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He had always been a jealous child, although he'd quickly learnt to hide it when his Aunt and Uncle would punish him for his perceived ungratefulness, but it was hard not to be jealous when the other children his age had parental figures that loved them, clothes that fit them, meals that made sure they weren't hungry, toys to play with, and friends to share their company with.
Harry had none of that, his days when he wasn't at school were spent doing the housework or in his cupboard, unless he escaped the house early in the day that was, his Aunt and Uncle not caring if he was out of the house, so long as he came back before the front door was locked.
As such, he spent more and more time away from the house, only making sure to be back before they locked him out, because they would, and they wouldn't unlock it until the morning, as he'd found out once, where he'd needed to sleep in the shed instead.
Harry would often wander around the area, not particularly keeping to his neighbourhood, ending up at the library a few times, or in the woods, or once he'd even made his way to a scrapyard.
One of the days that he was wandering in the woods, he came across a small, abandoned shed, it had been left alone for so long that the walls seemed to have been taken back by nature.
Something in Harry screamed that this small, crooked building in the middle of nowhere that was falling apart was his, or more accurately could be his, but only if he walked through the door.
With little hesitation, he walked over to the door and opened it, gasping as he saw the inside.
Bigger on the inside, round with a walkway to a strange-looking centrepiece of some kind, and another door on the opposite side, and warm.
But none of that mattered, not when the feeling of being home rushed through him as he took a step inside.
The Thief
From that moment on, Harry didn't take another step inside of his not-relatives house, opting to return to his new home each day instead.
Said home was alive, and not really a home at all, but a ship called a TARDIS, she taught him things that he wouldn't learn anywhere else, with help from books on every subject ever written in a multi-story library, and all types of recorded media in a storage room nearby, from VHS tapes to holographic projections.
She'd also taught him a lot about himself, she never would have been able to reach out to him, to nudge him into opening that door had he been human.
The Potters had been undeniably human, however, which left him with the knowledge that he'd been adopted, and thus Petunia wasn't his biological Aunt, thus they were not-relatives instead.
Having an actual home, as well as someone who actually cared for his wellbeing, imposing bedtimes on him, making sure he bathed properly for as long as he needed, making sure he had enough to eat, and digging up a wardrobe with clothes that actually fit, was very comforting.
And yet, he still found himself jealous of the humans that he lived around, and not just the children anymore, they had such nice things and yet they didn't care for them as well as they should.
The Thief
The first time he stole something it had been a spur of the moment thing, the girl who'd owned it had put it down on a bench while she ran off to play with her friends.
It was a doll with long black hair and blue eyes, wearing a pretty summer dress with sandals, Harry didn't care that it was a girl's toy, just that it was a toy that he liked the look of.
After making sure no one was looking, he walked over to the bench and picked it up, before walking back to the tree he'd been sitting under.
He quickly stashed it in his backpack, zipped it up, then walked out of the park and back to his home, feeling his hearts thrumming with anxiety the whole way back.
Once safely in a deeper part of his TARDIS, one of the living rooms, he pulled it out and placed it on the coffee table that her previous pilot had bought from some auction five thousand years in the future.
The TARDIS was curious as to what he'd bought back with him, and he told her, somewhat reluctantly what he'd done.
To his surprise, she didn't tell him off or get angry at his misdeed, but instead, she supported him, as she put it, she was a TARDIS and he was her future pilot, already psychically bonded, his actions outside of her didn't affect her, so why should she care?
And so, he continued, a small toy here, a couple quid there, eventually he learned some skills to aid him, lockpicking, pickpocketing, how to hide when someone turned around, how to sneak around a building.
The Thief
When he turned eight, the TARDIS piloted herself to one of the very few off-planet Schisms that had been recorded by the Time Lords.
It was Harry's first time away from Earth that he could remember, the planet they'd landed on was covered in a fine blue moss that was very soft to the touch, it was barren of any other life, apart from bacteria that was.
It orbited around a single star and was quite cold compared to the temperatures he was used to.
Stepping out of the door fully, he quickly spotted the Schism and walked over to it, staring into its depths, he was quickly overcome by fear, and yet he found that he was unable to move.
When he could finally move again, he ran towards the safety of the TARDIS and hid in his bedroom as she sent herself into the Vortex, where they remained drifting for three days, until Harry felt comfortable enough to leave once again.
