The Inbetween (Reimagined) – By Slytherin's Dragon

4/24/13:

This is a Redo of The Inbetween. The first attempt was incredibly messy and ill-planned. My apologies for any problems this decision may have caused. But I think it's better this way.

That said, there are plot differences between the two. It starts off AU this time, instead of that adherence to canon events that I did in the original for the first year of Hogwarts. I have plans. Fun plans.

Pairings: I don't know. It's not important. Not slash. Won't be Harry/Ginny for sure.

Warnings: Profanity/Science/Death/Violence/Manipulative people - You have been warned!

Disclaimer! I don't own HP and other recognizable characters in JK Rowling's world. Nor do I own any references from other fandoms. The plot is mine and my OCs are mine.

Part I(1): The Boy who Played with Fire

The room was dim, with a lone dusty table, and the only thing that was animate within was a wriggling plump man lying on the ground struggling desperately against unseen forces. His arms were bound behind his back, his legs seemingly glued together and any sound he made went unheard. Minutes of struggling later, his body went slack. He was drenched with sweat. Weakness, thirst and fatigue made him feel like a piece of lead.

How long has it been? He wondered vaguely to himself. The familiar fear coursed through his blood. He had no inkling of why he was here, trussed up in invisible bonds, and left in a tiny dirty room that stank of his own waste.

He froze when he heard footsteps. An unknown man in a long dark cloak strode in the room and flicked a switch on the wall. The sudden flash of light almost blinded the captive, but after a few seconds, his eyes accommodated to the change. He realized that really, the dingy room was only slightly brighter than before, lit now by a simple light bulb attached to the ceiling by a few tattered wires.

The newcomer was tall, rather pale, and what facial features the prisoner could make out were sharp. His pale hand held a simple dark wand in a leisurely manner. The prisoner felt a familiar pang; he had lost his wand sometime back at the day, the day that he had fled after his old friend had discovered the truth.

"An insignificant man..." The newcomer spoke quietly with a slight infusion of a Russian accent, "Yet somehow, one of the cogs that keep the machinery running. Very, very spineless... a man governed by fear. Yet, you have no idea what the implications of your actions are. Curious."

The prisoner shot the man a simultaneous look of pleading and fear. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound emerged.

"Oh, I am terribly sorry," The man said with false sincerity, "Let me remedy that." He pointed his wand to the prisoner, who began shaking uncontrollably. His voice was squeaky.

"Please... please..."

"Please what?" The man sounded highly amused. "Is this the sound of how you beg and grovel at Voldemort's feet? Pathetic."

A look of pure agony was what the man got in reply. "He was so powerful, I couldn't resist..."

"And so, you betrayed your friends: James Potter and Lily Evans are deader than doornails, no one knows where their son is, and Sirius... languishing in Azkaban... you know, they picked him up just before you sped away to the sewers. You've been in here a few days."

"Who the fuck are you?" Peter Pettigrew gathered what ounce of spine he had and directed it at his captor.

"That's not for you to know. And it's my job to know everything." The man said gravely, "I could easily turn you in, or you can tell me exactly what happened that night. A little bird told me you were a black sheep, Peter. Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?"

"I will tell you everything!" Peter crumbled, defeated, more unnerved by the man's sudden recitation of childish nursery rhymes than his accusations which were all undoubtedly true. He found himself babbling his doings from the past months, from convincing the Potters to change their Secret-Keeper, to his escape from one Sirius Black.

In other words, he sang like a lark.

"It's a shame, Peter that no one knows what happened that night in that house. By rights, you should have been burned with everyone else in the house. Only the boy survived you know, or that's at least what the sources say. But, perhaps you have a larger role to play in this game." His voice maintained its calmness, "No one knows where Voldie-shorts went, no one knows where the Potter boy is, and no one knows how Godric's Hollow was reduced to cinders, with a couple of Voldie's henchmen burned within. They say that the fighting destroyed the house, but I sure as hell don't buy that. Something burned the house down. And yet..." The man trailed off.

"It was green fire." Peter interjected, in his whiny, pleading voice.

