A True Elsewhere

A True Elsewhere

Based upon II of Hearts

By Slytherin Repute

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Chapter one:

Flying Away

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"In the heat of a bout, I often get carried away."

Harry Potter sat in one of the hard, wooden chairs that surrounded an equally hard, wooden table in the kitchen while his uncle bellowed at him with a voice as big as an ox. Uncle Vernon was preaching the same speech for the third time in nearly a month. Never say "magic" under his roof, he'd holler at Harry. As Uncle Vernon continued to send out his awful yells, Harry began to count the dots on the tiled floor beneath his chair. His mind was, once again, wondering to its own little world where he wasn't treated as if he were only five years old.

"Are you listening to me, boy?" Uncle Vernon shouted as he slammed one fist down on the table. The sound from the great impact nearly made Harry jump straight out of his skin.

"Y-yes, Uncle Vernon," came Harry's reply as he shifted in his chair to better look at his uncle.

"You had better be, boy, because you are not worth this much energy on my part!" Uncle Vernon's face began to change from red to purple as he realized that Harry, in fact, had not truly heard a word that he had said.

"Yes, Uncle Vernon," Harry parroted his last spoken words.

"I know what you are trying to pull and let me tell you, boy, it's not going to work on me!"

"I am not trying anything," Harry said as he twisted his face into a questioning expression, which slowly turned to an expression of anger once he saw the equally angry demeanor is uncle had put on. "Why do you treat me like this? Why do you always accuse me of things?" The raven-haired boy continued in a loud voice as he stood. Now, at 15, Harry stood a good ten centimeters taller than his uncle did.

"Who am I supposed to blame, Dudley? I think not!" the short, pudgy man scoffed at Harry and stood as tall as he could.

Harry remained silent and began to stare down his uncle. His lips were pin straight across his face and from behind his glasses his eyes burned bright green with hatred for the man in front of him. Slowly, Harry parted his lips.

"I hate you," the teen said quietly.

"What was that?" his uncle replied in an anger filled tone.

"I said," Harry spoke slowly as he balled his hands into fists, "that I hate you."

"You, shut your mouth!" Uncle Vernon commanded loudly as if he were a general in the military and Harry was an out-of-line, lower ranking officer, "You have no right to speak to me in such a manner!"

Harry pulled his eyes off his uncle's angry, twisted face and looked to the floor once again. He sighed, tipped his head from left to right, causing his neck to crack, and cradled his right fist in his left palm. Quickly, he looked up, shooting a blaze of hatred from his eyes to his uncle's eyes, and slammed his right fist into the left side of Uncle Vernon's already purple face.

"Why, you son of a bitch," Uncle Vernon said as he rubbed his cheek with the palm of his right left hand. Harry's eyes flashed again with anger. It was becoming that every little movement his uncle made was like wood being added to the fire burning inside him.

"Never. Never say that about my mother," Harry said in a dry, threatening voice as he pushed past his uncle and started toward his cupboard.

"Just what do you think you are doing?" the man inquired as Harry passed him. When Harry said nothing, and halted in his tracks, Uncle Vernon spoke again the same question, in new words, "I demand to know, boy, what do you think you are doing?" Harry turned to face the man who was sick enough to call himself Harry's family, sick enough to call himself a father, sick enough to call himself a human.

"I am leaving," Harry said simply. His words were all spoken clearly and loudly, "And I am never coming back." This last comment triggered a chuckle from Uncle Vernon.

"Never coming back, boy?" he laughed nervously, "Where will you go? Nobody wants to anywhere," the words were designed to cut like knives through Harry's exterior and to pull apart Harry's soul. They were words meant to make Harry feel worthless - words Harry had grown up hearing.

"I know where I'll go," Harry said in a strong voice as he held his head high, "and all you need to know is that I am going elsewhere, nothing more."

"There is no elsewhere for you, and you know that as well as I do," Uncle Vernon said in one last futile attempt to break Harry from the inside. Harry only sighed and opened the cupboard door. Opening his trunk and pulling out his wand, Harry turned again to face his uncle.

"Expulsion," Harry began as he pointed the wand at his uncle, "would be well worth it." His uncle fully understood what Harry meant by those words and took a slow, cautious step back.

