Title Pending

Title: Title Pending - Chapter Two - Rhea
Author name: Kenji
Category: Angst
Sub-Category: Drama
Summary: In another world, James survived. In another world, he raised his son devoid of magic. In another world, Harry is called upon once again to culture the strength within him and conquer the loathesome future of his world.
DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author notes: The content in this story will progressively get darker and darker. This is not a light-hearted, happy story. As for the Harry/Hermione pairing, that might not happen like most of your are hoping. It is also a long time in coming. So if you are reading this story solely because of the Harry/Hermione category then be warned.

Chapter Two - Rhea

It was always the same dream when he had it.

He would run and run, and never tire. The park that he would run in would fly by. The trees were luscious green Cyprus trees. Their vagrant nature exceeded the wills of other life forms around him; including him. And then the murky blue water in the pond; even that was vagrant in nature. They were nature.

The forests flashed by him in an instant. He was all at once in a murky fog-ridden wood and then in an alley shallow and well lit. He felt as if a wolf. His senses were heightened; stimulated by sinewy smell of rotting flesh. There was no blood to be found, of course, but the aura of death stayed in tact.

He lay on the hard cement floor that felt not so much solid and bitter, but soft and mellow. And yet he could feel the cold seeping into his skin. He felt it clamber through the capillaries and veins and arteries in his body oscillating up its path to chambers of his heart.

The alley was peculiar to him in his surreal state. As he lingered upon the coldness of the floor he also began to think of the alley that harnessed this contradiction of feelings and sensations. And indeed the alley was simple enough; formed by the gap between two homes both ancient looking and worn with life.

The brick house. That's the one he remembered most vividly when he woke up. It was open to his prying eye by a hole that was protruding into the alley. It yielded no warmth but the light it relished into the alley was comforting enough.

He watched through the hole for what seemed like days but was most likely hapless minutes of solitude. A family moved throughout the home. A family he did not recognize except for one solitary member, his father. It seemed as well, that this lone figure--his father--was the only one who could see him peering through the hole. Every time his father caught sight of him, the man's face grew modest, even vengeful.

And then the notes, the last, final, and most puzzling of this recurring dream. They were notes placed underneath the hole in the wall, in his father's pen. He knew it enough to recognize it with barely a sight. The cover was always the same.

Open quietly or the floorboards will creak.

He feared the creak. He feared the sound of the rich, stained, mahogany boards clutching at each other and screaming their variable agony. And he did not know why.

The letters were never opened. They remained prone and waiting in his hands until his conscious mind took grasp of his reality. Always the same he would wake, solute and devoid of any emotion or clue as to what to do. It was as if he were still holding that letter in his hands, waiting in the alley for something to happen.

The world to collapse perhaps.

***

And when the willow grew large enough to over power the picket fence that separated the two homes, the families came in unison and tore the fence apart allowing the regal old sapling a place to breathe and to live. The willow most graciously returned the favor of course. In prim prime fashion it allowed a house to be built in it.

A house that would connect two souls.

***

Although young, he remembered, it was just after he skinned his knee for the first time. His father had been working at the aquarium for two years and had prospered quite securely. They lived in a cheap apartment on Freemont street; one room sufficient enough for father and son; a small kitchen so tiny it was a chore for two grown people to inhabit the space at one time; a family room that was rarely inhabited by family, it sat sad and alone.

During the day James would spend time with his son. He would read to him, sing to him, cook for him, play with him. He taught him values of life and death and even though Harry was so young, he played the part of an attentive young student well, if he played it all.

At night James would tuck Harry into bed and pray the boy had a restful night. It was at night that James would work protecting not his son at home, but oceans of fish trapped in Plexiglas palaces. He would fear for his son, naturally. Often times on his lunch break he would drive back to their cheap apartment and check that his son was okay, kiss him on the cheek and quietly walk out of the apartment.

It was just after he skinned his knee for the first time--the right one-- that James met Zoe Eneas. Two years James' minor, she was twenty-two, just out of college and full of life and excitement.

