A/n: A challenge to myself, to see if I could write a crossover where the main characters don't meet right off the bat. Enjoy the suspense!

On the premises of 'what if Harry didn't summon the Knight Bus that day?'

xXxXxXx

Harry shivered as he dragged his trunk down Magnolia Crescent. The wood made a soft plunk, plunk sound every time it struck against the sidewalk, but Harry wasn't strong enough to lift it. Half of him was still in shock over what he had done, and the other half was desperately trying to find a way out of this situation.

He had just done magic, and serious magic at that. When Uncle Vernon had mentioned inviting Madge over for the summer, Harry had never imagined it would result in him getting kicked out of his house and expelled from Hogwarts.

But that was what had happened, and Harry had to deal with it.

It had seemed to happen all so quickly, and to be quite frank Harry was still in a daze. After the events of Hogwarts —the Heir of Slytherin, Hermione petrified, the Basilisk— summer had seemed like a dream, or maybe even a bad nightmare that Harry needed to wake up from. It wasn't so. He could not think of it that way anymore.

"Oh I give up," Harry finally muttered, throwing his loaded trunk onto the ground. It made an even bigger thump, and made swirls of dust emerge from where wood had met concrete. Harry sighed, and plopped himself down on his trunk, sitting with his elbows on his knees and chin resting between his palms. He had no idea what he should do.

The dark haired boy closed his eyes, wondering how it had all come to this. He knew he shouldn't have blown up at Madge, because what were her words worth anyway, but at that time he could not help himself.

Even now, he was having a hard time regretting what he had done. She had insulted his mother, and she deserved no less than what she had got.

But, it had gotten him in trouble. Harry Potter would never be able to learn magic now, and just when he had just found out how amazing it all was.

Miserably, Harry couldn't help but reflect on the fact that some people had absolutely no luck.

He kicked a stray pebble with the toe of his shoes, watching with dull green eyes as it bounced away. With another, deep shuddering breath, Harry Potter folded in on himself, wrapping his clothing tighter around his body as he drew up his knees and buried his face within.

He was trying to push down his panic, but he wasn't sure how well he was succeeding. He couldn't help but wonder if they'd record him down as the quickest savoir who turned criminal, because all it took was eleven and some years for him to do a misdeed. In his despair, he couldn't help but wonder whether Tom Riddle had been right after all, and that they were more alike than he could ever imagine.

So deep in his thoughts, Harry didn't notice when his eyes began to droop, or when his breathing started to deepen. All he really remembered were his last thoughts, which were something about how he wished that he was with Ron and the other Weasleys in Egypt.

xXxXxXx

There was sand filling his nostrils.

Harry let out a cough, his mind still partially in dream land as his body shifted, trying to get rid of the itchy sensation. It did not go away. His nose twitched in irritation, but still that did nothing, and Harry realized that the only way to get rid of it was to go back to the land of the waking.

The discomfort pulled him back into consciousness, and awareness was coming back to him. He could feel the heat lapping against his skin, the aridity cracking his lips. Green eyes fluttered open, only to snap shut again against the stinging light of the unforgiving sun.

He took a breath, and realized that he was face belly first against the ground. It explained the sand in his nose. He must have slid off his trunk at some point.

Harry opened his eyes again, gradually this time, and prepared for the sun. He still couldn't help but squint, but was able to keep his eyes open this time as he slowly pushed himself off his belly. The ground underneath him crumpled, sliding through his fingers and spilling over across the backside of his hand.

Harry gasped as he realized that he had been lying on sand, and by the looks of things, a lot of it. His head snapped up, ignoring the bright lighting of the skies as he looked around. He was not in Surrey anymore.

Miles upon miles of sand met his eyes, the rigged landscape sometimes marred by huge towers of sand dunes. The sun gleamed roughly off of the land, making the blinding beacons that had blinded Harry previously. Somehow or another, he had ended up in the desert.

The stifling air blew past his ears, ruffling his hair with its hot breath. It was not relieving in the least.

Harry scrambled to a sitting position, and pinched himself. He often had strange dreams, and he prayed with all his heart that this was one of them. All he got in response was a sore cheek.

"I really just made myself appear in a desert," Harry said in wonder, his mind hardly able to process this all.

He wasn't sure how it was all possible, or even why it had happened, but he had stopped questioning the circumstances around him a long time ago.

Somehow, in the back of his mind, he knew he had done this, just as he had turned his teacher's hair blue back in elementary school, and he had gotten the wind to carry him to the roof. This was a similar situation, except that the wind had carried him much further than the roof.

