I would just like the thank everyone who has read and/or decided to follow this story. Every time I see an alert that I gained a new follower, I light up a little. And to everyone who reviewed, you made me do a little dance of joy. Hah. Good luck getting that picture out of your head.

Also, I am sorry, but this is mostly an interlude chapter, to make the time lapse work. The plot should get going next chapter, promise!

Anyways, thank you all so much! Now, on with what you care about, the story!

~X~

~~~~~~~~Pavement Diaries~~~~~~~~

~X~

The storm never came, Or it never was
Didn't know getting lost in the blue
It meant

I wound up

losing you

~X~

It was mid afternoon. The sun was roughly halfway down the sky, resting at just the right angle; when it passed through the tall, cathedral windows in the oval room, the office was flooded by a brilliant white light, with all the colors of the rainbow dancing along the edges. The array of objects and artifacts littering the room, both arcane and rare, and useless and trivial, reflected the light and cast it in different shapes and sizes, as if the light was broken glass, and the room was simply where it had chosen to fall.

The portraits on the walls, were sleeping, like they most always did, A pensive to the side of the room was swirling about, glistening with whatever secrets it contained, but no one was watching. All the walls were shelved, and covered in books, knick-knacks from all over the world, and the stray phoenix feather. Only one section of the wall, about five feet long, was left bare, and even then, you couldn't truly call it bare. It was clearly the part of the room where the most time had been spent, and the most time had been spent pacing before it.

Newspaper clipping, photographs, letters, a small organizer filled with the glass phials, and a series of bright red threads, pinned down and linking together any possible connections. All the threads radiated out from the same point; a newspaper article in the center of the section of wall. The edges of the paper were worn from being handled frequently, but the article was clearly legible. Next to an enlarged, unnaturally still photograph of a young boy with messy black hair and brilliantly green eyes hidden behind lenses, it read;

Arson In Little Whinging?

Yesterday afternoon in the suburb of Surrey in Little Whinging,

fire broke out. The fire was isolated to a single house, Number

Four Privet Drive. The home belonged to the Dursley's, a family

of three, and all emerged from the fire unharmed, though the

house was burned completely to the ground. Firefighters could

not pinpoint where the fire started, or even how the fire began.

"It almost looks like the entire house went up at the same

time, like there was no one spot where it started. We can't make

any sense of it at all." one first responder said. The Dursley's claim

that the fire was an act of arson, caused by their seven year old

nephew, Harry James Potter. Their story is that Potter is a disturbed

young boy, and while their son Dudley was trying to play with him,

he went into a fit of hysteria and lit the house on fire, just before

running away. Eyewitness Arabella Figg claims that the Potter

boy wasn't even in the house when the fire started. However, she

also testifies that he was running away, so investigators speculate

that he may have started the fire and ran away before the inferno

truly began. Harry Potter is not considered dangerous, but could

possibly be a threat to himself if his mental state is damaged.

If you see him, contact... (cont. B4)

It was the only muggle printing on the wall. Naturally, after Mrs. Figg stepped forward as a witness to the disappearance of Harry Potter, the wizarding world lost interest in anything else. The rest of the newspaper clippings were articles from The Daily Prophet, shouting outrage that the Boy who Lived had gone missing, Even more of them choosing to slander Dumbledore for allowing the boy to live with muggles, which Dumbledore took as a welcome change from being proclaimed as the hero he wasn't. There were stories about searches conducted by the ministry, all in an attempt to find Harry Potter, stories about how since he had never entered a Wizarding Institution, other than the hospital he had been born at, the trace had never been placed on him, so they had no means of tracking him, and stories from people who claimed to have seen the boy, many of whom claiming to have pictures as well.

Of course, Albus Dumbledore had met with all of them; the memories of those encounters contained within the glass phials in the organizer. All of them had been frauds, whether it was their intention to be deceitful or not.

Perhaps the worst of the mess had been six years ago, the year that Harry James Potter was to start attending Hogwarts. The Daily Prophet had quite the field day with that; the entire front page of the paper and the next three pages behind it, not to mention a new section of the paper devoted to nothing but the Boy who Lived and how Dumbledore had failed, had been released that day.

