Chapter 7: Was Lost

Harry pushed around his rooms, running a comb pointlessly through his hair with one hand the other rubbing at his temples, trying to forestall the pounding headache that had accompanied the bazaar snippets of memories that had plagued his night.

It had been two days since Ron and Hermione had visited him last.

On their last visit they had brought more photo albums, with moving pictures this time, and began to put names to faces. Harry's mind was quickly filled with family connection and stories of unfamiliar travels and trials he had with strange people.

Hermione had been quick to fill him in on Hogwarts but put the most emphasis on her plan to retrieve his memories. Apparently there was a magical form of mind reading, not that that surprised him in the least, which let one wizard see another's memories... unless the wizard had magical defensive walls that he, apparently, had never been able to erect. According to his conspirators, one of his friends from this war held sway over a professor, whom was a master of the art...though the look on Hermione's face and the skeptical sniff Ron made at the suggestion told Harry he wasn't particular friends with this master.

The boy's name was Tonks while the Professor's name was Arthur….no wait. Arthur was Ron's father and Tonks was…his mother?

Harry growled and messaged his head with the heel of both palms. Throwing down the comb, Harry let Bandit out into the small square of yard behind his flat, popping a Pop-tart into the toaster. Dashing out, he snatched up his suit jacket and keys, buttoned his sleeves, and looked himself over in the mirror before running a hand through his hair to make it stick up in a more uniformed direction.

If you can't beat them with gel and a fine toothed comb, deal with them the best you could. Damned cow-licks.

Snatching up his Pop-tart he stuck it in his mouth and let Bandit back inside.

"Let's go Bandit!" Harry called breaking the Pop-tart in half and giving the German Sheppard one half to scarf down while eating the other half himself. The team piled into Harry's car and speed off to the Police Station, hardly noticing that the car floated half an inch off the ground.

His head was throbbing, so many thoughts and images spinning around in a space already cramped with on-going investigation and paper work notes. Sighing, Harry silently wished he had never found out about Ron and Hermione and Lord What's-His-Face, or about wizards and Hogwarts or anything that had come to his attention in the last week.

He had begun to notice strange things after meeting the couple from his past. He began to notice stores lined with a spider web of glowing light that he had previously thought to be decorations, he noticed people simply vanish from one place and not reappear anywhere nearby. Sometimes he got the feel that he was being watch, and people he had once thought to be criminals would divert their eyes whenever he caught theirs. He also noticed that now that he was more aware of magic, it seemed to happen all around him.

As he passed through the Police Station's double doors, the one person he didn't want to see appeared to be waiting for him.

"Riddle!" Sylvester Snap was standing, arms crossed, and his face contorted in, what had to be the most pissed off look known to man kind. Harry had never seen any one pull off a more vindictive look without ending up just looking like they had swallowed a lemon tree. His hooked nose seemed to draw Harry's eyes, unsurprising since the protruding appendage probably had its own damn gravitational pull. The black holes that served for eyes looked out over it, seemingly unaware of the shear monstrosity of the mass before him.

"What did I do now Snap?" Harry sighed, pushing past him to the elevator, Bandit on a tight led as a low rumbling growl escaped his partner's lips.

"Paper work Riddle! Or did you forget? Just because captain gave you leeway to work your pathetic way through that mad house you call a mind for answers I could have given you, being a Juvenile Delinquent Warden myself, does not mean that you can get behind the paper work on the Jewelry Store thefts." He smirked, his hooked nose making his leering eyes look like one's you were more likely to see on the head of a vulture then a JDW.

Harry grimaced. The man thought he was so good. Flaunting the position over Harry's head. He seemed to mention it at any point he could manage and ended up sounding like a broken record playing out of a bent bell. Even his insults were becoming ridiculously laden with the continuous reminders.

"Last time I checked, Snap, your division didn't over see my paper work habits." Harry hissed.

"I am a superior to you Riddle, which means that I oversee what ever I think needs to be overseen." The man sneered, his greasy black spiked locks falling to cast shadows over his already cavernous face, giving it a demonic air.

