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Chapter Text

Harry’s heart pounds when Aunt Petunia pulls the hoover out of his cupboard.

Harry tries to duck into the safety of his cupboard, but Aunt Petunia’s bony hand snags him and pulls him out. “Stay.” she says, like he’s one of Aunt Marge’s bulldogs.

Harry starts rocking, trying to calm down as he watches her plug the hoover in. “Still!” she barks at him. “Come here.”

Harry can’t obey. He can’t move towards the hoover, only away. He has to escape before the awful sound starts.

His cupboard isn’t far enough away. It’ll still be too loud. He darts upstairs and into the loo, closing the door and hiding in the bathtub, behind the curtain.

The bathtub is about the size of his cupboard, but blinding white instead of completely dark. Still, the nothingness surrounds him, and Harry curls up on the cool surface.

His humming echoes through the tub, almost like the horrible hoover, except he’s in control, it’s not too loud, he can feel it in his throat.

He hardly hears the banging on the door until Dudley barges in. “Get out!” he shouts, but it’s like he’s far away.

Dudley bellows “Mummy! The freak’s in the bathroom and I have to wee!”

Aunt Petunia storms in and snatches Harry’s arm in bony, claw-like hands. She drags him out of the tub and towards the stairs. “You won’t get out of this,” she tells him, like he’s just being lazy like Dudley and faking the hoover hurting his ears. “You won’t be completely useless under my roof.”

Harry doesn’t understand. She always says he’s a useless freak, and school had only confirmed that. He’d gone to the same primary school at Dudley, and it had been terribly confusing. All the rules suddenly changed from the Dursleys’ rules. At school, they wanted him to talk, tried to make him look into their eyes and participate. That had been a whole new kind of pain from the pain he was used to.

He hadn’t stayed in school long.

It’s funny; as much as the Dursleys hate him, they don’t force him to do those things. They’re probably glad he can’t talk and would certainly tell him to shut it if he could. They don’t want him looking at them, and don’t want him to join in.

“Stop laughing!” Aunt Petunia shakes him. She starts dragging him down the stairs. Harry tries to pull away and goes limp. She keeps dragging him down.

Harry can’t stop. He doesn’t even want to laugh, he’s still terrified of the hoover, but the laughter keeps coming up like vomit, right up until she marches over to the hoover again.

They don’t force him to talk, but they force him to hoover.

Harry’s hands fly up to cover his ears. He glances towards the kitchen, half wishing she’d make him do the washing up instead, but that wouldn’t stop the sound.

Last time, Aunt Petunia had hoovered while Harry was washing up, and Harry had dropped a dish, breaking it. He’d gotten a whole day without food in his cupboard for that. 

“Come here!” Aunt Petunia snaps. Harry flees up the stairs again, and the whole cycle repeats. This time, Aunt Petunia fumes about how stupid Harry is, how he can’t learn, he can’t even stay in school. She doesn’t let go of him this time, and forces him over to the hoover.

She clicks it on, and the sound is like fire on Harry’s ears. He tries to clamp his hands over them, but Aunt Petunia holds them on the hoover handle. 

Harry thinks he might be screaming, but he can’t really tell over the sound assaulting his ears. Aunt Petunia’s yelling, too, maybe, and then the hoover catches on fire.

Aunt Petunia shrieks and jumps away, though she doesn’t pull Harry away from the flames. She runs and fills a vase with water, throwing it on the fire.

“Look what you did!” she snarls, like Harry somehow made the hoover blow up. Dudley thumps down the stairs, moaning that he didn’t get to see the fire.

Aunt Petunia yells at Harry for a while, shaking him, and then shoves both Harry and the burnt hoover in the cupboard.

She storms out the front door, and comes back with a neighbor’s hoover. The sound of her hoovering right outside the cupboard door, for far longer than it would take to clean the hallway, is a worse punishment than shouting, or Uncle Vernon shaking him roughly.

Harry can barely hear his stomach grumbling over Dudley’s wailing.

It’s past bedtime, but Harry was locked in the cupboard long before bedtime. His cupboard reeks of urine, since they didn’t let him out to use the bathroom. He’ll get in trouble for that, later, he’s sure.

Dudley’s throwing a tantrum to stay up later and watch more television. 

“Diddums, we need our sleep.” Aunt Petunia’s voice is kinder than it ever is for Harry. She offers Dudley another snack before bed, but Dudley cries that his show isn’t over. It’s one of the grown-up shows with guns and shouting and explosions.

Harry wishes his cupboard cut out sound as much as it cuts out light. He can’t even hum to drown out the noise, because Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia will pound on the door and tell him to shut it.

Harry doesn’t understand why he’s a freak when he cries, but Dudley isn’t. Why does Aunt Petunia try to make Dudley feel better, but yell at Harry? Uncle Vernon laughs when Dudley shouts, but goes purple if Harry does. It’s been that way as long as Harry can remember, but he still can’t figure it out.

Finally, Dudley falls asleep on the couch and Aunt Petunia turns the telly off. She can’t even lift Dudley anymore. Harry hears her tuck him in on the couch, kiss him goodnight. His aunt’s sharp footsteps and his uncle’s heavy ones go up the stairs, above his head.

Harry’s finally able to sleep. He’s dreaming of a flying motorbike, but then he’s awake. 

The noise of motorbikes isn’t as bad as the hoover, but Harry doesn’t like it. His dislike of the sound battles with his longing to soar off like the wind, zooming fast.

There’s someone sniffing in the hallway. Harry thinks it’s Dudley, searching for a snack, but then there’s a snore from the sitting room.

After the snore, there’s a low growl, like one of Aunt Marge’s dogs. Harry freezes, and then there’s a sharp sound that goes snikt!

Harry isn’t sure what that is.

Is there a sword? Something sounds like a sword, cutting the lock on his cupboard door. The door’s wrenched open, and Harry squints in the darkness of the hallway.

The man crouched outside isn’t Uncle Vernon, Harry realizes. He’s as muscular as Dudley’s action figures, maybe even more so.

None of Dudley’s toys have three swords coming out of one hand, like this man, and Harry realizes he’s a freak too. Aunt Petunia would never let him in the house. He looks wild, as vicious as Aunt Marge’s dogs. But he doesn’t attack like the dogs do.

“They keep you in there all the time?” the man’s voice sounds different than anyone Harry’s heard, and not just because it’s deep and growly. He says words differently, and his nose wrinkles at the smell of Harry’s accident.

Harry remembers Aunt Petunia telling Dudley never to talk to strangers, but Harry doesn’t talk. Besides, the teacher was a stranger, and she tried to make Harry talk to her.

“You got spare pants?” the man asks, though Harry’s accident soaked his trousers as well as his pants. The man’s dressed in dirty boots, worn jeans, and a leather jacket.

Harry yanks off his pants and trousers and pulls on another pair.

“Got a name, bub?” the man asks.

Harry tugs at his unruly hair. Hairy. Harry. Aunt Petunia always complains about his hair. The man’s hair looks wild, too, somehow forming two points. 

Harry doesn’t know if the man understands it. People struggle to understand Harry as much as he struggles to understand them. 

The man just waits, not bombarding Harry with words like Aunt Petunia.

Dudley’s snore cuts off, and he plods towards the kitchen for a snack. He blinks, stupidly, then shrieks “Mummy! He got out! And-”

The man snarls, pointing his swords at Dudley, and Dudley goes quiet. But it already woke them. Uncle Vernon’s feet pound down the steps. “Boy! You better be in your cupboard, you ungrateful little whelp. If I catch you stealing-”

“He needs food more than either of you.” the man drawls. He stalks towards the kitchen and says. “You trying to be the Blob?”

Uncle Vernon’s face goes purple, which isn’t a good sign. Harry wishes everyone’s face changed color like that, it’s so much easier than what faces usually do.

Harry edges away from Uncle Vernon, towards the clawed man. 

“Who are you?” Uncle Vernon bellows. “Get out of my house! I’ll ring the police!”

The man’s claws pop back out. He lifts an eyebrow as he slices through the phone cord.

Uncle Vernon sputters, and Aunt Petunia shrieks.

The man rummages through the refrigerator, growling “Locking him up, calling him freak. People say I’m an animal.”

He holds out a block of cheese. Harry stares at it.

“Take it,” the man tells him, not quite as growly. “They ain’t gonna stop you, unless they want some ‘o that fat carved off.”

Safe behind the man, Harry takes the cheese and takes quick, hurried bites.

“What’s his name?” the man demands. 

“Harry.” Aunt Petunia probably wants to scream at Harry, but the claws are stopping her.

“I ain’t suited for kids, but I’d still do better than you.” the man says, striding towards the hall. “You coming, Harry?”

Harry blinks. It’s a huge change to be thrown at him all at once. But the man’s a freak like him, and he’s been nicer than the Dursleys ever have been, even if he’s kind of like an angry animal too.

Harry rocks a bit, tugging his hair. This man doesn’t look like he’d make Harry hoover. He hasn’t told him to talk, or look at him, or scolded him for his accident.

Harry darts next to the man, who snarls and points his claws at the Dursleys as he walks by. They huddle behind the table.

He leads Harry outside, and there’s a motorbike parked next to Uncle Vernon’s car. Maybe Harry hadn’t dreamed it.

Harry covers his ears, but he’s grinning a real grin. Finally, he’ll get to fly out of here.

Chapter Text

Logan wasn’t planning on taking a kid. He knows he ain’t suited to take care of one, but this kid needs him. It’s an odd thought.

He’d only been passing through, and hating the perfect suburban lawns and rows of identical houses, when he’d smelled fear in Number Four.

From what little he remembers, Logan knows he’s smelled a lot of fear. Usually he inspires it. 

This wasn’t the sort of fear from a nightmare. Logan knew that stench from waking up to shredded bedding and his breaths no more than harsh pants.

Number Four reeked of constant fear, with an undercurrent of piss. And there ain’t any good reason for a home to smell like that.

If some asshole was beating on his wife and kids, well, Logan was prepared to stop it.

Instead, he’d found Harry locked away, forced to soil himself like a dog in a cage. Harry seems to have enhanced senses like Logan and hasn’t said a word, but Logan’s more of an animal than Harry, and he’d never treat a kid like that.

Some part of Logan still wants to storm back inside with his claws out, carve up his sorry excuse for relatives and paint the pristine, gleaming kitchen and floral wallpaper red with their blood. 

Growling, Logan lights his cigar and clamps it between gritted teeth, fighting back the beast raging within him. He ain’t going to orphan that little butterball, even if the even bigger one and the horsey woman deserve it.

Beside Logan, Harry freezes like a deer in the headlights. He’d been rocking, covering his ears and grinning at Logan’s ride.

Logan blows out a cloud of smoke. “Ain’t mad at you, bub. Harry.” 

Harry’s fingers start drumming a beat in his hair. He’s rocking again, leaning toward the motorcycle and then jerking back like he’s expecting another growl or further punishment for getting too close. Over and over.

The motorcycle ain’t equipped for a kid, and Logan doesn’t have a helmet for himself, let alone Harry. Logan will heal from any crash, but kids have soft skulls. Or is that babies?

Logan doesn’t trust Harry to hang on either, with the way he’s keeping his hands clamped over his ears. Sighing, Logan stubs out his cigar on his palm, ignoring the brief burn that heals instantly. There are all sorts of ads against smoking these days, saying it’s your worst enemy. Logan knows it ain’t his worst enemy, but he doubts Harry’s lungs heal.

He gets Harry sitting near the handlebars and swings on behind him, wrapping an arm around Harry’s stomach. 

Harry tenses when the engine growls and roars, but a laugh escapes him when they start moving. He cuts it off like he ain’t allowed to laugh, either.

Logan may not be a cheerful guy, may not have heard anyone laugh like that in who knows how long, but he’s not going to begrudge the kid his fun.

Once they’re really moving, Harry cheers and whoops, enjoying the speed and the wind whipping through his hair.

They ride to Cokeworth, which, like the town Logan took Harry from, has rows and rows of identical houses. Logan checks them into the Railway Hotel. It’s a gloomy place, but Logan’s slept in far worse, and it’s better than the cupboard. No spiders here, at least.

Harry keeps glancing out the window towards Logan’s motorcycle, until Logan promises “We’ll ride more tomorrow. We ain’t staying here.”

Logan kicks off his boots and stretches out on one of the beds. He could really do with his cowboy hat, but they don’t sell ‘em over here. 

Harry starts to crawl into the wardrobe until Logan tells him to get in the other bed. The kid doesn’t ask for a story or a lullaby, which is just as well. 

“Stay in that bed,” Logan warns, just in case Harry’s thinking of sneaking back to the wardrobe. Remembering how he found Harry, he adds that he should get up and use the toilet if he has to.

Shutting his eyes, Logan hopes Harry has the sense not to crawl into Logan’s bed if he’s having a nightmare, or he might end up getting stabbed.

He really needs to find a better home for Harry, because he knows it ain’t with him.

The next morning, they eat stale corn flakes before hitting the road. Harry’s almost bouncing with excitement as he climbs onto the motorcycle, even if he still covers his ears.

Logan doesn’t know where he’s going. He just drives, stopping only to eat or relieve themselves, and spending the nights at seedy hotels. Logan’s not concerned about Harry’s safety. Anyone wanting to hurt the kid would have to get through him.

The TVs in the hotels never show hockey, and Logan’s wondering if they should head to Canada or the States.

One time, as they eat burgers atop Logan’s motorcycle, a bit of mayonnaise from Harry’s burger drips down towards the shining chrome of the bike. When Logan looks down, there’s no mayo, just a drop of water. 

Huh. Is that Harry’s mutation? Harry hunches like a dog about to be beaten, but Logan just tells him it’s a neat trick. Not like mayo wouldn’t have wiped off the bike, either. Harry’s relatives really did a number on him.

Harry’s starting to stink- has been for days, really, but even with his enhanced senses, Logan’s used to the smell of body odor. He has to have his own by now.

Logan stops at a store to get Harry new clothes. The clothes he’s been wearing clearly belonged to the other boy and are several sizes too large.

Harry gravitates towards flannel shirts and jeans, like Logan wears. It almost makes him look like Logan’s son, which Logan ain’t exactly comfortable with. It’s not like he can keep Harry around forever. His life is no life for a kid.

He also finds a pair of headphones for Harry, a miniature version of what workers might wear when building things. Harry pulls them off, alarmed, but once he realizes they dull the noise of the motor and free his hands to grip the handlebars and pretend he’s driving, well, it’s the loudest Logan’s heard him laugh.

Logan’s cash is rapidly disappearing. One night, he checks into a slightly fancier hotel, leaves Harry in the room after telling him he’s allowed to watch TV, and heads to the local pub. He has a few drinks, hears a few folks talk about cage fights in another pub, and knows where he can win some cash.

Logan returns in the early hours of the morning with a thick wad of £20 notes. Harry’s asleep on the floor- he needs to sit close to see the TV, and Logan wonders if he needs glasses. The TVs still on, so he’d clearly fallen asleep before he could slink to the wardrobe.

Logan scowls at the players kicking around a ball. They really need to find somewhere with hockey. 

Logan crouches to wake Harry up and send him to bed.

Harry doesn’t look relaxed. His face is pinched, and he’s tossing and turning. Nightmare.

“Wake up,” Logan tells him, putting a hand on Harry’s bony shoulder.

Harry gasps, jerking awake and stifling harsh breaths. It seems his forehead is hurting him now, not his ears. He’s rubbing the lightning shaped scar above his eyes.

“Hey, bub. Harry.” Logan says. “You had a nightmare.”

Harry launches himself at Logan, clinging to him tightly. Logan awkwardly pats Harry’s back. Harry doesn’t cry into Logan’s shirt or anything, and Logan’s glad. 

Harry’s staring at the blindingly bright green paint on the wall.

Logan picks Harry up and deposits him in the bed. When Logan pulls away, Harry clings to his shirt, but reluctantly lets go.

Logan heads over to his own bed and says “Nobody’s going to hurt ya here.”

Harry looks away from the blinding green wall, and falls back asleep facing Logan.

Chapter Text

Harry quickly realizes that Uncle Vernon was wrong. Sometimes he’d get back from work still complaining about hooligans on motorbikes, though he’d quickly start complaining about Harry.

Riding with Logan on his motorbike is the greatest thing in the world. Even with the roaring engine, Harry can’t get enough of the wind in his face and hair. He feels safe, leaning back against Logan’s chest as they go so fast, it feels like they’re flying.

Logan even got him headphones so he doesn’t need to cover his ears, Harry flaps his arms. He wonders if they’ll really fly like in his dreams.

Instead, they pass a car wreck.

Harry shouts, trying to twist around to see as Logan speeds the motorbike past the crash, leaning to see around Logan’s bulk. He would fall to the ground if Logan wasn’t still holding onto him.

“Don’t squirm,” Logan shouts over the wind and the engine, but Harry can’t help it. The motorbike veers left until they’re off the road, and Logan’s kicking the kickstand down.

“What’s wrong?” Logan demands roughly. “You trying to smear your brains on the road or somethin’?!”

It’s the closest Logan’s gotten to yelling at Harry. What if he decides Harry’s a useless burden too and leaves him here on the side of the road?

Logan’s next words are still gruff, but quieter. “If you gotta pee, do it in the trees.”

Harry arches his back and twists to see the wreckage, groaning.

“Don't worry, I ain't gonna crash.” Logan promises.

A woman climbs out of the car, and Harry hears a baby crying, even higher than his screams. The mum gets the baby out of the seat in the back, and the dad hugs them both.

Harry’s chest gets a bit looser. At least another baby won’t lose its parents and be sent to live with the Dursleys. 

If the mum and dad in the car were dead, Harry would have tried to make Logan save the baby too. Except Harry thinks that Logan probably isn’t a baby person. He never talks in that high pitched coo Aunt Petunia still uses with Dudley, and he seems glad Harry’s accident in the cupboard was because he was locked in, and not because he doesn’t know how to use the loo.

Harry watches the family hugging, and his heart still aches. He tries to set it right by leaning against Logan. Logan’s heartbeat is a steady, strong ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum , and Harry hits his own chest in a similar rhythm, trying to fix his heart.

Logan doesn’t cuddle Harry like the mum hugs her baby, but he doesn’t push Harry away like Aunt Petunia had.

He wishes his mum hadn’t died, so she could cuddle him. He wishes his dad weren’t a useless drunkard who got in a crash and saddled the Dursleys with a worthless freak like him.

Harry thinks back to last night. Logan had smelled of alcohol, like when Aunt Marge has too much brandy. But Logan never once got mean. He told Harry the burning green light was just a bad dream. Even waking up surrounded by green walls hadn’t been scary with Logan there. 

Maybe Logan’s a drunkard too, but he’s not a lazy layabout like Uncle Vernon said Harry’s dad was. Dudley lazed around more than Logan has.

Slowly, Harry’s heartbeat matches Logan’s.

“I sure as hell ain’t going to be yer mother.” Logan tells Harry. Harry keeps staring at the family.

Harry can’t imagine Logan acting like a mummy, though he likes calling Harry bub like Aunt Petunia called Dudley all sorts of names. 

“You ain’t gonna get bedtime stories or kisses on skinned knees, stayin’ with me.” Logan says, but Harry never had those anyway. He reaches to toy with the chain around Logan’s neck. There’s a tag on it like Ripper had.

Harry keeps watching the mum, and Logan says “I’ll find a mother or someone fer ya.”

Harry blinks in surprise. Logan just said he wouldn’t have things a mum would give, so how could he have a mum? Besides, Logan doesn’t seem to like being around anybody, though he puts up with Harry better than the Dursleys had.

Harry’s not sure where they’d find a freak mum anyway. This mum clearly isn’t a freak. She’s looking back at him now, with the same disgusted look Aunt Petunia uses.

The mum hands the baby to the dad and storms over. “What if you crash?!” she demands. “Your son doesn’t even have a helmet!”

“I won’t crash.” Logan grunts.

“He still needs a helmet!” she says. “Richard’s an excellent driver, and look what happened!”

Harry shakes his head back and forth, thinking of how Dudley yelled and refused to wear a helmet when he got his shiny new red bicycle. Then he starts laughing, because Logan’s motorbike is so much cooler than Dudley’s red bicycle.

Still laughing, Harry grabs the handlebars, almost bouncing in his seat.

“Look, lady, I’ll get him a helmet when I find a place.”

“Get one for yourself, too.” she says. Logan just snorts. He grabs the handlebars too, and they soar off down the road.

Harry would happily ride with Logan all day and night, but he’s glad when they stop for food. For some reason, Logan always buys Harry food whenever he gets food for himself, and he didn’t even get mad when mayo almost fell on the motorbike.

This time, they eat in the cafe. A little girl and her mum sit at a nearby table. They both have brown skin and poofy hair that Aunt Petunia would hate. She’d probably say they’re freaks like Harry and Logan.

Harry wonders if maybe this mum will be his new mum.

He sways his head and flicks his fingers, and the little girl gawks at him.

