Summary: Completely fed up with the way that his 5th year ended, Harry heads to Privet Drive for the summer. A letter, some goblins, and a lot of luck spur our favorite young wizard on a summer of training and self discovery that will carry him on through the impending war.

Disclaimer: The characters in this work are the product of either JK Rowling or the Marvel Comic Group. I am poor and own nothing, please don't sue me.

A/N: This is my first story, I have been reading a lot of fic over the last few years and my favorite genre is most certainly the "Harry's got a gun" type of fics. Please be honest but nice in your opinions.

Chapter 1: Enough!

To look at the occupants of the Dursley's sedan is reminiscent of a question on a reasoning test. Which one of these do not belong in this picture? A large walrus-like man with a heavy mustache made bristly by his apparent agitation; the thin unsightly woman who appears both snobbish and full of disdain for an occupant in the back seat; a heavy boy (almost a younger clone of the man in the front seat) trying his best to look intimidating and not quite making it work; and last the sullen teenager, almost frail in stature the weight of despair apparent on his sunken features. It doesn't take a engineer to figure out that the youngest occupant of the car doesn't belong, a fact the other three occupants seem to be all too aware of.

Finally, the automobile rolled to a stop in front of an attractive yet unremarkable house that bore a striking resemblance to all of the other houses in the neighborhood. Without needing prompting from the unpleasant man in the driver's seat, the small teen made his way to the boot to dislodge a very heavy steamer trunk and a large and awkward bird cage. The boy then made his way up the stairs and into the smallest room of the house, his room, without emitting a single syllable. On his cot, Hedwig, his owl familiar had an envelope fastened to her talons,"Where have you been girl, you took off a week ago and I have been worried sick!"

"Hoot," was the simple response. After shaking his head amusedly at his faithful friend, he made to remove the letter only to see it sealed in gold wax with two crossed pikes for a crest. Intrigued,
Harry opened the letter to find it to be from the goblins of Gringots bank.

Mr. Potter,
We have received word that a Sirius Black has recently died and he had left some instructions to be carried out upon his death. We have enclosed a letter from the decedent and ask that you would please visit our establishment within 24 hours of breaking the seal to this letter to claim all that he has left for you. This parchment has been charmed to act as a portkey to one of our secure meeting rooms so that we might conduct our business efficiently without anyone being able to stick their overly large and crooked noses into our affairs.

Ragnok Executive Director and Clan Chief Gringots, Great Britain

P.S. Mr. Potter, it may be of interest to you that upon a routine audit of our files, we have ascertained that your parent's wills have not yet been opened. We sincerely apologize for this error and are currently looking into how such a breach of protocol could have occurred. We will take care of these matters when you come in for the reading of the late Mr. Black's will.

Setting the letter down, the boy known to many as The-Boy-Who-Lived and to those who mattered as Harry Potter broke down to grieve. This was not the meaningless whimpering that accompanies a painful bruise nor the self absorbed blubbering of a petulant child; no, this was the soul-wracking sobs of losing a loved one, of losing innocence. This boy, forced to become a man let the repressed emotions loose like a torrent washing forth to cleanse that in the path of the wash. And like a torrent, the cleansing came to his tainted soul.

Harry was no normal teenager, no he happened to magical and passed that, he was what the cliche would refer to as a chose one. For before his birth, a prophesy was made that singled him out to save the magical world from the dark; and save it he did! At little more than a year old, he and his parents were attacked by the leader of the darkness and after the death of his parents, young Harry somehow ripped the soul from the sorcerer Lord Voldemort. Harry was then left with his abusive and otherwise unremarkable relatives out of the public eye until he was called forth to rejoin the magical world after ten years.

Ten years is a long time, in that time young Harry learned very well that people responded much more gently when he appeared ignorant. In his time in the wizarding world, only his godfather Sirius, now dead,
saw Harry for what he really was. Now he was gone and Harry was alone; not even his best friends Ron and Hermione could understand Harry for what he really was. Resigning himself to this new status of solitude, Harry reached for the second parchment that he received from the Goblins.

