There wasn't much going for young Harry Potter in his life. He lived in a small, bug infested cupboard, spiders and rats his only friends. He was a small, skinny child, scrawny to the point of starvation. He was a freak, according to his relatives. He'd always end up doing something bad, something freakish and naughty, despite his best efforts not to, and they'd punish him for it. Currently he was nursing the results of his latest punishment. It was only a few bruises and a some small cuts, not as bad as last time, that broken bone had taken weeks to heal. He still thought it unfair, no matter how freaky he was, there was no way he could have had anything to do with Dudley's birthday cake exploding, he was in his cupboard at the time!
He was sitting upon his small, dingy bed, scratching at a scar on his chest whilst watching the fleas and spiders scurry about the room. He watched as one of the spiders began constructing a new web in between the fifth and sixth steps, the silken threads glinting with the reflected light seeping through the cracks in the doorway.
He'd often thought about running away. He'd even gotten as far as planning his escape several times but when he actually came to it, for some reason he never managed to go through with it. Even now the thoughts of running away wouldn't seem to come easily and left his brain feeling foggy and sluggish.
His thoughts turned sour as he contemplated his situation. He couldn't see many ways to escape his predicament, his teachers and the police all thought him a troublemaker and delinquent, they would rarely talk to him, let alone help him.
It was that day, the 30th of July 1986 that Harry Potter's thoughts first turned suicidal, the day before his sixth birthday.
It was over a year later before he eventually broke down into a deep enough depression to actually go through with it. He'd accepted that running away wasn't an option, his mind just wouldn't let him go through with it. He was once again sat upon his mattress under the stairs, listening to the quiet hum of the television and the not so quiet snores of his uncle Vernon, who had fallen asleep in the lounge again. His aunt Petunia had gone upstairs an hour ago with his cousin Dudley, who'd been banned from sleeping on the couch like his uncle when Petunia found she could no longer carry him up to his bed.
Slowly, making sure not to make any noise to wake his uncle, he opened his cupboard door and stepped out into the hallway. His relatives had forgotten to lock it after his afternoon's punishment, the bruises were still bright around his neck from his uncle's pudgy fingers and his breathing still came with a quiet wheeze.
Stealing a quick look in on the snoring man, Harry stealthily made his way into the kitchen.
Looking around he quickly spotted his aunt's new set of stainless steel knives in their wooden block. He made his way towards them before a thought struck him and he instead turned towards the refrigerator, once more scratching at the scar on his chest. It had become a habit of his lately. He didn't remember where the scar came from, but he knew it had appeared the day after his last attempt at running away from the house. He'd sworn he'd never call the place home again and stepped out the door. Oddly he couldn't remember the rest of the day, but had woken up later with the new scar and a fresh beating by his uncle evident on his body. It still hurt from time to time but then he'd just go to sleep and the next day it would be fine again. Looking up at the fridge he thought; 'One last meal. One proper meal before the end. That's what prisoners get isn't it?' With that he opened up the fridge door and gazed in wonder at all the food laid out before him. Most of his association with food had been the bacon and eggs he'd have to cook his relatives in the morning and the leftovers he could scrounge off of his aunt's plate, the other two rarely left anything if they could help it.
He filled up on all the ham and cold sausage he could. He grabbed some bread and cheese before downing a carton of orange juice. Finally done, full for the first time he could remember, but just to be sure he also picked up an apple from the bowl on the counter. Crunching on the juicy treat, he moved once more towards the knife block.
Slowly, with shaking hands, he reached up and pulled the largest one free from it's housing. Thinking slowly he remembered scenes from the brief tv and radio news articles he'd heard from his cupboard. Most people would cut into their wrists, whilst killers preferred the neck because it was quicker. Not wanting to spend any more time in the hell-hole of a house he was in he raised the knife to just beneath his chin. He paused, fear clouding his mind and halting his hand. Could he really do it? Could he take his own life? He certainly didn't have anything to live for and yet something stopped him. The thought of actually killing himself was reprehensible. He tried to steel himself and gripped the handle harder. After a minute, though, his arm sagged and he let out his held breath.
