It was a Muggle orphanage; Harry figured that out rather quickly.

How Lupin could leave him in such a place... he couldn't understand.

Oh, they were nice enough to him, certainly, even if he couldn't understand any of what they said to him.

Except one word -- malchik, boy -- he figured that out rather quickly too.

If he were perfectly honest, he would admit that he understood a bit more than just that, actually. He wasn't dimwitted; he knew what the lady meant when she patted her hand against her chest, repeating "Lena Levskaya," over and over, and then patted Harry's chest and looked at him questioningly. He pretended he didn't understand, though, because he wasn't sure he wanted to tell anyone his name.

The other orphans, a skinny, peaky group of about forty boys and girls, stared at him curiously when the lady, Lena, ushered him into a large room with several long tables set for dinner.

It was a simple meal, but Harry cleaned his plate ravenously. He hadn't realized how tiring his day had been. He ignored everyone around him, used to being stared at but not liking it any more here than he ever had.

The meal over, the children scampered off in all directions, leaving just one girl behind. When she stood up, Harry saw that she was lame, her left foot dragging as she walked. He understood why the others had rushed off so quickly when the girl began the long process of clearing the tables.

He already hated this place, and he cursed Lupin for leaving him there.

"You are British, no?"

Harry startled, blinking at the girl as though she had grown a second head.

She smiled at him. She had a nice smile.

"Yes," he finally said. "You speak English?"

"Yes," she said. Then she frowned slightly. "Very small."

"What's your name?" Harry asked before he could catch himself. Well, that was stupid. She'd want to know his name next.

"Irina." She cocked her head to one side, reminding him strongly of Luna Lovegood. "Your name?"

"James," Harry said.

This so startled him that he actually fell back a step, his mouth snapping shut so hard his teeth clicked together.

"James," he said again, forcing his mouth to shape the right sounds. It came out just the same as before.

She smiled at him again, despite a quirked eyebrow. "James. Nice to meet you."

Harry knew he must look terribly stupid, but it was such a shock to open your mouth to say one thing only to have something entirely different come out.

They didn't say anything else until Irina had led the way to the kitchen. Rolling up their sleeves, they started washing. There was only cold water until Irina filled a pan with hot water from a kettle.

"I saw you before," she said, glancing at him. "With the man. Your father?"

"No." He couldn't imagine the hurt of being brought to a place like this by his own mum or dad. "My parents are dead. He was just a friend."

Some friend, said a voice in his head. He stomped it down. Lupin couldn't help it; he wasn't in his right mind. Harry just had to figure out a way out of this mess....

Irina nodded knowingly, and didn't say anything.

They finished. She handed him a towel to dry his hands.

"Want to play --" She searched for the right word -- "Checkers? I have checkers."

Harry didn't want to play anything, but his mind was still blank on the subject of what he should do now that Lupin had abandoned him in some foreign country, hell knew where, exactly. "Yes. All right." Then he reconsidered. "Can you show me to a bathroom first?"

He wanted to see what Lupin had done to him.

In a minute he was standing in front of a mirror, which was too small to allow him to see all of himself, but was large enough to show him that his eyes were a dim, washed-out shade of their old green and his nose had rearranged itself to be larger and straighter than before. His dad's nose, unmistakably. Aside from these changes, he looked simply like himself. Just younger. Much younger. He wasn't quite sure how old he was supposed to be now; he had always been scrawny and short, and hadn't grown for several years before starting Hogwarts.

He felt his nose with a scowl. He hoped it was reversible. He rather liked his nose the way it had always been, even if it was a little on the up-turned side.

He looked hard at his reflection.

"James --."

He had tried to say 'Harry Potter,' but not only did he get 'James' again, he couldn't make a single sound after it.

He gave up on 'Harry' for the moment.

"James Weasley," he tried out. "James Granger. James Shacklebolt."

So far so good.

"James --. James --, --, --, --!" His mouth didn't even move to shape the sounds.

He huffed in frustration. So, he could say neither 'Harry' nor 'James Potter.' Brilliant.

Then he tried to pair 'Harry' with something other than 'Potter.'

"James Black. Argh!"

Fine. How about an outright lie?

"My name is Neville Longbottom. My name is Viktor Krum."

Brilliant; so he could lie, but not tell the truth.

"Once upon a time, there was an evil wizard who called himself Voldemort. One day, he tried to kill a baby boy named Harry Potter -- All right!"

That small success gave him an idea.

"A boy is standing in front of you. The boy's name is James -- Argh!"

