Disclaimer: Harry Potter and his world belong to J.K. Rowling. This story belongs to me.

Sticks, Stones and Broken Bones

Chapter 8: Time and Space

If Harry had to describe how he felt as he watched the shock-filled eyes of his friend take in the scar that he had gotten the night he had lost his parents- not in a car crash like he had always been told, but in cold blooded murder- then he could have used one word.

Numb.

Both boys were silent for a long time, both lost in their own thoughts as the revelation slowly sunk into their stunned brains. Harry was unmoving, shocked as he was, his hand still resting on his hair. Ron's mouth remained open, his eyes widening as the seconds past, unable to tear his eyes away from the mark on Harry's forehead.

Scabbers, the rat, squeaked loudly, apparently upset by the change in mood in the room, but Ron just pulled the blanket from his bed and unceremoniously dumped it over the rat cage, muffling the noise, paying the distressed animal no further attention, and never once taking his eyes of his friend's forehead.

"My name... My full name is Harry James...Potter," Harry said, eventually breaking the uncomfortable silence, his face paling rapidly as his mind flew around in a daze. This was too much for him to handle, especially on top of everything else.

It couldn't be true. He wasn't the boy in the story. It must mean someone else. It couldn't mean him.

He was nothing special.

"You're Harry Potter," Ron repeated, his mouth still open in shock. The redhead didn't seem to be dealing any better with the news than Harry was. He dragged his eyes away from Harry's scar, lowering his gaze to meet the wide, fearful eyes of the black-haired boy.

"I'm Harry Potter," Harry confirmed, nodding dazedly, meeting Ron's gaze with difficulty as he absently ran his hand through his messy hair.

"Bloody hell," repeated Ron, and Harry couldn't disagree with the sentiments. How the hell was he supposed to handle this?

"I mean," began Harry, unsurely, his hand dropping limply back to his side causing his scar to become covered by his unruly hair once again, "It...it might not be me. There must be hundreds of Potter's in Britain."

Ron shook his head, sighing deeply as he tried to get hold of his shock and think clearly. "Not in the Wizarding World. The Potter's are a really old Wizarding family. You...you must be the last of the line."

"But wouldn't I know?" Harry said, somewhat desperately ignoring the uncomfortable feeling that was rising in his chest, warning him that Ron's words made sense. He had, after all, never met another family member from his dad's side. Or his mum's for that matter. "I mean...I lived...I lived with my Aunt and Uncle. If I was some sort of saviour, wouldn't I know?"

He was clutching at straws now, and he knew it. The Dursleys had hated any talk about Harry's side of the family, and to this day, he still didn't know his parents' names, nor even what they looked like.

He knew nothing about them. For all he knew, it could be true.

"We know you're magical," Ron pointed out, having noticed that Harry was lost in his thoughts. It was possible that he had guessed the direction Harry's mind had taken him, however, because his next words seemed to voice all of Harry's doubts. "You're the right age to be him. And that scar..."

"What do you know about your parents?" Ron asked gently as his shock dissipated slightly, realising that no matter how much the shock of the revelation had affected him, it was ten times worse for his friend. The poor boy looked shell-shocked, and the phrase 'deer caught in the headlights' had never been more aptly relevant.

"My relatives told me they died in a car crash..." Harry answered quietly. His face was pale, and he was talking as if from a faraway place, forcing his eyes closed as he tried to shut out the world; as he tried to shut out the truth.

"Would they have lied to you?" Ron asked with a frown, his own face pale as he anxiously wrung his hands together, the half-packed chess set beside him forgotten now. Harry had so far refused to talk about his life before the streets, and this was the first conversation they had had in which he had mentioned having any relatives at all.

"Let's just say...it doesn't surprise me..." Harry admitted with difficulty, his eyes still tightly closed as he fought against the anger that he felt towards his relatives.

A sudden thought hit Ron, as a memory rose unbidden to the forefront of his mind. His dad had talked about Harry Potter; he had been involved in the search after he had gone missing.

"You lived with your aunt and uncle?" he asked quickly, his heart rate increasing.

"Y-Yeah," Harry answered confused for the moment. He had admitted that a minute ago, so where was Ron going with this?

"You ran away when you were ten, didn't you?" Ron said tentatively. "Because they did bad things to you."

"What...but...how do you know?" Harry asked in shock, his eyes snapping over to meet Ron's, wide and fearful, barely able to control his own rapidly beating heart.

Ron didn't know much really, but his dad had mentioned one night during dinner, that he had joined the search for an abused Boy Who Lived. Ron had only been eleven at the time, more worried about going to Hogwarts than anything else, but the exhaustion and regret that he had seen on his dad's face the night he had announced that their saviour had gone missing, was hard for the redhead to forget.

"There was a big investigation when you left," Ron answered softly, no longer deeming it necessary to question whether or not Harry really was in fact the missing Boy Who Lived. "I told you that Harry Potter was important in our world. My dad works at the Ministry of Magic, but he was always fairly close to Dumbledore. He helped to look for you. A lot of people did."

Ron looked seriously towards his new friend, fear clear in the body language of the black-haired boy. "It's you. The Boy Who Lived, the one who's been missing all this time; it's you."

Harry's stomach churned dangerously, and he began to wish that he had eaten less at breakfast. This was too much. Harry took a deep breath, desperate to calm his heavily beating heart. He felt sick. It was true; with a dawning, fearful realisation, he knew it was true. The scar itself was proof.

He was the boy from the story.

"The people- the one's who looked for me...they didn't find me," Harry whispered, but he had not spoken quietly enough. All those years he had believed he was all alone, and all that time there had been a whole world looking for him.

"No, they didn't," Ron replied sadly, unable to tear his eyes away from the anguish that crossed Harry's face.

