The Adventure Begins

When people become threatened there are two responses; fight, or flight.

Or at least, that's what his teacher said. But Harry Potter knew of another reaction; fright. He knew the instant the lawnmower broke down that Uncle Vernon would blame him. But he found that he couldn't run. He just stood there, knowing that Vernon would have heard the noise, and the inevitable would come sooner rather than later…

"What the blazes happened boy!"

Too late, Harry decided flight was the best response, but he realized he'd only get into more trouble if he tried to run. The result was a peculiar jerky leap, before spinning to face his uncle. "It wasn't my fault!" He cried on reflex.

"Oh? Well it's got to be somebody's fault hasn't it?" Vernon hissed.

The pair of them looked around for witnesses. Harry barely stopped himself from breathing a sigh of relief when he spotted Ms. Hodge tending to her rosebushes across the street. Vernon would never hit Harry, after all what would the neighbors think? But they had worse ways to hurt him when nobody was looking. They could hurt him without leaving a mark.

"You are to go into the garage and fix that lawnmower right now." Vernon hissed dangerously.

"But I don't know how." Harry said.

"Then you'd best read the instructions! Land's sake boy, you'd think that you don't know how to read! Get to work right now, and don't you dare come back inside until it's better than new."

Not that the Dursleys had ever bothered with reading before. Harry was the only one who'd read anything past required schooling, and that only because he'd sneak books out of the school library. It was difficult, but when you're locked in a cupboard every once in a while, you learn how to pick locks and sneak out.

Harry struggled to push the lawnmower into the garage. He was so skinny he struggled to push it on his own, much less the wreck it had become. He kept the garage door open, so maybe Uncle Vernon wouldn't come in and start punishing him for fear of being seen.

Hoisting the mower onto its back, Harry immediately found the problem. There was a long iron bar jammed between the mower's blades. Both ends of the bar had holes in them, like it was supposed to be screwed in somewhere. "Where did you come from?" Harry asked. It was a force of habit; he didn't have anybody else to talk to, so he talked to himself.

He set the bar on the ground and surveyed the damage. Nothing looked broken, just… warped. Harry sighed and went to fetch the hammer. He wasn't very strong, but if he wanted dinner, he'd have to hammer it back into shape.

When he returned to his seat, however, the metal bar was gone. A quick look around revealed that it was rolling out of the driveway… uphill!

Harry quickly rushed over and picked it up. Vernon would kill him if he did two impossible things today (not that he did them at all, but that wouldn't stop Vernon from blaming him). He realized that the two holes were blinking, which a bright blue light.

"What are you?" Harry asked.

He looked around, and quietly moved a brick loose from the floor of the house. He'd riddled the whole house with secret passages like this. It was handy; when Vernon or Petunia locked him in his cupboard, he could move around the house as he wanted (as long as he was really, really quiet) and even have a midnight snack once in a while, having the disappearing food blamed on rats. Of course, this meant that he had to wear a mask when he travelled through his secret crawlspaces, otherwise he might breath in rat poison.

After stashing the metal bar in his cupboard securely so it didn't bang around, he went back to work on the lawnmower. Of course, Vernon came in after about five minutes and told him to keep it down, so Harry had to bend the metal back into shape as quietly as he could. And when he'd finished that, around the time the sun was going down, he tried to start it up, but it still wouldn't go. He almost took the engine apart before he found out what was wrong and managed to fix it using Dudley's broken tricycle for spare parts.

At long last, the misquitos were out and the crickets were chirping, and Harry's hands were covered in cuts and oil, but he was finished. In fact, he noted with pride, the lawnmower looked even better then it had to begin with.

He was about to go inside and wash up, when a van pulled up in the driveway. A man with a clipboard got out and opened up the back of the van… and pulled out a new lawnmower.

"Ah, excellent!" Vernon emerged from his house with a wide smile. "Thank you for your prompt delivery." He signed the man's clipboard and he drove away.

Harry watched with apprehension as Vernon wheeled the new model into the garage. "You took too long boy." He said. "I had to order a new model because you couldn't fix this piece of junk."

"But… I did fix it." Harry said.

Vernon raised a foot, and brought it crashing down with all the weight behind it on the lawnmower. Tears welled in Harry's eyes, as the device he'd spent all day working on, missing lunch and dinner for, fixing up better than new, was destroyed. "Does that look fixed?" Vernon hissed sadistically.

For dinner that night, Harry only got one slice of roast beef and a glass of water. Dudley took great pleasure in flaunting his own dessert in front of him, having a second helping.

