Chapter 1 - Harry Hopper

I always hated my crutches. When most students got crutches after an injury they simply became more interesting for a few weeks, and most seemed to enjoy the attention they received from being so noticeable. They usually ended up with underarm crutches and a cast or a brace, and after a few weeks they were as good as new, nary any sign at all that they were once imperfect.

My crutches were never like that. They fit around my forearm with a handle for me to grip for stability, set specifically for my size and build. They weren't the type of crutches that a hospital gives out for a broken bone or short-term mobility loss. The forearm crutches meant to most people what they always meant to me - permanent. They were a symbol and a reminder of the worst night of my life, even if it's a night that I couldn't remember. Combined with the lightning bolt scar on my forehead, and I was only ever seen as the final victim of Lord Voldemort.

That's especially true of those who knew my story. Outside of Little Whinging, I knew that some people lauded me as a hero, the only person in the world to survive the killing curse. But nobody who met me ever saw me as a hero. My left leg was all but useless, a relic of the killing curse that never killed me. It may have looked fine physically, but I'd been assured by both doctors and mediwizards that the damage was permanent. Beyond that, I was terribly thin - and not the kind that would have suggested any sort of fitness or athleticism.

Worse still was what wizards saw when they looked at me. I was born with magic, but whatever happened when Voldemort cast that fateful curse managed to strip even that away from me, too. I could see the pity in their eyes when they saw me - like I'd lost the very thing that made me human, like I'd lost my very soul. I could see it even then as I was leaving school, reflected in the eyes of the people that saw me every day. I was Harry Potter, the cripple.

"Harry Hopper, the boy who lived to be a cripple!"

Or, I was Harry Hopper, the boy who lived to be a cripple. A not so creative nickname devised by my not so smart cousin. Still, it was accurate enough that it always bothered me immeasurably, which of course meant that Dudley and his gang of cronies repeated it as often as they could.

"How long does it take you to get home, hopping on one leg like that?" Piers Polkiss added, following behind Dudley.

It was phrased as a question, but after so many years of tormenting me on the way home from school, Piers knew that it genuinely did take me a fair effort to get back to the Dursleys. Dudley and his friends all knew as well as I did myself that it was the most arduous part of my day. Ten blocks may not have been all that far for most people, but most people didn't have to struggle with only one working leg, and any who did would most certainly have had people to come and pick them up.

In my experience, and I had a lot of it, answering his question was only going to make things that much worse. Fortunately, I'd gotten quite used to being able to comfortably ignore them - though, that of course never meant that they were going to ignore me, too.

I was almost knocked onto my face when a torrent of cold water struck me from behind. It wasn't that it was a particularly forceful attack, but the surprise was well enough for me to be stumbling forwards, especially since I had a bung leg. I only just managed to get my crutch to the ground in order to stop from falling, the awkward movement causing Dudley and his friends to all cackle like fools.

So now they're using their Pokemon…

Sure enough, when I turned my head, Piers had released his Pokemon, a small and round blue creature with a zigzag tail ending in a ball around the same size as it's main body, almost like a squishy blue flail. It had a happy, innocent smile on its face, like what it had just done was just a joke. Of course, I didn't blame the creature. Like most Pokemon I'd seen, it was just doing as it was bid by it's trainer.

I let out a small sigh and continued towards the Dursleys house, urging myself to try and go faster even knowing that it was impossible. Like every other day, I had no choice but to deal with their torment.

"C'mon Dudley, get your Growlithe out!" Piers yelled out excitedly.

As Dudley sputtered out a no doubt terrible excuse as to why he shouldn't, I finally had a reason to smile. Dudley should have by rights been the talk of our year group, with a powerful yet adorable Pokemon like Growlithe to call his own. Yet, that would only have been true if he had any semblance of control over the little fire dog, and he absolutely didn't.

Most of the time I'd seen Dudley try to give it any order, it had simply turned around and gone to sleep instead. There was even one time when the fire Pokemon had decided to throw a few embers towards his master when he finally got fed up with his orders, chasing him around the yard with spits of fire and irritated little barks.

"C'mon, Dudley…" one of the other boys tried. "Show us Growlithe."

From the look on Dudley's face that I managed to catch out of my peripheral vision, he was definitely going to give in to the pressure. How people see him always seemed to be the most important thing to my cousin, and he wasn't going to want to disappoint his sycophantic friends. With a single button press of the Pokeball hanging at his waist, Dudley's Growlithe appeared from a blobby mass of white energy.

