Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Coralline. If I did, do you really think things would've ended up the way they did?
BTW, this story has NO HOGWARTS and NO PAIRINGS, though it does kind of seem that way, it's really not. It's completely AU (and OOC) and takes place in America. DO NOT FLAME ME BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T READ THIS WARNING! It's also based on the MOVIE. Not the book. There IS a difference. I will be using lines and such from the movie, and I must impress upon you that I do NOT own any of this. I merely use this for my own amusement.
Harry sighed from his position in the four-door SUV his 'father' Sirius insisted they buy. In front of him sat the Pink Palace Apartment building, for all intents and purposes his home for an indefinite amount of time. He was only eleven and had moved no less than twelve times. Sirius was an author. A very popular author. And his fans had a habit of ransacking their home to get mementos that could be sold for millions on EBay. His other 'father' Remus, was an editor. To be more specific, Sirius's editor, and the only reason any of his Dad's books got out on time.
But did they really have to move here? Harry had already seen a man doing squats on the roof and a pair of old women who had emerged from the basement preceded by a herd of Scottish terrier dogs that yapped like mad at anything that moved. He didn't like the looks of this, older neighbors meant no children. This meant no friends, which meant imminent boredom.
With another gusty sigh that came with an energetic eleven year old, Harry climbed out of the car and made his way into the pink monstrosity. Walking inside, he found his Papa typing furiously on a laptop placed on their tiny kitchen table. He didn't even acknowledge Harry's presence. Being used to this, Harry walked through the door into the hallway and towards the room that had been picked out for his Dad to use as his study. Sticking his head in, he saw the dark haired man typing just as fast as his Papa. Taking himself upstairs, toward his room, Harry let out another gusty sigh.
"They never have time for me." He mumbled to himself, kicking the door to his room open. It was bare, and boring, like all the other rooms in the house. But what he was after was in a box off to the side. Tearing off the tape, he reached in and came out with a bright yellow rain slicker and pilot's cap. Shrugging the slicker on and nestling the cap onto his unruly black hair, Harry adjusted his glasses and headed back downstairs.
"I'm going outside to explore." He told his Papa, as he headed out through the kitchen. The tawny haired man let out a grunt of acceptance, still typing, and Harry left with an annoyed huff. Stupid parents. They never listen to me. He thought to himself as he walked toward the towering gates that led into the expansive garden behind the house. Before he entered, he stopped before a bush with red-orange leaves covering it. Spotting the forked branch he was looking for, he plucked it out of the bush and stripped it of its leaves. Harry held onto the branched arms of the newly-made dousing rod and closed his eyes, letting the device lead him through the garden and up a muddy path through an apple orchard.
The orchard was barren of all life, rotten apples littering the ground under the trees and a discarded wagon held a few empty baskets. Walking by an outcropping of rocks, he was startled to a stop by the clatter of falling stones. Slightly frightened, he peered up at the gathered boulders and ventured a "Hello? Is anybody there?" When there was no answer, Harry became annoyed. Try to scare me, huh? Harry picked up a stone and chucked it at the rocks, only to be startled into a run by the angry yowl of a cat as it was hit by the rock. He ran until the path ended in a large clearing with a large tree stump and toadstool ring.
Panting for breath, Harry looked around for any sign of the cat, jumping as he saw a sleek black form run through the tall grass out of the corner of his eye. With an angry growl, the cat leapt onto the old tree stump just behind Harry from where he had wandered into the toadstool ring. Harry shrieked, though he would forever deny that he did such a thing, and dropped his dousing rod. He whirled around, only to come face to face with a skinny, sleek, and rather not-so-frightening cat with large eerie blue eyes that stared unwaveringly at him. His green eyes narrowed behind his glasses, "You scared me, you mangy cat!" He bent down to pick his dousing rod back up and continued,
"I'm only looking for the secret well that's supposed to be here. Seen it?" The black cat then did an odd thing; he nodded his triangular head and blinked his blue eyes. Harry raised an eyebrow, "Not talking, huh?" He sighed and turned his back abruptly on the cat and raised his dousing rod into the air.
"Magic douser, magic douser, show me… the WELL!" Harry chanted in what he thought was an excellent mystical voice, turning in a circle within the toadstool ring.
Up on the rim of the hills surrounding the clearing, a loud blaring sound came and startled Harry for the third time. He whipped around and stared at the figure on a bicycle. Bright blonde hair stuck out at odd angles upon the head of a boy whose face was hidden by a large grotesque mask. A permanently grinning smile was painted, like a skull, under a single 'eye' that had three glowing 'pupils'. A long black coat shrouded his lanky frame completely. With another honk on his air horn, the figure popped a wheelie on his bike and sped down the hill towards Harry.