Albus Dumbledore sat at his desk, unmoving, as he had for the last few hours. His brow lay pinched between his fingers, his eyes closed in frustration.

Ten years.

He had spent ten years trying to find what had happened to the son of Lily and James Potter, and he had found nothing. Of course he had interviewed the Dursley's, who were still as horrid as be remembered them being sixteen years ago, if not worse. And of course he had gone to the Ministry, organized search parties, met with witnesses, even gone and searched the country himself! But, the boy was gone, and without him having entered Hogwarts, they had no way of finding him, short of pure luck. Luck however, was not something that had been on the side of the grey haired wizard for some time.

Perhaps the real problem began three years ago, or perhaps six. But no, Albus knew this all lead back to that fateful Halloween night sixteen years ago. No one would believe it, no one wanted to believe it, but Dumbledore and a few others knew better; Voldemort hadn't died that night. Yes, his body had been destroyed, there wasn't a corpse anywhere near the site of the attack, save those of Lily and James, but that didn't mean he wasn't still there. The aging wizard looked up and opened his eyes, which had all but lost their trademark twinkle. He had suspected, since Voldemort could still be called Tom Riddle, that he had studied arts as dark as the practice of making a Horcrux. And with his talent, he could have easily made more than one, Merlin knew he had killed enough people! It was all that made sense, since Dumbledore had already known Tom to reappear once.

That was the event of six years ago, when he learned that Professor Quirrel, the Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor, had been possessed by Lord Voldemort. Well, perhaps "possessed" wasn't the right word, since Quirrel had invited the killer to share the back of his head, but Albus couldn't think of a better word. He should have known something was going to go wrong with Quirrel sooner, since he had managed to hold the position of Defense Instructor for three years. But, Albus ignored the signs, he was too concerned with the slandering of the prophet. What a fool he had been.

It was lucky then, that a group of students proved to be more observant than himself. A shame that they were first years, so young yet in the face of such danger, but a blessing that they had succeeded. This group consisted of Ronald Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Neville Longbottom, the boy who almost became the Boy who Lived. How the trio met, he wasn't sure, though he knew it had something to do with a missing toad on the train to Hogwarts.

Perhaps it was their nature as Gryffindors that led them to mistrust Severus, but their trailing of him had led them to stop Quirrel. They didn't know what they were looking for, or even what "Severus" was trying to get to. All they knew was that someone was trying to steal from Hogwarts, and it was their valor that dictated them to stop it. Ronald had sustained significant injuries against Minerva's chess board, and Hermione had turned back at Severus's challenge to help him. So Neville, shockingly enough, was the one to come face to face with Quirrel, and with Lord Voldemort.

Of course he hadn't known who he was facing at the time, and the Longbottom boy came very close to dying down there. It was Severus, who noticed they had gone missing, and came to Albus to find them. The headmaster had only barely arrived in time to stop Riddle from killing Neville, since Neville finally had the stone, and was no longer of any use alive. Quirrel died in the process, but Voldemort, Dumbledore feared, was very much alive.

On a lighter note, Hermione, Ronald, and Neville had healed in a matter of weeks, and gave Gryffindor a much needed win in the House Cup Tournament. Then, they had vanished again from Dumbledore's eye. He didn't have time to watch over them. After all, he had a mission to focus on, he needed to find Harry Potter. He could only assume they had a fairly normal second and third year, he even believed the Longbottom boy had developed a bit of a crush on Miss Granger. But that was all speculation, based on the occasional glance he would witness in the great hall. For the most part, he didn't pay the trio and heed.

Until their fourth year.

Despite Albus's protesting to the Board of Governors, they had decided to reinstate the Tri-Wizard tournament. Lucius Malfoy had been the chairman to suggest they bring the competition back, as a means of building better relations with France and Scandinavia, and he was the one to push most of the other chairmen into voting in favor. Dumbledore had never trusted Lucius, especially not after the first war, and naturally he suspected the Head of the Malfoy's was plotting something. But what? He couldn't even begin to guess. And before he even knew it, another year had begun at Hogwarts, and the students of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons had arrived. Then lo and behold, it was time to draw the names from the Goblet. The months seemed to have simply vanished, but the world came to a screeching halt when the names were called.

