Summary: "I don't exist, and I don't care to, anyway." The first time, Harry's sure it's just coincidence. The second time, Harry's sure it — he — isn't. And in the times that follow, Harry still doesn't quite realize how befriending his mysterious guardian is going to reshape the world and beyond. Time/Dimension Travel. GEN.

Disclaimers: Rights for J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury for Harry Potter. Acclaim for Ghost by cywscross for inspiration. (If you like Naruto, you MUST check out her awesome work!)

Warnings: GEN, Rated T [12+]. Remember, this is a child's point of view at the start; many things are going to be exaggerated.

Author's Note: So I've fallen back into the HP universe... Sorry my KHR fans...

—Shade—
by rayningnight

I.

The first time, Harry's sure it's just coincidence. Or luck — luck that's finally rubbed off on his terribly unlucky self.

Harry dozes while running on auto-pilot, weeding and clipping what needs to be weeded and clipped at this not-evening-not-nighttime hour when cats stalk through twilight and crickets chirp happily. Secretly, he thinks Aunt Petunia only sends him out at this time because she's too lazy to do the gardening in the morning with the wet dew when she could be sleeping into the warm afternoons (not, as she usually says to the neighbours, to 'discipline' him).

It isn't hard to think so. She purses her lips thin whenever he helps with dish washing or laundry folding, while she smiles warmly at Dudley at every hour, even when he breaks the best china set or has thrown his really expensive teddy out the second-floor window.

He's happy, though, since Aunt Petunia at least calls him "Harry," instead of "Boy," like Uncle Vernon, even though she only calls him that when she wants some help with chores.

Sometimes, he wonders to himself if his Aunt and Uncle and cousin —relativesbloodfamily— even love him, and if not, why? Why is he here when no one wants him to be?

Losing himself to his thoughts and the garden's sweet-smelling plants and the musty air of now-drizzling June rain, Harry, being seven (almost eight!) years old and still in need ten or eleven hours of sleep (so so drowsy) thinks he should let his eyes rest for a moment — just one! — before his nodding off bed-head suddenly falls into an equally bed-headed bush.

And of course it has to be the rose bush that he's half-started trimming.

Yelping with eyes luckily protected by round glasses, Harry narrowly dodges the dropped clipper and instantly pulls away; sadly, his stupid hair has made an acquaintance with Aunt Petunia's prized pastel-yellow rose bush — not that he or Aunt Petunia would want them to be close in the first place — and now there's a thousand needles and thorns and evil pokey things in his face.

Harry hisses painfully and grapples with the stems before flinching back his palms, curling bloodied fingers around soft blades of grass and dirt underneath the plants. His face is probably just as cut and maimed, though he can't be sure, his eyes being shut and all. Suddenly he wonders, absurd and optimistic given the circumstances, if he'll have "battle scars" just like King Arthur or Hercules in those fairy tales Ms Meyers has been reading to them before recess last week.

Futilely, he tries to free himself again (and again and again) before Aunt Petunia comes to check like she usually does minutes (or hours) after the street lamps flicker on. But his hands hurt and it's painful and burning and they're so sticky and wet and he can't help thinking this watery stuff is blood which is in him and is not supposed to come out!

Burning tears are barely restrained — Harry refuses to cry; he's had worse than this — and he decides he hates roses, hates this whitish, buttery-pale yellow and will never ever wear that awful colour again in his life. He'll be happy if he'll never see the stupid stuff again.

Still struggling and not knowing what to do, Harry wonders if he should get the clippers and clip off the stalks — but no, he can't, because then he'll be cutting Aunt Petunia's oh-so-pretty flowers and she'll glare at him or scream at him more if he does that to her precious pricey plant that's an awful colour and he'll be locked in the cupboard again and won't be allowed food for a couple of days and will be sent for time-outs and detentions for missing school again—

It feels like hours pass as he thinks and sobs without waterworks and cries without sound; he's learned crying loudly leads to Very Bad consequences, unlike Dudley's ice cream and crisps — and when he thinks he can't take this anymore, and there's this weird feeling in him that usually happens when some funny business is inevitable — suddenly he's free with one last half-hearted tug, just as Aunt Petunia's shrill voice cries for him to get inside as the rainfall suddenly comes down in showering bullets.