"Green... Green as in Lily Evan's eyes green, or the green of Avada Kedavra?"

"I don't know!" Peter whined, "There was too much going on..."

"Think carefully, this is important."

Peter paused for a moment to think. "It was silvery-green. Very Slytherin..."

"Thank you." The man looked intensely into Peter's eyes, and the ratty man knew that Legilimency was being used. "All seems to be in order. You have five seconds, and I don't want to see your mug here again." The man seemed to have lost his Russian accent in his last sentence.

Peter felt a strange shift in the atmosphere and instinctively reached for his inner rat with the last bit of his strength.

/Toph\

"You let him go? After all of Ivan's hard work to get him here?" Toph exclaimed rather indignantly as the man in the cloak left the grimy room and entered an equally unkempt hallway. "I hope you at least obliviated the miserable turncoat!"

"Tophling," Toph winced at the nickname. It was a play on her first name, Toph, and her surname, Lin. Richard Abbott had the most unflattering habit of calling her such in the past week. She could also sense the man's unbearable grin when she washed the area Richard was standing in with her magic. She was a mage, and manipulating the fabric of magic for her own means was something that came easily to her. Her eyes had a dead silvery look to them, or that's what everyone described them as, but she certainly wasn't blind. Not with her gift of magic. "When Ivan set up those wards, he added a special ward. As soon as the Anti-Animagi ward went down, and a person transformed, they will immediately be apparated into a cozy little cage in Ivan's shop in Knockturn. I think it's cute."

She sighed, as the pair made their way out of the old neglected house, down the old creaky stairs, never to return. Wandlessly she transfigured Richard's cloak into an ordinary Muggle trenchoat just as they stepped outside and they casually strode through the seedy suburban neighbourhood. She saw the world in black, white and shades of grey rather like old Muggle movies, or that's what everyone described Toph's sight as after she described what she saw. She personally couldn't know, considering that everything was black and white to her. Colour was a foreign concept. "Honestly, how does your wife put up with you?"

"She doesn't." Richard laughed quietly, "It's kind of difficult you know. She doesn't know I do other work besides my job at Nimbus. It's complicated enough, she being a Muggle and all. And, now I have a daughter, so no more dangerous and abroad work for yours truly. My excuse this time was that there was a conference for broomstick designers or something along those lines. All terribly boring for her, you see."

"Do you think Ivan will ask rat-boy about the other fiasco? It would be nice to know if he had a hand in it." Toph mused, thinking about bygone days. She found the words of an old rhyme on her tongue. "Remember, remember, the fifth of November..."

"Remember Toph, not all of us are as old as you are." Richard groaned, "If you are talking about the Moo-... And did it even happen on the fifth of November?"

"You know what, I don't even remember." Toph said seriously, "And you are right, you were still a kid back then, and so was rat-boy. Ivan and I are bloody old!"

"And that saying," Toph felt Richard shiver with her magic. "It sounds ominous."

"It was a rhyme I heard somewhere..." Toph said vaguely, "And today is the fifth of November."

"I think there's something really wrong with us," Richard laughed, "You should have seen Petey boy's face when I recited a line of a nursery rhyme."

"Well, I am heading back to America tomorrow," Toph changed the topic to something normal.

Richard looked comically disappointed, "It was nice keeping house with you."

"I am sure it was," Toph grinned. "I am sure we will meet again, but whether the circumstances will be happier than the ones here, I don't know. Go home to your wife and daughter!"

"Will do!" Richard gave Toph one final nod, and a few seconds later, the pair parted ways with barely perceptible 'pops' of Apparition.

/Harry – Several Years later\

The boy winced when the cruel lash of his uncle's belt struck against his skin.

"You ungrateful boy – such ingratitude for the years your Aunt and I have put up with you!"

The whipping continued, despite the flow of the boy's tears, and the boy bit his tongue to keep himself from screaming out loud as noise merited double punishment. It wasn't fair. Dudley had deliberately tripped him and caused him to drop the plate of breakfast that he had cooked. The plate had been, coincidentally, Aunt Petunia's favourite plate, but it looked no more different than the rest of her plates. Same ugly flowery pattern and same cheap make.

