AN: Sorry that this was so late, I got really sick, then I was behind on school work then I completely forgot about it. Sorry about that. Hope you enjoy it, please tell me what you think. Thanks Sarah Jane

Unbeta'd

The sun was high, the wind blew freely and the children were outside playing in the grounds. They had spent almost a week in this magnificent place and there were no closer to finding out all of the secrets. The house was a labyrinth with different rooms being discovered each day. The land seemed to go on forever, all green and healthy.

Right now the two children stood by the still lake watching the wish swim gracefully by.

"Hey Tom, you know what?"

Tom suddenly stopped staring at the fish and looked at Harry.

"Hmm, what?"

"You starting to really stink, I think I think it's time that you had a proper bath" Harry said as she pushed Tom into the cool water.

Tom went down flailing his arms around trying to stay still but gravity won the battle as he was pulled down to make acquaintance with the fish.

Harry was hysterical with laughter, tears were coming out of her eyes. She was so distracted that she didn't notice two small hands coming out of the water and grabbing her arm until it was too late.

She fell head first into the water. The water had turned murky with the amount of activity taken places. All she could see was the brown water all around her. After the initial panic she slowly let her feet reach the ground and stood up. The lake was shallow with the water only reaching her shoulders. The first thing he saw in her view was the head of the boy with water sticking to his glimmering face. He wore a smirk on his face, his eyes were alight with a mixture of happiness and mischief.

As an attempt to wipe that smirk of his face, she created a wave with her hands and directed in the boys direction. It hit him with a force that caught him off guard. He was left standing spitting out the remnants of the water from his mouse and wiping the water from his eyes.

With a glare, he stepped backwards and with all his force made a larger wave that picked her up and displaced her a few inches.

This went on for a long time, with each attack getting larger than the other. They splashed along in the staying put in the shallow end of the pond splashing each other until they grew tired. Neither of them ventured out to deeper waters. This was mainly due the fact that Tom could not swim.

Tom would have been incredibly embarrassed about this fact but as it was just Harry he did not care that he was unable to do so. Unlike anyone else from the orphanage, who judged him greatly for his incompetence, Harry would just shrug and offer to teach him at a later date.

This was their behaviour for the past week, if one of them didn't know something, the other would patiently teach them.

Harry was always patient, kind and forgiving but she was also mischievous at moments too. She was passionate, but with that she was also incredibly stubborn and sometimes with a closed mind. She was at times impulsive and had a fiery anger which was best left untouched. (Tom learnt that the hard way when he tried licking the bowl when Harry was teaching him how to make a chocolate cake.)

When they finally got out of the water their fingers were all wrinkly. There clothes were drenched and dragged them down each step of the way home. The walk would take 5 minutes for them to get home. Just as they were starting to dry up it started raining heavily making the ground incredibly wet and slippery.

Determined for the rain not to ruin their day, Harry picked a large mound of mud when Tom wasn't looking and through it at his back. It hit its target and it clung to the fabric as it slipped down. Tom looked back with a mischievous smile on his face. He had just accepted the challenge and Harry had roughly 3 seconds to run for her life.

Harry was fast but she was not fast enough, the next thing she knew was a huge gooey substance smashed on to her hair.

"Tom, no I will never get it off."

"Yeah, well you should have ducke—"

Tom couldn't finish his statement as a huge wallop of mud was smacked straight into his mouth.

Harriet was holding her tummy laughing as Tom tried to spit out all of the mud. When he was done spitting out the remnants of the mud, he went up to her and tackled her on the ground. At that moment they could have been mistaken for too pigs. They were both completely brown with not a single patch of skin left untouched by the liquid dirt. Finally Harry was free from Tom's grip and she got up and tried to run away when Tom grabbed her foot.

"You are so slow, for goodness sakes a turtle can run fast than you," Tom teased.

"Oh really? How about a race then, the first to touch the door wins."

"What does the winner get?" Tom asked.

"How about Loser has to make breakfast tomorrow."

At that time Tom and Harry had cooked many a meals together but he hadn't a chance to cook by himself. He knew he hadn't quite mastered the art of cooking so if her lost this could end badly for both of them. So he really had to win this race and he was confident he could.

"Deal" Tom said, then quickly sprinted away to the house.

"Hey, that's cheating" he heard from behind.

"Yeah well you never said when to go", he replied not once slowing down.

He was going well there was only around 100 metres till he would be meeting the door but Harry was catching up. His legs were aching, his breathing was laboured but he had to go on he had to win. He knew he was slowing down, he couldn't help it he had never run such a large distance in such a short space of time.

Harry however wasn't stopping, she was speeding up. She passed him swiftly by, but he didn't give up. Determined to keep going he used up all his energy but he didn't make it. He failed, he lost.

Harry was at the door, with a smug smile upon her face.

"I told you so" she said.

Tom collapsed right near the door step. Suddenly, he couldn't breathe his legs stopped moving and he needed to vomit. With the little energy he had, he crawled over to the bushes and through up all that was in his stomach.

He felt horrible, he was tired, sick, he was disgusted with himself, and he was a failure just like everyone else said he was. Then he felt a small hand soothing his back while her vomited.

"Have you run that far before?"

Tom shook his head and then wiped his mouth with his shirt only have more mud on his face.

"Here" harry said as she took the underside of her too big shirt and wiped her mouth with it.

"Well that was a really good run for your first time, I can only run faster than you because I'm used to running away from my cousin." Harry explained. "The trick is to pace yourself, if you put everything at the start you'll have no energy left at the end."

