After an exhausting book-and-lunch run, Harte and I (unfourtunately) made our way back to the Dursley household.

Harte had actually managed to get us a discount at lunch, too.

"Br-bryan?"

"Yeeeees?"

"Thank you very much... for the books, and lunch."

I ruffled the tiny kid's long hair before picking him up and setting him on my shoulder.

"I told you, Harte, it wasn't a problem. If you like books, then it's not that hard to get them."

Harte nodded, blushing.

"T-Thank you anyway."

"It was nothing."

I walked into the cookie-cutter house, grimacing as the skinny one started shrieking.

"Just where were you? The boy hasn't done a single chore all day and I have company over tonight!"

"And you did not think of just doing it yourself? Seriously?"

The irritating woman just sputtered some indignant crap about not being a maid, waving her arms around in the air like a windmill. It was actually kind of amusing, if you got past that horribly annoying voice of hers...

"You," I said, glaring just enough to shut her up, "Go do your own damn chores."

And with that, I made my dramatic exit, Harte perched on my shoulder. Yeah, I'm pretty badass, I know.

"S-sometimes Iwish I could tell her th-that," the little child whispered into my ear, breaking out in a small giggle fit.

"Mmhmm, I think everyone who's ever met her wanted to tell her to shove it at least once," I added, nodding my head in agreement.

Hopefully, I'd be able to keep Ian from setting her on fire. He seemed to like doing that, for some reason... Wow, I never realized how much I'd miss them if they were all abducted by aliens or kidnapped or otherwise missing from my life...

Well, I just had to wait one more day until I got to see them and introduce them to Harte. Hopefully Ian and my cousin would get along well...

"Hey, do you know who your aunt's inviting over tonight?"

Harte shook his head, ducking as we walked through the doorway to his room.

"N-no idea. I just hope it is not P-piers's mom..."

I dumped him and the bag of books on the bed, flopping down on the floor to pull off my boots.

"Who's Piers?"

"D-dudley's friend. Whenever his m-mom comes over... well, th-they get bored, and when they g-get bored... They usually start pl-playing their favourite game."

"What, Twister? Chutes and Ladders? I bet they play some sort of girly game. Maybe they play with Barbies?"

"...H-harry Hunting..."

Death. Death to fat little piggies.

"What, exactly, does... Harry-Hunting entail?"

I tried to contain my anger, but either I did a crappy job or he was using his empathy thingie and could feel it anyway, because he flinched a little bit.

"Umm... chasing me around, and when they catch me, they... hit me a little bit?"

When I leave, I am going to have a hawaiian babecue as a celebration. Fat, yummy, pork, spitted. Over a fire.

"Eew. B-bryan, I do not think he would t-taste very good..."

"You're right," I said absently, standing up only to flop back on the bed, sending Hatre bouncing., "I should just feed them to Falborg- but it would probably make him sick- wait, I didn't say that out loud, did I? And where did Falborg and the random snake dude go, anyways?"

Harte shyly tapped his head.

"Oh. Ohhh. Telepathy/empathy thingie. Got it. Bjut, seriously, Falborg's dead. Where could they possibly hang out? A club? A dead bar?"

Harte giggled.

"Y-you would be surprised. Shinja can disappear for days on end. He always comes back in the end, though, so I do not mind."

"Eh."

Luckily for all involved, (though more for the Dursleys than anyone else) the rest of the day went smoothly. /neither Dudley or the other kid bothered us, and, after staying up 'till at least twelve, I made the tiny kid put his books away and go to sleep.

The next morning just about killed me, though. After staying up so late reading, we'd finished a lot of our books.

Which meant we had nothing left to do.

"Th-that crack in the ceiling looks like a fish."

I shrugged, staring at the aforementioned crack in the ceiling. Apparently I wasn't the only one boed out of muy mind. There wasn't aything to do but sit here!

"How did you keep from going nuts? There's nothing to do!"

"I never h-had time to sit in my room. I was always doing chores."

"Oh."

Congratulations Bry, you just won the Guinnes world recod=rd for sticking your foot in your mouth.

"Wanna go to the park?"

"Oh, yes, please!"

Hell, the kid looked so happy just 'cause I wanted to take him to the park...

"C'mon."

I picked him up and placed him on my shoulder and we both started down the stairs.