Harry Potter and the World Beneath
By: Tellemicus Sundance
Chapter 2—Giant Spider Attack!

6 September 1986
Saturday

In northern Scotland, the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft walked into his office after dinner. A very fine dinner he thought. He was about to sit down at this desk to handle the small mountain of paperwork when one of the little silver trinkets on his shelf made a light whistling noise and started puffing black smoke.

Slightly concerned, he went over to see which one it was, as he had several monitors. He became even more concerned when he saw it was not any of the ones that monitored the castle, but the one that monitored Harry Potter. Specifically, it was the one that monitored the wards around his aunt's house.

"Tilly!" he called out.

A pop sounded and an odd little character was standing in front of him. "Yes, Headmaster?"

"Tilly, please find Professor McGonagall and tell her I need to see her as soon as possible. Then go find Professor Flitwick and tell him that he's in charge of the school for a few hours while Professor McGonagall and I handle an emergency off of the school grounds."

"Yes, Headmaster," the little elf told him and left with another pop.

He turned back to his shelf and looked at the instruments again. There was no doubt, the wards were down. The other instrument trained on Harry was acting very bizarrely, as it was spinning so much faster than it had ever before. He contemplated that until a knock on his door was heard. "Enter," he called.

"Albus? Tilly said there was an emergency." McGonagall sounded very concerned.

He turned around to see a worried looking deputy. He suspect she was about to become a lot more worried and probably angry at him. "Yes, we must travel to Surrey."

"Surrey?" She looked at him oddly for a second before suspicion came over her. "Do you mean to check on Harry Potter?"

"Yes." While he sounded calm, he was not on the inside. Little shocked or alarmed him at his age, but he feared it might happen tonight.

"Haven't you checked on him before?" Her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned as if she suspected the worst.

Albus knew those signs and prepared for the worst. "I've had a long-time friend who's a squib living nearby. She's given me a few unusual reports on him, but nothing alarming."

McGonagall's frown grew. "And why do you think there's an emergency then? What did she say?"

Her gaze was piercing, but he did his best to ignore it. "I have a monitor on the wards on his house, and the monitor says they've failed. Therefore, we need to investigate. Come, let's use the Floo to the Leaky Cauldron and we can Apparate from there."

She quickly moved in front of him to block his path. "What aren't you telling me, Albus? I can tell you're leaving something out."

He wondered if his Occlumency skills were slipping if she was able to figure that out. "I have another monitor on his health. It is working, but it is acting strangely. It's spinning too fast.""

"And that means what?"

"I don't know, Minerva. Believe it or not, I don't know. This shouldn't happen." While he was concerned about the wards going down, there was a good reason or two that could cause that. Not that they were good situations, but it could happen and for Harry to be quite alive, as his health monitor indicated. But the strange actions of the health monitor mocked him for his lack of knowledge and he did not like that. By the health monitor spinning faster should mean that Harry was comparatively happy, but that did not make sense with the wards collapsing. "Come, we must be off to investigate."

McGonagall finally nodded and turned, going first through the Floo Network. Albus was about to leave when he heard sharp whistle and then a small poof. He looked over at his shelf and saw that Harry's health monitor had just exploded and was now in about a half dozen pieces. He was officially alarmed.

Throwing a pinch of Floo powder into the fireplace, he followed his Deputy. He had barely arrived at the sparsely populated Leaky Cauldron when he heard the crack of her leaving. She was rarely that loud, so she must be in a hurry. He took an extra second to quiet his down.

Dumbledore quietly appeared in front of #6 Privet Drive, just in time to see Minerva stride up to the door of #4 and knock. He quickly walked over to join her and arrived just as the door opened. A tall thin woman answered the door.

"Oh, it's you. Unless you're going to fix it, go away and never come back." She stood there glaring at them, as if daring them to do something odd.

"Mrs. Dursley," Albus started in his best grandfatherly voice. "Might we come in to discuss Harry? Even though it is now becoming night, it might be better than discussing this on your porch."

She looked like she had eaten something distasteful, but she nodded and opened the door enough they could enter. She quickly closed the door behind them.

"Well, are you going to fix his mess?" she demanded to know.

"Perhaps if you could explain the problem, I could answer the question." Minerva was quiet for now and letting him handle the problem, and Albus was extremely grateful for that.

"The thief stole five thousand Pounds Sterling, that's what he did," she shrieked. Her comment seemed to cause heavy footsteps on the stairs behind her.

"Who's here, Petunia?" When the rounded the corner, the very large man turned red. "Oh, them," he spat. "So, are you going to give us the money or not?"

"I'm afraid I don't understand," Dumbledore told them, and saw confusion on Minerva's face too. "Why would he steal money from you?"

"Because the bloody freak ran away! He took my spare money and then ran away!" Spittle was starting to fly out of Mr. Dursley's mouth.

"When?" McGonagall quietly asked. "When did he leave?"

"Three days ago," Petunia coldly told them. "He left Wednesday after school, taking our money and enough food that it took me fifty Pounds to replace it."