“Don’t stare, sweetie.” the mum says. Logan doesn’t seem to care if people stare. He sits there and lets Harry rock and hum. Harry’s trying to make his humming sound like the engine of Logan’s bike, because the sound doesn’t hurt if he’s making it.

The girl keeps coloring, but she still glances at Harry. “Mummy, what’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing’s wrong with him,” Logan grunts. He never minds Harry’s rocking or flapping, except when he almost fell off the bike. 

“Sorry,” the mum says. Logan grunts. The waitress brings their food. Logan had ordered a steak for both himself and Harry. Harry can’t finish it all, it’s more than he’s ever gotten, but Logan doesn’t get mad, not even when Harry sneaks some into his pockets to save for later.

Harry wouldn’t mind riding through the night, but they stop at another hotel. Harry had never been to a hotel before meeting Logan. It feels a little strange, staying in a new room each night, but they’re all pretty alike. Logan always gets two beds, and even though they have different colored duvets, the furniture in the rooms is almost always set up the same.

Logan even lets him watch the telly. He was never allowed to watch at the Dursleys’ house. 

The next day, they stop at a shop with motorbikes outside, and Logan buys Harry a helmet. Harry scowls, because he can’t wear the helmet and his headphones at the same time, and he won’t feel the wind in his hair with the helmet on.

There’s a rack of toy motorbikes, and Logan lets Harry pick one out. Harry chooses a toy that looks just like Logan’s real motorbike and holds it in front of his face like it’s flying. It’s Harry’s first toy, ever, and Dudley’s not here to break it like he broke all his own toys.

Their hotel room tonight has something new- a glittery gold ball under the bed. Logan says some kid must have left it, and it’s Harry’s now. 

Harry’s new ball bounces when he throws it, and soon he’s bouncing it all over the room. One time, it flies instead of falling, and Harry chuckles as he chases it.

He wants to throw his motorbike and see if it will fly too, but he doesn’t want it to break if it doesn’t. So he keeps playing with the ball.

“Neat trick,” Logan drawls from where he’s smoking on the balcony. Harry thought he wasn’t watching, but Logan never minds freak powers. Harry can’t always tell tones and faces, but he figures Logan isn’t angry when he asks “How many powers do ya got?”

Harry doesn’t know, but he knows now he won’t get in trouble as he finds out. He wonders if he really had set the hoover on fire, and if he could light up Logan’s cigars for him. That would be good, right?

When Logan goes out to smoke again later that evening, Harry follows him out. He grunts when Logan pulls out his lighter, and Logan pauses. 

Harry takes a deep, brave breath. He’s pretty sure he won’t get punished like he had with the hoover.

Harry wiggles his fingers like flames, staring intently at the unlit cigar, but it doesn’t catch fire. Logan pulls the lighter out of his pocket, lights it up, and shoos Harry back in the hotel room to play with his new toys.  

Chapter Text

Logan’s glad that Harry isn’t using him as a teddy bear at night, the way he’s started doing on the motorcycle. Harry falls asleep clutching his toy motorcycle and ball. Maybe they’ll help stave off his nightmares, the way a real teddy bear would.

Logan has his own nightmares. His body is stuck full of needles like a goddamn pincushion until he escapes and sticks his claws into the scientists in bloodthirsty revenge. 

Logan wakes up snarling like the beast he was, the beast that’s always inside him. His claws sever the back wheel and saddlebags from the body of the toy motorcycle Harry’s still holding, and it’s a damn miracle he hadn’t hacked Harry’s hand off, too. 

Harry must have come over to Logan’s bed during the nightmare. He’s clearly startled, but doesn’t seem scared. He’s either very brave, or very stupid.

Logan pants harshly, sheathing his claws and double checking Harry for injuries.

“What’d I tell ya about staying in your bed?” Logan growls, but Harry doesn’t take the hint. He stays on Logan’s bed and even reaches to hug Logan. Logan jerks away with a soft snarl. Doesn’t Harry see that he’s dangerous? He could have easily eviscerated Harry the way he’d gutted the scientists in his dream. 

Logan’s not sure how his brain cooked up that scenario. Seems like something outta Frankenstein. 

Harry’s as stubborn as he is brave. He flops next to Logan on the bed and drums his hand on Logan’s chest. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

Logan remembers Harry trying to calm himself down the same way, after seeing the crash. 

Logan rolls out of bed and stomps over to his jeans. Fishing out his cigar and lighter, he goes to the balcony for a smoke.

Harry follows him out, silently staring at him. Logan tells him to scram, but he doesn’t.

Of course Harry wants to help Logan after his nightmare, the way Logan had helped him. Harry’s a far better person than Logan is. Logan had seen how Harry wanted to swoop in and save the day at the car crash, once he’d gotten over his panic.

Harry would be better off if Logan rode off without him. Not only is Logan dangerous, he’d be a shitty guardian. Not as shitty as where he was, sure, but the kid deserves better than him.

But what would social services or whoever do when they found him? Probably send him right back to Number Four, where he’d be shut in the closet like an old pair of boots.

Logan told the kid he’d find him a mom, though Logan can’t say he knows any women who are mother material.

Harry stays with Logan on the balcony, not wanting to let Logan out of his sight.

Harry’s rubbing his forehead again, the way he had after his own nightmare. Logan huffs out a sigh. “You have a bad dream?”

After all, the car crash had put Harry all out of sorts. It wouldn’t be surprising if it affected his dreams. Harry’s growling now, clearly trying to mimic the rumbling engine on Logan’s bike. Logan half expects him to make explosion or crash sounds, but he doesn’t.

“Was yer nightmare a crash?” Logan asks. “Told ya I ain’t gonna let that happen.”

Harry may be too brave for his own safety, but he sure ain’t fearless. He should be scared of Logan, but he isn’t.

Harry presses hand against Logan insistantly, as if saying Logan had the nightmare, not him. 

“I did? I had no idea.” Logan drawls. The sarcasm seems to fly right over Harry’s head.

Logan gruffly tells Harry to go back to his own bed, but Harry simply leans against him. Logan sighs. “Hey, I may be hairy, but I ain’t your teddy bear.” 

Harry’s clearly decided Logan is, even at night.

The next morning, they stop for breakfast in the hotel cafe. As he eats eggs, Harry plays with his knife and snatches Logan’s too.

Logan raises a brow, but Harry’s too busy raiding the nearby tables to notice. Logan watches, torn between amusement and annoyance, as Harry attempts to hold the knives between his fingers, imitating Logan’s claws.

He takes a swing at Logan, though he clearly ain’t aiming to hurt him. Harry accidentally drops the knives in his right hand, and they clatter on the table and the floor. He goes to cover his ears, but Logan grabs his wrist, stopping him. Harry still has two knives clenched in between the fingers of his left hand, and Logan grabs them by the blades to pull them free.

Harry stomps his feet.

“Sir, please control your son,” the man behind the front desk says in his posh British accent. Logan snorts at the man’s terminology for both himself and Harry. He’s about to say Harry isn’t his, but that would lead to a lot of questions he doesn’t feel like answering.

Harry hastily sits back at his plate before Logan says anything. He glances at the mess of knives and then at Logan as if to say they’re even, though there was never a risk of Logan losing a limb.

The man turns back to his desk, but glances at them. People look at Harry like he’s a mutant, though his movements and sounds have nothing to do with his powers.

Harry holds his fork in his fist like claws and stabs a sausage. He beams at Logan as he pops it into his mouth, humming contentedly.

Logan shakes his head and mutters, “You don’t want to be me, bub.”

Despite Logan’s protests, Harry clearly wants to be just like him. Even worse, he wants to be around Logan constantly. The kid’s getting far too attached, clearly not understanding he can’t stay with Logan forever.

Logan’s a loner, but Harry’s not letting him be one. Now he’s got a kid leaning against him on the bike, flapping in excitement while they roll down the road.

At least Harry doesn’t try to force a conversation. He hasn’t said a single word, even in his sleep, and Logan ain’t gonna look a gift horse in the mouth.

Harry probably just likes Logan for his motorcycle. He doesn’t seem to hold a grudge over Logan slicing and dicing his toy. He hadn’t pushed it around the floor like Logan guessed a kid would. Instead, he keeps carrying the back part like it’s flying through the air.

Logan’s going to have to leave England soon. He’s been driving around aimlessly, since it takes far less time to cross than the States. 

Logan had snuck himself and his bike over here on a cargo plane, but he ain’t planning on dragging Harry around on all his treks. Surely Harry belongs here, in England.

Harry will forget about him, Logan’s sure. Logan’s life ain’t one for a kid. Harry deserves a family, someone to hug him and if they have a bike, too, then Harry ain’t gonna miss Logan at all.

Logan figures all he has to do is hit up a pub with bikers, find a woman willing to take Harry, and be on his way.

Chapter Text

Harry doesn’t know where they’re going. They’ve driven on some roads more than once, and they drive to a village they already slept at.

Instead of going to a cafe for dinner, they go to a pub with lots of motorbikes outside. Harry flaps excitedly. Maybe one of these ones flies.

Logan leads Harry inside, where it’s dark and smokey, like Logan’s cigars. 

Harry follows Logan to a bunch of high stools at a bar. Logan plonks on one stool and orders something that looks like juice, cigar already in his mouth. Harry climbs up onto the stool next to him.

Harry’s never had juice. He taps Logan’s glass with his broken motorbike, but the guy on the other side of the table says he can’t have that.

“Give him a juice,” Logan grunts, sliding another note onto the bar. He turns to talk to a pretty lady.

The man behind the bar nods. Soon, Harry has a drink that looks like Logan’s. Harry sniffs it, but it’s hard to smell it with all the smoke in the air. Harry’s juice tastes wonderful. Harry watches Logan drink his glass and slide it across for another.

Logan’s never told Harry he can’t have more. Harry chugs his juice and pushes it across the bar. The guy fills him up again, and Harry beams.

Logan and Harry keep drinking, until Harry sees a giant green table with lots of colorful balls on it. 

Harry goes over for a closer look. When he gets closer, he sees some balls are one color, and some are white with a stripe. They have numbers.

One man uses a stick to hit the plain white ball into another ball. They bounce off the little wall around the table, but not up and down. One ball rolls into a net in the corner, but the white one doesn’t.

Harry helpfully nudges the white one into the net too.

“Get out of here, kid.” the man seems angry about Harry’s help. Harry backs up, but keeps watching. Logan strides over with his drink, and says he’ll play the next game. He leans, watching and smoking, while Harry’s hands flick with excitement. He has to fight the urge to reach out and grab the bright yellow ball.

When the game’s over, Logan takes the loser’s stick. Harry cheers him on, jumping up and down.

Logan lines it up to hit the white ball. This time, when the balls bounce off the wall, they bounce into the air before falling into a pocket.

“What the hell?!” the other man shouts. “You some kind of bloody mutie?!”

“You wanna say that again, bub?!” Logan snarls. It’s what he calls Harry, but the way he says it now is different.

“Get out of here, freak!” the man raises his stick to whack Logan. Harry shouts, and Logan’s sword claws shoot out. Snikt!

Logan cuts through the stick as easily as he’d cut Harry’s motorbike. The guy’s left holding a cut piece, the other three falling to the green table. The guy starts to try to stab Logan with the cut stick, but he jumps out of reach of the claws.

A glass comes flying out of nowhere, exploding on Logan’s head. Logan growls again, turning to whoever threw it. Harry hears people shouting words Uncle Veronon liked to use.

Harry snatches one of the balls from the table. It’s a lot heavier and harder than his bouncing ball, and he throws it at the stick guy’s head. It hits him with a thud, and he yells.

Not even Harry’s headphones help with how loud it’s getting in here. He wants to run outside, escape the noise, but then he’d be leaving Logan behind. 

Someone grabs Harry, and then Logan’s there, smashing a glass on the guy’s head.

Screaming, Harry grabs another ball, throwing it at someone who’s pulled out a knife. It’s not like Logan’s knives.

With a roar, Logan seizes Harry around the waist and hauls him to his chest. He runs out the pub, swings onto their bike, and guns the engine.

They tear off into the street, and then they’re going faster than ever. Some people from the pub are chasing them on their own motorbikes.

One of them gets close enough for Logan to slash through the front wheel. The motorbike goes out of control, veering sideways into another one.

Harry hates the collisions, but these really are bad guys. They hurt Logan, and it’s all Harry’s fault.

Harry shouts as another motorbike gets closer. Harry isn’t excited about them anymore. These guys hate Harry and Logan just like the Dursleys did.

Harry waves his toy motorbike, and one of the real ones chasing them catches fire, just like the hoover had. This time, it’s getting Harry out of trouble.

The other motorbikes fall behind, still shouting hateful words at them. Harry’s used to it from his aunt and uncle.

Eventually, Harry can’t hear the other motorbikes or their insults. The only sound is their engine, and their wheels on the road.

Logan huffs. “Ya sure know how to get into trouble, bub.”

Harry stares at Logan’s hands on the handlebars. Logan looked like he got into those fights a lot, and might have enjoyed it. Harry’s pretty sure Logan knows how to get in trouble too.

“Guess we ain’t findin’ ya a mother there.” Logan says, a while later.

Everyone there hated them. It seems like Logan’s the only person who likes Harry. 

And then Logan says “Ya ain’t gonna stay outta trouble if I leave, are ya?”

Harry stiffens, arching his back, twisting to hang onto Logan’s leather jacket. He knew someday Logan would notice how worthless he was, like Aunt Petunia always said, but hearing him talk about leaving Harry hurts worse than the hoover. Harry fists the jacket with an angry shriek. 

Logan pulls the motorbike to the side of the road again, and Harry starts to scream. He really is going to leave Harry this time. If Harry could talk, he’d promise to be better. What does Logan want? He doesn’t seem to mind that Harry can’t talk, unlike everyone at school. Did he not want Harry to join the fight? But Logan almost seemed to enjoy fighting.

“Hey. I’d only leave ya fer yer own good, kid.” Logan says, but he’s been good to Harry. “I could’ve killed you. And hangin’ around me, well, there’ll be a lot of fights like that.”

Harry grunts, not letting go of Logan’s jacket. Logan still saved Harry a bunch. And he only cut Harry’s motorbike, not Harry.

Harry’s not going to let go. He won’t be left here.

“Ya ain’t safe with me an’ ya ain’t safe without me.” Logan shakes his head. “I see how they look at you, before ya even use your powers.”

Harry might not be able to always read people, but he knows what disgust looks like. He’d seen it every day on Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. He’s still seeing it with Logan, but never from him.

“Alright, bub, I ain’t gonna ditch ya. Yer too clingy to let me.” Logan says. Harry isn’t quite sure he trusts that, and keeps his hand fisted in Logan’s coat. 

Logan wraps his hairy arm around Harry, and Harry grins.

“If ya want to leave, though, I ain’t gonna blame ya.” 

Harry laughs, shaking his hair wildly to create the feeling of wind. This is the best his life has ever been, even with fights and chases. It’s better than being chased by Dudley, anyway.

Logan pulls out his cigar, but he doesn’t get the lighter out. Instead, he gives Harry a crooked sort of smile. “Think ya can light me up like ya lit that motorcycle?”

Harry laughs. He’s already been trying. For some reason, though, he can’t do it when he wants to, so Logan has to light the cigar himself again.

Harry turns towards the handlebars as Logan smokes. Logan says there’s no point sticking around here, and asks “Ya want to go flyin’ fer real? I’m going to Canada, and I guess yer going wherever I go now.”

Harry flaps his arms, grinning up at the starry sky. 

Chapter Text

“We ain’t exactly going to be ridin’ in style here.” Logan remarks. He had to pay most of his last fight’s earnings to get his bike on the plane, and sneaking aboard with it wasn’t exactly easy. Logan ain’t really the stealthy sort, but Harry is surprisingly sneaky. Or perhaps unsurprisingly, considering he likely tried to avoid any notice from his relatives.

Logan’s rode in worse, and even the cargo area of the plane is better than that cupboard Harry was locked in. Harry still flinches when the door thuds shut, and clutches Logan’s leather jacket. 

It’d be better if they were above, where they serve beer, but without passports, that’s hardly an option. Logan hadn’t found someone to forge ‘em.

There are a few sorry animals in crates down here to keep them company. They don’t stay in their cages for long. Logan wants to slice through the crates once he and Harry let them out, but that ain’t exactly inconspicuous.

Logan honestly prefers the animals to being crowded by other people. Harry is cautious of the dogs, but decidedly more relaxed when a large, shaggy one noses him. 

Logan wonders if it reminds Harry of him. 

Logan leans back against someone’s suitcase, but Harry climbs onto Logan’s motorcycle, which is tied down to a wooden pallet.

When the plane starts to move, Harry lets out a delighted giggle, which quickly turns to a screech of anguish when the engines pick up. Mixed with the dogs barking, it’s quite a racket.

One dog pisses itself in fear. Logan has smelled worse, but it ain’t pleasant.

Harry knocks his headphones away in a frenzied attempt to claw his own ears off. Logan swings behind him on the seat, letting Harry lean back against him.

The moment their ears pop is quite the experience. 

Finally, it’s smoother in the sky, and everyone settles down a bit. Harry goes back to pretending to fly the motorcycle for a while. When he tires of that, he bounces his ball around, and several of the dogs want to play fetch. 

That entertains them for a while. Thankfully, nobody above seems to hear the dogs bumping into things, or the barking when they find the ball.

Harry’s clearly used to being locked in the dark for hours at a time. Any other kid would be complaining, but Harry seems to view their accommodations as a luxury, even if he isn’t thrilled about being locked in. 

Logan’s getting antsy, himself. This is a long flight to be stuck in a cargo hold. He’d slept on most of the flight to England, but he’s hardly gettin’ a wink now.

Even Logan can’t smell what they’re eating up in the coach, and he doubts the dogs can, either. One of them’s been nosing the saddlebags on Logan’s bike the whole time.

Logan pulls out a packet of jerky out and breaks some off for Harry. Of course the dogs start begging, or jumping for it in some cases.

Good thing he brought extra. The dogs have food and water in their crates; they probably have to, with how long the flight is, but they’d much rather have the jerky.

Logan cracks open a can of beer, and fishes out a can of Coke for Harry. Harry tries to share it with the shaggy dog until Logan says “It ain’t good for dogs.”

Logan has no idea if that’s true, but Harry believes him.

Before he’s even finished the Coke, Harry starts squirming in a way Logan’s started to recognize on the road as the need to pull the bike over. 

Of course, there ain’t anywhere to pull over now, and Harry clearly realizes this. He starts grunting and whining, which gets the shaggy dog whining too.

“Just go,” Logan tells him, handing over an empty plastic bottle.. There ain’t any sense in Harry torturing himself tryin’ to hold it in. Harry’s squirming, flapping his hands anxiously.

Harry glances at Logan, clearly remembering the state Logan found him in, and then pulls his pants down and lets fly, apparently not realizing what the bottle’s for.

Logan has to growl at some of the dogs when they start trying to mark territory after Harry goes. The dogs whine and decide Logan’s the alpha, the head honcho.

Logan doesn’t care, he’s just glad he prevented a literal pissing contest. This cargo hold reeks enough as it is.

By the end of the long flight, Harry has become very attached to the large, shaggy dog. 

“No, he ain’t comin’ with us,” Logan grunts. Harry may not talk, but Logan sees the pleading in his eyes, even if they aren’t looking at him.

Harry flails a hand angrily at the crate, as if Logan had forgotten the dogs’ plight.

“I don’t like it either,” Logan says. “But I can’t be pickin’ up any more strays.”

Harry’s already more of a traveling companion than he ever expected to have, and he sure ain’t looking for more. Not that the mutt could fit on the bike, even if it was welcome. If Logan were to add a sidecar, it’d be for Harry.

Harry scowls at Logan. Logan ain’t the type to call kids cute, but Harry’s glare ain’t as ferocious and terrifying as Logan’s, that’s for sure.

Finally, the plane starts to descend. It goes better than takeoff, and Logan unstraps his bike from the pallet, planning on making a hasty exit.

The dogs bark when the plane lands, and when the workers open up the cargo hatch to unload the luggage, the dogs charge out onto the ramp. There are a lot of surprised shouts amid the barking, and Logan revs the engine, taking off down the ramp and across the tarmac. Harry’s shout- half excited, and half mad about leaving his favorite dog- joins the cacophony.

The workers yell for Logan to stop and identify himself, but Logan guns the throttle. Harry’s gazing toward the runway, like they can speed up and take off like a plane, but Logan maneuvers them under a few other planes and heads towards the highway.

Sirens start wailing, and Logan scowls. Escaping planes and skipping customs is a damn hassle sometimes. If they actually had passports, this would be a breeze. Logan really needs to find someone to forge some for ‘em.

Harry turns to watch out for sirens, but looks at Logan like he’s crazy for driving on the right side of the road instead of the left.

“It’s different here, bub.” Logan smirks. “Welcome to Canada, Harry.”

Chapter Text

Harry might not always understand rules, especially the ones people don’t tell him. He doesn’t always follow the ones he does understand, like how he was supposed to hoover.

