The Golden Strings

-Dragoink

Disclaimer: I do not own either Harry Potter or Card Captor Sakura. They are owned by J.K. Rowling and CLAMP respectively.\

Beta: Michiko-Sakura (Thank you!)

Prologue

The wind swept past the pitch as everything was dead silent. The boy looked around him as he took in the surroundings. It was a vast ground which had what appeared to be stands on the edges surrounding the pitch. He turned around to look at where he was. It was a place where he had never been before. He saw that one of the stands was red, another green, one more yellow and another was blue. He also noticed three hoops on the far ends of the grounds. He did not know what to make of these colours but somehow knew they were important. Though, that feeling was telling him everything was important.

He suddenly felt the presence of a couple of people around him. Funny, he did not see them around him when he had turned to observe the surroundings. Neither did he see them coming to him. He took in the appearance of the strangers around him. On one side of him, to the left, was a freckled boy with fiery red hair. He was quite tall for an eleven year old and his face held a grim expression which didn't suit his boyish face. On the other side of him was a brown, bushy haired girl who had a determined look on her face. She saw him looking at her and flashed a reassuring smile.

Why is she smiling at me? I don't even know her!

He ripped his eyes off the girl and observed around him. He saw that he was wrong in his assumption that only two people were with him in this field. There was another girl who had light brown hair, almost bordering on gold, who was carrying a pink staff in her hand. The staff was topped with a golden star that occasionally caught the moonlight. Her face was expressionless; though when he concentrated, he could see the resolve flash in her eyes. She stood away from the trio, diagonally to the right, and was flanked by a mane-less lion and a man who appeared to be dressed completely in white. A sudden thwump! made him whip his head to the left where he saw a brown haired boy who had a sword, a blade that was decorated with intricate designs, which the moon made bright now and then. The noise, he realized, was due to the boy sticking his fancy sword into the grass.

'Hello Harry, dear. Ready to die?'

He turned his head to the front as he felt the people around him stiffen. He saw a man dressed in black robes. His face was stark white and he was bald. His nose was only two slits on his face. The man in front of him advanced towards him and Harry dipped his own hands into his clothes, which he noticed surprisingly, were black robes with a loosely tied tie around his collar. He took out the only thing that was in his robes and found out that it was a –

"-a stick? What's this doing in my robes? How can I protect myself from this man with a stick?" grumbled Harry. He then saw other men in black appearing behind the man who had arrived earlier. They were endless and they seemed to stretch throughout the clearing. His companions moved away from him as they got engaged with the new visitors.

'Ah! Alone at last. We have been waiting for this for so long, haven't we, boy? So long, these fifteen years have been… But I should tell you that I do not intend to let you slip through my fingers again!'

One part of him was demanding him to take that stick from his robes, point it at the man and then say something along the lines of Expelliarmus! But the logical part of him however was adamant that it was merely a stick and it sounded and looked ludicrous when someone watches him waving a stick in the air.

His body, however, did not seem to listen to his brain and it took the stick from within his robes and shouted, "Expelliarmus" on the top of his voice. He heard the other man say, in a low, almost hissing tone, "Avada Kedavra"

Red light met green in the middle of the clearing. As Harry clutched his wand-his wand? Seems to do it no justice calling it a stick- with all his might and was desperate not to break the connection.

'Why?' his brain was asking. He didn't know. He was just going along with the flow…

Suddenly, there was a bright blue light beside him and Harry felt the connection between the green and the red lights slack a little. And it was not because of him. He looked incredulously at the other man who he was currently battling and saw that the snake-faced man's wrist was surrounded by a string of blue light which, when traced, went back to the person beside him. He now turned to observe the person – boy- beside him. What he saw made him almost lose his grip as well.

The boy looked almost exactly like himself, except he did not bear any scar on his forehead. The blue strings which covered his enemy's hand where being manipulated deftly by the boy's fingers. Then he snapped his fingers once and the blue strings left the fingers of his look-alike and wrapped themselves onto his adversary. He snapped his fingers again and the scenario around the two changed. They were now sitting in the swings of a park, in broad daylight, where there was a big blue penguin with a crown in the middle which acted like a slide. The boy then turned towards himself and Harry noticed that the boy had eyes and hair the shade of midnight blue. Harry looked warily at him.

"Dear, dear, Harry. You've seen so much already! Don't worry about it, little one. You'll know everything about it in due time. Now, I greatly apologize for what I'm to do. But you must not know all this if you were to go on as per the Grand Prophecy"

Harry became more and more confused by the second. The boy continued his little speech.

"Now, you see, I need to know whether I've chosen rightly. Tell me Harry, if I were to ask you whether you'd do anything within your power to help those you set your mind to?"

Harry's mind wandered to his few, yet good friends, he had in school. Though Dudley had made it an unspoken rule that anyone who associated with Harry will be subjected to punishment dished out by him, two boys had become his friends. Actually, Harry had been protected by the two of them; twins named Gilbert and Garret Dagger, when Dudley had taken it upon himself to make his lunch time hell, just because he was bored.

That day, which had been three years ago, had made the twins an official target for Dudley's games. Though Harry was his personal play-toy, the Daggers had been the target when Harry did not comply with some of the requests – orders – that Dudley gave him at school. They were used for black mail for some time but after Harry had started to comply to his demands easily, Dudley had gotten bored with him. After a few months of slavery under his cousin, Dudley released him from bondage and did not bother with him much.

After the first few years of being scared of his cousin, Harry had slowly started to ignore his cousin's antics and surprised Dudley by standing up to him in school. During these years, Harry and the Daggers had gotten on swimmingly and he could also tell Gilbert and Garret apart which was quite a feat for anyone knowing the boys who were identical in everything. With his friendship with them came confidence, happiness, fun and a protective feeling towards the brown-haired twins.

However, the twins had moved to Bulgaria and had promised to write to him frequently. But, knowing the Dursleys, every form of happiness to the messy, black haired boy was a strict no-no. He did not have any hope that he would read any letters for them.

He would do anything to have them here.

He asked himself the question his-look-alike-without-the-scar was trying to make him understand.

Would I protect them if they were in any form of danger? Would I do anything it takes?

"Yes"

"Good. I expected you'd say that. The Daggers are very good friends of yours, aren't they?"

This jolted Harry. How did he know about his friends? He had never seen him before… Had this man - boy - been stalking him? Or maybe it was something to do with the stick-like thing which emitted light that Harry had brandished earlier at that dark cloaked man. Was that – dare he say it – magic?

"Oh, Harry, you catch up so quickly. I wonder if it would be safe for you to see anything else. Best to return to the regulars, right?"

The place turned into night, when clearly it had been day before, and Harry wondered what sort of a world he was in. He heard the rumble of a motorcycle and whipped his head around to see the automobile flying in the air.

Then there was a flash of green light and then the world became black.

Ten year old Harry James Potter woke up sweating for no apparent reason. He calmed his racing heart, took a few deep breaths and looked around. He was in his cupboard. And he had dreamt again about the flying motorbike and the flash of green light which, when he casually informed to the Dursleys, had made them go pale. They had wasted no time in admonishing him for having "ridiculous freakish fantasies".

He had had that dream plenty of times before. But none of them had woken him up so harshly.