Title: Harry Potter and the Omniband

Author:Joshua

Disclaimer:JK Rowling has Harry, and whoever else from the books show up in these plots. I don't own either and I'm not making any money from all this, so don't bother suing me. The concept of the Omnitrix was created by "Man Of Action" and is owned by Cartoon Network. Ditto for Max, Ben and Gwen Tennyson.

Summary: What if Harry gets the magical equivalent of the Omnitrix? Instead of 10 Alien Heroes however, Harry turns into 10 different Magical Creatures.

Part 1: Torch

It was a normal day in Diagon Alley. August first, one month until the next semester at Hogwarts begins, so of course there were a fair number of young people flitting here and about all over the center of the magical world's economy. In particular, one young boy, just turned eleven and his half-giant guide were enjoying their day of shopping.

After getting the boy his wand, Hagrid felt his job was done for the time being and it was time for a mead break. So, giving Harry the last of the gold retrieved from the boy's vault, and taking the trunk full of books and supplies and everything while leaving the owl free to sit comfortably on Harry's shoulder, Hagrid told the young Harry Potter to explore and enjoy himself and that they'd meet back at the pub entrance of the alley in one hour.

Eager to do just that, Harry ignored his normally sensible instincts that were shouting at him not to leave Hagrid's side no matter what, and turned around with his new owl to explore this new world he was part of.

Meanwhile, not too far away, it was a normal day in Knockturn Alley too. Unfortunately, normal for Knockturn Alley was anything but peaceful.

"Confringo!" a dark cloaked figure cast the blasting curse at another figure, one that was running down the alley carrying a chest.

The fleeing wizard spun on the spot and cast, "Protego!"

The blasting curse exploded against the shimmering magical shield, directing almost all of the energy directly back at the dark wizard that had fired it in the first place. He hissed and dove to the side, casting a wordless freezing charm at the explosion to keep himself from getting killed by his own spell. Once he was back on his feet, he saw his target still running away, clutching the chest he was after.

Snarling, the man threw back his hood revealing a metallic skull-mask, the mask worn by the Death Eaters of Voldemort and resumed the chase.

Glancing back the man being chased saw the distance between him and the Death Eater and cursed as it wasn't as much as he'd been hoping for. This wasn't what he signed on for! He thought to himself. He was just supposed to do some spell research, maybe occasionally take a look at an enchanted item every once in a while when his colleagues were stumped! Not be at the edge of a conspiracy within the government to work at bringing back the Dark Lord!

He glanced back one more time and then dove into a nook not too far from the entrance to Diagon Alley from Knockturn Alley. The Death Eater raced past, curving back into Knockturn Alley before anyone could get a good look at his mask. The Unspeakable from the Department of Mysteries in the Ministry of Magic sighed in relief, for the moment. He suffered no delusions, he knew it was only a matter of time before he was found and killed and the box stolen with what was inside someday to be used as a tool for the Death Eaters power.

He had to get rid of it.

Not that he could actually destroy it. What was contained in the chest he held couldn't be destroyed by the power of one measly wizard no matter how powerful. Still, he could ensure that it went to someone that would use it for good, to fight the Death Eaters and prevent them from raising their destroyed master from the grave.

Quickly, he took an old crate that held what looked like expired squelch fruit, and transfigured it into an exact replica of the chest he'd been carrying. Given how much time he'd spend investigate and analyzing the chest it was a very good replica. Then taking the real one he cast a highly complex spell on it.

Well to be perfectly honest the most complex thing about it had been researching it and discovering who'd first created it and all the times it'd been used since. It was a spell that had been used in the past to send incredibly powerful objects of power and magic to the ones that needed them and would use it for the greater good. It had sent Excalibur to Arthur, the Spear of Light to Cuculan, and the Wand of Heroes to Dumbledore for his battle against Grindelwald. It only consisted of a single wand movement and a two-syllable word.

"Eicio!" he cast and instantly the chest launched high into the air over the alleys, arching away from Knockturn Alley the Unspeakable was glad to see.

Now the hard part. He had to attract the Death Eater's attention before he saw the chest flying through the air and keep that attention until he was certain that it was in the hands that it belonged to. Grabbing the transfigured crate, he ran out from his hiding spot and ran back into Knockturn Alley. It was only moments before the Death Eater was on his tail.