It looked as healthy and formidable as ever, covered with vibrant orange with black stripes, with an occasional tuft of cream colored fur. The claws on it's forepaws were long and sharp, much like I knew were the teeth in his mouth. He was a decent size, too, coming up to perhaps just below Dudley's hips at full height, with stocky legs and a muscular body.

Unlike when most Pokemon are called though, Growlithe didn't look to be expecting an order from Dudley, or more likely, didn't care and wouldn't obey if there was one. His eyes scanned slowly around the street before he opened his jaw wide with a long yawn.

But Dudley never was very bright, and despite a thousand attempts to get Growlithe to obey, for some reason he seemed to think that it would be different this time. "Growlithe, bite him!"

Slowly, Growlithe looked up at Dudley, then slid his gaze towards where he was pointing, straight at me. He looked back at Dudley for a brief moment before stretching out his front legs and laying his head lazily on the pavement.

"Growlithe, I said bite him!" Dudley yelled again, this time with much more feeling. This time, Growlithe didn't even bat an eyelid in response. Even knowing logically that it was a bad idea, I just couldn't help my reaction - I laughed.

Stupid, stupid! Impossible or not, I urged myself once again to crutch faster away.

"Think that's funny do you, Hopper?" Dudley snarled after me. There was a brief flash of red, probably Dudley recalling Growlithe back to it's Pokeball. I didn't turn to answer him, still trying to get away as fast as I could manage, which was in reality probably not much faster than a normal persons normal walking speed. I could hear Dudley storming up behind me, and I couldn't help the cringe from appearing on my features when I knew what was about to happen. One of Dudley's favorite games in the world seemed to be making me fall, something that was almost laughably easy considering my issues with mobility.

As he had done a million times before, Dudley kicked the crutch in my hand to the side as soon as it struck the ground, sending me sprawling on to the paved path beneath, thankfully on my right side. It might not be painful to the touch or have a physical wound, but landing on the cursed damaged leg was entirely more painful than landing on any other limb.

"At least I've got a Pokemon, cripple," Dudley sneered. "You're never going to have one. Not a wizard… not a trainer… what good are you to anyone?"

It was far from the first time I'd heard something like it, but still each word was like a hard blow to the head. Dudley's normal insults never phased me all that much, be he tended to pull out his more disparaging words whenever driven to anger. It wouldn't have been an issue were he not absolutely correct.

If I still had my magic, I'd have been at Hogwarts several years earlier, and I could have actually made something of my life. Instead I was labeled a squib, and was forced into living in the muggle world. For most squibs, it wasn't as serious a blow, since they could always turn to some sort of career in Pokemon. I'd been denied even that, with Vernon having refused to sponsor me for a Pokemon license.

Tears welled in my eyes, despite how much I tried to prevent them, and I tried to get back to my feet. Instead, Dudley kicked my crutch again, and I fell back until I could almost taste the cement underneath me.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" a gruff, angry voice shouted from nearby.

Anybody else might have felt like they were about to be rescued, but the new voice had me immediately tensing up. No doubt this mystery adult, and it certainly sounded like an adult, would chastise Dudley for bullying. It sounded good in theory, but wouldn't be, in reality. Best case scenario would be Dudley getting told off before the stranger leaving, in which case Dudley would have complained to his parents, and I would get in trouble. Really, there was no way it could work out in my favor. Vernon and Petunia would find out somehow, and I would be in trouble for the embarrassment of it all.

Great. Just great.

Dudley backed off a little, looking wary as the man approached in front of them. I couldn't see the man's face, but his clothes were shabby, and patched, and familiar. Even with only a suspicion of who it could be, a small smile began to spread over my face.

"Who are you?" one of Dudley's friends asked.

The man let a wand drop into his hand from a holster assumedly kept on his forearm under his patchy sleeve.

"Keep bullying this young man here, and you'll find out the hard way who I am. I wonder how you all would look with green skin and covered with blisters?" he said, his voice commanding and threatening.

None of Dudley's friends were any brighter than Dudley himself, but even they weren't stupid enough to mess with a wizard. The second they saw the wand they scattered, leaving me helpless on the path.

"Alright there, Harry?" the man asked, gentler now.