Frightened, Harry wielded his dousing rod like a baseball bat and shouted, "Stay away from me," just as the boy brushed past. His long fingers snatched the dousing rod from Harry's hand, knocking the raven haired boy off his feet and into the mud. "Ugh!" He groaned, scrambling to his feet to look at the figure who had taken a perch on the tree stump. Harry saw that the 'eye' was actually some sort of microscope device that, when the boy cranked on the lever on the side of the mask, would change the viewing power. Harry found himself vaguely impressed.
Suddenly, the boy jerked his head up, flinging the visor of his mask up, and Harry was presented with a pointy-faced boy about his age. Silver eyes looked at him curiously, before he began to speak.
"Let me guess!" he began, those unique eyes turning to the dousing rod, "you're from someplace dried out and barren, like Texas or Utah, right? I've heard of Water Witching before, but I don't understand. It's just an ordinary branch." Harry's eyes narrowed and he stalked forward.
"It's a dowsing rod!" he punched the boy's leg hard, making him yelp in pain and throw the dowsing rod into the air. Stepping back, Harry caught the rod before it fell on the ground and glared at the boy. "And I don't like being stalked! Not by psycho nerds or their cats!"
"He's not really my cat. He's feral, like wild and all that. Though I do feed him every night and sometimes he comes to my window and leaves me little dead things." The boy replied, looking creepily happy to receive dead animals from the black cat as he stroked the animal's head. Harry sighed and rolled his eyes.
"Anyway, I'm from Pontiac." The boy looked at Harry strangely.
"Michigan." Harry elaborated with another sigh, and then threw his arms wide to encompass the clearing. "And if I'm a 'Water Witch', then where's the well?" he stopped one boot-clad foot and ignored the slight give of the surface beneath him. The boy suddenly looked rather panicked, "If you stomp any harder, you'll fall in it."
Harry jumped free of the toadstool ring with a gasp, and the boy leapt from the tree stump to kneel at the ring. With his gloved hands, the boy pawed at the mud, revealing the damp wood of the cover of the well. "See?" he knocked against the wood and it made a low, hollow sound. He began to talk as he levered the well cover up, knocking the mud from its surface. "They say that the well is so deep that if you were to fall in it and look up, you'd see a sky full of stars in the middle of the day." Harry made an impressed noise in the back of his throat and smiled a little at the boy.
The boy smiled back and said, "My name's Draco. Draco Malfoy." He shook Harry's hand, leaving a muddy print behind. Harry raised an eyebrow as he wiped the mud onto his rain slicker, "Draco?"
Draco snorted, "Short for Draconis. Not my idea, of course. What'd you get saddled with?"
Harry shrugged, "Harry."
Draco raised an eyebrow of his own, "Harry what?"
"Harry Black."
"Wow, and I thought a name couldn't get any more ordinary." Harry glared at the oblivious boy who had begun to pet the black cat. A moment of silence passed between them before Draco stood again and began to sway from side to side. Harry got the impression that Draco didn't like to stay still for too long. "I don't know why my dad rented out to you, he owns the Pink Palace, see, and for some reason he's never rented out to anybody with kids before. I wonder what makes your family so different."
Harry shrugged again, starting to get somewhat irritated with Draco and his constant moving. It made him dizzy. "I don't know." He replied shortly, in hopes that the other boy would drop it. Draco ignored him though, his pointy face screwed up in deep thought as he began to pet the cat again. Harry's ears perked up, though when the faint voice of a man could be heard calling Draco's full name.
"Sounds like somebody is calling you, Draconis." Harry teased, smirking slightly when Draco's lanky frame tensed and stood abruptly. "N-no there isn't."
The voice called again, this time more loudly, and Draco flinched as it sounded rather impatient. "Oh, no! Dad!" he mumbled to himself. He turned to Harry and smiled apologetically.
"I got to go. Oh, and if you plan on doing anymore Water Witching, use some gloves."
"Why?"
"Because that branch you're holding is poison oak. See you, Harry!"
Draco left Harry staring at the hand that had stripped the leaves from the branch. A scowl formed on his face and he glared at the cat. "I don't suppose you know what to do with poison oak, right?" the cat shook his head and pranced off, his crooked tail held high. Harry sighed once more and turned to the uncovered well. Getting on his knees next to it, he dropped a small pebble in through a knot-hole in the cover and put his ear to it. Slowly he counted, getting to thirty-two before he heard a small splash. Wow, that's a deep well. He thought as he got up. His curiosity satisfied, he headed home.