Harry locked himself in his closet.

He let his tears flow freely now. But even as his cheeks grew moist, he heard a soft sound. A sort of beeping. He lifted up one of the floorboards, and pulled out the metal bar, the source of all todays problems. As he held it, he felt it tugging his hand.

There were many times when he wanted to run away from the Dursleys. In fact, if he was being honest with himself, barely a week went by that he didn't pack his things. But always, he found that he had nowhere to go. Now this strange metal beam wanted to leave too… and it had somewhere to go.

He'd packed his things just yesterday. He'd snuck his way out of the house within minutes.

He stood in the middle of the street, wearing his cousin's baggy clothes, holding a cheap backpack with all of his belongings in one hand because the strap was broken. He'd done enough crying for one day, but as he looked up and down the streets, beyond the dim lights and into the darkness, he felt something well up inside him.

"Well?" He asked himself. "what are you waiting for? Adventure isn't going to find itself."

He took the rod out of the backpack, and held it up firmly in front of it. "There's no going back." He responded.

"Yes there is." He told himself. "There's always going back. There's flight, or fight, like Ms. Wormwood says. But right now you're just standing in the street doing nothing."

He looked around. "Adventure isn't going to find itself." He repeated, before letting the bar pull him forward.

Two weeks went by, and Harry Potter saw no wanted posters of himself, which was really just typical of the Dursleys, and probably the most helpful thing they could have done for him.

After the first few days, Harry had noticed that adventures in real life are different from adventures in story books. For one thing, he didn't have some sort of enemy lurking around every corner trying to kill him. What he had instead was a powerful urge to turn around and go home, which he thought was much more dangerous.

"You know…" He would say to himself. "Maybe if I went home right now, the Dursleys will realize what they're missing, and they'll welcome me back with food."

And then he laughed at himself, because if he didn't he was worried he'd give in.

That was another things about adventures in real life. No food. No toilets either, at least not in suburbia or in the countryside. He could always find a toilet in a food court. But mostly, the problem was food. Harry reckoned that Dudley would not last one day on a real adventure; he would break down into tears for lack of chocolate.

Harry had tried to steal some food for himself, but he couldn't bring himself to take anything from innocent suburban households, and stealing from food courts was hard. He was thinner than he was at the Dursleys (which was saying something) and his cheap backpack held a single sampling of fudge.

Hungry, he wandered through the docks of London. His stick was pointing out to sea, so he was trying to find a boat to stow away on. Maybe the boat would have food. It would definitely have places to hide from angry dogs without leashes.

In the dim light of the twilight, Harry saw a ship and he knew he wanted to be on it. It was a luxurious ship, clean and white, and full of bright lights. And the smell… even from here, Harry could smell a barbeque on deck.

"What are you waiting for, an invitation?" He asked.

"No excuses. You're hungry, there's food, and the people on the boat are probably rich enough to not care."

Harry ran towards the alluring smell of frying ribs. "Yeah, look at all those suits. I bet they won't miss a piece of meat or two."

Three plates later, Harry was stumbling across the darker parts of the deck where none of the people in suits would go, fuller than he had ever been in his entire life. He was good at sneaking, but on his second helping he'd been caught by a guy named Bruce Wayne. Fortunately, Bruce didn't turn him in. He just directed Harry at all of the good food. He moaned as the rare steak soaked in barbeque sauce made its way through his stomach, along with the chocolate cake, the vegetable platter, the French fries and lasagna with the fancy sounding name, and the fizzy punch…

As he was thinking about food, the metal bar slipped out of his tired hand.

"No!" He yelled, not caring if anybody heard him. He dove after it, but it had already rolled overboard. The metal rod sank into the river as he watched, and he realized that the boat was already pulling away into the sea.

He was leaving Britain. And he had nowhere to go.

He cried. He couldn't help it; after all that he'd went through, he'd thought that it would actually be worth something in the end. Now he was just another kid who ran away without thinking things through, and nobody was looking for him, and his adventure was over.

When he woke up, somebody was poking him the ribs.

Harry looked up. He was inside a room, with only one door. The man standing over him was dressed in a security uniform and prodding Harry with a nightstick. When he saw he was awake, he put the stick away. "So… shall we start with 'who are you?' or 'how did you get in here?' or maybe I should ask 'what are you doing here?'"

"I'm… lost." Harry said.

"You're lost? Well, this is a strange place to lose yourself in. Come on."

