Harry hated that he kept getting involved in this saving people thing. It never worked out for him considering that he just took a bullet for someone. The sounds of shouting got fuzzy when he hit the floor after his dive. Reaching down to feel his gut Harry pulled back his hand to reveal it was covered in blood. "Worse ways to go out-" He managed to cough out, turning his head to look up at the woman he pushed out of the way.

"Than taking a bullet for a pretty lady, right?" his vision swimming and two other figures end up looking down on him.

"Absolutely kid." The captain replied, trying to keep the boy focused while the doctor worked on him. Things started to get dark for him so Harry decided to close his eyes even if he knew he wasn't going to like the dreams that came along with them.

Everything was rage and spellfire. Fancy lights belying their devastating effects flew all around the Death Chamber. There was no way out but a body bag as it would seem that Bellatrix in her madness had blown up the doorway, ensuring that no one escaped tonight.

Harry was regretting bringing his friends with him to try and save his godfather, mostly because Sirius wasn't even in any danger, at least not until he had to come and save them. That frustration he felt towards himself was distracting him which might be why he didn't see the flash of green until it was too late.

Jerking up from the operating table in a cold sweat Harry looked around the room to see that he wasn't the only person there. Some teenage girl was laying on a cot nearby and his first attempt to look around the room more was met with sharp pain from his abdomen.

Pulling the sheets back revealed stitches in his stomach and the events that led to him waking where he was. "Right," leaning back on the bed with a sigh.

He remained where he was for a minute before getting the same antsy feeling he always got when he was stuck in the hospital wing ready to leave. "Time to find out what happened after I passed out." Kicking off the sheets and exiting the room.

After a few minutes of walking around Harry finally found the adults all situated in the dining room. "Ahh, I found the party." Chuckling to himself as he strode in. "What are we talking about?" smiling a cheeky grin at the group.

"You should not be up." Simon the doctor said as he hurried over to his patient.

Harry flopped his arms down and groaned. "Why not, I'm fine."

"You were shot." Simon squawked in surprise that this kid was being so combative.

Harry looked down to his stomach to where the stitches were and pointed. "But then you took the bullet out, which means I'm no longer shot."

"That is not how that works." Simon shook his head in disbelief.

Harry's carefree attitude about having a bullet taken out of him earned some chuckles from the others who were watching the scene play out. "So anyway. What did I miss, because I remember getting shot and now there's some new person on board. How long was I out?"

"A couple of hours, which is why you should be getting rest." Simon encouraged while looking to the others to back him up on getting his patient back in bed.

"Ehh," Harry shrugged while walking past the young doctor. "I've had worse. Just surprised me is all."

Jayne barked out a laugh at the kid's lack of caring. "I like him."

"Thanks, I like me too." Harry returned the compliment before taking a seat at the table. "But what'd I miss?"

Zoe looked at the rest of the crew before coming over to Harry and trying to usher him out of the room. She wasn't sure that this discussion was something for such a young age. "Why don't you go with Inara and leave this to us." Hoping that the companion would be able to keep the kid away from the grown ups table and Inara seemed like she'd be better with kids than herself.

Harry looked flatly at the second in command. "Sounds like this is about what happened earlier." Because it was plainly obvious why the crew had the doctor in a sort of mock trial, they were deciding what to do with him. "And since I got shot over all this, I feel like I deserve to be here. So doc, why'd I take a bullet today? Does it have anything to do with Sleeping Beauty in the med bay?"

"That's my sister, River Tam." Simon sighed because it would be a little tedious to have to explain it again, but as the teenaged boy hadn't been there and was shot as a result of the fed discovering him he felt he at least owed that much.

After getting a repeat of what the doctor had told the others Harry just let out a whistle. "Bloody hell. That's pretty horrible," Harry said sympathetically. "I know the effects of having someone messing around inside your head. If it's not done right then it is not pleasant and can leave you really messed up."

