A plot bunny that I hope I can do true justice; the title should say it all. Expect infrequent updates whenever I get inspiration to write this. The Pokémon World in this story is based mostly on that of the games, with a dash or two of the anime thrown in for good measure. I'm assuming that most of the more unusual Pokédex entries are either exaggerated or flat-out false urban legends. Also: I'm American, sorry if that affects the Potterverse too much. Let's see here, what else?

Rating: PG-13 to be on the safe side; expect violence and occasional swearing.

Main Characters: Harry Potter and Gary Oak

Pairings: Nothing really planned; I'll just see where the story leads. NO SLASH.

Other notes: The story won't completely focus on Harry's journey, parts of it will also show the absolute mess generated by his going to the Pokémon World.

Final Disclaimer: Pokémon and Harry Potter and all that goes into their two universes are the sole property of their own creators; I own nothing from this story save for the idea of bringing the two together. I'd like to thank them for allowing me to play around in their sandboxes.


Prologue: Breach


Number 4, Privet Drive appeared to be a carbon copy of the other houses that lined the long street that passed through the suburb. Like the others, it was painted in the uniform pure white, had an impeccably well-cared-for lawn, and housed a respectable, reasonably well-off family, the Dursleys. Vernon Dursley, a heavyset man with a bushy, grey walrus mustache, worked for Grunnings, a drill-making company. His wife Petunia, herself a thin, bony woman with a horse-like face, remained at home, caring for their young son Dudley.

Petunia put a lot of stock in the gossip of her neighbors, and she lived in perpetual dread of them learning the shameful secret of her family. The nosey woman knew there were already whispers about her; about the other boy of the Dursley household. However, she maintained an air of superiority, and refused to discuss the subject in-depth whenever the topic was broached.

It had been the talk of the neighborhood, when, four years ago in November, a second baby appeared in the Dursley household. Of course such a thing wasn't noticed right away, but eventually the other housewives of Privet Drive had discovered, both through spying and by interrogating Petunia, that her sister Lily and her husband James Potter had both been killed in a car crash on Halloween. Their boy, named Harry, had been passed into their custody. When asked why she'd never spoken of her sister's family before, Petunia clammed up and just mumbled that 'it wouldn't do to discuss such things'.

This of course, got the women talking even more, and rumors abounded about the true nature of the mysterious Lily and James Potter. Some thought that they were really gangsters, killed in a territorial fight with a rival organization. Others thought that they were agents of MI6, and that Harry was their unsanctioned love-child, among other, wilder ideas. The reality was of course, far stranger than anything they could imagine, but with no details forthcoming from the Dursleys, the subject faded away into obscurity. As the years passed, the messy-haired youth became a semi-frequent sight around the neighborhood and the local parks, often being chased by his husky cousin and a large group of other children.

The adults just shook their heads, thought to themselves boys will be boys, and didn't trouble themselves with the matter any further. The local gossip network moved away from the little drama of Harry Potter's mysterious appearance and all but forgot about the subject.

That morning, however, the sleepy suburb was about to be shaken up in a way no one could have foreseen. And soon the name Harry Potter would once again be on everyone's lips.

oOo

Harry Potter scrunched his eyes shut as a shower of dust fell from the ceiling of his 'room' under the stairs, accompanied by a loud thumping. He groaned and sat up on the thin mattress that served as his bed. He blindly groped around and found the glasses he'd received at the insistence of his school nurse a few months ago. Harry slipped them on over his shockingly green eyes just as the door to his cupboard shook as his cousin Dudley began pounding on it.

"Wake up, Potter!" A high-pitched, slightly nasal voice sounded from outside. "I want bacon!"

Harry sighed, and pulled on the string attached to the bare bulb on the ceiling, squinting against the harsh light. He grabbed the closest pair of socks at the edge of the bed that weren't too dirty, brushing a spider off of them as he did so. Once he had finished dressing, he clicked off the light and slowly opened the cupboard door.

