A/N Okie Dokie. So this is a collab with myself and Colenzo Em. All characters and Idea go to Rowling. But we do own the plot line. (: We'll be roatating every chapter. This one is written by Em. (: Next is mine! (: Hope ya like!
Edited: One of my friends who read it noticed some grammatical errors. So me and Em are ediitng this chapter. Nothing is different really, just some comma's and such. New chapter should be up this weekend sometime. (:
So. this chapter is beta'd by my lovely friend, Roslintower. Or I like to call her Rossy. (: Love ya girly!
The residents of Privet Drive in Surrey led a very quiet life, for the most part. The houses themselves were straight backed and proper, eagerly awaiting the highest of royal visitors, and their gardens immaculate both in their design and their current blooming glory. However there was always one garden that bested the rest of them. It rattled the perfect composure of the immediate residents that they would ever admit that- that thing, could ever bring such beautiful perfection when he himself would have looked more in place on the street of London in the 1800's.
Scruffy, with dirt smeared from one ear to the other, Harry Potter was small, skinny with a mop of black unruly hair, bright vivid green eyes behind taped up rimmed glasses and most odd of scars marring his forehead. It was shaped like a lightning bolt, as though he, Harry, had been struck from the sky and lived to tell the tale, keeping a bit of that bolt as a souvenir of such a great feat. He hated that scar with a vengeance, it was what was left from the car accident that took his parents from him, he didn't even know their names, but he knew that it landed him with life at the Dursleys. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon and their little, well, big son Dudley. He had no words of kindness for his family, and they had no words for him.
He looked up from the lily he was gently watering in the shade of the privet hedge, a secret gift from a neighbour from Magnolia Crescent, Mrs Figg. She had given it to him last year on his birthday with a hurried, "so you can have your family a little closer to home", which was somewhat lost on Harry as he was busily hiding it amongst the rest of the plants in the front garden at the time. Mrs Figg was a little strange, he concluded, but then who was he to talk? He himself was quite a bit strange.
Looking down the rows of houses to the commotion that was garnering attention at the entrance to Privet Drive, and to the neighbours who had poked their beady little heads out their windows to see what the fracas was all about, he crouched down low into the rose bush. It would not be good to be seen out working in the garden. How would Aunt Petunia gloat and glorify over her beautiful garden if they all knew he worked tirelessly on it.
"Piers, you can count" floated down on the wind to where Harry was hidden.
Groaning, Harry pressed further in to the bush, feeling the thorns scratch their way into his skin. He was in real trouble now. Harry and rose bush pricks were bad news. It was ok if he just got a couple, they would swell and be a bit sore but generally by the next day he was feeling better. The amount he could already feel burning his skin was going to make him very sick indeed; which meant no chores tomorrow; which meant the purple angry vein on Uncle Vernon's forehead was going to throb oh so dangerously.
He could see through a small gap. Piers, Dudley's friend was counting, and the source of Harry's current anxiety was barrelling towards him, well, rolling on stilts perhaps. His cousin was seriously overweight, and unfortunately he was heading right for Harry.
Oh no! Harry thought, trying to make himself as quiet and insignificant as possible, but his cousin just kept on coming. It was too late now, he couldn't move and the thorns were pressing his rational mind into stillness. He curled and hoped against hope that his cousin wasn't about to barrel into this very rose bush. Harry closed his eyes and begged for a miracle.
CRASH! Arms met ribs and legs met head, as a tangle of the two boys tumbled out of the rose bush and onto the lawn behind. There was now a huge Dudley shaped hole in the rose bush in front of where the two had landed. As Harry groaned and raised himself to his knees, he idly thought that it was going to take some fixing to sort out this mess, but he had a magic touch when it came to plants, and he hoped fervently that that magic touch would help him when he got out of this situation. However, just as he heard the final counts, he knew he was in immediate danger from the brute that was now righting himself on the lawn next to him,
"Thirty seven, thirty eight, thirty nine, FORTY, READY OR NOT, HERE I COME" Piers voice echoed down the street.
Harry looked at Dudley, and Dudley had locked eyes with Piers who had already set off in search down the street, there was a mad scramble later as Dudley attempted to re-hide behind the car, but Harry had turned to see Pier's already reaching the 40-40 post,
"Forty-Forty I see Dudley behind the rose bush and running to the carrrrr, you're out!" he declared to the street. Dudley was already on his feet and looking every bit as murderous as his Uncle could when in one of his rages. Dudley did not like loosing.
