Chapter 1
Harry knew he was in big trouble when he suddenly found himself on top of the roof of the school cafeteria. He hadn't meant to, really, but no one would believe him.
His stomach sank as he sat up on the chimney, helplessly watching as Dudley, Piers, Malcolm, and Gordon pointed and laughed at him. Dudley had sent Gordon off to get a teacher to tell on him.
'Uncle Vernon's going to lock me up and Aunt Petunia's going to take away dinner for the rest of the month!' He thought, panicking already.
He felt sick to his stomach with worry. 'I don't have enough cookies saved in the cupboard from my school lunches to last that long.'
His teacher, Mrs. Williams, came out with Dennis and the school headmaster in tow.
"Mr. Potter! What do you think you're doing?!" Mrs. Williams shrieked.
"Please, I didn't mean too, Mrs. Williams! I was trying to hide and the wind caught me mid-jump! I swear. Please don't tell Aunt Petunia!" he begged, tears streaming down his face.
"You will be lucky if I don't expel you, Mr. Potter! Amelia has told me all about you. You cheat on your school work, you refuse to leave your cousin alone despite repeated warnings, and now you're climbing school buildings and lying to my face about it. I will be having a serious discussion with your aunt and uncle this afternoon." replied Headmaster Davies, her face terrifyingly angry.
"Amelia, watch the children. I'm going to go call the fire department to get him down." Headmaster Davies said, turning to his teacher who nodded before leaving back inside to make the phone call.
It was all he could do not to wail as he watched Mrs. Williams tried to corral the growing crowd of children on the school yard below.
"I'm not lying, I promise. It was the wind. I only meant to jump on the trash cans." He repeated, sniffling and wiping his nose on his sleeve.
No one listened to him, and no one believed him.
Ten minutes later, the wail of a fire truck was heard as it pulled into the parking lot and maneuvered as close as it could get to the cafeteria chimney. Mrs. Williams and the other Year 2 and 3 teachers moved all of the children far away from the cafeteria building so they weren't in the way.
A man in a uniform climbed up on the ladder and into the bucket as it extended out towards the chimney where he was stuck.
"Got yourself into a bit of a pickle, haven't you son? Stay right there, I'm coming to help you down." The man with brown hair said in a gentle, calm voice.
"Yes, sir." Harry replied.
He waited until the brown-haired man came up and held an arm up to him before he slowly stood up, holding the man's hand for dear life.
"Climb on my shoulders and hold on tight, alright?" the man said.
"Yes, sir." He replied, shaking like a leaf as the man picked him up and set him down in the bucket with him.
"I'm ready, sir." He said, still clutching the man's hand tightly.
"Alright, we're going down now." The man replied as the ladder began to lower back down.
Several long, tense minutes later, Harry was back on solid ground. His legs gave out beneath him when the man set him down as his teachers and classmates rushed over, cheering.
The brown-haired man turned and went down on one knee to talk to him.
"You alright there? Just scared, huh?" he said, looking at him with the most sincere blue eyes he had ever held his gaze.
"Y-yes sir, I'm fine." He replied.
He wasn't. He knew he would be in a world of trouble now. It wasn't his fault, and nobody believed him.
"Learned your lesson the hard way, didn't you? No more climbing things, alright?" said the man.
He nodded. "Yes, sir. I won't do it again."
The man ruffled his hair and he tensed up, but didn't move. He wondered if he offended the man, and felt bad when he sent him a look as he withdrew his hand.
He just wasn't used to it, that's all.
The teachers and the headmaster thanked the men from the fire department as they left and everyone but him was sent back to class. He was escorted to the headmaster's office where he found Aunt Petunia waiting for him.
He could hardly focus on what they were saying, he was so scared. Aunt Petunia put on her usual voice and act and said all the right things and he ended up walking out with his school bag and a week's suspension from school. Once he got back to school he would spend the rest of the month in in school suspension.
Harry flinched badly when she slammed the car door shut behind him and got in the drivers seat, slamming hers as well.
'She's so mad. I'm in so much trouble.'