Coming from a Greek family with many brothers and sisters, Zoe was accustomed to diving into things on a moment's notice. She lived for the now and regretted the later. Her decision to become an English teacher was based solely on a whimsical conversation she had partaken in with her roommate in her sophomore year at the California State University of Monterey, her alma mater. Originally an undecided turned psychology major, Zoe realized her passions for teaching.

As was such, on a gloomy summer day that Zoe Eneas and James Brumnder came to meet, on the day Harry first skinned his knee.

Harry was still uncertain at his sixteen years of age, how the entanglement came to be exactly. What he was sure of was that Zoe Eneas became Zoe Brumnder exactly twenty-three days after he first skinned his knee. He knew exactly when his brother was born, on the sixteenth of July, Nineteen eighty-four. He was old enough now, yes, to put the two and two together. Nearly nine months prior to Jakob's birth, was around the time Harry first skinned his knee, around the time James met Zoe. The reality of it all though, would not settle in his stomach quite well and he did not want to think of his mother and father only marrying because of an accidental pregnancy.

He knew one other thing did not equate. Although never told openly, Harry knew he was not Zoe's son. The appearance that nearly exactly matched Harry to James was enough to rule out the possibility of him being adopted, but Zoe shared no resemblance to Harry himself. When he inquired of this, naturally at a young age, he was answered with non-committal grunts and changes of subjects. As he grew the answers were more volatile in structure. Privileges would be wagered and physical punishment would become a main threat.

Jakob, or Jake, was blonde and bashful as a child. He took to garnering at his mother's legs; attached to them as if he'd never left the womb. He was sincere and heartfelt. He would always tell his parents how fond he was of them; "I love you" before eating, "I love you" before peeing, "I love you" before sleeping and sometimes "I love you too much." Luscious brown eyes led him through his world as a child, so brown it was hard to believe the child didn't see the world in a tint of some sort of brown; shit brown maybe.

Jake's hands and feet were naturally long and thin. For a baby his hands looked out of place. Next to Molly Brown and Long Pham his hands were enormous, willing themselves to wrap around massive tree trunks. Early he demonstrated his power to harness both hands under one will. He drew magnificently with both hands even amongst chiding from chauvinistic parents that insisted he use his right hand only.

His parents grew his hair out long; Harry's parents did that. They grew it out long and wonderful like a girl's. It curled simply and Zoe would tie it back with a pony tail harnessing its free form will and curing it, saving it for another day. Zoe's mother loved the little boy. She loved Jake.

An old matriarch of ethnic Greek origin, she highly disapproved of the eloping of James and her daughter Zoe. Children was her weak spot. She would bow down and did bow down when she heard of her coming grandson, the fifth grandson and sixth grandchild. She bought the house on Watson Street. She wanted a home for her daughter to raise the son she bore and heeded in her daughter's love of teaching. She placed them right next to the High School, a five minutes walk.

When Harry was nearly seven and Jake newly three, Andrew was born. Also a July baby, his birthday of the twenty third drew very close to that of both the other boys. For Jake, this was a volatile offense. He resented his little brother, he did not want share the limelight of births. Jake knew, even at a young age, that he would lose love and adoration. He was no longer the baby in the family; he was no longer the cute one.

There was something wrong with the birth. There was something wrong with the baby and the family was not one to accept it so easily. Leukemia was not something that was detected right away; it was not found right when the baby was born. Andrew had lived for some years before the family ever found out that he had the disease.

Pale. That was the word that could easily be used to describe Andrew. Pale and weak, the venerable disease took its toll on the child. It stole grasp into his childhood and transformed his supple youth into vagrant tragedy riddled with decisions even adults had trouble making. If there were any greater heartbreak in the life of Harry, he could hardly remember it.

Green light.

***

After the fence was torn down and the tree house was built, the two friends really started to love each other. Ladders were erected that spanned from each window straight into the tree house.

"They're very safe," James would remark to the older, wiser Garry Mori, James' neighbor since Zoe's mother had bought the house on Watson Street for the family. "The ladders are sturdy. Metal like that doesn't bend very easily, let me tell you. It weighs a lot too, so that just goes to show you how strong it is. I have faith that they won't break, if they do, I'll pay the hospital bill, eh?"