No one was in sight, so he clambered out of the enclosed space and stretched, before heading towards the kitchen, from which the enticing smells of bacon and eggs were emanating. He walked through the door quietly, trying not to disturb the rest of his family. Dudley and his uncle Vernon were already seated at the table. His uncle, a large, grey-haired man sporting a huge walrus mustache, was seated at the far end of the table, his face buried in the newspaper, already dressed for work. His cousin Dudley, looking for all the world like a young pig stuck in a blonde wig, black t-shirt and baggy trousers, was already seated next to him, sloppily devouring a bowl of cold cereal, and occasionally sending greedy glances towards the kitchen with narrowed eyes, where Petunia was standing at the stove working on the rest of breakfast. She was wearing a conservative sundress.

Wordlessly, Harry crossed to the kitchen and grabbed the large blue coffee cup that was waiting there on the counter, having to stand on tip-toes to reach it. His aunt just glanced at him as he took the cup in both hands and hissed at him. "Don't spill it!"

"Yes, aunt Petunia." Harry said slowly, as he carefully walked over to his uncle and handed him the cup.

Vernon grunted and took the cup in one hand, leaving harry free to go pick up the full plates of bacon and eggs his aunt had just finished preparing. Harry took those too, ignoring the hollow feeling in his own stomach, and set one gingerly on the table in front of his uncle. He turned to give the other to Dudley, but had it violently snatched out of his hands by his cousin, who began to inhale the contents. Aunt Petunia walked up next to Harry and passed him a very small plate containing a few scraps of egg and a small strip of bacon, before she took her own plate and sat down at the table.

Harry sat down on the floor and quickly ate his meager breakfast. He knew from experience that if he didn't finish quickly, Dudley would take his food and eat it himself.

Harry glanced up at the kitchen table. He'd never been allowed to sit there. He didn't know why, but he figured it must have been something he'd done wrong. His aunt and uncle were always telling him he was doing things the wrong way, but he didn't know why. He wished he knew what he had done wrong so he could fix it, but they never told him what, they just yelled and yelled, calling him a 'freak' and a 'freeloader', whatever that meant.

Having finished his meal, the young five-year-old stood and set his plate on the counter next to the sink. His family was still eating, but he knew soon his uncle would be leaving to go to work, and he and his cousin would be off to school again. Then...

Harry shuddered a little.

Then more hiding during recess, more trying to eat his school lunch quickly so Dudley and his gang wouldn't snatch it from him. More running home avoiding the 'Harry Hunters' as Dudley and his friends called themselves.

Harry shook his head slightly, trying to drive off the bad thoughts. It wasn't that bad, he tried to convince himself, he could outrun most of them, and as long as he found a good hiding spot they wouldn't find or hit him. But deep down, Harry couldn't help but wonder why his family hated him. They were always yelling at him, and he didn't even know why. They never got him anything for Christmas, and he wasn't even sure when his birthday was. They just told him every once in a while how old he was. His cousin was showered with presents and attention, but Harry couldn't figure out what he was doing wrong that Dudley was doing right. His eyes started watering.

Harry tried instead to focus on the bizarre dream he'd had the night before, there'd been darkness, and then hazy shapes that he couldn't remember, then muffled voices saying something he didn't understand, and then a brilliant flash of green light accompanied by high-pitched laughter.

Unconsciously, Harry's hand rose to brush the lightning bolt scar that marred his forehead. He didn't know where it came from, his aunt and uncle had told him that his parents had died in a car crash and that he'd been given to them to take care of. When he'd asked about how he'd gotten his scar, his aunt had spanked him repeatedly and told him not to ask questions, while Dudley looked on and laughed; he never got spanked.

Harry's face turned red with shame at the memory, but he was broken out of his reverie by his uncle Vernon glancing at the clock and proclaiming. "Petunia, it's getting late, Dudley and I should be going if he's going to be at school on time."

He then glanced over at Harry and his gaze darkened. "Get your things boy, and don't be late or I will leave without you!" It wasn't an idle threat; several times Harry hadn't been fast enough and his uncle had left without him. His teachers had sent notes home with him every time this happened, but nothing else came of it.

