ALONE
Chapter 1: Abandoned
Harry stared at the empty slot in the car park, the driving rain a punishing sting against his skin that he didn't really feel, numbed as he was by the shock. Perhaps it shouldn't have been a shock; he knew the Dursleys hated him and always had. But to actually abandon him, to give him no way to return? No, he hadn't expected that. After all, who abandons a seven-year-old child in a foreign country at a market?
The Dursleys had been forced to take him with them in the first place. Uncle Vernon had been required to go to Indianapolis for a business conference. The family took the opportunity for a vacation, but they couldn't leave him behind in Surrey over the summer, so he came with them. And now he was standing in a car park in front of a market called Walmart with the clothes on his back and Dudley's wallet, which contained the $300 US they had given their son for spending money.
Harry had been told stories for years of how terrible orphanages were. The Dursleys had threatened for years to leave him in one, used that threat to make him do the chores. Of all those chores, Harry liked the gardening best. He was quite good at it, and Aunt Petunia never complained of how her flowers were growing, even when she complained about everything else. Harry didn't want to go to an orphanage. But he obviously couldn't go back home, either.
Harry shook himself and went back inside the store, to the place where they parked the trollies. He wrung as much water out of his clothes as he could, then walked back into the store. He felt like there were a hundred eyes on him as he wandered the store, looking for ideas. He didn't want to spend the money on silly things. Sure, $300 was a lot of money to a seven-year-old boy, but he had to figure out how to actually make it on that kind of money, and for who knew how long!
When he got to the sporting section, the seed of an idea planted itself in his mind. He could find a place to camp out, eat what nature could provide him! He remembered the tomatoes Aunt Petunia'd had him grow last year with fondness. It was spring. Maybe he could get some seeds, too? There was a book right here, titled "Survival Indiana" He looked through the book and started getting what he'd need. He grabbed a small tent, camping dishes, a knife and a hatchet, a compass, a canteen, a first-aid kit, a fishing pole with hooks and lures, a compass, matches, a camping spade, a sleeping bag and a bag of beef jerky. He thought about a chair, but decided against it. He picked up a length of rope in the hardware section, and a good torch, then went through the clothing and picked up a hat and one new outfit and a pair of leather boots. All of them were adult sizes, but they were hard-wearing and would last him a long time. He picked up a towel and some flannels that were on sale in the housewares department. Then he went to the gardening section and picked up twelve different kinds of vegetable seeds, all in little packets. Adding up the cost, he grabbed a bar of unscented soap, a bag of potatoes, a box of six frozen sandwiches and a bag of mixed whole fruits.
On the way to the registers, Harry spotted a plain black diary with an attached pen. He hesitated, but grabbed it anyway. If he had enough money, he'd buy it.
The woman at the register gave him a funny look, but she didn't try to stop him. He walked out to the car park, now that it had stopped raining, and began to repack everything in such a way as to be easier to carry. He wrapped the tent and his clothes in the sleeping bag and rolled it up, then used the tent bag to carry everything else, as it was shaped like a back pack. The last thing he did was attach the sleeping bag to the top of the pack with his new belt. Then he walked out to the edge of the road.
Harry knew that he was on the western edge of a large American city, and he wanted nothing to do with that, so he walked out to the big road which was called East Main Street and started walking westward.
Walking with a pack is harder than it looks, but Harry had strength despite his very slender frame. Munching on an apple from the bag of fruit he'd bought, he didn't look as out of place as he might, so he wasn't stopped by the adults he saw. He was quite lucky in one respect, that it was the weekend and there would be no one trying to find out why he wasn't in school. He'd have to find a place to hide during the week, though.
Harry looked at a map on the wall in a convenience store as he passed by, trying to decide where to go, and decided simply to continue along the roads, at least for now. He had a vague feeling of wanting to go north and west, so he decided to go to the little town of Belleville, where there was a major junction that would send him northward from there.
