Chapter 1

Hermione was worried. The Order had been very strict this summer about letting Harry leave Grimmauld Place. After the trial, Harry had hardly left headquarters at all. Mrs. Weasley was trying to keep them busy with the cleaning, with little success. The house only seemed worse after they spent hours cleaning.

She had convinced the Order to let her, Harry and Ron out for a walk around London with supervision this morning. Harry had been quiet and withdrawn ever since. She had expected that the fresh air and activity would cheer him up but it seemed to have the opposite effect. It didn't make any sense.

Hermione shifted her weight on the couch. A cloud of dust and the smell of moth-eaten cloth wafted up to her. She kept her eyes on the book in her lap (The Standard Book of Spells, Volume 5), but her thoughts were focused on their trip from the morning.

They had gone out around 10 am, accompanied by Remus and Tonks (disguised as a middle-aged Asian woman in a business suit). They had walked toward a park about 10 blocks from headquarters, passing through a dingy section of London. They hadn't encountered anything other than other pedestrians and a group of homeless children running across the busy street. After spending an hour in the park, which was completely deserted other than a broken swing set, they had returned to headquarters.

She sighed to herself. Okay, so it wasn't the most cheerful trip she had ever been on, but she had felt refreshed just getting out of this dismal house. Hermione could admit to herself that the place was a dump. Her family was fairly well off, with both of her parents being doctors and owning their own dental practice. She had been raised in a large comfortable home, and never truly wanted for anything. She had never lived in a house that was so run-down. The burrow, while not exactly posh, was homey and welcoming and clearly well cared for. This house reeked of decay and neglect. It was depressing just looking at the faded and peeling wallpaper.

She shook her head. She was getting sidetracked. Her main concern was not the depressing décor, but what was truly bothering her moody friend. Harry had always been a bit…off, socially speaking. While he was a very good and loyal friend, he always seemed so awkward around other people. He had very few friends outside of her and Ron and didn't seem to be interested in branching out at all.

This summer, he had been all over the board emotionally. It made sense, he had witnessed the murder of a classmate, had been tortured by his parent's murderer, been isolated from any friendly face with no information of any kind, whilst being maligned in the eyes of the public. She could admit that he had every reason to be frustrated, angry and upset, but it hurt that she couldn't help him. She didn't know how.

However, his mood today seemed different. She knew what his "brooding over Cedric and Voldemort" face looked like. His "anger over being shut out" face was pretty obvious too. This was even different from his "wistful" face that he had whenever he thought about his parents. This face was reflective like he was thinking about a past memory. His face was twisted in a way that showed that they were happy memories, but tinged with sadness. Nostalgia?

She peeked at her friend from the corner of her eye. Harry was sitting in an armchair across the small library. She said sitting, but in reality, he was more sprawling. His left leg was hanging over the edge of the armchair, while his right was propped up at an angle, pressed against the armrest. His right arm was curled over his chest while his head and left arm dangled over the other armrest. He was staring at the ceiling with a look in his eye that indicated that his thoughts were a million miles away. What was he thinking about? Hermione felt the familiar tinge of frustration that had been plaguing her all morning.

"What?" Harry's voice suddenly pierced the silence of the library, startling Hermione so badly that dropped her book onto the carpet.

"What?" Hermione struggled to regain her composure. "You haven't turned a page in your book in over an hour and you keep glancing over at me. What are you thinking so hard about." Harry's reply was matter of fact, his eyes never leaving the ceiling.

"Nothing." Hermione blushed and picked up her book quickly. She hadn't even noticed that she was glancing at him. She was more surprised that he had even noticed. She thought his mind had been elsewhere. Harry finally turned his head to look at her. His face was blank, but his eyes pierced into her. "I doubt that. Spit it out, you know you want to."

Well, this could work. If she wanted to know something, the most direct path would be to simply ask Harry what was bothering him. But then, this was Harry she was talking about. How often did he talk about his feelings? The short answer…Never.

"Hermione, just ask. I won't get mad. If I don't want to answer, I will tell you." He had yet to blink. Did he know how creepy he could seem when he stared at others? She doubted it.

" I noticed that you have been really quiet today. It seemed to start this morning after our walk so I was wondering if something upset you." Hermione pressed the question out quickly before she changed her mind. Harry blinked, surprised. He hadn't been expecting the question. He turned his head away from her and returned his gaze to the ceiling. She sat for several moments, waiting for his reply. He did not move for nearly two minutes. Hermione figured that he did not intend to answer her. She wasn't surprised. Harry did not like to discuss personal topics. There were times when she felt that she barely knew her friend at all. Just as she was about to return to her book, Harry's voice broke the silence.

"The Dursley's never liked me. I never really understood why. It wasn't until I got my Hogwarts letter that I started to get it. They always told me that I was different, a freak, but I didn't know what it meant. When I was really little, I tried to think of ways that I could get them to love me. It's all I really wanted from them. To have them be proud of me, to care for me, even if it was just for a minute. I tried to be quiet, and do all my chores without being asked. I followed every rule and never fought back when Dudley hit me. I kept telling myself that it was worth it. That one day, it would matter.

