Prologue:
A Mysterious Sickness

-1988-

Harry Potter was not usually the type of person to wake up in the mornings grumpy and tired. Granted, his Aunt Petunia almost always woke him up screaming and rapping against the door of the cupboard under the stairs, so perhaps he'd have a better reason than most to do so. Even so, however, when it was time to rise from the welcome, soft blanket of slumber, he would make no complaints, sit up on the hard floor, brush the various spiders and other bugs off him, and crawl out of it with relative wakefulness. It was something one picked up after spending seven years living with the Dursleys: if one doesn't get up fully prepared for the long day ahead, one's workload will likely increase tenfold. Therefore, when he had a large amount of trouble even moving his legs and arms that morning, nobody was more surprised or annoyed than he was.

"WHAT'S TAKING YOU SO LONG TO GET OUT OF THAT CUPBOARD, BOY?" roared Vernon, up early for once and reclining on his favorite seat in the living room, watching the morning news. "YOUR AUNT HAS ALREADY CALLED YOU THREE TIMES! SHOW HER THE RESPECT SHE DESERVES!"

"I would," Harry called back rather painfully and in a much quieter voice, "if I could actually move myself out of there. My limbs don't seem to want to do what I'm telling them to. I feel... kind of sick."

The moment the words left his mouth, he knew that it was only a half-truth. He did feel sick, but not feverish; his body felt weak and heavy, like something was attempting to squeeze the life out of him. His eyes were still a bit blurry from sleep, though, so he couldn't quite see whether Dudley had discovered some new way to prank him, or something. Straining as best he could against the exhaustion that had nothing to do from a lack of sleep, Harry struggled to his knees and tried to push open the cupboard door. It didn't budge, however, and a sense of panic started to well up in the eight year old boy. If he didn't get out of this cupboard, the Dursleys wouldn't bother to come open it for him, and he'd remain there indefinitely.

Harry's blood pulsed through his body, his heart beat increasingly rapidly, and without even fully understanding what he was doing, he slammed his fist forward into the door in a massive punch.

It flew open and the hinges screeched. Harry stared; he'd nearly punched it off its hinges.

Petunia's head stretched in from the left, and the woman with the longest neck on Privet Drive frowned in at him. "Treat our house carefully, boy, or you're cleaning it up!"

"I clean it up even if it's not me treating it without care," Harry pointed out, and his aunt pompously ignored him. Petunia's head slid back out of view and she went off to whatever it was she'd been doing before, leaving Harry to blink rapidly at his fist. How had he punched the door hard enough for it to nearly fly off its hinges? He'd always been scrawny and quite weak.

Harry, never one to let a random gift remain untaken, army-crawled as quickly as he could out of the cupboard, his body sweating unnaturally. He then maneuvered to the kitchen over the spotless, green-and-white floor, which he'd spent an hour sweeping it entirely clean of any dust and grime. Once there, the lightning-scarred boy reached up to grasp a handle on one of the drawers beneath the counter, and used this to pull himself up to a stand. His legs groaned at the effort of holding him up, but he didn't fall, which was nice. Harry rather liked a healthy amount of distance between his face and the floor.

This done, Harry set to work on that morning's bacon and eggs, his remarkably empty stomach rumbling at the raw ingredients as he prepared them.

Making breakfast passed without incident, although his exhaustion did not go away at all. This was strange, he thought, especially since he'd actually gotten nine hours of sleep the previous night. He should have, by all accounts, been wide awake. But his body was still sluggish, like he was trying to move it through a swamp instead of air.

It was at the end of breakfast when things really started to turn south.

Vernon hummed over the paper which Harry had retrieved after frying the bacon, examining the front page with a raised eyebrow. "Lots of mysterious deaths in Cairo," he observed, sipping his morning coffee. "Officers reported that all the blood from the victims had been drained entirely from their bodies. Weird marks on their necks, too. No idea what the cause of death is, although due to the large number of incidents as well as an increase in missing persons these past few years, they suspect foul play."

