It was just one of those nights where you don't seem to catch any lucky breaks. As soon as you step outside it starts to rain, downpour, as if someone was waiting above you with a bucket over your head. Waiting for the right opportunity to dump it over you. The kind of night that you always seem to get stuck in, locked outside your house or car. Searching your pockets, making a mental list of all places where you could have possibly left your keys. Until finally! Your fingers hit the cold metallic feel of keys. In triumph you pull them out. Only to fumble with what keys actually unlocks your car door.

"Useless muggles..." Francis McKnight muttered to himself. Followed up with, "Damn Ministry." The Ministry of Magic passed new regulations, monitoring the magic used in the general vicinity of muggles to an extreme extent. One couldn't even cast a simple drying spell without someone, somewhere recording the time and who did it. This was their big ploy to find rogue wizards that torment helpless muggles for their own sadistic pleasure. McKnight knew this to be a useless move. One that would just be a waste of time, effort and resources. Only the small fish, the stupid and young "rogue" wizards would be caught by this. The smarter ones would just find ways against the monitoring, take out the ministry officials in the area themselves or just find better, more efficient means. Francis knew firsthand ways to commit crimes against muggles without raising any suspicions from the wizard world. Like the saying goes, when in Rome do as the Romans do. When killing muggles, kill them as muggles do.

Fishing out the right keys, he jumped inside the car seeking shelter. Bulletproof vests were a pain to wear when soaked. He drove quickly and wildly, knowing the streets all too well from his prior week of casing the roads out. Lake Ave led directly to Main Street, which the 24B train stopped at. His train would be arriving at 1:43am. Stay on the train past its so called last stop and then see where you end up. Hogsmeade. An unmarked stop of course, but it's easy enough for any wizard or witch to find out which trains stop inside the magical world.

Everything was going according to his plans. Ditch the car, leaving the keys in the ignition, some fool would come along and take the car, evidence, away for him. Keep a low profile which was considerably easier due to the horrible weather. Not a soul was wandering or loitering about.

'10 minutes', he thought to himself already thinking about what he'd do first when he got home. It was down to sleeping or eating, although he wasn't much of a cook. It was nights like these getting a house elf seemed ever so appealing and the paperwork it required so much less irritating.

Movement caught his eye. A small shadow of a figure ran for the cover of the station, the rain pelted anyone who wasn't smart enough to use an umbrella. Once under it the figure collapsed down. Whoever it was they weren't waiting for the train, McKnight mused to himself. Moving towards the station, he betted it was just some homeless addict. The streets were crawling with homeless junkies of drugs and alcohol. McKnight felt no sympathy for them, they choose their own fate. His hand inched closer to the knife he had hidden on him, in case the person grew violent or tried to mug him.

Upon reaching the station's cover and closing his umbrella he saw it wasn't some old drunkard. It was a boy. A young one at that, maybe eight if that.

"Boy." Francis started, "What are you doing on the streets at this time? Go home." He commanded. The kid flinched as if struck and large green eyes peered fearfully at him.

"Well come on! This is the last train for a couple of hours and you're late going home as it is." He stated ushering the boy inside to the train station. McKnight could see the headlights of the train coming. The boy didn't put up a fight at all, but Francis could feel the fear and confusion direct towards him. As late as it was, being pushed around by some stranger, he couldn't blame the boy.

They both got on, McKnight paid the fare for both himself and the boy and then went into the furthest train compartment in the back. Light footsteps followed his own as he slid the door open. The boy came in and shut the door slowly, and sat across from him, casting a questioning look to him.

"Why aren't you home?" McKnight started, pissed at himself for having the kid come with him. People tended to remember guys with young kids in the dead of night on the train. Also the kid got a good look of his face.

"They kicked me out..." The boy's voice was filled with emotion.

'Great, just what I need,' Francis thought. 'He better not cry. I refuse to deal with that now.'

"I'm sure your parents love you and want to you to come back home. Things just got out of hand." Francis said dryly. Middle class parents getting into a fight with their kid. Kid takes it too harshly and stays on the street or a few days to 'show them'. Yawn.

"No. I'm staying with relatives... My parents are dead, never met 'em." The kid informed him. Francis looked at the kid. He was way young to be getting into the whole teenage struggle with his parents, err relatives, he corrected. His eyes surveyed the kid. The boy had thick glasses and looked like a drowned rat and he was tiny with bruises and discolored skin on the visible areas, his face and arms.

"How old are you?"

"Seven." Was the timid reply.

"And they're mad at you why?" Seven, what could a kid do to get kicked out and abused at seven? McKnight already felt his heart go out to this unknown kid who more than likely went through misuse. He knew what that was like, he lived through it once. Mentally, McKnight cursed his soft heart and told himself it wasn't a good idea to get involved with some kid's problems. He wasn't a therapist or anything.

"....Bad things, they sometimes happen around me…" The kid admitted after a long silence, staring at the ground as if something fascinating was going down there, refusing to make any eye contact with him.

"What kind of things?" He asked interested, a wizard kid would be easier to deal with. He could get him dropped off at a magical orphanage or something.

"Abnormal things." Francis could tell the kid clam up. He wasn't going to say much more on the subject he knew. Reaching out he pulled the kid's chin up, forcing him to look at him. The kid flinched back, but his eyes met Francis's grey eyes. Bright green stared back at him and if fear and those large coke glasses weren't dominating them Francis knew they'd be rather pretty. Something else caught his eye, a scar. His hand moved and moved the slopping wet hair out of the way. A lightning bolt scar marred the kid's forehead. An unusual scar which he could feel a strange sort of magic pulsating off of it. Francis knew of one important magical lightning bolt scarred boy.

"What's your name?" He asked breathlessly, this couldn't be the same boy. Running into the boy randomly without any prior intelligence in the middle of the night at a train station, it just couldn't happen.

"Harry Potter." Harry answered confused.

"Francis McKnight" Francis mumbled back his introduction, not quite believing his luck, yet knowing the boy spoke the truth.

And on this seemingly unlucky night, Francis McKnight did catch a break after all. He caught a break and gained a new roommate.