Mercifully, the boy soon felt himself flung into the familiar cupboard, landing in the mess of soiled blankets and old rags. He heard the familiar click of the cupboard door lock, and he resigned himself to the fact that he was going to be in there for a god-awful long time. Or until Aunt Petunia wanted him to pull weeds in from their textbook-perfect garden or trim the perfect lawn. Gingerly, he removed the ruined shirt from his beaten torso; at least this time Uncle Vernon had been in such a rage that he forgot to remove the shirt before the whipping began.

How he hated summer vacation.

Using his hands, he traced his new accumulation of fresh cuts. He knew that they would be gone after he took a nap. They always were. He didn't know why, considering that Dudley's boo-boos seem to take much longer to heal. He had always suspected that his spoiled brat of a cousin faked his hurts longer than necessary to milk Aunt Petunia for all she was worth, but with all the quirkiness that invariably manifested around him; he had a feeling that there was more to this particular story.

He sighed, after examining his hands. The blood had coagulated before he had an opportunity to feel the viscous fluid. It fascinated him that life seemed to be run with such a simple red substance. He shivered. Despite the warmth of summer, he felt cold, both physically and mentally. He found another old, smelly, and slightly holey shirt in a corner. He put it on, feeling the additional barrier really didn't do anything to his coldness.

He drifted off, his dreams haunted by green and screams. A woman's pleading screams, strange laughter, and green fire. Fire so intense that it consumed everything that it touched – dragons, serpents, the beasts of nightmares in green flames ran around in the darkness, while he sat in the middle, playing something that rather looked like a snake charmer's flute with some sort of purple turban with a feather made up of the same green fire wrapped around his head. The feather-flame swayed with the odd eerie music, continuous and rather oriental in style. The music got faster and faster, and the creatures sped up their tempo until they became one. A green flickering band of fire that suddenly reared up, grew eyes, tongue, fangs and stuck the charmer in the forehead, where the lightning shaped scar resided.

His eyes flickered open, and he rubbed his scar, trying to massage the agony of his migraine away. Fire. He thought. He could still felt the residual heat from his dreams. The strange green flames burning hypnotically in his mind – the screams and laughter that had puzzled him so much in his younger days were no longer the focus. His brain was telling him that there was significance behind the fire-dreams, while his common sense tossed the thought away.

Standing up cautiously, he reached for the ceiling, stretching. There was no pain, which was expected, and he knew that without even needing to touch his back, the wounds were gone. It was like magic. He laughed at such a fancy. It was ridiculous, but the evidence was there. He vigorously shook his head, and crawled over to the loose floorboard which held his secrets. He pulled out an old battered encyclopedia that he had managed to scavenge from school. A teacher had tossed it out, and he opened the tattered book to the page where he had inserted a scrap of paper to serve as a bookmark. He knew he was much smarter than Dudley, but he was nowhere as strong, nor fast, due to his malnourished frame.

It was two weeks later, when Aunt Petunia finally allowed him out of his cupboard. 'The gardens needed weeding' she had said, and weeding was what he was doing now. It was mind-numbing work, but at least he was out of the confines of his cage. With practiced ease, he pulled each weed out mechanically, making sure to get all the roots out. His attention eventually drifted to the house beside 4 Privet Drive, as he had noticed that the car parked in front was no longer the same as the car that had parked their two weeks ago. Maybe new car – he mused, or new neighbours.

He went back at his job, tackling one enormous weed at the corner of the garden. He smiled slightly when he saw a tiny snake entwined around a thick green stem which had been a recent addition. It was a rather ordinary snake, with green and black patches, and two faint yellow lines which streaked its back. A common grass snake. His brain registered, remembering a book about snake classification that he had read sometime during the school year. The snake flicked its tongue at him, and he stuck his tongue out back.

'Silly boy... silly silly silly boy!' The snake seemed to hiss.

The boy was bewildered. He must be hallucinating, his brain said, but no -.

'Silly silly silly silly boy!" The snake seemed to enjoy its chant, swaying playfully.

