London Victoria was one of the busiest transport hub stations in the city of London; the British rail services linked to the vast spiderweb of the network which allowed passage to Gatwick airport, Portsmouth, Brighton, East Grinstead, Portsmouth and Southsea, and services were branching off on the Chatham line, to Dartford and Margate.

Trains from the different branches converged in Victoria, connecting to the London Underground's Circle and District lines, while up above the station was served by a four-court bus station.

The station served several thousands of people a day who began and ended their journey at the station, and the place was full of tourists and holidaymakers. In short, it was the perfect place for a pickpocket. After making sure he was virtually cloaked to be unseen, an ability he valued the most since it had saved him from the Dursleys, Harry moved through the crowd in the station.

Nobody saw him.

Nobody sensed him.

Harry was a ghost as he followed his targets, a small group of people who were tourists, and looked like they were rich. They were a group of Asians, tourists by the look of them; their manner and attitude spoke of the kind of people he had come to expect from tourists. They were excitable, a bit clumsy and less aware of their surroundings.

In short, they were the perfect targets.

Plus they were loaded.

Harry could see it. Their wealth was obvious to everyone in the way they were dressed in clothes and shoes which looked like they'd come right off of the line in a high-end shop. Some of them were carrying flashy cameras. A silver glint on one of them caught Harry's eye. A watch. A Rolex by the look of it. Harry studied them as he slowly closed in on them, using his peripheral vision to make sure he didn't bump into anybody. They were crowded around the ticket machines; their very manner suggested they were used to this sort of service, but it was equally clear they were having problems with the language. At least they were still. He spotted a few of their wallets and purses, ready for the taking.

Harry stopped and waited nearby, casting his eyes on the crowd, keeping a watch out for any pickpockets he knew of. Finally, the group finished collecting their tickets and they passed through the ticket control and they went down to the platforms below. Harry didn't know where they planned to go, but he didn't think they knew themselves.

Keeping his distance from them as they went down to the District/Circle platforms, trying hard to not be squashed by the massive crowd on the platform, Harry made sure he was right behind them the whole way, using his powers to move people out of the way gently. His heart was beating a little quicker. He kept his eyes open in case there were any transport police. Harry and his gang had studied every single Underground station for the locations of the security cameras and their long experiences with the Underground gave them an intricate knowledge of where the cameras were.

Checking the train destination board, Harry saw he had only a few minutes before the next train arrived.

Stepping close to two of the men in the tourist's group, Harry slipped his hands into their back pockets, willing them and anybody nearby not to notice. Pushing the wallets into his backpack, Harry moved around them to approach the one who owned the Rolex and, once more willing the one with the watch not to notice him, Harry deftly unclasped it and the watch was quickly snuck into his pocket.

A little bit hot because of the body heat of the crowding bodies, Harry willed himself to try to keep himself as calm as possible. A trickle of sweat travelled right down his back as he stepped closer to one of the girls; she and her friends were gabbling away in their language. Now he was close by, he recognised the language as Korean.

Harry had been busy; contrary to what the Dursleys had believed and told everybody else, he was far from stupid. He had always been the best in his classes, far outstripping Dudley and pissing the Dursleys off, but that was more out of spite than anything else. He had always been a curious child, he loved to learn, loved to discover more. Knowledge is Power, he believed in that expression completely. He had taken to the pickpocketing lessons given to him by Sandra and the others because he knew it would help him survive on the streets, even if he was alone. He had learnt of their criminal contacts and learnt who could be trusted and who couldn't.

But he was also fascinated with furthering his own education even if he had no real intention of returning to the kind of education the Dursleys foisted on him. Harry loved satisfying his own curiosity and while he didn't know which one of his parents had contributed to that desire when they'd spawned him, he appreciated it since he found it helped him master writing and mathematics long before most others; sometimes he had come to suspect that his powers might have had something to do with his almost prodigious skills in memorising and assimilating knowledge, but he didn't know.

But one of the things that fascinated Harry the most was foreign languages.

There was logic in learning different languages; London was an extremely diverse city and there were hundreds of people whom he needed to bargain with now and then.

Harry had mastered French, German, Italian and Spanish. And he had also learnt a little bit of Russian, loving how it felt on the tongue, but he had studied a few Asian tongues; the different dialects of India, Japanese, Chinese, and a bit of Korean.

"I don't like this station," one of the girls was saying, "the train isn't here yet and the destination board says it should be."