As soon as they landed back in 1988, August 2nd, Harry committed his first burglary.
The Thief
At the age of ten, Harry, now going by the Thief, a name he'd picked out to fit in with renegade Time Lord standards, as that's what the TARDIS informed him, he'd be classed as if the Time Lords were still around, was going all over the place for his heists.
It was still smaller heists, homes and smaller shops without any CCTV, as he was nowhere near ready to try a bigger heist, not to mention the fact that he wouldn't want to go somewhere bigger until he was older with far more experience.
He hadn't been in Surrey for seven months at that point, and had no plans on ever returning, preferring to drift with his TARDIS, he didn't even go to school anymore, after all, all of his education was handled by her, and he had just caught up to his Time Tot peers, which by 1990 human standards was more like University level education, so it wasn't like there was anything they could really teach him anyway.
That day he'd picked out a small business in the middle of London, he'd seen the owners acting weird for the past three days and he'd become very curious as to why that might be, as such his break-in was less about finding something valuable, and more about finding out what they were keeping secret.
Apparently, however, the Thief hadn't been the only person with that idea, as while he was in the middle of picking the lock, a man and a woman walked up to the building, hesitating when they saw him.
The Thief stared at them, frozen with panic on his face as he held a lockpick that was halfway into the door's lock, the man stared back at him while the woman gaped, and the Thief felt rather awkward at the confrontation.
Coughing, he slowly pulled the pick out of the door, "I was just uh, testing it?" he asked.
"You were breaking in," the woman stated instead.
The man clapped and grinned, "luckily for you, so are we."
The Thief watched as he pulled something out of his pocket and walked over to the door, pushing him gently out of the way, as he did so, he caught a glimpse of the object and stared at it in jealousy as the door quickly unlocked.
A sonic screwdriver, he wanted one so bad, but his TARDIS had informed him that he wouldn't be learning how to make one for a good hundred or so years as she was afraid that he'd blow himself up without the practice.
The man looked at him and then grinned, noticing his obvious jealousy over the small object that had unlocked the door with ease, "much easier than those picks of yours, isn't it?"
The Thief scowled at him, before shoving past him and walking into the shop, not caring about what the two other people were doing, after all, they were just as guilty in this crime as he was now.
The man confidently walked in, casually strolling up to the counter as the Thief hopped over it and began searching through the paperwork stacked under the desk.
Idly, he realised the woman had wandered in after him and was looking around the shop warily.
"There's no CCTV if that's what you're worried about," the Thief informed her as he leafed through a statement with some rather interesting invoices.
"Twenty tonnes of metal sheets," he muttered, "Three gallons of chlorinated water?"
"What?" the man asked him.
The Thief raised an eyebrow but handed him the paperwork as he searched more of the shelves and cupboards, quickly finding a safe.
"Hey, your thing doesn't open safes by any chance, does it?"
"My thing?" the man asked, with a tone of offence in his voice, which the Thief snickered at.
"Yes, your thing."
He grumbled but walked around the counter to where the Thief was crouched in front of a small safe, which he began scanning at a frequency that caused the lock to pop open, revealing the contents inside it.
"Oh dear," the man muttered, and the Thief couldn't agree more.
Big blue eggs.
The Thief
The Thief hadn't wanted to stay after that point, the only big blue eggs he'd been taught about belonged to an extremely violent species, but the shop owners had walked in and caught them in the act.
The man had gone off on them for their illegal purchase of the eggs, they'd tried to brush it off as an exotic bird, until the man had informed them about the way they were hatched, in a nest of red-hot metal, and one of the known food supplements for this specific species had chlorinated water as one of the main ingredients.
The two had dropped the act after that and had turned extremely hostile, and the Thief had been forced to follow the two as they ran through the shop, which had multiple hidden basement levels.
The man had tried to stop them through peaceful means, and yet they refused to back down.
As it turned out, however, the eggs in the safe weren't the only eggs they'd gotten a hold of, and unfortunately for the shop owners, the batch they'd stumbled across in their basement which had been in a nest hatched.
The Thief had a front-row seat as the two shop owners were eaten by the birdlike aliens, which grew violent quickly, fast enough that the man was forced to put an end to them.
It was quite tragic, and at the end of the whole ordeal, he decided to go through the jewellery they had on display for his troubles.