Meanwhile back on Diagon Alley, Harry was looking in the window at the Nimbus 2000 that was on display at Quality Quidditch when he heard a sound like a gun firing and then saw something like fireworks going off and shooting up in the sky. Curious more than anything, he saw that it wasn't actually fireworks, but some object that looked to have been shot straight up into the air. Slowly, he tracked where it would land, surprised that it seemed to be landing not too far away from where he stood.

Quickly, following the smoke trail that everybody around him was ignoring and seemed to take as a matter of course, he got to the hidden away niche between two stores just after the thing had crashed. He dashed in between two arguing wizards, who never even notice him come between them and soon found what had been falling. It looked like a chest or box of some kind. Surprisingly, despite the fall that it had just suffered it had little to no damage on it. It looked to be a very expensive chest at that with gold seams, decorative runes carved into them, and gemstones and other fancy things to make it look pretty all over it.

Still curious, Harry slowly reached out a hand and touched it. It was cool and by touch just an ordinary chest about the size of Dudley's fourth TV he keeps in the patio room. So not very big, but big enough to hold anything from a lot of jewelry to a severed head. Given how expensive the box looked Harry was willing to put his money on jewelry.

Frowning to himself, he looked for the latch to open it up, but couldn't find anything. The closest thing that looked like it would let him open it was a strange panel that had a pointy thing at the center of it. Forgetting the proverb about how curiosity killed the cat, he investigated the panel more closely, running his thumb over it. He jumped back when he felt a sharp pain and saw that the pointy thing had cut him. A small pinprick of blood pooled on his thumb. He sucked off the blood to quench the pain, glad it was only a pinprick.

Then the most amazing thing happened.

The chest clicked and slowly opened up on it's own while Harry just sat there and stared. A blinding golden light emerged from the chest, forcing Harry to cover his eyes. When it finally subsided Harry looked in and was surprised to find that he was mostly right. Instead of being filled with jewelry there was only a single silver armband, though it could just as easily fit around his own forearm.

Inching closer, Harry reached out with his left hand to see if he could tell any more about the box or who it belonged to. After all this kind of thing isn't something a person would just throw away.

Before he even knew what was happening, the silver band jumped up, on its own, and latched itself around his left forearm sealing itself on skintight. Though not tight enough to be uncomfortable or pinching but tight enough that he couldn't even reach up under it to reach the skin beneath.

"WHAAAAAAH!" Harry screamed, skidding back from the box, shaking his arm to get the thing off.

After it didn't so much as slide or pinch from where it had latched itself on, he stopped panicking and took a closer look at it. Before he could really investigate though, the chest that the band had been in caught on fire. Without anything nearby to start a fire with by the way. Fortunately the fire didn't spread beyond the chest itself, which was completely destroyed. When it finally petered out there was hardly any ash at all.

Blinking in surprise Harry did a double-take between the small pile of ash and the silver band now on his arm. Deciding it would be better to not be there right now, he scurried to his feet and covered the band with the overly large sweatshirt he had on and raced back to the Leaky Cauldron to meet up with Hagrid. He'd had enough window shopping on the alley for one day.

Back in Knockturn Alley, the Unspeakable had been dueling the Death Eater and two of his friends that had showed up to help. The transfigured chest was behind him and his back was against the wall, so to speak, as they were at the furthest end of Knockturn Alley with only a solid barrier and some ward stones between them and Muggle London. The Unspeakable had managed to disable the Death Eater's two helpers, one stunned and the other restrained with magical ropes, but the first one was still giving him trouble.

Finally, he felt what he'd been waiting for. The signal he'd planted on the chest, indicating that it had been destroyed finally went off. Since the chest could only be destroyed once what was in it, the Omniband, had been removed and bonded itself to a host that mean that for better or worse it had fallen into the hands of the one meant to have it. He only had a moment of breathing room as both he and the Death Eater tried to gather their energy to continue the fight. Except, he no longer needed to continue the fight.

Without hesitation or any more waiting he cast the one spell he knew he'd be using before the fight even got to this point. A murder/suicide spell guaranteed to take out everyone within thirty feet of its casting. The last thing the Unspeakable saw was the Death Eater's eyes go wide as he was caught completely off guard. He was at least pleased that the Death Eater's two friends were within range of the spell's influence and would be going with them.

