Author's Note: This chapter is going to be a bit short, just because it is one location with just repetitive action going on, but things will start to get bigger and better soon. This is my first update, I plan to put in updates every Thursday, but if there is an extra short chapter in between, I'll put it up on a Sunday or something.

Review responses:

sakurhita - Unfortunately the retribution and revenge will take a while. There will be a hint of some retribution before Harry starts Hogwarts, and I'm planning on something real juice for Vernon probably in the winter of Harry's second year.

Kameka - Harry is pretty introverted at the moment, he will start being more vocal later on. And once there are more human characters, there will be more dialogue.

Read more, review more, I promise to respond to everyone!

Chapter 7: The New Room

Harry woke up in the dark curled up on his cot. The last thing he remembered was finishing his hamburger the night before and falling asleep. Harry rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. As he opened them he realized he wasn't in his room. He was in a box.

Harry got over his claustrophobia a long time ago. His room was barely bigger than he was, so he got used to small spaces pretty quick. So he wasn't afraid of being in a small box, he was afraid of being somewhere he didn't recognize. Familiarity was one of the only things that made him feel safe.

He heard from outside the box some muttering of other children, so he tried to stand up. As he did so, he heard some whimpering outside, and when he peeked out of the top of the box there was a gasp from children around him.

Harry was in a dark room, a little smaller than the first floor of his house on Privet Drive. The only light source came from a single bulb on an electrical wire swinging above their heads. Harry felt like they were moving, but couldn't figure out how. There was a bit of a salty smell in the air, but having never been to the ocean before, he didn't make the connection that he was near open water. The other children in the room were all against the wall, and when his eyes adjusted to the dark he could see that each child had a chain around one of their legs that was keeping them close to the wall. The children all stared back at him with equal curiosity. Most of them were older than he was, around 10-13 years old. Next to his box was a girl younger than him with nearly white blonde hair wearing a black dress.

Harry climbed out of the box and asked, "Where are we?"

No one answered him. Most of them just kept their heads down. As he tried to make eye contact, they all looked away, just like he would do when Uncle Vernon or someone else yelled at him. The girl near him stopped paying attention to him and started reaching towards a sack that was near the end of the room. Unfortunately for her, it was just out of reach. Harry went over to the sack and opened it up. There were a number of random foodstuffs in the sack. Some of it smelled bad and he put those to the side. There was a loaf of sliced bread, a few cans of baked beans, several bruised oranges, and tiny bottles of water. As he unpacked, all eyes in the room were drawn to him.

He held up a can of beans and asked, "Does anyone have a can opener?" No one responded. From the other end of the room, another can of beans rolled down. It had been split in the middle from repeated impacts to the side of the can.

Harry decided to put the can on hold for now. Harry split up the oranges into slices and went around the room to give out slices and the waters. Three of the older children tried to jump out and grab more food from Harry, but he was quicker from years of running from Dudley and his friends. He picked up a number of other water bottles that were empty and brought them back to the end the box was on. When he got back to the first end, he gave water and orange slices to the little blonde girl.

She wasn't as dirty as the rest of them and when he gave her the water, she squeaked out, "Thank you."

In any other situation, Harry might try to explore a bit, but he knew that getting close to some of the other children would be dangerous for him, so he stayed at the end by the little girl. The floor was covered by a layer of straw and dirt, like an animal stable, the walls were all metal. The wall on the end he was on had a structure of metal bars, but Harry couldn't figure out their purpose. As he was running his hands along the wall, one of the pieces of metal poked him and he withdrew his hand quickly. He ran his fingers along it, it felt like the end of a handle of some kind. He tried pulling on it, but it didn't budge. He carefully inspected the edge of the handle, the end was pointed and very sharp. He was lucky it didn't cut him the first time.

Though it did give him an idea. He grabbed one of the cans of beans and held it to the metal. He punctured through the lid after a few seconds of pressure. He couldn't use it to cut, but after multiple attempts, he had a hole that was big enough to pour.

Harry took the bread out of the package and poured some beans onto a slice and ate it. He then repeated the process one by one for the other children. The ones near the far end voraciously grabbed at the food and one of them spilled hers on the floor. Harry made sure to get that girl another slice. He went through two of the four cans of beans before finishing. There was still a little bread left so he tied off the bag. He didn't know what to do with the rest of the rotting food, so he just put it back in the sack. Consuming rotten food could be worse than not eating at all. Harry had learned that when he had tried storing food in his room and eating it later.