"You've had similar things done?" Simon questioned this information. Because in his planning to rescue River he hadn't come across anything that would indicate that someone else might have undergone the same treatment. Obviously his sister wasn't the only one in those facilities especially because her letter saying they were being hurt implied more kids than just herself.

Harry waggled his hand in the air. "Sort of, it's complicated but I had a professor who tried and I very loosely say tried, to teach me how to keep people out of my head. I can do it, I just didn't like the training very much. But I'd suspect that your sister didn't undergo the same process I did."

"Do you think you could talk to her and see if anything matches up?" Simon requested as there might be a possibility that this young man might have also escaped from the same place.

Harry offered a shrug. "Sure, I'll give it a shot. At the very least maybe I can tell you what they didn't do." As he doubted it was like anything Snape did to train him in occlumency and what he had practiced since he'd gotten here.

"That's nice and all," Captain Reynold's interrupted. "But we still have a kidnapped federal officer on board, the feds are on our tail and so far the only bright side to all this is that I don't got a dead kid here. So at the very least you ain't taking a walk outside."

"Woah hey." Harry protested that someone would have been killed if he hadn't pulled though. "He's not the one who shot me here."

"We know," Jayne said, cutting in. "And I'm scratching my head as to why we ain't dealt with the one who did."

Zoe glared at the merc. "Kill a fed? Could you come up with a stupider plan?"

Jayne looked back at Zoe. "He can I.D. us."

Wash decided he'd sat quietly enough. "Can we maybe vote on the whole murdering people issue?"

"We don't vote on my ship because my ship is not the rutting town hall!"

"This is insanity. Mal..." Inara protested that the captain was entertaining the idea of killing someone in cold blood.

Wash shook his head in his seat. "I think we've gone way beyond that point now," Commenting on the situation before looking at his wife. "Come on, we're going to talk this through, yeah?" When he saw that she wasn't backing him up on this he started to get pissed off.

"I'll not sit by while there's killing here." The preacher spoke up against the idea of knocking off the fed.

"I'm in agreement with the pastor," Harry chimed in that he didn't feel comfortable just killing someone when they didn't have to. He was tired of death.

"Nimen de bizui," Mal shouted over everyone. "Way it is is the way it is. We got to deal with what's in front of us."

"Mal, you can't be serious. Killing a fed, then what you gonna dump those two out on Whitefall. I doubt that Harry or Book will turn a blind eye to what's going on and I'd rather leave if you want to run your ship this way." Inara said while stepping up to challenge Mal.

"It might be best you do. You ain't a part of this business," Mall flatly said while looking over the other passengers and noticed that while the shepherd had tensed up, the boy Harry seemed ready to reach for something in his pocket. Taking a step away from Inara Mal took his exit hearing footsteps following him.

Harry finally let out the breath he was holding and relaxed in his seat. He turned his attention to the crew who were looking at him funny. "What?" He said when he realized they were trying to figure him out.

"You looked ready to fight." Zoe commented that when things got tense, someone so young didn't so much as flinch but instead looked ready to act.

Jayne smirked. "Kid's got balls. What would you have done if shooting broke out huh?" curious because he was starting to like this punk.

"Take out as many of you as I could, try not to get shot in the process," Harry shrugged out his response. "Non-lethally of course. Be a tad hypocritical to be so against killing a prisoner just to turn around and drop all of you in the heat of the moment."

Wash snorted in amusement of the oddness of that statement. Everyone's attention was grabbed when they heard the sound of a body hitting the wall and saw that at some point Mal had struck Simon.

After the captain had left there wasn't much reason for the crew to hang around as they had other jobs to do. Jayne had gone off with the captain. Wash had returned to his pilot's seat with his wife. Kaylee had returned to the engine room which left Inara, Shepherd Book and Harry in the dining hall. "So you've known these people for a while miss, are they always so…"

"Much like a family?" Harry finished for the preacher. "Sorry, they just all seem to act like a big family rather than a crew."

Inara smirked at the funny way that the young man saw the Serenity's crew. "That's one way to look at it. One big dysfunctional family."

