Inspired by Up. Chapters will vary greatly in style and content, because I'm a mess, and so my story will also be.

Just as a warning, you guys oughtta suggest a univers (book, movie, tv show, game) for Harry to end up in. You'll see...

He'd gotten the idea from a kid's movie. Sure, it was obviously not logical, or even practical, but that was what magic was for.

Even before that, he'd been enchanted by the yellowed copy of 'James and the Giant Peach' he'd found in the dustbin at school, its pages dog-eared and cover torn off.

So the balloons were necessary.

He decided that for all the work that he'd be putting into this, he'd rather have a house than a peach. It would get awfully sticky, and maybe even rot.

Harry Potter had a plan.

The first thing he did was build the house. More specifically, he planned it out and put it together with a few odds and ends and an unbelievable amount of magic. For the irony, he transfigured a pumpkin for the house, then added handfuls of ribbons, stray backs of earrings, candle stubs, and Popsicle sticks to bolster the magic and add details to the house.

It was, for now, a cheery shade of pumpkin orange, trimmed in satin black, and included a nice, railed porch, plenty of windows, and two whole stories.

It was a bit like a small mansion, actually, and very gracefully designed. The black trim was similar to that of old Victorian houses; carved wood, painted the above-mentioned color and affixed as detailing. It was a complicated mix of scroll work and hidden runes, but overall looked something like black lace.

The bottom of it was smooth, black stone, charmed to be impervious to scratches, spells, impact, and a great variety of other things. Essentially, it was a shield against anything below the house.

Carved into that very foundation were the runes that gave him hot, running water and functional electricity, and banished anything going down the drains. Runes for power, shields, and indestructibility were patterned in with those for joining, luck, happiness, good fortune, and a particularly interesting set-up that smoothed the air currents as they grew near to the bubble of magic surrounding the house, which would extend to cover the balloons.

He made beautiful four-poster beds with sweeping curtains, and came up with a total of seven bedrooms, one living room, a kitchen, a small, en suite bathroom for each bedroom, a multi-purpose room that would probably become a game room, an airy attic that would likely become his studio thanks to its large, floor-to-ceiling window at one end of the room, and a fancier, shared bathroom with a rather spectacular tub/shower hybrid easily big enough for ten people.

Expansion charms were glorious things.

He themed the inside of the house in black and orange, with splashes of rich purple or clean white for contrast.

The windows had tiny runes scratched into them, attached to the wards and living magic of the house, and were as indestructible as titanium. (Or rather, even more so.)

Unbelievable amounts of spell-work were anchored to each balloon, each string, every shingle on the roof and every nail in the walls, holding the great thing together.

He built it over a crossing of leylines to charge it, initially, until it was alive enough to generate its own magical power.

It was as great a fortress as Hogwarts, and even more whimsical.

But Harry was not a child anymore. The bitter words, and old hurts, and twenty galleons a month that Dumbledore shifted from his vaults to Ron and Hermione's ensured it as much as Quirrel's corpse and Dumbledore's placing of him into the Dursely home.

The sarcasm, the cynicism- those were him now. At sixteen, he was an old soul. His adventure called to him, but he wondered, even as he dumbed down his homework to give him more time to study inter-dimensional theory, if it would be any better than how he was living now.

Yes.

The thought reverbrated in his mind, and his resolve hardened.

Freedom. That's all he truly wanted.

Freedom from Voldemort's sights and the Death Eaters hate, from Hermione's put-downs about his intelligence and Ron's glory-hounding ways, from Dumbledore's manipulations and his own thrice-damned title.

They loved him, they hated him. He was the paragon of light, he was a dark wizard. He was a fairy tale, he was a madman.

The fickleness of the wizarding world was what made him decide in the end. As the Light dosed people with Veritaserum or Amortentia, and arranged for them to die quietly in their cells, and the Dark gained ground and support and somehow made Voldemort seem less evil than Dumbledore, he gave in to his urges.

"Malfoy," Harry greeted, glancing at the boy.

"Potter," the blonde returned. He frowned. "Why did you want to meet me here?"

"I have a message for you," he sighed. "Give it to your father. He can give it to his Lord."

Draco's eyes widened, and he opened his mouth, but Harry cut him off.

"I'll not stand in your way." His voice was almost affectionate as he spoke what sounded like words rehearsed. "I'm leaving this world, because as far as I can see, both sides are equally evil. Do as you will. I won't be around to see it."

Draco would have no trouble remembering those words.

"Why?" he blurted. "Aren't you the Gryffindor Golden Boy?"

Harry laughed darkly. "That's what they tell me," he chuckled. "But no. I should've been a Slytherin, if not for the manipulations of an old man."

Draco still didn't understand, but held his tongue. "Fine," he agreed. "I'll send the message on. But where are you going?" Genuine curiosity colored his voice, the animosity of years before gone.

"Anywhere I want," Harry answered, a delighted smile curling across his features. He reached up from the balcony, framing the moon in his hand. "Anywhere I want."

The living room was the 'cabin' of his 'ship', the wide windows making it easy to see where he was going. Realistically, he could plow through a building unscathed, but he didn't really want to.

In any case, the center of the black, wooden floor stood a steel and glass coffee table that had a circle of stone embedded in the center. There were seven rings in all, each one able to be turned to match up different combinations of the symbols.

Coordinates.

While time was something he could not yet manipulate, space certainly was, even between dimensions where the time would be different than in the one he was in already.

When at last his supplies were fully stocked, his wealth squirreled away, and his magic recovered from the effort, he sat on the floor of the living room and began to turn the wheels.

Musical chimes of higher and higher pitches sounded as he readied himself, the brightly colored balloons lifting the house up through the canopy of the Forbidden Forest even as he entered the series of runes that had come to him in a dream.

First years down by the lake shrieked in excitement, little Dennis Creevy snapping pictures like nobody's business even as he cheered at the strange spectacle.

With a blaze of technicolor light, he was gone.