Bandit growled menacingly, as he and Harry climbed into the elevator, trying to close the doors on the elder officer. His hand stopped the doors however and Snap slipped into the elevator.

"Don't think you can loose me that easily." Snap smirked down his crocked nose. "I have little to do today but keep you company till you fill out that paper work. My next case is an abuse victim's trial and that's not till four."

Harry froze up, a scene flashing before his eyes.

A fat man with an impossibly purple face sneered in at him. A ridding crop in one hand, his other clutching Harry's shoulder. There was a fat replica of the man behind him, a bloody knife gripped in his pudgy hand, twin wicked sneers on both faces.

"Touched a nerve, did I?" Snap pushed, eyebrows raised in pleasure as he continued to torture. "Something bother you about abuse victims Tom?" Snap stressed the name, pushing forward tenuously; weary of Bandit's salivating chops.

"Pick on a few victims in the old days Tom?" He pushed forward even more.

Suddenly the elevator doors dinged open and Harry scampered out, Snap still on his heels.

"You did, didn't you? Something in your past you found out Tom? Something ugly? You never had problems with abuse before." Snap prodded.

"Snap. I'm warning you!" Harry spat.

"What? Going to do the same thing you did to that little boy?" Snap was inches from his face, his foul breath raising hairs off Harry's neck to stand starch stiff.

Harry snapped. He lashed out, going to punch the man only to find him flung into the air by his ankle.

"FUCKING HELL!" Harry cried, Bandit barking mad. "Get down! THIS ISN'T FUNNY SNAP!" He hollered, no longer worried of being discovered thanks to the remoteness of their location. He would shout and curse at Snap all day even if he wasn't play practical jokes. Up here the only person able to hear anything was a nearly deaf man working reception and a cranky old secretary working on ancient filing too important to be abandoned for a second of curiosity.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!" Snap cried.

Harry panicked and fled. He reached his office at top speed and locked himself inside with Bandit cowering under his desk in the bomb position that had been drilled into his tiny brain. Harry was rocking in his spindly chair, hidden behind the walls of his cubical, a wooden door closing off the roofless square.

As he shook, he noticed that the things on his desk vibrated like they were in an earth quake. Crying out in anguish his slammed his head into his desk. His vision blurred and the objects stopped vibrating. Carefully Harry slid himself under the desk with Bandit, the pair of them huddled into the back off the desk, Bandit waiting for the release word, Harry waiting till he was sure that moving again wouldn't set him off again.

It wasn't his fault. It wasn't his fault. It wasn't his fault.

He sighed and took in deep breaths. He didn't want this. He didn't need to be any weirder than he was. He didn't want to be anything other than Tom Riddle, the Police Intern with the blank slate past and a German Shepard. That, his flat, and his girl were all he needed, not any of this drama. He didn't need to be making earthquakes or hauling people into the air by their ankles when he was pissed.

He could beat up a guy with his hands. He didn't need some freaky magic scarring the shit out of his attacker, freaking him out so that he ran away from a fight. Thinking about it, that episode with Snap was the first time he had fled a fight, or a potential fight, and it wasn't even because the other guy was better then him or he was out gunned. No it was because he had some freaky voodoo going on within him.

Fucking wizards. Why couldn't they just keep their fucking magic and their fucking heroes and problems? He didn't want anything to do with them. Groaning Harry dropped his head into his hands again and desperately wished that if anything, Ron and Hermione hadn't cured his cold. He wanted to be at home figuring this out. But no, he was hiding under a desk in a small cubical on an abandoned floor of an already vacant building.

He was tired, he was confused. He was lost in his own mind and everything that was happening was making it that much worse. Images wished around his head, spinning through his mind's eye with blaring quality but so fast that he couldn't put objects or faces to names.

His head spun and he fell back against the underside of his desk, hopping that a momentary glance at them would make them go away. He just wanted things to go back to the way they were, before all this craziness. He just wanted to come to work and clock Snap a good one in the jaw then proceed to Bandit's training without having to worry about blowing something up.