"Isn't that the only way for families to work?" Harry chuckled, his thoughts going back to the Weasleys, they were a good kind of dysfunctional. "Not that I would know, I'm just an orphan."

"Must be hard at such a young age," Shepherd commented as he'd seen many such cases of parentless children, it never seemed to get easier.

"I managed," Harry replied. "Been doing alright on my own." Not saying that he'd been trying to find a way home for a while but not having a lot of hope. One thing that had gotten him out of trouble for the last year or so was that he seemed to be the only wizard around. Everything he found indicated that the Veil of Death just spat you out in some random place and time in the universe and considering who he fell through with he was worried what that meant.

Inara sat down in the seat next to Harry and patted him tenderly on the hands. "There are places you can go if you need help."

Harry had to look away because he didn't want to show that such a gentle gesture had affected him so much but he was used to tough people and hard hits, not soft words and kindness. Their conversation was broken by the intercoms throughout the ship coming to life.

Mal's voice began to come out from the one in the dining hall. "This is the captain."

"We're passing another ship. Looks to be Reavers. From the size, probably a raiding party."

Harry tensed up at the warning of what was coming closer to the ship. He'd heard the stories, most people assumed they were just that, but he was always more cautious because every tale had a grain of truth to it to get it started.

"Could be they're headed somewhere particular, could be they've already hit someone and they're full up. So everyone stay calm."

Shepherd Book started a prayer with the knowledge that the space savages were going to be so close to the ship that an attack might be imminent.

"We try to run, they'll have to chase us. It's their way. We're holding course. We should be passing 'em in a minute, so we'll see what they do. Zoe, you come on up to the bridge." After that the intercom cuts out and the ship seems to move again.

Harry could see people moving around and decided he should get himself ready if the ship was going to be boarded. "Can't just have a normal day can I." He grumbled to himself heading out of the room to go where he kept his stuff. Magic might be the ace up his sleeve but he did learn a few more tricks along the way.

The atmosphere on the ship while waiting to see what the reavers did was grim. It was as if everyone was holding their breath and waiting for the sound of the magnetic grapplers to attach themselves to the hull of Serenity.

But after a few grueling minutes Mal's voice came back on to tell them all the reavers were passing by. The ship would go another day without problem.

And maybe that was his problem, he realized. He'd let his guard down and now that lawman had a hostage. To Harry he'd come out to the cargo hold when he'd heard the commotion of the sounds of someone struggling. Inara and Kaylee had followed him and they were both looking down to see Dobson trying to force the now awakened River outside with him. "Bugger me," Harry groaned as he flung himself over the railing to land on the man.

He figured that a fist fight with the older officer would end poorly for him so he'd have to act quickly or else be overpowered by what he presumed was someone with a bit of training. Dobson had already lunged at Harry to pin him to the ground so he had a shot he couldn't miss and with the man on top of him no one would see him draw his wand.

Kaylee and Inara were shouting for help while running down the steps only to see Dobson's body jerk and fall off of Harry. The younger teen picked himself up off the floor a moment later panting. "Probably should have thought that one through a bit more."

"Is he dead?" Kaylee nervously asked.

"Nah just knocked out," Harry shook his head while pointing a finger at the officer's slightly rising chest. "LIke I said, I don't want to kill if I don't have to."

The intercoms blared to life. "We got Reavers coming, they must have gotten hungry again."

"Come on!" Harry bellowed in frustration. Then he turned his attention to the doctor's sister. "Hey, you alright?" Trying to slowly approach the panicked girl.

"River?!" Simon calls out after he makes it to the cargo bay and sees the state she's in.

"Doctor, I think we have another patient for you," Inara pointed towards Shepherd Book who stumbled in with blood dripping down the side of his head.

Hearing the sounds of pounding hooves Harry looks out of the cargo hold to see that those who had left to sell their ill gotten gains had returned.

Mal only spared a glance at the unconscious officer as he moved through hold. Harry shrugged. "He tried to take a hostage."

The captain chuckled and stepped over the man to hurry up to the cockpit with the others following behind him. "Alright everyone, to your posts, I want all hands on deck for this."