In Diagon Alley, everyone still there felt the street beneath them shake and a sound like thunder, only louder and different, and a flash of energy coming from Knockturn Alley. Conversation ceased for all of ten seconds as people turned to stare and then after that they went right back to doing what they had been doing. Unfortunately, a fact of the Wizarding World is that explosions and loud noises are just a part of life. In Knockturn Alley, the explosions were just as often a part of everyday occurrences ranging from a murder to a misfiring spell or bad potion.

The next morning the papers held a story detailing a Ministry Employee who died from an attack by some unknown dark wizard in Knockturn Alley. There were no names, in fact the whole story was only a single paragraph in length, right between two advertisements for the Daily Prophet sponsored businesses.

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Later that afternoon, almost evening in fact, Harry had finally made his way back to 4 Privet Drive. As much as he'd been hoping though, it seemed that he would not have the house all to himself for however many days it took the Dursley's to get back from the shack on a rock in the middle of the sea, as they were already back.

With a sigh and a heavy heart, Harry carried his trunk and all the rest of the things he'd gotten today with Hagrid today at Diagon Alley. Knowing better than to waste his time trying the door, or looking for a key (there never was one), Harry set his things down and pressed the doorbell and then sat down on his trunk to wait. They would either let him in, or he would sit out on the porch until one of the neighbors saw him sitting there and the Dursley's let him in out of shame. It had happened before.

While he waited, he took the opportunity to take a better look at the band that had gotten stuck on his arm earlier today. He hadn't been able to move it, let alone get it off, no matter what he tried. He'd even shown it to Hagrid, but the drunk half-giant just grinned and complemented him on his accessory. Without using so many words of course.

Speaking of which, Harry had some time to closer inspect it on the journey back to Privet Drive, thanks to a taxi driver that didn't ask any questions upon seeing the gold coin Harry held out to him. The band was mostly silver, though portions of it were so light and so dark they might be called white and black, but overall it was a gray silver color. It covered his young arm from wrist to halfway to his elbow, a lighter silver seam circling the rounded edges of the band. It was a darker silver, almost black but more dark-gray, on the bulk of the band, except in the center on the top part. There was a jeweled design there.

It was sort of like a diamond inside a circle, actually, as he inspected it closer, that's exactly what it was. An upraised portion of the band formed a circular plate, upon which a diamond rested, coming to a sharp point at the center, and touching the edges of the plate at four points. The shadows and light played havoc with Harry's vision as he looked at the diamond, as looking at it from one angle had the 'top half' of the diamond looking 'white' and the same 'half' of the circle cast in shadow so it looked 'black', and then the opposite of the 'bottom half', where the diamond looked 'black' and the circle looked 'white'!

Just outside of the circle and diamond though, were a series of grooves and 'pearls' though they weren't actually pearls, but just rounded beads of silver placed symmetrically around the circle and diamond. Of course, all over the band, Harry could feel small grooves here and there, though they were not easily visible, he could feel them with his fingertips. As he traced one groove in particular, he realized it kind of felt like letters, but not any kind of letters he even recognized!

Unfortunately, before he could determine the exact nature of the band, the taxi arrived at 4 Privet Drive and Harry had to get out, taking his trunk and new owl with him. It was then that he noticed the car parked in the driveway and realized what that meant. Leading to where he now sat in front of the door to his home, waiting to be let in. Since he had the time, he started feeling around the band again, trying to determine what kind of lettering was etched all over the thing.

It took a while, but he finally noticed that a lot of the lettering was similar, though not the same, to some things he'd seen in Diagon Alley earlier that morning. A few of them he'd even seen in his spell books that he'd browsed through. The snowy white owl, still in her cage beside him, hooted questionably. Harry sighed and shrugged.

"I don't know how much longer we'll have to be out here girl. I don't have a key, and UNTIL THE DURSLEY'S LET ME IN, I'm just going to HAVE TO STAY OUT HERE ALL NIGHT, WHERE EVERYBODY CAN SEE ME!" he shouted at the door and all around the neighborhood.

There was raised voices from inside where even Harry could hear them, but no sounds of the door being unlocked or opened. He sighed and shrugged helplessly at his companion. She gave a bird-shrug in reply, then reached out a talon for the door to her cage.

Harry blinked, then looked around, surprised to see the sky already darkening and a few porch lights coming on automatically. It was getting dark and the sun was setting. Knowing that owls were nocturnal creatures by design, Harry nodded and smoothly opened the door to the cage.

