Light and Darkness

Chapter Six

Run and Don't Look Back

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A low moan of pain came from the black-haired child resting on the floor like some carelessly thrown rag doll. It was obvious that he has hurting and rather badly too. The boy slowly and with a lot of difficulty placed his hands against the cold, unforgiving floor and pushed with all the strength he had left, trying to push himself onto a kneeling position at the very least. Every single cell in his body seemed to protest the movement and his nerves lit up with indescribable pain but the child stubbornly held the anguished cry within himself – although he could do nothing to prevent the pained groan that escaped even his strength of will. When his body was finally somewhat lifted away from the dirty floor, the boy opened his eyes.

They were blood-red.

He took in the grisly sight in front of him and another pained sound escaped his throat, but this one had nothing to do with the physical hurt his body found itself in, but rather the turmoil that afflicted his mind and heart. He could not believe, simply could not believe that this had happened.

He had done this.

The child got to his feet, his shock and horror for a moment overcoming the pain and stress this movement caused his body. He should have known that this would happen, that his control would slip sooner or later and someone would have to pay the prize. He should have known that the monster he hid inside his heart would surface one day to seek revenge.

Not that he was entirely regretful of the occurrence. Oh, he had no regrets about the man being gone from this world. Rather, he regretted that it had come to this, that he'd had to recur to murder to bring safety and that his most cherished person in this world had been hurt before such safety had been achieved.

In that moment, as though remembering something, the child looked around with wide and frightened eyes, frantically looking for something. Where was…? Crimson eyes widened even more in shock and the boy's gaze slowly turned down, finally resting on his trembling hands. His knees buckled underneath him, suddenly unable to support him, and he went back down to the ground.

"Light" Said the child, but his voice carried a tint of grief, sorrow and ancient sadness that could simply not belong to a boy, especially not one of the age his body portrayed.

And such statement would be correct, because this was no boy. This was Atem, once King of Egypt and now nothing but a Spirit that had resorted to taking over someone else's body…again. Almost impossibly, his guilt doubled and threatened to consume him.

'Light is…Light's hands are red…blood red' The Pharaoh's grief-stricken thoughts came in waves, feeding the negative feelings that seemed to fester in his soul this day.

'My fault, this is all my fault!' The voice of his mind cried out in sorrow.

'Light…' The name he had given his charge sounded like an echoing whisper inside the Dark's thoughts, and one anguished tear escaped him as he thought of the child he had sworn to protect.

He panicked, thinking of all the possibilities that derived from this decidedly bizarre event. He had never, during the decade he had spent with Light, ever taken over the body in such a manner. It wasn't for lack of trying, though, as he had long since come to the realization that if he took over the body during Light's hardest chores and punishments then he could take the pain for the boy, and spare a bit of innocence in the child. Regardless, every one of his tries had been blocked, and he was sure that the block didn't come from Light himself, until now.

The once Pharaoh hurriedly closed his eyes and turned his sight inside. He let out a breath of relief that made his cracked ribs protest loudly, having just found Light's own conscience and soul still inside the body it rightfully belonged to, merely 'sleeping' for now. He had feared for a moment that, in his mad rage, he might have damaged his dear Light as they switched places.

With Light's relative safety ensured, Atem turned to more pressing problems. For starters, he had a rather brutally murdered man right in front of him and he really had no way to logically explain anything to the authorities that were sure to show up soon enough, unless of course they were willing to believe in ancient spirits, possession and Shadow magic. And never mind the authorities, the man's family was still inside the house and they would know that this hadn't been an accident, and Atem would not put it past the harpy-woman to try and off her already half-dead nephew for this.

The boy gave a deep breath, which again brought protest from his aching ribs, closed his eyes, and put all of his will power into calming down. He could not panic now, not when Light's life and future were on the line because of his stupid lack of self-control. When his eyes next opened they had lost all fear and shock, gaining instead an almost cold look accompanied by a calculating glint. He had to put his feelings aside and think logically, with the mind of a strategy master, to figure out the best course of action now.

