"Let the rain come.

Let rain wash us in our ruins,

wash the corpses, wash our history."*

Shortly after Dumbledore's departure, another staff member dragged Harry to a medical inspection. It was not a surprise, but he had kept his scrawny body and all of his scars. That was enough to make his new caregiver frown, except that she was not here to find proof of abuse or anything like that. In his new story, Harry escaped a near-death experience from a German raid, so the woman searched for any pulmonary complications from smoke inhalation, recent wounds or parasites that Harry could have cought during his trip.

From the point of view of a mid-century nurse at the beginning of the war, Harry was in pretty good shape—summarized by a strong beating heart and four working limbs.

She asked him many questions, which Harry was incapable of answering clearly. How can he know if his body has already been infected with chickenpox! … So, he didn't lie. He said that he didn't know.

After the tenth identical reply, the woman stopped and just wrote with an annoyed scratch on her clipboard: 'Amnesia/Concussion.' She took another long look at Harry's scarred face and added: 'Shock may have damaged cognitive functions.'

Playing dumb? Harry would roll with it. The caregiver presented him a small bag with the bare minimum of clothes inside—the same kind of grayish tunic every orphan wore here … and a gas mask.

Being dead was not that bad, but Harry didn't really like the pain that came before it—he didn't want to imagine the suffering induced by biochemical weapons. He would keep that mask close during his time in London. Even if air raids and bombings that would cause the greatest damage in the next few years. Maybe practicing Protego wandless soon would be a good way to ensure survival.

… With the gas mask in his hands, he decided to revise his Bubble-Head Charm too.

A ringing bell. "Dinner," explained the nurse for Harry, who didn't move, clearly clueless on where to go.

With an exasperated sigh, she drove him out of the infirmary. They walked down an endless hallway with the same checkerboard tiled floor—everything looked identical here.

She dropped him at a modest canteen, lined with a few long tables dressed in blank tablecloths. In a corner, alongside the windows, there were two tables different from the rest, smaller and round. One was full of young children—toddlers, really. The other one was reserved for serving the food. From what he could see, Harry concluded that each table had an age group. There was no mixing; the oldest didn't sit with the youngest or vice versa.

The room resonated with a lively hubbub (quite normal for somewhere full of teenagers and kids), but it wasn't as joyful as in the Great Hall.

A stream of boys grabbed Harry and led him to the table with all the food. Some of them looked at him and greeted him with small smiles. After a bit, Harry checked around, but did not see Tom among the crowd.

With his bag on his shoulder and a steaming bowl of soup, Harry seated with the other children of his age group.

One of them, a ginger boy, leaned towards Harry, "You. You're the fourth, this month. That only leaves Tom's room—" Harry heard a sudden silence around him. "Tom is your roommate, right?"

Another child, a chubby blond boy, imitated the posture of the first one. With a conspiratorial whisper, he added, "stay away from him. A weirdo that one."

"Dangerous," a brunette girl corrected with a frown on her nose.

Silence fell on the table as Tom appeared. Expressionless, but again with a cold warning in his dark eyes directed at the first boy who had spoken.

He dragged an empty chair with him and put it beside Harry, pushing away another child with just a look. Harry found himself like a buffer between Tom and the redhead who warned him in the first place.

"Already talking about your rabbit, Billy? Or I'm too early?"

The now named Billy blushed and turned his panicked gaze onto Harry. "No one wants to accuse him, but he hung it. I know it's him who did it."

"You only think that because you and your cronies killed one of my snakes before."

"Those beasts!" Billy growled, "I will smash them again!"

To illustrate what he was saying, Billy slapped both of his hands on the table. Without missing a bit, Harry let his magic work. The bowl of soup made a wonderful backflip and landed on Billy's face. Not too hot to hurt him, it was just to make him shut up—both to protect him and for Harry's sake.

The other children squealed in surprise before they began to laugh—much more cruelly than cheerfully. Tom's knuckles were white, his hand pressed forcefully around his spoon. His magic was almost palpable in the air, sharp with a threatening edge of coldness.

A member of the staff gravitated to their table to reprimand Billy severely. After that, the rest of the diner was quiet. Even after a few minutes, Tom's grip on the spoon didn't relax, so Harry did the first thing that came to mind: he let another portion of his magic go wild.

It probed the shadows, from which emerged a feeling of mourning, still fresh from the loss of one of the reptiles that they appreciated more than anything else here. Through them, Harry felt on his tongue a bitter taste of never shed tears, and, in his heart, the thunderous beat of revenge.

