2

~*~

Take

a

Breath

and

Fight

the

Tide--

the

Future

isn't

Cut

and

Dried

~*~

Harry got his first opportunity alone with his package later that evening, when the Dursleys went out to dinner to celebrate Dudley's passing marks. For all his excitement, though, Harry lingered outside his cupboard even after the sounds of the Dursley's car had faded out of earshot. There was a horrible, gnawing part of him that knew that the sooner he opened the cupboard, the sooner he would have to walk the package over to Mrs. Number Seven and explain that there had been an error at the post office. The sooner he opened the package, the sooner he would have to explain to his uncle why the big, expensive, misaddressed drill part had arrived pre-opened, a day late, and with Harry's name on it.

Soon enough, his excitement turned to dread, and he could finally open his package—because Harry could deal with disappointment, and he could do things he very much did not want to do, but he hardly knew what to do with himself when faced with something that might, on some off-chance, actually make him happy. Since he was once again on familiar ground, he took a deep breath, opened the cupboard door, and realized all over again that this was more than an accident. Fortunately, seeing as his heart rate was such that any small noise might have easily killed him, he was already committed to opening it, and could stall no longer.

He tore away the paper with jerky, trembling movements, unable to think and forgetting to breathe, and by the time he broke through the packaging, he knew that it was something special. Unfortunately, he had no idea what.

By all conventional standards, it was a broomstick, but Harry had never before seen a broomstick that looked as though it would jump out of his hands and beat him over the head with itself should he ever try and sweep the floors with it. As he turned it over, the glow from the porch light fell on the broom handle and lit up the lettering on one side with a coppery-red glow.

"Comet X." he read quietly.

He sat there for far longer than he would ever realize, in the dark of the hall with his thoughts and his broomstick. There was something that held him there, a quiet awe, and a feeling that he and the broomstick had been waiting for each other for a very long time.

He slipped back into his cupboard when the headlights of the Dursley's car flashed through the front windows, but it wasn't without an inexplicable feeling of shame. Part of him felt that even if he didn't quite know what to do with a broomstick, he could work it out if he tried, and that hiding in his cupboard was no way to try. That was why, after the Dursleys had all gone to bed, he crept out of his cupboard with his broomstick and into the garden.

Of course, he still had no idea what he was supposed to do, so he sat for a while longer admiring the effect of the moonlight on the wood.

Before long, he got to playing with it a bit. He twirled it like a drill rifle (but quickly stopped, because it was far too dignified a broom to do such a thing with) and rolled it along his forearms for a while as he sat cross-legged on the garden bench. He was on the edge of considering that maybe it was just a very nice-looking broom, when it slipped from his fingers and fell, gracefully, smoothly, and a considerably shorter distance than one would expect a broomstick to fall.

Harry froze, and then grinned. It was a flying broomstick, and he was more surprised that it had taken him this long to figure it out. Sure, it didn't make sense, but it was a broomstick, and he had just seen it fly. If that wasn't proof enough, he didn't know what was. He reached out tentatively and pushed the broom through the air. It hovered along at just the right height to sit on, had he been so inclined.

He was just beginning to consider the implications when Vernon (who, occasionally, if he needed a bit of cheering up during a late-night run for a slice of pie or a glass of brandy, woke Harry up just to be sure that he was still asleep) stormed into the yard and demanded to know, in a whisper like a lawnmower-engine, what the bloody hell he thought he was doing in the garden at this time of night with a broomstick, besides waking the whole blasted neighborhood.

"Nothing, Uncle Vernon, sir." Harry said quickly, as he pulled the broom behind his back in a very poor attempt to hide it.

"Nothing is right, boy!" spat Vernon, "Nothing worthwhile since you came to this house! NOTHING! What is that, anyway, stolen?" he had dropped all pretences of whispering, and Harry was sure that if he could have seen his uncle's face through the dark, it would have been turning a most remarkable shade of purple. "Oh, that's it, isn't it?" Vernon took a slow step towards Harry, like some massive bathrobe-clad predator. "You've been out all the time, nicking the neighbor's household things. And what then? Selling them on the black market?"

"Uncle, I—"

"That's it—PETUNIA!"

Harry winced. Not because his aunt was flying through the house in her pajamas followed by a shrill, bird-like repetition of "Vernon! Vernon!" (although that certainly wasn't pleasant under any circumstances), but because Vernon's shouts had awoken the neighbor's dogs, and, in turn, the neighbors, and they had all started shouting at each other about how they had heard a that mixer, or a spoon, or the television remote, had gone missing just last week, and now they'd caught the thief.

"Clever, too" said the man from number six, in nothing but a bath towel, "Nothing we would even bother reporting! Makes us think we've just misplaced them!"

"Always knew he was a bad sort, that boy…"

"Has someone called the police yet?"

"Vernon!" Petunia had finally made it into the garden, now nearly in tears, "Vernon what is this about? Look at the neighbors, what will they think?"

"Petunia, the boy's a common thief, and he's got to go!"

Dudley made it downstairs and joined his family, while the neighbors poured out of their houses to crane at the garden wall and shout gossip across to their neighbors, all around a nine year old boy with nothing to his name but a broomstick, which happened to be nearly a meter longer than him and quite inconvenient for a person who would rather not be noticed at all.

"Alright then." Harry said at last, a bizarre boldness coming over neighbors fell silent and looked at him, as he drew himself up every inch of his meager hight.

"Be quiet, boy," Vernon started, "I'll have no—"

"I'll leave."

Vernon narrowed his eyes at his nephew, who only nodded mildly as he spun the broomstick from behind his back so that it was horizontal before him. He cast one last decisive look over the house, the neighbors, and the people he had lived with for most of his life, pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose, and twisted his hands securely around the broom handle.

"Goodbye." he said calmly. "I never liked it much here, anyway." With that, he ran a few steps, kicked one leg over the broomstick, and flew off into the night, regretting only that he would never know just what the Dursleys were going to tell the police.

~*~

When

Order's

Gone

and

Reason's

Died,

What

can

you

Do

but

Enjoy

the

Ride?

~*~

A/N: Here we go, second chapter for both the people reading this (thanks for reviewing, by the way!). Hope it's not too strange? Oh well, it's supposed to be kind of funny.

The formula in the title I was originally going to use ( V= ([g*t]/m)^f, but the punctuation didn't show up, so I changed it) is the formula for the velocity of a falling object (velocity equals gravity times time) with the added variables of magic and fate.

Second random trivia question: Fredric Alkerton (the delivery guy) is related to an unnamed canon character. There's a very solid connection between them, but it's a pretty obscure character. Any guesses?