Cedric Diggory, Fleur Delacour, Viktor Krum...and Neville Longbottom.

It was nothing short of a miracle that Neville survived against the dragon, touching that he managed to work up the courage to ask Miss Granger to the Yule Ball, lucky that he studied Herbology diligently enough to know about Gillyweed, and a strong testament to his character that he could handle the constant ridicule of his classmates. He wasn't winning the tournament, no, but he had held his own, and by the final task, he was in second place. But then, it was time for the champions to enter the maze.

Fleur only made it about halfway through before she was hexed into unconsciousness, Cedric Diggory sending up rescue sparks for her. Viktor Krum almost reached the end, but stopped when he came face to face with a Bogart, in the form of a dozen Inferi clawing after him. As for Cedric, he was only a few yards behind Neville. Cedric had told everyone that he and Neville had reached the turn to the cup at the same time, and had decided to settle the winner in a race. Cedric was winning, but a root shifted under his feet, and he fell forward. When he looked up, Neville had just grabbed the cup.

Then, Neville Longbottom vanished.

It had been three years since anyone had seen any trace of him. Augusta refused to accept that her grandson might be dead, and there were still a few students that held onto hope, mostly Ron and Hermione, but Dumbledore did not share their faith. He couldn't hold onto another unrealistic dream only to tear himself apart again when he found it was a lie. And a lie it was, if his information from Severus was anything to go on. Severus had gone to Dumbledore many times that year, voicing his concern over his mark, and the dark mark of Igor Karkaroff as well. They were growing darker, darker than they had in thirteen years. Dumbledore listened, but had no way of knowing what was happening, much less how to stop it, so he overlooked the marks and focused back on his searching.

Then the night of the final challenge, when Neville Longbottom went missing, Severus came to him. He came to Dumbledore, eyes wide with fear, to tell him that the Dark Lord was back. Dumbledore understood that fear, it was something he knew was coming for some time, but they were still so unprepared. Severus, although reluctantly, took back his position as a spy. Dumbledore understood his hesitation entirely, it should be difficult for a man to pretend to go back to serving a megalomaniac Dark Lord who murdered the most important person in your life. As for Albus Dumbledore, he went to reform the Order of the Phoenix. But even after three years, their numbers were minuscule, consisting mostly of Hogwarts staff and a handful of Aurors. All they could really do was stave off a few raids here and there and keep a few extra guards around the Hall of Prophecies. And that still hadn't stopped Bellatrix Lestrange from breaking in and taking the prophecy! She marched right in, by herself, armed only with a wand and Nagini, Voldemort's snake. As for how she left with the orb, It was such a trivial loophole. So trivial, yet so brilliant. Bellatrix couldn't pick up the orb, but she could move the shelf it was on. So she did, and levitated it in a bag complete with featherlight and invisible extension charms, and walked right out the front door with it. She had attacked at the perfect time, the only guard on duty was Arthur Weasley.

He died in St. Mungos a few days later.

The order had been a wreck for weeks, partly because of how beloved Arthur was, and partly because a great deal of the Weasley's were members themselves. Most of the order in grieving, but Dumbledore couldn't stop now. There was the matter of the prophecy, the prophecy which Voldemort now knew. They couldn't defeat Voldemort without the chosen one, and Voldemort knew that. There was no way the Death Eaters would rest until they took care of the one threat to their master's life. But fortunately, though a small fortune it was, as the wall before Albus reminded him every day, no one could find him. No one.

Perhaps that was why he kept the wall there. So many of his mistakes had already been overlooked; his friendship with, and love for, Gellert, the death, possible murder, of Arianna, his broken relationship with Aberforth, the obsession with power he discovered in his youth, all of them had been ignored. But not this. And so this wall, in all it's slanderous glory, was his daily reminder that another failure would only be looked down further on. That the next day, he had to succeed.

