Disclaimer: Don't own. Don't care. Writing this for free.

Edited on 09-04-2017: There were mistakes and was kind of crappy overall. Sorry about that.

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Chapter 2: Nightmares and Meetings

Harry opened his eyes, unsurprised to find himself in an ever-so-familiar small, dusty room... no, not a room, a cupboard, his cupboard under the stair. His hand traveled up, searching for the thin chord that turned the cupboard's light-bulb on. His old "room" -the one he had occupied before the Durdsleys moved him to Dudley's second room- seemed more cramped than ever with Hedwings cage taking away half of his dingy bed. Harry felt the familiarity of the cupboard soothe him. Which was odd, he hated that room as much as he hated Harry Hunting, maybe even more. At least there wasn't sand in his cupboard -though why that was such a good thing evaded him.

The sound of meat hitting wood came from outside along with Uncle Vernon's customary yells and complaints about him being lazy and not having the food done while Aunt Petunia's voice carried around the latest gossip in the neighborhood. "It was time you got out of there ungrateful child," she scowled after she noticed him. The little payback he had gotten out of their relatives while shouting "hocus pocus" all over the house, since they didn't know he wasn't allowed to use magic out of the house, was over... Not that he remembered how they discovered that, but something at the back of his mind told him it was an important event.

Shrugging off, Harry proceeded to slave in the kitchen while the two whales in the room engulfed several cows worth of bacon and sausages. 'No wonder there is so much hunger in the world'. When the breakfast of his esteemed family was over and aunt Petunia kissed the flabby cheek of her obese husband, Harry fished around the little food he had purposely burnt so it became too unappetizing to save as leftovers the next day. Aunt Petunia looked at him down her nose, her big-nosed thin frame, matched with her long neck, made her look like a horse who got half-way into becoming a giraffe before God decided the animal kingdom should be spared, thus He turned her into a human. Harry's thoughts on why his uncle and cousin were human went among those lines too, but they obviously belonged to another species than his aunt.

But humor can only take you so far when cooping with your shitty luck. And the humor Harry got with his mental images could not cope with the feeling of loneliness he got when his hated relatives walked out and locked the door with him inside.

Normally, a home alone day for Harry meant he could sit around and be lazy for a while, even watch the telly but, for some reason, today the loneliness only reminded him that his two best friends hadn't written him all summer.

The smell of something burning traveled from the room Harry had just vacated into his nose, so he decided he could mope later. If he forgot the stove on and something important caught fire he was going to end up with bleeding ears with all the shrieking his aunt would make at the sight, not to mention all the bruises he would get from his uncle who kicked with all the force of a truck of lard. But it was not the stove what was on fire, the wooden cabinets, the curtains and the floor tiles were aflame. He didn't understand how the floor and furniture started to burn until he saw his relatives grinning viciously from outside the window. Harry ran towards the window, trying to open it with all the strength his 11 year-old body could muster, but it was in vain. He pleaded for them to get help, wondering over and over why they were doing this to him, but they simply stood there, eager to watch him burn.

Rapidly concluding his chances of survival depended entirely upon him, Harry ran towards the door and tried to open it. Upon failure, he tried his luck with the windows of the first floor. Nothing, he had been shut inside the burning house to roast alive.

Hoping against hope he could escape by the second floor, he checked Dudsley's second room, there he saw his friends Ron and Hermione shouting at him from Mr. Weasley flying car. Not wasting any time, Harry jumped with his arms extended to catch his friends arms. Then the flying car started to move further from danger and ground and Harry didn't resist the temptation to laugh at the Dursleys's shocked faces... Victory was short-lived, though. A clump of something gray and dusty fell squarely in his face making him look up to see his two mates turning to dust from the arms they had grabbed him just as Professor Quirrel had while trying to pry the philosopher stone out of his grip.

"NOOOOOO!" Harry awoke with a yell, arms stretched up. His forehead was damp and his heart was pumping blood as if Harry had just been playing a Gryfyindor vs Slythering Quidditch match.

"The great Harry Potter is awake!" A voice cut through the confusion The-Boy-Who lived was feeling; he recognized that voice.

"Dobby?" Harry asked, now remembering all the little details that evaded him in his dreams.

He was not in the house of his relatives, nor was he in Hogwarts (where he was supposed to be in this time of a year). No, he was trapped in the middle of who knows where with a house elf and a very hurt Ronald Weasley... "Ron!" Harry looked around frantically, then relaxed somewhat when he noticed his best friend was right beside him. The tension in Harry came back tenfold as he noticed his mate was deadly pale, but somehow managing to sport the pinkish flush of high fever.

"Dobby we need to get Ron to a hospital!" Harry urged the house elf, who looked sheepishly to his feet.

"Dobby tried to take the Great Harry Potter's friend to St Mungos, but Dooby's magic doesn't want to take Dobby to places. Dobby is sorry," Dobby looked so miserable Harry didn't have the heart to get mad at him.

"It's ok, Dobby, we will figure something out."