"Yes uncle Vernon." Harry mumbled and hurried out of the kitchen.

"And don't run in the house!" Vernon bellowed after him.

Harry dove into his cupboard and grabbed up his single pencil, notebook, and the coloring book he'd nicked from a neighbor's bin and put them into his ragged, used backpack, which his aunt had bought at a second-hand shop last year. He turned and opened the cupboard door again...

...Just as his uncle Vernon came walking by. The door struck the portly man's left leg, causing him to stumble. He overbalanced, and went crashing facedown on the floor. Harry gasped, his eyes going wide with fright and his hands going to his mouth. He was going to be in so much trouble.

Vernon clambered unsteadily to his feet, blood pouring from a damaged nose, and rounded on Harry, his eyes ablaze with fury as his hair-trigger temper snapped.

"YOU!" He roared and grabbed the front of Harry's shirt, lifted him bodily off the ground and began shaking him. "YOU DID THAT ON PURPOSE, YOU LITTLE FREAK!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Harry sobbed, his arms flopping around limply from the force of Vernon's arms.

"Well, sorry's not good enough!" The fat man sneered, and he stopped shaking him. For a moment Harry relaxed just slightly, before Vernon tossed him roughly into his cupboard and kicked the door shut.

Harry blindly stuck out an arm to catch himself. He barely registered his hand impacting the wall, before he heard a loud and wet crack and his right arm began screaming in pain. Harry would have begun screaming then too, had his head not hit the wall next, knocking him senseless. He lay there in a dazed heap, not understanding what had happened, before the pain really set in and tears sprang to his eyes. He tried to scream, to call out for help, anything, but he couldn't do anything but sit in the semi-darkness and whine, not noticing the trickle of blood pouring out of his arm from where the broken bones had torn through the skin. All he could do was focus on the searing, blinding pain, as darkness began to eat away at the edges of his vision.

oOo

"Vernon!" His wife's shocked voice broke him out of his stupor from where he stood, chest heaving, before the cupboard under the stairs. "How could you!" Harry might have been the son of the sister she despised, but she'd never thought her husband would do anything that cruel, especially to a child.

"Petunia," He said, gesturing to the blood running down his face. "The little freak tried to bloody kill me! A little time in his room'll teach him some respect!"

"Vernon, he's a-" She was going to say 'child', but Vernon cut her off.

"He's one of their lot!" He hissed urgently, eyes shifting from side-to-side as if he was worried that he'd find the dreaded neighbors hiding in the adjacent sitting room, holding their hands to their ears to hear the conversation. "We- we swore we wouldn't stand for any of it!" A fanatical gleam came into his eyes, even as he pulled a handkerchief out of his suit coat's pocket and dabbed at his bloody nose with it. "We have to stamp it out of him, there's no other way!"

"Besides, a little discipline never hurt anyone." He continued, regaining control of his mental faculties. "He'll be fine. We'll make him miss school and lunch for today, and he'll learn that he has to respect his betters." He finished dabbing up the blood.

Petunia bit her lip; she wanted to agree with her husband. And more importantly she wanted to punish her nephew for his, his unnaturalness; people shouldn't be able to do what those folks did, it just wasn't right! However, a very, very small voice at the back of her head was trying to say that Vernon had gone too far this time. She ignored it.

"You're right." She conceded to him, forcing a smile. "A little bit of the cane, so to speak, and he'll learn some proper respect."

At that moment, Dudley came pounding down the stairs, backpack slung over his fat shoulders. He glanced at his mother and father, but didn't say anything.

"Ready for school, Dudders?" Vernon asked with false cheerfulness. The obese boy grinned and nodded, not questioning where Harry was. "Good, let's be off!"

He opened the front door and walked out with his son. Petunia gave one last glance at the shut cupboard door, before she walked out to see her husband off.