As he was rummaging through their jewellery, the man and woman went around securing all of the unhatched eggs, preparing to return them with minimal contact to their species, which was understandable, they were definitely an attack first ask questions never species.
"So, you'll be going home once we're done here?" the woman asked him as they came up from the basement.
The Thief pulled out a necklace that was full of diamonds and sapphires, the chain of gold, worth a small fortune in the right places, "yeah, I gotta sleep soon or my caretaker will go spare," he muttered.
"You're what, ten?" the woman asked, "it's three in the morning, how come your caretaker allows you out this late? do they know what you're doing?"
The Thief blinked at her as he pocketed the jewellery, "yes, she knows what I'm doing, she doesn't mind, so long as I'm back before four and get a decent amount of sleep," he frowned down at a ring, "fake," he muttered.
The woman blinked, "fake? how can you tell?"
He hummed and picked it up, tilting it slightly to show her the inside, "it's gold plated, which you can tell because it's rubbed away on the inside from where it's previously been worn and," he tilted it back to show the stone on the front, "it's listed as a diamond, but the stone's not clear, and if you look closely, you can even see what looks like grit inside of it."
He passed her the ring, which she took, turning it this way and that to see what he'd pointed out.
"That's pretty impressive," the man told him as he walked over, "been at this for a while then, I'm guessing?"
The Thief just shrugged at him and pocketed another necklace, before turning to the door.
"I should go now, thanks for the company."
"Wait, do you need someone to take you home?" the woman asked, and the man seemed very interested in doing so.
He could take a guess why, sonic screwdriver, mass knowledge of obscure aliens, the occasional slip up on what time period a few things actually belonged to, it all pointed to the man being a Time Lord, or at least knowledgeable on them.
If that was the case, the Thief was rather interested to know how he survived the Time War, as his TARDIS had informed him that there had been no survivors, well, apart from him, that was, but his survival had been a bit of a fluke, and also treason, technically.
It was also likely that if the man was in fact, a Time Lord, he would be recognising him as a Time Tot subconsciously, but the Thief did not want to deal with having a possibly overprotective adult hanging around him, which would definitely happen if he discovered his home was a TARDIS, as he could grab her signal with that sonic of his and add it into his TARDIS's database.
"No thanks," he declined, "I'll be fine, it's just down the road anyway."
"Your house is just down the road?" the woman questioned in alarm, "aren't you worried you'll be caught?"
The Thief shrugged it off, "nah, we're just staying nearby for a few days, we'll be out of London by tomorrow evening."
With that, he made his way to the door, stopping as the man quickly spoke, "we forgot to introduce ourselves," he rushed out, "I'm the Doctor."
The Renegade Time Lord style name certainly gave more credibility to the fact that the man was quite possibly a Time Lord.
"I'm Rose," the woman spoke, grinning at him.
The Thief tilted his head to the side, before putting his hand in his pocket to grab at the emergency teleporter he'd bought along with him, flicking it on, he held his thumb above the trigger button, "I'm the Thief."
The button was pressed, and he was whisked away to his TARDIS before the two even had a chance to react to his name.
"Rose," the Doctor spoke calmly, "did he say his name was the Thief?"
"Yeah, that's what it sounded like."
The Doctor stared at the place the boy had been stood mere seconds prior, "we've spent the night in the company of a Time Tot, and I didn't even realise."
He walked to the doorframe and ran his sonic screwdriver in the air where he'd been, frowning at the readings, then looked out of the door.
"Please be safe, Thief, be safe and know that you're always welcome to come to me."
"Doctor?" Rose questioned.
He turned to her and sighed, "I can't reverse his teleportation, it's a safety teleport, but I can send him a message," he ran his hand through his hair, "I just hope he believes me."
A Tot alone in the universe was akin to a horror story back when Gallifrey was still around, in fact, the thought still made him queasy, but there wasn't much he could do but open his doors for him if he ever needed it.
He also had questions for the Tot, should he ever take him up on the offer, such as why he looked much older than he actually was, although thinking about that, it was likely something that his parents did to hide him better, which was most likely how he was still alive instead of dead with everyone else.
The Doctor frowned and shook the depressing thoughts away, he'd just found a living Tot, after all, now was the time to be happy.
He wasn't alone anymore.