Harry's eyes continued to adjust to the dark and he could now see the box he had been in was the one from the dishwasher. So his uncle must have brought him here. He didn't know if this was a punishment or something else. Maybe this is where all the other freaks ended up when they blew out the power for the whole street. Even if this was a punishment or to teach him a lesson, it wasn't that bad. He had some space to move around, more than just bread and water, and most importantly he hadn't seen any of his relatives yet.

He started to look and feel through the dishwasher box. Everything he owned was in there with the exception of his gift bag with his money, thank you notes, dried mistletoe, and the tea room card. He wondered if it was still safe with whatever made it so Dudley and his uncle were unable to look at it. Also down in the box, the few sets of clothes he owned, his briefcase (with some school supplies), some pens and pencils, his copy of The Hobbit, and his cot folded in half.

When he was done looking around, he heard from the middle of the room, "Hey kid, come over here." Harry saw one of the kids leaning away from the wall and waving at him in the dark. Harry walked slowly down the middle until he reached the boy. He was maybe 12 years old with sandy blonde hair. He was wearing a puffy jacket and jeans. "I need you to go to the other end and get the bucket." Harry looked confused, so the boy continued. "I need to take a shit, you understand? There's a bucket in the corner down there," pointing to the far end. "After we use the bucket, you put it on the shelf across from me and someone on the outside takes it and brings it back empty. They won't clean it more than twice a day, so we only put it up there when it is full."

That was disgusting, Harry already thought it was disgusting when he had to use a bucket in his room with his relatives, but now he was sharing it with a dozen children. However, they were in a box with children chained to the wall, so he didn't think it was that big of a deal, relatively. Harry went to the end and brought the bucket back to the boy who proceeded to do his business. Harry returned to his box. He climbed down inside and tried to read The Hobbit, but it was too dark. He climbed back out to get some light and started to pick up where he left off.

Just then, the girl next to him spoke up, very politely, "Excuse me? Could you read to me?"

He stared back at the little blonde girl. Her eyes were hopeful and scared at the same time. "Have you read 'The Hobbit?'" asked Harry. The girl shook her head. "It's about an incredible adventure of a small man in a very large world." He explained it as best as he could. "I'll start at the beginning."

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."

Harry started a new routine.

All of the children were sleeping at relatively the same time. There was also a new sack of food that was lowered through the ceiling on a hook and the old one was taken back at sometime when there was a low amount of light from the outside each day. With the arrival of the food, the children assumed that it was morning. Harry brought the bucket around to all the children. Everyone got a piece of fruit and beans on bread. Later on, he would read a few pages from The Hobbit. After he had gotten a few chapters into the book, the other children started to pay attention to his reading. After a week had passed, Harry had needed to start again from the beginning and had moved to sit directly under the light in the middle while reading out loud to the group.

He tried to read only a few pages a day because he didn't know how long they would be in there. However, after he caught up to where he had been before, it became difficult to not read ahead for his own curiosity.

He tried for a little while to try to get to know the other children, after reading each day. None of them liked talking, but enough spoke to him that he learned that all of them came from places that didn't want them for one reason or another. He didn't really want to tell anyone his story, so he understood that no one wanted to tell him theirs. No one shared their names either, it just didn't seem worth it to be familiar with anyone there. A lot of the times he spoke with the other kids, it would be about something in The Hobbit or about another book they had read before. Remembering things that never happened seemed to be the best way to pass the time in their dark room.

Before sleeping, Harry would read another few pages, and then they would pass the bucket and sleep. Harry continued to sleep in his box. He was the only one who had more than a blanket to lie on, so he avoided showing anyone that he had something they didn't. Harry also used his pens and pencils to draw on the inside of the box. One side was a map of Middle Earth, another was a unicorn, another was the map of all the streets around Privet Drive and his different routes home, and the last one he just doodled random things.

It was a sad day for everyone when Harry finally finished the last chapter in The Hobbit. They had all been keeping track of the day with a few pages in the morning and a few pages in the evening. The blonde girl cried a little that night because the book was over and he heard some other sobs as well from the far corner. The next day, Harry tried to start retelling what he remembered from Redwall, but he had trouble remembering it and it didn't come out exactly right. It was however what the other children needed to keep their spirits up. When he was done telling it, he was mentally exhausted and couldn't imagine anything else to retell.