Harry let out a sigh, and rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. Now that he had an idea of what had happened, he needed to figure out what to do.

He knew he couldn't just wish himself back. Not only was he sure that he wouldn't be able to accomplish such a feat intentionally, but he also knew that such an action was probably pointless. He didn't know where he was, but it was definitely not England. England didn't have deserts.

It was probably better that Harry was in a place that the Ministry of Magic couldn't trace him.

But he also couldn't survive in the wilderness.

Harry looked around for any signs of civilization, but didn't spot any. There were no coloured smudges in the horizons to indicate the setup of a city or village. He did however, see something else.

"Oh!" Harry cried in surprise. A few feet away from him was the tip of something black, half buried beneath a dune, triangular in shape and very familiar. He knew instantly what it was.

Pushing himself off the ground, Harry raced towards the thing, stumbling every once and again when his foot lost their grip against the water-like land. When he got to it he fell to his knees, reaching over to brush the sand off to reveal a rectangular box made of hard leather lying underneath. His trunk.

When he touched it however, he couldn't help but pull back in surprise.

"Ouch!" Harry yelped, hopping to his feet again. He shook his hand, blowing on it softly in hopes to cool it. The sand was burning hot!

He glared at his trunk, took a breath, and kneeled again. It took him a moment to remember that sand and black leather absorbed the sun, or something like that. Primary education seemed like years ago after all the (mis)adventures he had at Hogwarts, but it was at moments like these that Harry realized that there was a reason that muggles had gone to space where wizards hadn't.

Then again, wizards could have gone to space for all Harry knew. He realized with some shame that even after two years, he still didn't know a lot about the wizard world.

And now, he thought morosely, I'll probably never get to know it, since I'm on the run and everything.

Shaking his head to clear itself of the depressing thoughts, Harry got to work extracting his trunk. Now that he was prepared for the biting pain of the heated area, he was able to complete his task with minimal impediments. He was used to pain after all, and a little bit of willpower went a long way for ignoring it.

He honestly wasn't sure how his trunk had ended up so far from him in the desert when he had been sitting on top of it in Magnolia, but he supposed that the space travel thing might have had something to do with it. In one of the few science fiction books he had been allowed as a child (and that was because of a school project), Harry remembered reading something about objects being warped when travelling through time/space.

He had never thought he'd see it applied, at the time.

He was pleased to see that everything was in order when he opened up his trunk. Apparently the displacement in space hadn't caused a displacement on the things inside. He could continue his journey peacefully, despite the fact that it would be in a very different place than he imagined.

He closed his trunk, paused, looked around, and then turned his attention back on the rather large leather object again.

Harry looked at his trunk doubtfully. He had already been having trouble hauling it around before, and now with the sand, it would probably be even more wearisome than before. Harry didn't know whether he could go around dragging something that was almost as big as he was.

Mournfully, Harry opened his trunk, realizing that something things had to go. To be quite honest, he liked everything in it, because Harry had never been a person to bring useless things in the first place. But if he were going on the run, it would be infinitely easier to bring as little things as possible, even he knew that.

In the end he only took his invisibility cloak and the photo album of his parents. He used his Hogwarts robe to craft a makeshift bag that allowed him to carry a few spare pieces of clothing, and he stuck his wand in his pockets.

He was loathe to leave his spellbooks, but he knew he couldn't use them anyway. He was no longer a student of magic, and books were by far too heavy to carry.

After taking all the things that he needed, Harry reburied his trunk, hesitating only a moment before taking out his wand and turning the sand a few meters away from it blue. While it stuck out like a sore thumb, he hoped that passerbys would only dig up the blue sand to find nothing, and not look around it.

"I'll come back for you," he said to his trunk, and then he brushed off his clothes, stood up, and turned towards the sun.

He began walking in what was hopefully a straight line, but he often had to go around the sand dunes and that made it hard to get his bearings. While he was sure that if he could be in the desert a week or so, like he had been with Hogwarts, he would get used to it, he also knew that he could not survive in the desert for a week.

The sun seemed to pulse with every step, and before he knew it his glasses were sliding down from the sweat that was accumulating on his nose.

Intellectually he knew that no more than a few hours could have passed, because the sun's position didn't really change, and that made him gain a whole new respect for Ron's brother Bill who apparently could work in appalling conditions like this.

