Foreword - Not so long ago I came up with the experiment to see if I could write a separate foreword so I can just say I don't own something, but it didn't work.

Anyway, I was inspired to write this particular story when I read up on a burglar in Australia who scaled walls like Spider-Man, only in this case it was more magical. There is no crossover with Spider-Man; I borrowed the name, yes, but that IS IT. I don't want to repeat myself if people continually send me stupid reviews asking when he is going to change his name to Peter Parker and all that. It won't happen.

Anyway, I don't own Harry Potter.

Enjoy!

Harry Potter.

The Spider-Man Burglar.

Lifting up the mirror, Harry sighed when he saw that Pier's was not chasing him anymore. Oh, come on, Dudley. How many times are you going to do this before you get the hint that it won't work anymore? he thought in exasperation as he continued to run. He hoped he could find a place to rest, preferably somewhere a very long way from the gang.

But his body knew from long experience it wasn't going to catch a break, and the injuries he had suffered from his last beating groaned at the thought of another.

Once Harry Potter had watched a nature documentary about chimpanzees, and he had watched as the apes had come up with a hunting strategy designed to catch Red colobus monkeys and snatch them out of their tree after chasing them into an ambush where they would not be able to escape before the chimps tore them to bloodied pieces.

Harry knew how the monkeys felt. except the primates following him were a small fraction as intelligent. Dudley and his gang rarely if ever came up with anything new; oh, once or twice they developed a strategy that would take him by surprise, like that time when Malcolm had appeared right in front of him when he'd been running down a street from another road. Later, after he had licked his wounds, Harry had worked out for himself that Malcolm had split up from the other members of the gang, and had run down different streets to get ahead of him. That time Harry had been beaten and pummelled really badly, but he had learnt from the beating so now Harry had developed two tactics so they wouldn't get him another time.

The first tactic was to simply hold up a very small mirror, and after careful practice and patience, he was soon able to get the angle right so he could keep track of the gang as they chased him to see for himself if they were behind him or not.

The second tactic was to simply go down random streets so if any of the gang did split up, he would change direction and turn down different streets at random so then the gang wouldn't catch up with him.

But the most ludicrous thing was Dudley and the others were still trying out the trick. When it was going to occur to them that he had thought out two ways of fooling them? Knowing them they wouldn't work it out until they were much older.

Harry panted as he ran through the streets, the sounds of Dudley and his gang of primates quite a long way behind him. He had named them primates because in effect that was what they were, and as he ran down different side streets and back alleys, completely far away from the nearby streets Piers the moron was probably using to try to get ahead of the game.

Harry lifted the mirror up again as he continued jogging and he spared a short glance at it, noting with a degree of pleasure the sight of his obese pig of a cousin. Dudley was red in the face, and judging from how he was having problems running, he was becoming more exhausted, though it was interesting that Dudley hadn't collapsed, though Harry hoped it happened soon; hopefully, the pig would have a heart attack and die. But those thoughts were fleeting before he groaned again. This time Gordon had broken away from the gang.

This time it was going to be Gordon, who happened to be one of the best runners of the gang, who was going to get ahead of him and grab hold of him and beat him up.

No. He wasn't going to let that happen. He turned right and ran into the road, glancing in both directions - he wanted to outrun a pack of primates, he didn't want to die by being run over or smashed to the ground by a car - and then he ran to the other side of the road when he saw that a car was coming from the opposite direction. He used the car to buy himself a good few minutes, and then he started running again, hoping to put distance between himself and Gordon before the rest of the gang managed to catch up to him.

I can't take much more of this, Harry thought to himself tiredly as he rounded another bend as he tried to do another lengthy zig-zag as he tried to put some distance between himself and the gang again. I need a rest. Why does Dudley need to do this every week? Doesn't he ever get bored?

"We're gonna catch you, Freak!" he heard Dudley holler though he sounded breathless from his running, and Harry swallowed his exhaustion and he kept running while he hoped to find a place to hide until the gang had left, and he turned a corner and ran down a few more streets before he leaned against a wall to catch a breath, and his eyes caught sight of a drainpipe.