As he walked, Harry passed by many different kinds of shops, houses, even a school. Then the road left the town he was in and passed into farmland, with young crops of corn and beans just getting started in their growth. He didn't think too much as he walked, just watching the road as he passed it by and making sure no one hit him with their car. He did idly notice that cars were driving on the opposite side of the road to what he was used to, but that wasn't a big issue, so it was soon shoved to the back of his mind. He saw a rabbit at one point, and saw a hawk dive on it, taking it away to be eaten.
When Harry reached Belleville, he watched carefully for the road which would take him northward. He wasn't sure why he wanted to travel north, but he was following his instincts, feelings he had always paid attention to and which had kept him from being thrashed by Dudley more than once.
He added water to his canteen from a convenience store's bathroom, as well as using the loo, and made his way to a spot of grass where he could eat one of his six sandwiches. He'd been walking long enough, they weren't frozen any more, so it was easy to eat it. He hoped he found a place to camp fairly soon, or he'd be in trouble. A fire to cook his potatoes would draw attention.
He continued northward, now, knowing he was because of his compass, until the sun started to go down. He had just passed a town called Danville, and all of their street lights were on, now. He couldn't walk in the dark, or he risked tripping and injuring himself, so he got off the road, found a spot that wasn't in a ditch in case it rained over night, and started putting up his tent. It wasn't too hard, having instructions included along with the hammer and pins, so before long he was able to stop for the night.
Harry didn't dare start a fire until he was somewhere secluded, and he didn't count a farmer's field as such. Still, the sleeping bag was warmer than his old blanket back in Surrey, and the ground, having been recently plowed, was far softer than his manky old mattress. Indiana was also much further south than Surrey, making it a bit warmer, anyway. He ate another of his sandwiches and had an orange for desert. Then, exhausted, Harry went to laid down to sleep, setting the alarm on his watch for six o'clock local time. The last thought he had before he drifted off was to wonder in a resigned manner what he had ever done to the Dursleys.
Harry woke when the alarm went off, and for a moment he didn't know where he was. There wasn't any light yet. Then he heard a car drive past on the nearby road, the memory of yesterday came rushing back to him. He took a deep breath and sighed. He ate an orange from his pack for breakfast, washing his hands with a little of the water from his canteen, then set about packing up his camp. The sky promised rain very soon, so he waited to pack the tent.
As the sky let loose, Harry held out one of the plastic bags from the market and let the rain fill it as much as it could. His arms didn't last for long, but he got enough water to refill his canteen completely. Then he hurried to shake the water off of his tent so he could pack it, got everything put back together, and got back on the road.
His feet held up better to the pounding today than they had yesterday, and Harry walked further, but he still had his tent up by sunset, this time on the outskirts of a town called Lebanon. He'd eaten another two sandwiches, but was starting to worry because there were only two left. If he didn't find a place to stop and cook soon, he'd start to go hungry. He couldn't eat raw potatoes and beef jerky.
The next day, though brought Harry a break. He'd changed roads, for one that lead a little further west, and it crossed a stream called Prairie Creek. This was what his instincts had been looking for, and he left the roads, beginning to follow the stream. It took more time to follow the uneven ground. He didn't make as much headway as he had the previous two days. But he did find something he'd been needing all along, and that was fish.
He spent three hours on the fourth day with a baited hook in the creek, and was rewarded with three silver-finned bodies. He finally risked a small fire, cooking the fish and one of the potatoes and washing his clothes. It was a very new experience, catching his own dinner, but he did know how to handle fish since it was one of Aunt Petunia's favorite dishes and she didn't like to clean what she brought home from the fishmonger. He spent the rest of that day reading his survival book. He thought about the black diary, but he wasn't ready yet to do anything with it. His thoughts hadn't stopped swirling around in his head long enough to put any of them on paper yet.
Harry's fifth day brought him to the place where Prairie Creek met and joined with Sugar Creek, just north of a town called Thorntown. He left the creek and went into town with the last ten dollars of Dudley's spending money and bought a five-pound bag of self-rising flour, six cans of evaporated milk, and a can opener. As a final farewell to civilization, having decided never to return if at all possible, he bought a fizzy drink as well, tossing the empty can in the trash of the building he'd bought it in.