"Well, at least one of us should be doing something worthwhile. If I'm still out here when you get back girl, maybe you should go find help. Like the police for child abandonment or something," Harry said out loud to the owl on his arm preening her with his fingers. He listened as there was another commotion inside the house, but still no sign of the door being opened. Harry sighed and then allowed his owl to fly off, though she did not go far.

"Wonder what this thing is anyway," Harry muttered softly, turning back to the band on his arm. He knew pretty much from the start that it was magical, but it hadn't responded in the slightest to his touch, no matter how many times he ran his fingers over the jewels and the writing.

So maybe, he thought to himself, since it's magical it will only respond to something else that's magical. Like a wand! Excited by this line of thought, Harry quickly pulled out his wand, which he'd kept in the box in his trunk. Taking it out, he saw an immediate response, as the tip of his wand was glowing that same warm yellow/red that the sparks had been when he'd first waved it around. The band too was responding now, as the pearls around the diamond plate were softly glowing. Not vividly or all that noticeably, but enough that Harry could tell the difference.

Face etched in concentration, Harry slowly brought his wand closer to the band and gently tapped the glowing tip against the pearl closest to him as he held it up before him. Instantly, the diamond at the center lit up with a golden yellow light and where it had once been smoky and shadow-filled, it was now crystal clear and showing a silhouette of some kind. Curious, Harry brought his wand closer to the diamond, absently making a swishing motion with it. Instantly the silhouette changed to something completely different.

Surprised and encouraged by this discovery, Harry repeated the motion a few more times, the silhouette changing each time. After about a minute of this Harry realized that the forms began to repeat themselves and by his count there were roughly 8 or 10 different silhouettes showing up. It was actually hard to tell with a couple of them as at least two could have been the same one out of sequence but he wasn't sure.

Finally settling on one of the more unique silhouettes he saw, it kind of looked like a long-tailed lizard with something on the tip of its tail, he decided to see what else this thing could do besides show off cool shapes. He briefly wondered if there were magic words to go along with it, but he didn't know any besides the generic ones everybody in the world knew. Out of sheer silliness, he recited most of them, waving his wand in a figure eight above the band, but nothing happened. Except that it got really quiet inside the house, but he didn't notice that at the time.

Frowning, Harry shrugged and raised his wand above his head and then brought it down, intending to tap the same pearl thing that he had before, but at the last second the door swung open to reveal a red-faced fuming Vernon Dursley. He looked furious and the sudden opening of the door startled Harry, enough that he 'missed' in where his wand finally landed and tapped the center of the diamond instead.

"BOY!" Vernon shouted in a strained voice, about to do violence right there on his own front step, but before he could, the freak's wand touched the funny looking bracelet thing on his hand first. That's when Dursley's world crashed down around him, metaphorically speaking. In a flash of yellow-gold light, the boy disappeared and something else reappeared!

For Harry, the experience was vastly different!

Despite questionable treatment by his relatives Harry had never been electrocuted before, but he would imagine that getting struck by a bolt of lightning felt much like this! His whole body was charged with energy and it felt like that energy was still coursing through him in a never ending loop trying to find a way out! All of it starting and coming from that band on his wrist!

Then he felt his body begin to change! His limbs and bones shrunk, his muscles tightened, his veins and organs shifted, and his skin reshaped itself becoming leathery like a lizard's! That's about when the heat started! He was so hot! It felt like fire was pouring through his veins instead of blood and that's about the time he noticed the tail growing out of the base of his spine! On the tip of the whip-like leathery tail was a ball of fire, he held it up to his face for a second and then flicked the tail around behind him with a swooshing sound! By this time, he'd finally noticed the rest of the changes had completed and he was now a four foot (seven if you count the tail) orange-brown giant lizard with big green eyes and a flame on the tip of its tail, which was arched over his back like a scorpion's tail!

After the flash of yellow-gold light had dissipated, there was a moment of silence on the doorstep of Number Four Privet Drive, and then two voices screamed out in sheer terror. One of those voices was of course Vernon Dursley who had just seen the strangest thing he'd ever witnessed, and that scared him more than anything else. The other was the now fire salamander that had only moments before been a young Harry Potter.

"Whu-whu-whu... What happened to me?!" the salamander shouted, displaying a highly unique ability as no other fire salamander on the planet could speak. It's voice, for the record, was rather deep and rumbly but not gravely. It certainly wasn't the voice Harry was used to. He spent half a second looking around for the man that had spoken, but only saw his still screaming Uncle. Only after another few seconds did he realize that the strange voice was him! "And what happened to my voice?!"