I wish I could climb something like that, he thought to himself as he looked up, panting while he leaned against the wall. Dudley and his pals were too big and too stupid to know how to climb up a drainpipe. Harry could see the advantages of climbing such a pipe; not only could he climb like Spider-Man from the comics, but he would hopefully be out of sight of the gang and out of their reach.

Harry looked around for any sign of the gang yet, but he couldn't see any of them yet but he knew it was not a good idea to stay down here where the gang could find him and pulled away from the wall.

Or at least he tried to pull away.

Harry gaped in shock when he saw that his hand was sticking to the wall. What? Had someone put something on the wall, some kind of glue? But that made no sense, if there was glue on this wall which was made from brickwork, then why couldn't he smell anything, never mind feel anything that felt like glue?

He wanted to pull his hand away quickly before the gang turned up, and it did. It came away without any problems, just like that. Harry looked at his hands in befuddlement as he tried to work out what was happening. It was so weird, and then he remembered all the other weird things that seemed to happen around him. Harry turned around to see if any of the gang had found him yet, but there wasn't anyone here. But there was no one at the moment. He had the place to himself.

Harry looked down at his hands and tried to work out if he could stick to the wall again. He tried it as an experiment, but it didn't work. He placed his hands to the wall as he had done before, but it came away normally without sticking to it. For a moment Harry was convinced what had happened was some fluke, and yet the part of him which was forever curious about the weird events that took place around him wanted to continue to try to see if this was a fluke.

He had to admit to himself that a lot of weird events happened around him, and this was no different. For a long time he had often wondered what was happening to him, and asked himself if that propaganda the Dursleys were always coming out with about him being a good-for-nothing freak were right, even if he hated them for everything they had done to him over the years, and yet that didn't answer one very good question. Why were these weird things always happening around him?

As he stared at the wall in front of him, Harry thought to himself how great it would be if he could climb walls, like Spider-Man. If it worked he could escape from Dudley whenever possible without the gang knowing a thing. He stared at his hands, remembering the incident clearly whenever something occurred to him. Wait a second, he thought to himself in growing excitement, my hand came away within moments of wanting it pulled away. What if I try it again-?

"Hey, here he is!" Harry turned in horror and he started running when he heard the voice of Gordon, and he took off, but blocking the alley, grinning crookedly was Piers, but Harry grabbed hold of a black bag on top of a bin. He picked it up. The bag wasn't that heavy, but it wasn't light either and it was no problem for Harry. It should do what he needed. Good.

"What're yer goin' with that, Potter?" Piers guffawed. "Taking it home to eat out of?" He laughed like it was a huge joke, but he wasn't laughing anymore when Harry smacked him in the face and head with it, and he was knocked to the side of the alley, leaving him stunned, but Harry used the chance to escape.

As he ran down the street, Harry cursed himself for being so stupid to remain in the alley when it was not a good move. He should have kept moving, put more distance between himself and the gang-

Harry sighed to himself as he jogged, glancing behind him with the mirror. There was no sign of the gang behind him, but he started zig-zagging through the streets to be on the safe side.

As he lay in the darkness in the cramped confines of the cupboard under the stairs, Harry thought about the day he'd had. He had managed to avoid Dudley, but his cousin had promised that he would pay for what he had done, running away from them like that. Harry knew his cousin was not making an idle threat. He would try to carry out the threat, and Harry knew there was a chance his cousin would succeed. Dudley had always been out of shape because he always ate fatty, sugary, processed foods all the time without his parents doing anything to mitigate the worst of it. On the contrary, they had encouraged him to eat though sure it had occurred to them, a simple synaptic firework here and there in their brains, that they should perhaps curtail their son's eating habits. But it never happened. Worse, whenever Dudley came back after a long run of Harry Hunting, he was usually sweating and panting, sucking the air noisily in wheezing, gasping breaths as he tried to relax although his morbidly obese frame was simply not used to the strain of exercise. Today had been no exception, and he had been gasping, sucking every particle of air out of the sky when he had come back to the house, red in the face and sweating like the pig he was.

