As far as Harry was concerned, Draught of Peace was a miracle cure.

Under its influence, his relatives barely noticed his existence. When they did, he could safely ignore them. He'd determined this over the course of his first week back at Privet Drive, through a gradual testing of limits.

He stopped doing most of his usual chores, reasoning he'd put in far more than his fair share of labor his first ten years living there. He continued to prepare most of the household meals, as doing so gave him the opportunity to administer the Draught of Peace. It also meant he could make whatever he felt like having.

He kept close to the established meal schedule, other than the odd morning when he felt like having a bit of a lie-in. Listening to Vernon and Dudley whinge placidly if a meal was late was annoying, even though he knew nothing would come of it.

Although Harry cared little about how they spent their time, he couldn't help picking up bits and pieces. He was amused to note that Petunia and Vernon actually seemed to be doing better at living the normal life they'd always wanted, now that they weren't grasping so desperately at it.

Petunia got along better with the neighbors, once she stopped snapping at them for every minor transgression of her notions of the proper order of things.

For his part, Vernon golf game seemed to have improved. Vernon conducted a lot of business on the golf course. Harry couldn't imagine the man willingly engaging in physical activity otherwise, and he was pretty sure he always used a cart.

If nothing else, Vernon no longer had to spend money on replacing clubs he'd bent in half or thrown into the water after flying into a rage–formerly a common occurrence.

The only one having a harder time getting along with people was Dudley. He'd fallen out with his gang–Piers Polkiss and that lot. It made sense. They'd had little in common other than loads of misplaced aggression.

Dudley didn't seem too bothered. He was probably better off, as none of them were a good influence on each other. Privet Drive as a whole was certainly better off, as the gang was less intimidating with the loss of their largest member.

Harry idly wondered if the new Dudley would even bother to defend himself if Harry walked up and punched him in the face. But no. He wouldn't lower himself to Dudley's level, and he wouldn't abuse the gift Ginny had given him–though he suspected she would see the situation differently.

Aside from all that, another change in the Dursleys was that they spent even more time than before staring blankly at the telly. When not doing anything else, they drifted to the screen as though drawn to it.

At first, Harry found it surprising that none of the neighbors showed much reaction to the entire Dursley family changing their attitudes overnight, but he assumed everyone was too grateful to look deeper. Then one evening when he went for a stroll after dinner, he noticed as he walked past the windows of the other houses that the whole neighborhood was sitting watching television in their own living rooms.

He thought there might be some lesson or moral in that about what it meant to be normal, but he didn't dwell on it. This wasn't his world anymore, and the customs of these people had little to do with him. His life in the wizarding world often lacked in peace, but at least it had purpose. He'd known that since the night Hagrid had come for him on his eleventh birthday.

With Dobby no longer blocking his post, he didn't feel cut off from that life the way he had the previous summer. The house on Privet Drive was not the whole of his world.

Ginny wrote to him the most. To keep the peace between her and Ron, Harry made sure that whenever he sent Hedwig off with a letter to her, he included one to Ron as well, though Ron was less reliable about writing back.

She made an effort to entertain him and keep his spirits up by describing increasingly bizarre and outrageous ways to use magic to put an end to the Dursleys. At least, Harry thought she was mostly kidding.

She also sent him food on a regular basis, though he'd told her the Dursleys no longer concerned themselves with how much of their food he helped himself to. He assumed he had the potion to thank for that as well.

The pace of letters slowed down once the Weasleys headed off on a trip to Egypt. This didn't get him down too much, since by the time they left, he'd nearly made it to the half-way point of summer.

His first day back at Privet Drive, Harry had taken a calendar and worked out that there were seventy-five days from June 19th to September 1st. (That was if you counted the days on both ends–which he did, since he had to spend part of each of those days with the Dursleys.) Either way, as of July 27th, he would be half-way to heading back to where he belonged.

~*~

Though they were busy with tourist stuff in Egypt, Ron and Ginny remembered to send him gifts and cards on his birthday. Along with the post from Hermione and Hagrid which showed they hadn't forgotten him either, his thirteenth year was unquestionably starting out on the right foot.

That all changed in the afternoon, with the arrival of Aunt Marge, who started in right away with her usual snide remarks. When she ordered Harry to serve her a cup of tea, he added a drop of Draught of Peace. The potion had little effect–even when he added another drop to her second cup–except to make her deliver her insults in a dull monotone. Apparently, Marge didn't need to feel agitated to produce her usual stream of vileness. It came from a deeper, more fundamental part of her character.