He tried again.

"Once there was a boy named Harry Potter. I am Ja-- Argh!" He smacked his palm against the sink in frustration.

Even if he got back to London and managed to find someone he knew, how in bloody hell was he going to convince anyone he was Harry, if he couldn't say his own bloody name?

He scowled at his reflection again.

This gave him another idea, and wetting his finger in his mouth, he wrote Harry across the glass.

James stared back at him, glistening with spit.

Whatever Lupin had done, it was good.

That night, Harry lay on a mattress on the floor -- several other boys were without proper beds as well, so he supposed the orphanage had run short -- and tried to think.

When he had undressed he had found, to his horror, that Lupin had taken both his money and his wand.

No wand. No money.

The Knight Bus was out. Apparating was out. A patronus messenger -- assuming one could go as far as Britain anyway -- was out. How was he going to get back?

He fell asleep with these worrying thoughts, and no solutions, and woke up in the morning with the same nervous, knotted-up feeling in his stomach.

There were no solutions to be found that morning, either. The children's routine was to make their beds, wash up using cold water in basins lined up on a long bench, have breakfast of watery porridge, bread, apples, and milk, and to be marched outdoors, where they worked for hours weeding the large vegetable garden under the increasingly hot sun.

The work was not new to Harry, but he had the sense to pretend it was. He stayed close to Irina, whose pace was slower because of her leg, and whenever the sour-looking man who was watching over them was far enough away, they exchanged snatches of conversation.

"Here is not so bad," Irina said at one time, noticing Harry's scowl. "Many worse places."

Harry nodded. He knew that perfectly well, having grown up in one. At least food seemed to be regularly available, and the other orphans weren't teasing or bullying him. Yet, anyway.

"Is there a telephone here?" He had the idea that he could call someone. Not Hermione -- she was still out of the country with her family, as far as he knew -- but someone.

Irina shook her head, then ducked as the man yelled something their way.

When his attention had turned to two boys at the end of another row, Irina continued. "No telephone. Only in --" She looked like she was thinking hard. "-- Room they go when they want to take one child. Adopt."

"Some kind of office?" Harry prodded, but she didn't have a chance to answer him; a bell was ringing, and the children were putting down their tools and heading back inside, stopping to wash up as best they could under a pump worked by the sour-faced man.

After lunch, the girls were taken away.

"To sew, and stitch, and darn," Irina said on her way past Harry.

He figured that was the girls' chores, patching and mending ripped clothing, and other such tasks.

The boys seemed to have no chores assigned to them, and dispersed quickly, leaving Harry alone in the dormitory, sitting on his mattress.

Now might be a good time to go, if only he knew where to go to, or what to do when he got there.

He tried to think logically.

His first problem was that no one knew where he was. Did they even know he was missing from Grimmauld Place?

Yes, he decided. Someone must know. Lupin had sent their things to Hogwarts....

Unless Lupin had been lying to him even then. If that was the case, the situation was considerably worse. Sometimes days passed between visits or even calls from anyone. And if Lupin returned to Grimmauld Place, there was no telling how long it might be before anyone realized that Harry was not also there.

He had no way of knowing which of these possibilities was the truth.

Assuming they had nothing but the knowledge that Harry was missing, would they be able to find him? He didn't see how. Apparition was not traceable, was it? How many times had they Apparated to get to this place? Harry himself had lost count.

Frustrated, he tackled the next problem. Could he contact someone and let them know where he was? He supposed he could get to a telephone somehow. Whom would he call? It wasn't as thought he had a lot of telephone numbers memorized -- he only knew Hermione's because she had made him memorize it, before it became necessary for her family to leave Britain, making the effort wasted.

He had no means of contacting anyone by magic. Without a wand he really was as helpless as any Muggle child would be in a similar situation. Even with a wand, he wasn't sure what he could do.

The problem, he decided, was that he was here, and here was really far from where he needed to be if he wanted any chance of being found and restored to his normal self.

But he saw no way of getting back to London. He was, after all, just a child -- he really cursed Lupin for this -- and children could not simply take a train across country borders, or hop on a bus, or any of those things.

Even if they had money, which, he reminded himself, he did not. And even if he still had his money bag, it would have been gold Galleons, not anything he could actually spend out here in the Muggle world.

He sighed heavily and resisted the urge to curl up in a ball and cry his eyes out. It was bad enough he looked like a snot-nosed little kid; he didn't have to actually make it true.

Before he knew it, it was dinner time, and then Irina cornered him with her checkers board again.

