How We Survive

How We Survive:

Adaptation and Flight

The young women who worked at the counter of the bakery watched as the small raven haired boy entered the store, just as he did every morning. He was still dressed in the same ragged clothes as always, and had most likely come for leftovers again, she was sure, though she'd only seen him do so a few times. She sighed, and took out her cell phone. It would be horribly selfish of her to do nothing, just because she found the child's presence comforting, a sort of kindred soul within the chaos. She was unsure of whether he was an orphan, or just from a very poor family, but the weather was getting colder, and if he was on his own... she dialed the child help number she'd found in the phone book. After all, an orphanage would make sure he got food, and wasn't freezing to death. But somehow, as the worker an the other end reported that they'd "send someone over right away to check on the little imp," she wasn't sure whether she'd done the right thing.

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It was a completely terrified child who was dragged out of the back of the bakery by several agents, lips parted slightly in shock, eyes wide. He been slightly uneasy when he saw them purposely drawing nearer through the window, but once they'd entered the store and moved to surround him that he'd panicked. Jumping sprightly to his feet in alarm, he sprinted for the door. His size proved to be an advantage. Seven-year-olds are normally quite small in comparison to adults, and Harry was undersized for his age. He ducked to and through. Reaching the door he shoved it open, right before, to his dismay, someone behind him grabbed him sharply, and held on so that he could not get away.

"Where are your parents, kid?" a voice demanded roughly.

"Now see here," protesting one of the customers, standing up, "he's a good kid, he hasn't done anything wrong, or bothered anybody. Leave him alone!"

"He don't have no parents, do ya kid? Dead, aren't they?" Harry gave a small nod, a rather traumatized expression on his face.

"We'll be taking him to the orphanage, unless you want him to freeze."

"No! Let me go! Please!" Harry screamed, but all his pleading was to no avail. He didn't want to go. Uncle Vernon always said he was lucky they didn't just drop him off at an orphanage. He didn't want to go anywhere worse than his aunt and uncles. He wanted to be free, even if he had no idea how to survive the cold of winter. It was irrelevant to him for the moment. He just wanted to get away. He struggled wildly, but it made no difference. He was dragged away with seemingly no effort, like a life-size rag doll, floppy clothes and hair, almost impossibly emerald eyes, fearful flailing struggle making him seem to flop to and fro. The inhabitants of the small store sat in stunned silence, staring out the window to the corner around which they'd last seen him disappear.

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First entering life at the orphanage, he'd acted fairly subdued. He was quiet, and mainly went about his chores, before retreating to the crummy orphanage library. He knew it wouldn't be long before he'd read everything there, but he enjoyed it as best he could while it lasted. The other inhabitants, or at least the ones who showed themselves, seemed rather loud, rough, and obnoxious. He suspected most others would have learned to avoid them. Harry would have run away, if after a while the reality of the impending winter hadn't sunken in. Here an least he had some food on a consistent basis, and wouldn't freeze, so despite, being unhappy, and feeling rather hopeless here, he made no effort to try and leave.

It was several weeks into his stay when he was confronted by a group of older boys, and asked to come join them. Didn't he want to be their friend? He aught to have known better then to trust them, of course. But he was only seven, and had always been lonely, and so he jumped at their offer of companionship without stopping to notice the jeering edge to their voices, the mocking hinted in their less-than-sincere smiles, and walked over to join them. For the next week, things seemed to have improved. He found some comfort in the loud greetings and pats on the back, never noticing how fake they were. For an oh so brief while, things were fine.

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It was one week later they informed him that it was time for his first "mission." Breaking into a house.

"Ya can't expect ta ever get out of the dumps if you don't learn to take stuff kid," one of the older boys informed him, "no one's going to give you anything, you've got to take it." Harry glanced uneasily at his older comrade. He wanted to please his new friends, after all, he'd never really had any before, and it meant something to him, to really be part of something. It was the closest he'd ever come to having family. And in Harry's experience, no one ever did take care of you, or give you what you needed. You had to take care of yourself.

"I dunno... what if I get caught?" he questioned warily.

"You won't, trust me."