"That's other countries for you. They don't seem to care about accurate timekeeping," her friend replied, sounding like she agreed but taking things in her stride.

"Where are we going anyway?" A young boy looked around as he asked the question.

"A place called South…Kensington," one of the men replied, "there's the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum-."

"Museums?" The boy whined.

While they'd been speaking Harry had been collecting a few more of their wallets and he snuck in some of the purses. Walking away from the gabbling group, Harry moved further down the platform to put some needed distance between himself and them. As he walked away, Harry felt the weight of the added purses and wallets in his backpack. When the train came in, a packed train - a Circle Line train - Harry boarded the train and mentally summoned his patience. When the packed train left the station, Harry stayed on it until it travelled to Baker St.

Getting off the train, Harry followed a small crowd, heading for the tube platforms, choosing to head for the Bakerloo platforms. Frustratingly a train was already there and was leaving, the air rushing as the train picked up speed, clattering out of the station. Waiting for the next few minutes patiently Harry boarded the next train and stayed on it until he was at Regent's Park. Harry could have gotten the Bakerloo line from Paddington, but he had chosen to get off at Baker St because it was closer to Regent's Park.

Walking out of the station and heading for the zoo, Harry decided to try his luck somewhere else. The Underground was good for pickpockets and he could do it all day, every day, but there were other tourist spots in the city. London Zoo was perfect. Using his powers to go unnoticed, Harry slipped inside the zoo without anyone noticing him.

After stealing a few wallets, Harry decided to take a break and he bought himself an ice cream and a bottle of water before he decided to head into the crowd, assuming correctly nobody would notice him or bother with asking him to see his ticket if he bought something like an ice cream. Licking the ice cream, Harry wandered around the zoo, looking like one of the regular kids. Nobody bothered to ask him why he was on his own.

Wandering into the reptile house, Harry gazed around with wonder at the snakes and the lizards and the other exhibits.

"Make it move, Mummy!" A little girl whined loudly.

Harry looked in her direction, spotting a little dark-haired girl with a woman who had to be her mother and a short stout man who was likely her father. But he didn't care.

The woman rolled her eyes but dutifully obeyed her daughter's command and rapped her fingers against the glass window. "Move, you giant earthworm!"

The girl banged her fist next impatiently. "MOVE!"

Harry ground his teeth. 'It's ironic, I moved away from the Dursleys for so many reasons; one was to get away from Dudley while I still had my brain cells, but it looks like the world's full of him.' Rolling his eyes at the kid's manner, Harry calmly finished his ice cream while she whined and moped that the snake was boring, and nothing like what was seen in the movies.

' How can that poor snake, in fact, how can any of the poor animals in this zoo be like what you see in the movies if they're locked up?' Harry thought to himself derisively, sneering at the girl's manner. Slowly eating the ice cream wafer cone, Harry licked his fingers after swallowing the lot and he walked to the snake.

The reptile lived in a very small enclosure. It was likely a far cry from what it was used to in the wild where it would have whole patches of jungle miles wide in diameter. In comparison, the enclosure was no bigger than the Cupboard under the Stairs.

Harry felt his heart ache for the snake, knowing that it was truly bored and likely sleeping to stave off boredom. "Sorry about the little bitch," he said quietly to the snake, "she doesn't know how bored you must be, forced in this cramped cage with nobody else to talk to, unable to slither around and do your own thing, having people gawk and stare at you stupidly all day, every day."

Suddenly the snake moved.

It looked up, and to Harry's surprise, it blinked.

Harry gasped. "C-Can you hear me?" He whispered.

The snake nodded its head slowly.

Yes.

The snake did understand him, and Harry gasped as he realised he could speak to the snake. "H-Have you been in here long? I mean, where do you come from?"

The snake jabbed its tail at a plaque underneath the cage. Harry stood back to get a better look, and he sighed when he saw the snake had been bred and raised in captivity. While he could understand the benefits of keeping animals in captivity, he felt keeping them in these small cages was cruel, and he knew how the snake and the other animals felt.

"I know the feeling," Harry lifted his gaze and sadly met the eyes of the snake, "I never knew my parents. I was locked in a cupboard my whole life."

"Why are you making that noise?"

Harry turned and looked in alarm. It was the little girl. She had wandered away from her parents and had seen him talking to the snake.