"AAAHHHHH!" Vernon screamed and grabbed a broom and tried to sweep the thing out of his house.

"Hey! That hurts!" salamander-Harry cried out. He instinctively swung his tail forward to bat the offending object away but neglected to pay close attention as the wrong part of his tail hit the straw of the broom thus catching it on fire.

"AAAHHHHH!" Vernon screamed now because his broom was on fire. He dropped it on the shag carpet and grabbed the baseball bat he usually threatened Harry with when he didn't do all of Dudley's chores.

Fear gripped the fire salamander at that moment and fire salamanders, unfortunately for Vernon, react only one way to fear. The orange-brown creature turned a menacing red and yellow before opening it's mouth wide, aiming for the bat more than the man and a massive fireball about the size of a football shot out and destroyed the bat in seconds. Unfortunately it also spread the flames, and the burning broom on the shag carpet hadn't helped either.

An hour later, all said and done, only Harry's things remained of all possessions in and around 4 Privet Drive once the fire was put out. Thankfully he'd only been transformed for about ten minutes and then a gold diamond on the salamander's chest, which Harry hadn't noticed until the end there, began beeping with a warning red light and moments after that there'd been a blinding flash of red light and then Harry Potter was standing there, same as ever. He'd then moved his trunk and his owl to across the street and then went to Mrs. Figg's house, the lady down the street with all the cats, and called the fire department.

Fortunately, or not, Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley had all made it safely out of the house before it became an inferno, just needing to be looked over by the paramedics for smoke inhalation, and the fire trucks arrived in time to keep the fire from spreading to the other houses in the neighborhood, but nothing could be done to save the house itself. The Dursley's were left with nothing but their pajamas, as all documents had been left in Vernon's study on the second floor... and not in a fireproof safe either.

Harry, amidst all this had managed to slip away in the confusion.

He wasn't stupid. No matter what made the Dursley's keep him around for all these years instead of giving him up for adoption, or whatever, nothing could possibly make them accept him back into their home after this. His home didn't even exist anymore, so there was nothing to do as the Dursley's and he would never live in the same home ever again, not if Vernon had anything to say about it in any case.

At that moment, as 11-year-old Harry Potter walked off into the night with only a trunk, a caged owl, and a magical armband that turned him into magical creatures, hundreds of miles to the north all manner of magical instruments started going crazy driving their owner into a wild panic.

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In the weeks that followed, for the last month of summer vacation, Harry had quite a few adventures. Primarily, of course, because he was officially a runaway, and potentially an arsonist since he had, technically speaking, burnt down the house that he was never going back to.

The night of, he'd made it as far as the park a few blocks away from Privet drive before stopping and apologizing to the owl he named Hedwig for the lack of proper accommodations. She seemed to understand and was sympathetic towards him. At least she returned after he let her out to hunt for the night.

For half the night he just sat there on the swings just thinking, trying to figure out what to do now. He was only eleven years old, and just that as it was now coming up on midnight of his eleventh birthday! He wasn't old enough, wasn't prepared to be out on his own so suddenly like this!

He needed a plan. Actually, he revised, he needed some place to spend the night or just some place to live. Sure, he could go to Hogwarts like Hagrid told him about, and it seemed the friendly giant lived there all year round anyway, but not until September 1st and that was a whole month away!

He didn't have any friends... well at all, but certainly none where he could spend the night or thirty. Besides, once the Dursley's got their composure back in place (his aunt had been crying her eyes out staring at her destroyed garden last time he saw her) they would make sure no one that he might even know of would take him in. So where did homeless people go? Besides living on the street like Vernon always complained about.

Shelters. Homeless shelters, he remembered hearing about them on the news once or twice. But he didn't know where any of them were nor how to get to them!

Harry looked down at his wrist and raised an eyebrow in thought.

Since this thing had gotten him into this mess, maybe it could get him out of it somehow?

Hesitantly, Harry brought his wand back out and tapped the band again. It had stayed a warning-red for about twenty minutes after he'd changed back and then finally gone back to its normal appearance. Now, it turned the same yellow-gold that it had when he'd looked at it before. He spent some minutes cycling through the silhouettes now with greater understanding of what they meant and what the band could do. He still didn't fully understand it, but he could figure out that when he activated it, he would transform into whatever creature was in silhouette in the crystal's image.