But he couldn't. Albus wasn't a fool anymore, He knew he couldn't win. The most maddening part of it all was that there really was nothing Albus could do about it. There were no witnesses to the night Voldemort returned, save for his inner circle of Death Eaters, and they weren't going to start talking anytime soon. The public wouldn't listen to a lone wizard claiming he was back, even if he still had his popularity, and Severus couldn't do anything without compromising both his position as a spy and his life. The Order couldn't storm the Death Eaters now, not only were they outnumbered at least two hundred to one, but they had no was of knowing where they were.

Albus sighed, and leaned back to stare at the ceiling. He still hadn't. He knew he couldn't anymore.

Time was running out, and he knew it. In another week, Harry James Potter would turn seventeen. Once the boy came of age, the blood protection Lily had left behind would disappear, and Harry would be completely defenseless. Who knew if Harry Potter knew any magic at all, if he even knew there was a massive army hunting him down? Albus doubted very much that the boy did, and feared he would be killed by Death Eaters like a lamb to the slaughter.

Albus suspected that blood protection had a great deal to do with Harry's inability to be found, but as soon as the boy turned seventeen, anyone would be able to find him. Undoubtedly, thanks to all their Ministry connections and infiltrations, the Army of the Dark Lord would have a significant advantage. The order would have to work quickly to find him, but the Death Eaters would most likely have already found him before the Order even knew what part of the country to search. Albus kept his head tilted towards the domed ceiling and began shaking. Without a miracle, the war was as good as lost, and the light had been short on miracles for some time. The man once hailed as the most powerful wizard alive let out a chocked sob, thinly veiled in a delirious laugh.

Come July Thirtieth, Harry James Potter was as good as dead.

~X~

The Market Coffee House on Brushfield and Crispin Street was usually a hot spot for local college students to study and grab a quick bite. But today, it was unusually quiet. Perhaps it wasn't so unusual though. It was July, and most of their regular customers would be on Summer Holiday. So today, the patrons of the cozy corner-set shop were mostly tourists, visiting with their families. There were only a handful of customers today, so having three employees on the clock did seem a little excessive, especially for such a small shop, but regardless, they were happy to have each other for company.

Tabitha, a tall blonde girl of twenty, who in spite of her impressive height still felt the need to wear heels, walked back and forth across the floor, stopping at tables to ask if anyone needed anything, or checking that their service was alright. There were only three people present, so this didn't take long at all. Alex, the store's twenty-one year old sports enthusiast and, as his co-workers jokingly called him, the "token black guy", was standing behind the bar trying to make shapes in coffee by pouring cream into the cup in different patterns. Earlier that week he had seen an article about a barista a few blocks away who could make anything from faces to chrysanthemums, but so far Alex had yet to achieve anything other than a puddle of coffee and cream running halfway down the counter. And Harry, Harry stood a few feet to the left of Alex, chuckling as Alex let out an exasperated sigh and went to wipe up the mess for the seventh time that hour.

'

"Come on Alex, if you waste any more of that, you're going to get us both fired." Harry laughed. Alex smirked and rolled his eyes in reply.

"Right, because anyone would actually fire someone as dashing and charming as me. Isn't that right Tabs? " He leaned back against the counter and called out to Tabitha, knowing that calling her pet name would drive her insane.

"Not going to happen, Alex." She snapped without looking up. It seemed cold, but Harry knew their teasing was in good fun. Alex had wanted to go out with Tabitha for months, but she wasn't interested in the slightest. So their arrangement was that Alex would constantly flirt and ask her out, and she would always shoot him down. Somehow, they still considered each other friends through all this. Harry laughed at their exchange.

'

"Seriously mate, move on, she's not interested." Harry repeated for what felt like the thousandth time. They both smiled though, knowing he wouldn't.

Harry was petite and wiry framed, which led him to look younger than his almost seventeen years, with unnaturally messy black hair that was never longer than four inches, and shockingly green eyes that people commonly mistook for colored contact lenses. They were always the first thing people noticed about him, the second being the strange scar on his forehead, which oddly resembled a lightning bolt. Harry came across to customers and co-workers alike as being relaxed and at ease with the world, laughing whenever the chance arrived. Really, with his carefree personality, it was impossible to think that he had spent years on the streets.

