Chapter One: Where I can't seem to think of a title

"I don't like this." Lily Potter stated for the third time in the last hour. Her husband ignored her with the ease of long practice, focusing on dealing out the cards to his friends instead.

"James, are you listening to me?" She demanded.

"Always, dear," he answered dutifully. "Padfoot, stop looking at Remus's cards. He might just go canine on you."

Halfway through his monthly cycle, Remus Lupin growled in a manner which at least partly justified James's warning. He was never at his best during this time, but being dragged from bed and forced to play some insipid little game which was obviously just an excuse to make him suffer Lily's ire along with the two of them…it wasn't doing much to put those cheery smiles Sirius had promised into his face.

He rubbed his head wearily. Anything in the name of friendship, he supposed.

"Lily, you need to stop worrying," he said right before she was due to burst out again. "Harry's not a child, and he can take care of himself. We've pretty much taught him everything we know. Combined."

"Not to sneeze at." James added.

"But he's out there!" Lily threw out her hands in the direction of the window. "And we haven't heard from him in weeks-"

"Eighteen days," Sirius Black pointed out without looking up from his cards. "Hardly something to worry about."

Lily stony silence was eloquent in its' own way. James casually moved away from his friend and Remus shook his head out of sheer pity. Long moments passed before Sirius looked up from the cards, somewhat guiltily.

"Hell, Lily, when I go outside I don't come back for months. Harry's bound to be curious; he's pretty much spent his life locked up, after all. I'm sure he appreciates being out there without a chaperone-"

"Chaperone?"

"And a fine one at that too, just the right amount of firm-handed control it took to stop him from being completely spoilt by two adoring uncles and one knucklehead of a father," Sirius made his hasty retreat before her voice could turn chillier. In a more serious tone, he added, "He'll be fine, Lily. He's got more guts than I did at that age."

Lily's words were clipped when she answered, "I think that's probably going to be the problem."

It was official. She hated kids.

They were noisy, they were over-exuberant, they got bored easily, they followed at her heels night and day while all she really wanted to do at the end of ant given day was to wanted to do was fume, glare, and toss back something alcoholic. Rinse and repeat. Running around her loft trying to keep a chronically curious charge out of collapsing everything in sight just so he could watch it happen was not anywhere on her agenda. Never had been, and now that she'd had the experience, never bloody would be.

She was tempted to shake him till he behaved himself out of sheer terror, but his diminutive size always stopped her. She wasn't prepared to risk doing any real damage to the kid; because, all said and done he was just a poor, lost orphaned-

Something went bang and Ginny rose, cursing philanthropy. Next time she saw an abandoned child, she'd serve the world better by personally throwing it out into the street, or possibly feeding it to the nearest starving crocodile. It might have been unfair to take out her frustration on the whole of kidkind just because one thoroughly spoilt little brat had accomplished making her life chaotic, in addition to the hopelessness and misery which was already so much a part of it. She wasn't particularly bothered.

"What on earth did you do this time?" The small bathroom was barely enough to keep him at a precautionary distance from her. "I didn't think there was anything left to damage-"

His lip wobbled at the tone, his eyes as wide as they could go. The unshed tears in them made the green clearer, and they were somewhat impossible to ignore, what with making up most of his thin face. Ginny had melted when she first saw the expression, cursing herself for being such a heartless witch. Two weeks with him and she'd learnt better. He was showing all signs of growing up to be a skillful manipulator. If she hadn't been one of his hapless victims, she'd have been suitably impressed.

"You can save it," Ginny told him. "I told you before, do not touch any one of my possessions with the intention of reducing it to some…other form."

And then there was that. 'Demon child' hadn't really been that far off the mark. Ginny had been one of the people who'd scoffed at the idea that paranormal creatures were what was responsible for the country's fall some two decades ago. (Most of them at the orphanage were like that. They'd lived in said time, and the survivors were still equipped with their primary weapons; no-nonsense attitudes, potent streetfighting skills, and remarkably hard heads.) Two weeks of objects inexplicably changing form and colour had her doubting her conclusions.