"What can I do to help?" Harry asks while following the captain. He saw that the crew was heading to where they were needed and felt like he should be doing something too.

"Unless you can perform a miracle, then not much," Mal muttered.

"Probably not that, how's your pilot planning to lose these guys?" Harry questioned because on the video screens the Reaver ship was in hot pursuit.

"Not sure yet?" Mal said while wracking his brain to come up with a solution.

Harry's eyes widened as he came up with an idea. "These guys are complete nutters right, just chase and chase?"

Mal nodded in reply. "Pretty well sums it up."

Harry turned towards Wash. "We got some cliffs below us. Have you ever tried to pull a Wronski Feint?"

"A what?" Wash asked in confusion because he'd heard of some crazy maneuvers but none with that name before.

"A Polish flier came up with it. Go over a cliff and go straight down, last second pull up. These guys are in a ship bigger than yours, going faster than yours, no way they have the same handling and I'm betting their crazy means they won't see it coming."

"You want me to fly straight into the ground?"

"Yeah," Harry smirked at the genius of his plan. "Be helpful if you don't hit it too."

Wash thought for a moment about how well he could pilot his own ship and how hard this might be to pull off. "Pull up too soon and they'll have time to react. Too late and we're lucky if we pancake," mulling those not too different outcomes as they both ensured death for the crew. "Alright I'm in."

The pilot reached over and hit the intercom. "Kaylee, we're going to try a Wronski Feint. Get the engine ready to have our thrusters shoot our ass down so we can avoid the planet."

"What?!" was Kaylee's reply that was heard even without the intercom on.

"Oh yeah, this is going to work." Wash smiled because surely the greater the incredulous response from his mechanic to his shenanigans were, the more likely they were to pay off.

"Hold onto something!" Mall shouted as loud as he could just before Wash took the ship over the edge of a big cliff.

Soon as Serenity started heading down, gravity got a bit weird and things in the ship began to float off the surfaces not able to keep up with the speed the ship was falling. "Harry if this doesn't work." Mal managed to grunt out through the immense g's he was feeling.

"Don't be a baby, this'll work." Harry laughed uproariously from the familiar sensation. "And if it doesn't, you don't have to worry about it."

Seconds before impact, Wash sent the order to the engine room and the thrusters flung themself to their new angle, trying to correct the descent and keep them from splattering all over the canyon floor. Probably with no more than a small building's worth of clearance the small spaceship managed to pull herself out of a dive, the larger vessel… not so much.

The cataclysmic sound coming from the Reaver ship when it plowed into the ground was overshadowed by the cheers of a successful escape. "Hot damn!" Wash shouted as Serenity punched through the atmosphere and back into space.

"And the best part, they're not just going to be able to head onto the nearby town and pick them clean either." Harry said with a bit of pride, that his plan had worked out and removed a threat to nearby innocent people.

"That's a big damn hero moment if I ever saw one," Zoe smiled before grabbing her husband vigorously. "Sir, you're going to need to take the helm, I need this man to tear all my clothes off."

Mal knew he couldn't protest and sat in the recently vacated pilots seat. "Hey kid," Looking over his shoulder to Harry who started to slowly meander out of the cockpit. "You're alright."

"Thanks Cap'n," Harry smirked and strolled out whistling a tune.

Harry took a walk through the ship and saw all the damage pulling a Wronski Feint under the effects of a planet's gravity had done. Pretty much anything breakable was and there was so much bent out of shape that it would take ages to replace it all. If you didn't have magic on your side.

Taking a peek around to make sure no one was looking, Harry began to carefully cast repairing charms on items before storing them back in their cupboards. He hadn't wanted to mess with the electronics of the ship with wide area spells so it had taken him a bit of time, but thankfully everyone else on the ship seemed a bit preoccupied with the recent escape so he was just finishing up when some people entered the room.

"Oh hey, I've almost got it all packed away," Harry beamed a smile at those who entered. Those being Simon, Shepherd Book, Inara, Kaylee and Jayne.