But Harry knows everyone in Canada is breaking the driving rule. They’re all driving on the wrong side. Logan says it’s different here, so maybe people here won’t think they’re freaks. 

They keep driving around on the wrong side. 

Logan steers them away from the busy roads. Eventually, they’re surrounded by trees, alone on the road. Logan twists the throttle, and they soar even faster. Some of the animals don’t seem too keen on the engine, like Harry.

Harry thinks he sees a bear in the thicket of trees whizzing by. 

Logan slows the bike in the middle of the forest, pulling off on the still wrong side of the road, hiding the bike in the trees. 

Harry looks around, and Logan says “British Columbia. Might feel more at home, here.”

Logan sort of smiles around his cigar, like he’s being funny, but Harry doesn’t get the joke. He follows Logan through the trees, up a hill, to a cave.

Harry’s cupboard sometimes felt like a cave, but he never imagined he’d ever be in a real one. He sets off to explore the deeper, darker parts.

“Careful, bub.” Logan warns him. Harry grunts. He isn’t scared of the dark. He’s used to it, with his cupboard.

Logan grunts back, shaking his head. “You ain’t going to like falling, or twisting yer ankle. I haven’t seen a healin’ factor on ya.”

Harry sighs and returns to Logan’s side, even though his curiosity is pulling him towards the depths of the cave.

Logan sniffs out and stabs a few rabbits for them to eat, and Harry helps Logan collect firewood. Harry feels a bit sorry for the rabbits, trying not to look as Logan skins them with his claws, but he’s really hungry. 

That night, Harry hears wolves howling, but he isn’t scared. He misses the shaggy dog from the plane. All the dogs were much nicer than Ripper was.

Harry thinks the howls sound sad. A wolf would fit right in with them. Harry grins, hands jumping in excitement. He tiptoes past Logan and heads into the woods.

The moon shines bright overhead, and Harry picks his way through the forest towards the howls. He can’t speak with words like other people do, but maybe he can speak wolf. 

Harry lets out his own howl, hoping the wolves will come to play.

Instead, he hears a growl from behind him. A familiar growl. 

“What do ya think yer doin’, bub?”

Harry doesn’t turn around. He stares off in the direction of the woods.

“Look. I’ve lived with wolves, but they ain’t pets.” Logan tells him. Harry darts ahead. If Logan lived with wolves, why is he trying to stop Harry? 

Harry grabs Logan’s arm, trying to tug him forward. With his other hand, he pets Logan’s arm hair, and Logan snorts.

“Wolves ain’t dogs. They’re feral, like I was.” 

Harry howls again, still tugging, and Logan tugs back. “Come on, bub. Back to the cave.”

Harry reluctantly lets Logan lead him back to the cave. The fire has died down, but Logan lights it up again. Harry gazes at the dog tag around Logan’s neck, not sure why Logan has it, since he’s not a dog.

He’s been wearing it the whole time Harry’s known him, like Ripper, only on a chain, not a collar.

Logan’s tag says Wolverine. Was that one of the wolves he lived with? He prods the tag questioningly.

“Guess that was my army codename.” Logan says. “Wolverine.”

Does being Wolverine mean Logan can turn into a wolf? He already has hidden claws, and he’s really hairy. It’s not too hard to imagine him becoming a wolf for real.

Harry throws his head back like a wolf howling at the moon. Logan snorts. “Wolverines ain’t wolves.”

Harry frowns. What is a wolverine, then? Is it made up?

“Now it’s my cage name.” Logan says with a dangerous grin. Harry isn’t scared.

They stay in the cave for a few more days. Harry quite likes the idea of being feral and living in the woods with Logan, but eventually they climb back on the bike and roar down the road. Probably because Logan used his last cigar.

As they drive, some creature Harry’s never seen before darts in front of the motorbike. It freezes, and Logan yanks the handlebars, leaning, but it’s too late- 

Harry shouts, and suddenly, they bike lifts off the road like an airplane, the wheels barely grazing over the animal’s horns. 

Harry gasps. This is just like a dream he’s had. He always wanted to fly off on this bike, and it’s really happening. His warning yell becomes a whoop of joy. Logan’s still cursing, gripping the handlebar tight with one hand and wrapping his other arm around Harry, as if Harry might fall off.

Flying feels easy, natural.

“Yer just full of surprises.” Logan says. “Time fer landin’”

Harry doesn’t want to stop flying, but now they’re barely missing trees and Logan’s struggling to steer through the air. He leans sideways, and Harry whoops again.

Their landing is just as sudden as the takeoff, but not quite as smooth. 

As soon as they hit the ground, Harry longs to take off again. 

Still, his heart feels light, almost like he’s still flying, and he feels even better when Logan says “Good on ya, kid. You saved the elk, and saved our ride from getting wrecked.”

Logan buys more cigars, and checks them into a motel, which is like a hotel but the rooms are right by where they parked. It’s almost worse, watching Logan take the bike and head off somewhere. Maybe another pub fight.

Harry hopes Logan’s not going back to the forest without him. He stays awake, bouncing his ball around the room and bouncing on the bed, something he was never allowed to do at the Dursleys. Not that he could have done so without cracking his head on the underside of the stairs.

Logan smells like beer, smoke and sweat when he comes back. Aunt Petunia would have turned up her nose, and Uncle Vernon would have called him a wastrel like Harry’s dad, but Harry would be happy to have Logan as a dad.

Logan doesn’t send Harry to school, but that suits Harry just fine. He doubts the schools here would know what to do with him any more than the local primary school the Dursleys briefly sent him to in Surrey.

Harry’s content to travel around with Logan, alternating between motels and the forest. They don’t go back to the same cave, which is somewhat disappointing. As horrid as the Dursleys were, it was nice being able to crawl into the same cupboard every night. Sure, Harry always has the bike, and the hotel and motel rooms don’t change much, but it would be nice to have a home.

Logan fixes that when Canada starts getting colder. He buys a rather beat-up old pickup truck, with a trailer for his motorbike. Harry misses roaring around on the saddle, but the truck’s warmer, and he doesn’t need his headphones in the truck. 

Logan turns the back of the truck into a home by attaching something called a camper to the large open boot on the back of the truck. There’s a bed in a little cranny above the truck’s roof. When Harry rides up there, it almost feels like flying, except there’s no wind blowing his hair.

Harry’s new home isn’t much bigger than his cupboard, but it’s much better, and it can carry more than the bike. Harry’s content to curl up on the mattress next to Logan at night. 

It’s even better than a cave.

Chapter Text

Somehow, taking in a mute kid ain’t as life-changing as Logan had expected. It hasn’t stopped Logan from being a wanderer, or a loner. He ain’t alone anymore, but Harry’s not the type to annoy him with pointless chatter.

Logan doesn’t know much about kids, but he knows Harry is different. Most kids would be talkin’ his ear off, complaining about the long hours on the road and the lack of other kids to play with.

Aside from midnight wanderings to befriend the wolves, Harry’s pretty low-maintenance. Logan suspects he’d be much higher maintenance if Logan tried to insist he talk and sit still, though the rumble of the bike always seemed to satisfy his restlessness, even if the sound had overwhelmed him. 

Mostly, Logan leaves Harry to his own devices, which suits both of them fine.

One morning, as the sun peeks through the curtains of the camper Logan had affixed to the bed of his pickup, Logan wakes before Harry. Usually, Harry’s clambering all over him, even on the nights Logan tries to distance himself after a nightmare. 

Immediately, Logan realizes that the sheets are wet. Growling softly, he hopes Harry hadn’t wet the bed. 

There’s no scent of piss, which Logan would easily be able to detect even without his enhanced senses. No, he smells sweat, though he doesn’t recall Harry having a nightmare. He tries to shake Harry awake. “Hey, bub. Harry.”

Harry hardly stirs, laying limp and listless. Logan brushes aside Harry’s sweaty bangs. His forehead, and the lightning scar, are almost shining with sweat, and his skin is hot to the touch.

Logan curses. He ain’t a doctor. Kids are enough of a mystery without illness on top. Logan’s healing factor takes care of this stuff for him; or rather, Logan doesn’t get sick in the first place. He doesn’t know what the hell to do.

Harry’s eyes eventually open, but they’re glassy and dazed rather than their usual vibrant green. They still hold a hint of confusion that Logan’s checking him over, like he expects Logan to just let him sweat out the sickness himself.

Once again, Logan longs to sink his claws into Harry’s relatives.

“I ain’t leaving,” Logan mutters before sliding down from the sleeping nook above the roof. He exits the backdoor and climbs into the driver’s seat. 

Fortunately, they aren’t too far from civilization this morning, and Harry got sick now instead of in the cave. It’s only a ten minute drive into town now. Logan checks on Harry quickly before heading into the store.

Logan scours the shelves for fever medicine, inspecting small plastic pill bottles. He gets some bottled water, and initially walks right past a spinning rack of stuffed animals, but then pauses and strides back. Nestled among the bears and bunnies is a plush wolf with soft fur.

It might stop Harry from trying to befriend real wolves. Logan grabs the toy and heads for the counter, silently daring the man ringing his purchases to comment on the toy.

“Kid’s sick?” the man asks as he scans the bottles of pills. “My Amelia had the flu a few weeks ago. Knocked her right flat for three days, it was terrifying, but kids bounce back quick. A few days of hell, and she’s up and running like always.”

Logan gives a vague grunt and nod, taking the bags and stalking out the door.

He climbs into the back of his truck. Harry barely acknowledges his return. Sure, Harry may seem to be in his own head a lot, doesn’t always acknowledge Logan to begin with, but Logan finds himself uncharacteristically worried. He finds himself missing when Harry’s lively and bouncing like that ball of his. He even misses Harry’s excited shrieks.

Harry’s too dazed to even take the offered pills. Logan has to pop them in his mouth and hold the water bottle, tipping the water in, too.

Harry sputters and ends up coughing the pills onto the bedcovers. He trembles, sweating, and Logan swears.

Reading the back of the bottle again, he realizes they aren’t supposed to be taken on an empty stomach. Cursing louder, he cleans up the coughed-up pills and settles Harry on the pillow.

He doubts Harry will tolerate breakfast if he can’t swallow pills, and has to stop at another store for juice and chicken soup. He ain’t even sure that’s what you give a sick kid, but it’s liquid.

Logan never pictured himself as the nurturing type, and he feels vastly out of his element propping Harry up and slowly tipping juice and broth down his throat. Harry vomits at first, but eventually keeps some down.

He crushes two pills with his fist, mixes it in with the juice, and slowly but surely gets Harry to drink them.

“Yer doin’ good.” he tells Harry, before remembering the wolf. He pulls it out of the bag. “I know it ain’t real, but we can’t have a pet.”

Harry clings to Logan more than the wolf.

“I’m here,” Logan rumbles, smoothing a hand over Harry’s messy hair. Logan hopes this sickness ain’t serious enough to need a doctor. That’d lead to a lotta suspicion over Logan’s claim to Harry. Logan supposes he technically kidnapped Harry, but his relatives sure weren’t putting up a fuss. If it weren’t for the woman’s evident obsession with normalcy and cleanliness, he’d think they were glad that the likes of him had taken Harry off their hands.

Logan supposes it’s lucky he hasn’t sent Harry to school yet. No need to call and report the absence, not that Logan even has a phone. Logan doesn’t remember ever attending school himself, but he doesn’t remember ever being a child, either. 

They haven’t stuck around anywhere long enough to attend school, but he doubts any school would take Harry, both because of his various abilities and various disabilities. 

Logan sticks around town today, hardly leaving Harry’s side in the camper. This sure ain’t the life he expected, especially today, but life without Harry would feel lonely. 

The thought doesn’t sit well with Logan. He’s used to being by himself and he can’t help feelin’ Harry’s in danger, stickin’ around him. But he knows the world ain’t going to be kind to Harry, both for being a mutant and for being different. Somehow, his gruff care is still the most kindness Harry’s ever been shown.

By afternoon, the fever reducers seem to be having some effect, and Harry hasn’t vomited the juice or broth for several hours. He’s aware enough to grab his broken toy motorcycle and press it to Logan’s chest, asking for a ride. 

Logan ain’t sure if the recent chill had caused Harry’s sickness, but he supposes the air and the wind will feel like a balm on Harry’s flushed skin.

He uncovers his motorcycle and carries Harry over. Harry slumps against him even more than usual. Logan takes Harry for a short, slower ride, during which Harry’s usual whoops and tense excitement are noticeably absent.

Logan steers the bike back towards the camper and bundles Harry back into bed. 

By evening, Harry’s drinking the juice himself. He’s recovering even quicker than Logan expected, almost like he’s got a healing factor too. Logan doesn’t know if he could spend days actin’ as a nurse, but it seems it won’t be necessary. Whether it’s the medicine or Harry’s abilities, he’s just glad the sickness appears to be ending within a day.

He supposes it’s good they ain’t stayin’ in a cave now.

Chapter Text

“How ya feelin’?” Logan asks, once Harry’s head isn’t so foggy and his body doesn’t feel like he’s too close to the stove.

Harry squints at him. He’d felt half asleep a lot of the time, actually asleep the rest, unsure what was real. What he had noticed hadn’t seemed real. Why would Logan buy him medicine, or warm up soup on the stove, or bring him a toy wolf?

Harry would have thought he’d dreamed it, but the wolf’s right there, and empty soup cans litter the tiny countertop.

Nothing Logan does makes much sense. 

There had been an odd sort of comfort in knowing what would happen at the Dursleys, even if it meant yelling and insults and being slapped and shaken around. He was used to hearing he was useless, stupid, a waste of space. He could never quite figure out if they were annoyed or gleeful; maybe both? They seemed to like having proof of how worthless he was, even if they constantly complained he was a burden.

Logan never calls him a burden, and he’s the one who actually cared for Harry when he was sick. He’d been there every time Harry woke up. He’d even helped Harry drink juice when he was too weak to do it himself. If anything, Harry had been far more of a burden for Logan, but Logan hadn’t simply shut him away until he recovered. 

Logan hadn’t been as doting as Aunt Petunia was when Dudley was sick, but that would have been ridiculous. Logan’s still gruff, not exactly gentle, even if he’s the nicest anyone’s been to Harry. He said he’s not a wolf, but he’s wild and strong like one, fiercer than the cuddly toy he’d bought Harry.

Harry throws his head back, pretending to howl. Logan throws the cuddly toy at Harry’s chest. “Don’t go looking for wolves. You have this one.”

Harry has something even better. He reaches out and strokes Logan’s hairy arm. Logan huffs and presses a hand to Harry’s forehead. “Ya ain’t burning up anymore.”

Harry presses his hand against Logan’s head, under his oddly pointed hair. 

“Don’t worry, bub. I don’t get sick.” Logan tells him. “Seems to me you’ve got a bit of a healin’ factor, too.”

Harry loves the thought of being like Logan. He supposes he was never sick as long as Dudley, but even he could tell Dudley was faking sometimes. 

Harry thought he knew the rules for being sick, but Logan changed them. Logan’s changed everything, but the newness isn’t overwhelming. It’s actually a nice change.

What is overwhelming is thinking that Logan will realize what a freak he is, that he’ll decide Harry’s too much work, even though he’d just spent a lot of effort caring for him without complaining. 

Harry’s starting to hope they don’t find a mum for him, because Logan never said he’d stick around once they do. Harry realizes, right now, that he doesn’t want a mum if it means leaving Logan. Logan might not be what he imagined a rescuer to be like, even if the motorbike fits right in. He hadn’t imagined cigar smoke and claws, pub fights and caves, but Logan’s better than anything he’d dreamed up at the Dursleys. 

Even now that Harry’s better, they don’t go anywhere. They can’t. Snow swirls so thickly that it’s impossible to see anything outside their home. Canada’s been snowy for a while, which was probably why Logan bought the truck, but now the world outside is blank white, the opposite of Harry’s cupboard. 

Logan bought a heavy coat for Harry long ago, but not one for himself. He isn’t even wearing his leather jacket, just a sleeveless shirt and his dog tags.

Harry throws the bedding at him, but Logan says the cold ain’t bothering him. “You keep warm,” Logan tells him. “Don’t want you getting sick again. I ain’t cut out to be a nurse all the time.”

Harry stares at Logan’s knuckles, but his claws don’t come out to cut anything.

“I’d take care of you, if you did.” Logan grumbles. “But neither of us want that again. It ain’t fun.”

Harry’s not having fun now, either. He’s used to laying still for ages, having spent countless hours in his cupboard. Only now he’s used to riding around with Logan, and laying here doing nothing is rather boring.

Harry tries bouncing his ball off the walls and floor. Their home’s small enough that his ball can bounce off every wall without flying. But soon that’s boring. He spins the remaining wheel of his toy motorbike, wishing they were on the real one.

Logan sighs, and starts telling Harry stories about living with wolves, even though he’s a wolverine and that’s different somehow. No wonder Logan isn’t cold without a jacket, if he used to live out in the snow without any clothes at all.

Harry still thrusts Logan’s leather jacket at him when Logan starts pulling on his boots. Snow blows in through the camper’s back door as Logan stomps into the storm. The door slams shut, leaving Harry a tad warmer, but alone. 

Within seconds, Logan has disappeared into the swirling snow. Harry doesn’t hear the roar of the motorbike, but the howling wind might be loud enough to block it.

Harry grabs his toy wolf and follows Logan outside. The cold hits him harder than one of Dudley’s punches, but he wants to be brave like Logan. He has his coat, and he’s still freezing.

Maybe living in the wild isn’t as great as Logan’s stories. Harry’s grown awfully fond of their truck home, after all, even if he’s sick of sitting in it now.

Harry’s quickly realizing it’s worse out here, but he still doesn’t see Logan.

Harry squints, still seeing the bike under its tarp on the trailer. So Logan walked. Is he hunting? Harry trudges forward, sniffing the air, but even the smell of cleaning chemicals bothered him more than it seemed to bother the Dursleys, he can’t actually sniff out where Logan is.

Harry turns back to go back to the camper, but now he can’t see that, either. He tries to wrap his freezing hands in his toy wolf’s tail. He only gets colder and more lost, until in an instant, he’s back in the truck. Logan’s here, too, growling. “You tryin’ to get sick again, bub?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Forget gettin’ sick. You could’ve died out there.”

Harry shivers, his clothes dripping on the floor. Logan pulls Harry’s coat off him, slinging it over the clothesline as he demands “Do I have to start locking you in here?” 

Harry shrieks. He wants to storm away, but there’s nowhere to hide in here. He whirls towards the door, but Logan grabs him, snarling not to leave.

Harry smacks himself for his stupidity. He’s ruined everything, and now Logan’s not just growling and grumpy, he’s getting mean. He keeps peeling Harry’s wet clothes off, having clearly decided Harry doesn’t deserve them. 

Maybe he’s going to throw Harry out, naked in the snow. Harry wonders if the wolves will take him in, or if he’ll die in the cold. He doesn’t know why Logan’s mad about it, if he’s going to toss Harry out.

But then Logan’s hoisting him up to the loft with the bed, bundling Harry up in the duvet. Not gently, but not cruelly. He’s still muttering about how stupid Harry was, and Harry is unpleasantly reminded of Aunt Petunia.

Harry turns away. He knew it was only a matter of time before Logan realized. Logan’s stopped muttering, but the words replay in Harry’s head until Logan speaks again.

“I ain’t actually going to lock you in here. But you can’t go wanderin’ off. I know we’re drifting around, but you ain’t gonna make it out there yerself.”

Because he’s dumb, and not nearly as strong as Logan. Harry stares blankly at the blankness of snow out the window.

Harry knows he wouldn’t survive without Logan. Logan’s the one getting the food, both buying and hunting. Harry can’t drive, he’d be stuck walking everywhere, and he just learned he can’t walk in this storm.

A while later, Logan says “Yer not dumb, kid, but you can’t keep wandrin’ off. I ain’t losin’ you, got it?”

Harry nods into the pillow. The Dursleys didn’t even care that Harry left, but Logan does. It almost makes up for his anger.

The bike won’t start after the storm. Logan swears at it, and Harry tries to fix it with his powers, even though he doesn’t know how. But then, he doesn’t know how he made it fly, either.

Harry’s careful to stick close to Logan, not straying too far as he hunts for cool rocks.

Logan grabs a toolbox and starts getting to work fixing the bike. Harry watches, fascinated. His toy hadn't had any of these parts, even before Logan chopped part of it off. 

Watching Logan working with the tools, Harry wonders if Logan can fix him, so he doesn’t do stupid things like wander off into the snow.

He grabs Logan’s hand and guides it, tool and all, to the lightning scar on his forehead. 

“It ain’t gonna fix you, bub. There’s no fixin’ us.” Logan puts the tool back in the motorbike. “Ain’t nothin’ to fix.”

At least, not with Logan. His body heals so fast, it’s like it was never broken in the first place.

Harry raps his knuckles against his head. “Yer not dumb, kid.” Logan says. He’s never been one for compliments, but he seems to be trying to make up for what he said during the storm. “You’re better company than anyone else I know.”