The security guard pulled him away. Harry briefly saw something else in the room with them, a pedestal, with a screw the size of his fist on it, bumping against the side of a glass case like it was trying to get out, and blinking blue.

The security guard lead Harry out of the room. He lead him past a foot thick door, that made a huge heavy sound when it closed. He pressed his hand against the wall, and another door opened after much whirring sounds from within. Then he went and pressed some numbers on a pad in the wall, and the floor lifted them both up like an elevator. When they reached the top, the security guard holding Harry nodded to two other, scarier looking guards, and pushed on an ordinary wall. It opened up, and they walked through, and when Harry looked back the ordinary wall was just a widescreen television sitting on top of a beautiful aquarium.

The rest of the room, was as beautiful as the aquarium, but Harry didn't notice. Because there were three other people in the room, each wearing expensive looking suits. Two of them were smiling (not I-caught-you-where-you-don't-belong smiles, but real genuine warm smiles), and the other one was sipping a McDonald's soft drink.

The man sitting behind the desk adjusted his glasses, as if to get a better look at Harry. "Is this one of your co-workers Mr. Ocean?"

The other man not sipping the drink shook his head. "The kid's not with me."

"Thank you Gerald, you can go." The man in the glasses waved gestured, and the security officer let go of Harry and left.

"Well, hello there." He said with a smile. "My name is Mr. Rich. What's yours?"

"Harry sir. Harry Potter."

"And how old are you, Harry Sir Harry Potter?"

"Six."

"Ah, what an age. I remember my sixes well. Well then Harry Sir Harry Potter, welcome to the Incredible Voyage." Mr. Rich spread his arms wide, gesturing to the room. "I built this ship so that my friends and I could have a good time. But secretly, below the decks and behind that wall, there's a vault that keeps a wonderful piece of technology. It's the most secure vault in the world. Well, aside from a couple of vaults I have at my home. Mr. Ocean's job is to break into it to test its security, and not even he's cracked it yet. He says he needs a couple more men and a couple more weeks before he could get in. So, Harry Sir Harry Potter, how did you get in?"

Harry looked at the door longingly. "I don't know." He said. "Sometimes, I just go places where I shouldn't go. My Uncle says it's because I'm a freak."

Even the man sipping the drink frowned at this.

"I'm sorry for sneaking onto your boat." Harry said, not looking at their faces any more. "I was just looking for food… and a place to sleep…"

And with that the whole story came flooding out of Harry. He cried at parts, and Mr. Rich sent for a towel and a soda pop for him. He felt better after that, and when he'd finished telling them everything, Mr. Rich and Mr. Ocean were smiling much more warmly.

"Well, you've been through quite an adventure." Mr. Rich said. "And I don't think the ship will be turning around any time soon, so if you're looking for a place to sleep, I'm sure my son Richie has a spare set of pajamas that'll fit you, and you can sleep in his room."

"Thank you Mr. Rich." Harry said.

He was so tired the rest of the night went on like a dream. He got pajamas on, and Richie told him about his life in the mansion, and somehow Harry found it in him to have an ice cream cone before bed.

As he lay somewhere between sleep and waking, he heard the three talk about him.

"No." The one called Rusty said.

"Come on Rusty…"

"No."

"Well I'm not sending him back." Mr. Rich said. "You heard what his relatives are like."

"He also said that a magic stick lead him into a high security vault."

"Maybe the stick's a metaphor for something? Or somebody, who's so terrible he blocked out the memory?" Mr. Rich suggested.

"I'm going for it." Mr. Ocean said.

"You're going for it?"

"I'm going for it."

"A son is the most priceless commodity a man can ask for." Mr. Rich said. "It's something you can't get through stealing it; only through hard work."

"...You've already made up your mind haven't you?" Rusty asked.

"Maybe." Mr. Ocean shrugged.

"Alright."

"Alright."

"Tess'll think he's adorable."

"Let's hope so."

"Oh don't worry, all girls go for the british accent."

Harry went to sleep that night with a really warm feeling.

A/N: This fic is a little different from my other fics. First off; my other fics combine every single aspect of Disney, whereas I have not seen every Warner Bros. movie in existence, so this is the story of what would happen should only my favorite Warner Bros. films be in the same universe. Also, instead of having the events of the flims be canon, only the characters will be. So some things will turn out differently from what happens in the films. Also, since Warner Bros. has made so, so many DC movies and cartoons, different aspects will be used from each one to form a whole.