Harry blinks, looking at his hands, which are miraculously not painful and not burning and cleaned off, as if a Mr Clean eraser wiped them gone like grime in the bathtub. He runs his fingers through his scalp for thorns and is astounded by the silky feel and untangles — there's almost no jumbles or knots, even less than when he has time to brush his bushy curls to something less gravity-defying — and he looks up right then, catching a pair of piercing green and a black silhouette jump the fence and stalk into the raining night.

Again, he blinks, wondering what—

"Boy! Get in bed, NOW!"

With unbridled speed, Harry swipes the clippers, stows them into the garden shed, and stumbles inside.

II.

The second time, Harry's sure it — he — isn't.

A coincidence, chance, or luck, that is.

Dudley and his gang are chasing him for what feels like hours ever since class ends for lunch. It's only after sneaking and weaving through the school courtyard — overlooked by peer-pressured kids and unseen by the far-off Prefects and oblivious adults — that Harry unluckily turns into a dead end with Dudley lumbering behind his heels. Fearing for his life and already feeling unavoidable blue-black marks, Harry leaps at a breakneck pace, hoping to jump over and behind the lunch room's massive garbage boxes.

Instead, he finds himself up on the school kitchen roof.

Now, don't get him wrong, Harry knows he's small and light enough to be blown down by a strong wind, but even he doesn't think some blast of air could possibly lift him up so high. Peering down the thousands and thousands of feet after the first hour passes and the bell rings and classes have begun, Harry wants to bawl even though he's not some crybaby girl.

He's not.

And it's just random drops of September rain running down his cheeks, because Harry James Potter hasn't cried since he was four when he realized food and water and warmth came at a price and he refuses to start now so he doesn't, even if he's never liked birds or the swings or been on a plane before and would never, ever, ever go up so high.

Harry's gotten used to large, sharp-teethed dogs and snarling cats and clawed bigger-than-and-uglier-than-cat-thingies, small, enclosed places and creepy-crawlies in the looming dark, freezing temperatures in winter and water and prickly plants that are nasty, a red/blue/purple-faced shouting Uncle/Aunt and other disapproving adults—Harry knows he'll get used to extreme heights sooner or later.

Harry was raised an adapter.

So he stands back from the edge, not wanting to get too far in case he misses a passer-by who'd maybe help him, but not wanting to be so close in case the stupid wind knocks him down instead of up. He ignores the biting gales and the light rain and the freezing cold. Another hour passes. Harry curls into a sitting position, hugging his jean-clad knees and breathing warmth into his small shaking hands. He's lucky he chose one of Dudley's too-small-for-him but too-big-for-Harry sweaters. The darkish green fabric is still warmish and soft, but still, Harry longs for his favourite fire-red wool, which is in the wash today, because warm colours are better than cool colours in the cold because they're warm.

Green is not a warm colour.

Suddenly, as he notices the rained-on-cheeks have stopped flowing, Harry hears a pitter-patter before there's buckets of water hammering the ground like one of Dudley's fists or the pellet guns Piers has that always misses when trying to shoot him. Harry's soaked to the skin, and the hundred-holed shoes Aunt Petunia gave him two years ago aren't doing much to protect his now-wet socks and feet.

The bell rings, and with rising hope, Harry tries to scream for help — but his tongue is stuck behind frozen blue lips and he's fixed in this curled-cramped position and, car after car, each child from Dennis to Katy and Malcolm to Zuzia and even Dudley's gone, which squeezes his heart the most, if only because Uncle Vernon just does a half-hearted sweep through the kids, raises an eyebrow, and drives off, no questions asked.

He feels numb both figuratively and literally when Ms Meyers jogs through the rain to her car and the cook and the office ladies and the principal and the vice-principal follow suite.

Harry wonders as hours or days or years pass, if being fostered off into the cold midwinter like last December is worse than this; then he decides it definitely isn't, if only because Aunt Petunia kicked him out with a thick, warm jacket and black boots when the Christmas banquet she was hosting got too crowded.

The wet and cold doesn't matter though, since he's immune to sickness, Harry knows; he's never ever gotten a fever or the flu or lice or whatever the other kids got. He can prove it if anyone checks his attendance roll-call since he hasn't missed too many school days or ever skips out (unless Uncle Vernon says so), even if his academics are all over the chart (because he has to doodle away one or two of his classes and 'forget' every second or third day of homework, 'else he'll do better than Dudley and nobody wants that).

But even years spent in this winter cold with almost-autumn clothing will affect him.