The obese pig had been running all afternoon and the exercise had nearly made him collapse. Harry briefly wondered how long someone could go like that before they collapsed if their body was disgustingly out of Dudley had seen his cousin in the house again, his piggy-little eyes had narrowed and he had curled his ham-like hands in rage, but he didn't start on his cousin. That fascinated Harry. Clearly his cousin had been more exhausted than he'd thought, but he didn't care. But it wasn't enough for Dudley to look like a pig, he was sweating like one too.

Even his Aunt Petunia had been disgusted. She had been like, "Whatever have you been doing, Diddy-Duddydums? You'd better go and have a shower."

Dudley, too tired and too filthy to resist, had done as he was told, which was an achievement; most of the time Dudley couldn't give a thought about his personal hygiene, and he usually fought his mother every step of the way, but it seemed even he had standards, surprisingly enough. But that hadn't stopped him making a threat. He whispered, "I'm gonna kill you, Freak!" and then he lumbered his way upstairs, shaken by the run and he was left stumbling up the stairs. Harry hadn't said a word. He had known from the off his cousin meant every word he said. Dudley never made idle threats at the best of times. But tonight he hoped his Uncle wasn't told about what happened.

Harry snorted. Uncle, Aunt, cousin. These three are not my family. In my mind, a real family does not do what these pigs do to me every day, he thought to himself, One day I'll get out of here.

But as he lay there in the darkness of the cupboard which he was able to squeeze himself into, Harry thought of the days' events. Only one thing stood out to him, well, two things. The first was how he had managed to throw that bag of rubbish at Piers' head (another member of Dudley's gang who will definitely try to get revenge, he knew, but so long as the rat-faced idiot didn't catch him then Harry would be safe). He would worry about Piers later, he had his mind on other things. He had never used his surroundings to attack one of the gang before. Yes, he had used his knowledge of the geography of Little Whinging to his advantage, using it to get away from the gang, keeping two steps ahead before he found somewhere to hide for a bit while the gang poked around.

But he had never used his surroundings to attack one of them before. Harry didn't care if he got one of the gang permanently injured, although it would have consequences for him in the future if one of them got hit by a car although he wouldn't be sorry; they had never restrained themselves from hitting him and hunting him down like an animal, so why should he care about hurting them? One thing was for sure, he wanted to use his surroundings to his advantage again. Hopefully, if he refined his approach instead of just using a rubbish bag, he could use bin lids as a shield, kind of like the shields used by medieval knights of legend to block Dudley's punches. Harry chuckled quietly to himself as he pictured Dudley throwing a punch at his face, only to scream in pain as his knuckles impacted those lids made of metal rather than plastic.

But then he thought about how he had stuck to the wall. Yeah, it had only been brief, but he had stuck to the wall. Harry just didn't know if it was a fluke or not, a figment of a desperate imagination. Harry lifted his hand; he couldn't see it in the darkness of the cupboard, but he could feel it. He could feel the cold of the cupboard tickle the pale skin of his hands, and he wondered if he could do it again. He remembered clearly how he had pulled his hand away with a thought because he had wanted to pull it away, but what if he reversed it?

He decided to try it here. The confines of the Cupboard weren't really a great place to hold such an experiment, but he didn't care. He was on his own, which was a good thing, and with the Dursleys occupied in the living room while they watched television which he could hear from where he was, Harry knew he wouldn't be disturbed unless Vernon decided to have "fun" although Harry wouldn't term it as fun. He sat up slowly, knowing from long experience if he sat up too fast he would bash his forehead on the stairs, and potentially get another scar like the lightning-bolt shaped thing on his head.

