Kitty

Continuation of Chapter 2 - Cloud

"You're my new pet, little Cloud!" the creepy boy announced gleefully as he sat next to Harry on the plane. The inside of the plane wasn't rows of seats, like on the adverts. It looked more like the inside of one of the fancy rooms in Aunt Petunia's magazines, that she never read but made sure he arranged just so when he cleaned the living room, so that the neighbours would see them when they came to visit. Harry liked looking through them, and dreaming about a house of his own that looked like that. The only other person on the plane with them was a scary man with long blond hair, who had shouted a lot and told the creepy boy that Harry was 'your problem, brat! I'm not dealing with him'.

"What should I call my new pet?" the boy giggled.

"My name's Harry," he told the boy quietly, before he froze. The boy suddenly had knives in each hand, held dangerously close to Harry's face. He stopped breathing.

"Ushishishi! It doesn't matter what your name was, little Cloud. I'm giving you a new name. Now hush. Peasants shouldn't speak unless they're spoken to."

The boy was terrifying, and Harry still didn't know his name. All he could do was stay still and pray that he didn't upset him again. He knew that the knives were real, and he knew that the boy would use them. Dudley wouldn't even have given Harry a warning, if he had been allowed to use knives on him.

"Are you going to start crying, little pet?" the boy cooed. A knife was right next to his eye now, under the edge of his glasses. He couldn't get enough air in, his lungs had stopped working.

"No," Harry whispered, forcing his mouth to move. Crying never solved anything. It just made Dudley want to hurt him more.

"That's not very polite," the boy scowled. Harry's heart thumped in his chest. What had he done wrong? Was he supposed to cry? Everything was different here, and he didn't know the rules. He just wanted things to make sense again.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, then swallowed. Did that break the no-talking rule? He didn't know. His mouth was dry and his head was spinning.

"Ushishishi! The prince forgives you, Kitty. Call me Prince Bel!" the boy's voice was suddenly cheerful again, and the knife moved away from his face. Harry breathed deeply, realising that his chest was burning like Dudley had stomped on it. Apologising seemed to make the boy – Prince Bel – happy. Was that what he had done wrong? Not call the boy by name?

The loud blond looked up from the folder he had been looking at. "Voi! Did you leave any loose ends behind?"

"Nope! Kitty's family won't be causing any problems, Bertesca is very dead, and I have the files," Prince Bel announced. Harry wondered if he was a real Prince. Uncle Vernon had always been very impressed by royalty. What did Prince Bel mean when he said that they wouldn't cause problems? Harry didn't want to ask. Were they dead like Mr Bertesca? Should he be sad about it? All he felt was empty, and kind of relieved. They couldn't touch him again. He was never going back in the cupboard.

"Good. Have Levi sort out papers for the brat when we get back. You can't put Kitty on them." The blond said, shuffling the papers he held.

"But Kitty's his name!" Bel pouted. The knives had vanished into whatever pocket they had come from, and Bel was stroking his hair. As scary as the older boy was, it still felt nice. The only time anyone had touched his hair before was when Aunt Petunia was trying to comb it, and that always felt more like she was trying to rip it out. Bel's hand was amazingly gentle, even when it caught on the tangles which he carefully teased out.

"Kit is short for Christopher. Put that on the papers. Choose a last name." the blond snapped at him, before looking back at the paper in front of him. Bel turned to Harry and grinned, before pulling his arm.

Harry yelped as he was shifted so that he sat cradled in Bel's lap, his head tucked into Bel's shoulder with one of the Prince's arms wrapped tightly around him. It was amazingly comfortable. And Bel hadn't done anything to actually hurt him yet, he hadn't even shouted at him really. This was better than the Dursleys.

"What do you want your last name to be, Kitty?" It seemed like he would be stuck with that name. Still, maybe some of the others would call him Kit, or Christopher. That was a nice normal name. Kitty could be a nickname. Harry had always wanted friends who would call him by nicknames, actual ones like Dudley's friends called him instead of insults. Kitty was better than Freak or Boy, anyway.

"Whatever you want, Prince Bel," he told the Prince. Agreeing made the boy happy, after all, and he didn't want Bel to be angry with him. He couldn't think of any good names anyway.

Harry closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, to the sound of Bel's quiet giggles and the feeling of his gentle hand running through his hair.