A/N: I do not own Harry Potter nor am I making any profit from this work. Updates may be sporadic. Harry is Casca, Hermione's chosen alias is Katharine, Ron is Julius, Ron's chosen alias is Antonio, I am incredibly sleep-deprived, and everyone is a little bit dead inside


Freak- no Harry but then after this, he couldn't use that name either. He anyway, he packed his bag, the faded red fabric nearly pulling away from the grey duct tape that barely held it together. Pants, trousers, shirt, and three pairs of socks, Dudley was bigger than him but not by so much that the clothes Dudley had worn when he was four would not fit, albeit loosely. He weighed a set of six broken toy soldiers in his hand; he didn't need them, per se. He placed them carefully in his bag. He had two bottles of water, three cans of chilli, and a bag of rice that he had smuggled into his cupboard over the previous weeks. He had read somewhere that all one needed to survive was water and complete protein. For example; a ratio of three scoops of rice to one scoop of beans. Chilli worked nicely. Only one meal was needed. Now his plan was ready to be put into action, this was the tricky bit. He took a deep breath and looked inward. There, somewhere at his very centre was a crackling oblong of power and light. It was so bright he could barely look at it, its dark tendrils sucking all light in, shining with power and confidence, and it was his, all his. It was beautiful and powerful and it was HIS. He took a mental step back and the heady rush of power faded slightly. He wished it hadn't but he had work to do and, if he was being honest with himself, it scared him, just a bit. He concentrated on the power and let a bit, just the tiniest bit, so infinitesimal that it was barely noticed, barely perceived in comparison to the rest, flow through him, flow down his arm into his fingertips. Then, still being careful to hold the power, he focused on the lock, an easy thing, just a bolt on the exterior of the door. With a flick of his fingers, he suggested that it didn't want to hold its position, that it wanted to slip free, to unlock. The door sprung open and he breathed a sigh of relief. The last time he had tried to use only a little bit of the power a cubicle door in the school loo had ripped off its hinges and helpfully disintegrated. He had gotten a week in his cupboard for this incident when word of it had reached the Dursleys. He slipped out, taking care to swing the cupboard door carefully closed behind him, locking it manually. Avoid risks, avoid trouble. He had recently oiled the hinges of all the doors in the house, he knew every creaky floorboard, the locations of everything he could possibly bump into in the dark. He headed for the kitchen. Aunt Petunia kept her purse above the refrigerator so he quietly moved a chair over to retrieve it. He had figured out the general salary for around four years of steady house/yard work and two years of kitchen work but the bills in Aunt Petunia's purse would do little to cover it and he knew that cards could be tracked and frozen. Uncle Vernon kept his wallet in his bedroom and if nearly six years with the Dursleys had taught him anything it was that attempting such a venture was stupid and dangerous. No matter. He pocketed the bills and went through the display cabinet, taking anything remotely valuable. It was probably enough to constitute the wages owed him. He almost wanted to stick around for when the Dursleys found his letter of resignation. He had left in his cupboard a note made up completely of words cut from newspapers and magazines and pasted onto a sheet of cardstock. He would have written the note but his handwriting was illegible. His work done, the six-year-old boy whose legal name was Harry James Potter slipped out the door of No. Four Privet Drive for the last time. By the time his relatives found he was missing, by the time they read his letter he would be well on his way to London.

TO my former employerS,

I have the pLeasURe to inform you of my resIgNation. I am resignInG due to lack of PayMent and unfit living conditions. what I have REmoved from your HOUSE is my way of claiming what I am owED.

from,

Your formEr employee


Ronald Weasley sat dejectedly in the garden. "Hello," he muttered to the gnome whose bald, potato-like head had just popped out of a wellington, "Wonder how many siblings you have?"

"Probably over six hundred." It was his brother, Charlie, who had spoken. He had an odd habit of sneaking up behind a person accidentally and then talking without so much as a greeting about whatever subject happened to be on his mind at the time. Ron had pretty much gotten used to it by now, after seven years of life, but sometimes Charlie still managed to surprise him. His brother continued, "The common garden gnome reproduces both more frequently and more rapidly than even rabbits and in greater numbers. The average gnome is a pretty tough little bugger and all sexes give birth to new litters bi-monthly. Once they mature they only live for two years on the outside though." Sounds like us, Ron thought gloomily, Mum churned out kids practically every year and Bill and Charlie are getting increasingly interested in dangerous jobs. We'll lose our eldests ten years into adulthood this way and the rest will follow. He forced a grin onto his face, told Charlie that that had answered his question, and dodged any queries about his mood. Ron's brother looked a bit concerned but he was soon called over for a game of quidditch and dashed off, cares forgotten. Ron philosophised. He wasn't in the eldest three and thus wasn't special that way. He wasn't a twin and so wasn't exceptional in that quarter. He wasn't the prized youngest and only girl which again made him blend into the background hubbub. He was in no way special or prized. Oh yes, he was loved but he could tell even now that he would have to fight his way through life, proving himself at every turn in order to be anything other than extra. He would have to fight to get at what his siblings simply by the circumstance of their birth never lacked: worth. The plain unfairness of it struck Ron hard and he made up his mind that he would prove his worth to himself, his family, and the world. In order to do so, however, he had to strike out on his own. No more prized siblings, no more Mum and Dad to run to, no more ghoul banging fruitlessly in the attic. Ron would be necessarily alone. He dashed indoors to begin packing. Ron's first item could be made out of an old muggle tee shirt; cut off the sleeves, shred the bottom, tie the shredded ends into tassels, voila! a bag. It took maybe ten minutes, a pair of scissors, and one of Dad's 'muggle disguises'. It was quick, easy to make, and cheaper than leather school satchels, if not for the appearance Ron would suggest its use for Hogwarts. He then carefully rolled up his best pair of robes, two 'muggle disguises' (he and his siblings wore the style far more often than robes), muggle underthings, wizard underthings, and more pairs of socks than he felt he could possibly need (but in actuality he could never wear the same pair of socks twice in a row). After stowing his bag under the bed Ron casually thumped his way down the stairs to the kitchen. He pocketed fourteen rolls, a block of cheese, a clean tea towel, and a carefully wrapped knife and made his way upstairs again. Ron put these items in his bathroom towel after wrapping them in the tea towel and placed them in his bag. As an afterthought, he grabbed three washcloths and a bar of soap. He then solemnly pulled his most recent sweater over his head and patted the belt around his waist. Ron had everything. When he left it was quietly, mumbling something to his Mum about taking a walk. Ronald Billius Weasley looked back for a moment, cementing the image of the Burrow in his mind. It would be a long while until he saw it again.