James reached over and slapped his stern neighbor on the back playfully. Garry only returned an insecure desolate look.

The ladder steps that led up the trunk of the regal, strong willow would eventually be taken down. The two children, Harry and Sharon were so trusting of each other and such good friends that they had taken to keeping their windows unlocked. The other could easily slip in through the window in the dead of night and slip back out to their own bed just as easily without anybody but the two of them being the wiser.

But someone was the wiser, or perhaps it was just sheer dumb criminal luck. It was on a clear, chilly November day that someone, nobody quite knew who, broke into the Mori home through the tree house. The criminal got away with many different things: Jewelry, money, pictures (why the pictures nobody knew), even the small television set that occupied Sharon's room. It was the kind of television that ran on batteries that had crappy reception and black and white picture. It was Sharon's more prized of possessions and after it was taken she felt deep sorrow over it.

Sharon's room was not the most thoroughly thrashed though. Whoever had ransacked the home knew that that the Mori residence held in it a family of rich history. Family Heirlooms that Garry had had passed back since his family emigrated from Japan were taken. Swords crafted by sword crafters to the powerful Mori family of Samurai ancestry were taken and never were found again. It was a great loss to the Mori family. Steps were taken to remove the steps to the tree and the proposition that the tree house should be eliminated were also considered. The two, Sharon Mori and Harry Brumnder, fought gallantly though to protect it and there stood the tree house just as awesome and compelling as it always was from when it was first built.

***

Tuesday,

August 6, 1996

"I still hate this job," Harry tried to reason.

"Yes, but it pays money and money does well in the end," Sharon said.

Harry picked up his broom and collector and moved down the halls of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. He didn't care to gawk at the fish anymore. He'd seen countless fish since he'd started working in the Aquarium nearly a year past. He glared at the tourists as they walked by, forgetful of their trash and only focused on the stupid aquatic animals that dwelled in the high roofed building. As it were, he was in front of the otter tank, a stone's throw away from the food quart. That was where all the trash usually culminated and his boss made sure that that was were the cleanest parts should be. Nobody enjoyed eating in a messy area.

"If dad weren't a security guard here, I'd be home right now," Harry said.

Sharon walked over to him pinching through two white brothers that stopped in front of her to stare. She was beautiful, twenty, and full of vigor that radiated out of her; it was normal for her to get stares.

"Yes, that's true and you'd have no money. Zilch, nothing, nada. You know, you should be thankful that you got this job. I mean, I know I'm thankful he got it for me; I wouldn't be able to pay for college without it. The hours are great too."

"Doesn't make me feel better." He swept a chip wrapper into his collector and made his way down the stairs to dump his load in the trashcan. Sharon followed him, her collector nearly full as well.

"Might not, but you'll see, when you go off to college and you have all that money to fall back on, you'll feel better about yourself. That is if you don't spend it all on," she paused, bending closer to his ear and whispered, "those fucking drugs you always insist on buying."

She shook her head and swept imaginary dust into the collector as he took a hard look at her.

"What I chose to do, is just that," he said.

"But why do you do it? I've always wondered." She looked at her watch and grabbed his arm. "Come on, it's time for our break. Let's go outside and talk."

The went up the escalators and towards the Outer Bay and then taking a left outside towards the outlook. Sharon always felt at home speaking amongst the gentle ocean spray that came there.

"So tell me, why do you insist on fucking up your life like this? You're sixteen. You just got your license. You should have some clean fun. Why do you hurt your body the way you do? Is it just something you think is cool? Are you so stupid that you think drugs make you seem cool?"

He dug into his pocket and pulled out the pack of Marlboros he had. He took a quick glance around his shoulder making sure his boss wasn't anywhere near or for that matter, any of the management. Then he lit it up with the old lighter he procured from his shirt pocket.

"Sharon, there are two types of drug users in this world: the kind of users that take drugs because they think they're cool and the kind that take them because they have a deep dark whole inside them. I have that damn deep dark hole in me. You don't understand. It's hard to live when you know that something is missing in you. I don't want to go to college because I know that's not where I'm meant to be. I can't explain it just right, but..." he stopped. He'd said too much. He never spoke much because he knew that when he started going he would talk into oblivion.