Harry glances back at his toy wolf, and Logan smirks. “Yeah, yer better than wolves.”

Harry grins, leaning into Logan. He’s better than wolves, and he doesn’t stay mad like the Dursleys.

Chapter Text

Logan supposes he shouldn’t be surprised when Harry starts collecting things. Some of it’s useful; Harry gathers sticks that they can use as firewood. He’s fallen right into helping with the chores; gathering firewood, helping carry their clothes into the laundromat and load them into the machines. Even helping cook, not that Logan’s much of a cook, himself.

Harry doesn’t help chop firewood, though he clearly wants to. He watches with envy, but laughs, startled, whenever Logan uses an ax instead of his claws.

Harry brings sticks to Logan, one by one, pressing them against his knuckles until he carves them into kindling. Even after the near miss with Logan’s claws during the nightmare, and the destruction of the toy motorcycle, Harry shows no fear whenever they emerge.

Harry’s rock collection ain’t as useful. Harry alternates between intensely studying the small speckles, as if the ordinary rocks might be gold, and hurling them into trees like he’d hurled billiard balls into people at the bar.

Logan smirks. Seems Harry’s practicing for another fight. Logan spends an hour helping Harry improve his technique, and tries not to think about how he’s actin’ like any dad teaching his son to throw a ball. 

Harry hauls a large rock over, drops it at Logan’s feet, and tries to tug Logan’s fist down, tapping impatiently at his knuckles.

“Yer makin’ me feel like a kitchen boy.” Logan grumbles, but he ain’t really annoyed. Slicin’ and dicin’ has always satisfied the darker part of him, and he ain’t indulging in that side as much with Harry around.

Logan has no clue how old Harry is. He ain’t an expert on kids in general and he’s sure Harry’s small for his age. His relatives weren’t feeding him enough, despite eating plenty themselves.

Logan at least makes sure Harry has enough to eat, even if he ain’t suited to look after a kid in any other way. 

With regular meals, Harry’s no longer the runt Logan found in the cupboard. As the weather gets warmer, Harry looks pointedly at the bike.

“Yer gettin’ big.” Logan mutters, as Harry takes his usual place in front of Logan on the saddle. Really, Harry’s probably still small for his age, but Logan was often called a runt, himself. 

Harry tries to curl up in a ball, but it really doesn’t help, and Logan grumbles “I can’t see with yer rat’s nest in my face.”

Harry grunts, glaring, like Logan’s going to pop his claws and shear his hair off or somethin’.

That wasn’t what Logan had in mind. They ride to a dealership selling used bikes, and Logan purchases a sidecar. The salesman tries to charge extra to install it, as if Logan can’t damn well do it himself.

Rather than wandering off and collecting things for Logan to slice, Harry stays and hands Logan tools. Rarely the right ones, but it’s clear he’s trying to help. Harry almost dents the sidecar with a wrench while trying to help, but the thing’s dinged up anyway.

Logan learns Harry dislikes drills with a passion. Even with his headphones, he tugs at his hair when it whirs.

Once the sidecar is attached, Harry promptly ignores it and climbs into his usual seat on the saddle. 

“It’s fer you.” Logan nods at the sidecar, though Harry doesn’t budge. “Ya know I ain’t the snuggly type.”

Harry doesn’t reply, and Logan scowls at the salesman’s smirk.

Logan forces himself in front of Harry, and Harry wraps his arms around Logan. Logan still ain’t sure he trusts Harry to hang on the whole time, but he knows how stubborn Harry is. If Harry’s determined to stay on the saddle, then Logan just wasted his time and money on the sidecar.

Harry actually hangs onto Logan the whole ride back to the truck, and Logan realizes Harry hasn’t only grown physically. He has the sense to hold on, now.

When Logan starts to dismount, Harry tries to hold him on the bike’s saddle, grumbling like the bike’s engine, so Logan takes him for a longer ride before finally stowing the bike on the trailer.

As Logan climbs into the truck, Harry looks slightly forlornly at their bike, perhaps missing the days when they rode it around all day.

“We’d have to leave the truck.” Logan tells him. Logan doesn’t particularly care; he’s used to roughing it, but Harry hesitates, frowning. Logan knows Harry views the truck as home, even if he’s never said so.

Harry glances at his toy motorcycle. He backs far away from the truck and holds his fingers close to his eyes, squinting as he squeezes his fingers close. Logan snorts. From Harry’s point of view, it must look like he’s squishin’ the truck with his fingers. 

“Don’t flatten our truck, bub. I don’t want ta see that trick.” Logan drawls. Logan’s seen Harry teleport, but now, he doesn’t manage to shrink the truck down to pocket size, or whatever he was hopin’ fer. Logan supposes it’s just as well. Harry ain’t exactly in control, and he might as easily blow up the truck as shrink it.

Harry lets out a growl that ain’t nearly as intimidating as Logan’s, flapping his hands in frustration. He pulls a rope from the trailer and drags it from the back of the bike to the front of the truck.

“Tryin’ to tow the truck?” Logan raises a brow, shaking his head. He wonders if Harry could make the truck fly, like he had the bike, but Harry eventually admits defeat.

When Harry climbs into the truck, his reluctance is gone. He doesn’t say it with words, but his face says it’s good to be home.

Logan has no clue when Harry’s birthday is, but he finds himself picking things up for Harry every so often. If anyone says he’s spoilin’ the kid, they’re going to have a chat with his claws.

When Logan hands him a pocket knife, Harry shrieks with excitement. He clenches the knife in his fist, blade poking out between his knuckles.

“That ain’t how you hold a knife.” Logan starts to pull it out and readjust Harry’s grip, but Harry’s fist clamps down on the knife, hard. Of course, Harry’s strength ain’t a match for Logan, but Logan pauses when he sees Harry staring pointedly at his knuckles.

“Yer bein’ me?” Logan asks. No use tellin’ the kid he wouldn’t want Logan’s life. Harry’s carved out his own place in Logan’s life, a feat Logan didn’t think possible anymore.

Logan scowls around his cigar as he watches Harry swipe low-hanging branches with his new knife in his fist. His life ain’t been this peaceful in ages, and he knows it ain’t gonna last. Harry’s going to get hurt; everyone who gets close to him ends up hurt, or worse.

Logan doesn’t know when Harry’s birthday is. He hadn’t remembered his own until Sabretooth started showin’ up to give him a birthday beat-down.

Logan’s going to have to keep Harry away from that. Kid might think he’s tough with that pocket knife, but he ain’t a match for Sabretooth.

Logan would never claim to be a good influence on Harry. He knows he ain’t anyone’s first pick of babysitter, nor is it his first pick of work. Watching Harry growl and bare his teeth at other customers the next time they stop at a seedy restaurant makes that all too obvious.

Harry’s eyes are still drawn to the pool table, until his attention is caught by the man tying his large, wolflike dog to a post outside. The dog smells the meat cookin’ inside and whines. The man snarls and aims a kick at the dog. 

Logan feels his own snarl leave his throat.

Harry tracks the guy through the restaurant like a wolf watching prey, but he slips outside and starts sawing at the leash with his pocket knife. It ain’t doing much, seeing as the leash is a metal chain.

Harry howls. The owner storms out, scowling first at the dog, then at Harry. He doesn’t notice Logan behind him.

The man’s furious shout is knocked out of him as Logan slams him into the brick wall. He struggles, spitting, then wheezes again as Logan jabs his fist against the guy’s throat.

Two claws shoot up, barely avoiding grazing the man’s cheeks, and his struggling abruptly vanishes, his furious slurring about freaks cutting off. 

“You leave them alone, or I’ll give you more’n a middle finger.” Logan growls in the guy’s face. Harry growls at the chain, sawing furiously with his pocket knife.

Logan extends the claws in his other hand and slices through the chain easily. Harry gives his own knife a rather disgusted look, as if it let him down personally.

The guy flees. Ain’t brave enough to fight anyone he can’t simply kick down. Harry leads the dog proudly into the restaurant, either ignoring or not noticin’ the no pets sign.

“I told you we ain’t getting a dog.” Logan huffs as Harry happily feeds the dog steak. Harry howls again. “He ain’t really a wolf, bub.”

Once the dog is done devouring Harry’s steak, it goes for Logan’s until Logan growls at it. 

Of course, now that they’ve freed and fed it, the dog follows Harry as eagerly as Harry follows Logan. Harry starts to urge the dog into the sidecar, and lets out a furious howl when Logan tells him, once again, that they ain’t gettin’ a dog.

Harry’s face is a mix of pride and defiance as he leads the dog into their camper. Logan watches Harry’s face fall as he realizes just how much of their small living space the dog takes up.

“Let him run free.” Logan grunts. “Maybe he’ll join the other wolves.”

Harry shoots Logan a look. Clearly he’d been listening when Logan said the dog wasn’t a wolf. Logan forgets, sometimes, that Harry’s listening even when he’s lookin’ away or making sounds while shakin’ his hands.

The dog starts eagerly shredding Harry’s toy wolf, and Harry lets out a betrayed howl. 

“We keep him here and he’ll tear the place apart.” Logan says. He can already tell this dog has a lot of energy, and keeping it cooped up in a camper ain’t fair. He supposes the same could be said for Harry, but Harry ain’t leavin’.

The dog does, taking the thoroughly chewed toy wolf with it as it disappears down the street.

Chapter Text

Harry can’t stop howling over the loss of his wolf cuddly toy. He’d saved the not-wolf dog, and it repaid him by turning mean like Ripper and tearing his wolf apart. 

Harry shakes his head vigorously, still picturing how it shook the wolf around. He growls at himself, wishing he’d been able to rescue his cuddly toy like he’d rescued the real dog.

Logan doesn’t tell Harry to shut up, but he doesn’t shower him with promises to buy him something better, or even hug him. Harry isn’t throwing a tantrum to get something, like Dudley always does. He just can’t get over how the dog betrayed him.

Logan just raises an eyebrow once Harry calms down. Harry doesn’t know what he means, but Logan mutters “People are gonna think I’m hurtin’ you.”

Harry wonders if people will think Logan’s chewing him up, too. He pets Logan’s hairy arm. Anyone who thinks that is dumb.

Logan climbs into the driver’s seat. As Logan drives, Harry stares out the window, sulking. Cuddling a pillow isn’t nearly as nice as cuddling his wolf had been. He buries his head in it, longing for the soft fur, the reminder that Logan cared for him even when he was sick and really was a useless burden.

The pillow feels fuzzier. Harry lifts up his head. There’s no way his wolf came back, right? 

The pillow is now fuzzy like his wolf was, but it’s still a pillow, not a toy animal. Harry had no idea he could make things fuzzy, and Logan says that Harry always has a new trick up his sleeve.

Harry rubs his arms under his sleeves, wondering if he can make them hairy like Logan’s. It feels nice, but he doesn’t get any hairier.

Logan parks their truck in a forest clearing. They move into the back and climb into the loft, and it would have been awfully crowded with the big dog in the bed, too.

Harry snuggles the fuzzy pillow as he curls up next to Logan.

That night, Harry dreams that Ripper the dog is giant enough to trap Logan in his jaws, shaking him viciously. Logan’s snarling back, hacking with his claws, but they aren’t doing anything. Harry screams and attacks, but he’s unable to stop Ripper as he shreds Logan to pieces. 

No, no, no. Logan said he can heal. Harry stares, aghast, at the stuffing coming out of the torn-off arm. Then he hears a growl.

A wolf pack- Logan’s family- has come, and they are furious to see what happened to Logan. Harry tries to explain that he tried to save him, tries to warn them to run before Ripper tears them apart too, but they close in on him, snarling, ready to devour him.

Harry wakes up panting, something fuzzy against his arm. It’s the stuffing, and he feels Logan’s arm above his head. Harry tries to cram the stuffing back into Logan’s arm, but there’s no hole to stuff it into.

Harry blinks. Logan’s all in one piece. He really had healed, and Harry can see his chest rising and falling. 

Harry lets out a shaky sigh of relief, resting his head on Logan’s chest, hearing his heartbeat. He realizes the stuffing is actually the fuzzy pillow.

Logan rumbles under Harry’s head. “Bad dream, bub?”

Harry clings to the shoulder strap of Logan’s sleeveless shirt. It’s stupid, really. If that had happened, there would have been blood, not stuffing. Logan would say he ain’t a toy, if Harry could tell him about the dream.

“I ain’t your snuggly wolf.” Logan grumbles as Harry keeps cuddling him, though he doesn’t actually push Harry off.

In the morning, Logan takes Harry back into town to visit a toy store. Harry can’t believe it. He’s never been to a toy store before, and hadn’t thought Logan would ever step foot in one, though he must have gotten the wolf from somewhere.

The store has more toys than even Dudley had in his second bedroom. There are toy motorbikes, a toy camper for dolls and every sort of ball Harry could ever imagine; big rubber balls, foam balls, hard little glass marbles. Harry scouts around for the hard, numbered balls he’d thrown in the pub, but there’s no large green table here. 

He finds a box with a picture of a miniature green table with balls and sticks. “Tabletop pool.” Logan snorts, shaking his head at the box. “Ain’t worth it when it’s shrunk down.”

Logan hadn’t wanted him to shrink the camper either. 

There are tons of small plastic animals, including a whole family of wolves. Harry picks them up, but they aren’t very cuddly. He might be able to make them fuzzy, like he had the pillow, but he hasn’t made anything grow larger yet.

Logan nods over at a section of cuddly toys. Harry finds cuddly bears, horses, rabbits, snakes, monkeys, cats and dogs, but no wolves. 

Logan points at a brown cuddly toy that sort of looks like a bear, but it has a longer, bushier tail, golden fur on its face, and a golden stripe along each side. “That’s a wolverine.”

Harry bats the toy against Logan’s dog tags. This is a wolverine? Why did Logan live with wolves, if he’s this instead? It’s clearly not a wolf; it doesn’t look anything like one.

The wolverine toy is soft, and seems happy to cuddle with Harry in a way Logan isn’t always. Harry strokes its brown fur as Logan pays for it at the register.

Harry can hardly believe how lucky he is as he carries his wolverine, walking next to the real one. Logan has given him more than he’d ever dreamed of having. Harry doesn’t have nearly as many toys as Dudley has. He doesn’t have two bedrooms, or even his own bedroom like the cupboard, but he doesn’t mind. 

The next time Harry helps collect firewood, he feels sorry for the trees. They’re watching others get chopped up and carted away, like Harry watched the dog trot off with his torn up wolf. 

One of the trees they leave standing even has a hole where the heart would be. Harry’s heart had felt like there was a hole in it, even though it had been obvious there wasn’t.

Harry helps Logan load the firewood into the trailer, but he can’t shake the sorry feeling. As Logan heads off for a smoke break, Harry unloads the trailer as best he can, carrying the kindling back to the trees. He can’t haul the logs back, and he can’t fix the sticks, but he lays them down gently among the roots.

He feels awful for clawing and hacking branches with his pocket knife, for making Logan cut even more. He’d hurt them so many times, like the dog hurt him.

“What do ya think yer doin’?” Logan asks from behind him. Harry can’t explain without words that he knows how the trees feel. He shakes his head vigorously again, to show about the dog, but Logan doesn’t seem to understand.

“Pick ‘em back up.” Logan points his cigar at the pile. “Yer usually a good helper.” 

Harry scowls. It’s not quite like Aunt Petunia berating him for not being able to hoover, but Harry’s still not happy to hear it. He doesn’t move to pick up the sticks, instead folding his arms over his chest like Logan does sometimes.

Logan studies him, cigar clamped between his teeth again. “Ya tryin’ to make more work?”

Harry stomps his foot. He’s trying to say sorry to the trees. He hadn’t even considered it, any of the other times they collected firewood, just like the Dursleys never considered his feelings about anything. 

A shout escapes Harry. It’s like Logan doesn’t even care about hurting the trees. Harry howls as Logan starts chopping down another one.

“Don’t tell me yer turnin’ into a hippie.” Logan grumbles, not pausing his chopping until Harry tries to pull the ax away. Logan snarls, but stops swinging the ax. Harry keeps shouting.

“What’s eatin’ ya, bub?” Logan demands, folding his hairy arms.

Harry frowns. Nothing’s eating him, except in that dream, and that was a few nights ago, now.

“Something’s botherin’ ya, ain’t it?” Logan changes the words so they make more sense.

Harry stares at the hacked tree and the ax. He thinks about carving a sad face into the tree, so Logan would see how sad it is, but that would hurt the tree too. It’s already dead, though, thanks to Logan chopping it.

Harry marches to the truck, digging around the cab until he finds a receipt and a pen. He sketches a sad tree and cut-up logs, then marches back and thrusts the receipt at Logan.

“The trees ain’t sad.” Logan snorts. “They’re livin’ but they ain’t got any brains.”

That doesn’t make Harry feel any better. Aunt Petunia said he didn’t have any brains, either.

“They don’t feel a thing.” Logan tells him, swinging the ax again. Harry cries in fury.

Instead of the thwack of the ax striking wood, the blade bends as if it’s suddenly made of rubber.

Logan tosses the rubber ax aside and balls his hands into fists. His claws pop out, and Harry briefly braces for an attack. 

“I ain’t gonna hurt you, and I ain’t hurtin’ the trees.” Logan tells him in a somewhat softer voice, even if it’s far from gentle.

“Ya hear me?” Logan asks, rather impatiently. “We’re just gettin’ firewood. You never had a problem with it before.”

Harry nods. He used to be excited, watching Logan hack sticks and logs. It was proof Logan could protect him.

“Ya goin’ to lose yer head if I chop more wood?” Logan asks. Harry slowly shakes his head. Not unless Logan chops his head off, and he’d never do that.

“Don’t turn me rubber, bub.” Logan warns, swiping his claws at the tree instead of Harry.

Harry doesn’t scream as Logan carries the logs to the trailer, but he leaves the kindling with the trees.

Harry’s still amazed how Logan makes everything better, even bad things. Harry had hated when Dudley had sat on him, pinning Harry with his bulk as he punched him, but wrestling with Logan quickly becomes one of Harry’s favorite games.

Logan always says he isn’t cuddly, but he doesn’t seem to mind when Harry clings to him as they roll around the forest floor. It’s really not that different from hugging.

Harry knows Logan could rip him off if he really wanted to, or rip him up, but Logan seems happy to play. He even encourages Harry to claw at him, though he never claws back at Harry. His claws never emerge when they wrestle.

Harry thinks Logan’s probably training him for more pub fights, like when he taught Harry how to throw rocks better.

Logan even comes up with a form of Harry Hunting, but somehow it isn’t cruel like when Dudley and his friends played it. Logan says Harry needs to learn to escape from enemies, as if more people will try playing Harry Hunting for real.

They play a sort of hide-and-seek, where Harry has to notice Logan sneaking up on him, and run before he’s caught.

Harry’s always been fast, and Dudley usually couldn’t catch him. Logan barks instructions as he chases Harry through the trees, telling Harry to run in unpredictable patterns.

Logan catches him and tosses him into a pile of soft leaves. Harry returns Logan’s feral grin as they start to wrestle again. He manages to slip out of Logan’s grip and cling to Logan’s back. Logan tells Harry to claw at his eyes, but Harry doesn’t hurt Logan for real.

“I heal real quick,” Logan reminds him. “Trust me, I’ve had worse.”

Harry still refuses, instead simply hanging onto Logan’s back, not letting himself be shaken off. It’s still a game, because Logan doesn’t try to knock him off against a tree or anything.

“Come on, bub.” Logan sets off back to the truck, carrying Harry on his back the whole way.

Chapter Text

Logan’s been living day to day for as long as he can remember. Likely lived moment to moment when he was a soldier, though he can’t recall being’ one.

Harry embodies living moment to moment. First he’s bringing Logan sticks to hack, then he’s flippin’ out about hurting the trees. At least his tree-hugger phase only lasts an afternoon, because bein’ a lumberjack suits Logan better than most other work ‘round these parts.

Harry’s fascinated when Logan starts carving spare bits of wood with his claws. Logan carves a howling wolf cub for Harry, and Harry attempts carving with his pocket knife. Harry’s carvings don’t resemble any animal Logan’s seen, and Harry hacks at the thing in frustration, almost slicin’ his damn fingers off.

Logan confiscates the pocket knife, and Harry settles for exploring the forest with his stuffed wolverine, probably searchin’ for a real one. Logan ain’t surprised by Harry’s penchant for trying to befriend dangerous animals; kid’s happy livin’ with him, after all.

Occasionally, Harry strays too far, and Logan has to track his scent down. Harry runs further, until Logan catches him and wrestles for a bit. He’s not sure Harry understands when they’re playing their tracking game, and when they’ve stopped.

Still, Logan can’t fault Harry fer wandering. They don’t stick around long. A few towns over, Logan gets cash by cage fighting again, but leaves before he’s too well known as the Wolverine. 