It took time, but the darkness retracted, curled up in the afire embrace. A faint flush spread on top of Tom's hollowed cheeks, as if warmed from the inside. His shoulders loosened and he started to eat, his knuckles not white anymore.

Their table stayed like that, the quietest until the end of their meal. Harry ignored Billy's angry look and the fact he was the first of his friends to quickly escape from the room.

Slowly, one by one, each group of children was conducted out of the canteen in ten minute intervals.

When their table's turn came, Harry followed. A daily timetable of the orphanage was beginning to be constructed in his mind: free time, dinner and, now, shower.

They arrived at a collective bathroom, large enough to accommodate about ten children at a time. Each stall was individual, barely what was needed for a bit of privacy. Harry paid zero attention to the mirrors and to his reflection, which was trying to catch his eyes.

He leaves his bag and clothes on a hook before entering the last free shower—

The door of his stall closed behind him in a loud snap.

Harry's bag was thrown over the door. His few clothes spilled out on the tiled floor of his shower.

A red head peeked out above the divider. Before Harry could understand what was happening, Billy and his cronies were armed with large buckets of water.

They gave him a cold shower, with big ice cubes viciously dropping on Harry's head.

The children threw their buckets in Harry's stall and after their mischief was accomplished, Harry heard them sprint away with fearful screams.

Harry didn't move, thunderstruck. Only his chattering teeth and his soaked clothes were proof of the mean prank. The childish temptation to stay there and ask Death to kill him right then and there was powerful, but, before he could act, the door opened again.

" I scared 'em off, " Tom hissed. "You need to make them fear you too. It's the only way to survive here."

Harry picked his stuff from the wet floor and shrugged. "There's always another solution—"

Hands covered his mouth. Tom looked around and pushed Harry further into the stall, closing the door shut with a sharp kick.

"Hogwarts begins in a month. By then, they're gonna have plenty of time. Mark my words: this is just the start, and it only grows worse. I know how it works here."

Harry blinked and tried to talk, but Tom's hands still gagged him. Avoiding any abrupt gestures, he gripped Tom's wrists, and pushed them smoothly away. "Before that, I will already be somewhere else."

Quick realization flashed in dark eyes. " Running away? " Tom whispered in Parseltongue.

Harry nodded, and shadows cloaked his skin; a forgotten scream from a broken heart and hushed remains of hurtful years. In Tom's dark eyes, there was a light. Something akin to when he had sensed Harry's magic for the first time. At that time, Harry hadn't figured out what it was; but now, as he observed it again—this feeling that Tom was trying to choke—Harry was certain that this light… was a tiny hope. At this moment Tom was just an unloved child, who finally saw a way out.

"Children! Lights out!" A staff member announced.

Both boys returned promptly to the room they shared. Harry threw his pile of soaked clothes on his mattress and focused on channeling his magic into a Hot Air charm. Without noise, a wind plastered all of his clothes against the wall and dried them completely.

The achievement left Harry dizzy. This was, again, the fault of his brand new child body. With his many lives, his magical core only grew over time, and, now that he crash landed in the body of a child, the two didn't match—it was like putting a racing car engine on a lawnmower.

He really needed a wand if he wanted to attempt advanced spells, or his magic would backfire on his body. He hoped that a wand would balance his magic out.

As Harry put on a newly warm top, his hands a bit shaky, Tom's hoarse voice asked, "where?"

"I don't care. Anywhere? As long as it's not this rotting hell."

A silence. "I will go with you."

"As if I was giving you a choice," Harry laughs.

Suddenly, Harry was pushed face first onto his mattress, someone straddling his back. A cold breath brushed his neck. "I said: I'm coming with you. Whether you like it or not."

With the help of his magic, already ready to fight, Harry sent a faint Jelly-Legs Curse to destabilize Tom—At this rate his body would really break down from channeling so much magic. In a shove and a growl, Harry inverted their positions. On top, Harry forced Tom to stay still on his back, clutching his hands fiercely on Tom's shoulders.

"You don't understand. I would not have left you there. I would have dragged you with me regardless of what you had to say about it."

Comprehension flashed on Tom's face, his angry curled lips morphed into a much more cunning grin. Both boys shared a heavy breath.

"I've already got some ideas," Harry offered.

"Me too."

That night, neither of the boys slept, and, when the sun rose, they sported dark circles under their eyes and glorious smiles. They would get the hell out of there.