Harry always considered it a small miracle that nobody recognized him. He could still remember the panic that coursed through him the day after he turned seven, and he found the news article claiming he was an arsonist. How could that have been possible? He didn't even know Number Four Privet Drive was on fire! He spent months trying to figure out how that fire could have started, but none of it ever made sense, so he had pushed it to the back of his mind. Aside from that, the Dursley's thought he was disturbed? It wasn't the claims about him being mad that scared him though, it was the photograph. His face had been on the breakfast table of nearly every family on London, there was no way he wouldn't be seen! And once he was, he knew he'd be sent back to the Dursley's. If they really thought he caused that fire, then there was no way he could ever go back.

Harry had spent his first week on his own in an almost continuous panic, only letting up when he slept. He could still remember it, vividly. The smell of the alley he slept in was something like vomit and alcohol, and the loud thumping bass of the music behind him kept him up for hours. He was desperate, desperate to prove that he could live, and desperate to stay as far away from Little Whinging as possible. Thinking back on that now, he probably shouldn't have stayed in London, but regardless, Harry was glad he did. London was busy, transient, there was always somewhere new to stay, someone new who didn't recognize you. The strange part was, no one seemed to recognize him. Someone could be looking right at him, and pass by as if they were looking at the wall instead. And if anyone did stop to talk to him, mostly to ask where his parents where, they didn't know who he was. And if they did, they showed no signs of recognition.

Harry was snapped back into the present as he attempted to stifle a yawn. Alex looked over and punched him teasingly in the arm.

"Heh, lot of sleepless nights Potter? Nice, you dog." Harry laughed.

"Right, you know I've just been going crazy lately. You know, parties, girls, drinks, the usua- oh wait, never mind that's all you." Alex feigned offense, and replied in an over-dramatic fashion.

"I'll have you know, I've been a perfect gentleman. I haven't been to any clubs or parties in almost a week-"

"And we all know how hard that's got to be on you!"

The two of them laughed for a moment, before an uncharacteristically somber tone came over Alex. He became very quiet, and leaned back against the counter.

"So, have you been sleeping alright? You're not… you're not having those dreams again, are you?" Alex looked over at his petite co-worker, who was now looking down. Harry paused for a moment before speaking, looking up to see that Tabitha wasn't within earshot.

"I- I suppose I am, yeah. They're not too bad, they just, make it harder to get to sleep, that's all." Harry turned his attention back to his feet. One of his shoelaces was untied, but he couldn't bring himself to care at the moment. Alex shook his head, and placed a hand on Harry's shoulder.

"You need help, mate."

Harry silently agreed. He'd known that since he was fourteen, and the dreams started. No, scratch that, he'd known he needed help since he was eleven, but that wasn't something he liked thinking about.

There was something about the dreams that just, never made sense. They weren't like other dreams, they were hyper-realistic, and afterwards, he could remember every last detail. Also, he knew he wasn't creative enough to imagine half the stuff in them, so how the ideas came into his mind, he had no idea.

The biggest thing about the dreams was that in them, Harry was never portrayed as himself. Yes, it seemed normal enough to imagine yourself as a different person, but the same one every time? And from what Harry had imagined, this wasn't someone he would consider an alter ego. Everything about him gave Harry a bad feeling, from his milky jade skin to his commanding, almost hissing tone, to his eyes, a shade of crimson that looked more suited for a terrible poison than for a face.

Even the name he invented was chilling; Voldemort.

Harry wasn't sure where he got the name from. He could remember every detail from the dreams, and no one had ever called him Voldemort. They either called him the Dark Lord or they were running away screaming. But somehow, he knew what to call the cloaked man. Although, that should have made sense. After all, he had imagined all this, right? It only made sense that he would know things that weren't explained.