Harry’s hair grows faster than anyone Logan’s known, going all over the place. He tries to shape it into two points like Logan’s hair, or maybe he’s goin’ for wolf ears. Logan snorts, but doesn’t insist Harry get a haircut. He suspects insisting on haircuts would mean at least one a week. 

Once Logan’s hair grows too long, Logan chops chunks off with his claws. It’ll form points soon enough. For all that Harry’s enamored with Logan’s claws, he clearly hates haircuts.

A few days later, Harry hacks his own hair with his pocket knife, and Logan realizes Harry just hates other people cuttin’ his hair. The result ain’t pretty, but Harry’s hair was never neat to begin with, and Logan’s not one to talk about unkempt hair.

They slowly make their way from Canada into the western states. Logan gets a cowboy hat and a job as a ranch hand. Harry mistakes coyotes for wolves, and Logan has to stop him from hunting them down.

Logan gets Harry a stuffed coyote, which he’s likely viewin’ as a wolf. He turns their camper into a damn zoo with toy animals, though some of ‘em are ones Logan carved. Harry adds a length of rope as a snake and shakes it around.

One day, Logan finds Harry intently watching a real snake hiss at him, as if it’s tryin’ to have a conversation. He hauls Harry away, shakin’ his head. Logan may be immune to venom, but Harry ain’t. 

Harry still loves cruisin’ around on the motorcycle, roaring down the road, but he’s clearly curious about horseback riding. Logan ends up leading Harry around on a goddamn pony ride after the guy took one look at Harry and declared him too small for a grown horse.

Harry grunts excitedly, rocking in the hopes it’ll urge the pony faster. Harry seeks speed even more than Logan.

Harry doesn’t bring home any more dogs, though his toy menagerie continues to grow, lined up in the nook between the mattress and the wall. 

One day, Harry returns with a collar and tags, but no dog. He jangles them excitedly as he tries to slip the collar over his head. 

“You ain’t an animal.” Logan tells him, pulling the collar off Harry’s head and slicing the dog tags off. He inspects them and snorts, raising an eyebrow. “You wanna be called Rascal? Suppose yer lucky you didn’t find tags that said Princess.”

Harry shakes his head vigorously, tugging his hair and thumping his chest. 

“Still Harry, huh?” Logan drawls. Harry doesn’t seem to care what’s on the tags, he just wants some like Logan’s. “Didn’t know ya were in the army.” Logan tells him, though Harry clearly doesn’t understand the significance of dog tags. 

Logan finds a spare chain, so Harry’s not walkin’ around wearing a damn collar. Harry ain’t a pet, though people in town seem to think he’s an animal.

Logan ain’t one to keep track of the years, since he hardly ages, thanks to his healin’ factor. The days pass, seasons change. They travel from Arizona to North Dakota, back to Canada for a while before heading to Washington State.

On a random day, Harry presents Logan with a cake he must have stolen. Several of Logan’s cigars are jammed in like candles waiting to be lit.

Logan drawls “Can’t say I’ve had a birthday party before, bub.”

Good thing it ain’t Logan’s real birthday, or Sabretooth would show up and ruin Harry’s plan.

Harry wiggles his fingers like flames, impatiently waiting for Logan to light the cigars.

“Can’t blow these out like candles.” Logan says, sure that Harry’s noticed that Logan doesn’t blow on cigars to put them out.

Logan pulls his cigars out, wipes the frosting off, and lets Harry eat the cake. Harry devours it like a predator with a fresh kill, but he can’t finish the whole thing. Logan ain’t one for sugary crap, but Harry’s surprisingly insistent on sharing.

Logan ain’t a fan of parties either, but he returns the favor a while later, picking a random date to get Harry a cake, a plastic hockey set, and a few more pocket knives that he knows Harry will use as claws of his own.

He’s not spoilin’ the kid; Harry doesn’t have nearly as much as that cousin o’ his, yet Harry ain’t complainin’.

Logan makes sure to stay far away from their truck once his birthday really comes around. When Sabretooth comes knockin’, he smells Harry on Logan’s shirt and says he’s gonna have a snack once he’s finished with Logan. 

The ensuing fight is even more savage than usual, which is sayin’ something. Logan’s never been restrained in a fight, but he doubles his efforts to keep Sabretooth away from Harry. Logan’s still discomfited that he’s so protective of Harry, who would be all too willing to throw himself into the fight, and unlike Logan, wouldn’t see tomorrow. 

Logan survives, heals, and hikes back to their truck. Harry’s missing, of course, though Logan hears a distinct howl. He tracks Harry through the trees, finds him sniffin’ around, much less successfully than Logan.

This time, Logan doesn’t sneak up to wrestle with him. Just strolls up with a lit cigar like nothin’ happened. Harry acts like he successfully tracked Logan down, instead of the other way around, and Logan doesn’t bother to correct him.

Logan knew Harry stuck out from society all along, but it grows more obvious the more Harry grows. Livin’ with Logan sure ain’t helping matters. He’s probably turned Harry half feral, and his temperament seems to be spreading.

He’s noticed that Harry’s abilities mostly surface when he’s angry. Fair enough; Logan’s claws come out when he’s angry, too.

Harry still has no control over his abilities; stuff happens seemingly at random when he’s worked up. His anger’s expressed in snarls and howls, though the same can be said for Logan. 

Though he’s seemingly feral and independent, Harry shows no embarrassment curling up next to Logan at night and snugglin’ his toys. Now that he’s prepubescent instead of the runt kid Logan freed from a cupboard, he’s far too old to be sleeping in Logan’s bed. People might think Logan’s some sort o’ creep. Logan generally doesn’t give a rat’s ass what people think about him, but even he draws the line somewhere.

The dining booth in their camper converts to a bed. No matter how many times Logan tries to get Harry to sleep on that, Harry usually winds up crawling next to Logan, as if the dinette bed ain’t spitting distance from Logan’s.

One day, Logan takes Harry to a dealership with larger, towable campers. They have bunks as well as the dining bed Harry usually rejects, but Logan bets Harry would reject the bunks too.

Harry eagerly explores the upgraded campers, racing back and forth, delighted there’s more space to run. Yet as soon as Logan suggests switchin’, towing their home behind them while the motorcycle lives in the truck’s bed, Harry immediately loses interest. He acts as if removing the truck camper would be dismantling his whole life.

As Harry snarls, the camper’s cabinet’s quiver, and Logan’s gonna end up payin’ anyway if Harry blows the thing up.

“Come on,” Logan growls, tugging Harry out of the camper before his powers wreck it. Harry relaxes once they’re back in their truck home. He clearly doesn’t feel it’s too small, even though it’s been years since he was locked in a cupboard. 

They end up keeping their current camper, to Harry’s relief, and the motorcycle stays on the trailer. 

Their life hasn’t changed much over the years. It hasn’t felt like years, even though Harry insists on makin' him a cigar cake every winter, apparently not noticing that Logan ain't a party person. 

Harry still hasn’t spoken a word, and some of his anger seems to be because Logan doesn’t always understand him. He still launches himself at Logan to wrestle. He finally starts staying in his own bed around half the nights, once they keep their truck camper.

One morning, as Logan converts Harry’s bed back to the dining booth, he sees a letter on the pillow. Scowling, he picks it up. Heavy parchment, a wax seal showin’ animals on a coat of arms. Wonderin’ who Harry took it from, he flips it over.

There's no stamp or return address. Logan's scowl deepens as he reads the address.

Mr. H. Potter

The Dining Booth Bed

The Truck Camper

Banff National Park

Chapter Text

Logan’s glaring at a yellowish envelope when Harry wakes up. That’s never happened before. Nobody sends either of them mail. Who would? They don’t have any friends or family besides each other. They don’t stay anywhere long enough to have an address, and the door on their truck home doesn’t have a mail slot.

“Yer name’s on it.” Logan tells him. Harry has to trust Logan about that, since he can’t read it himself. He hadn’t stayed in school long enough to learn, and his aunt and uncle never read to him or let him look at Dudley’s untouched books.

Aside from pets, the one thing Logan hasn’t given Harry is books, but Harry hasn’t seen Logan read anything except occasionally the newspaper when they stay in hotels or motels.

“Someone’s followin’ us. Knows where ya sleep, even.” Logan scowls down at the bed he makes Harry sleep in, then frowns more as he scents the air. “I don’t smell anyone.”

Harry thinks Logan’s going to drive away, then laughs at how ridiculous that is. Logan never runs from a fight. Sure enough, Logan doesn’t move towards the door.

Harry eyes the letter in Logan’s hand. His curiosity is just as overwhelming as the strange situation. He taps Logan’s knuckles, urging him to extend a claw and use it as a letter opener, but Logan hands the letter to Harry instead.

Harry has never opened a letter in his whole life.

It’s heavy like a newspaper, but it feels different and isn’t as bendy. Harry runs his fingers over the animals on the back, all surrounding the letter H, like his name. A snake, a lion, a wolverine and a bird. No wolves.

Maybe it will tell him where to find those animals. Harry hopes there are maps inside. 

He sets the envelope next to his toy animals and flips open one of his pocket knives. If Logan won’t use his claws as a letter opener, Harry will.

Harry gets a bit too excited and ends up hacking the envelope and letters inside to pieces. It’s quite enjoyable, but he growls at the pieces on the floor. They’re not maps at all, just words. 

It’s useless, and not just because it’s all in scraps.

Logan won’t let him keep a real lion. Harry knows a lion wouldn’t fit in their home, and Mrs. Figg’s cats had scratched up her couch. 

Harry doesn’t think much of the letter as they keep driving around, but the next morning, there’s another yellow envelope with green writing. Just like yesterday’s, but it’s not cut up at all.

Whoever sent it followed them to this town, and Logan says the new envelope has their new location written on it. Not even Logan can smell anyone on the envelope.

This time, Harry gets Logan to open it. 

The envelope holds more thick, yellowish parchment filled with more words Harry can’t read. He watches one of Logan’s eyebrows rise as he reads.

“Dragon hide.” Logan snorts. Harry snorts back. There’s no way to find dragons.

Logan mutters more nonsense words, “Spells. Wands. Broomsticks. Ya gotta be kiddin’ me.”

None of those are real except broomsticks, and Logan doesn’t make Harry sweep. 

Logan starts reading the other paper aloud. Something about a First Class, and then “Dear Mr. Potter, We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of-”

Harry clamps his hands over his ears, trying to drown Logan out by making motorcycle sounds. He hasn’t been called Potter since he went to primary school back in Surrey, and he has no desire to repeat that experience. The school thought he was as troublesome as the Dursleys always said. He was still treated as a problem, still seen as a stain on their usually normal lives. 

School had hardly been the escape Harry had hoped for.

Harry’s perfectly content roaming with Logan and never going to school again. He snarls at the letters in Logan’s hands. 

Logan stops reading, shaking his head. “Wizard school, huh? We’ll see if this jokester thinks he’s funny once I catch him.”

Harry knows it’s a joke. Wizard schools aren’t real, and if they were, they probably wouldn’t be any better than the school he’d gone to. 

When Logan mentions it’s supposedly a boarding school, and explains it means living at the school, Harry hates the thought even more.

Harry eagerly shreds the letter on purpose this time. When it’s just scraps on the floor, he goes outside and runs with his hockey stick held between his legs. He’s always pretended it was a tail, but for some reason, he keeps thinking of it as a broomstick.

He shakes his head vigorously, trying to get the stupid letter out of it.

The next day, they’re in the middle of a forest, but still three envelopes arrive for Harry. Harry runs to Logan, who’s smoking his cigar outside. Shoving the letters into the cigar, Harry grins with satisfaction as they catch fire. He drops them on the forest floor, ready to watch, but Logan stamps them out furiously with his boot.

“You tryin’ ta start a forest fire?” Logan demands, probably thinking it’ll ruin his chances of chopping wood. Harry scowls. He’s seen Logan stamp out lit cigarettes on the forest floor too, though he always picks them back up to shove in his pocket. He’s also seen Logan put them out on his own palm, and watched the burn heal before his eyes.

The following morning, Harry finds an envelope wedged between every animal in the line beside the mattress and another under his stuffed wolverine’s paws, like the wolverine is offering it to him.

Nobody’s following them that Harry’s seen, and Logan’s always teaching him to better watch for that. But Harry’s wolverine has been following him for years.

Harry wonders if his toy wolverine is really alive and evil, like that movie with the killer doll he heard some teenagers in town talking about a while back. 

Harry imagines his wolverine sneaking off at night and getting the letters, now that Harry’s sleeping all night. His wolverine hasn’t tried to kill him yet, like Logan says a real wolverine (or a snake, or a wolf) would. 

Looking around their home, Harry sees more letters stacked up by the dishes and stuffed into their shoes and boots. 

Harry grabs his wolverine by the scruff of the neck and shakes it furiously. He found the jokester, and it’s not funny.

He doesn’t want to claw his wolverine to pieces, but if it’s evil, he’ll have to. He heard the teens say the murderous doll got chopped and burnt at the end. And shot, but Logan doesn’t like guns.

Still holding his wolverine, he clutches his knife claws and aims them threateningly at his toy. He’s never been bothered looking in his toy’s glass eyes, but he avoids them now.

Logan grabs Harry’s wrist before he can stab the wolverine. “What’s gotten into ya, bub?” he asks. “Ain’t he your favorite?”

He’s the jokester. Harry throws his head back and cackles maniacally to get the point across.

Logan keeps his iron grip around Harry’s wrist, and Harry starts to yell. He’s trying to stop these stupid letters from coming. That school sounds like the loony bin Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had discussed shipping him off to. They made that place sound even worse than living under their roof, which didn’t seem possible. 

With his unrestrained hand, Harry whacks his wolverine against the stack of letters, scattering them. 

“Yer wolverine ain’t responsible for this.” Logan huffs, as if Harry’s being ridiculous.

Harry sniffs pointedly. Logan still hasn’t caught a scent of someone else following them and leaving the letters. 

“I’m gonna find whatever comedian’s followin’ us and show him something funny.” Logan growls. He still hasn’t let go of Harry’s wrist, but Harry knows Logan won’t hurt him, especially when it isn’t his fault.

Harry pulls his toy wolverine into a crushing hug, ashamed he was about to hurt it.

“Carrier pigeons ain’t used much anymore,” Logan grumbles, sniffing the newest batch of letters. “And these smell ‘o owls, not pigeons.”

That makes as little sense as the letters themselves. Magic wands and owls. Harry wishes it would quit. 

No matter where they go, the letters follow. Once, Harry wakes up thinking it’s still nighttime, only to realize that letters have been plastered to every window in their home. 

Harry helps peel them off the windows and tries to fold them into paper boats, which he sends down the gutter when it pours that afternoon.

Logan seems furious he can’t sniff out the real culprit. Harry’s furious too. If some loony bin magic school tries to take him from Logan, he’ll sink his knives into them.

After several days with even more letters each day, Harry awakens to Logan’s snarl. He thinks Logan’s having a nightmare until he hears thudding footsteps outside. It’s obviously something giant, like a bear, but bears are quieter.

Outside the window, a massive man, far too big to even fit in their home, clomps towards them. He’s more wild-looking than Logan, with long hair and a long, shaggy beard. 

Logan roars, throwing open the door and launching himself at the giant. Harry follows with a scream that’s much higher than Logan’s, but he’s just as ready to join the fight.

Chapter Text

Logan knows this giant ain’t going to be defeated with just one jab and stab. Just from lookin’ at him, it’s obvious the giant can pack a punch.  It won’t be enough to take Logan down, but it’ll hurt like hell in the moment it takes him to heal.

The guy’s hands are big enough to snap Logan’s bones like a baby bird’s, but he ain’t gonna be breakin’ any today. Logan can’t recall ever breaking a bone; his skeleton is the same mysterious indestructible metal as his claws, even if he has no clue how it got that way.

As Logan hurtles towards him, the giant pulls out a pink umbrella and readies it like he’s plannin’ on spearing Logan on the end. He swings it, and suddenly Logan flies backwards and slams into a nearby tree.

He hadn’t felt anything hit him. 

Logan’s climbing back to his feet as soon as he hits the ground, charging at the giant again. He’s sent sailing back into another tree.

“So, ya want to play that way, huh?” Logan snarls.

A high-pitched scream echoes through the forest; Harry’s grown over the years, but not enough for his voice to drop. Harry launches himself at the giant, gripping his pocket knives, but the giant snags him out of midair, wrapping him in a crushing hug. The knives tumble to the ground.

Harry wriggles and howls, trying to bite through the giant’s moleskin overcoat without any effect.

Logan manages to plunge his claws towards the giant’s chest. He feels his claws puncture something metal in the pocket. Before he’s truly sunk them in, the giant grabs him and slams him into the ground.

Logan snarls, slashing at his ankle, though that hardly incapacitates him.

When Logan throws himself at the giant again, the giant blocks him with a fallen tree, then wraps it around Logan’s torso, pinning his arms tightly to his side.

Trees ain't’ made to bend that way, but Logan’s seen Harry do the impossible time and again. The way the tree pins Logan’s arms prevents him from easily slicing through it. 

Once Harry wriggles out of the giant’s hold, he abandons the giant to try to saw through the trunk with his pocket knife.

Logan would admonish him for his foolish decision, but the giant doesn’t attack further. His coat is a cacophony of scents; uncooked sausages, moldy dog biscuits, chocolate and a live owl, which explains the scent on the letters.

“Couldn’t jus’ talk over a cup o’ tea, could we?” the giant asks, almost pleasantly. “It’s not been an easy journey.”

“Ain’t got any tea.” Logan growls.

“I’d not say no ter summat stronger if yeh’ve got it, mind.” the giant’s black eyes crinkle. “I just want ter talk.”

“I’ve got somethin’ stronger.” Logan doesn’t stop wriggling until he finally manages to free his arm enough to chop through the trunk wrapped around him. Harry hadn’t made much progress with his knife.

“An’ here’s Harry,” the giant says, as if Harry hadn’t just attacked him. “Las’ time I saw you, you was only a baby. Yeh look a lot like your dad, but yeh’ve got yer mum’s eyes.”

Harry closes his eyes and shakes his head, his way of blockin’ out the world.

The giant falters before wishing Harry a happy birthday, pulling a squashed box out of one of his many coat pockets. He offers Harry the chocolate cake with icing that spells Happy Birthday, Harry. 

Logan almost laughs at the giant’s face as Harry pulls a cigar from Logan’s pocket and jams it right in the middle of his own name. Harry’s brave enough to root through the giant’s pockets for another, pulling out a golden key that he jams into the cake too.

“That’s yer Gringotts key.” the giant admonishes, plucking it out.

“Look, bub, we don’t want yer letters.” Logan tells the giant. Harry grunts and retreats into the truck for more cigars. “Harry ain’t a fit fer yer magic school.”

“Call me Hagrid,” the giant says, though Logan couldn’t care less. Clearly Harry couldn’t, either. “Of course he's fit fer Hogwarts. He’s our kind.”

Logan snorts. “He’s not goin’.”

Hagrid grunts. “I’d like ter see a muggle like you stop him.”

Logan bares his teeth in a feral grin as he balls his fists and extends his claws. “Ready fer round two?”

Hagrid ignores him, fishin’ another envelope from a pocket and proffering it to Harry, who’s sticking more cigars in the cake. “I reckon it’s abou’ time yeh read yer letter.”

“We’ve read it.” Logan raises an unimpressed brow, though he smirks when Harry takes the letter and shreds it scornfully. Ain’t as creative as burnin’ them with Logan’s cigars, but it gets Harry’s point across fine.

Hagrid tells Harry he’ll be a thumpin’ good wizard, once he’s been trained at the school his parents attended, that his parents were some of the best. Whatever Harry’s parents accomplished, Harry’s on a different path, and Hagrid’s seemin’ to catch on that Harry ain’t normal.

“What’d yeh do to him?!” Hagrid demands, black eyes dartin’ between Logan and Harry. “He was s’posed to be with the Dursleys. Gulpin’ Gargoyles, yeh turned him feral.”

Logan smirks. “Look who’s talkin’.”

Three’s a crowd. None of ‘em are fit for society.

Harry howls, clawing his hands through the air, though he doesn’t hurl himself at Hagrid.

“Do yeh talk, Harry?” Hagrid asks, and Logan instantly knows he’s got a ton of experience with wild animals. Which Harry ain’t, but Hagrid’s approachin’ him like one now.

Harry flaps his hands, shaking his head. 

Hagrid pulls the live owl out of his coat, along with a quill and parchment to scribble a quick note.

Dear Professor Dumbledore,

Given Harry his letter. Something’s wrong with him.

Hagrid.

The owl takes the parchment and flies away. Harry flaps his hands.

“Yer wrong.” Logan grunts. “Harry’s fine. Better’n most. But we’ve been together fer years, and he ain’t like the kids at that school.”

Logan’s seen the supply list; Harry can’t read any of the books. He can’t tell Logan what he wants to eat unless the menu in whatever diner or fast food joint they’re visitin’ has pictures. He once exploded a can of soup on the stove. 

Logan knows, without a doubt, that Harry would break all the school rules. He doesn’t follow any of society’s rules. 