"The great Harry Potter is so kind. Dobby doesn't deserve the great Harry Potter's-"

"Dobby, please, don't start with that again," Harry begged, feeling a deja-vu. The groveling of the house elf was several layers of disturbing to the young magician. It felt wrong and made him feel like he was bulling the elf, even when that was an irrational notion since the one doing the groveling was the only one eager for that to happen.

Now that Harry wasn't recently awaken from a nightmare and that he knew pushing the elf would be of no use, the Boy-Who-Lived smelled the horrid stink coming out of the tent. "What the hell is that smell?" Harry put his hands over his nose in a vain attempt to shield him from the horrid air. "It smells like dead cat and clogged toilet."

Not waiting for a reply, Harry peeked his head out of the tent. A look to the outside might spark some idea of what he ought to do, and with some luck they would be close enough to people that Harry could get some help. No such luck. They were in what looked like a swamp with mosquitoes the size of mockingbirds. "We need to get going," Harry decided, "Ron won't get any better without a doctor looking over him, and it would take us who knows how much to find people to do that. So we need to hurry."

Having said those words, Harry spun around, almost falling face first into some disgusting mini pond when a dizzy spell hit him. "The Great Harry Potter doesn't be well. Dobby will take the Great Harry Potter and the Great Harry Potter's friend around while people is not around." Before Harry could give his opinion, fingers snapped and he found himself floating horizontally. A second snap of fingers latter the tent was gone, and after the third an unconscious Ron was floating by his side.

Harry was trying to figure out how it was possible to have so many weird things happen in 24 hours... then again, he didn't really know how long he was out of it and was reluctant to ask. Harry also didn't know how many meals he had jumped since he are at the Weasleys before they took them to the Platform 3/4. Not that he was hungry -the smell killed any chance of that happening- but he mused that the hunger could have something to do with his dizziness.

It took a lot longer than Harry would have liked to stop being led around like a balloon, and when it happened it was so abrupt he barely had time to yelp before his body met the soft ground with a thud. It was official, Harry now wanted to punch Dobby's giant nose even more than he ever wanted to punch Snape's. That is, until he heard the sound of bushed rusting. Curious, Harry made an effort to sit, which send him into another dizzy spell. He sat there with the hands grabbing his forehead as the world around him spun so much he couldn't see past his nose.

"Oni-san, Anata wa bujidesu ka?"The voice of what soon revealed to be dark haired boy with a funny-shaped nose and a green beret, reached Harry. Of course, Harry had no idea of what the boy just told him. Harry felt his stomach drop at the foreign words, but couldn't help but hope that the boy might understand English, so Harry could ask the boy for help.

"My friend is hurt," Harry pointed towards Ron, who lay bleeding in the floor next to Harry, "he needs to go to a hospital!" there was a palpable sense of urgency in Harry's voice. The boy gave Ron and Harry a look before running back from where he came. Harry's fear of being left behind were put at ease when he came back with a nun that had long blond-brown hair and pretty grey-green eyes that zeroed on Ron as she hastily made her way towards the red-head. A step behind from the nun was a boy around Harry's age, wearing black nun-ish clothes (minus the head garment), who made his way towards Harry right away.

Harry could see green hands get closer to his head, the pounding dizziness subsiding a great deal. The world was coming back into focus, and Harry spotted that the nun's hands were glowing green as well. One of the unnecessarily long bandages that had been wrapped around Ron's head was in a bloody heap in the ground, but the gash that had once covered, which was now in the open, was being closed by the green glow, leaving behind angry, red scars that no longer bleed. Harry felt a tad relieved that the woman was capable of tending Ron, and Harry felt himself slump when the panic lost its edge, and his heart stopped pumping enough adrenaline into his body to keep him from fighting the mental and physical exhaustion in his body.

Harry's vision got marred with dark spots, and the last thing he saw before oblivion claimed him was the grey-haired boy that had been tending him running towards Ron and the nun.

Thank Merlin that they had been found by healers.

Harry felt like he was floating in the sea. The waves swayed him side to side and he swore that if they kept the swaying up he would puke on them. He opened his eyes a little, flashes of green and brown danced in his eyes before, making the nausea worse. He abandoned his attempt for waking up there and then, and let the sway continue while his eyes were closed.

The next time Harry opened his eyes he was resting on plain ground, bandaged and sore, but decidedly better than he had been before. He managed to sit down, looking all around him for Ron. There were many bodies laying on the ground -most grown men that had had bandages in several places- but none of them had the distinctive carrot-colored hair of his best friend. Ron wasn't beside Harry, who who now sat on the blanket that he had been placed on. The air smelt heavily of blood and smoke, but the stank of the swamp was no longer there, and the canopy of trees over Harry's head were gone, leaving him laying unprotected from the sun that shone brightly over his head. It had barely been a minute of Harry being awake when he spotted the tents a ten meters or so away from him. People were coming in and out from under the white fabric, and Harry was somehow sure Ron was in one of those. Harry stood up with great effort, the protest of his pale skin after getting sun burnt couldn't hold a candle to the protest of his bruised muscles. Still, the will to find Ron was mightier than the pain, and his feet dragged themselves forwards until he was making it to the nearest (and biggest) tent. Once inside, it was clear to Harry why he had been placed outside: the place was beyond cramped, with people who looked as though they had gotten a herd of centaurs to stomp all over them.

