The Boy Failure

Author's Note: Greetings! Thanks to everyone who reviewed my first chapter, I apologise profusely for not updating sooner. I have also tried to edit this one a little more thouroughly, I found some errors in the first chapter upon later reading, im sorry for that too. no smut yet, but its coming! Enjoy, Read, Review...but mostly Enjoy!
p.s. There are some religious jokes in this chapter, consider yourself warned.

Sundays were days of rest, and Harry took full advantage. Raven always told him that he was crazy. "The killing you could make in the churchgoers alone!" He would lament, "it's been proven now, them clergymen love the little boys, and with that face of yours..." He wagged his eyebrows in a Groucho Marx fashion. Harry always laughed at Raven's show, but still refused to work. "I get enough pedophiles as it is, thanks." He would reply tartly, "Plus I don’t need God smiting me more than he already has." Then they would both laugh and the matter would be forgotten.
Raven was Harry's only real friend. They had met when Harry had first moved to his current location, in Amsterdam's notorious Red Light district. Sometimes even Harry couldn't remember how he'd ended up here, of all outlandish places. It had just seemed, at the time, to be the farthest he could get from his old life. This was a place that moved at its own pace and made no apologies, a place where the outlines of good and bad were blurred, and most importantly, this was a place where survival was the only motivator. No one could guilt him into being the hero, or pressure him into their definition of perfection.
When he’d first moved here no respectable place, muggle or otherwise, would hire him, (he hadn’t exactly stopped to get his diploma before leaving, or a social security card for that matter) so he was forced to move on to the less respectable places. He turned out to be a smash at not being respectable. The lowlife muggles in charge of everything could pay him whatever they wanted, but Harry lived with it because taxes couldn’t be taken out of his meager paycheck if the government had no idea he existed. Raven worked at the first stripper joint that hired Harry as a hawker, in the gay district of Amsterdam. One night after one of his acts Raven bought Harry a drink and they talked until the doors closed, around three a.m. Raven revealed that his real name was Daniel, but that he’d changed it for his job; “it sounds more exotic.” Harry didn’t tell Raven much about himself, but somehow Raven had understood. They’d been best friends ever since. Raven even allowed Harry to share his flat for reduced rent. He knew that Harry made less than he did, way less, but he never asked questions.
In the end none of it helped. He could barely make the reduced rent, much less buy himself food and clothing (thank Merlin he didn’t have to wear much when he worked nights). He simply could not afford to keep working as a hawker, or a chauffeur for valet parking. After one particularly hard night (Discount Friday, to be precise) Raven finally told Harry about his first job upon arriving in Amsterdam. “Well, you can charge whatever you want,” he stated reluctantly, trying to convince himself as much as Harry that this was a good idea.
After Harry’s first night he never cried again, and he had enough money for a down payment on an apartment in Raven’s building. Apparently he was very easy on the eyes; the Red Light District was famous for its “wares,” and being part of that legacy didn’t hurt Harry either. People came from across oceans to sample something, or someone, from the District. With all the money Harry was raking in per night he had enough to start making some very strategic changes. Piercings: three in one ear four in the other, one in the eyebrow, and both of his nipples. Tattoos: a large tribal one covering his back and left shoulder (it meant Love, ironically), and the words Life and Death, one on the inside of each wrist. Clothes: all tight leather, black and red fishnet shirts, the strategically altered schoolboy uniform; nothing he owned was for daylight hours. He also invested in cocntacts, large leather boots and his mother-of-pearl handled switchblade, just tools of the trade. While Harry made the changes to fit in with the tourist ideal of the streetwalker, he also realized their concealing ability. The new face he’d made for himself was more effective than any glamour. Harry Potter The Boy Who Lived made the slow transformation into Harry the ‘Naughty Schoolboy’ or Harry the ‘Screaming Submissive’ because they were roles he knew he could fill. Tests he would not fail.
Like the ones who came before him, Harry’s eyes slowly filled with cold and unwanted knowledge, and the memories of before bled out of him like a disease, only to be replaced with a new one. Nothing hurt more than a needle through the eyebrow or a particularly rough client, they were small pain. He stood under one or the other of his favorite streetlights and smoked his cigarettes, silver rings glittering like cold stars against his cream-colored skin and long ebony hair, and he waited for more little hurts. Things that killed Harry Potter one piece at a time, because Potter was useless, Potter was a failure. Sundays were for him. Sundays were for remembering. Remembering, fleetingly, Madame Pomfrey asking if "they wanted the neck wound healed?" and later remarking that it "handn't been worth the blood it took to save him." Remembering how their eyes turned away after that night. Sundays were also for crying, because sometimes Potter still needed to, and somehow Harry couldn’t deny him the luxury.

...

Snape didn’t even bother searching the wizard communities in the countries he searched. Reasoning that the boy would never be accepted there, and surely he didn’t know enough about glamour to be disguising himself effectively enough to be evading notice. He had searched all of the British Isles and was working his way across the rest of Europe, telling the headmaster that he was merely asking around for rare ingredients for potions experiments, but he could still only go on his spare time. Which left him impressed that he’d gotten this far, and that his determination never wavered. For all he knew the boy could have caught a boat to the Americas, hell, he could be dead. Somehow or another Severus simply could not stop looking.
It was true that he and the brat had become somewhat close, at least on a first name basis, during the boy’s occlumency lessons, and the war had a way of bringing everyone involved closer than they ever had been, or ever wanted to be, before. This was not, however, and attempt at rescuing a friend. This was merely service to a fallen soldier and ex-student, at least, that’s what he kept telling himself.
He had contacted ever muggle he knew owed him a favor, and a few who he merely intimidated into doing his bidding. They spanned every country in Europe and from every social walk of life, but still no one had seen an eighteen-year-old boy with short black hair, green eyes and glasses. Severus had even quietly contacted some of the local law enforcement in each country he passed through, telling them that the boy was wanted back in England for any number of petty crimes, still nothing. Severus began to doubt himself after roughly three months when there was still no trace of hide nor hair, dead or alive. Perhaps the boy was better with glamour than Severus thought, which would mean re-scouring every country he’d been through; perhaps he’d found a way to survive in a wizard community somewhere; or perhaps the wizard community had found him first. A million things, including alien abduction and being drawn and quartered, could have happened, and he was beginning to suspect the worst. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a police officer fresh off the graveyard shift contacted Severus about the arrest of a boy roughly matching Severus’ description. The arrest had taken place in Amsterdam of all places, and the officer refused to name the charges, citing that he’d rather break the news in person. Severus was notably confused and intrigued by the officer’s reluctance, and his morale was greatly improved by the possibility of having finally found the boy. That night Severus packed for Amsterdam and apparated himself.