He pouted, "But I'm doing it."

"Yeah. That's why I don't tell the walls to stop alternating between pink polka dots and green and white stripes," she closed her eyes. "Dear god, I can't believe I'm actually considering he's-"

"'Rius and Daddy liked it." He pronounced stiffly. Ginny felt a brief stab of irritation. She couldn't tell if it had been directed at his relatives for not being here, or at him for hanging on so tightly to people who'd obviously abandoned him.

Maybe she was being uncharitable. Maybe they were frantically looking for him and couldn't find him.

Yeah, right. With food so scarce, abandoned children were not exactly a rare phenomenon. She didn't want to be the person who broke it to the little kid that no matter how cute he could be (which was a considerably cute, she admitted grudgingly) it wasn't going to make an iota of difference; his family wasn't, not anymore.

"Daddy and 'Rius are not here," she told him. "It's just Ginny, and Ginny does not like having her house mutilated."

He scowled fiercely, all traces of his puppy-dog face gone. Ginny was suddenly exasperated. Children, you could never do things right with them. If parenthood was a prolonged version of this, she could see how her parents would've been happy to leave her at the damned place.

"You really don't know anything," he told her, somewhat waspishly. "Even Mommy liked it, and she hates it when I break things."

"I wonder why."

He scowled at her again, and she knew this meant stony silence till the next time he slept. For some reason, he always went back to badgering her after waking up. It was plainly exhausting.

"Can you at least try not to do it?" she asked him, somewhat waspish herself. "A little bit, even? My funds would appreciate it, and so would my eyes. I'm a lot less colour-blind than most people seem to think."

He humphed, past the point of deigning her with actual words. Ginny had a brief, blissful image of herself holding him by the collar over a sheer black abyss.

"'Rius wouldn't have-" he began, tone suggesting she was the toddler here. Ginny didn't let him go any further before she shook him violently, consequences be damned.

"One more word about them and I swear I'll-" she took a deep breath to get rid of the graphic images. "For God's sake, Harry! Don't you get it, they left-"

The surprising vehemence with which he reacted told her he wasn't as oblivious as she thought he'd been.

"They didn't!" he literally clawed at her face, the short nails thankfully not enough to do any damage. "They'll come! They've never not-" Ginny was startled to realize he'd just burst into sobs. She knew kids were expected to cry a lot, but it was the first time she'd seen actual sobs coming from him. Dangerously bright eyes, scrunched up face; all of it happened on a regular basis. Actual tears, however, hadn't made their appearance even once since the time she'd found him. Which just proved her future master-manipulator theory.

Or maybe he was just damningly stubborn. She thought she might just understand that.

Almost without noticing, she'd pulled him into a hug.

"Not." He muttered defiantly, but closed his arms around her neck, tears flowing freely.

"Don't think about it now," she murmured in what she hoped was a comforting tone. "It's not important."

"He said they'd get to me, " he choked out between sobs. "He said Mommy would- I wish I hadn't left Wormy-"

"Your pet earthworm?" she hazarded a guess, receiving mild contempt in return. She didn't mind as much as she might have done. Anything to get rid of the tears, and anyway , he didn't try to correct her this time.

"But I didn't want to worry Mommy," he sniffed, ignoring her comment. "Once I hid in the cupboard and she couldn't find me and she threw things and cried and really got mad at me-"

Ginny patted his back reassuringly, not that it had any effort except making him howl even louder.

"And I want to see her. And 'Rius and Daddy. And I haven't seen them for ages and-" he burst into a new flood of tears, which faintly impressed Ginny after all the crying he'd already done.

"And he sids they'd be there. He said they'd-"

"Who?" Ginny asked, a little sharper than she intended. If he'd been kidnapped…

"Dunno," he sniffed again, wiping his nose. "but he had oily hair."

"You're really bad at giving out descriptions, you know that?" Ginny wiped the snot from her back and made a face at her hand. "Bath now, squirt. Don't make me manhandle you."

"'Rius-" he started sleepily, then nodded off.

Unfortunately for him, it was just her. Poor kid.