Missing.

Harry lugged the trunk after he'd materialised in his home time back to the orphanage. It was quite late at night, and he had sneaked a key so then he wouldn't have to knock on the door for someone to come down and ask stupid, boring questions. When he opened the door, he carefully picked the trunk up over the threshold. Just as soon as the closed the door and walked into the hall, the light came on.

Ah, shit! Harry cursed when he saw who it was who'd turned on the lights.

Elaine, the bitch who often came from social services to manage the orphanage, was standing there, arms folded. A short, fussy woman in her late 30s, Elaine was part of the problem in Harry's eye when it came to living here. Usually he kept out of the way, preferring his own company. Unfortunately Elaine was one of those people who made snap judgements about people, and in her eyes Harry was asocial, and she often interrupted his experiments, unable to grasp that privacy was something to be prized in his experiments, so she'd interfered in his plans more than once just like she was right now. There had also been times when Harry had come back to find Elaine rifling through his stuff, and Harry had resisted the urge to kill the interfering harpy. It never occurred to Elaine that Harry was like that because of his upbringing, and saw friendships as pointless and sometimes painful. She just saw a boy she had suspicions about.

" I was looking for you Harry, care to tell me where you've been?" Elaine asked.

Harry sighed, " I've been out in the city, and I bought this trunk and I also bought some books. Not drugs, not alcohol, books."

" I wasn't thinking that," Elaine protested, but Harry saw she was lying. " Don't be so quick with your denials," he told her.

Harry sighed again, " Whatever, I'm going to bed. That is if my room hasn't been torn to pieces. Again." He spat at her.

" Don't speak to me like that!"

Harry sneered, " Careful of the volume, Elaine, there's other kids in this place, and they see you like I do; an interfering cow who can't keep her big nose out of our affairs." Harry pushed past her, not caring if he made any noise up the stairs, not that any of the kids would do anything since they were afraid of him slightly.

" I heard you had a little run in with Elaine last night," Matt, the orphanage manager told Harry the next day.

They were in Matt's office, a small office with pictures of cars from various magazines and those he'd seen in motor museums. Harry had a mixed relationship with the man, but there was no warmth between them. Matt left Harry alone, gave him the space he needed, and he didn't believe necessarily what Elaine tried to tell him about Harry. Matt believed that if you push someone hard enough then they would fall into the trap Elaine believed Harry was in.

Harry snorted, " What was she doing here anyway?"

Matt sighed, " Believe it or not, Harry, she was investigating you, and she can't find anything about your past. She was here asking me and the others questions about you, what you did on your own all the time, and to be honest I agree with her on one or two points. Your lack of socialising-"

Harry waved a hand, " Please, Matt, don't start. I don't like socialising with people. I don't like half the little snots that come into this place, and I certainly don't like Elaine. She breaks into my room on a regular basis when I try and work in there, she asks me questions, some of them I can't answer."

" Like what?"

Harry sighed, " She keeps asking me questions about my parents, people I've never known. Does she truly think I would be here if I could help it?"

Matt nodded, mentally noting to talk to Elaine about her harassment and persecution of Harry.

When Harry finally got to bed that night, he leapt onto the bed and looked up at the ceiling. The trip into the future had changed the way Harry saw the world, how he saw the past. The revelation of magic, the way magicians would one day be persecuted because of their arrogance, and the newfound knowledge of his parents being alive pissed Harry off. The magician in the future knew he was a time traveller, that was a piece of knowledge Harry wished didn't exist for the magical world since it gave them a power over him.

His parents...that was something different. It was one thing to get over the pain, and the perceived loss of his family, but learning his parents had purposefully abandoned him filled him with an emotion he could not discern, but it was not anger. It seemed like resignation.

Harry knew that he would need to study the magical world, but he couldn't do that here, nor could he do it in the future. The future was not a bright place for the magical world, but Harry was certain he could learn more than magic. He needed to train himself, become strong, powerful both in magic and technology. Harry was aware of the coming triwizard tournament thing, and he couldn't help but be daunted by it all.

His main concerns were to get away from it all, and build a new time machine that didn't rely on plattnerite like the iPhone and the iPad did. He needed to truly escape from this time. He'd spent his time since getting away from the future learning about the magical world and of the future ages, and Harry had started feeling he knew where he should go.

Harry made a list of things to do.

Train. Mentally and physically, develop strength and agility and reflexes. Learn cardiovascular training, like yoga and pilates.

Learn engineering.

Study various sciences.

Weapons and martial arts training. Guns, knives, rifles, etc.

Magical training - spells, transfiguration, magical combat. All of it needed to be learnt. He was going to fight a dark lord, his followers and his own parents. The task was difficult but it could be done. In addition, he should study the more diverse magical arts, those that others barely bothered with in their lives. In fantasy novels, magic was a diverse art with dozens of branches and sub branches. If that was true in this case, then Harry needed to learn it all.

Time travel. Harry needed a new time machine in order to truly be free from the magical world, and from the other world.

Harry folded his hands over his chest as he thought about what he needed to do. What Harry did not know was that this was the first step.

The next day, Harry Potter disappeared from the orphanage, taking everything with him.