When Harry was "dreaming" that he was Voldemort, he was always doing unexplainable things. That much felt like a regular dream, the part where he had no idea how it started, he just jumped into the story. He was commanding an army, an army of loyal followers, bent on taking over the world. Sometimes he was leading them out into battle, sometimes he was discussing tactics in a meeting with some sort of Inner circle. He assumed it was an inner circle of sorts, since it was the same people every time; a tall, aristocratic man with long blonde hair, a wild eyed woman with even wilder black curls who, from what Harry had witnesses, enjoyed torturing people, a man who Harry assumed was her husband, another with greasy black hair and a hooked nose, who nobody seemed to really trust, and a few others who weren't very recognizable. But he knew their names; Malfoy, Lestrange and Lestrange, Snape, Nott, Yaxley, Rookwood and Dolohov.

The worst of the dreams perhaps, was when he imagined he was Voldemort alone, with a single goal in mind. The alter ego was ruthless, and once his mind was set to something, he never gave up. Never. Whatever he was looking for, nobody ever spoke it. All Harry really knew was anyone in his way would die. The man would just point a stick at them, how this constituted as a weapon, he wasn't sure, but it terrified him, and speak two words. They sounded something like, "avada kedavra", and then his vision would flood with brilliant green light, the same shade as his eyes. When the light settled, whoever was before him would be in mid fall, dead before they hit the ground.

Strangely enough, there were also times when he almost seemed, vulnerable, if that word was even applicable to the man, which Harry very much doubted. But nonetheless, sometimes Harry would catch glimpses of a small boy, shunned by everyone no matter where he went, and though he would feel nothing, he would remember how it used to hurt. Harry would almost sympathize with the figment of him imagination. Then, Voldemort would stand back up and kill another.

It bothered Harry how many people he killed.

It bothered him more that, while it was occurring at least, he wanted to kill them. His emotions, he wasn't in control of them when he was asleep. When he thought of it that way, it didn't sound so bad, but when he woke up in the middle of the night, prepared to lunge forward and attack whoever might be in front of him a fraction of a second earlier, that was terrifying. Even on the rare occasion that he wasn't Voldemort, he wanted to kill. Usually when he wasn't the red eyed lord, he was a snake. A massive, black serpent, with the same single minded sense of focus.

The last time he had been the snake, he was fifteen. Harry was slithering down a hallway, besides the mad woman who enjoyed torture. The hallway was completely black, not from darkness, but from the color of the tile. It must have been late, since it was nearly empty, but he could smell another man there. Harry could still remember the frustration he felt for not being able to tell Lestrange sooner. She was in a hurry, a hurry to get to the door. There was something behind it, something she wanted, and he wanted it too. The duo of woman and snake rounded a corner, only to come face to face with a middle aged red-head, pointing a similar stick to the ones everyone else bore. The woman beside him cackled, her maniacal laughter echoing throughout the department, and motioned for Harry to attack him. Harry remembered being happy for the opportunity, he could recall what it felt like to feel his serpentine body lunge forward, for his fangs to sink into the man's flesh. Once, twice, thrice, he just kept biting. The man beneath him began seizing, thrashing back and forth, foam coming out his mouth, and Harry had thought it was funny.

He woke up seconds later screaming.

Perhaps there was a part of him somewhere, however, that respected this alter ego. His invention did horrible things; killed without mercy or thought, condemned entire groups to die, "muggles", he called them, and aside from rage, pride, and arrogance, seemed not to know many emotions. But he stood his ground. He had a plan, a goal, and he knew what he was doing. Harry still didn't know what he was doing with his life. For him, it was a step up just to be out of the shelter and sharing a flat with someone, and he'd only moved in a few months ago! Harry would tell himself that his dreams were just his subconscious telling him to figure his life out, but he never believed that. If this was just the result of a few head games, than none of the other things would happen.