"D-don't do anything rash now, boy," Uncle Vernon said as he stepped back again. Harry, in response only narrowed his eyes and turned back to the cupboard. Pushing his heaving school trunk aside, Harry's eyes fell upon his Firebolt that had been laid on Harry's old bed. A small smile crossed the Gryffindor's face as he picked the broom up in his right hand and pulled it from its dark tomb.

Without so much as another look at his uncle, Harry walked down the hall and out the front door into the mist and fog. The sky above was gray, and the small water droplets in the air around him began to fog up Harry's glasses as he stood for a few seconds in the front yard - broom in hand and wand in pocket.

Harry looked quickly to the left and the right to make sure no one was outside before he mounted his broom and kicked off of the damp earth beneath his feet. Hovering for a second, Harry sighed and wondered just what he was doing. It didn't matter anymore, though. He couldn't walk back into the house now - that's what they expected him to do, and he had no idea where he should go - he would go to see Ron, but he had never paid much attention to the route there.

Taking a deep breath, Harry pulled back on the handle of the broom and started to climb and gain altitude. The already dense fog became denser as he went, and, to Harry, that was a Godsend. With the thick, misty, gray fog surrounding him, Harry had to worry little about being seen.

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Harry's eyes fluttered open as gentle rays of sun poured in through glass windows from the bright, blue sky beyond the walls of the room that now contained him. Sleepily, Harry rubbed his eyes and sat up as he tossed back the soft sheets and put his feet on the wooden floor. He knew where he was, of course, he'd stayed in the Leaky Cauldron before, but he couldn't for the life of him remember how he had gotten there.

As he looked around the room, Harry saw his Firebolt resting upright in the far corner of the room. Harry walked over to his broom and picked it up. There seemed to be no damage done to the broom, but Harry noticed that when he moved his right arm, shooting pains traveled from his shoulder to his elbow. This made him all the more curious about what had happened to him.

The dark haired boy turned then to face the door and slowly walked out of the room and down the hall. He was in no rush to get anywhere, so he took some time to look at the paintings that hung on the walls. Some of them were moving and, some were not. One of the paintings - particularly, a young woman, waved and smiled kindly at Harry who smiled back. Harry was enjoying the company of the silent painting when he heard a sudden rushing coming from far to his right. It was the sort of rushing noise one could hear when someone wearing a long cape rounded a corner a bit to hastily. As Harry turned and looked toward the sound, the ground was quite suddenly rushing up to meet his face.

"Ugh . . ." Harry moaned as he hoisted himself up. He had fallen hard, his right arm breaking his fall. Giving his head a light shake to knock away the feeling of the rapid fall, Harry's gaze fell upon the person who had crashed into him. Face first on the ground, with his backside in the air, and his cape up over the back of his head lay a boy that Harry figured was about his age, if not older, "Are you alright?" Harry asked as he knelt down beside the young man, "If you hadn't been going to fast, I could have gotten out of your way, you know."

Harry waited for a response, which did not come. The boy flaggingly stood up and pushed his cloak back from over his head letting it drop to its full ankle length. With his back to the raven-haired boy, Harry couldn't see the mystery person's face. He could see, however, light strands of silk-like flaxen hair, which laid perfectly in place except for a few wisps of hair that had gone astray. A porcelain white hand ran through the golden strands. Suddenly then, with another swift swish of the air, Harry's emerald eyes locked onto silver, stormy ones. No words were said. No actions were made. The two stood - or knelt - looking into each other's eyes dispassionately and flat out coldly. Draco's storm cloud eyes showed no remorse for crashing into someone and Harry's eyes showed sudden lack of concern for the person who had crashed into him. After what seemed like hours of staring, Draco finally spoke.

"Potter," he said in his normal, drawling, snobbish tone, "you're finally awake I see." Harry's only response was a half-hearted snort as he rose to his feet once again. "Not going to talk, are you?" Draco asked.

"Shut up, Malfoy," Harry nearly hissed at the blonde boy.

"Oh, such hostility, Potter," Draco said with a grin, "Almost slid into Parseltongue there, didn't you?"

"No," the black haired boy replied sharply. Draco was now leering at Harry and the Gryffindor could only offer week scowls in response to the Slytherin's visage.

"If you say so, Potter," Draco said with that ever-present touch of snootiness in his voice, "By the way," he continued, "you owl is downstairs. You many want to slide down there and pick her up before she wakes up and starts to squawk like she was last night."