He turned on the light and looked at his left hand. He closed his eyes and placed it on the stair above him. He held his hand with his fingers splayed open for a moment, and then he pulled his hand away slowly. It came away. Harry looked down with a sigh. It was a fluke. Disappointment filled him, but he fought it down. He should have known….

And then he remembered how he had willed his hand away from the wall the first time. What if he did it again? Willing his hand to stick to the ceiling, Harry tried it again. He pressed his hand to the wall for a moment. He licked his lips as he pulled his hand. It came away. He sagged in disappointment, and then he rolled over after turning the light off. But he was hit by a brainwave. He had thought about how cool it would be if he could climb.

What if he could?

What if he learnt to scale walls the normal way? Yeah, it would be a challenge, but he would rather take his chances scaling a wall than being a sitting duck on the ground. With that in mind, Harry went to sleep.

Lunch was usually a small affair, but for Harry Potter, every meal was something he both looked forward to and dreaded. He looked forward to them because he would be able to stop the inevitable hunger he usually endured and dreaded because the food he was given was the equivalent of a crust of bread and a shot of water with a wizened, half-eaten apple given to prisoners.

The Dursleys regularly starved him as a punishment, usually for something Dudley did or because Vernon and Petunia wanted to drag him down to his lowest ebb and die, and they worked him really hard with few breaks to either catch his breath or to get something to drink which did not help. It also made him wonder what truly was normal. He could tell that none of the kids here was in the same hell he was, which made him stand out even more so without his baggy clothes which didn't fit him, his thin, tiny frame, and his messy hair to make it worse. A voice, the result of years of abuse by the Dursleys, told him it was because he was a freak, but he didn't care.

Anyway, Harry was truly hungry. He had been given, once more, the scraps from God knew where, and he was expected to be grateful for them, but he was still hungry.

He looked up from his meagre meal and glared angrily at the kids around him, who were obvious to his rage. They had enough food around them to feed a nation, never mind themselves. Some of them had fruit gleaming in the dim light with a shade of attractive ripeness. Others had biscuits either homemade or store-bought. Some were guzzling down yoghurts. Other kids were swilling down fruit juices or soft drinks. Some kids were eating school-meals, but Harry couldn't see them eating down portions that would starve even a mouse. The sight of it made him angry, but he squashed it tight down.

Getting furious was not going to help him, and he knew it. He closed his eyes and tried to resist the pain of hunger in his stomach. He wanted some of that food, he wanted to be healthy instead of on the point of becoming a skeleton all the time. And then it occurred to him, what if he stole some of their food? For a moment he recoiled at the thought, but the more he thought about it, the more appealing it became to him.

Abandoning his meal - it was disgusting anyway - Harry stood up, his mind racing and started walking around the hall. His mind raced as he thought about how he could do this, and he decided he would be careful. He cast a look around the hall for any sign of Dudley and his cronies. He spotted them quickly enough; they were on the far side of the hall, and as long as he avoided them they wouldn't know what he was doing, and besides, they were laughing raucously at something Harry neither knew or cared about. He looked around the hall and realised there was a chance he would be spotted, so he picked up his lunch box, and he went back got it so no-one would be suspicious.

He targeted a girl who had a lunchbox open to the side, and after a quick and furtive look around, Harry walked over slowly while making sure no-one saw him. He had targeted the girl because the teacher in charge of lunch duty had her back to him, so this was the perfect target. He walked over to her while he saw she was distracted by her pals, and he spotted a milky way in her lunchbox. He flexed his left hand to make it ready, and he dipped his hand into the girl's box and curled his fingers around the wrapper, feeling as though his breathing was out of sorts. But little by little, he eased the packaged chocolate out of the box, wincing inwardly at the sound it made, and then he pulled it out and walked away.

Harry smiled as he walked away without hearing anyone shouting, and he went to the bin and emptied his lunch box. He had done it, he had succeeded in stealing food from someone else. But he knew he was not finished yet. He stood by the bin quietly while he had the lunchbox in his hands and he emptied it.