Like his scar; his scar shouldn't start burning every time he woke up. And even when he wasn't sleeping, if he was just at work, or playing soccer with Alex and Nikolai, sometimes it would flare up. Harry knew the scar was completely unrelated to the dreams. His dreams hadn't started bothering him until he was fourteen, his scar had been occasionally flaring since he was eleven. Mind you, before he was fourteen, the pain was only the occasional prickle, a bit unpleasant, but in the end it was nothing. Since the dreams started the pain had become a lot worse. And like the images of his mind, his scar seemed to have a way of hijacking his emotions; he could be incredibly happy, then his scar would burn and for a moment, he'd want to hurt whoever was in front of him. Or he could be completely miserable, and the next thing he knew, poof, burn, and he was laughing almost insanely. Yes, Alex knew about the dreams, even if only a little bit, but Harry had never told anyone about his scar before. People were already concerned enough for him as it was, he didn't want any more attention.

Harry hated to think about it, more than anything else in the world, but the scar and the dreams still weren't the weirdest things about him. And the more time he spent thinking about it, the more he became sure the Dursley's were aware of it; after all, why else would they hate him so much? They were right, he never was normal. When he was a kid, it was easy to pretend he wasn't the source of it, but that illusion was shattered pretty harshly.

His first few years on the streets, before he started staying at the shelters, he always found a way to stay alive. It was a time in Harry's life that he would do almost anything to survive; steal, cheat, lie, but he still knew that he shouldn't have made it. He should have been found be the police and taken back to Privet Drive, or locked in an insane asylum. But Harry was still here, against all odds. He usually credited it to luck, but one person could only have so much of that. Not enough to explain never being recognized, by anyone, to explain waking up in the morning and finding things next to him that he needed, things that certainly weren't there the night before, and usually they were things he had been eyed the day before, like food, new shoes, or medicine. Whenever Harry had been desperate enough to try pick-pocketing, he was never seen. Ever. Even if he was so clumsy that he ran right into his victim, they never said anything. And luck definitely didn't explain his affinity for snakes, like how whenever he was lost, one would show up, he would follow it, and somehow the snake would know exactly where he was going.

Luck didn't explain the burning, either.

Harry was certain he had caused three fires in his life. Those fired were the final straw, the event that made him realize that coincidence couldn't possibly explain everything that happened around him, that he was the cause of everything.

Harry wasn't sure how to explain it; the best he could think of, was that whenever he was too scared, or he couldn't think of any other escape, everything around him would just, go up in flames.

The first fire, he was certain, had been the Dursley's. He had finally pieced that together after he realized he could do these things, when he was eleven. Harry knew the Dursley's knew he caused it too, even if Harry didn't understand how.

The second fire was when he was nine. It was dark out, and fairly cold too. Harry was pretty sure it had been September. He had been heading back to the alley he stayed in the night before, but two men came up behind him; one of the men reeked of alcohol, the other of cigarettes. Harry didn't like the way they looked at him, it reminded him of how a wolf would look at a rabbit. One of them was about to speak when Harry was overcome by panic, and the next thing he knew every dumpster on the block was aflame. The man who smelled like alcohol jumped, and the other began looking frantically back and forth for the source. Harry didn't think, he just ran.

He was pretty sure once he was out of that alley, he heard an explosion. That should have been enough, but Harry had only been nine, he was still young and naive. He didn't even know what the two men wanted at the time, and recalling that memory now, it was pretty obvious what they were after.

No, he had still been unwilling to accept it, and it took Harry a few more years to figure it out. That was the fire when he was eleven.

Harry was snapped out of his thoughts. He shuddered; that was something he really didn't want to remember. Just, just focus on something else, anything else, he told himself. There was a stain on the tile floor next to Harry's left foot. It looked a bit like Australia, He thought, and forced himself to smile a little. He laughed a little.

"Alex, I know I do. But, but can we not talk about it now? Besides, I think they're getting better."

Alex looked at him reluctantly, but nodded in agreement. He wasn't the type to push people, anyways. The shop was completely empty now, and an eerie silence came over them. Fortunately, Tabitha came over to break it.

"Hey, are you boys done slacking off? It's Sunday, remember? We close early. So, which of you gentlemen wants to clean the floor, and who wants to count down the drawers while I text my girlfriends as payback for you two not doing anything for the last hour and a half?" She smirked, clearly amused with herself. Alex and Harry groaned in stereo.