Aunt Petunia hid her rage until they got home. She held her anger in, holding his hand in a firm grip that belied her desire to just pull him along as quickly as she could if they didn't have neighbors. He was pulled quickly down the hall, his school bag ripped off his shoulders and tossed at the couch.
He half-fell onto the couch as he attempted to right himself while his aunt set her purse down on the side table. And then, she rounded on him.
"For six years I have put up with your constant misbehavior. You cheat on your school work, you don't even do half of your homework, you bully Dudley and break his toys, you spilled his juice when I told you to help clean up the kitchen just yesterday, and you dyed your teacher's hair blue last year!" she screamed, pinning him to the couch with her furious blue eyes.
"Vernon and I have done so much for you, and all you have done is throw it back in our faces. We took you in when we could have left you to the group home. You know what they do to children at the group home, right? You would have been beaten and molested. But Vernon and I took you in and we have tried our best to give you everything your no-good, alcoholic, unemployed layabout parents couldn't. I know you love them, but Harry you would have been eating ramen noodles every single meal and sleeping on the floor, never once attending school in your life if your mum and dad had raised you. We gave you everything and we have never once laid a hand on you. You have a nice place to sleep, good food on the table, and a quality education at a good school. And this is how you repay us?!" Aunt Petunia shrieked.
"I'm sorry, Aunt Petunia. It was an accident. I didn't mean to. It was the wind, it caught me mid-jump I swear it!" he exclaimed.
"And now you're lying, again. You knew very well what you're doing, you freak." Aunt Petunia replied, hurling the insult at him like a punch to the gut that took his breath away.
"I'm telling the truth. I'm not a freak. I'm normal." He replied, hopelessly, after a moment when she didn't continue.
She had only ever called him a freak a handful of times, and always for doing things he couldn't convince them he didn't do.
She sent him to his cupboard and listened as she and Uncle Vernon discussed what to do with him when he got home from work. They were talking in the kitchen while Aunt Petunia made dinner.
"I'm tired of this, Petunia. It doesn't matter if we tell that school no and send him to Stonewall, he's still going to be a freak." Uncle Vernon insisted, likely over a cup of brandy. "I'll ask my sister to take him for the week. That'll set him straight. One week with Aunt Marge and he'll realize how good he has it here." Vernon replied.
"But Vernon, she hates the boy." Aunt Petunia exclaimed.
"Exactly. It'll be good for him." Uncle Vernon replied.
Harry's stomach sank.
'No not Aunt Marge. Ripper's gonna bite me. A whole week? He'll kill me!'
He still had nightmares about that one Christmas where they told him to let the dog out cause they were busy visiting. Aunt Marge let Ripper chase him up a tree and they left him there until bedtime. He ended up going to bed without lunch or dinner and eating some of the dog biscuits she'd given him as a present instead. He was never so happy to be grounded to his cupboard until New Years when she left.
That evening after dinner, he emptied out his school bag and packed it with everything Aunt Petunia said to bring for the week and met her at the front door.
"Well, hurry it up. We've got a long drive to Aunt Marge's house." Aunt Petunia said.
"Yes, Aunt Petunia." He replied, hurrying to put his shoes on.
No one spoke the entire drive.
Aunt Marge's house was a smaller one-story home with a yard full of dog kennels.
"Oh hello Petunia, good evening. Thank you for bringing the boy." Aunt Marge said, smiling politely, sickeningly, as he walked hesitantly to her side, trying to stay just out of arm's reach and far away from the dog.
Ripper was at her side, barking, so Aunt Petunia kept her distance.
"Yes, of course. Thank you for taking him. Here, for your trouble." Aunt Petunia said, handing her a few bills. "Thank you, have a good evening. Be good, Harry."
He wanted to beg Aunt Petunia to take him back, to promise to do anything she wanted so long as he didn't have to stay here, but he knew she wouldn't care.
"Boy, is that any way to treat your aunt?" Aunt Marge asked, hitting him over the head with a heavy hand.
"No, I'm sorry. Thank you, Aunt Petunia. Have a good evening." He replied.
She led him into the house, with Ripper at their heels, but instead of leading him to a spare bedroom or to the couch, she led him through the kitchen and out the back door to the kennels.