When fuzzy whiteness is blurring his eyesight worse than when his glasses are off, Harry thinks this may actually be the end. Like, sad-fairy-tale-story End. It's never taken this long for someone to find him before he's not able to take it anymore — usually Mrs Figg finds him outside the Dursleys' or Aunt Petunia remembers him when flicking the porch lights off — and it jolts him like the lightning above that this is school and no one helps him here, and it only just settles in that everyone's gone home and they won't be back until tomorrow — and even then, will they notice, if they haven't so far today?

He'd cry right now if he had the power to, but he wants to just jump into a hole and never move or feel or breathe wretched cold rain-filled air ever again.

Harry can't feel his fingers or toes and that pins-and-needles sense in his left leg is completely gone along with any other feeling, and Harry doesn't have enough strength to change his once-comfortable position. As the whiteness turns to blackness, he thinks he sees an odd, tall humane smudge at his front and a pair of foreign-familiar, startling green and another flash of lightning and rolling thunder.

Before he completely drifts off, a jolt of lightning flashes once more and he suddenly feels warm; the smell of ozone and rainfall swathes him and Harry only then realizes he's in the embrace of somethi— wait, no — someone.

Harry looks up to untidy jet-black hair and startling green eyes that are just like his. Though there's a distinct lack of glasses, Harry still can't help whispering (incomprehensibly) through half-frozen lips as he meets this foreign-familiar face, "Are you my father, Mr Angel?" because this older, Harry-like man has this otherworldly glow behind him that sings with power and though he scents the rainfall, he can't feel the showers anymore, just this strange warmth, almost as if a small flame had been lit up in his stomach and is slowly making its way up through his bloodstream and heartstrings.

He ignores the Aunt Petunia-like voice in the back of his mind throwing scathing comments about never talking to strangers.

The tall man —angel?— ghosts a smile, though it looks strange, as if he hasn't smiled in a very long time or as if he's in pain, and it's all wrongwrongwrong, because there's this hard look in his almond-shaped eyes that are just like Harry's that somehow make him feel better and worse at the same time. Wait, is that look directed at him? Did Harry offend him? Harry jolts at the thought, but before he can try to apologize, the man shakes his head.

"No, I'm not your dad or any sort of angel, kiddo," he says quietly in this low even tenor (or is it alto or bass or something else? Harry chose to doodle in music class instead of maths) and then the man's hand is suddenly over him, making Harry flinch and shrink into himself, but all the large (not angel, but Harry can't help but think so when the man is glowing) man does is ruffle his wet hair and Harry's unsure whether to feel happy about it or not, but decides that yes, he does kinda like the massaging feel and the human contact that doesn't aim to hurt.

After a moment, Harry throws caution to the wind and snuggles into the free, warm chest.

They sit there, under what Harry only realizes then is this unearthly transparent-bluish bubble protecting them from the harsh rain when his sight is no longer edged with whitish-black blurs, and then the calm silence — not awkward or tense, unlike the ones during an ordinary Dursley supper — is broken, because Harry can't hold it in anymore.

"Thank you," Harry says, with the most sincerity he's ever said with before. The Dursleys certainly never got more than a civil or silent tone.

And though he's unsure if he's thankful about the warmth or hug or rain or whatever, somehow, the man understands, because those identical green eyes soften, and this time when the man almost-smiles, just a quick quirk of the right side that lasts but a second, Harry feels something — his heart? His spirit? His soul? — lift because, this time, the smile seems less strained and painful and doesn't have that strange bitter edge, and Harry can't stifle his own cookie-eating grin.

They sit again in silence, calm and warm and dry, Harry realizes, when he wiggles his toes and doesn't feel damp socks. It's heavenly, Harry thinks, because his socks have never been this dry during the wet winter season.

"I really don't like the rain much," Harry muses aloud.

Amusement flashes in the man's bright eyes and the man looks skyward as Harry flushes, burrowing down into the man's arms to hide his face.

Then, again, there is calm, peaceful silence.

Hours may have passed, and still at the edge of the roof, Harry realizes he's lost his fright of heights and instead begins to actually like the feeling of being up high, just because of this not-angel 'man.' Angels fly, and men don't, but Harry's certain Not-Angels can fly too, for how else could he have appeared before Harry? It's strange, Harry reflects, curled up in caring arms, because even as the sun goes down and the rain lets up and he's drifting off, this warm feeling in his heart never leaves, and there isn't any hunger or thirst, and Harry wonders if this Not-Angel-maybe-man white-lied just to make him feel better when Harry knows Heaven is sure to be a whole lot better than living on Earth with the Dursleys.