Perplexed, he looked at the snake, pinched himself, and muttered 'I am going crazy, I can hear snakes talk!' He heard the hissing noise emerge from his own mouth. Bloody hell!

'Of course we talk, silly boy!' The snake tasted the air rapidly with his tongue. 'But what's odd is that you talk back. Humans aren't supposed to talk back to snakes!'

'I know that!' The boy said back, 'I don't know what's going on!'

'Silly silly silly...' The snake slithered away, 'silly silly...'

Snake is bloody bonkers. He thought before resuming his task.

The summer days passed slowly, as Aunt Petunia slowly allowed him to resume all his tasks. The snake, 'Silly' as the boy had ended up naming him, was a constant amusement for his weeding.

He got whipped and sent to his cupboard again after Dudley had thrown a tantrum over under-fried bacon that he had cooked. Such a drama queen. He mused. I bet he can't even scramble an egg to save his life. As he was lying in the soiled rags, he found himself thinking about the fire dreams again.

They had come less frequently during the days of chores, where he had been too tired to dream. He remembered his first memory of fire, Dudley's birthday candles – three candles, Harry remembered. A droplet of flame burning the coloured wax slowly, and he remembered that he had been drawn towards the fire, like a moth. The days at Ms. Figgs, when the Dursleys were out, he remembered that she had a proper fireplace that she had kept lit, and he stared into the flames as cats mewed incessantly around him. He remembered when Dudley got a fire sparkler, and he watched in awe as sparks danced in the air, burning the fuel on the stick, leaving a metallic smell behind.

He remembered Uncle Vernon saying to Aunt Petunia that 'the boy was a freak; just look at the way he looks at the sparkler." And his Aunt had agreed.

He almost yelped when he saw silver fire emerge from the palm of his hand. Brilliantly silver, very warm fire that seemed burn from an invisible source, barely a few centimetres above his skin. He dropped his hand, and the fire died. He imagined the flickering tendrils of silver fire, and again, the air above his palm was lit.

It was beautiful.

He searched around for the nastiest rag he owned, and when he did, he visualized the fire again. He tossed the dirty cloth into the flames, and watched the silver consume the rags to ashes almost instantaneously. He imagined burning 4 Privet Drive to cinders, his inner pyromaniac was aroused, but he immediately discarded the idea. His flames were silver, unlike any fire he had ever seen before, and it would be suspicious if he was the only survivor of the house. And besides, where would he go?

To Aunt Marge's?

He really didn't relish the idea of her dogs.

The rest of his week in solitary confinement was spent playing with fire. He sculpted his flames into impossible shapes, burnt tiny scraps of paper, and discovered that his abilities weren't confined simply to one palm, but both as well. He also dug out his old homework from the previous year, and practiced his arithmetic, relearned about trees, and went over his grammar. He knew better than anyone that one had to keep busy, or go mad in such isolation.

The fire was back in his dreams, burning vividly, but this time he was lying on the ground of his cupboard, watching as ring of fire danced slowly around him. The fire soared higher and higher, and budded off into dragons, massive beasts which roared and launched themselves to the walls. The image changed, he was standing now, in the middle of the living room, watching everything burn. It was cleansing in a way, he felt any negative feelings clenched in his mind burn away with the house in his dreams. The him in his dream started to laugh, and it was the same odd laugh that he heard in the dreams of the green fire. The dragons flew back, and flew in a circle so quickly to reform the fiery snake, which again bit him in the forehead. He felt a stab of agony, and the sensation of his body being thrown.

He was no longer in the Dursleys' burning house, but rather, perched upon a statue, looking over beautiful and old stained glass windows. His vision blurred, and he found himself staring at a dusty, neglected room, with a rather odd and old forlorn creature looking nostalgically at an old moth-eaten tapestry. The images continue to morph, from a dark musty dungeon, a room filled with treasures – unimaginable wealth, like Aladdin's cave, until finally he was in a forest. The ground was so close to him which he found odd, until he saw the ground suddenly rise upwards and he realized he was looking from the point of view of a snake!

He woke up shaking, finding it a relief that he was in the cupboard and that he actually hadn't burned the house down.

Dreams were dreams; he wasn't going crazy, was he?