“He’ll learn at Hogwarts.” Hagrid nods, as if they can start trainin’ Harry like a damn dog. 

“I’d say good luck, but he ain’t going. His pick.”

Logan readies himself for another fight, but Hagrid just watches Harry collect rocks, his eyes forlorn behind his tangled hair.

Logan supposes he has to give Hagrid credit; he’s not declaring Harry broken and discardin’ him as useless. But Logan’s been with Harry long enough to realize he ain’t gonna ever be typical, may not ever live by himself, a future Logan refuses to dwell on. Harry might always need him, and Logan ain’t the type for sticking around and commitin’ to anyplace or anyone. 

He doesn’t know how he hasn’t left Harry yet.

Even if Harry ain’t equipped for Hogwarts, Hogwarts might be better equipped for him. Teachers are surely better suited fer lookin’ after kids than Logan. Except Logan’s seen how parents look at Harry, like they’re relieved their precious angels aren’t him. They tug their kids away from Harry like he’s contagious, though Logan ain’t exactly encouraging them to approach either.

Harry would fit in with Hagrid, at least, but Hagrid’s actin’ like Harry’s some beast to tame. Logan’s never tried to tame Harry; he ain’t tame, himself.

Harry retreats into their home, and Logan takes the opportunity to grab beers from the fridge.

Logan and Hagrid pop open some bottles while Harry reemerges and hunts down rocks for Logan to stab, as if to tell Hagrid not to mess with them.

“Blimey, I had no idea yeh’d be so…” Hagrid trails off, at a loss for words. “That yeh wouldn’t be ready for Hogwarts.”

“Why do ya want him so much?” Logan asks. Why track Harry all around with the letters? Surely they'll view Harry as a problem at their school.

Hagrid starts to tell a story of dark times, a war. A man who Hagrid refuses to name was gainin’ power and followers, and Harry’s parents  fought against him.

“You-Know-Who came to yer house ten years ago. On Halloween.” Hagrid’s still speakin’ to Harry even if he ain’t showing he’s listening. “You was just a baby. He went to your house an’… an’…”

Hagrid sobs through telling of the death of Harry’s parents, and naming several others. Logan ain’t one to cry over death, and Harry barely reacts to the news his parents were murdered.

The real mystery, according to Hagrid, is that the evil wizard tried to kill Harry after killin’ his parents. He pointed his wand at Harry and cast a fatal curse, but Harry survived. 

Hagrid tells them the scar on Harry’s forehead is the mark of the curse. His eyes blaze with a sort of respect mixed with pity as he tells Harry “No one ever lived after he decided ter kill them. No one except you.”

“Yer just like me, bub.” Logan smiles crookedly at Harry, who presses into Logan’s side and starts smacking his own forehead.

Hagrid tries to calm Harry, but talkin’ to him like a wounded animal just makes him withdraw even more. Harry darts away and starts shredding leaves, grass, anything green he can find and reach with his knives.

At a loss, Hagrid peers into the window, at the toy animals still arranged by Logan’s bed. “You like animals, Harry? Yeh like dogs? I’ve got a boarhound named Fang.”

Harry bares his teeth, as if Hagrid or his dog will suddenly run off with his toys, but otherwise shows no interest in Hagrid’s words.

“What happened to the wizard?” Logan grunts, finishing his third beer and opening a fourth.

Hagrid says it’s an even bigger mystery. He vanished after failing to kill Harry. “Some say he died, but I reckon he’s still lurkin’ out there, waiting for his next move.”

Clearly, they think Harry beat the wizard. Logan bets Harry just survived, and the guy was so ashamed of losin’ to a baby that he fled. He wonders how Harry would do against him now, whether Harry would hit him with a rock, or knife him. 

“Ya want Harry to beat him again?” Logan asks, though he doesn’t wait for an answer. Are they seriously relying on a kid? Logan’s seen what Hagrid can do himself, yet Hagrid ain’t huntin’ the wizard down for whatever reason.

Logan drains another beer and crumples the can. “Tell ya what. You ever find this You-Know-Who, come find me. I’ll make sure he dies this time.”

Chapter Text

Sunlight streams through the windows the next morning. At first, Harry thinks Hagrid had been a dream, but then he sees a huge lump sleeping outside.

What is he still doing here?! Harry’s not leaving Logan to go to a magic school. He’d slashed the letter right in front of Hagrid to prove it. 

At least with Hagrid still here, there aren’t any new letters stuffed into their home. But the letters were easier to get rid of.

Is Hagrid planning on staying around like a pet? Logan wouldn’t allow that. A wolf and a lion would be too big to live with them, and Hagrid’s gigantic. He can’t fit in their truck, but maybe as a wild man he wants to live outside anyway.

Harry creeps out of his home and whacks Hagrid with his toy wolverine until he wakes up.

“Was going to take yeh shopping today in London.” Hagrid tells him, which sounds much better than going to school.

“London,” Logan snorts from behind them. “There’s an ocean in the way. How’d ya get here?”

“Flew.” Hagrid nods at their motorbike. “I took yeh on a flying bike when you were a baby. Got it from yer dad’s friend-”

Hagrid stops talking, suddenly furious, but he doesn’t smack Harry, even though his hands are big enough to send Harry flying.

Harry laughs. Logan doesn’t have friends, until he realizes Hagrid was talking about the dad Harry doesn’t remember.

Hagrid tells Harry he looks just like his dad, and Harry doesn’t know which one. He has dog tags and clothes just like Logan’s. 

“Harry made my bike fly.” Logan grunts, lighting up a cigar.

Harry closes his eyes, remembering sailing over the elk with Logan and stopping the crash. He hadn’t stopped the crash that killed his parents, but there hadn’t been one. Hagrid said they were killed by a bad wizard, and he couldn’t kill Harry for some reason. Which means Harry’s like Logan. 

The story last night had made his scar burn, and he’d seen green brighter than the most hideous hotel wallpaper. 

Harry shakes his head, hoping it won’t burn again, and climbs onto the motorbike. If he can make it fly, they can fly to London to go shopping.

“There ain’t any use buying supplies when yer not goin’.” Logan tells him.

“There’s other things ta buy.” Hagrid says, then mutters that he can’t believe Harry Potter isn’t going to Hogwarts. 

“We best be off.” Hagrid says. “I’ve got important business ter attend to. Dumbledore trusts me to do important things fer him. Fetchin’ you, getting things from Gringott’s. That’s the wizard bank.”

Harry doesn’t want to be fetched. He’s not a ball. He climbs off the bike and rushes into their home.

Hagrid seems to sag a bit before finally turning to trudge through the trees.

“That ain’t the last of him,” Logan mutters, but it feels like it is. They don’t receive any letters as they drive to a new town. Everything’s back to normal, as it should be, as if the letters and Hagrid really had just been an elaborate dream.

Harry’s glad to be picking up their usual supplies the following day, not weird wizard school supplies.

A grey tabby cat sits stiffly, watching as Harry helps Logan fill up their truck at the petrol station. It stays as they fill up spare cannisters.

The tabby watches as they pick out beef jerky, which Harry tears into before they reach the register. It follows as they get jeans, not strange robes. 

No matter where they go, the cat is there, just like how the letters showed up every morning.

Mrs. Figg’s cats never followed Harry this much. Logan was right, they aren’t being left alone. Harry starts to growl, scratching stripes across his face like whiskers. 

“I know the cat ain’t right,” Logan grumbles near Harry’s ear, and he’s never said that about Harry. “Smells off.”

The cat suddenly disappears, and a severe woman stands in its place. She has a tight bun and glasses that look like the shapes around the cat’s eyes.

“Stop that, Mr. Potter,” she demands. “Throwing a tantrum at your age.”

It’s not one of the tantrums Dudley always had. The comparison makes Harry madder; they won’t leave him alone and then they say stuff like that?! He stops clawing his face but howls at her.

“What did those awful people do to you? I’m glad you’re not with them anymore, but I’d expect that you’d-“

“Harry ain’t what ya were expectin’?” Logan cuts her off. Everyone seems disappointed in him except Logan. “They kept him locked in a cupboard.”

“Is that why he hasn’t said a word?”

Logan shrugs. “His brain ain’t made fer talkin’. Mine ain’t either, so scram and stop spyin’ on us. We already told the giant he’s not goin’ to yer school.”

“I knew Harry couldn’t live there.” the lady shakes her head, her lips thinning. She gazes at Harry, then turns back into a cat and slinks away.

For a few days, there are no cats or letters or giants, until Hagrid appears once again. “Haven’t gotten yer present yet.” he says. “I wanted ter take yeh myself.”

Harry shrieks at him. How many times does he have to say no?

There’s a sudden burst of flame, but none of the trees are burning. A fiery bird appears out of nowhere, beating its red wings. An old man pops in with the bird, holding its tail feathers. The man doesn’t look wild at all. He has a long, purple cloak, the longest silver hair and beard Harry’s ever seen. His nose looks like it’s been broken, so Harry doubts he heals like Logan.

Wondering if Hagrid flew with a giant bird, Harry flaps his hands. The bird flies to perch atop their home. 

“Professor Dumbledore,” Hagrid sounds relieved, like this guy will fix everything.

“Good morning, Hagrid.” Dumbledore’s eyes twinkle behind fragile-looking glasses, and Harry avoids them immediately. “Good morning, Harry.”

It’s not a good morning, and it gets worse when Dumbledore says “You’re a long way from your aunt and uncle.”

Harry stiffens. Logan said he’s never going back there. He grips Logan’s wrist and closes his eyes, shaking his head. He wants Dumbledore and Hagrid to leave him alone, and he and Logan can go back to riding around in peace.

“Long time, too.” Logan drawls around his cigar. “He’s been with me fer years, and ya haven’t noticed?”

“Arabella did report she hadn’t seen you.” Dumbledore muses.

“‘Course not.” Logan’s voice is a rumbling growl now. “They kept him locked in a cupboard.”

Harry hums, hating to be reminded of where he was before, but he still can’t quite drown them out.

“It wasn’t ideal.” Dumbledore is saying, “Minerva did say they were the worst sort, far worse than I anticipated, I fear. She’s given me a thorough rebuke for placing Harry with them, but it was necessary to protect him from Voldemort.”

“We ain’t had any trouble from wizards ‘til yer letters and you lot showed up.” Logan growls, and the telltale snikt of his claws sliding out is a welcome sound. “And if anyone comes knockin’, I can handle ‘em. Already told Hagrid I’d take care o’ yer Dark Lord.”

Harry reaches up, snatches the glasses from Dumbledore’s crooked nose and smashes them on a rock. 

Dumbledore pulls out a stick and waves it. The glasses are whole again, as if Harry had never smashed them.

Harry smashes them again, and Dumbledore waves his stick to fix them again. And again. And again.

“You’ll learn how to break things at Hogwarts. And fix them.” Dumbledore waves his wand again. The glasses float back to his face and turn into sunglasses that hide his intense gaze. “You’ll make things fly, or change into other things.”

Harry’s done a lot of that already on his adventures with Logan. 

Why couldn’t they have left him with Logan when his parents were killed? Harry presses his toy Wolverine into Logan’s arms. Harry could’ve been a baby wolverine, and lived with Logan his whole life. He never would’ve had the Dursleys saying he was a freak, a worthless burden and a waste of space.

Logan doesn’t cradle the toy, instead handing it back to Harry. Harry frowns. He’s never seen Logan coo over a pram like so many other grownups. Would Logan have taken him when he was a baby?

“Harry,” Dumbledore says. Harry doesn’t respond, even when Dumbledore calls his name several more times. He’s too busy wondering if Logan would have rejected him back then. 

Hagrid whispers, not very quietly, that something’s wrong with Harry’s head.

“I have a colleague, a friend, whose expertise in the mind surpasses my humble understanding.” Dumbledore says. “Professor Charles Xavier will be able to help you. Both of you.”

Harry’s avoiding Dumbledore’s eyes and he can still tell they’re not twinkling as much now. Dumbledore doesn’t seem as happy to see him now that they’ve met, like almost everyone else. 

Logan’s the only person who isn’t disappointed in him or ashamed.

“We don’t need a shrink.” Logan snarls, and Dumbledore smiles like he’s used to grumpy, scowling people. He stays a lot calmer than Logan.

“You need help. Doctor Xavier will be able to help you find some answers.”

“We ain’t interested in seein’ any doctor.” Logan still has his claws out, but he hasn’t swung them or stabbed anyone. Harry hopes he’ll hack Dumbledore’s hair and beard.

“He’d happily welcome you into his home.” 

Harry glances at their home. The fiery bird is still there, and Dumbledore calls it a fox. He must be dumb like his name to not know the difference.

Harry wishes he could voice that thought, just to see Dumbledore’s face. He knows what befuddled looks like; Dudley had that expression a lot.

Harry flaps faster, to calm down and say it’s a bird. The bird flaps with him, flying over to perch on Harry’s shoulder. Harry shouts at the clawed talons digging into his shoulder, suddenly reminded of Aunt Petunia’s bony hands snatching him.

The bird flies above him but starts crying, and a few tears land on Harry’s head when he cranes his head back to howl.

Harry shakes himself to get the tears off.

Dumbledore calls Harry’s name again as if he’ll suddenly respond like other kids. Harry flaps at the bird until it swoops to perch on Dumbledore’s shoulder. Dumbledore calls it a fox again.

“Yer plannin’ something.” Logan growls at Dumbledore. “Leave us out of it. No point hangin’ around now, so get outta here.”

Harry tries to give Hagrid a shove, but he doesn’t even budge, 

“I still want ter get yeh a birthday present.” Hagrid says. 

Harry bares his teeth.

“Perhaps I can interest you in a parting drink?” Dumbledore offers.

“Now yer speakin’ my language.” Logan grins.

Harry starts to climb onto the motorbike, but Dumbledore says his fox bird will take them. 

Dumbledore waves his wand, shrinking their truck and motorbike until they’re no bigger than Harry’s toys. Harry never managed to do that, but he clings to their home tightly, peering into the tiny windows. Their beds and the cooker and all his toys are tiny, too.

“I’ll fix them,” Dumbledore promises. Harry bares his teeth. He’d better.

They have to grab onto Fawkes’ tail, all crowded together. Harry hates it. There’s a flash of fire, and the forest disappears. Instead, they’re outside a pub on a street full of hamburger restaurants and cinemas.

Harry looks at his hands, relieved he’s still holding their shrunken vehicles. If they’d left them behind, he probably would have broken down again, and he’s grateful Dumbledore made it so he could bring them.

He still doesn’t want to go to Hogwarts, but he wants to learn to make them shrink and grow, so he can shrink their home and they can carry it while riding around on the motorbike. And he wants to learn to make the motorbike fly all the time.

He can learn that without Hogwarts, right? He’s learned how to make a fire and fight with Logan, and he hasn’t been to school in years. 

The inside of the pub is smoky and grubby, like most of the ones Harry and Logan have visited and fought in over the years. Knowing that Aunt Petunia would have hated the pubs makes Harry love them more.

This pub doesn’t have a billiards table, but it quiets down when they arrive, and Harry finds himself liking it enoromously. 

He gazes around, wondering who they’re going to fight. The old lady smoking a pipe that’s far bigger than Logan’s cigars? A tiny guy in a top hat at the bar? The toothless old man making drinks? Maybe everyone.

Everyone calls out Hagrid’s name, and Harry wonders whose side Hagrid will join.

“The usual, Hagrid?” asks the old, toothless man behind the bar.

“The usual, Tom. And more for my friend.” Hagrid nods down at Logan, then asks “What’ll yeh have, Harry?”

“Bless my soul,” Tom gasps. “It’s Harry Potter.”

Tom surges from behind the bar, gripping Harry’s hand so he can’t even grab his pocket knives. “Welcome back, Mr. Potter. Welcome back.”

All the chairs scrape, and suddenly everyone is trying to shake his hand. Harry manages to pull his knife out of his pocket, but can’t even flip it open before someone else grabs his hand and pumps enthusiastically. There’s a mess of words around him, Doris and Diggle and it doesn’t make any sense. Harry yanks his hands away and clamps them over his ears.

Over Harry’s shouts, he hears Logan say “Stop crowdin’ him.”

The crowd disperses a bit, but a pale man in a purple turban comes up. Dumbledore and Hagrid greet him as Professor Quirrell. He seems to have trouble speaking, not as much as Harry, but he stutters over his words. “P-P-Potter, c-can’t t-tell you how p-pleased I am to meet you.”

Harry can tell Logan isn’t pleased. He’s scowling, sniffing the air, and then growls “You smell toxic.”

Logan’s claws pop out, and he slices the turban off Quirrell’s head. Several people scream. 

There’s another face on the back of Quirrell’s face, with skin so pale it’s almost white. It has horrible red eyes and no nose, and everyone in the pub shouts. Harry hears “You-Know-Who!” and “Get him!” 

Several people pull out their wands, but Logan has already plunged his claws through Quirrell’s face. The tips poke out eyes of the hideous snake face, as blood splatters, and Quirrell’s body goes limp.

Harry rushes forward to join the fight, and Quirrell’s body burns and peels under his hands. Wow. He doesn’t even need claws.

Logan pulls his claws out of the limp body, which crumples to the floor. The evil face disappears as the body turns to dust. 

Logan turns to Dumbledore like nothing’s happened. “I believe ya offered ta buy me a drink?”

Chapter Text

Logan strolls over to the bar, lighting up a cigar. The stool pulls itself out for him.

The bartender, Tom, offers him a rag to wipe the blood and brain matter from his claws, then shakes his head and vanishes the mess instantly with his wand.

Tom’s smile is toothless as he’s quick to assure Logan his drinks are on the house fer life. Logan snorts. Tom has no clue how long he’s promisin’ that for- Logan himself ain’t sure how old he is, but he hasn’t aged in the decade or so he remembers.

The drinks here ain’t normal beer, or even Sake. The Leaky Cauldron serves Butterbeer, which sounds too damn sweet, and Firewhiskey. Logan orders the latter, wonderin’ if these wizards mean the fire part literally. They don’t have apple juice for Harry; instead they have pumpkin juice. 

Tom serves Logan and Harry before Hagrid, despite Hagrid clearly bein’ a regular. Harry places their shrunken truck and motorcycle near Logan’s glass, then backs away. His hands and fingers dance like nervous flames, and the stench of burnt flesh still lingers from when he touched Quirrell.

“Thanks fer the backup, bub.” Logan says, and Harry’s fidgetin’ becomes a bit less frantic.

Logan ain’t surprised that Harry can burn stuff- his evident magic means he has a vast variety of powers- but Harry seems concerned he’ll burn their miniaturized home like he burned Quirrell.

Harry needs to learn control, sometime, but it ain’t gonna be at Hogwarts. Where then? And how much of his magic is he capable of controlling, when he can’t control his mouth to speak or his outbursts?  Logan counts himself lucky that Harry can at least control his bladder.

As Logan knocks back a few Firewhiskeys, Dumbledore works on calmin’ the patrons. They all seem to respect him, and the panic over the return of the unnamed wizard and his immediate demise slowly subsides with Dumbledore’s words.

Soon, everyone in the pub starts crowdin’ them again. This time, they’re focused on Logan, practically worshippin’ him. The tiny man in the top hat actually bows to him, even though this ain’t Japan.

They’re callin’ him another savior. Logan shakes his head. He’s never gotten this reception during his cage fights, and he’s not a fan. He ain’t after adoration, he just wants them to leave him alone. Usually, his demeanor discourages others from approachin’, but his scowls and growls don’t seem to work on this lot.

Dumbledore notices Harry’s distress, and with a wave of his wand, a pair of earmuffs materializes over Harry’s head. Harry startles but grins- his usual pair is shrunken down in their truck.

Hagrid rambles about how he’d talked of meetin’ Harry when he came here after Harry’s birthday, how it’s all his fault Quirrell was waiting, how he thought You-Know-Who was out there but didn’t think he was here.

“Pull yerself together.” Logan grumbles. Hagrid’s sobbin’ as he slurs that at least the Stone is safe now. Harry doesn’t look over, but Logan can smell his interest at the mention of a stone. Probably wants it fer his collection.

“Hagrid,” Dumbledore rebukes, far gentler than Logan’s ever been.

Hagrid shakes himself slightly. “Still need ter get Harry’s present. He needs some cheerin’ up after all this."

Logan stuffs the toy-size truck and motorcycle into the pocket of his leather jacket and Hagrid leads them out the backdoor. Dumbledore stays to handle the situation inside.

They’re crammed into a courtyard only a bit bigger than Logan’s truck, surrounded by bricks. Hagrid pulls out his umbrella and starts counting bricks. Harry pulls out his pocket knives and starts tryin’ to carve away at them, tugging impatiently on Logan’s hand when his own progress is too slow.

Before Logan can even think of buryin’ his claws in the bricks like Harry wants, they rearrange themselves into an archway big enough for Hagrid to get through, revealing a twisting cobbled street full of shops.

“Welcome to Diagon Alley.” Hagrid says.