"Terrible, truly terrible," hummed Petunia, who did not sound sympathetic at all. "You know, Mrs. Johnson just down the street was telling me yesterday that it's likely someone mad at their Prime Minister. Said he's been doing an awful job, and that they should've seen this coming."

"It doesn't sound like someone mad at the Prime Minister to me," said Harry without thinking. Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley all stared at him, and he desperately wished he could shrink down into his chair. "Er, ah... it sounds like... a..."

He trailed off. He'd been about to say vampire, but the Dursleys would've been furious.

"Um, nothing," he finished weakly, poking at his small plate of scrambled eggs (he hadn't been allowed bacon).

"I should think so," said Vernon, with a deep frown. He tilted his coffee mug back further, paused, then slammed it back on the table. Harry jumped. "FREAK! Go get me another cup of coffee."

With a quiet, "Yes sir," Harry reached over to grab Vernon's cup. He made to stand up... but he'd barely risen at all before his knees gave out and he collapsed to the floor. The mug, unfortunately, tumbled out of his hands and shattered.

Dudley's eyes widened. "You've done it now, Potter!" he said gleefully.

"BOY!" Vernon was furious. Eyes wide and dilated, he looked rather like a bull about to barrel at some poor sap who'd fallen off of its back. "YOU BROKE MY FAVORITE MUG! HOW DARE YOU!"

Cold shivers ran down Harry's spine. "I-I-I'm sorry," he mumbled, staring in horror at the shards of porcelain scattered around his face. One had nearly lodged itself in his right eye, which was now pressed against the floor, but had missed by several centimeters. "I didn't mean to. I'll clean it up..."

He tried to get to his feet, pushed against the floor with all his strength, but he wouldn't move.

"I... I feel really sick..." He moaned, his vision swimming.

"Sick... SICK!?" Vernon bellowed. In his anger, he smashed his fist against the table so hard the wood groaned and sounded like it might have cracked. "DON'T THINK SOMETHING LIKE BEING SICK IS EXCUSE FOR THIS, FREAK! GET TO YOUR FEET AND SWEEP IT UP! THEN YOU AND YOUR AUNT ARE GOING TO THE STORE RIGHT AFTER BREAKFAST, SO YOU CAN BUY ME A NEW MUG!"

"I... I can't get up... and I don't have any money..."

"Can't get up?" repeated Petunia, and... was that a hint of concern in her voice? "Are you sure?"

"My body won't move..."

"Don't believe his crap," Vernon spat, glaring contemptuously at the pitiful form unmoving on the floor. "He's just trying to shirk his work."

"Vernon, he's never complained about not being able to move before," Petunia pointed out. "And he said he felt sick earlier. What if there's actually something wrong? He might need to go to the hospital, and if we just let him... you know..." Her voice dropped to a hushed whisper, so quiet that neither Harry nor Dudley could hear, "they'll know, and they won't be happy."

Vernon's face closely resembled a strawberry for several seconds. In fact, his whole body was turning a unique shade of red specific to that fruit. Just when Harry was wondering whether the pudgy man was trying to transform himself into one, Vernon sighed and growled, "Fine. You take him in for a check-up while I go to work. But we're not getting him treatment for anything more than life-threatening."

"Of course not," Petunia agreed, some small amount of relief settling in her stomach.

That day, it was discovered that Harry James Potter had come down with a mysterious, as-yet-undiscovered sickness that none of the doctors at the hospital knew how to treat. For many days and nights, he was kept under careful watch, and when the doctors asked why he was so very small and skinny for his age ("Almost like he was malnourished," several of them insisted), the Dursleys responded only that he was a very light and picky eater. Finally, though, after fifty five long days, Harry Potter woke up in his hospital bed as good as new. Better, in fact, since he'd been given enough food for a month and a half to actually function at full potential.

And none of them - doctors, Dursleys, or even Harry himself - saw the burly boy with the yellow skin and pink hair, with large muscles and white gloves covering his fists, who had been squeezing him in what amounted to a deadly tight hug for the previous month and a half, and who had mysteriously vanished on the fifty-fifth day.

-TO BE CONTINUED-

Stand: Roundabout
Stand User: Harry Potter
Ability and Stats: ?