Luckily, a few days later, they started to hear noise and people moving around outside. Occasionally people seemed to walk by, outside the walls of the room talking in another language. There was a rattling of metal on the end where Harry slept and for the first time since the doors were closed, they opened again and sunlight shone into the box. Most of the kids shielded their eyes from so long in the dark and screamed at the sudden light. Three large men came into the room and started to unchain the children near the door.

The girl and one other were dragged out, Harry was also grabbed and dragged from the room. He yelled and screamed and clawed at the man holding him. The man holding him wasn't as big as his uncle, but even though he fought as hard as he could he couldn't get away. Outside, all he could see was blue water all around them. They were on a ship at sea, and that must have been the movement that he could feel all the time in the room. Harry was thrown next to the blonde girl and the boy that was near the door while the man who had dragged Harry yelled at him in another language while holding a wooden club in his hands. Harry yelled back at him.

The man with the club laughed at the small child in front of him and swatted Harry in the head with his club like he was nothing but a fly.

When the club connected, it hit Harry right on his lightning bolt scar, and Harry felt something intangible crack. There was a pulse of energy with a violet hue that knocked all the men around them into the air. The boy and girl that had been unchained were pushed against other metal containers, but they stayed on the ground. The man that hit Harry went straight up in the air, while all the others that had been standing around were thrown over the side of the ship. Harry could hear a creaking and groaning of metal and the ship started to lean to the side. Alarms started going off around the ship causing Harry to look around in panic. The man that hit Harry fell out of the sky crashed down right in front of Harry with a sickening crunch. Harry was reminded of when the sign broke Nigel's nose and the sound that it made. This was far, far worse. He did not get up either. The sound froze Harry in place, staring at the broken body of the man. Blood began to pool around the man's broken form on the deck of the ship.

A few containers started to slide off the tops of the stacks and splashed into the water, snapping Harry back to the reality at hand. Harry could hear the screaming of the children still inside their room. The ship started to list even more and more containers began to fall into the sea. The broken body of the man who had fallen from the sky started to slide towards the water, leaving a bloody smear behind him, so Harry ran in the opposite direction towards the higher end of the ship. He grabbed onto the railing there and held on with all the strength he had.

Looking around he could see the blonde girl had made it to this side of the ship as well, he didn't know where the other boy who had been unchained had gone. The ship began to roll over and more containers fell off the boat. Harry saw the container he was in crash through the railing and fall into the sea. He forced his focus away from that in order to pay attention to his own survival.

When there was water directly beneath him, he prepared to let go. He yelled at the blonde girl to do the same… and then he dropped. He hit the water and went under. He looked around and saw all the containers that had fallen sinking into the depths of the ocean. When he came up, he realized he had forgotten a small detail. He didn't know how to swim. Just at that moment, he saw the blonde girl drop about thirty feet away from him into the water. When she came up to the surface, it seemed like she was having the same problem as he was, her head going back below the surface over and over. Harry scrambled as best he could to get over to her, but he kept going below the water as well. Just as water began to fill his lungs, his clothes inflated like a balloon and he rose up to the surface, taking a few breaths of fresh air before moving as quickly as possible to the blonde girl. She grabbed ahold of him and took a few deep breaths.

An hour later, the boat had completely sunk and various debris was beginning to float back up to the surface of the ocean. The blonde girl pointed out what looked like a large piece of wood and they paddled over to it. It turned out to be a large office desk made of polished wood. There was enough space on it for two adults, and the two children easily fit on top of it. As they climbed on top, Harry's clothes deflated. They lay there for a few moments just breathing. The girl was out of breath, but starting to recover a bit and looked like she was about to start crying.

Trying to distract her he said, "My name is Harry." The girl looked shocked and didn't know what to say. Harry followed up with, "But most people call me 'Freak'"

The girl looked startled, but then responded slowly, "My name is Lyra… but my family mostly calls me 'Squib.'"

Harry nodded to her, he understood that that the word was something bad, but had no idea what it meant. The two of them held onto each other and fell asleep on top of the desk.

Chapter 8