DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN HARRY POTTER OR POKÉMON
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Quick Author's Note: I know...another new story! Sorry to anyone who is still waiting for an update for my other stories but this idea popped into my head after I got writer's block for a different Pokemon story! I get kind of hyper-focused on new ideas, so it's hard to focus on anything else but that 1 idea, so here it is!
|PROLOGUE|
It was a brilliantly sunny Saturday, and the zoo was crowded with families. The Dursleys bought Dudley and Piers large chocolate ice creams at the entrance and then, because the smiling lady in the van had asked me what I wanted before they could rush me away, I ended up with a cheap lemon ice pop. It wasn't bad either, I thought, licking it as I watched a gorilla who looked remarkably like Dudley, minus the blond hair, scratch its head.
I had the best morning I'd had in a long time. I made sure to walk a bit away from the Dursleys, keeping a safe distance from Dudley and Piers, who by lunchtime were getting bored with the animals and might resort to their favorite hobby of hitting me. We ended up eating in the zoo restaurant, and when Dudley threw a tantrum because his Knickerbocker Glory didn't have enough ice cream on top, Uncle Vernon caved and bought him another one, leaving me to finish the first.
I felt, afterward, that I should have known it was all too good to last.
After lunch, we went to the reptile house. It was cool and dark in there, with lit windows all along the walls. Behind the glass, all sorts of lizards and snakes were crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. Dudley and Piers wanted to see huge, poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found the largest snake in the place. It could have wrapped its body twice around Uncle Vernon's car and crushed it into a trash can—but at the moment it didn't look in the mood. In fact, it was fast asleep.
Dudley stood with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the glistening brown coils.
"Make it move," he whined at his father. Uncle Vernon tapped on the glass, but the snake didn't budge.
"Do it again," Dudley ordered. Uncle Vernon rapped the glass smartly with his knuckles, but the snake just snoozed on.
"This is boring," Dudley moaned. He shuffled away.
I moved in front of the tank and looked at the snake. I wouldn't have been surprised if it had died of boredom itself—no company except stupid people drumming their fingers on the glass trying to disturb it all day long. It was worse than having a cupboard as a bedroom, where the only visitor was Aunt Petunia hammering on the door to wake you up; at least I got to visit the rest of the house.
The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it raised its head until its eyes were on a level with mine
It winked.
I stared. Then I looked quickly around to see if anyone was watching. They weren't. I looked back at the snake and winked, too.
The snake jerked its head toward Uncle Vernon and Dudley, then raised its eyes to the ceiling. It gave me a look that said quite plainly:
"I get that all the time."
"I know," I whispered through the glass, though I wasn't sure the snake could hear me. "It must be really annoying. "
The snake nodded vigorously.
"Where do you come from, anyway?" I asked.
The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign next to the glass. I glanced down at it.
Boa Constrictor, Brazil.
"Was it nice there?"
The boa constrictor jabbed its tail at the sign again and I read on: This specimen was bred in the zoo.
"Oh, I see—so you've never been to Brazil?"
As the snake shook its head, a deafening shout behind me made both of us jump.
"DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!"
Dudley came waddling toward us as fast as he could.
"Out of the way, you," he said, punching me in the ribs. Caught by surprise, I fell hard on the concrete floor. What came next happened so fast no one saw how it happened—one second, Piers and Dudley were leaning right up close to the glass, the next, they had leapt back with howls of horror.
I sat up and gasped; the glass window of the boa constrictor's tank had vanished. The great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly, slithering out onto the floor. People throughout the reptile house screamed and started running for the exits.
As the snake slid swiftly past me, I could have sworn a low, hissing voice said, "Brazil, here I come...Thanksss, amigo. "
The keeper of the reptile house was in shock.
"But the glass," he kept saying, "where did the glass go?"
The zoo director himself made Aunt Petunia a cup of strong, sweet tea while he apologized over and over again. Piers and Dudley could only gibber. As far as I had seen, the snake hadn't done anything except snap playfully at their heels as it passed, but by the time we were all back in Uncle Vernon's car, Dudley was telling them how it had nearly bitten off his leg, while Piers was swearing it had tried to squeeze him to death. But worst of all, for me at least, was Piers calming down enough to say, "Harry was talking to it, weren't you, Harry?"
Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting on Harry. He was so angry he could hardly speak. He managed to say, "Go—cupboard—stay—no meals," before he collapsed into a chair, and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy.
It was nearly midnight before I could risk sneaking to the kitchen for some food. I lay in my dark cupboard much later, blankets drawn over my head like a tent, hunched over a discarded Game Boy that Dudley had deemed 'boring' last year only a week after his birthday. The device, slightly cracked but still functional, was a treasure to me, who found it atop a pile of unwanted toys in the Dursley's bin. It wasn't just a way to pass the time—it was a portal to another world, a world where I wasn't just the unwanted nephew who lived under the stairs.
Tonight, as the Dursleys' loud snores echoed through the small house on Privet Drive, I was starting a new journey in the digital region of Kanto, playing "Pokémon FireRed." The game cartridge, slightly sticky and covered in a fine layer of biscuit crumbs—likely from one of Dudley's snack-time tantrums—had miraculously kept working.
The screen flickered to life as I turned on the device, the iconic theme music bursting forth—tinny but magical, filled with the promise of adventure. Choosing my character's name was simple; I quickly typed in 'Harry' using the clunky controls, feeling a thrill at seeing my name in another life, another story. I chose Charmander as my starter Pokémon, drawn to the small, flame-tailed creature—something about its dragon-like appearance always got me excited.
Even though I'd beaten the game probably half a dozen times now, I could still play for hours. Each victory in the virtual gyms gave me a sense of accomplishment I rarely felt in the real world.
Underneath the stairs, with the walls pressing close and the air stuffy and warm, the Game Boy screen was a window to a place where I mattered, where I was a hero on a grand quest, not just the boy who was expected to be as silent and unobtrusive as the spiders sharing my cupboard.
In Pokémon FireRed, I wasn't just surviving; I was thriving. I strategized against gym leaders, collected special items, and learned the strengths and weaknesses of different Pokémon. In this world, nobody mocked me for my hand-me-down clothes or my broken glasses. Here, I was just a skilled trainer, traveling from town to town, trying to be the very best.
When I beat Misty, the leader of the Cerulean Gym, for the seventh time, a soft cheer escaped my lips, quickly stifled by the sound of shifting upstairs. Freezing, I listened intently, a familiar tension crawling up my back. After a few minutes of silence, I exhaled and turned my attention back to the screen, where the words "Leader Misty defeated" still flashed.
The late hour eventually wore me down, and my eyes grew heavy. I saved my game and hid the Game Boy under my bed. I couldn't let the Dursleys find it. Vernon or Petunia would take it, and Dudley would just destroy it. I couldn't let that happen. In the cramped darkness of the cupboard under the stairs, the game was my only escape where I could be something more.
I'd been living with the Dursleys almost ten years, ten miserable years, as long as I could remember, ever since I'd been a baby and my parents had died in that car crash. I couldn't remember being in the car when my parents died. Sometimes, when I strained my memory during the long hours in my cupboard, I recalled a strange vision: a blinding flash of green light and a burning pain on my forehead. This, I supposed, was the crash, though I couldn't imagine where all the green light came from. I couldn't remember my parents at all. My aunt and uncle never spoke about them, and of course, I was forbidden to ask questions. There were no photographs of them in the house.
When I was younger, I had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take me away, but it had never happened; the Dursleys were my only family. Yet sometimes I thought (or maybe hoped) that strangers in the street seemed to know me. Very strange strangers they were, too. A tiny man in a violet top hat had bowed to me once while out shopping with Aunt Petunia and Dudley. After asking me furiously if I knew the man, Aunt Petunia had rushed us out of the shop without buying anything. A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily at me once on a bus. A bald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken my hand in the street the other day and then walked away without a word. The weirdest thing about all these people was the way they seemed to vanish the second I tried to get a closer look.
At school, I had no one. Everybody knew that Dudley's gang hated that odd Harry Potter in his baggy old clothes and broken glasses, and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley's gang.
The Pokemon anime didn't start until 1997, so we're just going to pretend Harry started Hogwarts in 2001, the same year the first movie came out!
Thanks for reading!