Why couldn't that escaped nutter from the news go after her? Harry wondered.

He imagined a tiny Hermione on one shoulder telling him he was awful for thinking it, but the tiny Ginny on his other shoulder agreed with him wholeheartedly. He thought tiny Ron would land on the same shoulder as Ginny, if only for the sake of disagreeing with tiny Hermione.

~*~

After a week of Marge's attacks, Harry had reached his limit, to the point that he considered taking some Draught of Peace himself. But honestly, why should he? He wasn't the one at fault.

At one time, he might have thought otherwise, back when all he ever heard was how everything was his fault. His friends at Hogwarts had helped him see things differently. Trying to change himself to accommodate Marge's awfulness would be a step backwards. He was sure Ginny wouldn't want him to use the potion she'd given him like that.

And so, one night at dinner, Harry blew up at Aunt Marge figuratively, which caused her to blow up literally, like a balloon. The Dursleys observed this with mild complaints and potion-induced equanimity.

Harry gathered his possessions and made his way out of the house, ignoring Vernon's relaxed suggestions that he should fix Marge before leaving.

The impulse to get away was enough to propel Harry through dragging his trunk and Hedwig's cage for several blocks before the question of a destination started to nag at him.

He stopped. Where could he go? The Dursleys had poisoned the opinion of everyone in the Muggle world against him. Anyone who didn't turn him away at the door would just call the Dursleys to come get him. Possibly both.

His friends from school? The Weasleys and Hermione's family were both abroad on holiday. Who else was there? He got on well enough with his roommates and his Quidditch teammates, but not enough to turn up some night at one of their houses without raising a lot of questions.

And that was assuming he had a way to locate or contact them, which he didn't. He looked down at the empty cage. He should have waited for Hedwig to return before storming out. She would find him wherever he ended up, but that didn't help him right now.

Okay. What did he have? No Muggle money, and not much wizarding money. How late did Gringotts stay open? He'd only ever been there during the day.

He had his wand. For a wizard, that was a lot, though maybe less so for a wizard with a mere two years of education. He had his Invisibility Cloak. His broom. Alright then, not totally helpless. In fact, being able to fly, turn invisible, and cast even his limited set of spells basically made him a superhero, at least in the Muggle world.

Except he had nothing and no one in the Muggle world–no one who lived there full-time at least. And judging by the warning he had received thanks to Dobby's misguided efforts to protect him last year, the wizarding world would soon be expelling him from school, possibly even arresting him. He looked up at the sky, scanning for Ministry owls.

He might have problems in the wizarding world, but at least he had resources and connections there. He had none in the Muggle world. He had to get back where he belonged. The Leaky Cauldron, then. Now, how to get there?

Just as he started to feel better about having taken stock and set himself a goal, a different feeling crept up on him–the sense of being watched.

He drew his wand. "Lumos!"

This was more magic he wasn't supposed to be doing, but he was sure someone or something was out there. He waved the lit wand around, scanning the darkness. The light fell on a large, dark shape. A pair of eyes gleamed at him. He wished more than ever he could be somewhere else.

With the combination of wand-waving and focused intent, it wasn't long until a loud bang and a flash of light brought a purple triple-decker bus bursting out of the night and screeching to a halt right next to him.

The young conductor introduced himself as Stan Shunpike. After a brief conversation on such topics of large dogs, luggage, and the accidental summoning of public transport, Harry was on his way.

From Stan's copy of the Daily Prophet, Harry learned more about the escaped criminal from the Muggle news. Sirius Black turned out to be a wizard who had escaped from Azkaban. He had killed thirteen people in broad daylight in front of witnesses, and Harry thought he bore a striking resemblance to the actor who played Dracula in a recent Muggle film.

After a short but terrifying trip, the bus pulled up to the Leaky Cauldron. Harry's encounter there with the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, did little to improve his opinion of the man. At least Fudge hadn't come to drag him away to Azkaban, as he had done to Hagrid the year before.

In fact, without quite knowing how it happened, Harry ended the night with a room (with Hedwig somehow already perched on the wardrobe waiting for him), a reprieve from any consequences for using magic to lash out at Marge, and–most importantly–freedom from the Dursleys for another year.