Home At Last

The Runaway Prat

Harry groaned as a stream of light escaped the flimsy curtains and glared right into his eyes. It seemed Potter or Riddle, he will always have terrible luck... He sat up in bed and clutched at his hair, he didn't know what to do. He didn't know if his parents remembered him. He didn't know if they cared. He didn't know if they were really planning to kill so many innocent muggles. He didn't know anything. Well, that's a lie, if he knew one thing for sure, it's that he's not going to let his parents kill all the muggles and muggle-borns if that was truly their purpose.

Shrugging on an overcoat he recently acquired from Madam Malkin's, Harry stepped out of the pub and walked aimlessly down the street. Diagon Alley was packed with people, one would think the streets would be empty this early in the morning, but no. Harry was about to start heading back, but fate decided to step in. He heard a whispered mention of his father, or rather, the alias he goes by now.

Harry snuck carefully behind a trashcan in the dark alley that the two men had turned into, "Did you hear, the Dark Lord has called a meeting at his muggle father's mansion. Word is, he's got a son and he's just now remembered."

The other man snorted, "How do you forget you had a son and just remember out of nowhere? That is to say, I mean no disrespect to the Dark Lord, it seems unlikely..."

"Mate, what'll I know about it? I just wanna go and leave to that new pub down by Knockturn as soon as possible. Who cares about the boss's little runt?." Comes the gruff reply.

The other man, the blonde one Harry realizes, sighs as he shook his head, "One day mate, you're going to say the wrong thing around the wrong person."

The brunette man, rolling his eyes, walks off ahead of the blonde man, not bothering to reply.

The men have moved out of earshot, but Harry doesn't care. Harry can't breathe. His father knows. He doesn't know how, but he does. He doesn't know how to feel about that. On one side, all of this could have been orchestrated by Dumbledore and separated from his father. On the other side, his father may have never wanted him to begin with. The problem is, he doesn't know which story is true and worse, he doesn't know who to trust.

Harry rushed back to his room and laid down on his bed. Everything seemed so impossible. He was walking along a twisted path that forked ahead, one path lead to certain death and the other was his salvation. Harry had no idea which path was which and yet the forked road was close approaching.

Harry felt his breath come out in increasingly short pants, his vision started to blur, his head had started to spin and when he lifted his hands in front of his eyes, he could see through the haze that they were trembling. It had been a good long while since Harry had last had a panic attack. In fact, they had become few and far between soon after he had started Hogwarts and spent more time away from his Aunt and Uncle's home in Surrey. It felt different this time though, he felt hopeless, as though there was no way he could move on from this point. He didn't know how to fix it.

He heard a dull thud, it was distant (so, so distant) and yet somehow he knew it must have come from somewhere close-by. Soon after, there was the hazy shape of a person moving along the field of his vision. More muted sounds. Harry couldn't make out what they were saying, the pounding of his heart too loud in his ears. He couldn't even make out their face. His panic seemed only to mount higher.

"P-r... Mer-n's beard! Don't cry." The person's voice was familiar, Harry thought absent-mindedly. His breathing calmed just a tad as he took note of his slowly returning hearing. He heard a door shut and soon after, a hand touched his shoulder.

"P-r. Po-r. Potter!" startled by the clarity of the stranger's voice, Harry's eyes snapped to his intruder. His intruder who may not be as much of a stranger as his panic-addled mind had initially believed.