I almost laughed out loud when I head the more soothing tone of his voice. He sounded very different when he was angry, but I was sure then of who it was. Sure enough, when I lifted my head further, it was to look into the lightly scarred face of Remus Lupin.

"Hullo Remus," I smiled the first genuine smile that I had in weeks.

"Are you sure that you're alright?" Remus asked, taking a seat across from me in our usual booth at the local ice-cream parlor. As per usual, Remus had ordered a double chocolate sundae, topped with little flakes of chocolate and further smothered in a rich chocolate sauce. It looked as sickly sweet as it always did, enough that I could practically taste it from across the table.

"Of course," I said in a deflection of the question. "What's with you and chocolate?"

Remus simply raised an eyebrow at my rapid change of topic. For a brief second he looked worried, but quickly covered it with a smile. "According to muggles, chocolate releases endorphins, and endorphins are meant to make you happy. We could all use a little more happiness in our lives, wouldn't you say?"

Maybe I should have ordered chocolate…

Remus shot me another concerned glance at me after that, but I just smiled back. Most of our monthly meetings went the same way, with Remus worrying like a mother hen and me pretending like life was just grand. I had no intention of stopping that pretense, either. My daily life was already filled with people treating me like a poor little victim, or otherwise bullying me relentlessly, so the last thing I wanted was my one meeting with Remus a month to be the same.

"So, how's school?" Remus asked after a short and exasperated sigh. No doubt he knew that pushing me to really open up was a pointless endeavor.

"Schools fine," I said noncommittally. "Kind of boring, though."

Remus let out a short laugh. "I remember feeling the same when I was at school. I always did quite well, but sometimes I'd rather have been doing just about anything else."

I had to suppress a surge of anger at that. Bored at Hogwarts? I would have given just about anything to have the chance to go there, and Remus has the hide to say that he was bored? How could magic ever be boring?

"In fact we were doing other things most of the time," Remus continued, oblivious to my sudden anger. "We spent more time just exploring the castle and playing pranks than we ever did studying."

It's nothing that I hadn't heard from him before, but whether they were repeated stories or not, I wasn't about to turn down hearing stories about my father. Merlin forbid that Petunia was ever going to tell me any stories about my parents, so I would take whatever I could get.

"What kind of pranks?"

Remus shrugged. "Looking back, many of them went too far, but I can't deny how much fun we had with them. One time we slipped a potion into a Slytherins pumpkin juice at breakfast to make his voice high-pitched. It took the potions professor nearly six hours to cook up the antidote."

I grinned wide, unable to picture anything but the same situation only with Dudley in the leading role. I'd have given anything to see such a thing. It would definitely have taken him down a peg or three.

"Merlin, your mother was so angry with us that day," Remus added quietly.

"Angry?" I asked, "wasn't she friends with you?"

Remus laughed out loud and shook his head. "Oh, I think she absolutely hated us to be honest. She had the right of it too. Immature idiots we were back then, and it didn't help that James was always mooning after her. It wasn't until he started to smarten up in our final year that Lily finally warmed to us."

"That long?"

"Oh yes. She used to tear strips off us for being so stupid. I remember one particular stinging hex that had James limping about for nearly a fortnight, and moping for even longer. She was perhaps the kindest woman I ever met, but you'd have been an absolute fool to cross her," Remus said, his eyes suddenly sad and wistful.

"I wish I'd known them," I said quietly. As happy as the stories always made me, it was always impossible to ignore the images that popped into my head. How different would my life have been if they were still alive? Would I have been at the same school? Would I have friends?

Would I be happy?

"I never saw them happier than the day you were born, you know. I'll never forget the way they looked at you - like you were suddenly the focal point of their entire universe," Remus said. "That kind of love never really goes away. As long as we remember them, they're right here with us."

It was easy for him to say, but it was hard for me to feel it. It was a nice thought, I could acknowledge that much, but I knew better than anything that my parents weren't right there with me. I was reminded of it every day when I woke up in the cupboard under the stairs. More than that, how was I supposed to remember people that died when I was a baby? More than once it felt like I loved the idea of my parents rather than my parents themselves.

"Harry," Remus said, distracting me from me pointlessly spinning my spoon in my ice-cream. "I know that things aren't easy for you…"

"Stop," I said forcefully.