It was really those last words that made him agree. He wanted, more than anything, to be able to rely on someone else, and for others to trust him. He followed without any further request for explanation.

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After being taught the basics of lock braking, he was led to the front of the house the others had chosen.

"That house there, see? Just pick the lock on the front door and head strait in. Grab anything valuable that you see. It's the middle of the night, they'll be sound asleep, no need to worry." The tone the words were spoken in, however, was clearly suspicious, though Harry, mind occupied, didn't notice the overly calming, subtly mocking undertone. "We'll just move off while you make your entrance to avoid calling attention to the area."

And so it was that was Harry found himself standing alone in front of a strange house in the middle of the night. He walked to the door, and preceded to pick the lock with the hairpin they'd given him.

Before long, he found a purse on the table, and managed to grab a twenty dollar bill right before he heard the footsteps on the stairs. The alarm system in this particular house sounded upstairs, alerting it's inhabitants, but not the thief. Hearing the footsteps, he panicked, wishing, more than anything, to be somewhere else. When the owner of the footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs, there was no one there, and so they searched the house. The rest of the gang, who'd planned to use Harry's capture as a diversion to allow them to break in from the back, rob the house, and get out, were less lucky. Seeing the person chasing after them, they ran for the door. Most of them got away, but the last one was caught, and handed over to the police who arrived moments later.

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Harry was not out of trouble yet, however, and I don't mean the police. Those who escaped the house were furious at their near-capture. They caught up with him just outside of the orphanage, and everyone of them put in their two scents, or shall we say blows. Anyone who walked by would have been startled at the sight they left behind- the unconscious figure of a small boy, ragged clothes slightly torn in a way that suggested the child had recently taken a through beating, a black eye, and blood seeping from the side of his jaw, staining the once white snow.

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In the months that followed, Harry was careful to keep out of the way. He remained fairly swift on his feet from all the practice running from Dudley and his gang. He also worked on developing two different skills, ones the others couldn't use. He worked on disappearing from one place to another as he had in the house, concentrating hard on a specific location and his desire to be there, and unlocking and locking locks with a thought so that he might hide in empty rooms the gang thought to be locked, and that he wouldn't have had time to unlock the normal way. Both skills he became rather good at fairly quickly out of necessity. After all, he was no match for them in a fight, being only seven, and having no one to teach him. He often watched them fight, however, so that he could get better at predicting how blows would come, and how to dodge them. He watched also, when they robbed houses, or got money as pickpockets, so that he might learn what to do, should he ever need to- and what not to do.

Despite being successful keeping out of the way, Harry had no desire to stay. When the snow melted, and the weather began to warm, he was on his feet and running. He would not stay any longer, and would deal with his troubles as they came, come what may.

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At almost eight years old, young Harry Potter was on the run- again, messy raven lock blowing behind him, eyes set with a determined light. Indeed, he had spent several occasions flying from place to place, whether literally or figuratively. At one, he'd been flown to the Dursleys on a flying motorcycle, though he couldn't remember. All he could remember from infancy was a flash of green light, and a women screaming. Over the years more shrieks of pain and terror had been added to his nightmares, such as those of the Dursleys as his feet carried him away, and the second house he'd inhabited had gone up in flames, and sometimes, his own screams, often almost inaudible over the fierce winter wind and the pounding of his heart, and the harsh labored sound of his own breath that always surrounded him in those dreams.

So perhaps his actions this time were merely the continuation of a tradition. He had a large bundle with him this time, filled with a few sets of clothes, a blanket, several bottles of water, and a few loafs of bread. It was only after he had collected these supplies to bring with him that he brought the box of matches out from his pocket. He nimbly lit a match, then dropped it on the floor. There was not much flammable material near by, so it couldn't spread far, and would never light up the house the way the last two fires had. But it was enough that, with the smoke alarms that would soon be ringing, everyone leaving the building, and the fireman who would have to search for the fire and extinguish it, it was enough that he would be long gone before anyone noticed he wasn't there.

