AN So this is just a little one shot that I wrote in an afternoon that I thought I would share with you all….I swear I don’t know where all these sad songfics keep coming from, but I figure I get all the angst out of my system in these so I can keep my chaptered fics happy. So this is a songfic based on the song from Les Miz Castle on a Cloud so I don’t own that or Harry Potter, obviously...And thanks to MercuryBlue for Beta-ing this for me, she’s the best!

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It was one of the coldest winters in recent memory and the residents of Little Whinging compensated by wearing warm flannel pajamas and wool socks while burying themselves beneath blankets of fleece and down. All of them were peacefully slumbering, waiting for a much-anticipated Christmas morning and dreaming of gingerbread men and all the things they hoped Father Christmas would bring.

Well, almost all of them.

There was one resident of the neighborhood whose last concerns were cookies and Christmas presents. There was one little boy whose only wish was that his teeth would stop chattering so hard, because it was making his head hurt.

Six-year-old Harry Potter couldn’t think of a time he had ever been so cold. He was wearing every article of clothing in his possession and had even gone so far as to cover himself in his bath towel in addition to his thin blanket, but nothing seemed to cut through the frigid draft that circulated in his “room” underneath the stairs. His uncle always made a point of shutting all the heat vents downstairs before he went to bed, so that only the upstairs rooms were heated at night in an attempt to save money, leaving Harry in the cold.

The little boy shut his eyes hard, tensing his whole body in a futile attempt to stop its shaking, wishing-hoping-dreaming that he was anywhere but where he was.

There is a castle on a cloud,
I like to go there in my sleep,
Aren't any floors for me to sweep,
Not in my castle on a cloud.

Most little boys his age would be shaking, not from cold, but from anticipation for Christmas morning. Harry could not claim to be in their company. In fact he had never looked forward to the holiday, but instead dreaded it.

In his experience, Christmas just meant more work for him to do. It meant that he would be doing extra cleaning before any company that they were having over arrived. It meant even larger and more complicated meals to cook, and bigger messes to clean afterwards. Not to mention having to sit and watch his cousin Dudley open mountains and mountains of Christmas presents, knowing that he himself wouldn’t get to play with any of the toys, and knowing he would be responsible for cleaning up the mess Dudley made with scraps of wrapping paper and packaging.

He would then also be responsible for finding a home for all of Dudley’s new toys in his already overflowing room, all the while being yelled at to be careful to not break anything. Meanwhile, Dudley would be purposely destroying half of his presents, at which Uncle Vernon would shout about the shoddy workmanship of toy companies these days.

There is a room that's full of toys,
There are a hundred boys and girls,
Nobody shouts or talks too loud,
Not in my castle on a cloud.

Harry shifted slightly as his stomach growled painfully. He had been locked in his cupboard since shortly after breakfast. He had been caught playing with one of Dudley’s yoyos while he was supposed to be cleaning the living room.

He had found it while steam cleaning the couches and had simply wanted to try it before finishing his chores. Unfortunately Uncle Vernon had walked in at that moment and yelled at him for neglecting his duties around the house, but Dudley of course took the opportunity to make it worse by accusing Harry of stealing it from his room and told his father that he had been looking for that yoyo for weeks.

Harry knew it was no use to say that he had found it wedged between the sofa cushions or to point out that Dudley had several more yoyos sitting on a shelf gathering dust in his playroom. So he simply allowed himself to be grabbed harshly by his arm and thrown into cupboard.

As a result he had missed both lunch and dinner and had developed a sizable bruise on his upper arm. But he could handle the hunger and pain, he had long since gotten used to these common occurrences. No, it was the dark and loneliness that he couldn’t adjust too. It didn’t matter how many times he heard the lock click shut, or how long he sat there wondering when they would remember he was in there. It never got any easier.

Above anything else, Harry hated being alone, especially in the dark.

There is a lady all in white,
Holds me and sings a lullaby,
She's nice to see and she's soft to touch,
She says "Harry, I love you very much."

Harry reached a pale hand out from the minimal warmth that his worn blanket provided and slid it underneath the thin pallet that constituted as his mattress. With minimal searching he found what he was looking for. By the light that steamed through the cracks around the door in the closet under the stairs he looked at his most prized possession.

It was a picture of a woman he would never meet, a woman he would never know. It was his mother. He had found the picture on his fourth birthday, while his aunt was making him search the attic for a sun hat that she wanted to wear later that week, when she and Uncle Vernon took Dudley to the beach. It had been stifling up there while he sorted through boxes, looking for a hat that he wasn’t even sure what it looked like. But when he found a picture wedged between copies of outdated beauty magazines, a chill ran though his small frame.

He’d looked down at the girl in the picture, only to see his own emerald green eyes staring back at him. He’d known immediately that it was a picture the mother he had never known. It didn’t even matter that his aunt started screeching at him a moment later to hurry up, because it was the best birthday present he had ever received.

At times like this, he would pull it out and gaze at it. She was young in the picture, probably fifteen or sixteen, but from the perspective of a six-year-old, that seemed infinitely old. It was a candid picture obviously taken one carefree summer afternoon, for she was running somewhere and had looked behind her just in time for the photographer to snap the picture. Her deep auburn hair and white sundress swirled around her, as the electricity in her smile and eyes practically crackled with youth and exuberance.

Ever since finding this picture two and half years before this cold Christmas Eve, he had known that if he closed his eyes tight enough and wished hard enough, he could almost feel two gentle but strong arms wrap around him.

As he lay there clutching the blanket tightly around his shoulders, he could almost imagine that he was not in a drafty cubbyhole, but was sitting in his mother’s lap being rocked to sleep in front of a roaring fire. Breathing deeply, he could practically smell a comforting mix of cinnamon and sage, with maybe a hint of something lemony. Suddenly he didn’t feel as cold anymore, and the numbness of his fingers and toes subsided.

I know a place where no one's lost,
I know a place where no one cries,
Crying at all is not allowed,
Not in my castle on a cloud.

But when a car backfired somewhere down the street, Harry’s eyes flew open and the illusion dissolved around him. Suddenly she was gone and he was alone in the dark once more, back in the drafty cupboard beneath the stairs.

He squeezed his eyes shut again but this time it was in an attempt to keep the tears from leaking from his eyes.

One day, he promised himself as another chill wracked through his body, one day I’m going to get out of this place. I’ll make it to my castle on a cloud. I will have people that love me and care about me. Someday...

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A/N So…love it? Hate it? Think I should stick to humor, want more songfics? Leave a review and let me know…