He couldn't do it.
As he stood there he suddenly felt something behind him and heard a ragged breath-like sound. Turning his blood ran cold as he saw his uncle, purple faced with fury at the sight of Harry stood there, the evidence of his late night snack on the counter and in the open fridge, holding a knife to his own throat.
"Why you cowardly, ungrateful little FREAK!" His uncle spat the words at him from across the kitchen. "How DARE you? How dare you eat the food I work so hard to provide for my family? How dare you stand their with my wife's knife in your hand you cowardly little shit? I'm going to break every one of those fingers and then we'll see about your punishment!" he stalked over to his nephew slowly.
Harry stood there paralysed by fear, he couldn't move as his uncle drew back a fist and punched him in the jaw. He spun around and crashed against the side of the kitchen counter. There was a sharp pain in his chest to match the dull throb of his head. He looked down to see the knife had stabbed a few millimetres into his chest, right on the solar plexus, right into his scar. Dazed as he was he thought he saw a strange blue glow reflected on the blade of the knife and the grating feeling of something hard where the knife was pressed.
Vernon paused for a second as his nephew was sprawled on the counter. He couldn't see the knife as it was under the freak's body. 'Oh well,' he thought, 'if he gets seriously damaged the old freak can just patch him up again like always.'
With that final thought he brought his right fist back and smashed it into the boy's back, throwing all of his weight behind it. He heard a satisfying crunch that usually accompanied a broken bone, though slightly different than normal, more like shattered glass before everything started to go wrong.
Harry felt the impact and of his uncle's fist and felt the knife still pressed against his hand pierce through the hardness in his chest. Expecting the world to go black and resigning himself to his fate, finally getting the release he wanted, he was surprised when the world instead went blue.
There was a cracking and shattering sound before blue light shot out from his chest in a wave, knocking his uncle back and nearly blasting harry off his feet. The pain then grew intense as he felt several sharp slivers like knives pierce him from the inside out, emanating from the knife wound in his chest. Another blast of blue and the knife shot out of his chest and embedded itself in the wall, this time Harry was knocked off his feet but he didn't fall, and his uncle was sent sprawling out into the hallway as a wind began whipping around the inside of the kitchen.
Harry seemed suspended in mid air as another blast of blue energy shot out of him and the objects around him started to melt, fizz, crack and bubble as the wind grew stronger and whipped around his body, swirling everything around him in a maelstrom of chaos.
With the latest wave of blue energy Harry's mind felt afire. He threw his head back and screamed as memories forcibly flooded into his head. Memories of all of his escape attempts. Every time he'd run away and the old man with a stick would find him and bring him back, before telling him it was time to forget. Then came the memories of his last escape attempt. The old man had caught him and then said something to his uncle when he'd been brought back, something about failing wards, keeping him here and a different solution. The man had pulled out a small blue stone from beneath his cloak, at which his uncle nodded and told him to get on with it. The old man had leaned down and Harry couldn't move, only his eyes seemed to obey him as he watched the old man mumble some words and scratch a shape into the rock before pointing his stick at Harry's chest. Suddenly a gash appeared in his chest and the old man push the stone into him and muttered another word, which closed the skin over the small lump. "There we are now just to make it look like a scar and it's time to forget Harry." After that there were more memories, more recent ones of the old man coming back and removing the, now painful, stone from his chest and replacing it with a new one, before making him forget again. The first time he had muttered something about, "Sooner than I thought… even with the bindings… powerful too… should be very interesting."
As the memories ended a final double wave of blue burst from Harry's chest. The first healed his recent injuries, including the bruising and scars covering his body. The second erupted before withdrawing back into him and seemed to inflate him slightly. He filled out and no longer looked like a starved runaway, he didn't look like a perfectly healthy child either but the majority of his ills had been fixed. As the glow settled down and his skin regained its usual colour, the force that held him up disipated and he dropped the two foot back to the floor. The winds surrounding him died down and he looked around.