Hermione Granger was an interesting child. She was seven years old (nearly eight). She read voraciously, she was top of her class, she wasn't terribly athletic but she had come across the notion that throwing knives was a skill she should have after some poor fool twenty years older than her had commented in a leering fashion that she was 'a pretty girl'. When Hermione shopped she was alone, when she ate she was alone, for most of the day and night she was alone. It wasn't that her parents didn't care, they did, they were always kind to her in an awkwardly encouraging fashion. They just didn't know how to deal with children for more time than it took to fix their teeth. They weren't actually good at dealing with people in the slightest. They had work personas but when the subject was not the mouth and the location was not their offices they became awkward and unknowledgeable. Hermione knew that parents weren't really supposed to awkwardly let various babysitters take care of their child nearly 24/7 until said child turned four and it was decided that she was old enough to look after herself. She knew that parents weren't supposed to be there only for the signing of school forms and the giving of spending money when she told them she needed new clothes. Hermione also knew that if she informed her parents of these things they would try to rectify them. However, her parents' awkward, absentminded support could be incredibly helpful. If she wanted to walk downtown to the library she could without a fuss, if she was hungry she could just cook something up for herself, if she wanted to visit somewhere far away for the weekend she could with little more than a note. If the price for autonomy was that her parents barely remembered her name over half the time and coddled her exactly none of the time, Hermione was okay with that. In her free time, Hermione liked to ride buses and observe the people riding them. Bus fare was free for those under eleven so Hermione never spent any money doing so and it taught her just as much as school and the library did. The way people talked, the way they acted, the way they fought, and the way they lied. Riding a bus aimlessly taught Hermione much about life. Riding buses also taught Hermione how to wear disguises, pick pockets, hide things on people, and snoop on their conversations. Hermione even tried deducing things like Mr Sherlock Holmes and she was slowly improving. Hermione was riding a bus when a black-haired, green-eyed boy with light brown skin got on. He wore baggy, oversized clothing, ratty trainers, and carried a backpack so broken that it took Hermione a good second or two to determine that under all the grey duct tape and stains the bag might once have been red. He was the size of a four-year-old but it was clear to Hermione that he was several years older than that. Somewhere from six years to eight years. None of the adults on the bus would be able to tell though. They were too far past his age. He was also almost certainly a runaway. He was young, alone, and furtive. Also, when he opened his bag to take out his money (that alone blew his cover) a set of broken toy soldiers fell out, leaving Hermione enough time to run up to the front of the bus as he scrambled for them on the floor and pull him back with her, thanking her lucky stars that she looked older than she actually was and had picked this disguise for today's bus ride. "What kind of a fool are you, Jimmy?" she exclaimed, just loud enough so that everyone on the bus could hear her, "No, don't talk. What were you thinking? I told you to follow me! And what did you do? You missed the bus! I don't know how you managed to catch up with me but thank heaven you did, I don't know what I would have done if I had lost you!" the boy tried to speak again but Hermione steamrolled over him, "Mum told me to look after you, what was I going to tell her? 'I'm sorry, Mum. I didn't mean to but I kind of lost the VERY CHILD you've been trying to gain custody of for the past seven weeks!'" Hermione was pretty proud of her voice crack there at the end… "Really, Jimmy, we're only going to Gran's for the weekend while Mum figures all the legal stuff out and I can't even keep track of you. I was worried, Jim." For the rest of the bus ride, Hermione continued to talk over her companion, not allowing him to get a word in edgewise, fearful of the possibility that he might have a very different accent than the one she was putting on which would bring her whole carefully constructed story crashing around her ears. She was careful to leave loose ends, not laying the story of her and 'Jimmy's' lives on too thick, not that anyone on the bus would have noticed, it being around six in the morning. Hermione got off several stops later dragging 'Jimmy' with her, still chattering.