A/N: This is probably the quickest update I've ever managed. I'll put up chapter two next week, but I'll be in Salem for The Witching Hour for most of the week, so we'll see how quick I am about chapter three, especially w/ a ten-page paper due this Monday and two tests right after I get back. Ugh.

And ty for the kind reviews I've gotten

Chapter 1

The night of May the twentieth brought with it a full or a nearly full moon. Harry noticed this because he could see more, and also because he had a greater chance of being seen. He crept down a back alley, looking for somewhere to sleep. He'd had a dry enough space under some stairs leading to a warehouse cellar the last three nights, but the men in long, black coats, the ones who seeped from the shadows, who appeared from thin air and disappeared again like ghosts, had started crawling around there, searching for him. They wanted to lock him away, he knew. Uncle Vernon had always promised that freaks got locked away, that useless boys always ended up in bad ways. And now Uncle Vernon was….

Harry shuddered and turned down a deserted street. He'd ridden the Underground for hours earlier, sleeping during the evening rush hour, when no one would pay much attention to one small boy curled up in a corner seat. He had no idea where he'd ended up, only that it was nowhere near where he'd been. He's spent another couple of hours wandering on foot as inconspicuously as possible. He was learning to identify the sort of people to avoid and the places he'd likely be safe and hidden for a few hours of sleep. Two weeks, and he still had nearly half the money he'd stolen from his uncle's wallet after he…when he ran away. He'd learned how to beg a few pounds here and there without attracting much notice, enough to buy some crisps and a hamburger, and last time he'd bought one chocolate bar, he'd walked out with three others, but shop owners were starting to look at him suspiciously, with his unwashed hair and grimy, oversized clothes.

The scent of something hot and tangy caught his attention, and he'd turned toward it before he even knew it. Hunger had gnawed at him more and more since he'd started spending most of his time running from the people in the black coats. That was a little more than a week, he realized.

Harry found himself behind a small Chinese restaurant. He could go in and buy something, but he didn't know when he'd get his hands on more money. His story about needing money for the Underground usually got him a few sympathetic donations, but he'd found that he couldn't beg off more than a few people before someone started getting suspicious. He wouldn't let them catch him, either the police or the others. They would both lock him up for what he'd done. He'd wind up in prison before he was even ten, and they wouldn't let him out till he was an old man.

He edged toward the restaurant's open back door, wary of the light but drawn by the smell of a hot meal. Maybe he could at least get a couple of fortune cookies or something. He gave the giant garbage dumpster a dubious look, but decided he wasn't half that desperate. But he could just take a look in the door, see if there was anything—

A set of snarling, snapping jaws leapt at him, and he screamed, scrambling backward from the big, hairy dog chained to the wall. A short man in a white apron appeared in the doorway, but Harry didn't stay around to listen to his half-English cursing and shouting.

Harry ran until his chest and throat burned and his legs felt stiff and heavy. He was in a commercial district, avoiding the eyes of a shabbily dressed man with a bottle in one hand.

"Hey, kid."

He walked faster, blinking because his vision was starting to go blurry; his eyes felt hot. Behind an old brick building, Harry found a small alcove he could crawl into. He curled in on himself, resting his back against the cold brick. It smelled like garbage. He missed the dusty smell of his cupboard and the soft warmth of his lumpy mattress. He missed the feeling that no one could ever find him if he didn't want them to. He pulled off his glasses to wipe his eyes and nose.

He scrambled to put them back on when he heard a soft wine. He gasped, staring at the dark, hulking shape, but he had nowhere to go. At first he thought the black coats had found him, and then he thought the dog from the Chinese restaurant had followed him all the way here to eat him. It was neither.

The dog was huge but thin. It had floppy ears and a long, snuffling snout. It didn't growl or bark or anything, just sort of sniffed forward.

Harry jerked back when the cold, wet nose touched his hand, striking his head on the wall, but the dog didn't do anything mean. It…it seemed nice enough, friendly.

Swallowing hard, Harry lifted one hand to pat the enormous head and got a soft whuff in response. The dog pushed into Harry's touch, pressing himself into the tiny alcove and filling it with furry and warm.

Feeling bolder, Harry used his other hand to scratch behind the dog's ears, then to scratch its neck and shoulders. The dog whuffed again and, with a sudden lurch, licked Harry's face. The boy grimaced and laughed at the same time.

But he froze when he heard footsteps in the alley. His fingers tensed in the dog's thick fur. The footsteps were uneven. After a minute, they passed by and turned a corner. Harry let out a breath and went back to stroking the dog's head.

"I dunno if you want to stick around," he told it. "I've got people after me. Cops and men in black coats."

The dog whined softly.

"They want to put me in prison because I…I…" Harry shuddered.

The dog nuzzled his cheek.

Harry leaned over to wrap his arms around its neck because it was the first thing to have been nice to him in more than two weeks. His vision blurred again, but it didn't matter very much because everything was dark dog hair.

"I didn't want to hurt anyone," Harry whispered. "I didn't mean to be a freak."

Neither boy nor dog moved for a long time, and eventually Harry fell into the deepest, securest sleep in recent memory.