Kaylee sighed as she looked over the room, mentally calculating how much would need to get replaced as that would eat up any profits from the sale of the food stuff they just sold to Patience. "So how much broke Harry?" hoping that it would be too bad.

"Hmm, oh nothing much," Harry pointed to a few plates, cups and silverware that he kept broken so as not to be too suspicious. "A couple of things here and there but I think we got pretty lucky that it wasn't everything." Which it had been before Harry got to work.

The mechanic let out a happy sigh that a couple of utensils and dishes was all that was lost. She considered that a little miracle on its own. "So that Wronski thing, that was your idea?" asking of the odd teenager.

Harry slyly grinned. "Yup, I didn't come up with it, but I've done it once or twice before. Not on something this big, mind you, but the principles are the same."

"Well I for one am grateful that we are out of that dreadful situation," Inara said, slumping into an open chair with others taking up seats at the table with her.

"Twice in one day… and that's normal out here?" Shepherd Book questioned because this was already getting too exciting for him.

"Nah," Jayne laughed. "Don't ever get away from Reavers twice. Most people don't even get away once."

Seeing that people were just loafing about, Harry moved to the cabinets where he saw some ingredients and began to pull out some pots. Before anyone really paid attention to what he was doing he had already returned from the stove with a plate of fudgy caramel squares. "Here, I figured a bit of sweetness after today will help take the edge off." Offering the treats to the table.

He hoped that no one would notice that the caramel should have taken a few hours to cool down but a discreet charm had them at the right everything in moments. "Wow Harry, these are great." Simon complimented the chef on the tastiness of the little squares.

His was not the only appreciative response however. "Oh mmm," Inara let out a soft moan. "These are perfect."

"How's a boy like you so good in the kitchen, you some kind of pansy?" Jayne questioned even if he was happy to eat the food.

Harry let out a laugh and shook his head. "Sorry Jayne, you're not my type. I prefer mine a bit more leggy and less," waving his hand over at the guys who had ended up on one side of the table. "No offense."

"But how did you get so good that you can just bust out something like this without a recipe book?" Kaylee questioned because she loved strawberries but these were pretty good too.

"I've been cooking since I could reach the stove." Harry smiled at the young lady because learning to cook for the Dursleys and with how much his cousin liked sweets Harry had actually become quite the confectioner.

"Seems awfully dangerous without supervision." Shepherd stated as that seemed a bit unwise to let a child cook.

Harry stared blankly for a moment then took a deep breath. "Anyway, I'll go take some of these to the captain." Placing a couple on a smaller plate. "Simon, did you want to get your sister so she can have some?"

"I put her to sleep, gave her a mild sedative to help with everything she experienced today," Simon replied.

Letting out a hum, Harry looked at the doctor curiously. "Might be a tad extreme. Going straight for a tranquilizer."

"My sister wasn't meant to wake up for another week, the effects of cryo and then being taken hostage gave her a fright." Simon retorted harshly.

"Woah hey, you got me all wrong. She's had a pretty jarring day, I can see why she might need a little help. Just that she didn't really get a chance to meet everyone before she took a nap. I'll save some for her in the fridge, same as the two love birds because I am not going near their cabin for a while." Harry chuckled because he knew that any interruption would be unwanted.

Harry plopped in the copilot seat next to the captain and held out the plate of fudge for him. "Made a snack for everyone, it isn't chocolate but the sugar should still be a bit calming."

Mal eyed the golden brown squares before taking one into his mouth. "Pretty good kid. So what's your plans, figure we can drop you off somewhere nearby after all the help you were these last couple of days."

Harry sat in silence for a bit thinking over the offer, which was pretty generous. "I just don't really have anywhere to go, been drifting for a while."

"No family?" Mal asked.

"Orphan." Harry shortly replied.

"Friends?"

"All dead." Harry answered reluctantly, after all this time unless they made a new philosopher stone, Hermione, Ron, Luna and Neville would have hopefully lived long and happy lives that ended centuries ago.