Remus shook his head slightly, obviously determined to say what he had to say. "I just… if there's anything I can do to make things better…"

My patience cracked like a tree struck by lightning. We'd been down this route so many times in our meetings over the years, and it had become very clear in that time that there was nothing Remus could do to help me. Or, at the very least, nothing that Remus was willing to do.

"Can we not talk about this again?" I snapped, returning to spinning my spoon in my quickly melting sundae.

It wasn't that I didn't appreciate Remus' wanting to help me, only that the conversations always ended with the both of us upset. It was very well established that my situation wasn't about to change, no matter how much either of us wanted it to.

Out of my peripheral vision I could see the hesitation on his face. No doubt he didn't want to rock the boat either, but I knew that Remus felt just as powerless as I did. Perhaps in saying something he felt like he was at least trying to make a difference.

"You know I would take you in an instant," Remus tried slowly, "Only…"

"Only the Dursleys are my legal guardians," I cut him off with a sigh. "I know. Remus, just let it go."

"It's not just that. With my condition-"

"As if I care that you're a werewolf!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. It was one thing to argue that he couldn't do anything about my situation because of the Dursleys legal rights, but entirely another to suggest it was because he thought I would care about him being a werewolf. It made me furious to think he could think so little of me.

Though he must have known that everyone was now looking our way, thanks to my little outburst, Remus didn't flinch or take his eyes off me. I could see the other customers in the parlor look at him with faces full of fear and disgust, but Remus still didn't tear his vision away from mine.

"That is not what I was going to say," Remus said forcefully. "Please, if you could just calm down and let me say my piece… This isn't easy for me, either. I was going to say that even if I wanted to challenge your aunt and uncle for guardianship, the law wouldn't let me because of my condition."

Oh.

Behind Remus a man clutched the hand of his young son tight and left the parlor, glaring at Remus is disgust the entire time. My crutches weren't really intended to be weapons, but I was certain that they'd hurt any idiot well enough were I to whack one atop the head. I was very sorely tempted to test that theory.

"So you might be right," Remus conceded, either missing the bigoted fool or simpling ignoring him. "Perhaps there's nothing I can do to change things, but you're my family whether we live under the same roof or not."

"It's a nice thought," I said slowly, my anger evaporating away. "But I still have to go home to the Dursleys after this."

Remus shook his head and leaned forward over the table, his light green eyes boring into mine. "No, not home," he said. "Only you get to decide where your home is."

I couldn't help but roll my eyes. Whatever new tactic Remus was trying to cheer me up, it wasn't really working. Normally he'd have stuck to the same old pointless spiel about willing to do anything to help me, but this time he was pushing far more than usual.

"So your point is that I don't actually have a home?" I asked sarcastically. There was a small part of me that was fully aware of how stubborn and obtuse I was being, but I was just so sick of these conversations. The best part about meeting Remus once a month was that it allowed me to forget the misery of my day to day life, but the more he brings up unsolvable problems, the less enjoyable the meetings were becoming.

A look of hurt flashed across his features, but he recovered quickly. "My point is that you have a home with me. We may not be able to live under the same roof, but I need you to know how important you are to me. I can't stand the idea of you going back to those people and thinking that there's no-one in the world who cares for you. I care for you."

All semblance of anger and annoyance went out the window at that, and I was at a loss for words. Life still sucked, no doubt, and nothing was really about to change, but it was still nice to hear out loud that at the very least, somebody would notice were I to fall straight off the face of the earth. But, having never had anyone say anything quite like it to me before, I really had no idea how to respond.

"You don't have to say the same," Remus said slowly, filling the awkward silence his statement had made, "you only see me once a month, and-"

"You're my home," I said with a tone of absolute finality. It was an easy thing to say, in the end. Even if the only qualifier in the decision was that Remus was the only person in the world who cared for me, it felt like enough. The world still didn't feel fair, and everything still prevented us from living together like family, but I was used to life not being as it should be. At least this meant that I wasn't really alone.

I was expecting the berating of a lifetime when I walked through the front door of the Dursleys home.

But not my home.

After my meeting with Remus, it was a strangely comforting thought. Privet Drive had never truly felt like home anyway, but now it felt different in some way than it did before. Perhaps it was the thought that one day I would legally be an adult, and nothing could have kept me there. I was definitely thinking that one day, Remus and I could become a real family. For right then, it was nothing but a roof over my head.

But until then, I was going to have to deal with my uncles fury. Dudley had undoubtedly told them about Remus threatening him by then, and I was going to have to bear the brunt of it, as ever.