A droplet lands on his cheek—

And Harry suddenly wakes up to his Aunt's shrill cry and that warmth in his chest is gone, and Harry wonders if it all was just a dream with a disappointed frown.

But, then he notices this really long golden chain hanging around his neck with a transparent-bluish raindrop-shaped stone resting at his stomach that was never there before when he sits up and it jostles. Harry smiles as he picks up the eyeball-sized gem.

Suddenly a prism of colours shines in an incredible rainbow flame.

"Don't look down; without the rain, there would be no rainbow."

Harry whips his head around at the foreign-familiar voice and he nearly hits his head under the stairs. Suddenly a thought jumps him and he scampers out of his cupboard and into the still-dewy yard, eyes zooming skyward like the 'man' had done while Harry had been busy hiding his face and staring at the ground.

There, melded in the dawn sunlight is a vivid arc of multicolour painted on morning blue, more vibrant, more brilliant, more breath-taking than any other rainbow Harry had ever seen.

Later, other neighbours gaze up with appreciation, and Number 5's painter brother tries a hand at capturing the sky in acrylic while Number 2's ex-photographer wife comes out of retirement.

Later, he wonders if he'll ever see that not-his-father-not-an-angel man ever again.

But he secrets that thought away as Uncle Vernon hollers for his omelette, no chives, more ham, more cheese and hears Dudley thundering down the stairs and is Aunt Petunia cooking?

And then, as the clock chimes seven, he wonders why the Dursleys don't question where he'd been after school yesterday or how he ended up funnily in the cupboard;

Or even why he's allowed breakfast today.

But he chooses to stay silent and eats quietly, rubbing a stone under his favourite dark green sweater and wishing for rain.

III.

His daily thoughts consist of herb collections, potted peonies, petunia flowers and hydrangea shrubs, and of how much dish soap is needed before the next bottle runs out; most of the time, he'll check how much homework Dudley completes the night before that he'll need to finish up by morning. Sometimes, he'll be smiling over his third grade teacher's sudden blue hair or about little shrunk sweaters and absently rubs a precious stone hidden underneath his shirt.

Today, he wonders about hair growth since he woke up, still dread-filled and instinctively running a hand over his head, knowing that the hairless—

But it's not hairless.

He blinks repeatedly, speechless, ruffling his black hair and feeling curls, not short, not long, but brushing his neck and over his forehead in its typical untidy bushiness. A grin stretches across his cheeks and he's so thrilled he forgets about Aunt Petunia until she sees him entering the kitchen with a bedhead full of hair.

She screeches and screams and it's shrill and tinged with some emotion Harry can't understand and it's worse than any horse or bird cry he's ever heard. He's bopped twice over the head with her hot frying pan that just deposited the eggs on Uncle Vernon's plate and he bites back a painful sob that's just caught by a grinning Dudley before he's ushered by the hotpainfulburning frying pan into his cupboard. Such freakishness must be punished, and he's told he'll be locked in for the rest of the day, no school and certainly no food.

As the door slams shut, Harry dives for his cot's blanket, rummaging until he uncovers a half-filled plastic water bottle to twist open and pour over his blistering-hot, bump-forming head.

Harry releases a thankful sigh and sits down on the thin mattress, legs folding underneath him as he stares at his cupboard and zones out like he normally does to pass time during his punishments. There are only a handful of two-inch-tall green toy soldiers and a few broken crayons on the shelf, and they aren't very fun to play with after so many years with them.

Underneath his mattress, peeking out half-way, there's an old The Jungle Book picture story and a ripped up D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths, but Harry's practically memorized them already (and is still itching to be rid of before the Dursley's find out his "borrowed" books that Dudley had placed in the trash). His sixth birthday had the Dursley's giving him an ugly (but thicker) quilt, and Harry's of course grateful for it… but… there really isn't much to do in his cupboard with a whole day to pass.

So Harry sits there, his hand fondling his familiar droplet stone as seconds turning to minutes turning to hours perhaps, but the next time he snaps out of his daze and turns to wrap the blanket around him as his stomach growls something ferocious, his tugging meets resistance.

Harry blinks, rubs his eyes, and blinks again in shock.

There's a black cat on his bed.

A cat.

A sleeping cat.

"How did you even get in here?" Harry wonders aloud.

The black cat lazily flutters its eyes open and Harry gasps.

Those eyes!

They were the same colour as his own and—

"You remember me."

Just like that rainbow incident, the low, even tenor (it's definitely a tenor) reverberated in and around him, and Harry whips his head around, eyes wide in amazement and wonder.