Dumbledore detected a lie on the food, but that was unimportant at the moment. "What did the authorities say when you contacted them about his leaving?"

"We didn't," Petunia told them. "We were waiting on you, since he's yours anyway."

Albus wanted to pull his glasses off and rub his temples as he felt a headache coming on, but he resisted the desire. Instead, he closed his eyes for a moment to contemplate the situation.

"Albus!" he heard a Scottish brogue starting to become prominent. That was even a worse indicator of how much trouble he was going to be in when he got back to the castle.

"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, thank you for the information, we shall be in touch." He turned to leave.

"What about our money?" Vernon Dursley shouted.

"As I said," Dumbledore threw back over his shoulder, "we'll be in touch." He thought he might have heard a spell being cast as he walked out the door, but decided that it was better not to know. Perhaps that little dally would help her to relieve some stress and not cast it upon him. He Apparated back to the gates of the school. The walk in the cooler night air would do him some good.

He heard a loud crack behind and then a thick Scottish brogue. "Albus, 'ow are ye goin' to fin' 'im?" That was the magic question, he thought. As the prophecy came to mind, he became thankful she did not know about it. "Well?" he heard from her again.

It was definitely going to be a long night.

Harry Potter – The World Beneath – Harry Potter

28 September 1986
Sunday (Present)

It was quiet in the forest. Too quiet.

It sent shivers down his spine and the primeval fear started to make him feel almost hyper-aware of his surroundings. Harry sat in front of his tent, wrapped up in his blanket as he stared off into the darkness that surrounded him. He felt like he was being watched by something dangerous, and that something was the forest itself, like it had a mind of its own. And in the deep darkness that surrounded him, Harry could do nothing more than dearly wish he had a fire to give him some light.

As strange as it seemed, the more he desired to have a small campfire near him, the more he began to feel a familiar yet alien tingly feeling rushing through his body. It started in his abdomen and slowly began to work its way through his shoulders and towards his hands. He just wanted a little fire, something to throw back the spooky darkness that filled the night around him.

Finally the strange tingling reached his fingertips. A split-second later, a small pile of branches and leaves in front of his tent burst into flames. Recoiling slightly in shock, Harry stared wide-eyed at the fire that now burned lively before him. What just happened?

Shaking himself out of his stupor as he noticed the fire slowly beginning to die down, he quickly climbed to his sore feet and collected a pile of leaves and broken branches, never venturing out of sight of the small flames for an instant. Gently piling on the brush and enticing the flames to return, Harry blew slowly into the fire, smiling slightly as he watched it quickly begin to grow in size.

After quickly clearing away the brush from around the fire and digging a small trench in the exposed dirt, Harry quickly withdrew back into his tent to grab his traveler's pack and grabbed one of his last apples, water bottle, knife, and a piece of bread. With the fire illuminating the area around him, Harry found it much easier to peel and slice the apple.

As he slowly ate his late meal, he couldn't help but wonder at the strange feelings he had felt before the fire had spontaneously combusted. Had that been his doing all along? It seemed to convenient to be true. But if it had been…could he do it again? And could he do any other things? That thought brought several potent memories for the boy; like the time he'd been blamed for turning one of Dudley's friends hair blue, or the time Aunt Petunia had given him a horrible haircut only to have the hair all grow back in one night, or that garden snake that Harry could've sworn he'd heard whisper something about needing water. Lifting his free hand, Harry stared at it slightly. Could he create fire again?

After finishing his apple, Harry turned and faced the fire. He tried to imagine that strange tingling feeling he had just before the fire came. He didn't know just what he was looking for, only that he wanted to know if he could touch that strange feeling again. On whim, he decided that he wanted to make the fire float in the air. Focusing on that, Harry tried to touch that power again.

Floating fire, he thought. It started slowly, very slowly. Floating fire. The tingle did begin to return and work its way through his body. Floating fire. Just as it reached his hands, it erupted from them. Floating fire!

Then, before his very eyes, Harry watched as his makeshift campfire began to rise off the ground until it was floating level with his eyes. He'd…done it. He'd done it. He'd done it! If Harry had been anywhere else, he would've let out a loud cry of joy at his accomplishment. Instead, in the presence of a foreboding forest, he just let a large grin form upon his face as he lowered his outstretched arms. Whatever force of power he was controlling, it obeyed him as he lowered his arms, the fire gently returning to its original perch.

With a sigh, Harry settled down for the night.

Harry Potter – The World Beneath – Harry Potter

29 September 1986
Monday

He wasn't sure what had awoken him. It certainly wasn't dawn as there wasn't even a hint of color upon the horizon, not that he could've seen it in the gloom of the forest anyway. It wasn't the crisp, cool forest air as he'd grown reluctantly use to it in the past three weeks. And it most definitely wasn't his internal clock that had tended to wake him before the Dursleys so he could begin his morning chores. Whatever it was that woke him, Harry quickly realized that he felt that compulsion in his gut that told him he was being watched. And it was by something very, very dangerous.