Wind blew past him every once in a while, but it was not the relieving kind of wind. The hot breath of the skies were as blistering as the sun in their way, chafing against whatever skin he had exposed. He'd taken to tying one of Dudley's shirts around his lower face so that the winds couldn't get to it.

The winds also kicked up sand, which not only blinded Harry whenever it happened, but also left its mark afterwards. It was annoying enough trying to brush the sand off his clothing every time the winds passed, and after a while, Harry stopped trying. It took up too much energy, anyway.

The scenery was monotonous, just piles of sand after sand. Harry wasn't sure how long he walked for before finally coming across something different, and what he saw did make him freeze in his tracks.

He stared, and stared some more. The blue patch of sand a few feet away did not spontaneously combust or otherwise change.

"Oh you've got to be kidding me," Harry groaned, somehow just knowing that it was his blue patch of sand. Anything else would be too much of a coincidence. Somehow, he had come around in a circle.

Harry wasn't exactly a pessimistic person by nature, but he thought that even Dr. Seuss would be upset if he'd just found out that his last few hours of walking in the blistering sun had been for nothing.

For a moment, the green eyed boy thought about giving up. He was tired and he was hot, and he just found out what could possibly be the worst news of his life. There wasn't a city for miles, and he probably wouldn't find it anyway, at this rate.

And then he shook the gloomy thoughts from his mind, and took a breath. The breath was not nearly as relieving as it should have been, because all that did was fill his throat with scorching air.

But it did do the trick of putting his mind back on track.

Harry nodded to himself as he determined this to be a minor setback. While it was true that he had wasted hours, one could also look at it as that he had only wasted a few hours. It would have been far more terrible if he had found out about how useless a sense of direction was a few days afterwards, or if he hadn't marked the sand at all and had never realized.

And, now that he knew the problem, he could fix it.

Not daring to sit for fear that he would just collapse and never get back again, Harry just stood there, thinking. He wasn't sure how long he deliberated for, but he was vaguely aware of his thoughts drifting before he forcibly snapped them back.

The problem with the desert, Harry realized, was that one couldn't possibly hope to keep track of where they were going unless they had a compass. Harry had tried to make markings as he walked, but they would just get blown away by the wind or covered up. He did think of charming more blue sand, but he also knew that while one patch of blue sand was easy to ignore, multiple patches were not.

"Oh whatever," Harry muttered to himself as he finally gave in and turned another patch of sand blue. "I'm a criminal already. The magic police can deal with cleaning this up."

Feeling rather guilty, Harry started his journey again, this time placing a deep spell every few meters or so on a pile of sand to maintain it and to turn it blue.

It seemed to work better this time. The enchanted sand could not move, and every once in a while Harry would glance back to make sure that the blue markers he had placed were in a straight line, and thus know that he was walking in a straight line. While he still had no idea where he was heading, it was still considerably better than virtually staying still.

Things were somewhat worse the second time through. Harry's solution only lasted a while before Harry's throat started getting sore from all the constant repetitions. It got to the point where he almost couldn't speak at all, and he had to give up on the spells and just hope that he had learned how to walk in a straight line by now.

Walking through the sands was also harder.

Previously it had been easy to summon the energy to oppose the tides, but on his second wind, Harry really started feeling it. Every step he took, Harry felt like he was dragging his feet through mud. He sunk in when he placed his foot down, and he couldn't figure out a way for the earth to stop doing that. It made walking twice as difficult as it should be.

Sweat was dripping down every part of his body, and probably would have soaked his clothes through if it wasn't for the fact that they were being evaporated just as quickly. All it did was leave him dehydrated.

It was when he stumbled and fell flat on his face for the fifth time that day because he swore that the ground was a few inches higher than it actually was, that Harry decided that it might be time for a little rest. The lack of water combined with the simmering heat was playing tricks on his mind, and he hoped maybe that a little time to recuperate would help him get over it.

He got up, brushed excess sand off his clothing so that it wouldn't weigh him down, and looked around.

The whole problem with the desert was that there wasn't really any place that a tourist could just sit and take a breather. All there was were towers of blistering sand.

And the shadows cast by those towers.

Harry almost hit himself for not seeing it earlier. He knew that there was a reason that Hermione was the top witch of the year, and not him. He had no doubts that she would have spotted it much, much sooner. Then again, his semi-fuzzy mind made thinking more difficult than it should have been.