"Home?" Mal inquired further hoping to hit something positive.

"Burnt to the ground a long time ago." The Earth-That-Was had been one of the first things Harry had learned after arriving when and where he was because there didn't seem to be a way back and no real reason to go back anyway.

Mal slumped back in the pilot seat. "Kid, you are making this really difficult."

"Sorry, I've never been an easy one to figure out what to do with. Not unless you're some really old man with an unhealthy interest in a teenage boy."

"What?!" Mal exclaimed in confusion because that sounded wrong to him.

"Don't worry about it, long story." Harry waved off the concern because he knew that to someone who didn't understand it would seem weird.

Jayne chose that moment to intrude, dragging the unconscious officer in with him. "What do we do about this guy now?" Asking because they still haven't come to a decision on what the fate of the fed would be.

Mal pressed his palms to his eyes because of his frustration at the never ending day. "We can't just dump him can we?"

"Nah, Kaylee, the whore and the other passengers saw me bring him in." Jayne brumbled out an answer. If no one was looking he probably would have done that but now if he did the women folk and weaker men would complain.

"Well he can't just leave, he'll rat out the ship," Mal said in anger as he slammed his fist down on the console.

Harry looked guilty as he raised his hand slowly. "I can maybe… sort of fix this." Because he had come up with an idea that he didn't particularly like. "He won't be dead but he'll forget the last couple of days."

"You can do that?" Mal raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, it's just that I don't know how long he's been looking for the doc and his sister so I don't feel safe making him forget too much, but he won't remember this ship or any of the crew."

Mal looked to Jayne who seemed just as curious as he was. "And this amnesia you're going to give him, it's permanent?"

"Unless someone knows how I did it they won't be able to undo it," confessing that his obliviate wouldn't stand up to a trained mind healer who would be able to restore what he took, unless he overpowered it like Lockhart did to himself. Which is where he had gotten the idea from. And since he'd not found a single shred of evidence that other witches and wizards were out here in the verse, then he felt confident that it would hold up especially on someone who didn't seem all that important.

"Alright, you make this problem go away and then we'll see if we can find you a spot on the ship," Mal offered because he wanted to know more about this strange teenager who had an unusual skill set. "Could always use a cook. If you make other foods taste just as good as this stuff." Holding up his last piece of caramel fudge to Harry.

Zoe leaned over to Mal after they touched down on the refueling station and watched to see Harry do whatever it was he was gonna. "Are you sure about this?"

Mal looked pensive as he watched Harry put his hands on the unconscious man's head. "He's an oddball, but my gut is telling me to trust him. So far hasn't done us wrong."

"Yeah but to take him on as crew?" Zoe whispered, she liked the teen well enough. He was polite, could cook and didn't make messes which already put him above most everyone on the ship. He just seemed a bit younger than she would have liked having around.

"Boy's got nowhere to go, he's just going. Figure he can go with us, earn a bit and when he finds somewhere he wants to get off at," Mal shrugged while waiting to see the result of Harry's conversation.

"Oh jeez," Dobson said while looking over at the crew who the young man had told him were worried sick when he had his accident a couple of hours ago. "That's so embarrassing. And to think I was so klutzy that I tripped and knocked myself out."

"Hey hey, it's alright Dobson," Harry smiled at the man, seeing that the effects of the obliviate had taken hold by the glazed over look in his eyes. "These things happen, you just get some rest and you'll feel right as rain in a couple of days."

Dobson came over to the rest of the crew of the Serenity completely unaware of how tense he was making everyone, but they could tell that something was definitely off with the guy.

"You see that look in his eyes?" Jayne whispered to Shepherd Book after Dobson grabbed his bags and departed. "Ain't right."

"I believe that I would have to agree with you. Harry seems to possess either a strange gift or he knows a scary amount about the human psyche to make a man forget days of his life." Shepherd concurred with the merc's assessment of what he witnessed.

"Well," Harry excitedly clapped his hands, drawing attention back to himself. "Who's ready for a new day?"