Then why did it feel so real?

/Sirius\

Eight fucking years... eight fucking years...

The thought reverberated in his mind as he sat against his cell wall. Grey stones, cold wall, dirt floor, and metallic bars separated his cell from the walkway.

I am innocent... I am innocent... Peter – that bastard...

The years had not been kind to him. He looked emaciated, not because he wasn't well-fed, but the doom and gloom of the inhabitants of jolly old Azkaban was slowly sucking his life away. He was weak and he longed for a good night's sleep. One without dreams – in fact Dreamless Sleep Potion was a commodity worth its weight in gold in this shithole. It wasn't the bars that kept the crooks in, but the mind. One was forced to relieve their worst memories over and over again, and any happy ones would have been gone in a blink of an eye.

For you see, happy thoughts was the commodity that the dementors fought over amongst themselves. It was a very sad thing, actually, for scraps of happy memories were scarce, and feeding frenzies happened when a new prisoner arrived on the rocks.

James... Lily... Harry... Remus...

He shook his head, his shaggy long hair and beard swung with the movement. He pressed his hand against the folds of his robes, and he removed a piece of parchment. In elegant handwriting, it said.

Hello Padfoot,

We have stumbled upon the truth many years ago, and we have finally found a means to help. So here is your ticket out of this place. Seek your alter-ego within and go to the docks, where they bring shipments and new prisoners at sundown on your godson's birthday. Follow your instincts there.

I.

He didn't know who I. was, but really he didn't give a damn. He wanted off this Merlin-forsaken island. Someone had obviously cared enough to find the truth of that night. He carefully shredded the parchment with his hands, tossed the remains in his mouth and swallowed it. He took one last look at his surroundings again: the old mattress that he had slept on for the past eight years, the worn grey sheets, battered grey pillow, and the bolted nightstand to the grey wall.

Everything was fucking grey.

Sirius never wanted to see that fucking colour again.

Grey was the mist of the dementors, that horrible horrible fog. He shivered when he saw a dementor glide past his cell. Looking out his window, barred with metal impervious to magic, he was able to discern that the sun was setting. He felt himself instinctively falling into his big black dog form, so lanky and thin, a sliver of his former glory.

He felt his sense of smell sharpen, and the more limited colour-spectrum of his dog vision started to take effect. He remembered the days when James and Remus had teased him about being unable to distinguish between red and green.

A happy thought – hang on, why aren't the dementors swarming to me like flies?

He slid through the bars, and slowly made his way towards the docks, walking the reverse direction that he had came eight years ago. He saw a Ministry guard, leisurely sitting at a corner with his Daily Prophet in hand. The man paid him no heed, and he walked on. Most of the inmates were splayed on the floor, in a similar manner that he had been doing, no doubt feeling too paralyzed with misery to do anything about it. Soon he came to the docks after passing the formidable wall, and sure enough there was the cargo-craft, a small magic-powered motor boat that shipped everything from food to criminals.

The man standing in the boat, dressed in the Azkaban uniform, barely glanced at him. He quietly clambered into the boat, making her wobble once or twice. He curled up near a keg of Firewhiskey rather wishing that he had some himself.

He soon heard the purr of the motor, and with a joyous thump of his heart, he knew that he was leaving the island for good. It was nice to feel the adrenaline of adventure again, like his younger, more carefree and naive days. He found himself thinking of his godson, he'd be a big boy now – ten today.

When the boat was halfway across the North Sea, Sirius' keen ears heard the sound of footsteps. He turned his head abruptly to the man that was steering the ship. Oh fuck. He looked towards the sea, and then at the man, debating to swim the rest of the way, or attack the man. Indecision tore at his mind until the man spoke.

"Padfoot, is it? We've never met under any capacity, but rest assured that I will have you delivered to the right place. I hope you like adventure, because we are part of a boat-jacking mission."

Sirius barked once and walked over to the man. The man petted his head, and from somewhere procured a turkey sandwich. He handed half to Sirius, who devoured it as if he never saw food in his life. The man chuckled and whispered, "The Polyjuice is wearing off... don't be alarmed now."