He was unsure of how long he sat there and even less sure of the number of people that had knocked on his door to somehow find that the lockless door wasn't budging. He slowly regained his breath, returning to a state of somewhat calm appearance. Climbing out from under the desk, Harry released Bandit and straightened his tie, reaching into his coat to move the gun holster away from the irritated area it had been poking at.

He peered out of the door before leading Bandit out. He couldn't live like this. He couldn't be alone in the office, his old life. He knew too much. He hurried to the elevator without running into anyone and had made it down to the third floor before he was joined by a podgy desk clerk taking an arm full of files down to archives. His thick round glasses sat on his nose as a bead of sweat played with his reseeding hairline, dodging in and out of the thinning hairs but never fully crossing the line.

Maybe he had been staring at it for too long but it almost seemed to Harry that he was moving the bead. He felt like he was sending it swirling in and out of the black hairs on the shorter man's head. With every drop of his eyes, he would release it to fall a little closer to the line before returning his gaze to the droplet and pulling it back into the middle-aged man's hair.

Suddenly the man looked at him, a hard glare that brought a blush to Harry's face and made him drop the bead of sweat down the man's small nose. The doors seemed to take forever to open. The bell seemed to ring an hour before the metal cage was drawn back to let him out. He rushed from the annoyed desk clerk and, with Bandit on his heels, hurried to the garage.

"Give me a curser and a destination." Harry breathed to the young brunette behind the counter with the keys on racks behind her.

"Mr. Riddle. Perfect timing as usual. They just requested a canine unit down at the water front ports. I swear you're always in the right place at the right time. First with that raid were Tina found you, and then with the Jewelry Store thief, and now this. It's like you've got some magical homing device." She laughed handing over the keys to the number 13 cruiser and placed her head in the palm of her hand, propping herself up with her elbow, batting her heavily blackened eyes at him.

He shifted nervously, tipped his head to show his thanks and rushed into the garage. Bandit bounded to the number 13 cruiser, happily dancing, ready to get to work. The hour or two he spent under the desk probably catching up to him. Harry smiled and opened the passenger door for the mutt before letting himself into the driver's seat.

He radioed his response to the team requesting the canine unit and peeled out of the lot. He flicked on his siren and was soon floating into old routine. He had been lucky enough to get his own cruiser as well as his own jobs. He had been quick to learn everything else, taking to it so naturally, officers claimed he must have worked for a branch of defense or police work before his black out.

How wrong they all were.

Apparently he had been fighting an invisible war before he'd lost his memories. And the fact that he had quickly become one of the best shots in the force told him that he had been one then too. He could only imagine the things that he had done. After all, he had been a weapon.

He wasn't stupid. He could read between the lines of crap Ron and Hermione feed him. They stated he was revered. He new he it was really that he was feared. He could tell by the muscles that were already built on his chest, arms, and legs, everywhere. He was built for war and the lightning fast reflexives had been drilled into his scull on a daily bases, if his instructor's opinion was worth anything.

As he careened around curves and nearly rode over a party of tailgaters, Harry lost himself to thoughts and allowed his body to register obstacles on its own. He soon found himself pulling into the marina and had parked between a group of warehouses. He let bandit out, hooking the normally free dog back to his leash.

As he hurried to where the arresting officer had indicated, Harry found himself reliving memories.

A stone bathroom with high walls and slights of light filtering in from the ceiling. A group of sinks in the center of the room, each with a mirror hang over it, creating a sort of alter. To the left, two rows of stalls each were facing each other. Definitely not a men's' room. Then out of no where a translucent figure of a girl hovered before him.

"If you die down there…You're welcome to share my cubical." She flirted gesturing to the stall beneath her. Then Harry found himself turning to face the sinks whispering "Thanks Myrtle." It was then that he noticed one of the sinks had lowered to the floor opening up to a tunnel of some kind.

Where it lead Harry would never know. For at that moment, he approached the first officer on the scene and was forced to focus on work. He let Bandit go, issuing commands. Together they hurried around the bathroom….no the warehouse...it was a warehouse... together, just like old times. Not ghosts flirting with him, no friends spontaneously cropping up at the least convenient times, and best of all, no Snap breathing down his neck.