XXXX
Harry stood in the kitchen in front of the sink that had a large window above it. Outside, the heavens had opened up and pelted the earth with rain. And it wasn't a friendly shower either; it was a turn-the-dirt-to-mud-and-play-the-drums-on-your-head kind of rain. The angry emo rain that showed how angry it was to the world. The… well, you get the idea. It was raining, and that meant that Harry couldn't go outside to plant his garden like he wanted.
Absently, he scratched at his poison oak and said, "I almost fell into a well yesterday, Papa." His papa mumbled something that sounded like 'that's nice' as he typed on his laptop and Harry had to restrain his smile. "I could've died." He waited and wasn't disappointed when Papa mumbled, "Very good, Harry."
This time he couldn't stop his smile. "So, I think it is perfect weather for gardening, Papa."
The man sighed, "No, Harry. Rain makes mud and mud makes a mess." Harry groaned and twirled around to stand next to his Papa. "But I want things growing when my friends come over, Papa!" He argued, "Isn't that why we moved here?"
"Something like that, Harry. But the answer is still no." the man sighed again, "Besides; you still have a lot of unpacking to do."
"That sounds so exciting!" Harry grumbled sarcastically, looking away from his Papa mutinously. The man ran a hand through his shoulder length tawny hair and looked at his son with exasperated gold-amber eyes. "I don't have time for you Harry. Go find something to do. Other than going outside, of course."
Harry turned to leave, but a large warm hand stopped him, "Wait a minute. I just remembered that some blonde kid left this on the porch for you." He handed Harry a newspaper-wrapped parcel. Curious, Harry unwrapped the object a little and saw a note.
Hey Blackie,
I found this doll in my Father's trunk. Does it look familiar?
Draco
Finishing the unwrapping process, Harry came across a doll that looked exactly like him. Right down to the glasses and small lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead that he had gotten in the accident that killed his biological parents. A little me? Harry thought in confusion. His Papa turned to him,
"What's his name?"
"Draco."
"What'd Draco give you?"
"A doll." He looked up in time to see his Papa giving him a weird look. Harry blushed bright red and held up the doll for his Papa to see.
"Ah, how sweet." He teased in a low voice that made Harry's blush all the more bright. Mumbling about strange writer Papa's, Harry rushed from the room and toward his Dad's study.
With his free hand, Harry pushed open the door to see Sirius Black, writer extraordinaire, hunched close to an ancient PC computer that gave off a greenish glow.
"Hey Dad, how's the writing going?" Harry greeted, standing in the doorway. When he got no response, Harry tried again. "Dad!"
The brunette man sighed, "Hello, Harry and Harry doll?" tired grey eyes glanced over his son and the strange doll he held in one hand before going back to his glowing screen. Harry rolled his eyes and decided to try his luck with his Dad.
"Hey Dad, where are the gardening tools?"
"It's, uh, pouring out there."
"It's just raining." He pressed stubbornly.
"What'd the boss say?"
"Don't even think about going outside Harry Black!" he mimicked his Papa horribly while shaking his Mini-Me to emphasize his point.
His Dad smiled, "Then you won't need the tools." Harry groaned in disappointment. That's when he noticed that the door had snuck up on him. He pushed the door away from himself, and it made a delightful creaking noise that Harry knew would drive his Dad up the wall. With an evil grin, Harry began to do a dance that gave the creaking noise a constant rhythm.
A tortured groan came from his Dad, and Harry grinned, thinking he had won. "You know, this house is a hundred and fifty years old."
Harry frowned, "So?"
"So, explore it." He passed a small notebook to Harry, along with a pen, "count all the windows and doors. Find the old water heater. List everything that's blue. Just let me work!" he twirled abruptly in his spinney-chair and missed the hurt look that flashed through his son's eyes.
Masking his hurt and loneliness with a scoff of anger, Harry angrily shed his rain slicker and left it in a crumbled heap, just to annoy his clean-freak Papa, and began his 'exploring'.
After turning all the power in the house off (which was obvious with his Dad's tortured screams that if he was ever found out to have done that, that he would be killed slowly), finding a nest of wiggly bug-things, and every leaky window in the attic-sunroom place, Harry ended up in the 'parlor', which would eventually become their family room, if what his Papa had been talking about was to be believed. Now, however, it was desolately empty, with only a sad rug, a rickety table, a painting of a boy in a blue suit with a spilled ice-cream cone up on the wall above the fireplace, and a few boxes here and there. Sticking his Mini-Me, which had followed him all throughout his adventure, on the rickety table against the box that held all of his Papa's snow globes, Harry drew out what he knew to be his Papa's favorite. It was a blue Detroit Zoo snow globe that displayed the fountain that they had had their picture taken in front of.