Sirius watched in fascination as the man in front of him grew taller, the hair turn jet black, silky and long, and dark eyes peered at Sirius. There was a faint alteration in facial features, and a paling of the skin. There was something very familiar and unsettling about the man's face that Sirius couldn't quite place. The man waved his wand at his clothing, and they morphed to fit his taller, thinner frame.

"Oh don't look at me like that. Everyone in bloody Britain does. Should have stayed in Massachusetts," The man groaned.

Sirius gave the man his best apologetic expression, and the man laughed. "Glad to see that Azkaban hasn't dulled your humor."

The man walked back to the steering wheel, and Sirius followed close behind. It was so long since he had any sort of legitimate company. And he might get another pet or sandwich. He craved nourishment, be it in the form of nutrients from food or human contact. He gently nudged the man's leg, and he felt the man's right hand scratch his neck.

Ah, that was good.

But he still couldn't place why the man looked so familiar.

/Hannah\

Long blonde haired Hannah Abbott sat in her room, doing division. It wasn't fair. She thought, most girls her age would be outside in the glorious sunshine, frolicking, and here she was, doing pages of arithmetic that her father had told her to do before he had left for work today. Her mother had left soon afterwards, to work at her busy job as an environmental lawyer and she felt lonely. She swore that her parents gave her enough homework during the days that they worked just to keep her out of trouble. But she did feel a spark of pride though, her parents trusted her enough to stay at home alone.

Seeing that it was noon, she got up from her desk, a nice sturdy mahogany affair, and walked down the stairs to the kitchen. She got herself a glass of milk, heated up a plateful of green onion Chinese pancakes that her dad had brought home last night, and fetched an apple from the glass fruit bowl that sat in the centre of the marble-glass hybrid dining table.

After she devoured the food, she immediately set herself to washing the dishes, leaving them to dry on the rack beside the sink. She then looked out one of the windows of the house, to see a familiar figure kneeling on the grassy lawn pulling weeds or something like that. What kind of parent makes their kid pull weeds all day long? Hannah mused to herself. Her lonely self had watched the dark-haired boy pull weeds for the past month, with intermittent breaks, because there were weeks that the boy didn't come out of the house.

Gathering some courage, she grabbed her set of keys to the house, put on her running shoes and walked out through the side door. She locked the door on the way out and deposited her keys into the pocket of her jeans. She walked a few steps until she was standing right beside the boy, her neighbour.

"Can I help you?" The boy finally turned around to see her. She examined him, baggy clothes, taped together glasses, but with nice green eyes looking through them, and his messy black hair stuck out in every direction.

"Hi, I am your neighbour." She said shyly and then suddenly she whacked her forehead, "Merlin, I suck at this."

"Suck at what?" The boy asked politely.

"Talking to people," Hannah admitted, "I mean I can talk to my parents and stuff, but really... this is embarrassing."

"You appear to be doing fine." The boy said encouragingly, "So is there anything..."

"Why do you think I want something? I was just lonely in my house and I thought you might want to talk..." Hannah said rather wistfully, "Being cooped up in the house is horrible. And I just moved here, so I have no friends. My name's Hannah Abbott, by the way."

"I am Harry." The boy continued pulling weeds.

"It's nice to meet you." Hannah smiled.

"Yeah," Harry said.

"So why do you pull weeds all the time? I see your chubby brother..."

"He's not my brother, he's my cousin." Harry immediately corrected.

"I am sorry," Hannah looked extremely apologetic, "I didn't-"

"You didn't know." Harry nodded, "Its fine."

She watched quietly as Harry pulled each weed out with care. He meticulously dug out all the roots, and the sight of earthworms didn't faze him one bit, even though Hannah found them rather queasy. When she saw a snake approach, she was surprised to see Harry hiss to it. The snake seemed to hiss back, and seemed to sway comically to some imaginary tune.

"That's Silly." Harry mused, "He keeps me company during weeding days."

"Why do you call him that?" Hannah said in awe, "And are you a Parselmouth?"

"Because he slithers around saying silly silly silly all day long..." Harry said with a deadpan expression.