"She wasn't with me last..." Harry trailed off as he looked questioningly at Draco who only gave Harry one last cruel grin before fleeting down the hall and vanishing as he rounded a corner.

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Later that night, Harry sat quietly on his bed while gently stroking Hedwig's pale white feathers. There was total silence as he thought to himself about how he and, of all people, Draco Malfoy could both end up in the same place at the same time. And what did Draco mean when he had said that Hedwig had been squawking when Harry knew that Hedwig had not been with him when he left. As a matter of fact, the day Harry ran out was the same day the sent a letter to Ron. There was no possible we Hedwig could have been with him or, for that matter, gotten to Ron's and back to the Leaky Cauldron in less than a day. Harry shook his head and looked at his bird.

"I swear... the things you'd tell me if only you could talk," Harry said with a sigh.

The teen continued to stroke his owl while he looked around the small, dimly lit room when his eyes quite suddenly fell upon his Firebolt that still rested upright in the far corner of the room. The gears in Harry's wondering mind began to turn again as he tried to put all the pieces together - as he tried to make sense of what was happening to him. He had not been thinking long when a greater question suddenly jumped into his mind. Where would he go? After all, he could not live in the Leaky Cauldron for the whole summer. He had already established that he did not know how to get to Ron's house and, he'd have to wait send Ron another letter asking if he could come and visit. That meant he'd need to stay in the Leaky Cauldron at least another week, unless Hedwig could pull another one day round trip. Harry sighed again and leant back on his pillows. Just as Harry was sliding into a peaceful sleep, there came a light knock on the door. Reluctantly, Harry lifted himself from the mattress and walked slowly toward the door. Lazily, Harry reached out and turned the brass knob on to door, pulling the wooden door inward. Before Harry stood, not the last person Harry wanted to see - that was his uncle - but, a person Harry never fancied seeing much.

"What is it, Malfoy?" Harry asked in a sleepy voice.

"I wanted to know," Draco started, "if you had gotten your owl back alright. I don't want her God-awful squawking to keep me up again."

"Yes, I got her back fine," the tired boy replied as he gestured with one had toward Hedwig who was clearly asleep on the bed.

"Oh," Draco said bluntly before he nodded and started back down the hall. Harry watched Draco's back as the blonde boy walked away from him and, suddenly, a realization came to him.

"Malfoy!" Harry said, causing the blonde boy to stop and turn around.

"Yes, Potter?" Draco asked in reply.

"Thank you for helping me," the Gryffindor said with a smile. What he saw next was something he had neither ever seen before nor ever thought he would see. Draco Malfoy smiled at him. It wasn't a leer, a grin, or an evil smile, but a real, heartfelt smile.

"You're welcome, Potter," Draco said with a nod, "Good night," he added as he turned and started back down the hall. Harry laughed a bit to himself as he watched Draco walk away and he waited until he disappeared again around the corner before going back into his own room.

Harry walked over to his bed and picked up Hedwig who he set down on the only chair in the room before he pulled back the sheets and sighed. He pulled off his shirt and dropped it on the floor before pulling off his shoes and propping his jeans. As he stood next to the bed in only his shorts - his pajamas - he began to wonder what Malfoy might sleep in. The teen laughed and tried to shake away the slightly disturbing images of Draco in various sleeping garments before he finally crawled under the covers.

A warm tenderness encompassed Harry as a slight smile slid onto his lips. He couldn't figure out why, but the young teen sensed a feeling of invulnerability beginning to arise within him. Of course, now that he was alone with no one to truly protect him, he was very vulnerable, but he still felt that there was someone who was watching out for him. A guardian angel perhaps? No, not possible. Could it be a guardian Malfoy? That seemed even less likely. But, then why had Draco bothered to help Harry? It had to be for Draco's own advantage, of course. He'd never help any one unless he had something to gain from it, Harry knew that, so what was he after? There were still so many questions Harry needed to ask. Was Malfoy looking out for Harry? Had it all been some strange coincidence? How had Malfoy found Harry in the first place? It was son confusing, yet still worth it. Harry hadn't felt as secure in years as he did now.

"Good night, Hedwig," Harry said softly to his already sleeping owl, "Good night, Malfoy," he thought to himself as he shut his eyes. The candles in the room were still lit when Harry fell asleep and would remain burning all though the night. When Harry woke the next morning, they would still be burning, as some things in the wizarding world never burn out.