Obviously, he couldn't release control of the body for now since not only was Light out cold, but if the child woke up in control then he would be the one feeling the heaps of pain Atem was currently in, the body simply too damaged. Also, they could simply not stay here any longer, not with this murder on his hands – to the rest of the world, Light's hands, which was even worse. So, his only choice was to go through with Light's long-since-devised plan and run away…this time forever.

Remembering the last time they had tried it, when they had ended up having to sneak back in the house in order to get some belongings and necessities, Atem forced the drained and damaged body to move. He went into their cupboard, their safe haven waiting just a couple yards away from him, and painfully gathered Light's scarce few material goods into the old blanket the boy used for cover during chilly nights, unwilling to touch his Light's valued possessions with his blood-stained hands. A set of secondhand clothes – the best ones he had or at least the ones that fit better –, the hand-made deck of playing cards, a notebook filled with sketches and the scarce few art supplies pilfered from school. An almost pathetic amount of belonging by anyone else's standards, but to Light they were almost prized.

Atem didn't even close the cupboard door, unwilling to make more noise and call Petunia's attention, as he moved on to his next target. He stood next to the slowly growing pool of cooling blood, watching the end result of years of accumulated rage towards this man, before he finally gathered his courage and searched through the corpse's pockets. Stealing from the dead was a decidedly gross crime, but Atem could not allow himself the luxury of ancient morals right now, and he would need the money to buy Light food and supplies later on. For Light, he would even turn to his ancient enemy's methods and put aside his opinion on the matter.

Finally having collected everything he could, and somehow managing to keep the urge to throw up down, he limped towards the front door, opened it as noiselessly as a skilled thief – and wouldn't Bakura just love to hear that! – and stepped out into the shadows of the night.

He was gone before anyone could realize.

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Miles and miles away from the eerily silent Privet Drive there was a place as different from that little suburb as night was from day. It was a place of wonder and magic, of knowledge and growing, and it had been a beacon of light for many generations of wizards now. It was the ancient castle known as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Hogwarts was usually bursting with life, its corridors, halls and rooms filled with rowdy magical children, magic all around, noise all around, a truly lively place. However, as summer break had started only a little while ago now, the place was almost abandoned, with only the teachers and other staff there to fills its magnitude of rooms.

It was in one of the many towers of Hogwarts that the office of one Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts among many other things and titles, could be found. And inside that office there were many cabinets, all of them filled with baubles and trinkets. One particular cabinet, though, contained particularly important trinkets; little shiny crystal things that served as anchors to a very special set of wards…Harry Potter's wards.

Since the Potter child was such an important character in the wizarding world, it was of no surprise that his residence was so heavily warded, to protect the child as well as the child's secret of magic. It had been years now that the wards had been active, monitoring the use of magic in the little muggle house, preventing the entrance of unauthorized wizards or dark creatures and all in all keeping an eye on little Harry Potter.

With such marvelous functioning for a decade now, it really wasn't surprising that Dumbledore had grown to trust these wards impeccably and heavily relied on them to let him know the status of the young wizard hero. Growing confident, however, usually leads to disaster and this case was no exception.

What Albus Dumbledore – nor indeed anyone else – could possibly plan for was the fact that there was another conscious soul attached to Harry Potter, a soul capable of taking control and assuming use of the physical body. Sadly modern magical wards really could do nothing about soul magic, since such a branch was ancient and banned due to being considered dark and dangerous, so they could do nothing about detecting the extra one. Even though of this effect, ward could read magical cores and magical cores were very heavily affected by soul magic, as each soul had a very different 'flavor' to its magic. Not only that, but wards made by wizard magic really had no way of making any sense of other kinds of magic like, say, Shadow Magic, and could only interpret is as a sort of 'white noise', to give it a name. All of this piled together into one convoluted mess of coincidences that had the effect of screwing with the wards' perception.