She didn't notice the dust particles suspended in the air; glinting in the early morning sunlight, shift themselves into the rough outline of a long-haired woman. The apparition stared at the closed cupboard door for a long minute before dispersing back into randomness.

oOo

Harry, tears pouring down his cheeks and his breathing coming in gasps, curled up on his left side on the floor of his room. He didn't even have the will to scream, all he could do was screw his entire face up at the waves of sheer agony lancing up his right arm, which had begun trembling uncontrollably. His plain blue t-shirt had begun to get soaked in the blood coming from the compound fracture.

Why? Harry thought through the white haze of pain surrounding his mind. Why did you die mum? Why couldn't you have taken me with you and dad? Why did you leave me with them? I'm sorry, whatever I did, I'm sorry. Fresh tears of pain, of a different sort from that in his arm, began pouring down his face. Whatever I did to make you mad, mommy, daddy, I don't, I can't, I'm sorry, just please don't leave me here!

A faint silvery haze appeared, softly coating Harry's form, and the faint scent of ozone began permeating the air.

oOo

Petunia watched as her husband and son drove off in their aging car. Vernon had been hoping for a while now to get a big promotion in Grunnings so they could afford a better car, but no such luck.

The woman sighed and folded her arms in the cool morning air. She'd check on Harry in a bit, and then put him to work on doing the chores around the house. She rather liked having him around in that respect. With him working, she could relax and sit down with a good book in the sitting room.

"Mrs. Dursley!" A feminine voice called out to her from down the street.

Petunia turned and plastered a fake smile on her face as she walked over to talk to one of her neighbors, trade the latest gossip, and perhaps learn something that would give her blackmail material on someone.

oOo

There was a reason why the Ministry of Magic didn't have a Department of Child Services. It was because almost no magical parents have ever been stupid enough to abuse their magical children. This wasn't strictly because of any particular loving care among the families (though that was also a big reason this sort of thing didn't happen); it was for self-preservation.

When children's magical cores begin growing, the magic within is highly malleable and unstable. It tends to lash out in concert with spikes of emotion, such as extreme happiness or anger. For example, if a magical child was sad that their favorite toy got taken away, their magic might reach out and summon it to them, or transfigure something nearby into a duplicate of the toy. By its very nature this accidental magic was unpredictable, and under certain circumstances, highly dangerous.

For example, if a child was severely injured or under extreme emotional stress, their magic would flare to try and protect them, and due to magic being intent-based it would often seek out and attack or otherwise remove the source of the danger. Thus, every magical parent knew better than to harm children in their care, at least beyond a certain amount of stern punishment. The parents of muggleborn witches and wizards were also warned of this effect around the time they were told that their children were magical. Again, this was done out of self-preservation. If odd things started happening to the parents of muggleborns because their children had lost control of their magic, it would be very hard to keep quiet.

The problem with Harry was that, being given to his muggle relatives at an early age and hidden by the extensive protections Albus Dumbledore had placed around the property, no one could have found the Dursleys to explain the danger to them, even if they would have bothered to do so. Dumbledore had never thought to warn them about the dangers of abusing their nephew. Even if it had occurred to him, he would have brushed it off and assured himself that the Dursleys would take good care of Harry. He was family after all.

oOo

In the darkness of the cupboard, now dimly illuminated by the ever-brightening aura surrounding Harry, the young boy groaned. Small static discharges were arcing off of him, and his hair was standing on end from the magical energy emanating from his rapidly destabilizing core. Harry for his part didn't understand why he felt so warm all of a sudden, or why there was a pressure in his chest that was making it increasingly hard for him to breathe.

I must've done something to make mum and dad mad at me. That's why they left me here. Harry continued his earlier train of thought. Why? Why did they hate me so much? Was I not good enough for them? Why?! I wish I were somewhere else, anywhere but here! Why did they leave me here all alone! He drew a shuddering breath as suddenly every hair on his body stood on end and waves of hot and cold began flashing through his body. The pressure in his chest increased a hundredfold and it became nearly impossible to breathe. What's wrong with me? Harry wondered briefly if he was dying. Maybe I could see my parents. He thought faintly, consciousness slipping away. Maybe I could ask them what I did to make them not love me this much...

