DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended

Harry Potter climbed out of the taxi, pulling his trunk and Hedwig's cage with him.  The driver had thought him mad to be left in front of an empty lot, but had accepted the money anyway.  The taxi pulled away, leaving Harry alone.

Harry knew that he was going to be in a lot of trouble when he got back to the wizarding world.  He was supposed to stay at the Dursleys; it was the safest place for him—except perhaps Hogwarts.  If the Dursleys were treating him badly, he was supposed to notify the Order and let them handle things.  If he absolutely had to leave, he was expected to tell someone:  Mrs. Figg, a member of the Order, Dumbledore, Ron, somebody.  He was definitely not supposed to just pack up his things and leave.

He didn't even have a reason for leaving.  The silence in his room, in his life, had just become too much.  Although there was a guard on him, they were not supposed to talk with Harry; it could distract them from the job of keeping him safe.  He reckoned he could ask to talk to someone, but the adults he thought he could talk to were all very busy with Order business; they had more important things to do than go all the way out to Surrey to listen to Harry whine.

There were people he could write to but what he really wanted was someone to talk to, someone he could see, someone who could answer what he had to say right then, someone who could . . .  Harry didn't even really know what he wanted from this person; he just knew he couldn't get it from a letter.  So, yesterday afternoon, after another exciting day of trying to interest himself in reading through his schoolbooks looking for things he could use against Voldemort, something inside of him finally broke.  He had thrown all of his things, except for his invisibility cloak, into his trunk, cleaned out Hedwig's cage and left.  He had sent Hedwig to Ron's earlier that day with a letter, so he didn't have to worry about her right away.

He had walked to the train station and bought a ticket to Godric's Hollow.  Once he got there, he had found a taxi driver who knew where the address he had found was.  And, now, here he was.  Standing in front of an empty lot, where the house in which he had lived once stood, with no idea what he was going to do next.

Harry walked up to where the house, his house, had stood.  He now understood he had been looking for a place where he belonged, but there was no such place.  He didn't belong with the Dursleys, even if it was the only place he could call home.  He didn't belong at Hogwarts, except during the school year as a student.  He didn't belong at the Burrow, at Grimmauld Place, or anywhere else he could think of.  Harry closed his eyes, wishing, hard, that he could open his eyes and see the home where he had belonged, could see the house bright and open and filled with family.  His family, that he no longer had.

He could hear voices nearby, the voices of a family preparing for the day.  He thought it must be from one of the houses next door; the voices were that close.  Harry opened his eyes, intending to go back to the street and find a secluded place where he could summon the Knight Bus.  He was shocked to find himself standing in front of a house he had only seen in photographs.  He walked up to the door and knocked on the door.  He felt a fool but he had to see for himself that he had become delusional.

The door was opened by a woman in her late thirties.  She looked much like an older version of Harry's mother.  Seeing who was at the door, she rolled her eyes and turned to go back into the house.  "Honestly, Harry, why are you knocking on the door?  And what are you doing outside; I thought you were upstairs?"  She turned and gave Harry a much more careful look.  "Harry?  Is that . . ?  Who are . . . ?"

While she was still trying to put the Harry at her front door with the one who was presumably upstairs, they both heard a voice coming from the room behind her.  "Mum, what did you want?"  The voice, which was Harry's, was followed by . . . Harry.  It didn't look exactly like the image he would see in a mirror:  the other boy was a little taller and a bit heavier, slender rather than skinny.  His glasses' frames were different and he didn't have a scar on his forehead.  He stopped short as he came into sight, his eyes widening.  "Mum . . .?"

"Harry, has your father left for work yet?"  Lily Potter had paled and was swallowing hard, but her voice was calm and steady.

"I don't think so," Harry's doppelganger's eyes were wide and he, too, was pale.

"Go get him.  And get everyone else upstairs."  When he didn't move immediately, Lily snapped, "Now!"

Harry stared at Lily, feeling unnerved.  "Maybe I should just go.  I didn't mean for any of this . . ."

He was stopped by another voice, also male.  "Lily, Harry's babbling something about mirrors and doubles and . . ."  A man who looked a lot like Harry, either one, came into the hall.  "Merlin's beard!"

Right on the heels of the first man, a second one came into sight.  Tall and handsome, with long black hair and grey eyes, Harry recognized him immediately.  "Sirius?"  The events of the past month, the past year, were finally too much.  The world started wobbling, then went black.

Harry woke up gradually to what sounded like an argument.  It took him a few minutes to realize whose voices he was hearing and why his was one of them.  He couldn't identify the voices; everyone was talking over each other.  He opened his eyes a little to see if he could see who was in the room.  Everything was very blurry; someone must have removed his glasses.  James and Lily Potter were there, as was his double and Sirius.  He could also see Professors Snape, Lupin and Dumbledore.  It was the last person he saw that goaded him into action.  Off in a corner, looking up a staircase, was Peter Pettigrew.  Without thinking it through, Harry leapt off the couch and dived for Wormtail.  "You bastard!"  he screamed while he wrapped his hands around Wormtail's throat and tried to strangle him.  Wormtail looked panicked and tried unsuccessfully to push Harry off of him.

The room exploded in noise and action.  A minute later, Harry felt hands trying to pull him off Wormtail.  Although the hands were strong, Harry had the advantage of adrenalin and years of anger; he wasn't going to let go.  The hands quickly gave up; he heard someone say "Stupefy!"

This time when Harry woke up, there was a hand on his shoulder holding him in place.  He opened his eyes to see James Potter looking down at him.  "Peter isn't here," the man told him.  "If I let you up, are you going to attack anyone else?"

"If it's just who was here before, and not he's not, I won't," Harry said.

James sat back and let Harry sit up.  He was on a couch in a lounge.  With the exception of Wormtail, everyone else he had seen in the room was still there.  Lupin and Sirius both looked rumpled; Harry thought it likely they were the ones who had tried to pull him off Wormtail.  "Let's start with the basics.  Who the hell are you?"

Harry took a deep breath.  "The short answer is Harry James Potter."  Everyone in the room looked at him in a combination of shock and disbelief.  "But I'm not your Harry Potter.  I'm just not sure how I got from where I belong to here."  And I'm not sure I want to go back, Harry thought, but didn't say out loud.

Dumbledore was the first to respond to Harry's answer.  "Do you have any idea how you came to be here?  I'm assuming James and Lily here look like your parents; you seem to know everyone in the room."

"And how do we know you're what you appear to be?" questioned Snape.  "Albus, he may look like Harry, but there are several ways to create that appearance.  And his first action was to attempt a murder."

Lily shook her head.  "I'm not saying I believe the boy, but I don't think he came here to kill Peter.  He was going to leave right before James and Sirius came into the hall and he had no way of knowing we'd call Peter in on this.  In fact," she glared at Sirius, "I clearly remember saying that, other than Professor Dumbledore, we should keep the number of people in on this down."

Harry was feeling sick now, and scared.  He had no way of proving who he was; even his scar . . . "What happened to Voldemort here?"  Everyone in the room looked confused.  "Was he killed?  Is he in Azkaban?  Is he in power?  What happened to him?"

"I'll bite," said James.  "Who's Voldemort?"