Uncertain sight

I don't own Harry Potter

AU of Who Will Fill A Coward's Grave? by RobSt

The dark-haired boy with a scar on his forehead jolted awake in terror, heart hammering fit to burst as a trickle of sweat creased down the side of his face. His hands flailed and scuttled across the nightstand like spiders as he searched for a lightswitch. Instead his hand knocked over something hard and cool which clattered against the stark wood.

He cursed softly as he listened in the dark for angry voices, then he remembered. He wasn't at his horrible relatives anymore, he was at the Granger's, safe for the moment. He snorted. Safe. He hadn't been safe since the moment he returned to the magical world! A literal two-faced man that tried to kill him for a magic rock, only to turn to dust before his eyes. A murderous snake that could have killed the whole school and then probably some of the nearby settlements before Muggle or magical authorities could put the damn thing down. Ghostly wraiths that fed on souls or at least what was the term used on that show his whale of a cousin sometimes watched? Neural energy? And then, Prefect Cedric Diggory, the guy he used to hate for dating Cho, cut down in a flash of green light by that sorry rat Wormtail. Now this dream, of someone dying for him again, this was the last straw. Harry Potter seized a change of clothes, his wand, his money bag, and his invisibility cloak (he figured the broom was too obvious, even concealed), and his wand. His hand clenched around the door, poised to run, before he realized running wasn't an option. Even if he hid in a concrete bunker under the middle of the most boring field, Voldemort would find him sooner or later.

And what would happen to his friends? Sure, he barely tolerated his classmates and teachers at large most of the time, alternatively praising him for some magic his mother performed, or condemning him the moment they thought he was 'dark.' But the Weasleys, his godfather, Hermione? Oh Merlin. His jaw clenched at the mental image of Mrs. Granger and Hermione wailing over a dead body. Harry seizing a ginger-haired man, before being cuffed and held at wandpoint. He didn't 'see' what happened after that, but it probably wasn't good.

It took some convincing for the Grangers and Hermione to leave the house in the middle of a night on the word of a boy that they'd know for all of fifteen minutes, especially one who needed counseling. In the end, they packed light and headed toward London, figuring they could blend in for a few days if needed. This decision changed a lot for the wizarding world, in some ways for the better, in some for the worst.