Harry,
If you are reading this letter, I am dead; with any luck I died of strain from a lovely set of triplets that I met on my travels after my flight from Azkaban, or kicking some Death Muncher arse (the last is far more likely, but you can't blame a bloke for trying). Regardless of how I checked out, I want you to accept my death but not the responsibility; I know that you will want to mope about, but I also know that you are smart enough to know that you are bright enough to place the blame for my demise squarely where it belongs. I love you kid, you are the closest thing I have to a son and as such I am leaving all of my worldly goods to you with three bits of advice. One,
enjoy yourself as much as possible with knowledge of what you need to prepare for. Two, leave for the summer and get to the states, I know you will have to stop by Gringots - just ask them for a quiet way out of the country. They will also have a way to make sure that a certain white haired bird lover will not be able to cut your quest short. My third and last piece of advice is to look at your life and make the decisions that you can live with, don't live for anything you don't want to. If I may be so bold as to make a final suggestion, I know that there is no love lost between you and the muggles, at least let them know what is coming with this whole return of the Dork Lord. They might not deserve much, but no one deserves to die at the hand of one of those dark tossers.

I hate to drag this on, but I feel that I must share with you one last story before I leave you to your journey. Shortly before your parents went into hiding, they came upon a group of Death Eaters attacking an orphanage. Just as they were about to take the evil munchers, they got ambushed by a second group of DE's and were quickly overwhelmed. Just as the head baddie was finishing up his monologue, this strange muggle came in dressed in black with a white skull on his shirt and just started killing people. He killed all of the Death Eaters before they knew what was happening. Just as he turned to free James and Lily, one of the dark dorks jumped up (he caught on quick unlike his comrades and played dead) and fired an AK at the muggle's back, just when all was lost, James kicked the man thus knocking him out of the way of the curse and letting him finish his work. After all of this, he said that he owed them one and that they could find him in Chicago when they wanted his help. When they asked him his name, he just smiled and said that he was known as the Punisher. My closing words are these, when you make it to the states, look this bloke up, he knows everything you need to about combating the death eaters.

Your dogfather,
Sirius

Steeling his resolve, Harry took a moment to evaluate what his mentor told him. Finding that he happened to agree with the fact that nobody deserved to be tortured to death, he made his way down to the sitting room where the three other occupants of the house sat around the telly not having a care in the world.

"Excuse me," Harry said in his best neutral voice.

"What do you want Boy?" Vernon spat, the venom plain to see in his bristling mustache.

"I will be leaving tomorrow morning for good, but before then, I wanted to let you know some things that are happening in, um, my world. You see, last year I was enrolled in a competition that pitted champions from the three schools like mine in Europe. The conclusion of the tournament was an ambush that had me witness the rebirth of the madman that killed my folks, I fought him and barely escaped with my life. This year, we fought again and I had to watch as one of his followers murdered the closest thing I had to a father in this world.
I fought Tom, that is the one who killed my parents, again only to be saved by my headmaster." Here Harry took a deep breath and continued,
"I am telling you all of this because this dark lord will no doubt come for you to hurt me, and even though we may not like each other, I do not wish for you all to be tortured to death by the magic you hate so much."

"Well boy," Vernon said with much less hate than just a minute ago.
"We tried to stomp that freakishness out of you growing up, I guess you were just to stupid to realize that. In any case, thank you for telling us about this Voldy-whosits return. Are we safe here? Can't the military do something about this?"

Startled at being asked his honest opinion, Harry answered,"Well if it were me, I would put in for a relocation to Australia or the Orient with Grunnings and the military doesn't know of the existence of the,
of my world." Harry decided to keep his plans secret from his so called family.

Petunia spoke up with a shaking voice, "Boy, Harry, thank you for letting us know all of this. I know that we never showed you a good home, but we did take you in and I am glad that you realize that after all this time." she finished this last with a disdainful sniff, at least some things never change Harry mused to himself.

"Well, I guess thats all I needed to say. I will just be going now"
With that, Harry made his way back up the stairs feeling good that he has acted on the behalf of his godfather and himself, not with the supposed good of the wizarding world at stake, just making the decision to help one person out of his own choice was both liberating and strengthening. He would go to the goblins and then find this new mentor.

As Harry stepped back into his room, he looked around surveying this room, "Hedwig, girl I know you won't like it, but could you please fly to Hermione and stay with her for the summer? I would take you with me, but I will be around muggles and it would look weird if I had an owl as a traveling companion." Hedwig looked rather put off to put it mildly, but being the faithful familiar she is hooted dutifully and flew out the window. After one last look around, Harry grabbed up his trunk and the gringots letter and muttered the code word supplied by the goblins and the world spun away below him.

A/N I know, lots of foreshadowing, the next few chapters will be Harry getting the necessary equipment to make his journey to the US and then his first encounter with the Punisher.

RR please, I live for feedback.