"That's fucked. But I don't believe it. Whatever you think is going on with your life isn't what is really going on. Just you watch, you're going to wake up tomorrow all hung over and you're going to hate yourself. Not because you have a big hole in you, but because you think you are cool because you had drugs."

She reached over, took the cigarette from his mouth, puffed it into her lungs and stubbed it out on the telescope pointed straight at the otters in the bay.

Harry made a half-hearted reach for the butt but knew it was already out. He would light another one but he felt weak and obtuse.

"Come on my favorite little fuck up. We've got to get back to work and then get home. Greg's party is tonight and I'm not going to have us show up like this," she pointed to her uniform. "It's embarrassing enough that they know I work here, showing up in this goddamn death suit...they'd never let me live it down."

"Yes, mistress."

***

Harry reached into his pocket and dug out the key to Sharon's house. She was digging through the back seat of her sedan trying to find the lost shoe that she would wear to the party. It was eight o clock and it was a bit difficult to see giving that the light above the back seat was burnt out and never replaced.

He walked in and set his keys (a jumble of metal consisting newly of the keys to his very own car now, the old jeep that he hated so much) on the table in the foyer. He set out straight to the kitchen where he met Midori Mori, Sharon's mother. Immediately, without bothering to say hello, he opened the fridge and fished out a can of soda.

"Herro Harry, it is very happy to seeing you here," she spoke in a very heavy accent.

Harry nodded, then turned around and walked back into the foyer barely catching Sharon's shadow creeping up the stairs. Presumably to her own bedroom.

Harry knew the house like his own. He often wondered, in the dead of night, if he spent more time in his own home or in this one, the Mori home. It was rich with culture even though it had been robbed of part of its culture so many years ago. Flowers were arranged in a pot so conspicuously perfect that one had to wonder if they were fake or actually real. Harry knew they were real and knew exactly how to order the different types of colorful flowers in their perfect pattern, their perfect style, and their perfect form of Ikebana.

He continued up the stairs until he reached Sharon's room. Up the stairs and to the left, the hallway ended in a door that was her room.

Stepping through the door ajar, he downed the last bit of soda from the can and threw it into the trashcan that Sharon kept for aluminum cans. It was then that he noticed that the shower was running and that Sharon's uniform was neatly folded on her bed. He chose to sit down next to her clothes, carefully picking up the pressed and shiny cotton shirt with the nametag that said in normal green letters:

Sharon Mori

He hugged the shirt to his chest and inhaled the scent. It was one of his favorite scents, he thought as he leaned back into the bed with the short posts and cheap aluminum bed frame. Her bed even smelled of her, her room smelled of her and her clothes definitely smelled of her. He thought to himself, perhaps he should have her in his room more often instead of going to her room to have her. That would surely leave his room smelling very good, like her. He loved her smell.

The walls were painted blue and the ceiling resembled that of a blue sky moving in the wind. Garry had painted the white fluffy clouds with a sponge when Sharon was nine. Five-year-old Harry had stood beside Sharon in the doorway as Garry cursed the falling white drabs of paint from the sponge onto his forearm.

There was a light that turned on behind him, through the window that led into his room. He turned onto his stomach and used his arms in a push up position to peek out the window and through the tree house into his own room. His father stood at the doorway with the light on just staring at his room.

Harry looked at his watch. no, he thought, it's too early for lunch break. James had not yet left for work. Harry was actually surprised to see that James had not left earlier; the aquarium that he worked at had already been closed for two hours.

Harry looked at the expression on James' face. It was something of cross between malice and fear. Something of a cross between dread and hate. He couldn't quite understand it there, in the push up position on his best friends bed, but he did register it in his mind so that he would not forget it. James turned off the light before too long but Harry kept to looking at the forlorn darkness in his room trying to decipher the facial expression.

The shower in the bathroom adjoining Sharon's room turned off and not very much longer Sharon appeared in the doorway wrapped in a towel and pink faced and wet-haired.

"Something happening at your house?" she asked.