Harry limped through, eyes roaming around until they settled on Ron's limp form. His friend was wrapped almost from head to toe in bandages, brown eyes closed. "RON!" He yelled and made to run towards him, but a firm grip on his arm kept him in place. Harry's head moved from Ron, to the hand gripping his elbow, to the palest person Harry had ever seen. Harry was unsure if the person was a man or a woman, since he could spot long hair hiding a pretty face that had yellow eyes and purple make up-like marks, but could also spot muscles on the arms of his captor and a flat chest... a magical creature maybe? Harry glared and tried to break free, but a manly voice came out of his thin, white lips "Shōnen wa, kore wa anata ga acerca o jikkō suru tame no asobibade wa arimasen"1. Needless to say. Harry didn't understand a word the man said.

Another voice speaking in that foreign tongue, this distinctly female, came from Harry's right, "Shōnen o tebanashimasu, Orochimaru-san"2. Harry recognized the nun that had rescued him and Ron, and was torn between thanking her or asking her about Ron first... then again, none might be an option if she could not speak English. Thankfully Harry didn't need to say a word, because he was promptly pulled towards Ron's bed as soon as the girly man let go.

"Anata no yūjin wa hidoku fushō shimashita. Kare wa ima wa antei shite imasuga, mewosamasu ka dō ka wa wakarimasen."3 The woman told Harry gently- It sounded like an explanation, and while Harry apreciated the effort, it was a futile action all the same.

"Can you speak English by any chance?" Harry asked. By the was her brows furrowed, Harry might as well have said that in Gobbledegook. The woman looked Harry with a weird expression, then lifted a finger in front of her lips, clearly asking Harry to keep quiet. Harry nodded in understanding, and remained where he stood by Ron's bed. The woman smiled her approval, then briskly walked away towards one of the many wounded in the tent.

As the minutes tickled by, Harry saw many people come and go carrying swords and weird triangular knifes. Harry saw scrolls of what might have been parchment being used to stash old, bloodied bandages and sometimes even the bodies of those that could not be healed fast enough. Harry had never seen so many hurt people, nor had he seen so many people die. The image of men with purple and black veins screaming themselves to death, or convulsing while chocking in their own blood was something that frightened Harry... he was made aware that wherever he had landed was more dangerous that anywhere he had been before.

The memory of a small kid with blood-red hair and green eyes, carrying trying to murder the in the desert flashed in Harry's mind-eye. He also remembered the sand monster that had crawled from bellow the dunes Harry had buried the kid in. Harry had killed, not once but twice now. And his killing of a child, even to protect Ron and himself, had broken something inside Harry that had begun breaking when he accidentally took Quirrell's life.

Trying to distract himself of the blood in his hands, Harry focused on his surroundings. There were more deaths, but even more were those that ended up being saved. But, then, as he quietly took everything in, he noticed something he should have before: none of this people didn't have wands.

Harry understood that, whatever this people were, they were not wizards and that using magic could draw attention to him. Irrationally, Harry was sure that if the people around paid attention to him, they would realize what Harry had done and take him to jail for his crimes.

Fearfully, Harry tried to make himself as small as possible, his eyes no longer roaming all around the room.

The sun started to set in the horizon, turning the blue sky several shades or pink, dark blue and orange. The men that had been put on the ground before had been healed of their wounds, then, after paying some coins to the healers, they had left in groups towards the setting sun. Now the place was deserted save from the healers that dressed a lot like nuns and priests with their white aprons and collars over black robes. It was clear to Harry that these people were exhausted after a long day, but that didn't stop the adults around him from systematically taking down everything human made in the ares, tents included. Then, when there was only barren earth to be seen, the healers moved away, barely giving Harry and Ron second looks.

Harry, despite his want to talk to them or follow, remained quiet and put, obediently waiting for the woman that had rescued Ron and him to make her was from the moving mass of healers. And come towards Harry and Ron she did, and next to her were the grey-haired boy and the one with the green beret, both carrying a stretcher made of bamboo and sturdy fabric.

'They probably got that from out of one of those scrolls' Harry mused absently. The woman gave him a soft smile and offered him her hand, and Harry took with apprehension, but willing to trust his savior. The boys lifted Ron from the floor with the stretcher and before long the five of them were on their way towards the forest, they walked until the sun sank completely in the horizon, the moonlight not being enough to light their way.

That night they camped in under the stars. The next one, after walking all day, they rested in a cave beside a stream. Then, at the dawn of the third day they arrived to a building made completely of wood, in front of which children chased each other in a merry play of tag.

The laughter did nothing to uplift Harry's spirit: on the tree days it took them to arrive this place, Ron had yet to wake up.

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AN (09-04-2017): I made a little re-write of this chapter. It was really bad. Also, it didn't quite fit canon. I also made little fixes on ch1, but nothing more than fixing a typo or two, and make Gaara 6 instead of 8... Anyway, for those who want to know what was said in Japanese:

1: this is not a playground for you to run about

2: let the boy go, Orochimaru-san.

3: Your friend was badly wounded. He's stable now, but we don't know if he will wake up.