"Where are you?"

The cat seemed to sneeze, catching Harry's attention, and Harry's young mind suddenly makes a very improbable realization as he remembers black blurs from raining days and stares into brilliant green eyes.

"You were the cat the whole time!" exclaims Harry.

When cat sneezes again, Harry can now clearly see that it was more laugh than sneeze, but cats don't laugh when amused (at least, Harry's quite sure they don't…), so the very human-like behaviour has to translate to something in cat-form Harry concludes.

"Good deduction."

Harry's face warms, for he's only ever praised in mathematics and art class (the only classes he actually puts effort in) and a thought strikes Harry out of nowhere.

"So you weren't white-lying! You're a cat-man, not an angel man or normal man!" Harry says in amazement, thinking of the superheroes he sometimes sees on the telly when Dudley doesn't notice him dusting in the living room.

Suddenly the cat leaps off his cot and stand in the space before the shelf, slit-green eyes sweeping the area before suddenly enlarging into—

—into Harry!

Gobsmacked, Harry's arms turn to jelly and his head just misses the stairs above his bedstead. Quickly, he sits up in embarrassment, before just as suddenly, he feels a jolting pain on his head as it brushes a stair dip from his upward angle.

He hisses, and he only then remembers that Aunt Petunia had recently hit him with a frying pan.

Then other-Harry is sitting by his side, his hand suddenly on the sore spot and Harry flinches; but the hand doesn't send his nerves on fire — no — instead, it cools the area, like what he'd imagine a cold pack to feel like, and it brings as much relief as the comforting scent of sparks and showers now encasing him.

"Thank you," says Harry, belatedly feeling a sense of déjà vu from his own sincere tone.

The feeling doesn't leave when other-Harry does that half-quirk smile of his, just like before. The hand on his head then ruffles his hair, and Harry notices that this other-Harry is just slightly older, maybe nine or ten, so being teased like a younger brother isn't so strange.

At least… this is what he'd think different-aged siblings would treat each other like.

"Why're you a kid now anyway?" Harry blurts out before his cheeks flush when green eyes (too old, too wise) meet his own.

An eternity could've passed before other-Harry says, rather vaguely, as he stares at his hand, "Age is an issue of mind over matter." He fists his hand and shrugs. "If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

Apparently it's a good enough response.

And it sounds familiar, Harry thinks, before coming to sudden realization. "I told Ms Meyers about that rainbow saying," he pipes up to fill in the silence and to make that faraway green gaze turn to Harry. "An English man wrote it. Some poet guy named Gilbert — K? — Chesterton. And the one you said just now… isn't that…" his brow furrows, "Mark Twain?"

Harry sees the proud glint in other-Harry's eyes, and he can't help but smile back and feel grateful for the annoying quote-session Ms Meyers had with him when she thought he found another interest other than art and maths, even though he'd been punished for being late after school. He vowed to do even better in English class, for both Ms Meyers and—

"What are you?" Harry asks then, realizing he'd never known the cat-man — wait, cat-boy's name.

A hand runs through the boy's unruly hair, so like Harry's own, and Harry can only marvel at the foreign-familiar similarities between the two.

And then everything comes to a halt as he realizes his error.

"I-I meant—" Who. Not what, Harry wants to say as his face flushes crimson, but the words tumble and trip over his tongue, never fully making it out of his mouth except in sputters.

Then he notices the shaking in the boy's shoulders, and Harry's brow furrows in worry before—

The boy laughs, laughs hard, and it doesn't sound right, not at all, especially when the otherworldly sound is coming from such an ordinary looking boy. The voice is too deep, too rich, with a strange ethereal resonance that sounds like the echoes of a bottomless cave than that of a cramped cupboard.

"I am…" the boy pauses mid-chuckle, as if wondering how to word something particularly difficult, "I suppose, technically…" he trails off with a bitter, but resolute edge.

"I don't exist, and I don't care to, anyway."

And Harry's left flabbergasted as the boy fades down into his shadow, the blackish-grey shade outlined by the overhead light bulb.

Harry's only a tad shamed to still wonder what the man was.

Happy Easter Weekend! I won't have time to post for Resurrection Sunday, so I hope you all enjoyed reading this for your day off (if you got one anyway...) as I've enjoyed writing and posting it! ...Hopefully my muse won't die off... like all my other stories... meh. I make no promises on when I update. —rayningnight

PS: If you see some spelling and/or grammatical errors, please tell me!