I let out a sigh of relief as I crutched my way into the living room past the entrance and into silence and darkness. Either the Dursleys weren't home, or they were already in bed. Either way, it was a victory.

Was the car in the driveway?

Remus had side-apparated me right to the front door before bidding me farewell and cracking away into the night, so I had to look out the window to actually check whether they were home. The car wasn't there, which meant that they'd most likely gone out. That wasn't as good news as if they had simply gone to bed, since it meant that Vernon would come for him the minute he came through the door. At least if he were to wait until the following day, some of Vernon's formidable anger might have dissipated.

In the end I decided it was probably safest if I just locked myself away in my cupboard. But first - supplies. Living fourteen years in a house where nobody bothered to look out for my wellbeing had made me rather more thrifty and resourceful than most other boys my age. It was rare that the Dursleys would leave me alone in their house, but when they did, I made sure to take advantage.

Both Vernon and Dudley were big eaters, so they generally didn't notice when a little food was missing. I was careful not to take too much anyway. Even the idea of Vernon finding my stash under the loose floorboard in my cupboard was unthinkable. He was angry enough for any of the small offenses he decided that I had made, but the thought of being caught stealing food from him was utterly terrifying.

I crutched my way towards the kitchen, eying the red and white ball left on the bench as I passed. Vernon always took his Pokemon with him wherever he meant, so there was no doubt that it was Dudley's Growlithe inside. I rolled my eyes in disgust. How was it that a boy like Dudley, who clearly didn't appreciate his Pokemon, was allowed to have one, and I had to go without? Just another unfair facet of my life.

I was poking my head into the pantry when I heard the familiar creak of the front door swinging open. Startled, I cracked my head hard atop the roof of the pantry, stumbled on my bad leg and fell back towards the kitchen bench.

"Uncle Vernon," I said, blinking away my blurry white vision from the bump to the head, "I didn't think-"

Even with my vision compromised, it was easy to see that it wasn't Vernon or Petunia who had entered. For one, neither of them was as large as Vernon, and the way that they simply stood across the room from me was quite unlike anything I'd ever seen my aunt or cousin ever do before. They were more likely to storm across the room and scream in my face than ever stay silent.

"You're not uncle Vernon," I said.

"There's the scar," one of the men said. "Can you believe it, Avery? This broken runt of a kid defeated the Dark Lord?"

The Dark Lord? But the only ones who call him that are Death-Eaters…

"Hard to believe. Kid can barely even walk and he's meant to have defeated the most powerful wizard in the world? Dunno that I believe it," the other one said in response.

What do I do?

Death-Eaters were never meant to be able to get close to me under any circumstances. It was Dumbledore himself who told me it was impossible. Evidently, he was wrong.

"Almost seems like we'll be putting him out of his misery, doesn't it? No magic to defend himself, a bum leg and a skinny body like that? We're basically doing him a favor."

I instinctively ducked behind the bench when I saw the wands appear in their hands, just in time to avoid a barrage of spells that sailed over my head and smashed into the kitchen wall tiles behind me. My crutch was knocked out from underneath me and I fell hard onto the ground as debris from the kitchen wall fell in pieces over my body.

The sound of it was unbelievable, like a series of mini-explosions sounding right over my head, until all I could hear was a loud ringing in my ears. Pieces of tile and now food from the smashed fridge rained down over my prone form, some of the sharper pieces cutting along exposed skin on my arms, legs and face.

And then it stopped. I couldn't hear anything beyond the ringing in my ears, but the flashing lights from the spell-fire had stopped. Before I could move, there was a flash of movement in front of my eyes, a blur of red and white that landed on the ground in front of my face.

It was Growlithe's Pokeball, and it was open.

Notes

I've had this chapter written for yonks, and the second is actually nearly done as well. Just decided to randomly post it.

This chapter does raise several questions though, I know. Firstly, Harry here is about 14, three years after he should have gone to Hogwarts. Second, the muggle world and the wizarding world are not separate, since Pokemon are basically the magical creatures of the world. Third, any questions about Harry's lack of magic and his cursed leg will be answered in time.

Hope you guys enjoyed it!

NOTES ON NOTES

I've actually gone back and fully rewritten this chapter from third person present tense to first person past tense. If you spot any remaining tense issues, please let me know :)