"Really?" Hannah laughed, "That seems so absurd!"

"I told him that, and he said I was absurd for not doing so." Harry sighed, "You can't argue with a snake. And what's a Parselmouth?"

"Someone who can talk to snakes..." Hannah said, "It's apparently a very rare ability in Europe attributed to dark people, but in places in India, my father tells me that Parselmouths are more common and highly honoured."

"Really?" Harry looked a little shocked, "And here I thought I was talking crazy."

"I think it's awesome, especially if you can make friends with snakes –"

Harry looked ominously in one direction and stiffened up, "I think you better go, my cousin is coming, and this is not going to be good."

"What do you mean?" Hannah asked.

"Just go, I will talk to you another time, hopefully." Harry said insistently, "Please."

Feeling some unknown dread clench at her stomach, Hannah ran for her house door. As she reached the door, she saw Harry start running in one direction, followed by a gang of bigger boys that were hot on his trail. And then she remembered the scar on the boy's head – on the boy's forehead.

Holy bloody Merlin, indeed.

She reached for the keys in her pocket and unlocked the door.

/Harry\

Harry ran. There was no stopping. His Dudley-dar was beeping like mad and he could see the word danger flashing in orangey-neon lights in his mind. He was tiring, and he knew that the game wasn't going to last any longer. He felt the familiar taste of iron from the depths of his throat, and he felt like retching. He wished he wasn't here, wasn't chased, somewhere safe... and just when things were at the most dire, he felt an unusual jerking sensation down at his navel. He was engulfed by blackness.

It was a while before he felt himself come to. He felt cold air attacking at his exposed skin. He slowly opened his eyes, and took in the darkness of the sky above. There wasn't a cloud in sight, and the stars twinkled from above, light-years away. He must have fainted, he reasoned, but from what? A beating? Pure exhaustion? And where in bloody hell was he?

He was surprised that he wasn't stuffed in somebody's garbage bin – Piers liked that. He felt rough edges from underneath him, and he was surprised when he looked down. He was exactly two stories above the ground. On a rooftop.

It was nice to lie outside, on a relatively chilly summer. Sure beat the scenery in his little cupboard by a long shot. He thought about the girl that he had met today – the one who had diagnosed his strange behaviour with snakes. It was very good to know that he had lost his sanity completely. She seemed nice... it was rare that Harry had ever got a chance to talk to someone his own age. Usually, Dudley humiliated him so badly in school before he got to meet anyone. The humiliation was usually so bad that most people gave him a wide berth, not wanting to be part of Dudley's victim list. Really, he was surprised that he could still function well amongst people his own age, despite his lack of social activity at school.

Maybe he wasn't too far gone.

He sighed. He knew he ought to feel happy that he escaped Dudley and his gang, and that he met someone that could be his friend, but he felt empty. He remembered days at school, where the class had read a very sad story about a mother squirrel being run over a truck, and he had felt completely empty inside, while others genuinely felt sad. He knew that theoretically, anger and love were arguably the strongest of the human emotions, but he didn't feel either. He neither loved nor hated the Dursleys. But he knew the circumstances in which one could use to fake emotion. He knew how to keep a happy front. That was expected of him, and he'd be beaten if he did any different.

Now, how to get off this bloody roof – the problem at hand, Harry continued thinking. He remembered wishing for somewhere safe. He tried many movements, many trains of thoughts, but got nowhere. When he started to look for ways to get off the roof physically, an insight fired in his brain. Of course, the silver flames... He remembered visualizing the tendrils of fire, what shape they formed, and so on and so forth. With concentration, Harry pictured the ground below, and his two feet landing safely on the grass below, with the rest of his body. A familiar lurching sensation hit Harry's stomach, and he found himself on the ground, just as he had wished.

Bloody fucking hell! Did he just learn how to teleport?

He then visualized his cupboard, and with the same careful thought process as before, he felt the familiar sensation of teleportation, and he found himself in his cupboard.

He made a mental note to himself to read up more on teleportation, and physics at the soonest opportunity.

Bloody hell, I can actually teleport to the library!

And with that happy thought, he went to sleep.

Review, silly! Thanks!