It didn't hit him until she stopped in front of an empty kennel.
I have to sleep in a dog kennel.
"I don't have a spare room for you to sleep in because I'm using it as the puppy room. So I moved this one into her sister's kennel for you. There's a litter box in the corner when you need to use the bathroom." Aunt Marge said, opening the door and looking at him expectantly.
"Thank you, Aunt Marge." He replied, walking in and putting his backpack down on the cement floor.
"Now hold still while I get this collar on you." Aunt Marge said, holding something else in her hand.
He obeyed and held still, frozen, while she put a collar with prongs that poked at his neck on him and tightened it so it hurt.
"That's a shock collar, boy. You step one toe out of line, you so much as look at me wrong, and I will hit this button and you will get an electric shock. You don't have fur, so it will leave a burn. You don't want to have to explain that, now do you?"
"No, Aunt Marge. I understand." He replied dutifully, terrified.
"Good boy." Aunt Marge replied, patting his head and smiling.
She picked up two clean bowls off the kennel floor and left with them, shutting and locking it behind her. Moments later, she returned with a bowl full of water and a bowl full of cereal.
"Here's your dinner, boy. Go to sleep, it's late. I've got a lot of work for you to do tomorrow. If you have the time and energy to be climbing buildings at school, you can be put to work." She replied.
"Yes, Aunt Marge." He replied.
She left him there, locked in a dog kennel, and went back inside. The dogs barked and growled at him from their kennels beside him, but there were no neighbors to hear and complain. Aunt Marge could do whatever she wanted to him.
He was too scared to be hungry, despite it being dark out and him having had nothing but cereal for breakfast all day long. He just drank some of the water, tilting the dog bowl to his lips and sipping at it.
'What's she going to do to me? Is she going to let Ripper maul me? Is she going to beat me up? She's always telling Uncle Vernon its nothing a good beating won't cure. She says he must not be hitting me hard enough cause all he does is slap me.'
It kept him up thinking, catastrophizing, trying in vain to figure out how he could get through tomorrow without being hit or shocked and how he was going to explain anything to his teachers if they asked. He started crying again silently, tears streaming down his face and blurring his vision.
'I want to go home.'
But he didn't really want to go back to the Dursley's house, either. He didn't want to go back to being grounded without meals all the time and blamed for everything Dudley did wrong.
'I wish someone would find me and take me home with them. I want a real home.'
Something within him responded and swelled inside of him, and suddenly with a loud pop he found himself far, far away in a big forest.
'Uh-oh. Where am I? Am I dreaming?'
He pinched himself.
'Ouch!'
Nope, not dreaming.
"Hello? Aunt Marge?" he yelled.
How did he get all the way out here? He didn't remember seeing a big, thick forest like this on the way to Aunt Marge's house. Did she take him away and abandon him while he was asleep? But that didn't make sense, what about all the work he was supposed to do tomorrow?
'Oh no I'm going to get in so much trouble! She's going to be so mad I'm not there.'
He wandered around aimlessly, scared by the never-ending expanse of the deep, dark forest and it's huge, towering trees with trunks as thick as Uncle Vernon and Aunt Marge back-to-back. He'd never seen trees so big.
"Aunt Marge? Where are you? Aunt Petunia?"
No one could hear him, and no one was coming to help him.
He heard something in the bushes beside him and screamed as a huge snake as long as two city buses lunged at him, hissing something about prey.
"No! Don't eat me!" he screamed, covering his face with his hands, but what came out wasn't English. It was hissing, and it made the snake freeze mid-lunge.
"You ssspeak sssnake, hatchling human! Thisss one has never ssseen that before." It replied, shocked, as it slithered out of the bushes and settled back to look at him. It was a big light brown snake with lots of dark brown markings all the way down its back.
"Can you help me? I'm lost, I can't find my aunt!" he replied, lowering his arms back to his side.
"Thisss one doesss not know what aunt isss. Thisss one will take you to the humansss." It replied, before slithering through the forest, waiting only to pause and make sure he was following.
Author's Note: I got an idea, I wrote it, and now you have this. I was watching some of the chunin exam arc. Please leave a review and let me know what you think!