Ursae Dubhe

While deciding to leave the Dursley’s had Harry feeling freer and lighter than he could ever remember feeling in his life, actually walking down the street in worn hand-me-downs that had him shivering in the night air and seeing everything and nothing in the shadows looming around him made it feel much more real, and much more terrifying. He continued to walk almost automatically, until he got at a certain point at the end of the street.

There was nothing unusual about where he stopped, just a normal street with normal houses. But Harry could sense feel the air somehow, and he somehow knew that if he really did choose to leave and kept walking, this weird air would break like a bubble.

Harry stood there for a long time, thinking hard on actually leaving. On one hand he realized that he would have no home anymore, nowhere to sleep and nowhere to eat. There would be no adult to take care of him, and to have a job to provide for him.

But then he remembered how he barely slept from being shoved to the side in a cupboard with no blankets or soft things to lie on, how he had to wait for the scraps of meals to be left for him to eat at all, how neither his Aunt or Uncle ever cared for him, or made sure that he was provided for in any way. His situation would stay the same if he left.

He clutched at the straps of his backpack, emptied of his schoolwork and filled with his one other change of clothes, eight cans of chili and three bottles of water (which seemed more than enough to a child used to no food and water for a week or more and that only ever knew hand me downs given every few years).

He thought of how even though he wouldn’t be able to go to school, he could still get access to books on any subject at any library and could follow along at his own pace without limiting himself.

But most importantly he remembered how even though he tried his best to squash any ‘freakishness’ he could, he never felt so alive and right as he did when he jumped too high and somehow ended up on the roof, or fell down a flight of stairs at school only to somehow perfectly roll safely to the bottom without a scratch, or when Dudley was after him and instead of his fist ever hitting Harry he screeched and ran off to Petunia wailing about ‘bright fireworks’ that burned him. While Harry had dragged fought tried to be normal and loved, he could never stop loving how it felt when he acted ‘abnormal’.

And now, as he finally lets himself see and know that he can never be normal, never be able to have Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia and Dudley love him as family all he ever wanted from them so why?, he wants to be able to embrace whatever this weird, abnormalness about him is. To not only stop pushing it back but use it and see what it does.

“...to see if it can help me to be happy”, he whispered into the dark street.

So Harry Straightens his shoulders, raises his head high, and steps through the wall of the bubble.

Immediately there’s a ‘crack’ in the night air, not audible but physical, and Harry simultaneously is shot with a sense of vulnerability but at the same time so much power. And that can truly be the only word for it. He feels like he’s been thrust out onto the center of a stage with no script but also as if he’s just been pulled out of a lake, and now everything is clearer, sharper, and has an energy to it. It's so natural that Harry wonders how he never noticed before.

It takes him a little while to come out of his shocked awe at how different the world around him seems now, until he realizes that he should move now and come back to this later.

He knew that for him to properly get away he’d need to make sure the Dursley’s could never find him.

Not that they would though, would they, he thought bitterly.

No they would only try to look for him if someone in the neighborhood asked after him, which was also unlikely, and they had to save face by doing something. Harry figured that both parties would benefit if he could effectively disappear and be unable to find.

His first step in this endeavor was to go to London, a city so densely populated that it would be easy to miss him among the masses of more important people than Harry. The only hard part to that was the getting there bit. Harry knew he couldn’t walk, and he certainly didn’t have a car, so that left the only option of bus. He knew where the bus stop was and which stop to get off on, having been to London once when Aunt Petunia had taken Dudley for a day out and Mrs. Figg couldn’t watch Harry, so the only remaining issue would be to see if he could manage to ride without any questions.

After finally reaching the bus stop he luckily didn’t have to wait very long before the red, double decker bus came into view and stopped in front of him. Several people stepped out as the doors opened, and for a moment Harry stiffened, afraid that he would be noticed and recognized by someone, but none of them noticed the small boy, too tired and eager to get home to care. After relaxing Harry stepped up the steps and into the bus.

He managed to slip past without the conductor noticing him, busy talking to the driver, and sat in a seat close to the door concentrating as hard as he could on not being noticed, trying to use his freakness to do so.

As he didn’t know how to actually control whatever it is that he did, he just tried to focus on not being seen, and how much he wanted to avoid attention. After thinking along those lines very hard for a few seconds, he then felt like his body was being slowly dipped into something cold.

That seemed to have worked, for when the conductor looked his direction, his eyes glanced right over where Harry was sitting, not noticing the boy at all. Harry sat like that for the entire bus ride, and whenever he felt his body warming back up, he concentrated again, and the coldness returned.

The conductor never noticed Harry, and he was able to silently slip out of the bus, dodging everyone boarding, when they reached the stop he had waited for.

As he climbed out of the bus and finally stopped concentrating so hard on staying unseen, he took in his surroundings and realized that he was in the middle of the city. He had no idea where but from the traffic and clumped together buildings, he could tell that he wasn’t on the outskirts at least.

Nodding to himself Harry decided that he should stay around this general area for a while until the Dursley’s fake search, if it happened, could blow over. He decided to explore the area for a bit, and then find somewhere to lay down and sleep if he could.

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Unknown to Harry, the Dursley’s did indeed attempt to save face but not in the way he had thought. Relieved to be rid of the boy, Vernon and Petunia faked his death, so as to not have to ever be foisted with him again, heavily bribing the mortician and ensuring a closed casket funeral using the ploy of ‘the poor boy being so mauled and torn from his drastic fall that you can’t even tell his face is his’.

Unknown to Harry, that while the Dursley’s had planned a small, meek funeral for him, there were hundreds to show up instead. Vernon was red, purple, and putrid in the face upon seeing the unwelcome guests and Petunia’s face was so pinched it was painful. But they stood there, Dudley in between them, while everyone that arrived said how sorry they were, sobbed, and grieved heavily over the loss of “Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived”.

Unknown to Harry, a tabby cat sat in attendance at his funeral, and later returned to her office to sob so greatly no one dared to enter the whole day.

Unknown to Harry, a man with a long white beard and half-moon spectacles sat quiet in solitude in his office for days.

Unknown to Harry, a hooked nosed greasy haired man was especially mean throughout the day and later cursed his name with red eyes when alone.

Unknown to Harry, a pale, drawn, weary man, with ragged clothes held together by patches and sandy brown hair, visited his grave a few days after his funeral. Then this man later visited another graveyard for two other graves. And sobbed his heart out, feeling more alone, helpless, and pathetic than any other time in his life.

Unknown to Harry, his death made the front pages of a newspaper he had never heard of before. His death becoming a historical date in a world he had never known.

And Unknown to Harry, this newspaper was carried by a minister he had never heard of, that this newspaper went from the minister to the hands of an inmate kept in a prison in the middle of an island the minister was surveying. That upon reading the headline and then the story, the inmate let out the most terrible sound ever heard in that cursed place, and proceeded to sob and moan nonstop for the next few weeks, until finally he passed out from over exhaustion. That even when he recovered, as much as possible in such a hell, he sobbed in grief until he fell asleep every night from then on.