That was straight forward enough, he thought, but the lunchbox itself is too big, too noticeable. If I'd been there one minute longer, they would have seen me. There has to be another way for me to steal without being spotted….

And then he noticed something that caught his eye. He looked at the serviettes arranged neatly in a box near the dinner ladies and he grabbed a couple which he took with him, and he walked back to his seat but along the way, he looked around for any likely target. One of the best things about his life was despite everyone seeing him as a freak, he was never really seen or noticed by the others here. Harry took advantage of that right now. With just his eyes to gauge his surroundings, he caught sight of the teacher who was trying to get his cousin and his idiot friends to keep the noise level down. She wasn't having much luck by the look of it. But that was her problem, not his. Harry found his newest victim. A boy, this time, who had a few plums and a couple of apples to the side. Harry walked slowly over to him, thankful for his short frame for once. Deftly switching a serviette into his right hand, Harry came close to him before he had an idea. He walked over to the boy and placed his oversized trainer - yet another hand-me-down from Dudley - and placed his lunch box on the edge of the table. He didn't do it for the fun of it, he put it there deliberately so then he could block the other kids' views of what he was doing.

Unfortunately, he was noticed but luckily not in the way he was dreading.

"Go away, Potter!" one kid said.

"Yeah, we don't want Dudley to see us with you," another kid added.

That was the crux of his problem here. Harry had no friends, but truthfully the black-haired boy had grown accustomed to that since he could remember how he had been hurt the last time he had tried to make some friends, but he pushed those memories aside and carried on with his laces while he silently counted the moments. He didn't bother replying to the demands of the kids; nothing he would say to them would change their views, so he didn't see any point. He finished, but as he stood up he wrapped the serviette around one of the number of plums near him. He wished he could take more, but he knew if he did that then the kid would notice, and he didn't want that.

He walked away from the table quietly, savouring his victory, but he spotted another kid who, much like him, was alone on his part of a table. Harry liked the look of the kid instantly. Not only was he alone, but he had all of his attention in a comic book. Also, as he glanced around, the teacher was still on the far side of the hall, trying to deal with Dudley, and the dinner ladies were now packing up the food stores, chatting with one another to really notice him. A part of Harry wondered if they would even raise the alarm if they saw what he was going, but he decided not to try his luck. He walked slowly over to the boy and noticed that he had some fruit in his own lunch box. There were a couple of apples and bananas in the box and some sandwiches, but there was nothing there he could pinch, aside from a few more plums and some oranges. Harry breathed out slowly and eased himself closer before he performed the same lace-up trick, though he wondered if it was even necessary since the other boy didn't seem to be paying any kind of attention whatsoever to his surroundings. Still, Harry was cautious and he carefully watched the kid, but so far Harry felt he could get away with this.

He stood up, and with the serviette, he managed to curl his fingers around an orange and a plum inside the lunchbox and he held back the urge to grin as he felt the shapes of the two pieces of fruit, and he lifted them out slowly. Once he had them in his own pocket, Harry looked down at the boy, but he didn't see any sign that he had been spotted.

Harry walked away and he went to an empty table and he began eating his spoils. It might have been reckless, but since no-one paid any attention to 'Freaky Harry Potter' he felt he was safe. It would be years later that he would learn enough restraint. But for right now, before he tucked into the two delicious looking plums, the orange, and the packaged Milky Way, Harry knew he had to make sure he hadn't made any mistakes. He knew if the Dursleys found out about what he had just done then they would make his life a misery, though that was a contradiction in itself.

And yet, he had done what anybody else in his position had done. He had gotten food when he had needed it, and although the Dursleys would raise almighty hell if they ever found out about this, he knew he had done it to feed himself. If he hadn't then he would have starved to death.

Even more, he would never forget the indescribable exhilaration he had felt when he had taken those pieces of food from the other kids. For once, he had done what he had needed in order to survive. The thefts had felt as though someone had lit a spark in his brain and let it explode with the force of a bomb.

Harry knew only one thing.

He wanted to do it again.