With a fond smile, Harry shook the delicate souvenir and watched as the fake snow twirled in a colorful dance. Grabbing another, he placed them on the mantle and went back to listing what he saw.
"One boring blue painting of a boring boy, four painfully boring windows, and no more doors." He had reached for his Mini-Me, only to find the spot where he had left him empty. Thinking he had accidentally knocked the doll to the floor without noticing, Harry crouched down to look under the table. The doll wasn't there. Confused, Harry glanced around and saw that the doll had somehow made it behind the large box that had held the table.
"There you are." He mumbled to himself, leaning down to get the doll when he noticed something. In the wall, just behind the doll, was the faint outline of a door. Completely curious now, Harry flung the empty box away and traced the door with a finger.
"Hey Papa! What is this door doing here?" He yelled.
"I'm really, really busy!" Came the answer.
"I think it's locked!" Harry waited for a reply, and when he didn't get one, he yelled, "Please?" in his whiniest voice.
The rough shoving of a chair could be heard from the kitchen and his Papa came stalking into the room. Tall and broad shouldered, he cut an imposing and menacing figure as he stood in the doorway of the parlor with his arms crossed. Tapping his fingers impatiently against one arm, he glared from his son to the door with a scowl.
"If I do this for you, will you stop pestering me?" he demanded. Harry gave his best puppy-dog eyes and nodded pathetically. "Fine!" He huffed and stalked back into the kitchen, rummaging through a drawer filled with keys. After a few moments of shifting through the piles, he came up with an old skeleton key that had a handle in the shape of a button. It was large, black, and felt colder than the rest of the keys.
Stalking back into the parlor, he quickly cut through the wallpaper binding the door to the wall and stuck the head of the key into the keyhole. With a smooth 'clunk', the door unlocked and he swung it open.
Neither noticed the doll staring at the door with a strange glint in its large black button eyes.
It opened to reveal a wall of bricks. Harry's excited smile dropped from his face.
"Bricks? I don't get it!" he moaned in disappointment. His Papa sighed.
"They probably bricked this off when they separated the house."
"You're kidding me. And why is the door so small, anyway?" he asked as his Papa made his way from the room. The man turned and snarled at Harry, "We made a deal! Zip it!"
Harry watched as he left, racking his brain for anything to make his Papa come back. "You didn't lock it!"
The frustrated groan and the slam of a drawer convinced Harry to drop it. With a sad twist to his lips, he shut the little door and went back to his exploring.
XXXX
Later that night, he had drawn up another chair for his Mini Me as he waited for his Dad to serve them dinner. He was actually rather scared about what his Dad had made. Sirius Black was known for his novels, not his culinary skills. When dinner did come, he wasn't disappointed. Green slime that was supposed to be some sort of vegetable and a strange combination of rice and cheese that looked somewhat alive, Harry sighed. He was supposed to eat this?
What surprised him the most, though it probably shouldn't these days, was that both his Dad and Papa were eating it. Gross-gusting!
"Ugh! Papa, why don't you ever cook?" he whined and pushed his plate away, making his Papa sigh.
"We've been over this before. Your Dad cooks, I clean, and you stay out of our way. I swear that once your Dad and I finish this book, we'll go food shopping for real. Okay?" He pushed Harry's plate back to him.
"Now eat the chard, you need a vegetable." Harry grimaced in disgust and lifted some of the 'chard' up onto his fork only to wince when it when sliding back off.
"It looks like slime to me."
His Dad grinned, "Well, it's slime or bedtime, Har-Bear. Which is it?"
Harry looked to his Mini-Me and asked, "Do you think they're trying to poison me?" He used his hand to make the doll nod, and got up from the table to get ready for bed.
XXXX
Dressed in his soft green pajamas, Harry fell into bed with his Mini-Me pressed to his chest. With tired green eyes, he glanced around his barren room for a few moments.
With a soft, sad sigh, Harry placed his look-a-like doll on the chair next to his bed and smiled at it, "Good night, Mini-Me."
He curled up into his blankets and around a beaten up black dog that had the name 'Padfoot' carved into a thin leather collar around the dog's neck. Snuggling into his stuffed animal, Harry pulled off his glasses and fell into sleep.
End of Chapter 1
Now fixed. Hope you like it.