Harry and the Woods
Chapter One
Harry woke up with a start. It was very dark out, and that scared him very badly. He began to cry very quietly. Where were his mum and dada? Had they left him in the supermarket? No, the supermarket's ceiling was different, it wasn't so small, and it didn't only have one light. Harry put the piece of parchment he was holding in his mouth and gnawed thoughtfully. Maybe he should go and look for his parents. Yes, that's what he'd do. They were only mum and dada, they couldn't have gone all that far.
Harry also noticed, once he got out of the plaid blanket he was wrapped in, that it was cold out, but not so cold that he couldn't walk for a bit, just until he found mum and dada. He dragged the blanket behind him as he slid off the porch step and toddled down the street, just in case, he thought. It was what his mum always said when he didn't want to wear his jacket in the car. Of course, Harry didn't have much of an idea of what it meant, but it seemed important. He also took the now sodden piece of parchment with him in case he got hungry.
"Mumumumum! Dada, dadadada," he said to the empty street. He heard a sound off to his right, and so ran as quickly as he could without tripping over his own feet (which happened a lot at home) towards the noise he was so sure was the sound of his dada knocking something off the table again.
Harry followed the sound a long way up the street before he found a cat that looked very much like his own digging through some garbage bags. Harry gasped, and then squealed with joy. The cat, startled, spun around very fast and tried to stare the one-year-old down. But Harry would have none of that staring contest business. No, he just teetered over the uneven pavement of the alleyway and cautiously patted the cat on the back, the way his own cat had liked. The current cat, who Harry named Mippin (though he did not state this out loud yet), rubbed up against the child's legs happily. Harry giggled, because the cat's tail tickled his chin and nose.
Now, as Harry was simply an "average" wizard boy, he needed to sleep. So he picked up his blanket that he hadn't remembered dropping in the first place, laid it down on the ground and fell asleep to the rhythm of Mippin purring.
.:. :.: .:.
Harry awoke to the rough feeling of Mippin licking his face, and the sun low in the sky, shining yellow in his eyes. Harry reached up to rub the sleep from his eyes and looked around him. He was wrapped up in the blanket, and had some difficulty disentangling himself. Once, he'd gotten up, Mippin dashed around the corner of an intersection, but came back after a few second to stare intently at Harry. Harry soon caught up to his feline friend. When the cat began to walk away again, Harry followed, because it seemed the right thing to do.
Mippin led him to a certain address where, when the front door would be opened, Harry would have a very different life than the one intended for him by Dumbledore.
A/N: So this is another "Harry escapes the Dursley's earlier than intended" fic. I was inspired by a child psychology book I've been rereading and a one-year-old I looked after on New Year's Eve. One-year-olds can be clever little kids, eating my favourite books and whatnot.
Not sure how long I'll drag this fic out for, but I know where it's going.