It was two hours later that the shop closed. Harry had agreed to mop if Alex would handle the registers. Alex was happy to get to stay behind the counter, and Harry was happy to not have to explain how terrible he was at maths. The atmosphere had been distinctly lighter, with Tabitha constantly reading texts out loud to get a laugh out of them. Really, it was ridiculous the things girls talked about when boys weren't around. Harry wasn't sure he could repeat even half of them without blushing. Alex spoke, breaking Harry's thoughts.

"So, it's almost the end of the month. I guess that means Nikolai's going to want rent, huh?" They looked at each other seriously for a moment, before Alex put on a ridiculously goofy grin and Harry snorted in an attempt to suppress a laugh.

"Come on, you know he doesn't care. I mean, how lucky are we to share a flat with a guy who calls us his 'leeches' without even a hint of resentment? It's great!" The two of them shared another laugh.

Nikolai was a Russian student studying art in England. He came from a ridiculously wealthy family that let him do whatever he wanted. So Nikolai wouldn't have to stay on campus, his parents had purchased an enormous flat for him, with four bedrooms and two full baths. It was clearly too much for one person on his own, but that was just the way Nikolai's family was.

Alex had met Nikolai about a year after he arrived in London. It was at some club downtown, Harry couldn't remember the names of all of them. The two of them had hit it off, literally, when Alex had hit Nikolai for flirting with the girl we has dating at the time. The two of them got into a fight, not a very serious one, but serious enough that Alex supposedly had a shiner for two weeks. After a few minutes, they stopped fighting long enough to see Alex's "girlfriend" dancing with some other guy. The two of them started laughing, and within the next ten minutes considered each other friends. A few months after that, Alex was kicked out of his parent's place, and Nikolai invited him to share the apartment. Harry came into the picture about a year ago, when he started working at the Coffee Shop. The owner was concerned about Harry's application, since it didn't show any school records, parent contacts, or even a street address. Harry had, quite reluctantly, told him that he ran away when he was younger, and had been on him own ever since. He refused to say more than that. Apparently, and shockingly satisfied, the owner had hired Harry on the spot, and convinced Alex to let Harry join in the flat. Alex didn't know about Harry running away though, he just thought there were some problems at home and Harry couldn't stay there.

So, for the last six months or so, Alex and Harry had been leeches together. When Alex had started living with Nikolai, he insisted that he had to pay rent. Nikolai didn't need it, and really didn't care, but he told Alex that if it made him feel better, he could pay what he could every month. That meant that though Harry and Alex never actually did pay him anything, they could keep their dignity, in a sort of funny, moronic way.

The two of them kept talking and laughing on their way back. It wasn't terribly late, so they reached the complex before sunset was even half completed. It was a large, classically styled building that one only had to look at for a few seconds before they knew only the ridiculously opulent lived here. It was a nine story building, with Victorian molding around the doors and in between each floor, and about twelve steps before the front entrance. As they went up the stairs, Harry turned back. It was mesmerizing, really, how many colors the sky could show. This time of day was always his favorite, when streams of red and orange would streak across the sky, illuminating the London skyline.

A small nagging in the back of Harry's mind reminded him that in a week, he would turn seventeen. He turned back to the door and thought for a moment. He hadn't celebrated his birthday, ever. There had never really been a point before, he wasn't even sure he'd told anyone when it was. A smile crept across his face as he reached for the door.

Perhaps this year, he would.

~X~

Ok, so before you kill me, please keep in mind. The OC's are NOT IMPORTANT. I need them there to explain Harry's life, and to give him someone to interact with, show his personality a bit. They will not last long in the story, maybe another chapter or two, tops. I only planned on having two OCs, Alex and Nikolai, but Tabitha just popped in my head, and I thought the coffee shop needed another person to make the scene work.

Also, YES, that is a real coffee shop! I saw a picture of it, and looked it up on Google maps. So that really is the location! I've never been to London, so if anyone out there has, and has visited that shop, tell me what it's like! It looks so cute!

on a final note, I'm taking a lot of freedom with the interpretation of the trace. It will be explained more later, but I'm choosing to assume it's monitored and controlled by the Department of Mysteries, since so little is known about it.