The green eyed boy moved to the undersides of the dunes, walking much slower than he would have liked, and breathing much heavier than he had ever remembered. When he got there, he slid to the grounds, relieved to find that the sand was indeed as he predicted, cool to the touch. Being in the shadows, these sands did not absorb the energy from the sun, and as such, were bearable to sit on.

The dark haired boy allowed the tension to drain out of him, finally giving his muscles some time to rest. He leaned against the underside of the sand dune, breathing in and out very deeply. Every time he felt his eyes droop he slapped himself to stay awake, because he knew that if he slept now, there was a chance that he'd never find civilization.

He vaguely recalled reading that in some deserts, the temperature fell below freezing during the night, and Harry did not want to test whether or not this desert was one of those.

Staying still, Harry began to hear things that were not the crunching of his feet against the earth, or his heavy, laboured breathing as he struggled to move on. More specifically, he began to hear words.

"I'm so sleepy, why'd you have to wake me up now? It's not time yet!"

"Oh, my mistake. If you do not know why I woke you, then you are probably not worth the time."

Harry's eyes, which had been drooping once more, snapped wide open.

"Wha…?" He croaked, only to wince and raise a hand to his throat, rubbing the tender body part. He straightened, looking around, wondering where the voices were coming from. If he had finally come across other people, he did not want to miss it.

"You two, shut up. You're going to wake everyone else up."

"And does it look like I care…?"

Green eyes widened as Harry looked to his feet, finally realizing where he was hearing the voices from. Somehow, impossibly, they were coming from underground. The voices were muffled, but they were definitely there.

He scrambled to the spot he hear the words most clearly, going on his elbows and knees as he tried to clear away the sand. It seemed crazy, but Harry had seen many crazy things over the past two years. People living under the desert rather than on top of it might just be the norm for magical folk. They wouldn't bake in the sun, at least.

He cleared the sand away from the place where he heard the voices the clearest, and blinked faintly in surprise when his task was finished and he saw what looked like a rock plate with a small, shadowy hole in the center. He figured it might be some sort of mic, or even a piece of the roof that had broken apart, but either way Harry didn't have time to go and look for the real entrance.

"Hello?" He called down, ignoring the twisted daggers his throat received at the attempt to talk. Saying all those spells when he was in the middle of blistering land and had no water had probably not been the smartest thing, after all.

There was a moment of silence, a pause. Harry hoped that this was a good sign.

"Human," one of the voices murmured, his tone thoughtful.

The raven haired boy's brows furrowed at the word, and he distinctly felt that something was off. He didn't think that people greeted each other that way, even if they lived in a completely different country. And then, quite suddenly, it became chillingly clear to him.

Harry's blood ran cold as he realized that while he could hear English, certainly, there was an odd, accompanying hiss to every word. He had not heard people who lived underneath the desert—he had heard the poisonous snakes that inhabited it.

"This should be fun," another snake hissed, its voice joining the others in laughter, "we have not had a human in a while."

Somehow, Harry got the impression that what had happened to the last human wasn't good.

He moved back, and just in time too, because a moment later a hoard of snakes emerged from the little hole. They all let out a customary hiss, taking in the air around them, before turning to Harry as one.

Harry took a breath, and then another. He had taken down a basilisk. He would not be scared of snakes, even if they were probably poisonous and he was nowhere near a hospital.

"Hello," he greeted before they could attack, hearing the customary hiss that accompanied his voice whenever he spoke the language of the serpents.

Somehow speaking parseltongue was soothing to his throat, and while it didn't make things better, it certainly didn't make things worse. While he still burned with thirst every time the smouldering air of the desert made its way down his throat, it at least did not hurt.

The snakes froze. Under the shadows of the dune, it was hard to make out their features, but Harry thought that they might have been green. One of the snakes, who seemed slightly smaller than all the others, drifted away from the jumble and slithered up to Harry, raising its head.

Harry did his best not to move.

Do you understand us, human? It asked, its large white eyes unblinking as it fixed its gaze upon the thirteen year old boy.

Harry nodded, "You were talking about sleeping earlier. Do you hunt at night time?"

Their previous conversation made so much sense now, when he wasn't trying to apply them to humans.

The snake hissed in pleasure, or at least that was what Harry thought it was, because it didn't bite him. Seemingly pleased, the snake went back to join its brethren, You are smart, for a human man-child. We have never heard of a human who can speak our noble tongue. What are you?

"I don't think I'm anything," Harry replied honesty, getting the feeling that this whole scene was surreal. He couldn't help but wonder if this wasn't some illusion brought on by the desert heat. Talking to snakes was one thing, but to do meet them in the desert out of all the other possible dangerous animals Harry could have met just seemed incredible.