In other words, the moment the ancient spirit of Atem took control over the body a change was caused in the magical core of said body and, to the ward, Harry Potter stopped existing. Now, usually if something happened to Harry the anchors would alert whoever was around of the fact, but this was in case of death or kidnapping, not of simple vanishing. The wards themselves were tied to Harry Potter and so simply ceased to exist the very moment the boy's usual magical core became undetectable therefore failing to do their job and alert someone.

That night, not one tiny noise was emitted from the crystal trinkets, not one simple indicator that there was something wrong going on with Harry Potter, except for the little fact that the anchors died and stopped emitting magic. In a place as saturated with magic as Hogwarts was, the lack of such a relatively tiny source of magic really was as easily overlooked as though it were nonexistent at all.

As it all was, no one would miss Harry Potter for a month, when the boy's acceptance letter was to be delivered and the responsible authorities finally realized their mistake.

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Author's Notes: Chapter six already! Well, not a lot has happened in this one, except for Atem [and Light since he's pretty much a passenger right now] running away. That and the 'not missed for a month' part should also let you know that this is going to differ from the HP cannon a whole lot. Main point might still be there, but the way he'll reach those points will be as different as I can manage to XD

The second part was mostly to explain why this happened and why no one came to get Harry immediately after the Vernon attack. It sure should be interesting to see what those two get up to now that they are finally free, though severely injured.

On a happy notice, I've uploaded new chapters for not just this, but several of my stories so I'll leave you guys with enough updates to read for the week while I go away on holiday (Yay! Goin' to the beach, baby! XD) so I will be expecting loads of reviews when I come back home!...just kidding, but it would be nice of you -_^

And on an entirely different note, I'm going to have to resort to some advertising here ^^U You see some of my friends have this band that is currently competing in a contest to open a concert for Misfits. Sadly, the contest turned from a test of skill into a popularity contest so it doesn't matter that they are the only band participating that actually play the same genre as Misfits, they still need the votes to win. So yeah, if any of you guys would be kind enough to just click 'like' on this, I'll be insanely grateful ^_^ http: / www . facebook . ?fbid=10150556142215717&set=o.8192055889&type=1&theater [just remove the spaces please]

And a big Thank you to everyone who reviewed. Really, that sort of thing is what keeps me happily writing ^_^

Queen Lucy The Valient: Well, to be honest I'm not completely sure about his friends…I mean, I love Ron and Hermione but Harry's changes a lot from the Harry of cannon…still, I think there is at the very least a chance that he'll still be friends or at least friendly with them. As for the house, well, I'm afraid that gonna have to wait until he gets to Hogwarts…I'm not ruining the surprise XD

Stebba stud28: Yeah, second book is gonna be a bit harder, but I've already got a plan for it…or a possibility at least. And there is going to be some surprises with languages, but I'm not saying what exactly yet -_^ Oh, Umbridge *growls* I am still thinking of a painful enough punishment for that woman, unfortunately torture doesn't seem enough yet so I'm probably gonna have to tap into my inned Bakura in order to come up with something. And Malfoy…Oh, Malfoy is probably gonna have to learn to control himself if he doesn't want to get eaten by some shadow beasties *smirks* ^^U

XxAlysxX: I did consider that, leaving the ability there since it had been there at some point in time, even though it was a very short time, but Harry has a shadow magic-wielding, knowledgeable and wise ancient spirit for a bodyguard, magical training since early childhood and some ability for shadow magic himself…I had to take away at least one ability to balance the whole thing some, otherwise he would be awfully overpowered and with too many advantages.

Lady Avotil: *nod nod* Very right, but the point is…will the wizards even consider the possibility that it was Harry who did that to Vernon? Most wizards seem to kinda miss the obvious and jump to crazy conclusions *cough*SiriusBlack*coughcough* so what will they make of this? Guess we'll just see once he gets to Hogwarts and is questioned…because there is no doubt about that, he will be questioned. ^^U

mist shadow: You know, at first I actually was gonna make it just a penalty game, with Vernon believing he had died and everything, but in the end decided to just make it real because I seriously didn't want to deal with that guy anymore. I'll just save Atem's "Mind Crush's" for a later time XD