At roughly the same time Harry was sitting in the park alone, back at Privet Drive, a visitor arrived at Mrs. Figg's home. Albus Dumbledore appeared out of the night at the end of Privet Drive, much as he had ten years before, the crack of his arrival lost in all the commotion of the disaster that had only ended a short time before. He wasted no time walking past the smoldering heap where number four used to be only to determine that the wards placed there had fallen with no hope of being restored before moving on to his friend's home down the street.

"Where is he Arabella?" the silver-haired wizard said the moment he was through the door. "Where is Harry? Hagrid assured me that everything went five this afternoon!"

"I don't know, I'm sorry Albus," the distraught woman wailed. "He came in only a few hours ago and called the fire brigade! Then once they arrived and all this noise and confusion and my cats panicking and everything... I lost track of him and when next I turned around... he was gone!"

"Not to worry Arabella," Dumbledore worked to calm the crying squib. "Thankfully I do have means to find Harry quickly in case anything untoward should happen. I brought it with me just in case." He pulled out a small silver device that looked like a fancy compass except the needles did not point north. "It will take me only a moment to set it and then we can find Harry and reunite him with his relatives. Then it is most urgent we get them all to safe housing before the dark forces can discover the loss of the defenses."

At the same time the wizard and squib were working to find him, back in the park Harry had finally decided on the form he wanted to choose. There were three that looked almost identical to each other, but he felt that they were actually different creatures that just all happened to have similar silhouettes. He chose the first one of those, it kind of looked like a really big man with large arms and spiky hair. The other two were just as big, but one had a bald head and the others arms weren't nearly so big.

Taking a deep breath, Harry tapped his wand against the glowing crystal and felt the change as he was blinded by the flash of yellow-gold light. This time instead of heat, he felt cold so intense that he forgot what hot was for a second! The rest of it wasn't as strange as changing into the fire salamander, mostly because he was keeping the same human shape, two arms two legs a head and body. He was getting bigger though. The cold was the strangest part of it though by far as it felt like he had ice growing all over him starting at the arm where the band was until it reached and covered his head and eyes. When it had consumed him entirely, he looked down at himself with ice-blue eyes and saw that he now had ice-white skin, a black leather tunic covering his torso with matching boots covering his feet, frozen crystals for hair, and stood between ten and fifteen feet in height with matching width to make up his bulk.

"Whoa," he said in a booming, window-shaking voice as he looked down at himself.

Meanwhile, back at Mrs. Figg's house, Dumbledore's device suddenly started spinning madly the moment he activated it, and then exploded in the old wizard's hands. He spent the next hour investigating the remains but had no clue as to what could have caused that to happen. It was a simple device that tracked down a person, similar to the Point-Me charm, but more reliable. He'd built it himself and keyed it to Harry's magical signature. The only fathomable reason for it to explode was if Harry's magical signature had expanded to giant levels in the space of the same few seconds when Dumbledore activated it. Of course, Dumbledore had no way of knowing that Harry even now stood as a giant in the park only a block or two away. A Frost Giant, but a giant nevertheless.

After a few moments experimentation he found that while he still felt that all-encompassing cold, it didn't really bother him that much. He also found that he could transfer that cold to other things, kind of like that Iceman character he'd read about in Dudley's comics. He could also, after wishing he wasn't so massive and noticeable, that he could change his size. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a limit to how small he could get, but thankfully also on how big he could get too.

Finally, he settled with standing at just over seven feet and managed not to freeze his trunk solid when he picked it up. About seven minutes later though, he noticed that the same diamond crystal was set up as some kind of pendant on the black leather tunic and that it began beeping with the same red-warning light that had preceded his change back to normal before. It gave him enough warning to get out of sight, as he'd run all the way back to the Underground station, just in time before he returned to normal.

After that, Harry felt very tired and not surprisingly as it had been a very busy day and it was past midnight already. He spent a few moments debating on whether to get on a train or not, but he didn't really have anywhere to go.

At just that moment, luck would have it that an old plumber happened to be passing by the very moment that Harry stepped out of the alcove that he'd hidden in to change back. The old man was wearing a red Hawaiian shirt and gray pants, his hair silver but his face shaved clean. He witnessed the scene and almost couldn't believe his eyes, but a second look told him he wasn't seeing things. He certainly wasn't the type of man that would leave any ten-year-old boy in an oversized sweater, jeans, carrying a trunk and snowy white owl alone on the subway platform in the middle of the night on the outskirts of downtown London.