The kitchen and most of the ground floor was a shambles, all of the appliances seemed to have half melted, half exploded, the paint and wallpaper had been stripped from the walls, revealing bare bricks and mortar. Anything light and not tied down was strewn in a circle around him and most of the doors, pictures and other breakable objects were smashed beyond recognition, some things appeared to have vanished entirely and somehow a pair of rabbits, a fox and a small hamster had appeared inside the piles of wreckage. Looking out through the doorway he could see his uncle staring at him in a mixture of shock and outrage from his position sprawled at the base of the stairs. His aunt was stood on the stairs and looked like she was about to faint or be sick, he couldn't tell. Dudley was watching him from behind the banister with a mixture of fear and awe in his seven year old eyes.
Harry's eyes filled with hate as he stared at what remained of his so called family. As he frowned the staircase gave a groan before completely collapsing with a mighty smash, burying his uncle, dropping his aunt and cousin and destroying his 'room'.
He was shocked at the display of power, but before he could react in any way, he heard and felt a disturbance in the air behind him. Turning quickly, not wanting to be surprised and taken down by the old stick man he saw two people dressed in very strange clothes he didn't recognise.
The first spoke up quickly and his voice had an odd accent to it, the words sounded forced and not entirely natural as he said; "Peace, Harry Potter-san. We have no wish to harm you. We are here to take you away from this place."
His hair was a dirty-blonde, almost straw-like colour, tied back in a pony-tail and kept out of his eyes by a cloth strap with a metal plate on the front. He wore a black top with a green flak jacket and a flowing red sleeveless coat over the top and metal bracers on his forearms and the back of his hands. His long black trousers ended in sandals that left his toes and most of the top of his feet bare.
His companion looked half asleep as he spoke. He had black hair tied into a spiky bun and a short black goatee on his chin. His face was scarred and he dressed in a fishnet shirt, with the same green flak jacket but with a brown furry over coat, also sleeveless. He too wore long black trousers but had strange toe-less boots instead of sandals and spoke up when his companion had finished. "We've been tasked to take you away, your little display has dropped the wards so we could finally get to you. We need to hurry though, that troublesome Dumbledore will no doubt be on his way to brainwash you again and reseal your powers."
"Reseal… All this was me?" Harry asked, more shocked than anything, when everything. "Is Dumblethingy the old man with the glasses and a stick?" he asked, putting the thought of him destroying the house to the back of his mind.
"Yes, he is. He's the one who put you here and won't let you leave. When your parents died they left us with the task of caring for you should anything happen to your godfather. You should never have come here, but he got to you before we found out about their deaths and left you to these… people" the first man answered with a snarl at the last word. "We tried to get you out when the original wards failed but you had already left and he got to you first. By the time we tracked you both back here, the new wards were already in place."
Suddenly his explanations were cut off as a metalic crackling sounded from his and his partner's ear along with some words Harry couldn't understand.
"We have to go, now, our lookout has spotted the old man heading this way at speed. Please, Harry-san, will you come with us? If he sees us he will know where you have gone and you will not be safe from him" the second man asked him, kneeling and holding out his hand to Harry.
Smiling for the first time in as long as he could remember he took the strange man's hand, figuring that anything was better than beatings, torture and some strange old man's sick experiments. Smiling fondly the dark haired man said; "Great, not so troublesome after all. I'm Shikaku and this is Inoiki. We'll get out of here and meet up with Chouza then take you to your new home." Harry felt a tug and a swirl of wind and he was suddenly outside at the park several streets away with the two men.
After about a minute a new guy appeared, he had a mass of long spiky red hair and a white bandage over his forehead. He wore a black long sleeved shirt under an armoured plate with a red symbol on the front and had forearm guards like Inoiki. He also wore long black pants and sandals but had a thick coiled belt with a brown apron-like flap that went down to his shins. He greeted Inoiki and Shikaku and was introduced to Harry as Chouza
"We're good, he hasn't followed us. He's still trying to undo all the stuff the little one did when he released his core. There must be a whole square mile of random destruction, animated sundries and transformed items. There are squads on the way, we should be going before they begin sweeping the area."