After a week and a half, Harry's instincts let him stop. He was now in a place called Turkey Run, and it was perfect for his needs. He had fish in the creek, rabbits, squirrels and doves galore, as well as wild turkey. Many of the surrounding trees bore nuts, and he'd be able to hit any of the nearby farms for corn and soybeans if he needed them and blame it on the deer that were thick in the woods. Of course, he'd also have to protect anything he planted from said beasties, but it was a far better location than any of the others he had come through since Walmart.
He set up his camp, then hid it as best as he knew how with his burgeoning bushcraft skills. When he had everything set up, he stood back and admired his work, then he said to himself, "Welcome home, Harry."
Harry couldn't have known what saying that would set off, or he probably wouldn't have. But when he called something home that wasn't the Dursleys' house, it broke the powerful enchantments that had been lain on it through the strength of his blood relation to Petunia and Dudley. The wards fell and all of the tracking magic that Albus Dumbledore had attached to Harry when he was an infant collapsed.
When he arrived to find out what happened, he was quite surprised to learn that the Boy Who Lived had been missing for over a week. He was far less than thrilled to discover the reason why, which he did by lifting the thoughts out of Petunia's fool head. "When the followers of the man who killed your sister come for you, do please remember that the one thing that would have prevented it was allowing her son to call your home his own."
The next six and a half years would be hard on the wizarding world. They had lost an icon, and the darkness had lost an enemy. The Dursleys lost their lives due to the lack of protections on their home, and Dudley was sent to live with his Aunt Marge, his father's sister. When Quirinus Quirrell let a troll into the Hobwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in 1991, the troll killed a young girl who'd been crying in the bathroom. She was the first of many, as the troll had been a distraction for Quirrell to get to the Philosopher's Stone that was being hidden in the castle. He achieved his end later in the year, and Voldemort was brought back to life. The Minister of Magic refused to believe that the monster had returned, and while the madman planned and gathered what he needed to make his return more glorious, the Ministry undercut the very people who would lead the fight against him.
He had one of his minions sneak one of his Horcruxes into Hogwarts with a little boy to deliver it to the monster in the Chamber of Secrets, which proved to be a twenty-meter basilisk. It ate the boy of course, and under his direction Slytherin's Monster began running through the school, its Headmaster its target. He defeated the snake by using Fiend Fyre, but the damage to the Weasley family had already been done. His next move was to break open Azkaban prison and retrieve his most faithful followers. One other escaped, the wrongfully imprisoned Sirius Black, and he took the opportunity to stick a quill in Belatrix Lestrange's eye. His freedom lasted only so long as it took Voldemort to kill him, and Belatrix became even more insane than she had already been. She was now his loyal attack dog, and the man who had actually done the crimes for which Black had been accused had been eaten while in his Animagus form by what three different witnesses called a Grim.
Dumbledore had decided, at the last, to sponsor a revival of the Triwizard Tournament, ostensibly to bring together the wizards of Europe in cooperation and in friendship, in the hope of bringing in allies to aid against Voldemort and his forces, as well as to give everyone a break from the insanity. But he had an ulterior motive. If there was one thing that would rally the world and lift people's spirits, it would be the sudden reappearance of Harry Potter. He couldn't use the cup to bring him in except in a legitimate tournament, or he'd have done so long ago, but he was also sure that, whatever the magic was that was hiding the boy from all and sundry, it wouldn't be able to stand against the Goblet of Fire. With a prayer to the Unknown God that this would work, Dumbledore took an old and yellowed slip of paper, an assignment Harry had done when he was still in primary school which had both the name of the school and his name written in his hand of his own free will, and put it into the Goblet.
Well, I hope you've all enjoyed this first chapter. It's not my usual fair, not being a crossover. Honestly, I wrote this in a day, and it's not been betaed, so go a little easy on me. If you spot any copy errors, please let me know. Also, no Ron, Hermione or Sirius here, and everyone's going to be a little different because of ol' Snake Face being around and in the open. And of course, Harry will be very, very different himself.
Reviews make the world go 'round!