Chapter Text
Harry couldn’t stop crying. The alley was cold and dark, and he just knew there was an invisible monster howling nearby. As his tears chilled on his cheeks, he began shivering and wishing he was safe in his cupboard, where only the spiders could get to him.
Three days had passed since he was last at the Dursleys’, and to a four-year-old boy, three days was an eternity.
Six days ago, it had been a normal day. Harry had helped dust the house in the morning, weeded the garden after lunch, and dried the dishes after dinner. Dudley, a fat brute of a boy, and his friends chased Harry around the yard, playing their new favorite game: Harry Hunting . And a few houses down the street, Arabella Figg tripped over one of her cats, fell down the stairs, and broke her arm.
Five days ago, Harry heard his aunt and uncle yelling about their upcoming trip to Wales. With Mrs. Figg convalescing at home, she couldn’t take care of Harry while the rest of the family was away. Which meant that Harry would have to come with them.
Two days later, they drove to Cardiff. The first days of the trip passed in quiet misery. Harry was confined to the hotel room while Uncle Vernon glared, muttered, and threatened him at every opportunity.
But in that small room, there was nowhere to hide. At home, Uncle Vernon could shove Harry into the cupboard and slam the door. Here, his anger had nowhere to go. And each time Aunt Petunia hissed at him to be quiet, each time he held himself back, something inside Vernon stretched tighter. His silence became more dangerous than shouting.
On the third day, he snapped.
It started with a simple mistake. The glass was big and heavy, and Harry’s hands were too small. It slipped, and water soaked into Vernon and Petunia’s bed.
BAMB!
The blow came fast and hard. Vernon’s hand cracked across Harry’s ear and sent him tumbling. His head hit the ground. Light burst behind his eyes. The world spun.
As his vision cleared, he heard Petunia shouting.
“–op, stop, Vernon!” She was between them, holding her husband back, her arms shaking with the effort. Then, her voice dropped to a sharp whisper Harry could barely hear. “You could kill him. And then what?”
Vernon’s lip curled. “Fine,” he growled, locking eyes with Harry. “But he’s not staying here.”
A heavy hand grabbed Harry as he tried to sit up. He was hauled out of the hotel and shoved into the car.
The rumbling engine felt like his very bones were rattling, and his teeth knocking together nearly drowned out Vernon’s muttered fury. Harry shrank down to the floor between the seats, trying not to cry. Too soon, the car stopped.
He was yanked from the car and thrown into an alley.
“Stay here. Don’t leave until someone comes to get you.” Vernon’s voice was shaking with fury. His hands clenched, barely holding back another blow.
Harry curled into a ball. Hands over his head. Waiting.
But it didn’t come.
A door slammed. Tires screeched.
Harry was alone.
He had cried until his eyes were rubbed raw and his nose so stuffed he could only pant through his mouth. The howling came again, closer now. Something dark and hungry was out there. He could feel it.
A bottle skidded across the alley and shattered. Harry let out a yelp and tightened into a ball so small it hurt.
“Hey,” came a gruff, slightly slurred voice. “What are you doing here?”
Harry peeked over his arms. A tall figure was stumbling toward him, shadowed in the dark.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
Vernon had told him not to leave.
His heart raced. His breath caught.
What if Vernon came back and Harry wasn’t there? What would he do then?
The monster was coming. The stranger was getting closer. The world tilted sideways.
The air cracked. A sound like space tearing cut through the alley. Sharp, bright, and wrong.
Harry leapt to his feet.
The stranger was gone.
Daylight, bright and unnatural, was flooding into the alley.
Harry had seen sunrises before. They crept in slowly, stretching long fingers across rooftops. But this was like someone had flipped a switch.
He didn’t understand how the man had vanished, or where the light came from, but part of him was too tired to care. If he questioned it, it might all come undone.
He backed up until his shoulders hit a wall and slid down, arms wrapped tight around his knees. He would wait. Wait for Vernon.
It was just like before - the engine gone, the silence roaring back, only this time even the world had abandoned him.
If Harry had the nose of a werewolf, or the taste buds of a Time Lord, he might have noticed it then: the shift in the air, the electricity skimming under his skin, the scent of something foreign. It prickled against his spine like a warning. Like the air itself was watching him, waiting for something.
The alley looked the same. But it wasn’t.
This wasn’t the same alley.
This wasn’t the same world.
To the east, in London, smoke clung to Ianto Jones's clothes. Oil streaked his hands. Lisa's blood - if it could still be called that - soaked the front of his coat as he staggered through the wreckage. Every step away from Torchwood One was a denial: that she was lost, that he was alone, that the world had ended. His sobs echoed down mangled corridors slick with blood and wire, half-buried in the din of still-humming machines.
Something vast had ripped through the fabric of their world, and the seams were still bleeding.
And far to the north, then farther still, in a hidden castle in Scotland, a name disappeared from the silver-inked scroll that tracked the names of every child bound for Hogwarts.