Providing Ron hadn't made the story up, and Harry's instincts told him that Ron had told him the truth, then he was the bloody Boy Who Lived. His parents hadn't been killed in a car crash, like he had been told his entire life, but instead they had been murdered by a Wizard- a bloody Dark, evil Wizard. Said evil Wizard had tried to kill him as well, and that was how he had gotten the scar- not from a piece of shrapnel in the car crash.

"I'm going to be sick," Harry muttered, rapidly bringing his hand to his mouth, desperate to prevent the burning sensation in his throat from reaching his mouth.

"Oh... erm..." panicked Ron, his eyes wide. "Here."

He shoved an empty waste bin into Harry's shaking hands, and Harry grabbed it gratefully, retching desperately into the empty container as his stomach finally protested, expelling all the food he had eaten in the last twenty four hours, meagre as that was. Pain clenched at his stomach, and Harry had to grip the small bin with extra force to prevent it from slipping out of his sweaty grasp.

The retching continued against Harry's will, and he could vaguely feel a hand rest on his shoulder, and a voice uttering nonsensical, but comforting things. Harry could barely acknowledge it though, so lost was he in his miserable, desperate, hateful thoughts.

Harry Potter, the hero.

The thought made him feel even sicker, and his stomach ached as he tried desperately to suppress the retching that he felt building up again. Gripping the basket tightly, his gaze still lowered to the floor, Harry tried desperately to calm his whirring thoughts long enough to relax the spasms.

Harry had been called a lot of different names in his life, but never had one fit him so badly as this one. He was no hero. He was nothing. Nothing to the people in his world, and nothing to the people in this magical one. He couldn't handle the change that this revelation would undoubtedly bring.

He couldn't be the hero they wanted him to be. What would happen when they worked that out?

"You can't tell anyone," Harry said shakily, shoving the basket away from himself in anger, his face pale and his eyes glinting strangely as he met those of Ron's in an expression of such seriousness that Ron almost gasped aloud.

"But, Harry mate," began Ron, his tone pleading, concern for his friend emanating from every pore in his body. There was no pity there, Harry noted. "They've been looking for you. People...they've been searching for years..."

"Well they can bloody well carry on searching for all I care, because I am not going to be that person! I'm not the Boy Who Lived. I'm no hero...I'm just Harry," Harry said harshly, although he immediately regretted snapping at his friend.

It wasn't Ron's fault that this had happened. It wasn't Ron's fault that he could never be normal.

For one blissful moment, he had actually believed that he could fit in, in this new, wonderful, magical world. That he would no longer be the weird one, the one that everyone pointed to in the street. That he could be normal.

Anger gripped at his chest as he cursed his stupid life. He would never be normal, especially not now.

"Sorry. It's just...you don't know what it's like on the streets," Harry explained, trying desperately to make Ron understand as he wiped at the remnants of sick on his chin, grimacing at the feeling of rawness that the episode had left in his throat. "I was invisible. When I...when I beg, most people just walk past me as if I'm not even there. People, they look at homeless people like they don't exist. And to them, they don't. After a while...it's hard, and well...you start to think that maybe it's true...maybe you don't exist."

Ron looked sad, but Harry simply clenched his fists and carried on with his story.

"And now you tell me," he continued dully, as realisation started to sink in, "that I'm some sort of celebrity. That people are going to want to know everything about me. That I'll be stared at in the streets by people who I've never even met before. That everyone in your world already knows my name. They know my story, and yet I barely know half of it! It's too much to handle!"

"Harry..." Ron began, but as he stared into the desperate eyes of his friend, he seemed to waver in his conviction. Harry tried one last time, pleading with Ron to help him out.

"I...I need time," Harry begged, and he didn't care how desperate he sounded. "I need to deal with this on my own. Please, Ron. Just don't tell anyone, not yet. I'll tell them soon, I promise, just...now, well I can't. If you tell them, I'll...I'll leave and you'll never find me. I'll disappear again."

"No," Ron exclaimed desperately, panic clear in his eyes. "I mean...don't go. I...I won't tell anyone yet. They need to know eventually, mate, but...I'll keep it quiet until you're ready to tell them."

"Thanks," Harry mumbled, relief palpable in his whole manner. He ran a shaky hand through his sweat soaked hair, once more exposing the scar that had started all this trouble. "I'll...I'll tell them, I promise. I just need...time."

"In time then," Ron nodded reluctantly. "I'll...I'll keep it to myself for now, but you need to promise me something else." Ron's serious face, an expression so unusual on the usually smiling boy, gave Harry pause.

"You can't leave," Ron said seriously, his eyes pleading with the black haired boy. "You can't run away from this. Promise me, Harry?"

Harry swallowed loudly and took a deep breath, but although he wanted to dismiss the promise out of hand, something in Ron's eyes made Harry take the promise seriously.

If Ron was going to keep his secret, at least for the moment, then he would have to keep his word too.

"I promise."

A/N- Okay, so this is a really short chapter, but I have a feeling that the next one is going to be especially long, and this one did finish in a good place (with no evil cliff-hangers!), so I hope you can all forgive me.

Also, I just wanted to say, thank you so much to everyone who read, liked, favourited or reviewed the last chapter! It was so humbling and so encouraging to hear such kind things from so many people, that I just had to get this out there as quickly as possible. The next chapter will be much longer in length I promise you!

As a little reward for all your support, and as an apology for the shortness of this chapter, here's a little teaser for what's coming up soon. Hopefully it's enough for people to stay interested in this story:

Dumbledore makes a visit to the Burrow, suspicions raging through his mind, and Molly gets a little defensive of her newest charge...

Thanks for reading, and the next update shouldn't be too far away!