When I went to Primary school for the first time, I tried so hard. I wanted to be the best in the class. I thought that they would be proud of my grades, that this would be the thing that would change it all. That it would be the thing to make them love me. I would always be a freak, but maybe they would care if I were a smart freak.

On the last day of school, the teacher sent home our reports, and I walked right up to Aunt Petunia and handed her my grades. I knew that they were good. I had done all of my work and I paid attention in class. But when she looked at them, she got mad. I had done better than Dudley. She and Uncle Vernon accused me of cheating and disrupting Dudley's learning in school. I was…punished and sent out to weed the garden. I watched her tear up my report and throw it in the trash." Here Harry paused. His eyes were still locked on the ceiling, but she could read the lines of tension in his face.

She was shocked and appalled! How could they do that to him! He had worked so hard. She felt a surge of anger for Harry's family. She was about to start on a rant when Harry began speaking again. She didn't dare interrupt him. She knew that this had to be hard for him to talk about. If she interrupted him he might clam up and never talk about it again.

"In the garden, I came to a realization. My family did not love me, and they never would. There was nothing that I could do to change that. It hurt. Every day, I was surrounded by families and I could see what love looked like, but I had never had anyone care for me that way. I felt alone and angry and I made a really rash decision. I decided to run away. If my family wasn't going to love me and didn't want me, then I would leave. I didn't plan it all. I was five, I didn't think about the consequences. I just walked out of the garden and down the street. I walked for about 10 minutes before I realized that I was lost. I started to get scared. But I knew that when my Uncle realized that I was gone, he would come looking for me, and that scared me even more.

I kept walking, and that's when I saw the lorry. It was one of those big moving vans, almost completely full of furniture. I hid in the bushes nearby and watched the workers carry boxes and chairs and stack them into the back. One of the workers mentioned that they needed to finish soon so that they could get to London before nightfall. That is when I made the second rash decision of the day. I know that my Uncle was looking for me, and if he found me I would be in a world of trouble, but I doubted that he would look for me in London. So I waited for the workers to go back into the house and I snuck into the back of the lorry. I hid under the couch behind a stack of cardboard boxes. After a few more loads, the workers put the last boxes in and closed the back of the van. I hadn't expected to be so dark, and the ride was far from comfortable. I was pinned to the cold wooden floor of the truck under a musty sofa in total darkness for hours. It felt like an eternity before the lorry stopped and the back opened again. I waited for the workers to begin unloading and I snuck out of the truck into London."

Here Harry stopped again and looked over at Hermione. He grinned at her, and she suddenly realized that she was perched on the edge of the couch staring incredulously at him with her mouth hanging open. She snapped it closed, before suddenly opening it again. "Harry! That was really dangerous. You could have been hurt! Do you have any idea how unsafe that was? You could have been crushed! And you ran away from home to London! What were you thinking? How are you still alive?" She would have continued, had Harry not given a quiet, self-deprecating chuckle.

"Believe me, Hermione, I know. I had no idea what I was doing. I was five, and upset, and not thinking clearly. I didn't understand the consequences at first. After I left the truck, I wandered for hours around London. I was so lost. The sun had gone down and I was hungry, alone and terrified out of my mind. I didn't know what to do. That first night, I ended up crawling behind some bins in an alley to sleep. The next few days went about the same. I wandered around London, hiding in alleyways, stealing food from bins, and even drinking water from a drainpipe. I was realizing how stupid I had been, and even wishing that I was home with the Dursley's, even if it meant that I would be in trouble. I had almost convinced myself to find a police officer when I met Tootles.

Tootles was a homeless kid, just a few years older than me. He found me rooting for food in a bin behind a bakery. He was dirty and tousled, with shoes that didn't match, shorts held up with string and two faded shirts. He was crouched near the mouth of the alley, watching me when I finally noticed him. He didn't say anything at first, just looked at me and then asked: "Are you lost?". I nodded and he grinned at me. He held out his hand and said, "Good, come with me. I'll help." By this time I hadn't eaten anything other than brown lettuce and half moldy bread for days with hardly any water. I needed help, so I took his hand, and it remains to be one of the best decisions of my life.

Tootles was part of a group of homeless kids in London, they called themselves the Lost Boys, like from Peter Pan. There were about 10 of us, and we all had nicknames. The nicknames, I found out, were actually the names of the Lost Boys from the original Peter Pan stories. I never found out who started it, but the group was really consistent. The group stayed about the same size, and the nicknames were always the same. When a Lost Boy was lost, either to death, orphanages or the system, then the next person to join the group would inherit their nickname. So when one of the Boys, Nibs was picked up by social workers and put in an orphanage, the next kid that we found, a six-year-old who was abandoned became the new Nibs. When one is lost, another becomes him, and in that way, the Lost Boys never really grew up."

Hermione was speechless. She had no idea that Harry had lived with homeless children in London. The idea of the Lost Boys was so strange. Why would they use nicknames rather than their real ones? A thought suddenly occurred to her… "What was your nickname Harry?"

His smile was wide as he replied, "Peter Pan."