"Ow, wait, it's scratchy."

"Shh." Harry held a hand over the younger boy's mouth to keep him quiet as hurried footsteps sloshed through the puddles in front of the large rose bush.

"Where'd they go?"

Harry held his breath as Dudley and his gang surveyed the darkened neighborhood through the rain and mist, trying to discern where Harry and Mark had run to.

"Filthy, disgusting prick," Dudley spat. "Come on, maybe he's rummaging through a trash bin at the park where there's cover." He beckoned to his thugs and they ran off through the downpour towards the park.

Next to him Harry could feel Mark relax as their pursuers left, and Harry wiped some of the water off of his face and glasses.

"Too bad you can't put electronic windshield wipers on those," Mark said quietly, wishing he had a hood to shield his head from the summer rain.

"Yeah, too bad," Harry said quietly, wishing he could tell Mark that it was possible, and that Hermione frequently spelled his glasses to repel water during Quidditch games.

"Here," Harry dug into his pocket and pulled out the bag of chips and soda he'd snitched from the cupboard at home and gave them to Mark. A thorn from the bush they were inside caught his wrist and ripped it, but he ignored it.

"Thanks," Mark said, taking them and storing them away in his own pockets. "I'm so hungry, but I don't want it to get soggy." He hesitated, and then asked, "Do you think it's ok to go out yet?"

Harry looked up at the unrelenting sky and shook his head. "Better wait here until dark. At least the bush gives us some cover."

"Not much," Mark grumbled.

Harry wanted to snap at him because so far he'd been having a lousy day... a lousy summer actually, but that was nothing new. Instead he just nodded and said, "Don't move so much and you won't get scratched. Just sit still." Mark stopped fidgeting and Harry sat back on his bum and hunched over. That morning he'd been denied food again and been kicked out of the house and told not to come back until after dinner. He'd taken what he could from the cupboard while aunt Petunia was in the bathroom however, but had saved it for Mark, who was younger and smaller and who didn't have friends who sent him food by owl in the summer when his parents denied him food. Instead Dudley had seen Harry digging through a rubbish bin just before it started to rain and had taken chase. Mark had distracted him but Harry had only needed to rescue him from a pummeling that was a guarantee if caught. So here they sat in a rose bush in a downpour with no place to go.

"I wish I could go away with you to school," Mark said quietly, pulling Harry from his thoughts.

"What, to St. Brutus' Secure Home For Incurably Criminal Boys?" Harry laughed. "I can guarantee you're better off here than at a school for thugs like Dudley."

"But how come you're there?" the younger boy asked, wiping rain from his eyes again. "You're so nice and I never see you breaking in like Dudley."

"Because that's where the Dursleys like to tell people I go. Makes them feel good to seem in control to everybody. Makes it seem like Dudley is a saint because if they sent me ‘a real criminal'," he rolled his eyes, "then surely precious little Didykins can't be bad or else they'd send him too."

Mark shook his head, trying to make sense of it. "But we'd be together."

Harry sighed and looked up to the sky as the rain started to let up a little. "I'd protect you all year if I could. I do write though." It was true, Harry wrote every week so that Mark wouldn't feel so completely alone. Harry knew Dudley singled Mark out since Harry was gone every year for school, and Mark had no friends. Teachers took pity on him because they knew what his parents were like, but that didn't make things any better, and Harry worried yearlong about his friend, home and at the mercy of his parents and Dudley's gang.

They sat quietly for a while and the rain finally stopped, leaving Harry and Mark cold and soaked.

"It's getting dark," Mark said. "Can I stay with you tonight? My parents won't let me have a towel to dry off with because it's not my bath day and they won't want the extra laundry.

"I can't sneak you in unless you want to sleep in the shed. But I'll drop a towel to you out my bedroom window."

"Ok. Thanks." A shed, shared food and clothing and other shared necessities were a common occurrence for the two boys, especially before Harry had gotten his Hogwarts letter four years ago and gotten away from the neglect. Oftentimes one or both boys spent the night at the park, or at the other's house in the back yard.

There was no sign of Dudley's gang as they climbed out from under the bush, somehow getting more scratched up going out than they had gotten going in.

Harry sent a clean towel down from his bedroom window into Mark's waiting hands below, as promised, and then Mark went on his way home and Harry lay back on his bed, stomach growling as he hadn't been able to find anything edible in the bins on the way home, or been able to sneak anything else from the cupboard behind the Dursley's back. He thought briefly about emptying his Gringotts Vault to send Mark away to some private school far away, but drifted off to sleep unsatisfied with the idea because he knew a guardian had to enroll a student in school. If only he could go to Hogwarts, Harry thought sadly as he drifted into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

"Harry! Harry! Harry!"

Harry turned, expecting to see Mark tearing down the street in fear from Dudley in the heat, but instead saw his friend with a grin bigger than he had ever seen before.