Harry crouches down to inspect a gap in the cobblestones, possibly wonderin’ if one of them is the stone Hagrid had mentioned. 

Hagrid looks slightly disappointed at Harry’s lack of amazement, then shakes his head again and mutters to himself “He jus’ saw him, he’s in shock.” 

Logan hauls Harry to his feet and leads him through the twisting path. They stand out, but they ain’t the only ones dressed in jeans. Many people are dressed in robes like Dumbledore’s, though few are as vibrant.

They pass a bookshop, some place sellin’ brooms, an Owl Emporium that Logan hopes they ain’t goin’ to. 

“That’s Gringotts,” Hagrid nods at a slanted structure near the end of the street. “Wizard bank. Harry’s mum and dad left him some money for school, but if he’s not going…”

“I don’t need handouts.” Logan grumbles. He and Harry are doin’ fine. Besides, Hagrid looks and smells like he lives in a hut. He’s hardly one to judge them fer livin’ in a truck.

Hagrid leads them back to the Owl Emporium, and Harry hoots back at the owls, flappin’ his arms. Logan folds his arms over his chest. “We ain’t gettin’ a pet.” 

“They’ll carry yer mail.” Hagrid says.

“We don’t get any mail.”

Harry starts laughing, as if Logan’s forgotten the letters that got shoved in their home every morning.

Hagrid frowns. “How else will we write?”

Logan snorts. “What makes ya think we want to? I already killed yer evil wizard, but I ain’t gonna be at yer beck and call to solve all yer problems.”

Harry’s already dartin’ into the shop, gazing at all the caged owls. He swings his toy wolverine at one, like he’s tryin’ ta cut the door open.

Logan sighs. Harry’s gonna want to free every owl from its cage, no doubt reminded of when he’d been locked up. It’s been a few years since he freed the dogs on the plane, but he still always wants to play the hero. He’s already got his knives out, tryin’ to saw the bars apart, though the owl inside ain’t happy about the blades. It screeches at Harry, ruffling its wings.

Harry growls at Logan, as if wonderin’ why he ain’t helping. Logan’s not a fan o’ keeping animals in cages, but he ain’t the type to free all the animals in a pet store, either.

Exactly why Harry wants an owl is a mystery to Logan. Harry hadn’t liked it when Dumbledore’s bird landed on him. He hadn’t liked the letters the other owls had brought. An owl might use Harry’s toys as hunting practice.

Hagrid helps Harry pick out a snowy white owl. It’s asleep, with its head under its wing. “It ain’t a toy.” Logan tells Harry, since the owl ain’t movin’ right now. “It’s alive, but it ain’t going to be livin’ in the truck with us.” 

At least the owl can hunt fer itself. He doesn’t like the thought of an owl followin’ them around, but they were bein’ followed already.

They head back to the Leaky Cauldron, and Logan scowls when he sees it swarmed with reporters. They’re takin’ statements about how You-Know-Who had returned and been defeated.

“There they are!” the tiny wizard in the top hat points excitedly. “Harry Potter and the new savior!”

Logan scowls as cameras flash in their direction. Reporters shout questions and comments at them. “Harry, how do you feel about heading to Hogwarts?”, “You saved us twice!”, “Mr. Logan! Mr. Logan!”

It’d be a cacophony for anyone, and Harry’s quickly overwhelmed. The owl wakes up and starts hootin’ and flapping, and Logan knows it won’t be long before Harry joins it.

Logan doesn’t comment, doesn’t want anything to do with the press. There’s a reason he leaves towns before the Wolverine becomes too known at cage fights.

He stalks out of the pub with Harry in tow, back to the ordinary world. Logan finds a secluded alley for Dumbledore to return the truck and motorcycle to their original size.

Logan slices through the cage bars for Harry, letting the owl out, though he doesn’t let it in the truck.

As he and Harry climb back inside, Logan mutters “They ain't ever gonna leave us alone, now.”

Harry groans, thumping the door and clearly hating the attention as much as Logan does.

Chapter Text

They’ve left the pub and the alley with all the magical people, but there are groups of cloaked people hugging and whispering no matter where they go. A few of them even see him and point excitedly.

The cloaked people are everywhere now. Maybe they followed Harry and Logan out of the pub.

Same with the owls. They swoop through the sky, and Harry wonders if someone freed all the owls in the store. He can’t see them clearly enough to recognize any of them.

Harry’s white owl joins the others in the sky, and she’s a bit easier to spot, except when the sun’s too bright. She’s part of the owl party, while the witches and wizards party below.

Harry and Logan don’t join the party, but Harry doesn’t mind. He likes his cigar cakes with Logan just fine without a crowd.

After a while, Harry’s owl swoops back to fly alongside them, and Logan eventually lets her in the truck when they park for the night.

Instead of letters, Harry’s owl brings dead mice, which she drops in line with Harry’s toy animals. Logan makes Harry toss them out, saying they’ll reek. 

Harry’s owl frequently perches on his shoulder, or on his hair. Her claws don’t bother him, unlike Dumbledore’s not-a-fox bird.

The owl spends so much time perching on Harry that Logan says she looks like a second head. Or a wig.

The thought echoes through Harry’s head until he realizes he’s thinking of his owl as Hedwig.

He wonders if Hedwig wants to carry mail like all the other owls, so he gives her his old, chopped-up toy motorbike to carry around. While she’s gone, he starts to worry she’ll give it to someone else, but she returns with the toy still grasped in her talons, along with a newspaper.

She drops the paper and perches on Harry’s shoulder, lightly tugging his hair with her beak.

Hedwig’s in the photo on the front page, along with Harry and Logan. And they’re moving, like a telly screen on mute. Harry’s shaking his head as the cameras flash, and Logan’s glaring and pulling Harry out of the frame.

Logan starts reading the story and snorts. “I ain’t a superhero.”

He’d killed the evil wizard though, and Harry helped. Harry rather likes the idea of killing villains with Logan, but he hates all the attention. He’d been treated like a hero and a disappointment at the same time, which was almost worse than just being seen as a burden.

Harry wishes everyone was like Logan, who doesn’t treat Harry like he’s special or useless. Logan sees Harry as just Harry.

The newspaper doesn’t. Logan’s voice drops to a growl as he reads “The Killing Curse seems to have addled the young Harry Potter, similar to the fate of Frank and Alice Longbottom after suffering the Cruciatus Curse.”

Logan tosses the newspaper at Harry. “Feel free to shred it, bub.”

Harry stares at the picture. As much as he’d hated Privet Drive and is glad not to have seen it for years, he can’t help thinking about how there had been countless photos of Dudley framed in gold. 

They don’t have any pictures on the walls of their home; Logan can’t be bothered, and Harry only draws if he has to in order to get his point across.  

Even if this isn’t the best family photo, it has all of them: Logan, Harry and Hedwig. Even his toy wolverine, tucked under his arm.

Harry carefully slices around the edge of the photo and sticks it at the end of the line of his toy animals before shredding the rest of the newspaper.

Now that Dumbledore made their truck and motorbike their real size again, they’re sort of stuck in England, like when Logan first rescued him before they freed the dogs on the plane.

They can’t exactly bring their home on a plane, and Harry refuses to even think about leaving it behind. Still, he wants to leave. The wizard parties have finally ended, but Harry wishes they were back in Canada or the States, where nobody knew or cared who they were.

Sitting beside Logan in the front of the truck, Harry pokes a map insistently, making sure Logan looks. It really isn’t fair for Dumbledore to strand them here. Couldn’t his bird have at least taken them back, too?

“We’ll have to take a boat if we want to get our home overseas.” Logan tells him. “You wanna see Japan, bub? We ain’t gonna be celebrities there.”

Harry doesn’t know anything about Japan, aside from a dim memory of a golf joke he heard his uncle tell at dinner parties. He never understood what made it funny, but he’d always been locked in his cupboard anyway.

A boat trip sounds boring, and far too long. Flying is so much faster.

He doesn’t want to go to Hogwarts, but he wants to learn magic, so he can shrink their truck and motorbike down again. Maybe he could shrink himself and Logan to bug size, so Hedwig could fly their truck to Canada with them inside. Or she could carry their truck while they flew alongside on the motorbike.

Harry cuts a branch off a tree and waves it like a wand, but nothing happens.

He climbs atop their home, but his weight doesn’t help squeeze it down. He lugs the largest rocks he can carry up the ladder, and tries to squash the truck down that way.

Logan tells him to quit it, and Harry drops the stones off the roof so they thud on the ground. 

Harry waves his hands wildly, but he has no clue how to get his magic to listen. It’s almost worse knowing Dumbledore can do it but he can’t. He’s no closer to shrinking their truck than he was before the letters and witches and wizards showed up.

Hogwarts can’t be the only way to learn magic, can it?

As they drive through Devon, Harry sulks part of the time and bounces on the seat, trying to squash it down. He groans when nothing happens, and Hedwig nips his ear affectionately. 

They pass through a small town called Ottery St. Catchpole without stopping, but Hedwig swoops out the window, headed down a dirt road. Logan drives the truck down that road too, but mutters “I ain’t followin’ yer bird.”

At the end of the road is a ramshackle house that looks like it’s being held up by magic. Harry sees three figures on broomsticks dip beneath the trees, and flaps excitedly. If they can get broomsticks to fly, surely they’ll know how to make their motorbike fly forever. Maybe they can show Harry how to shrink their truck.

Logan sniffs and scowls. “I smell a rat.”

Chapter Text

Logan eyes the cobbled-together house- The Burrow, according to a sign out front- and scents the air again. The aroma of home cooking is soured by the stench of a terrified rodent, but even that scent is wrong, like the cat who turned into a woman. At least Harry’s bird ain’t really a person in disguise- it smells like any other owl. 

Harry’s owl follows him everywhere, and Harry always looks scandalized when Logan calls it “the bird”. He’s probably named it by now, but seein’ how he ain’t a talker, he’s never called it by name. 

Logan has no clue what a kid would name a bird. Feathers? Snowy? Even Dumbledore’s bird had a name as bizarre as his own.

Harry doesn’t seem to sense anything off about this place. Even his dislike of wizards appears to have disappeared; he’s scrambling out of the truck towards a tree-lined field, his owl flappin’ behind him.

Logan follows Harry rather than the scent of the rat. When they reach the field, Logan sees three redheaded boys- two of them identical twins- swoopin’ around on broomsticks as they toss apples to one another.

Logan thought the letter was kiddin’ about broomsticks, but the alley had a store sellin’ them too.

“Blimey, you’re Harry Potter!” one of the twins says.

“And you’re that bloke that stabbed You-Know-Who.” the other says to Logan. “That was bloody brilliant! Didn’t even need a wand!”

“You didn’t have a wand as a baby, did you, Harry?” the first twin asks. “You fought him off without one this time, too. What’d You-Know-Who look like in the back of that bugger’s head?”

Harry, of course, doesn’t answer. He’s eyeing the broomsticks, makin’ his motorcycle sounds, even though they clearly ain’t the same.

The boys suddenly look unsure. 

“Are you really-” the youngest boy starts, then hesitates. “Um. Did the Killing Curse… hurt you?”

“How thick are you, Ron?!” one twin snaps. “It gave him a lightning scar. Of course it hurt!”

“You know what I mean! The Prophet said he’s barking!” Ron retorts, then glances guiltily at Harry. “The Prophet’s not always right.”

Harry’s revvin’ louder now, shakin’ his head and hands, as he always does when people discuss his scar. 

The boys gawk until they suddenly become very interested in the trees surrounding the field. Logan snorts. He ain’t concerned with rudeness.

The twins ask to see Harry’s scar. When Harry doesn’t bother to show it, they ask to see Logan’s swords. Logan ain’t here for showing off, but Harry grabs his hand, obstinately tryin’ to curl his Logan’s fingers into a fist. Logan refuses to pop his claws.

“Sorry, Harry.” Ron mutters. “Um- do you talk?”

“No.” Logan says simply. Ron and the twins jump, like they’d forgotten he was there. They all quickly turn back to Harry as he approaches Ron, reachin’ out for the broom.

“Have you played Quidditch?” Ron asks, holding the broom out for inspection. “This is a Cleansweep.”

As Ron gushes about the Nimbus Two Thousand on display at Quality Quidditch Supplies, Harry takes Ron’s broom, scowling slightly, and brushes the end across the grass.

“You don’t really sweep with it!” Ron exclaims, laughing “You’ve been living with Muggles this whole time, haven’t you? But you have an owl now. She’s beautiful. Dad got Percy an owl for becoming a prefect, but I just got his old rat.”

“About that rat-” Logan starts, but Harry’s tuggin’ Ron across the field, back towards the truck. If he thinks Logan’s takin’ another kid, he can think again.

“Do you live in there? And it’s not even bigger inside?!” Ron stares in disbelief at the camper on the bed of the truck, glancing back at his own rickety house as if it’s suddenly become a mansion. Logan would wonder why they didn’t magic it into a larger house, but he doesn’t particularly care.

Harry hums contentedly, completely unashamed of livin’ in a camper as he pulls the tarp off the motorcycle and climbs on the saddle. He cranes his head back, starin’ at the sky, though he glances over at the broom.

“Wow.” one of the twins whistles. “Dad’s never brought home a motorbike before. He has this car he tinkers with, so now it flies.”

“I don’t suppose your bike flies, since he’s a muggle.” the other twin whispers, as if Logan can’t hear.

“We don’t know he’s a muggle.” Ron hisses back, his voice suddenly filled with concern “He looks like he could be a werewolf, and the Prophet called him-”

Harry howls at the sun instead of the moon, and soon he’s howlin’ with laughter. He darts into the camper and reemerges with his toy wolverine. He ain’t quite as attached to it now that he’s got his owl, but he shakes it pointedly at Ron.

“Ya got it, bub. Wolverines ain’t wolves.” Logan nods at Harry before rounding on Ron, who blanches slightly. “I’m no werewolf.”

All three brothers relax at that news, until Logan adds “And yer rat ain’t a rat.”

“Scabbers?” Ron’s eyes widen, then narrow in suspicion. “Are you mental? Of course he’s a rat. He’s been with us for ages.”

Logan’s scowl deepens. He definitely smells a rat if they aren’t even aware that the rat is really a person. He ain’t happy that he keeps gettin’ dragged into these magical mishaps, not that he minds the killin’.

“Bring him here.” Logan growls, but Ron hesitates and falters. The twins exchange a look and race into the house.

Logan can hear a woman lecturin’ them inside. “You two leave that rat alone! I don’t know what prank you’re playing on Ron, but you stop it now!”

“But Mum, the sword savior said he’s not really-”

“You think I’m falling for that, George?!” their mother demands. 

“Is Harry with him?” a little girl asks, and Logan sees a redheaded girl peer out the front window. “Mummy! They’re not lying! Harry’s really here, and the sword man!”

“Ginny, they aren’t something to goggle at in a zoo.” the mother scolds.

Ginny races out ahead of the twins, who ignore their mother’s call to let her go first. She runs up to Harry before her exuberance gives out to embarrassment. She goes as red as her hair, and if Logan hadn’t just heard her, he’d think Ginny was speechless like Harry.

The twins jog up with the rat, which is desperately scratchin’ and bitin’, far more nervous than a pet rat should be. 

Logan takes the rat from the twin, ignoring when it sinks its teeth into his thumb. Harry’s owl screeches, and Logan wonders if it’ll try carryin’ the rat-man off for dinner. He won’t give it the chance.

The twins whoop when Logan’s claws pop out, and the mother pulls Ginny behind her plump frame. Harry opens his pocket knives, never one to be left out of Logan’s fights, adding his own scream to the mix.

Ron starts to panic almost as much as the rat. “Don’t cut Scabbers! He’s already missing a toe!”

“Stop hidin’.” Logan snarls at the rat, which squeaks nonstop in terror, flailing in Logan’s grip as he brings his claws closer.

Logan feels the rat grow in his fist. He drops it but keeps his claws pointed in a clear threat. The rat grows like a sped-up film. A human head and arms pop out, and soon there’s a short, balding man standing among them. He’s shorter than Logan, and unlike the cat lady, somethin’ about this man stays ratlike.

Ginny screams, Ron shouts “Bloody hell!” and the mother whips out her wand, aiming it at the man as she halfheartedly scolds Ron for his language. Harry hardly seems bothered- Dumbledore’s earmuffs seem to help him more’n the ones Logan’s been buyin’.

Harry doesn’t even twitch when the mother shouts instructions to someone named Percy in the house, tellin’ him to contact Dumbledore.

“H-hello.” the man squeaks.

Dumbledore arrives remarkably quickly, somehow injecting a bit of calm into the chaos. He questions the rat man, and Logan only half-listens. The rat man is supposedly a hero, supposedly dead. All that was left was a finger. Logan snorts. If he’s a hero, who has he been hidin’ as a rat?

Not that Logan really cares. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass what happens to this guy. All he cares about is leavin’, so he doesn’t keep gettin’ dragged into this shit. 

The mother shoos her children away, ignoring their protests, and Ron drags Harry back into the field to show him how to mount a broomstick. Logan’s seen Harry mount his hockey stick the same way.

Harry, it turns out, is a natural at flyin’. He shoots across the field like a javelin, not seeming to hear Logan’s call that they need to get going. He races his owl back and forth, chuckling and howling in delight.

Harry flies up, over the trees, and Ron and one of the twins chase him down, telling him they can’t let the muggles in the village see them.

Dumbledore binds the rat man and disappears.

“Time fer us to go, bub.”

“Go?!” the mother asks. “Why don’t you join us for supper? It’s the least we can do after you saved us twice.”

Logan starts to decline, but the mother is persistent, not taking no for an answer.

Logan sighs and follows her into the cramped kitchen. There’s a peeler magically peelin’ potatoes, and a knife choppin’ them. Logan half-expected her to ask him to chop for her.

He glances at the clock, which shows a schedule rather than the time, as he lights up a cigar. The mother extinguishes it with her wand, and he growls.

“Do it outside,” she tells him, and Logan stalks back out to the trees to watch Harry fly. Harry barrels towards him for a midair tackle, and the other boys watch Harry roll around the ground with Logan, clearly thinkin’ they’re too old for to wrestle with a guardian.

The boys’ father, also a redhead, arrives, introducing himself as Arthur Weasley. The boys rush towards him, not to wrestle, but to tell him all about how Scabbers was really an animagus. “Percy was already puffed up being a prefect, and he’s the one who called Dumbledore.” Ron mutters.

Once the boys return to flyin’, Arthur seems more fascinated with the camper and the motorcycle than Logan or Harry, peering inside the windows. “Remarkable! It’s the same size inside. Is that stove gas or eclectic?”

Logan doesn’t bother answering, and soon Arthur is proudly stating “I have a Ford, too.” and showing off a blue Ford Anglia in the garage.

“I’ve rigged it to fly.” he says.

Logan snorts. “Harry’ll want you to make our motorcycle fly. And shrink our truck.”

Arthur frowns. “You couldn’t fly it where other muggles could see. And how would you grow your truck again? They don’t cover the Engorgement Charm in the first-year curriculum.”

Harry won’t like that answer.

Logan simply grunts, and the mother- Molly, according to Arthur- calls them inside for supper. They sit around a rather cramped table, and Ginny knocks her cup over, too distracted by Harry. Logan smirks.

Harry’s owl eyes the Weasleys’ pathetic owl from her perch on Harry’s head. Harry growls at it until Logan tells him it’s just an owl. The raggled thing appears to have fainted.

The whole family stares, nonplussed, as Harry starts shoveling potatoes into his mouth with his hands.

“You weren’t raised by wolves, dear.” Molly hands Harry a fork. Ron and the twins glance quickly at Logan, then look away.

Harry forgoes the fork and the knife in front of him, grippin’ his pocket knives like claws and spearin’ his potatoes on them.

Logan’s never gotten Harry to use cutlery, neither of them caring about the looks they get at diners. Not that Logan’s usually the best example; Harry’s seen him tear into dead rabbits with his hands and teeth.

As taken aback as they are by Harry’s behavior, the Weasleys still welcome him into their home. They even welcome Logan in a way he ain’t used to. Arthur bombards him with questions about his camper and Muggle things in general, not seeming to mind his scowls and clipped answers. 

“Are you an accountant?” Ron asks.

Logan snorts, and Harry swings his knives into the table leg, like Logan chopping trees. The table is fixed with a wave of Molly’s wand.

The twins ask how he got Logan claws- turnin’ into animals clearly ain’t unheard of in the wizarding world, but his claws are apparently a novelty. Logan couldn’t answer that question if he wanted to.

Molly coddles Harry through dinner, cutting his food for him, leaving Harry looking confused and disgruntled, shaking his head. 

Ron starts imagining all the adventures he and Harry will get up to at Hogwarts, already deciding that he’s Harry’s best friend. 

“I’ll be left alone,” Ginny mopes.

Molly reminds her that she’ll join them in a year. Ginny sighs, as if a year is forever.

“Harry ain’t goin’.” Logan says. “We already told Dumbledore.”

