Rune stone path

Family, Fame and Flight

This had probably been the second worst summer that Harry could ever remember. Prior coming returning to the Dursleys, he had thought he had friends in Hermione and Neville. He had thought he had an ally in Shiva. He had thought that things would be different.

He had been stupid.

As soon as Harry had entered Number 4 Privet Drive he had been thrown against the wall, nearly breaking his arm. Harry had been expecting that and immediately brought out his Slow Burn. It was a rune stone that didn't do much of anything beyond keep a low level lumos going for an hour or so. It was basically just a fancy candle. But the Dursleys didn't know that…so Harry had activated it on the train hoping to intimidate his Aunt, Uncle and cousin into leaving him alone. A bit of misdirection and with any luck Harry wouldn't have to worry about his relatives at all for most of the summer.

Unfortunately, he had greatly underestimated Aunt Petunia. Upon seeing the Slow Burn she just sneered at him. "Idiot, boy, my sister went to that school as well. I know perfectly well you can't do any of that freakishness here!" Harry's eyes had widened as Vernon's smile practically split his face. Dudley cackled with glee behind him. The beating that followed left him sore for nearly two weeks and Harry had been let out of his room only for bathroom breaks and two meals a day.

Even that wouldn't have been so bad except that he had received no communication from any of his 'friends' at all. Not a letter, not a phone call, not a visit. He couldn't even send Hedwig to ask what he had done wrong since Uncle Vernon had padlocked his familiar's cage. Harry was given little enough to eat himself and he had to split that with Hedwig to ensure his poor owl could last until school started again. Having friends and then being stripped of them, yet again, had made this summer practically unbearable.

Harry's only retreat had been speaking to Hedwig and coming up with new experiments and applications for his rune stones. Whenever he got bored he tried branching out a bit into attempting to craft some ward schemes. While he couldn't actually test any of them, several designs were complete and awaiting etching. The Ninja stone had taken a while but it looked like it should work. The only problem was it didn't seem like it would play well with too many others so his father's Cloak would likely still be more useful until he could figure out a workaround. He'd come up with a Proximity Ping as well that would let him know whenever anyone not in the original bubble radius entered. A Lockpick stone was easy to set up and it seemed to have the potential to work on things specifically designed to block Alohomora as well since his rune stone incorporated a Suppression rune twined into the Spell rune. The improved barrier that he had originally thought of the first time he met Shiva was making progress but was still way too complicated to attempt.

Harry had considered playing around with more offensive designs especially after coming face to face with Voldemort but ended up deciding that was something better left for next year. A simple Blastor Concussor,and Disintegrator would have to do for the moment. Building up rune stones designed to explode had too much risk without a bit of oversight. At least, at first.

July, 31st rolled around and Harry quietly sang to Hedwig and himself. Uncle Vernon was in the middle of a large business dinner so he figured he'd likely be missing dinner. Getting a soft hoot and gentle nip from his friend, Harry turned to head to bed early.

And found a small creature with very large ears, a long nose and bandaged hands standing on his bed. The creature was sporting several bruises and seemed to be dressed in a pillowcase with holes cut out for the head and arms. Harry's mouth dropped open and he just stared. 'And I thought my life sucked…'