"What noise?" Harry asked, wondering how much she'd heard, and cursing himself for forgetting to make himself unnoticed by everyone else. He had just become so comfortable with the snake and the break with the ice cream, it hadn't occurred to him.

"I heard you hissing at the snake, now it's up," the girl pointed at the boa.

Ever since Harry had embraced his 'freakishness' as the Dursleys called it, he had come to accept nobody else would, which was why he went out of his way to avoid people. Without a word, Harry coldly turned and walked away, sparing a wave towards the snake, with the mental promise of coming back.

Unfortunately, the girl was as obstinate as she was spoilt; she chased after Harry who quickly walked out of the reptile house. "Hey, come back here! You haven't told me what those noises were!"

"Lily!" Her mother called desperately behind her, but Lily stopped when she reached the entrance. Harry was gone.

Xxxx

Harry loved the West End of London.

Not only was this part of the city home to so many amazing hallowed theatres and shops but it also had amazing places for him to pick people's pockets.

He chuckled as he passed a poster as he went through Covent Garden station. The Tube staff and the public recognised there were pickpockets thanks to the numerous reports and complaints, but the problem was so many people didn't recognise there were sleight-of-hand tricks that allowed a pickpocket to steal things like watches and wallets and purses.

It has been a few months since he had left Sandra and the others. While he'd loved being with them, Harry was at his heart a loner by nature, and he had left. The gang was sorry he had left, but they couldn't stop him from leaving if he wanted, and they let him know they'd always have a place for him. Harry was touched despite himself, and in those few months he had become a kind of legend among pickpockets and even the general public as Tube travellers reported seeing nothing, and his legend had grown when he had snatched the wallet from someone in London Zoo…and there was nobody else around. The visitor had been searched and checked 7 times, but nobody knew where the wallet had gone.

Once he'd passed ticket control, Harry went down to the platforms in the lift.

He could have picked pockets from there, but he had decided to wait for the time being. Hanging back once everyone cleared the lift in a crowd, Harry absently willed himself to become invisible, unnoticed and unheard.

Once he was done, Harry followed everyone down to the platforms. As he'd expected and hoped, the platforms were crowded. There was no doubt one day crowding the platforms would become such a problem the London Underground would need to find a wholly new solution to the problem but that wasn't a problem for Harry.

Spying a man holding a newspaper to his face, Harry couldn't believe how much some people just seemed to want to get their wallets nicked. Harry walked over to the man, studied him for a moment to make sure this was no trick, and he willed everyone nearby not to notice anything as he summoned the wallet into his hand. Quickly he pushed it into his pocket and hurried away as if expecting everyone to notice. As with every time he picked someone's pockets, Harry wondered how long it would be before his victim noticed the wallet was missing and even when it had been taken.

Harry was beginning to ask himself if any of these travellers even had a clue how to read. Not only was the sign upstairs in the ticket hall clear enough, but it made it clear pickpockets were operating at Covent Garden, and yet some people were so careless they left their handbags lying on the ground in front of them.

Once he'd made sure nobody could notice him and that nobody, in turn, noticed what he was doing, Harry walked past the woman, ducking down and diving his hand into her handbag, and he took out her purse and he carried on to her friend, both of whom were gabbling away at each other which only made it easier for him to pinch their purses. With his coat weighed down by a wallet and two purses, Harry went to the next platform to try his luck, and within a few minutes he had picked out three more wallets, his hand diving into the back pocket of somebody's jeans, while he reached into the inner pocket of someone's coat, and two more purses after letting his hand snake through a woman's arms.

Harry followed his newer victims onto the Tube train, letting his invisibility drop as he settled down into a seat he nonchalantly took out a copy of HG Well's The Invisible Man, and he began to read, paying one-half of his attention to the book while keeping watch over everyone else in the carriage.

It was summertime and the Tube train was sweltering hot, and he paused in his reading and took out his bottle of water, and he began to drink; as he did, he cast his gaze around the carriage and then he turned his attention back to the book. Harry stayed on the train until he reached Barrons Court and he changed over to the District Line to head the other way. He stayed on the train until he reached South Kensington; as with the Covent Garden platforms, this one was packed.

Within seven minutes, Harry had stolen nine wallets and six purses, but as he spotted a tall man with dirty blond hair wearing a dark suit, he studied the man closely as he tried to work out where he should find his wallet. Harry walked over to the man, willing himself to remain unnoticed, and he slowly reached into the man's pocket, and he took out the man's wallet without him noticing a thing.

With that, he walked away.