Harry let a smile grace his figures as Bandit let loose a loud series of barks. Harry rushed over to the hound. He was forced to wrench away however when the sound of gun fire signaled his pull back from the stack of drugs now visible from the toppled crate Bandit guarded.

"Bandit! Stand down." Harry commanded, drawing his gun as he hunched against a large crate. The dog immediately dodged behind a pair of crates and a few over hanging tarp, hunkered down and watched, paws over his head. Harry had never seen any other dog do that but as far as he had known Bandit had been doing it since birth.

Peeking out when the barrage of automatic fire ceased, Harry took a tentative crawling step out from behind the crate and maneuvered himself closer to the drug stash. He could hear back up running, splitting its forces between the handcuffed dealers and helping the intern. It was a commonly known fact that the last officer that had let Tom Riddle get shot had ended up with a bullet wound of his own from the untraceable bullets of Tina's .45 magnum, a gun big enough to put a hole in someone large enough to drive a dump truck through.

Harry was returning fire now and had already clipped the shooter in the wrist and arm making the man change the Uzi over to his over hand. Harry knew he had been hit but at this moment adrenaline was enough to keep him moving without fully comprehending the pain. He had moved closer and could now make out the shooter's appearance.

Blonde hair. Long blonde hair. Familiar and yet so foreign. Just then a second canine units' dog came bounding out, clambering up the mountain of crates.

Crying. Someone was crying in the bathroom. Myrtle was hovering over the blonde framed by the door and the wall Harry peeped through. A boy, blonde, turned, surprised outrage on his face, he raised a stick a word on his lips "Cruci-" He didn't wait, unsure of what he was doing, he had his own stick in his hands, a word upon his lips and then…

"Sactumsempra"

Blood splattered from the gun man's chest just as the second police dog hit him. He toppled off his perch, the second canine unit's mutt falling back coated in blood. The man fell to the ground, a waterfall of blood following him and splashing to the concrete like sick water colors, bathing him, Bandit, Harry and the surrounding creates in the warm liquid.

Harry froze, shocked. Other units were bustling about him but he couldn't hear them. He couldn't make out their blurred face or feel Bandits warm pink tongue licking the blood from his face. He couldn't turn himself from the body, eyes wide enough to swallow the Grand Canyon.

He had done that. His memory, his power, he had done that. Without even really thinking he had cut down a man, a terrible drug lord but a man none the less. And with a look and a word, he had slashed deep into his chest, almost three-fourths of the way through. That much he could discern from all the babble as the paramedics packed him and Bandit up and the gun men was toted away in a body bag.

"Too deep...No way he would have made it..."

"...Put the dog down..."

"To think, a dog could do so much damage..."

No, it wasn't a dog. Harry was shaking, eyes unfocused, hands mechanically petting Bandit, clutching him like a life vest. No it wasn't a dog.

He had to get help. What if he did this again? What if it was with a friend? What if the next time he confronted Snape it wasn't with Levicorpus-

Harry shook his head, as if to take a double take on his own words. Who the Hell was Snape and what the blood fuck was Levicorpus?

Suddenly the paramedic was hanging in the air by his ankle. Panicked, Harry ran though a list of random words that suddenly popped into his head until the screaming man had been dropped on his head.

"What the bloody hell-"

"Obliviate!" Harry cried, flinging his open hand in front of the paramedic's face. A dazed looked crossed over him and he and his partners and the driver returned to their business like nothing had happened.

Harry shuddered and took a firmer hold on Bandit, sure that the spells would carry him away. That was the last straw, if he couldn't even think the bloody words without something terrible happening to him, then he was going to have to take Ron and Hermione up on his offer, if only to save everyone around him from friendly fire.

Rubbing Bandit's ears in small circles that calmed him more than the dog, Harry came to a conclusion. It was time to disappear. A sudden weight lifted off his shoulders, one he had been unaware of carrying until it was gone. He would quite the force, give up his desk and work out Bandit's new handler then he would go with Ron and Hermione. He was a danger to the normal world.

What was he going to tell Tina?

A.N: Thanks to all my reviewers. I am off on a band excursion but will be back Sunday, hopefully with a new post. Yes…it will be that boring.

Smiles