On a reflex, barely aware of his own actions, he moved his left hand out from under him and very lightly trailed it along his trembling right arm. Feeling his arm with his eyes and teeth clenched tightly shut against the pain. Harry briefly wondered why it was covered in a hot and sticky substance before his fingers brushed against the hard nub of bone protruding from the skin.

Pain.

Pain that dwarfed anything he'd felt before. Pain that flooded through him and caused his eyes to fly open, unseeing as the five year old wizard drew in a single, massive breath, and screamed at the top of his voice. He screamed like he'd never screamed before, and as he did so, the last vestiges of unconscious control he had over his premature magical core fled.

In a blinding flash of white light, Harry Potter, eyes wide, back arched, his face contorted in a terrible, drawn out scream, vanished from this world. For a brief nanosecond afterwards, all was silent and peaceful.

Then the universe reasserted itself, and with an almighty roar, an explosion of blue magical energy blasted out from where the young boy had been lying. The air plasmised from the sheer ferocity and energy of the detonation, while the cupboard door, walls, and the stairs above were vaporized a split second after the boy was. The energy didn't stop there, and the walls, photos of the Dursley family, the kitchen, the parlor, and everything within were obliterated as the rolling wave of destruction spread outwards. Then the explosion reached the ornate, rune-covered marble wardstone Dumbledore had carefully buried in the center of the house's foundation to anchor the massive protective bubble surrounding the home. It too was gone in the blink of an eye, and the audible shriek of the blood wards collapsing around the house barely preceded the crashes of glass shattering as every window in Number Four exploded outward from the pressure of the expanding, superheated air.

In a matter of seconds the Dursley home detonated in a shocking explosion, the entire house reduced to kindling, shrapnel, and other flaming debris that rained down for hundreds of meters in every direction. The neighbor Petunia Dursley had been talking to barely had time to gasp in horror, before the pressure wave and accompanying sonic boom knocked both of them off their feet in a rush of hot air, deafening them. The blast shook the ground with its intensity

After a few seconds, Petunia dazedly got to her feet, scraped and bloody from hitting the ground so hard, and stared at the unidentifiable pieces of flaming rubble that surrounded her, before turning around to gaze at the twenty foot deep crater that was all that remained of her home. All around her, her neighbors were pouring out of their homes, staring in utter shock at the plume of pitch-black smoke rising from the ruins of Number Four.

As well as the clouds of smoke rising from Numbers Three and Five, which had been damaged by the dissipating edge of the blast and were starting to burn. So were a dozen other houses that had been hit by flaming debris. Frantic shouting could soon be heard from the residents of Privet Drive.

"Someone call the fire brigade!"

"Save the animals!"

"Honey, get the kids out! Now!"

Petunia could only stare, wide-eyed and in shock at the ruins of her home. She didn't react when the woman she'd been talking to laid a shaking hand on her shoulder, she didn't resist when she tugged her away from the rapidly-growing blaze engulfing the houses surrounding the blast site, and she didn't respond when the paramedics arrived and began giving her oxygen and asking what had happened. Only one thing kept running through her mind, even as tears began forming in her eyes and an empty, hollow feeling settled in her gut.

Harry.

oOo

Hundreds of miles away, in an ancient castle overlooking a huge Scottish lake, the disturbance was noticed almost the moment it happened. In the office of the headmaster, filled with various knick-knacks, books, cabinets, and one massive desk, a brilliant red and gold phoenix awoke from his slumber on an ornate perch as dozens of shrill alarms began sounding all at once. The fire-bird's expressive black eyes took in the sight of every magical monitor attached to Harry Potter going berserk and spewing ominous black smoke, before he let out a heart-wrenching shriek and sprang aloft. In a flash of flames, Fawkes was gone, hoping that he wasn't too late; racing to fetch Dumbledore from the Wizengamot meeting he was presiding over.


Thus ends the prologue, next chapter: Aftermath

Please leave a review, and thanks for reading!