Lying under his scratchy woolen blanket that night, listening to the sound of dozens of children snoring around him, Harry was grimly aware of it being his second night at the orphanage.

He was awake before dawn. Somewhere in the night he had made up his mind.

To do nothing.

Sirius had haunted his dreams again, before giving way to others. He could almost smell the acrid smoke that had hung heavily in the air the night of the attack on the Burrow. He saw Cedric's empty eyes over and over. He heard countless conversations die when he walked into a room.

There was no reason, really, why he should go back. It wasn't safe; not for him and not for anyone around him. Harry knew the Weasleys loved him like he was part of the family, but he could never live with them again, after what had happened. It was for their own good. It was up to him to make this decision, and protect all the people he cared about. Maybe Lupin had done the right thing for all of them by sending Harry away.

It was such a wrenching decision that no amount of logic could make it easier. He thought of Hogwarts, and Diagon Alley, and Hogsmeade... and all the brilliant, magical places that had been part of his childhood. He wouldn't miss the Dursleys, but how could he accept never seeing Ron and Hermione, or Luna and Ginny, or Lupin and Mrs. Weasley --

It was too much. His eyes stinging, Harry got out of bed, washed up and dressed, and left the dormitory before anyone else awoke.

He slipped out of the building and sat down on the steps of the back porch, watching the sky lighten slowly.

He would just wait. If they found him and took him back, he would take that as a sign that he belonged in that world still. If not....

He was vaguely aware of the orphanage waking up; the smell of food reached him through an open window. He didn't go in. He figured someone would fetch him when they realized he was missing. Until then, he just wanted to be by himself.

Someone sat down on the step next to him. Irina.

"You are sad." A statement, not a question.

"Yes."

"You miss your friend?"

"Yes."

All of them. The dead ones as well as the living.

Her hand found his.

They sat side by side, not saying anything, watching the sun come up.

Harry looked away first, and studied Irina's face. She was gazing at the sky with a dreamy, far-away expression.

"What happened to your parents?"

Irina blinked and turned to look at him. "Hmm? Oh...." She pointed down at her leg. "No good on farm."

"They're alive?" Harry said incredulously.

"Father, yes. And stepmother. Three sisters. They visit here."

Harry swallowed. How did a little kid accept something like that, and talk about it so calmly?

But he remembered himself at that age, at the Dursleys. He had accepted a lot too.

She smiled at him; an amused little smile at his expression.

"Not very sad," she said. "They visit." Then she sobered. "Your friend left you, too. Maybe best for you?"

Maybe it was.

He shrugged.

She patted his hand. "Come. They yell if we not come to breakfast."

"In a minute," Harry said, sighing. "You go ahead."

She nodded and stood up, leaning on Harry's shoulder for balance, and went inside.

Harry sat for another few minutes, breathing deeply, trying to let go of the hurt inside him. Finally he stood up, letting his gaze travel up the facade of the orphanage.

Home now, maybe.

"Here is not so bad," as Irina had said. He smiled a wobbly smile. Maybe it wasn't. Was it worse that hiding out in Grimmauld Place week after week?

He went inside, following the sounds of children in the dining hall.

His porridge was already cold, and someone had taken his share of fruit and butter, but Harry didn't complain. He wasn't very hungry. Cold porridge and bread was good enough; a seven-course Hogwarts banquet wouldn't fill the void in him just then.

Even in his melancholy, he could help noticing that there was a lot more whispering than there had been at other meals. Children were constantly turning in their seats to look toward the parlor.

Harry looked for himself, but the door was firmly closed; nothing to see.

"What's going on?" he asked Irina, who was ignoring the hubbub in favor of helping a younger child mop up some spilled milk.

"Oh," she said without much interest, "a man is here. Hard to know why when it's only a man."

"Huh?"

She frowned a little. "Parents visit, like my father. Family visits. But not this man. Haven't seen this man before. He is here to adopt, maybe."

"Is that why everyone's so excited?" Harry looked around at the faces of the other orphans. He imagined that adoptions were a rare thing... and he noticed that the older children looked a lot less excited than the younger ones.

"Yes, but hard to know when it's only a man."

"Oh."

"He looked mean," Irina continued. "Like --" She frowned, then held her hands up like claws. "Dracula!"

Harry's spoon slipped out of his hand and clattered to the floor.

Irina laughed. "I joke! Dracula is not real. Only in books. Man looks ill, that's all, and wearing funny coat."

Harry groaned.