"Hey kid," he called out, his American accent rather noticeable amidst the background.

The skinny dark haired boy looked up, startled and almost bolted but stopped himself. The old plumber smiled and held up his hands non-threateningly. "Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to help. Are you lost? Where are your parents?"

Harry hesitated, unsure as to whether he should trust this stranger, but to be honest he didn't have a lot of options for the moment. Finally he answered, "I-I don't have any parents sir. They're dead. They died when I was just a baby. I... I don't have anywhere to go..."

The old man stared at him, and then sighed. Shaking his head tiredly he knelt down so they were face-to-face. "My name is Max. Max Tennyson. I'd like to help you out, if you're willing to let me. I don't suppose you have family that you can..."

"They don't want me. They'd... they'd never let me back after tonight," Harry said all in a rush.

Max looked confused, then asked, "What happened? It can't be that bad, and they are you're family..."

Harry determinedly shook his head. "I... I burned the house down. But I didn't mean to! It was an accident! And Uncle Vernon, he was coming at me with a broom and then a bat and I panicked and they've always called me a freak so I know that..."

"Whoa whoa whoa, calm down," Max tried to comfort the boy by putting his hands on his shoulders. "It's all right. I'm sure it wasn't your fault. Tell you what, why don't you come with me and you can get some rest. Here, I'll take that." He picked up the trunk with the owl's cage on top of it. "And who's this? She's beautiful. What's her name?" he commented about the snowy white owl inside.

"Hedwig," Harry replied, following along beside the friendly man. "Thank you."

"Think nothing of it. Kindness is it's own reward I always say," Max said with a shrug and a smile. He hid his real thoughts on the monsters that were Harry's relatives. Anyone that treated a child like that deserved to be put away for a very long time. "So kid, what's your name? Or should I ask Hedwig here?"

Harry smiled and laughed. "Harry, sir. Harry Potter."

Max raised an eyebrow but just smiled and nodded, saying, "Nice to meet you Harry. We're just up ahead," he pointed towards their destination. Harry turned and saw the oldest, most worn, aged motor home on four wheels than anyone alive had ever seen. Max called it the "Rust Bucket" and the name certainly seemed to fit. Harry thought it was the best thing he'd ever seen in his whole life!

"Ah," Max said as he helped Harry inside the vehicle, "These are my grandchildren. Ben and Gwen Tennyson. They're cousins by the way."

"Grandpa! How much longer do we have to be in this rainy city anyway?" the brown-haired green eyed boy in white and black striped shirt whined. "It's worse than Seattle with the weather and at least we had some fun there! Hey, who's this?"

"Way to go doofus!" the green-eyed redhead in a blue cat shirt snapped at her cousin. "Hi, sorry about the pea-brain over there. I'm Gwen. It's nice to meet you." She smiled and greeted the young boy that looked to be their own age.

Harry blinked, then smiled and accepted the girl's greeting. "I'm Harry. Harry Potter. It's brilliant to meet you. I, uh..."

"Grandpa, why'd you bring home some kid with a funky accent?" Ben asked while eyeballing Harry.

Harry wasn't sure whether or not to be insulted, but glancing down he saw the crystal on the band go from red to normal and he couldn't help smiling at the swell of confidence that he suddenly had the power to defend himself and didn't have to take anymore crap from anybody. He certainly wasn't about to go back to being the bullied after having just escaped the reach of the Dursley's and Dudley especially.

"From my perspective it's you who has the funny accent," he snapped back at Ben.

"Oh I like you already," Gwen smiled friendly at Harry.

"HEY!" Ben yelled.

"That's enough," Max stopped the fight before it could begin. "Harry here needs some help and we're going to give it to him. Ben, given your hospitality I think Harry can sleep in your bunk for the night. You can bunk with me... or Gwen."

"Eww! And risk getting cooties! I don't think so! Hey, how come I have to give up my bunk? Why not Gwen? Let Hairy risk getting cooties from her stuff!" Ben argued. Max just smiled and said, "On second thought, why don't you take the couch for the night. Might do you some good to remember the manners I've been trying to teach you all summer long."

Ben gulped and wisely kept his mouth shut after that.

TBC...?