Tom stared at Harry, she hadn't said anything about him being the loser, and instead she had complimented him. Of cause there was the stubbornness of her always being right but that was that. She didn't say anything about breakfast she just explained her strategy.

"Come on up lazy bones, we need to have a shower." She picked him up by the waste so he could get back on his legs. She stayed there for support but let him do most of the walking towards the bathroom. When they made it over to the bathroom, she led Tom over to the tap and ordered him to drink so that he would get some strength back. He drank the water and just sat at the edge of the bathtub until he knew he had the energy to be fully functional again. Meanwhile, Harry took care of the shower so that it was the perfect temperature.

She then hopped into the shower, fully clothed and invited in him as well.

"Why must we shower with our clothes on?"

"Well we need to make sure that we clean the mud of before we put it into the washing machine," Harry replied.

Slowly, when the mud was out, they would take of piece by piece until it was just them standing in the shower lathering themselves with soap.

Once they were finished showering they dried themselves off and put their clothes in the laundry.

Wearing only a towel they cleaned the muddy floors. Luckily by the time that was done the clothes had been completely washed and dried. They changed into them and went to the kitchen to go about making dinner.

"Why did you ask me to make Breakfast rather than dinner?" Tom asked while cutting up some carrots.

"Breakfast is a lot easier, I don't mean to say anything bad about your cooking skill but you aren't so ready to make a whole meal."

"Ohh, but surely breakfast is by far more difficult with the need to have the bacons crispy enough but not burnt and the egg cooked perfectly an—"

"You don't to have everything perfect Tom, it's only me, I would have been happy with just a simple bowl of porridge."

"A bowl of porridge, are you serious? You always make so much more for breakfast."

"I have a large family to feed, also I have so much practise in doing so, why must you compare everything about you to me?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you do, you like to be better than me, which is fine. However, you get disappointed when I am better at something than you."

"I don't mean it like that, you are an amazing person. I just … I don't know."

"You should know I didn't ask to be good at running or cooking. It was something that was important for me to learn. I didn't ask for it to be this way just like I didn't ask to have glasses or green eyes or uncontrollably messy hair." Harry said as she pointed at the birds nest attached to her scalp. "It is just the way things are. "

"I guess, it's because I can't stand to be less than perfect, I have tried so hard to fit into what everyone wants me to be. In order to get adopted but everyone one wants something different. I need to be noticed, no one notices me, it's always about Dennis Bishop, Amy Benson or Billy Stubbs" Tom said, "They get everything, Billy even got a pet rabbit. I need to be better than they are to-"

"What? What will you get!?"

"I will get adopted!"

"What will happen when you are adopted, huh? Have you thought of that? What are you going to then?"

"I will be better than them, I will have a family, and they won't"

"So what if you have a family, I have a family and all they do is make me work all day while their lazy son sits around getting fatter by the minute."

"They will not be like that-"

"How do you know that? You don't get to pick who buys you."

"Yes, BUT ATLEAST I WILL BE AWAY FROM THEM," Tom cried.

Everything was silent only the echoes of his shout could be heard through the house.

"Away from who?" Harry asked softly.

Tom looked down, continuing to cut his carrots.

"Tom, who? What voices do hear?"

"I don't know..."

Harry waited for Tom to explain a bit more.

"I really don't know" Tom said as he realised that Harry would be leaving his side. "I hear them sometimes in the orphanage. Sometimes its rubbish and sometimes its telling me to … do things" Tom went back to his Carrots cutting them up faster and making a louder noise.

"What kind of things?" Harry asked looking at Tom's face.

Tom continued to cut faster.

"Tom what kind of things?"

Tom's cutting increased in speed until his knife slipped and grazed his fingers.

"HORRIBLE THINGS HARRY, IT STARTED WITH HURT, THEN BITE THEN WENT ON TO BLOODY KILL THE WORST WAS EAT, IT TOLD ME TO EAT RIGHT AFTER KILL, IT WAS EAT."

Harry just stood there, she was at a loss of words. She simply nodded her head.

"Oh look what you've done to your finger," Harry said trying to change the subject. "Hang on, I'll just go and get the first aid kit." She left the kitchen leaving a bleeding Tom, breathing heavily. She returned with a plastic case that was not too dissimilar to a lunchbox.

She opened it and pulled out a glass bottle filled with a clear substance and some cotton wool. She poured some of the substance into the cotton wool.

"This will sting a bit" She said as she was going to put the wool up to his fingers. Tom quickly pulled the fingers away from her grasp.

"Are you sure you know what you are doing?" He asked.

"Yeh, I cut my self all the time, my aunt wouldn't help me so I went to the school nurse and she taught me how to look after the simplest of wounds."

"Oh ok then" He said and gave his hand.

"This will clean up the wound and will destroy any antibacterial that means you won't get any infections." Harry said as she dabbed the alcohol on to his wound. "Do you know what antibacterial and infections mean?"

"Yeah, I do, I'm not an idiot" Tom scoffed.

"Sorry, it's just because I had no idea what they meant until the nurse taught me."

"Ohh, well people say I'm very well read."

"Don't try to be humble Tom, it doesn't suit you."

Tom snickered, the air was light again. Once Harry put the bandage around his finger, they both went back to cooking dinner. After that was complete they simply ate at the table quietly and went to sleep after a very tiring day. Little did they know that they would not be waking up at that house the next morning.