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By the time dusk fell, though Harry was sure no one from the orphanage would catch up, he was tired and hungry. He sat down, back against a tall, branching oak, and removed a water bottle and a piece of bread from his pack. After scarfing down the slice of bread, and taking several gulps of water, he closed his eyes, and concentrated hard, wishing to be somewhere sheltered, but out of the way. He had no desire to keep running for much longer, and though it wasn't the same as thinking of a specific place, the first time when he had had to escape from the house the older kids had convinced him to break into, he his focus had just been a strong wish to get away. He just hoped that it would work, because he wasn't sure where he should head if it didn't. He was sure no one would drag him back to the orphanage, as long as he didn't draw too much attention to himself. He had several sets of clothes from the orphanage, which, while a bit shabby, where not as noticeable, and he'd honed his skills at staying out of sight and not attracting attention over the past few months.

Luckily, his attempt did succeed, most likely just because of the great amount of concentration and desire for it to work that Harry poured in. A moment later, the spot where Harry had stood held only empty air. The place Harry reappeared in appeared to be an old, abandoned manor. It was dusty, and had fallen into disrepair, and the window of the room into which he had appeared was boarded. It was shelter, and despite, or perhaps because of, its odd appearance, it seemed safe enough. It was rather comforting, to have shelter that no one else would come to. Despite the fact that he wasn't sure what the surroundings were like, and that the food he had brought with him wouldn't last long, it was extremely satisfying. He had, for the moment, a place to belong to. He had arrived in a manor with a most interesting history, though he did not know it. It stood atop a hill overlooking a town called Little Hangleton, ivy crawling up its sides, shingles fallen here and there. He was lucky in his own way, for, you see, it was one place that, as long as they were not alerted someone was there, no one would go to for many years. It was a place known to those who lived around it as the Riddle house, a place no one would visit, or try to knock down in it's derelict state. Even the old gardener never went inside, though people would sometimes attempt to break in on bets, they never dared to venture as far as he was now- the back bedroom on the top floor.

Resolving to explore in the morning, he through the dusty covers off, then curled up on the bed, wrapping his shabby coat around himself, and within moments, was fast asleep. He slept better that night than he had in a long time, for once unhaunted by the screams that had plagued his dreams for what seemed like almost eternity, without disturbance, and without fear of the day to come.

It is one of the many ironies of life that things are hardly ever as they seem. This strange, misshapen manor, still called after its former inhabitants by the folk of Little Hangleton, and thought "creepy" by most for the events that had happened nearly fifty years ago, when the Riddle family had been found there dead, with no probable cause. Their gardener had claimed to have seen a mysterious teenage boy that day, but no one else had glimpsed anyone of the sort. Examinations showed that all three were perfectly healthy. It was, in fact, the very house where Tom Marvolo Riddle, future Lord Voldemort had killed that father who had abandoned him. Despite all this, the house, for the moment, was relatively safe for young Harry Potter. It was exactly the sort of place he'd concentrated on transporting himself to- a sheltered place where he was unlikely to be found against his will. It was a rather odd occurrence, though he didn't no it, that Riddle manor, a place still associated with the man who had killed his parents all those years ago, would be the first place that he called home.

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The assumption Harry held that they would not be able to catch him once he left was, in fact, quite correct. The fire had only truly managed to really destroy one room- the one Harry had left from. No one was truly interested in his location, besides to cover up that he had ever been there at all. They feared that, if investigated, others would discover what they thought to be, most likely, the truth: that a seven-year-old child had been burned to cinders in the fire, while the rest of them blundered about, waiting for the firefighters. Harry Potter had never been connected to the child, for, as far as anyone knew, no one had survived the fire at Privet Drive. The adults at the orphanage had nothing on which to make the connection, after all, they had never known any name for him but Harry. He'd refused to tell them anything about himself, and so he wasn't their responsibility, not really, and no one had come looking for him, but all the same, it left an unsettling feeling hanging in the hearts of all who had heard. It was a feeling which would linger for years to come as they reflected on their lives, and tried to forget the small child with raven hair and emerald eyes, who's suffering had occurred without their comfort or intervention. Perhaps it was because, as often happens with people who have passed away when people who never really knew them reflect on them, he became a symbol to them of their own failures, and of the pain and loneliness and vulnerability that everyone has within sometime during their lives.

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