"Agreed. Harry-san, if you would climb onto my back, I shall carry you to our extraction point, it will be much quicker than walking." Inoiki, saying this, knelt down so that he could carry Harry piggyback style.
Nodding quickly, not wanting to be caught and handed back to the Dursleys again, Harry climbed onto the man's back. With one final glance around them to make sure they weren't being watched, the three men and their charge disappeared in a gust of leaves.
Several hours after his impromptu suicide attempt, Harry found himself in a hot, dry and heavily forested land, staring up at the largest set of gates he had ever imagined. Looking left and right he saw the giant walls continuing in a slight curve away into the cleared out forests on either side. Swallowing nervously, he followed his guards/rescuers past a booth where two young-looking guards watched them, or more specifically him, warily. There was a quick exchange of paperwork and some surprisingly friendly looks from the guards before they were waved through. When he asked about it, Chouza, who he'd come to like for his larger-than-life cheerfulness and general attitude, told him that his parents had been well liked here before they were killed.
"Killed? I was told they died drunk in a car crash." Harry responded without thinking. The three turned to look at him with shocked looks upon their faces. Shikaku growled angrily before violently stubbing out the cigarette he was smoking. "Mendokuse baka no… Apologies, but that is an insult to their memories. They died protecting you, they sacrificed themselves to protect you from a homicidal maniac who terrorised your country for years before that night."
"Oh, so they stopped him then?" Harry asked, intrigued, this was the most he'd ever heard about his birth-parents apart from the insults his uncle had spewed about them.
"No, Harry-san, you did, that's why you are so famous in your country, did no one ever tell you?" Chouza asked.
"What? That's crazy, I can't have, I must have been less than a year old, and I'm not famous… oh no, I'm the wrong person… look please, I'm sorry, I'll do anything, just don't send me back there." Harry was panicking, his dream of escaping the Durselys quickly fading out of his grasp. "I'm sorry, please, I…"
"Harry-san, stop." Inoiki commanded firmly. "Are you not Harry James Potter, son of James Potter and Lily Evans-Potter?" Harry nodded quickly, hope rekindling quickly despite his best efforts to suppress it. "Did you not live at No. 4 Privet Drive Little Whinging, Surrey, England, with your aunt Petunia Evans-Dursley, her husband Vernon Dursley and their son Dudley Dursely?" Harry nodded again. "Finally, do you have a lightning-bolt shaped scar on your forehead?"
"How do you know about that?" Harry asked, bemused as he lifted his hand subconsciously to scratch the offending piece of tissue.
"Everyone knows about that, you got it when you beat…" Shikaku began then sighed. "No, this isn't right, I had thought they would at least tell you a little about yourself and your parents. Screw protocol, the Hokage needs to know this now. Sorry, kid, but your questions are going to have to wait. We'll take you to our boss and he'll explain everything. Chouza, can you take him?"
"Just because you're too lazy to do it yourself." Chouza murmured just loud enough for Harry to hear as he bent to lift the boy onto his back. Despite the situation Harry had to suppress a smirk, the chubby man had been mocking Shikaku's laziness almost since they had left England, in English, to Harry's great amusement.
Once Harry was secure the group took off at high speed to the largest building around. It was a tall red tower, set against the backdrop of the cliff face that bordered one side of the village. Said cliff face had been carved and four dispassionate faces stared out across the entire village, keeping silent vigil and Harry was reminded of the pictures he had seen of the Americans' Mt. Rushmore.
As the party jumped from rooftop to rooftop at high speed, Harry pondered his current situation. 'Weird but definitely better than the Dursleys' was his conclusion, 'No matter what happens I just hope they let me stay. Learning this roof-running thing would be cool as well.'