Title: Replay (Chapter 01 - Over the Wall)
Author Name: Barb
Owl the author: here.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: PS/SS, CoS, PoA, GoF, OotP, QTTA, FB. Written between Order of Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince.
Genre: Mystery
Era: Multiple Eras
Main Character(s): H
Ship(s): G/H
Summary: Aunt Marge's arrival causes Harry to flee to avoid performing accidental magic again. But when number four, Privet Drive is attacked, he becomes the chief suspect and a fugitive from both the Muggle police and the Ministry. He tries going to Mrs Figg's but finds unfamiliar wizards there. With an Invisibility Cloak and nowhere to turn he hides in the house next door, to keep watch on Mrs Figg's. He has no idea that this will irrevocably alter the rest of his life....
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This fic is in no way related to the Psychic Serpent universe and it is NOT necessary to read any of those fics in order to read this one.
Author's Notes: While this fic will initially cover a few weeks during the summer between Harry?s fifth and sixth years, after that it will jump to his adult years. Also, unlike JKR's books and the fics in the Psychic Serpent trilogy, this story will not be written exclusively from Harry's point of view, so do not be alarmed the first time you realize that we are looking at the world in this fic through someone else's eyes.
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Replay
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Chapter One
Over the Wall


He should have bolted when he had the chance.
Surely it wouldn't have hurt too much to leap from the moving car, as it zoomed down the road from London to Little Whinging. It would probably have hurt less than having to be in the same house with her for a fortnight.
Whirrrrr THUMP! Whirrrrrrr THUMP! Whirrrr THUMP!
Harry Potter awoke to the sound of his aunt's hoover ramming against his bedroom door repeatedly. He rolled over and put his pillow over his head, willing the noise to go away; he knew Aunt Petunia was trying to rouse him to do some housecleaning. She would be arriving that evening, and despite the fact that the house was usually spotless (except for any place that Dudley had been shedding crumbs) his aunt was compulsively cleaning more nonexistent dirt from the carpet outside Harry's room.
It went on.
Whirrrrr THUMP! Whirrrrrrr THUMP! Whirrrr THUMP!
And on.
Whirrrrr THUMP! Whirrrrrrr THUMP! Whirrrr--
Harry sat up and screamed above the noise of the hoover and the thumping, "All right, all right! I'll help you clean if you stop that!"
The motor on the vacuum was abruptly switched off and his aunt opened his bedroom door. "Did you say something, then, you layabout?" she said acidly. "Eight o'clock in the morning, and still in bed! Make yourself useful! Marge will be here in nine hours and the house is a disgrace, now that you're back! Oh, and we've also invited Yvonne to dinner, so I don't want any funny business!"
Harry bit his tongue, trying to refrain from telling her that the disgraceful state of the house (it wasn't that bad, in his opinion) was the fault of Dudley, who was also still abed (and probably would be until noon, as was his wont since returning from Smeltings). "I'll do anything except hoover the upstairs, Aunt Petunia. Anything but that," he said emphatically.
"Oh, no, you don't--" she began, and then proceeded to tell him about every place upstairs that was expected to be spotless. He groaned, but tried not to overdo it.
"Aunt Petunia! Next thing you'll be telling me I have to hoover the downstairs, too."
Her eyes blazed at his insolence. "Just for that--yes! You do! Now dress and get to work!"
When she was gone, he couldn't prevent a grin from crossing his face; he'd become rather good at manipulating her over the years. Hoovering was one of the few household chores he didn't hate. When he was the one operating the machine, he didn't mind the noise, as he was in control of it, and it let him think his own thoughts while mindlessly pushing it back and forth, back and forth. It also caused a major headache to anyone who wasn't operating it, and gave him a very good excuse for pretending not to hear anything the Dursleys said to him. However, if he'd volunteered for this job, he'd have been cleaning windows or polishing silver in a trice and probably wouldn't have been permitted anywhere near his aunt's precious dirt-sucking machine. He shook his head over her naiveté; he'd been pulling the same stunt since he was nine years old, and she still fell for it. (Of course, after all these years of his complaining about it, she must have been convinced that it was his least favourite thing in the world, which just made her more determined to thrust this chore upon him at every opportunity.)