"Harry!" He came to an abrupt halt, on the playground pavement and took in deep gasping breaths from having run so hard.

"I've been looking everywhere!"

"What is it?" Harry raised a brow. Had he won the lottery or something?

"I'm going away! Just like you, to a private school!"

"How? Your parent's don't have the money to-"

"No, I don't know how but it's like a dream come true! They say if I can come up with the money then good riddance to me because they'd rather I be gone all the time than take care of me!" He grinned again. "Isn't that great?"

"Where is it?"

Mark bit his lip and looked around. "The letter said I couldn't tell anybody but my family. But it came tied to a bird Harry! A bird! Like in those novels we used to get at the library before Dudley tore them all apart and they banned us!"

Harry's eyes lit up now too. "Hogwarts? Is that the name of it?"

Mark pulled back, eyes wide. "How do you know?"

"Because that's where I go. I was never allowed to tell."

"But St. Brutus's-," Harry cut him off by shaking his head.

"No, remember, I told you, that's just where they say I go to look in control."

Mark plopped down on the bench they'd been standing next to.

"I can't believe it. We get to go to school together. Is it amazing? I bet it's amazing!" And then his face fell a little and he wrung his hands together.

"What, what's wrong?"

"Well, I don't have the money to go."

"Don't be silly. They have a fund for supplies for kids who haven't got any money. Besides that I've got some money so that you don't have to get second hand stuff."

"Really? Can you take me to get it all? My parents said they wouldn't."

Harry grinned. "Got your list? Come on then."

It was Saturday morning and they knew they wouldn't be missed. Harry pulled out some change and they took a bus to a stop near the entrance to Diagonalley in the center of London.

Mark's mouth was a non-stop machine throughout the day as Harry took him here and there, paying for his wand and books and even a pet, which it turned out Mark did not want an owl, but got a small magical snake instead who was trained to understand what humans said to it.

"Do you think I'll end up in Gryffindor?" Mark asked.

"Not with that you won't," Harry laughed and nodded at the snake.

"What? Oh, yeah, you said that's the, the..."

"Slytherin."

"Yeah, that one's symbol."

Harry shrugged. "I haven't met anybody in that house yet that likes me or that I get along with, and the head of Slytherin hates me, but there's a first time for everything if you end up there."

Mark wrinkled his nose. "I'll go wherever you are, I'm sure of it."

"Maybe," Harry said, "but that hat has a mind of it's own... literally. No use trying to convince it otherwise."

Harry used the money he'd pulled from his vault and exchanged for Muggle currency to buy Mark dinner before sending him home, telling him not to use his wand until he got on the train, and to read as much of his books as he could in the remaining weeks until school started.

Lying in bed that night, Harry mused at how very different things could turn out in the space of a week. Just a week ago he'd lay in bed wishing for the millionth time that Mark could go with him to Hogwarts, and today it was a reality. He was excited... almost as excited as he had been when he'd met Hagrid on the rock in the sea and finally been given his own letter.

* * *

Severus Snape was in a sour mood. Not only had Dumbledore sent him to do orientations with several Muggle first years, but one of the little sods had already gone and gotten his own supplies, some of them non-standard, all on his own. Scratch that, not on his own, but with Harry Potter, the boy who was ever insistent on being the bane of his very existence.

He shook his head and glared at a ghost he passed in the hallway as he remembered the whiny little voice telling him, "A boy down the street took me when he got his supplies sir. I didn't know somebody was coming to take me so I went with Harry."

A headache starting in, Severus settled down into the comfortable chair he'd just bought to replace the old one behind the desk in his office. Try as he might to put the Potter brat out of his mind, he could not, and cursed under his breath as he set down the lesson plan that he could not seem to finish. Where did Potter get off thinking he had the authority to take other people's children on a harebrained journey through Muggle London and then into Diagonalley by himself? He was only 14 himself and still just a child. What had his relatives been thinking letting him go off alone like that? They probably trusted the little whelp, and now that he thought about it, Severus was quite sure that Potter probably had those poor Muggles he lived with wrapped around his little finger, letting him do whatever he pleased, running amok all summer, neglecting chores and homework, lounging around all day... yes, that was what Potter had done.

A long sigh escaping his lips Severus knew that this year he would once again be forced to try and work some sense of responsibility into the child, as he was the only one who saw him for what he was: arrogant, stuck up, spoiled, and self-conceited, breaking rules without any regard for the importance others placed on his unworthy little life. He was just like James Potter, and Severus would not stand for it. He detested seeing the boy's little fan club following him around and falling all over themselves all year, and he would not let it go on again this year.

Determined that he would not suffer the Potter headache all year again, Severus was finally able to find some peace as he pulled the lesson plan back over to him and set to finishing it.