As silently as he could manage, Harry climbed out of his tent and began breaking it down. Whatever it was that was watching him, he knew he didn't want to come back here if he managed to escape it. With his pack safely strapped to his shoulders and around his chest and his hunting knife stored in his pocket, Harry slowly and quietly began making his way back towards where he believed the train tracks were. But in the darkness around him, he wasn't entirely sure he was heading in the right direction.

It happened before Harry even had time to turn around. There was a loud clicking noise and suddenly he felt something long and hairy seize him around the middle and lift him off the ground, so that he was hanging facedown. Struggling, terrified, he heard more clicking before he was being swept away into the dark trees.

Head hanging, Harry saw that what had hold of him was marching on six immensely long, hairy legs. Two more were clutching him tightly below a pair of shining black pincers. They were moving into the very heart of the forest. Instincts screaming in his head, Harry fought to reach his hunting knife that was stored within his front left pants pocket.

He never knew how long he was in the creature's clutches; he only knew that the darkness suddenly lifted enough for him to see the sickly silhouette of his captor. It was a spider! Not a tiny spider that was barely larger than his thumbnail, but a spider that was easily the size of carthorses. And it was speeding through the forest on a long, thick line of webbing with all the speed of a sprinting stallion.

Finally managing to grab hold of his knife, Harry let out a loud cry of terror as he thrust the entire length of the blade up into the soft underbelly of the arachnid. The spider dropped him immediately as it began thrashing about, attempting to pull the foreign object that was wedged within its body out.

Thankfully for Harry, they hadn't been too far off the ground and there weren't any sharp rocks below him. He tumbled to halt in the cold, damp grasses and leaves of the forest. As he pushed himself quickly to his feet, a loud thud crashed into the underbrush nearby. The spider's writhing form continued to thrash about as it emitted loud, pain-filled shrieks in its death throes.

Panting and staring wide-eyed at the monstrous thing in the slight amount of light that reached the forest floor, Harry found himself unable to form any coherent line of thought as he watched it slowly die. It wasn't until he heard more clicking shrieks off in the distance that he realized that the danger was far from over.

Turning, he sprinted as fast as he could off in a random direction. Dodging trees, bushes, and rocks as best he could in the poor light. He must've been running for no more than two minutes before Harry heard an ominous skittering sound off in the distance. It was a sound that was quickly growing louder and closer. Were there more of those things after him now? He needed to find a place to hide! But where?

With no other options, he just continued to run as fast as his legs could carry him. Unfortunately for him, the sounds of his pursuers just continued to escalate until it clearly obvious that they had already surrounded him.

As he was racing around a fallen tree trunk, a stray root caught his foot and sent him crashing to the forest floor. As he was pushing himself up, Harry heard a horrifying shriek that sounded very similar to the spider he'd killed, except this one sounded enraged rather than dying. Looking up, Harry spotted a spider of similar size as the last one perched atop the fallen trunk above him.

As it leapt at him, instinct forced Harry rolled away from it as fast as he could. However he hadn't paid attention to where he was rolling and accidentally smashed against the rotten log of the tree, easily breaking through its rapidly decomposing form. Just before he was able to reorient himself and where his attackers were, there came a loud crack just beneath his body. That crack quickly gave way and Harry dropped like a stone into a small underground cavern, dirt and foliage covering him as he landed heavily on the muddy surface below him.

Shaking the dirt from his face and hair, Harry quickly pushed himself to his feet. As he was doing this, the shrieking of his arachnid attackers began echoing into the cavern he'd fallen into him. Looking up, he easily spotted the small hole he'd unintentionally created. There was a silhouetted form of countless spiders as they attempted to burrow into the hole to reach him.

Fearfully backing away, Harry kept his attention trained solely upon the creatures as he moved steadily further into the darkness of the cave. Due to his attention being so completely captured and focused away, he failed to notice the subtle drop of temperature that washed over him as he approached an underground river system.

With a cry of terror, Harry realized his mistake as he suddenly took a step off a cliff that he didn't know he was on and fell backwards into the rushing waters of the river below him. He quickly surfaced, gasping for air as he grappled in the darkness for something to grab and hold onto. However, due to his positioning, the flow of the river, and the pitch blackness of the cavern, he never saw the rock outcropping that he was being pushed towards.

His head hit the rock with punishing force, knocking him unconscious and allowing the river to pull his no longer thrashing back towards its destination.

That night, the boy known as Harry James Potter died forever.

(Author's Note) Another shout-out to kb0 for the Dumbledore/Dursley scene, which was also part of the same chapter.

I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, though I apologize for its short length. I promise to do my best to make the next one at least three times as long. And it'll be the next chapter that truly reveals just what Harry is going to become and why. But the most tentalizing question is going to be: where? That's one you'll have to wait and see. But I do promise that this story is likely going to be a significant departure from a vast majority of the other fanfics on this site.