"GAMES OVER!" Dudley roared to the street. Several confused and angry faces popped their heads out from hiding places all over the street as Dudley strode out to the rest of them, to where Pier's was standing at the 40-40 post. Harry knew trouble when he saw it and weighed up his options. He couldn't hide; they would easily find him with there being so many of them. His best bet was the alleyway towards the Park and Magnolia Crescent. He was fast, he could outrun them in ordinary circumstances but the thorn pricks were throbbing all over his body and he could feel the slight sluggishness beginning to ebb into his scratched and torn legs. The alleyway was approximately half way between Harry and the gang, who were already grouped around Dudley, listening to his obviously embellished tale of the collision, his pudgy hands swinging wildly in the air. Harry's best bet was if he went now, he thought, before he felt much sicker. His adrenalin reacted to the decision, and his legs filled with a strength he didn't know he had. It was now or never, and never was not an option.
He stood, quickly and stilled as he slowly took in the path he was going to take, he had seconds before the gang spotted him and he needed to make a quick exit out of the garden. Ducking once more he crawled to just behind the hole that Dudley had created in Aunt Petunia's prize rose bush.
Harry dived. Rolling out of the hole painfully, feeling yet more thorns attaching and snagging on his skin, he righted himself just as the one of the gang spotted him. An arm was thrown pointedly in his direction as Dudley slowly turned. Go! He thought to himself, and his legs took off in a dead sprint. If he could make it to just the other side of the park he would be ok, he knew that that was Dudley's limit and if Dudley stopped, the rest of the gang would. He leapt to the side of the car that was parked, as his Aunt would say, so ignorantly on the kerb, and pushed his legs as fast as he would take them towards the alleyway. The gang had realised his plans and where at a dead sprint themselves to catch Harry, Dudley slightly trailing behind already. He could feel the burn in his legs already, the throb of the rose bush wounds tearing and grating on his resolve. He was halfway, he just needed to get to the alleyway first, and he put on a brief burst of speed, nearing the entrance. He could see the boys approaching but he was much closer, he could make it! Relief washed through him.
Closer, closer, he was almost at there. Harry jumped over the low lying hedge of the neighbour closest to the alley and cut a good chunk of the corner as he righted up and ran into the alley. He could hear Dudley's gang mere feet away from entering themselves and he pushed with all his might for the corner that turned towards the park. A cat scuttled out into his path, which he aptly dodged around and nicked the corner of the garbage can, which rattled on its axis and fell behind him! What luck, he thought, as he tore towards the corner, slowing the oncoming hoard. His vision blurred and he felt the burn of the stings on his legs intensify. Oh he needed water so badly, if he could just clean and cool the cuts he would feel miles better, but they burned and he felt the sluggishness of his legs return full force. He had to win this one, ten verses one was not good odds.
Harry neared the corner and snuck a look behind him. He had ten feet on Dudley's gang which was never going to be enough. He needed more, much more and he needed to get these stupid cuts cleared and get the poisonous sap out of him too. Tears threatened to flow from his pain filled eyes as he rounded the corner; desperation filled him as his eyes blurred more. Suddenly he felt odd, he felt like something was building up inside him, it felt dangerous and reassuring all at the same time, and his vision blurred even further, and everything was beginning to spin slightly. He gasped, that was if he could as everything around him seemed to compress and close around him. The claustrophobic was almost overwhelming, and reminded him of how he felt in his room, his cupboard when he was shut up for days. He felt something shift and the spinning turned into blurs before his eyes, so fast and the pressure was so great and then suddenly he stilled and a pop rent through the air.
Blinking quickly Harry opened his eyes and all he could see was the oncoming rush of water that he was obviously falling towards.
"Arghhhhh!" he shouted just before taking a deep breath somehow tucking himself into a ball just as he splashed violently into what looked like a cool deep pool of water, dappled in sunlight through what he had briefly seen as trees and woodland. Bubbles formed around him as his eyes snapped open as he felt his glasses attempting to rip free from his face. He half blindingly snapped his hands out to them to secure their position. He had stabilized in the water and with one hand and his now completely refreshed legs in the cool water, began to kick and swim towards the shining sunlight of the surface. Breaching he took a deep breath and sought out the edge of the pool mere feet away from him. Haphazardly doggy paddling towards the shore and pulling himself out of the wonderfully cool water he noted that his cuts and pricks from the rose bush had somehow almost healed themselves in the water and he felt much more clear-headed. Harry attempted to dry off the water on his glasses by blowing on them, and placed them back on his face. Looking around he saw what looked like dense forest surrounding him on all sides, casting a circle with the deep blue rock pool he had climbed out of as the centrepiece. The last thought he had before he passed out from shock was, where am I?