"Yeah, dad looked in my room," he said.

"Oh," she waved her hand emphatically. "He does that all the time when you're not home. You should see. Sometimes it scares me suddenly seeing your light turn on, I don't know why."

He got up from the bed and searched through her drawers. He kept quite a bit of clothes there in her house, it was quite nearly his own home too. He was going to take a shower, and take care of the cock that had sprung up in his pants. While he was at it though (picking out his own clothes) he picked hers out too. He chose out a pair of lacy panties and a matching bra. He loved the lace; he played it in his hands a bit before throwing it behind him and hopefully to her.

When he'd finished picking out his clothes, he turned around and briefly announced, "I'm going to take a shower."

"Well that's fucking obvious," she said, mockingly.

He walked past her in the room not giving her a glance and walked into the bathroom. He hadn't bothered to close the door while he stripped naked and hopped into the shower turning the water on extra hot. It took a while to actually turn hot even given the fact that Sharon had just occupied the stall, but it did turn scorching hot nonetheless.

A pair of female hands jumped in through the thin plastic shower cover, followed by a leg.

He smiled, just as he expected.

***

Harry snacked on the deliciously tasty slices of American yellow cheese with a settling in his groin and a smile of conclusion plastered over his fake grin. Kraft American yellow cheese to be exact, Kraft yellow slices of American yellow cheese that looked more orange than did they yellow to him. He felt he should make a crayon out of them; a Kraft American yellow cheese crayon that was the exact same color. He wondered if the bigwig crayon companies would take up his offer as he sat in the passenger seat of Sharon's old Japanese luxury sedan. He decided to voice his opinion to her.

"Do you think Crayola will take up my offer?" he said, as if she could read his thoughts.

"What's that?" she said, not looking away from the road. The two-hour trip from quiet, lustrous, homely Monterey to rowdy, spontaneous, wonderful San Francisco was one that a driver had to concentrate on especially at night.

"American yellow cheese crayon. You think?" he said.

"It depends," she said, having caught on to him. He'd grabbed a pack of twenty American yellow cheese slices on the way out of her home and he looked like he was in bliss gobbling them down and throwing the wrappers at her lap. She was not the greatest driver and in fact Harry with his license newly issued was better, but she knew the way and he didn't. The wrappers ended up littering the ground at her feet and while they distracted her, she paid them no heed.

"Depends on what?"

She finally stole a glance at him, a slice cut in half and dangling above his mouth. He fiddled it as if it were alive and kicking, like a fish about to slither down his throat.

"It depends on who you know I guess. In this world you gotta know someone to get anything. Besides, where's the Crayola headquarters? Florida?"

"Pennsylvania I think. You're wrong," he gulped down another cheese slice.

"Yeah. I guess I am. I guess though, that Kraft would have thought about it first don't you think? And if they did think about it first, don't you think that they would have tried to get it past Crayola by now? I mean, you don't make a product and not try to get it made into a Crayola anyways. I remember once I had one of those huge briefcases filled with like...One thousand crayons and I don't remember ever seeing an American yellow cheese crayon. And I would know too, I used every single one up till they were all leftolas."

Harry nodded, grabbed her thigh and squeezed hard making her gasp. "You talk to much. Just drive."

"You don't have to be so violent. Mike is going to find that hickey you left on my neck you know. That'll be another boyfriend I lose on the count of you. It's beginning to get a bit bothersome you know."

"Mike is a loser anyway. I saw that bruise you had on you; don't tell me that's a love mark. I know a fucker when I see him. Mike is a fucker, a motherfucker. He should fuck pigs. You're an angel, not a pig. You shouldn't let him near you," he said.

Sharon slightly hung her head in shame. She knew what Harry was telling her was true, but she still didn't feel better about it. She really did like Mike. She thought maybe he would be the "one". Well, the one she would marry. Harry would always be the "one".

Most people would say that it was an odd relationship they had. One of adultery and deceit altogether broiled and laced with a perfect white crust of innocent youthful love. They did love each other. They loved each other more than anybody they could ever love but they would never marry. Fuck forbid they would ever marry. They were friends, good friends, and would never break that bond.