The snakes hissed in displeasure, obviously not liking his answer, but they did not press him on it further.

"Um," Harry leaned forward slightly, feeling greedy for asking when he hadn't answered their question but seeing no other way, "by the way, do you know where I can find some water…?"

He really was dying of thirst. He could go days without food, but water was a must, even if it was just tap water.

The snakes glanced at each other, and Harry somehow got the impression that they were amused.

There is water everywhere, human, the snakes hissed in laughter, you just cannot see it.

Harry let out an exasperated sigh. They were not being helpful.

The snake that had talked to Harry previously though, seemed to take some pity on the boy. Harry wasn't sure how he recognized it, but he just knew.

We do not sense where water is, the snake told Harry, thrusting its body upwards to make itself distinct, especially if it is a source far away from us. All the water we consume is underground, and thus not available to you. But, I can tell you that it is in that direction that there is the faint smell of humans.

The asp had shifted its head to the southeast, clearly indicating the direction of some sort of settlement.

"Thank you," Harry said, relieved.

He left the snake colony then, and went staggering off in the direction the kind snake had given him. The smell of humans did sound promising, and Harry figured that they couldn't be that far if the snakes could smell them.

The small reprieve had been lightening, but it hadn't helped him as much as he had hoped. His stamina was dwindling at an alarming rate, but Harry was too afraid to try and rest again lest he really fall asleep.

He realized guiltily that ever since his Hogwarts letter came, Harry had been slacking off majorly. While he didn't complain about getting food at a regular time, he did grasp that it made him unable to adapt to survival situations like this well.

Before, when he had been forced to work on Petunia's gardens with a meal a day, he'd been able to conserve energy and combat hunger. Now, after two years of Hogwarts food and the toughest exercise being Quidditch, Harry Potter was no longer used to riding out his weariness.

The dark haired boy would always have more endurance than regular people in any normal situation, but Harry wasn't in a normal situation at the moment. And, his body could not deal with it.

It was failing, Harry realized with some dread when he tripped again, adding another bruise to his already healthy collection. His body was failing him.

His muscles burned and wreaked with pain from overuse. He felt light headed and dizzy. His eyes were blurring from the constant reflection of the sands.

Harry pushed himself up again, and told his body that they were going to be there soon.

He didn't know for how long he walked, but he thought he might have fallen asleep on his feet at some point. The scenery had started to blur together, and sometimes Harry would find himself surprised to see that he had passed by one dune or another.

The lack of water was especially getting to him. It made his stomach hurt with the need.

Harry squeezed his eyes shut, wondering when he was going to come across the village that the snakes told him about.

And then, he opened his eyes, and there it was.

His eyes widened when he spotted the smoky village in the horizon, an oasis of water surrounding its side. Harry let out a gasp, rubbed his eyes with his gritty hands, and looked again. It did not disappear.

Harry yelled out in happiness, and found that he did have some strength left in him, after all. He took off racing towards the village, leaving wafts of sand after him. He felt like crying. After wandering in the desert for who knows how long, he had finally found a source of water.

But the village seemed to get away from him the more he ran, its image never becoming closer. It remained distant and far, no matter how much effort Harry put into chasing it. Harry growled, and put in a new burst of speed, and this time the village stayed where it was.

The green eyed boy arrived just in time for the front gates to open, and he couldn't help but grin broadly. He was panting heavily, and had to bend over to prevent himself from collapsing as he took great, heaving breaths. His legs felt like jelly, and he was dizzier than ever, but he didn't care.

He had done it. He had found civilization in the great expanse of sand.

Harry let out a weak laugh, and looked up, only for the image of the village to simmer and disappear, leaving behind nothing but flat sand.

His heart dropped.

"A mirage!" Harry cried in despair, realizing the vision for what it was. His throat protested at the use of his voice, sending white hot pangs of fire to show its displeasure. Harry barely noticed though.

His legs buckled beneath him and he slumped to the floor, hardly registering the stings of the scorching sands. That last, desperate run had taken all the energy he had stored, and he could not bring his body to obey him any longer.

Harry swayed, his vision blackening. With his last hope of water gone, he could no longer keep up his pace. The dark haired boy fell face first, sending up a plume of sand as his body hit the earth.

I've got to the worst criminal in history, was Harry's last thought, I've only been out on my own for a day and here I am, conquered already.