They did not, however, resist the temptation of each other's bodies however. They would fuck often even when with significant others. Sharon was almost always "going out" with someone while Harry had only ever dated one girl. Sharon bordered a baker's dozen.

They were nearly there, to the party. Sharon's car burned off the US-101 and started towards the party held by a senior attending the University of San Francisco. The party, held at an apartment on the corner of 11^th and Judah Street, was a monthly thing, following the phases of the moon exactly. Every half moon exactly would bring about the party richly dubbed the, "Half full bitch bash." Select students from all over the Bay area were chosen to attend the party and only two, Harry and Sharon, were chosen from the Monterey Bay area. Harry, while not a college student per say, was enough apart of Cal State Monterey Bay, that Greg-- the party's founder, planner and life--thought he was fitting enough to join. He was the only High School student and for the life of any college person at the party, was never known as one.

The alcohol flowed freely into the hands of any of the party goers, all dressed alike in Scottish kilts, even the women of which there were many. Greg Douglas was about as Scottish as a thimble full of ale but he still commenced to hold on to his roots.

Harry and Sharon parked two blocks away and walked with Scottish kilts in the clan Douglas pattern of plain black and white. It was bitterly cold for the August night it was and they both willingly wrapped up in each other as they tracked up the stairs in the apartment and into through the door at the top floor left wide open.

Over the door sat a sign that said,

"Jamais arriere (Never behind)"

And Harry smiled and smacked Sharon's ass knowingly. Sharon turned around with a wicked grin and laughed entering the raging party.

***

Wednesday,

August 7, 1996

Harry was stripped down to a pair of boxers, Sharon the lace panties and bra, Greg was stark naked and Elie Masterson was all over his lap just as nude. The party had ended quite anti-climatically. Sharon had dumped Mike. He was kissing another bitch and she would not stand for it. Greg helped Harry drag Mike out when Sharon was done with him. They dumped Mike in the gutter a block away, high-fived each other and went back to the party. Sharon was unfazed if only a bit fuming.

They all sat in the Jacuzzi that Greg had installed on the roof. The landlord, a burly redhead, had had no problem with the Jacuzzi so long as no leakage was produced. Harry had his back to the raging couple of Elie and Greg, not because he did not enjoy the spectacle, but because he was busy fondling and manipulating the contents of a bag of hash. The pipe he used was aluminum chrome, a dish for the special stuff and a long short, fat pipe for the smoke. Sharon held the bottle of warm vodka in her hand waiting for Harry and staring at the moaning couple at the opposite end. The bubbles must have been very enticing and indeed added to the charm of the aura of sex, drugs and booze.

Turning around just as Greg spent himself, Harry grabbed the old lighter he always carried with him and came from his knees into the hot tub.

"Ok, who wants the greens?" Harry asked.

They looked around at each other. Greg had a forlorn, glassy-eyed look to him. Harry decided.

"Greg! It's your party, get over here," Harry motioned for him.

***

Cherry red it turned,

Gray white luster,

Burning-- sweating,

There mouths filled with dust,

The sun stagnated somewhere, off into the east.

***

It was only ten minutes later that they all sat back in the seats of the Jacuzzi tub. Harry had taken three times as many hits as any of the others and thrice the amount of vodka. He was nearly certain though, that he felt quite the same as they. It was just something with his body that he could not get high and/or drunk the way he wanted to. Even when he did manage to poison his body beyond recognition, he seemed to recover much more quickly than anyone else. It was a wonder to anyone that truly knew the drugs habits of Harry Brumnder, how he had not managed to fall over and die several times over.

Elie began to cackle madly. She was always weak in the aspect of losing herself. It was not something that one automatically did, when taking drugs. Everybody could hold onto their conscious, depending on the amount. But if somebody wanted to have a good time, then that was just as easy. Harry viewed it as a sign of weakness. He loved to challenge his drugs. He loved to fight to stay in control. He merely loomed as a presence as the two others: Sharon and Greg started to giggle as well. Harry was that kind of a fighter.

"All of you, shut the fuck up!" Harry said.

And they shut the fuck up. They did.