“Not going?!” Ron’s mouth drops open, showing his food. Molly scolds him for his manners, though Harry’s were far worse. “Why not?!”

Harry gets up and wanders off to watch the flames dart in the fireplace. His fingers flick along with the flames, his brow pinched. Despite everyone having clearly never met someone like Harry, they all seem surprised he ain’t goin’ to their school.

“You’re always welcome here.” Molly tells them warmly, and Ginny adds that a girl who lives nearby is a bit strange too. Logan ain’t lookin’ to make more friends, or any really.

After dinner, Arthur slips out to start workin’ on Logan’s bike, while Harry practically vibrates with excitement. 

Molly tuts disapprovingly as Logan guns the throttle and the motorcycle’s wheels leave the grass, though she smiles fondly at Harry’s obvious excitement as he clings to Logan on the seat. Ron and the twins race alongside the bike, while Harry’s owl swoops around them.

Once Logan lands the bike again, Harry taps the truck impatiently. Arthur offers to enchant the truck too, and add an invisibility feature like his Ford has. With a little work, he says he can make it grow and shrink at will, too.

“You’re supposed to be catching the misuse of Muggle artifacts, not encouraging it.” Molly scolds, but she waves her wand to shrink the truck down to toy size. Harry holds their miniature home tenderly before handing it to his owl.

“You’ll write, won’t you?” Ron asks, and Logan huffs as he lights a cigar. Why do all these wizards think Logan and Harry want to keep hearin’ from them?

The engine roars as Logan and Harry take to the sky on the motorcycle, Harry’s owl carryin’ their home beside them.

Chapter Text

Harry whoops, clinging to Logan as the motorbike soars through the air. He leans over to peer at the ground falling below them. The fields, houses and towns shrink almost as fast as their home, which is now as small as a toy and clutched in Hedwig’s feet. 

Harry briefly imagines Hedwig carrying the whole world when it’s no bigger than Harry’s bouncy ball.

Harry laughs at the thought, and doesn’t stop for a long time. The wind whips over his face and through his hair.

They aren’t trapped here anymore. They can fly over the sea, or take their tiny home on a plane. Harry leans further, trying to decide if the water below them is the sea or a lake.

Logan growls and reaches back to grip Harry tightly.

Harry keeps leaning, trying to steer their motorbike. The broom had been under his control, whereas Logan’s always the one driving the bike. As much as Harry has loved riding with Logan all these years, he finds himself missing the freedom of choosing where to fly, when to dive. Flying the broom had felt natural, marvelous. Harry had felt like he could go anywhere and do anything.

Logan’s never steered him wrong, though. Harry sighs and settles in to enjoy the ride, even if he isn’t the one steering the bike.

There’s nothing to crash into up here. They’re up above the trees, and he can’t see or hear any planes. Harry knows now that his parents hadn’t died in a crash, but he still would rather avoid one. 

He jerks his head up towards the clouds, bouncing in the seat, and Logan grumbles “What do ya want? Ya got yer flyin’ motorcycle.”

Harry stretches, trying to catch the sun in his hand. Ron had talked about how the seeker catches the Golden Snitch. Logan snorts. “Too cold up there, bub. And it ain’t easy to breathe.”

Harry frowns. If he flew a broomstick up there, would there be magic to keep him warm and help him breathe? Their motorbike’s magic now. Why can’t it keep them warm? 

Maybe they should’ve gone on a plane.

Sometimes they fly, but sometimes they drive. Logan seems to like riding on roads more, seeing trees rush by as their wheels skim over the pavement.

Harry can’t understand it. Sure, he likes when it bumps and shakes, but flying is so freeing. He tries to fly with his hockey stick, planning on flying alongside Logan as he roars on the road, but his hockey stick only fake-flies, like how it’s only ever a pretend tail.

The next time they stop at a pub, Harry hunts down a broom in the back rooms, and the cook tries tossing him and Logan out for sneaking around. Harry snarls, because Logan hadn’t even done anything, and Logan downs his beer and stands for another fight.

The broom gets broken during the brawl, but Harry hangs onto the pieces. 

Harry tries using his magic to fix it himself, but his magic won’t listen to his brain, the same way his mouth won’t say what he’s thinking.

Harry hates the thought of having to rely on some other wizard to fix the broom. The Weasleys were nice, and he’s grateful they made the motorbike fly, but he wishes he could have done it himself. He had, when they’d flown over the elk, but it hadn’t stuck.

They don’t visit the Weasleys again, or anyone else. Logan doesn’t like people, and Harry still counts himself lucky that Logan decided to take him, and let him stay. 

Now, their two old routines are merged into one, the best of both worlds. They spend their days on the bike, either on the road or in the air, and sleep in the camper at night. The only thing that would make it better would be a working flying broomstick.

Hedwig can carry their home wherever they go, and Harry just has to reach in and poke a button on the tiny steering wheel to make it big again.

Hedwig brings more dead mice for Harry’s line of animals. Harry wonders if they’d disappear when shrunk, since they’re already so tiny to begin with. Maybe they’d become bug-sized, or maybe they would actually turn into bugs. He’d seen a cat and rat become people, so why couldn’t mice morph into bugs?

Hedwig doesn’t just bring dead mice. She brings rocks for Harry’s collection, though Harry isn’t sure if any of them are the stone Hagrid mentioned. He’s still curious about it, but Dumbledore had stopped Hagrid from saying anything more about it. All Harry knows is it’s a special stone, and every stone in his collection is special to him.

One morning, Hedwig swoops in with something other than what she hunted. She has a letter from Ron in her beak. Logan sighs and reads it aloud.

Ron writes about different houses and which one he wants to be in, only Harry hadn’t thought the Weasleys were always moving around like he and Logan do. The houses are apparently at Hogwarts, but Harry thought it was a castle, not a house.

Logan doesn’t seem inclined to write back, and he doesn’t seem to know most of what Harry’s thinking, so Harry just sends Hedwig back with a wooden fox that Logan had carved. 

Ron’s going to Dumbledore’s school, so maybe he can show Dumbledore what a fox actually is, since he clearly thinks his bird is one.

Or maybe Fawkes really was a fox once. Harry feels a bit foolish once he realizes that’s entirely possible.

Hedwig delivers newspapers, too, which Logan scowls at and usually doesn’t read, until there’s a picture of that rat man on it, and another man with shaggy black hair, longer than Harry’s or Logan’s, and a full beard, unlike Logan’s mutton chops.

Logan reads that the rat man has gone to prison. The article even mentions Logan, the new savior, and Logan frowns around his cigar.

Harry strokes Hedwig silently. Eventually, Logan grunts. “Ya have a godfather, bub. Sirius Black. They thought he was the one who sold out yer folks.”

Sirius must be the guy with shaggy dark hair.

Apparently, Sirius Black was jailed instead of the rat guy, and they just switched places. Sirius wasn’t bad after all, but he was still locked up and treated like rubbish, and Harry finds himself strongly reminded of his years with the Dursleys.

Harry wonders if someone came and cut through Sirius’ cell, like Logan cut him out of the cupboard.

“I’m bettin’ he’s another wizard who won’t leave us alone.” Logan grumbles, tossing the paper aside. 

That evening a shaggy black animal lumbers out from the bushes, approaching their camper. At first, Harry thinks it’s a bear coming for their food. When it gets closer, he sees it’s more doglike, but sadly not quite a wolf. Harry howls softly.

Logan sniffs and heaves a sigh, blowing a cloud of cigar smoke like a dragon. “I know ya ain’t just a dog.”

The dog transforms into Sirius Black, dressed in robes. Harry wonders if every wizard can become an animal, and how he can learn without Hogwarts. Does Fawkes switch between being a bird, a fox and a person?

“Thanks for catching Pettigrew,” Sirius sounds like he isn’t used to talking. “I thought I was going to rot there forever. Nobody asked me, after all.”

“Don’t mention it.” Logan grunts, puffing his cigar. 

Sirius opens his mouth again, but Logan doesn’t want him to mention anything.

Harry flicks open his pocket knife and slashes the air, wondering who cut Sirius out of his cell. 

Sirius turns to Harry and smiles. It’s not as twinkly as Dumbledore’s smile, nor as hairy as Hagrid’s. “Hello, Harry. I don’t know if anyone told you, but I’m your godfather.”

Harry doesn’t need a godfather. He has Logan. 

Harry shakes his head like a dog shaking off water, trying to tell Sirius to turn back into a dog.

Chapter Text

Sirius Black looks slightly better-off than he had in the paper. He’s washed his hair and had a few decent meals, but Logan can smell the prison rot clinging to him under his fancy robes. Ten years has left a haunted look in his eyes. His voice is rougher than Logan’s, though Logan doubts that’s by choice.

Logan bets that Sirius has barely spoken more’n Harry in the last ten years.

If Sirius had been expecting Harry to bombard him with a hug, he’s sorely disappointed. He clearly wants to wrap his arms around Harry, but is wisely refrainin’.

Logan ain’t lookin’ forward to what’ll turn out to be an emotional reunion. If it ended up bein’ the heartfelt reunion Sirius is expectin’, Logan would give them space to avoid the feelings flowin’. But he doesn’t trust Sirius alone with Harry, and it ain’t going to be a huggy reunion. 

It’ll be emotional either way, when Sirius realizes Harry ain’t interested in having a godfather.

Sirius’ next words confirm he’s at least got some sense. “I know you probably don’t remember me. I haven’t seen you since…”

He trails off. Logan ain’t sure if it’s hard fer him to talk about that night, or if he’s confused by how Harry’s actin’, but he doesn’t particularly care.

“You look just like James,” Sirius breathes, like he can hardly believe it. “But you have Lily’s eyes.”

Those eyes ain’t lookin’ at either of ‘em. He keeps shakin’ his head, making his hair sway. He claws his knife through the air again. It’s pointed at Sirius, but he glances at Logan, as if wondering if he clawed Sirius out of magic prison in the middle of the night.

“Don’t think anyone cut him out, bub.” Logan drawls around his cigar. “They let him go when we found the rat.”

“After letting me rot there for ten years.” Sirius says under his breath. He grins, and it’s only a little forced. “Missed out on a lot of birthdays and Christmases. I’ll have to make up for those.”

Harry turns away, glancing toward the camper. Sirius eyes their home. Like Ron, he seems shocked that the inside ain’t bigger than it looks outside, though he mutters that it’s better than a grim old place. Wizards are strange, Logan thinks. Sirius could have easily called it prison.

Sirius glances at Logan, silently asking why Harry’s acting the way he is. Logan ignores him. If Sirius thinks he turned Harry feral, fine. Logan ain’t out to impress anyone.

Harry’s snowy owl flies out of the camper, clutching the broken broomstick from their recent bar brawl. She passes the pieces to Harry, who immediately thrusts them at Sirius.

“This is a muggle broom,” Sirius says slowly, as if he’s questioning Harry’s sanity. Logan snorts. Most people would think talk of flyin’ brooms and magic was nuts. “Your owl’s beautiful.”

Harry’s owl preens at that, like she can actually understand. Logan knows she’s just a bird- he can smell that- but she’s smarter’n any bird should be.

Harry flaps his hands- not in the way he does when he’s excited, but as his way of signing flight. Logan ain’t sure when he picked up the difference between happy flaps and flying flaps, but Sirius would be equally baffled by both.

“He wants you to make it fly.” Logan mutters, when it’s clear Sirius requires a translation. It’d seemed obvious to Logan.

Sirius barks a laugh. “Harry, we can do better than this. Have you heard of the Nimbus Two-Thousand? I hadn’t, until a few days ago…” He shakes his head like a dog, as if trying to shed the thoughts of all he’d missed in ten years’ imprisonment.

Harry shakes his head back, and Sirius smiles like it’s some deep connection. Logan raises an eyebrow. “Ya ain’t hard to impress.”

“I bought you your first broomstick, you know.” Sirius tells Harry fondly, ignoring Logan. “Your mum said you broke a vase Petunia’d sent her. James and I knew you’d be a great Quidditch player someday.”

Harry goes still, and his owl plucks at his hair like feathers.

“I know First Years aren’t allowed broomsticks, but we could smuggle it in.”

Logan grumbles that Harry ain’t going around his cigar, while Harry shakes his head faster. Is he goin’ to have to tell every witch and wizard they cross? Logan ain’t a fan o’ repeating himself.

Like everyone else, Sirius is shocked at the news that Harry won’t be attendin’ Hogwarts.

“Those were the best years of my life!” Sirius insists, which earns him an extremely disbelieving look from Harry. “I made my best friends there. Your dad, and Remus, and… we went on all sorts of adventures.”

Harry laughs and glances at Logan, like they’re sharin’ a secret joke. His smile clearly says they’ve been on their own adventures.  

“What are you doing, if you’re not going to Hogwarts?” Sirius folds his arms, hiding his hands in the sleeves of his robes. “Who doesn’t want to go to Hogwarts?”

Sirius eyes the truck, now clearly questioning Harry’s preference to live there rather than a magical castle school.

“How are you going to learn to defend yourself?” Sirius asks, already sounding like a practical guardian.

Logan wordlessly extends his claws, and Harry flicks out his knives, though he’s turned towards Logan’s motorcycle.

“She’s a beauty,” Sirius says. “So, you’re riding around? You’re at least seeing the world, right? France, Spain?”

Logan doesn’t mention possibly going to Japan, because it ain’t any of Sirius’s business.

“That’s what I’d do, if I wasn’t going to Hogwarts.” Sirius’s suggestion is a bit too pointed for Logan’s liking. “I had my own motorbike, before. She could even fly.”

He smiles at Harry, who snickers as if Sirius is slow on the uptake, and flaps proudly at their bike.

Harry glances back at Sirius, like he’s wonderin’ if Sirius is hiding his own motorcycle in his robes.

“I lent mine to Hagrid that night.” Sirius says. “I should get her back. We could race.”

Harry makes his engine sounds, but there’s a chuckle mixed in with his revving. Sirius smiles, but Logan frowns. Harry is enough company for him. He doesn’t want Sirius hanging around, constantly competing for Harry’s attention. Not that Logan’s going to fight him for it, as much as he likes fightin’.

“I’ll come find you.” Sirius promises. Logan really hopes he doesn’t. 

They were ready to sleep here for the night, but Logan shrinks their truck back down and roars off with Harry before Sirius has even disappeared.

Logan figured that Sirius wouldn’t break his promise, as much as Logan wanted him to. The next day, another motorcycle joins them in the air. Sirius waves at Harry from his own bike, face falling slightly when Harry doesn’t return the greeting.

It ain’t easy to shake Sirius off their tail in the air. Logan lands and speeds down the road, hoping to lose him in the next town, but Sirius follows.

Scowling, Logan screeches to a stop, and Harry grunts in annoyance.

“Look, we ain’t lookin’ for a travel partner.” Logan says. 

“I have something for you, Harry.” Sirius pulls a conspicuous long, wrapped package out of the sidecar of his own bike, passing it over. “It’s a bit late, but Happy Birthday.”

The broomstick Harry unwraps is the same model as the one prominently displayed in the window at Diagon Alley. It looks better than the Weasleys’ brooms, and the broken muggle one Harry’s refused to throw out. Logan bets Harry will continue to hang onto the pieces, even with this new fancy broom.

“Bribin’ him to like you?” Logan raises an unimpressed brow. Harry’s already climbed on and is effortlessly swoopin’ through the sky. Logan can tell this broom flies better’n the one he’d borrowed at the Burrow.

Sirius starts his own motorcycle, roaring the engine as he joins Harry in the air, racing back and forth.

Logan growls and mounts his own bike. “Let’s get goin’,” he tells Harry, not joinin’ their game.

Harry speeds alongside Logan’s bike, but grabs their shrunken truck from the saddlebag. It slips from his grip, and Sirius pulls out a wand, but Harry’s already diving effortlessly towards the ground, catching the truck before it crashes into the street below.

Sirius claps, saying he knew Harry would be great at Quidditch. Harry jangles his dog tag necklace as he presses the button to make the truck grow back to its original size. 

Sirius follows him down, and Harry’s owl dives after them. She swoops into the window and returns with the collar Harry had found along with his tags, and one of Harry’s toys.

Sirius sputters when Harry shoves the toy into his mouth, and Harry looks delighted when he spits it back out. Harry cheerfully hands Sirius the collar.

“You want me to be Snuffles again?” Sirius asks. “You know, your dad called me Padfoot. I called him Prongs. We had another friend, Moony, and he-”

Harry howls like a wolf, and Sirius huffs “He didn’t like his furry little problem.”

Harry stands on his tiptoes, moving closer to Sirius and reaching out. Sirius mistakes it for a hug, and seems relieved to finally embrace his godson, but Harry’s only trying to slip the collar over his head.

“How am I going to fly my bike as Snuffles?” Sirius asks, only half-teasing. Harry laughs and mounts Sirius’s motorcycle. 

“You have your broom,” Sirius tells him. “You’re too young to be driving my motorbike. I’ll teach you when you’re older.”

Harry scowls and revs the engine, but eventually mounts his new fancy Nimbus broom instead. He whoops as he kicks off, flyin’ a lap around Logan.

Harry’s growing up, no longer content to merely ride with Logan. Logan realizes that Harry wants freedom, wants to drive or fly himself. He might not be ready for Hogwarts, but he ain’t the kid Logan rescued years ago.

Now, Logan really ain’t sure why Harry’s so opposed to gettin’ a bigger camper. Surely he wants privacy now that he’s older? He’s gettin’ close to being a damn teenager.

Sirius flies alongside them, but when they finally land for the night, he turns back into the black, bearlike dog. Harry runs his hands through his black fur, and Sirius- or Snuffles, or whatever he calls himself- lavishes the attention, rolling on his back for belly rubs.

“Ya ain’t sleepin’ in our truck.” Logan mutters to the dog, whose tail thumps the ground as he pants happily.

Somehow, despite Logan’s protests, Sirius seems to be stayin’.

Chapter Text

“We ain’t goin’ that way, Harry.” Logan grumbles, as Harry veers to shoot towards the sun. It’s like the Snitch that Ron and Sirius talked about, a golden ball in the sky. They’d been flying towards it most of the morning before stopping for the afternoon. Logan had been impatient to get going again, and he barks “Come here.”

“He’s not a dog.” Sirius says.

Harry barely hears Logan’s reply of “Look who’s talkin’” over the wind rushing by his ears and through his hair. He squints, though he’s not sure if that’s more because of the wind or the pain of looking directly at the sun.

Sirius always tells him not to do that, saying his eyes are bad enough already.

The growl of Sirius’ flying motorbike grows louder behind Harry, and soon it swoops up next to him.

“You’re going West.” he says. “The sun rises in the East and sets in the West, remember? It’s setting now.”

During the nights, Sirius has been teaching Harry about the stars in the sky. He says the stars form pictures, but Harry doesn’t see any, just a bunch of dots. There’s a star that shares Sirius’s name, and Harry’s pretty sure Sirius is joking when he says it’s the dog star.

Harry can’t see any of the stars yet right now, but Sirius insists they’re still there during the day.

Logan’s motorbike engine is growing fainter. Harry turns and sees that, while Logan’s slowed down, he hasn’t changed direction to follow Harry. He’s still going East, and he might become invisible like the stars if the keep going different ways.

Harry puts all the speed into his new Nimbus Two Thousand to catch up to Logan. Was Logan going to leave him behind?

“Ya can’t go wherever ya want.” Logan tells him, and Harry stares at him, hoping his expression says Look who’s talkin’ the same way Logan does. Logan’s been going wherever he wanted all these years. Even now, he’s decided they’re going to go to Japan, grumbling that Sirius might shut up about traveling if they do.

Sirius had argued they could stop in France first. Sirius is the opposite of Logan. He wants to fly around to see places, fancy places, not just the inside of grubby pubs. He wants to visit the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal. He wants to fly alongside the Great Wall of China.

“I was locked up for ten years,” he frequently points out. “I need to see the world, not sit in some dingy pub.”

Whenever Sirius says that, Logan always has the same reply. “Go see it by yerself, then. We ain’t livin’ around yer travel plans.” 

But Sirius refuses to leave Harry behind. He grumbles that Hedwig is sightseeing more than he is but, like Logan, Sirius never calls Hedwig by her name. 

“Ya ain’t in charge of where we go. Yer a kid.” Logan tells Harry sternly. Harry scowls. Logan’s wrong, because Harry’s Nimbus Two Thousand really does let him go wherever he wants. He can try to catch the sun, or dive so his feet skim over the treetops, or spin until he’s dizzy.

There are a lot more disagreements on where to go, now that there are two motorbikes and a broomstick. They could all go different places. Both Sirius and Logan say Harry should stick with them, even if they don’t want to stick with each other.

Even as Snuffles, Sirius has opinions on where to go. He carries a rolled-up map in his mouth, and once it’s flat, presses his paw over different places. As Sirius, he quizzes Harry on the map, saying the names of countries, seas and oceans for Harry to point to. 

“Your dad and I made a map once.” Sirius shares during one lesson. “The Marauder’s Map. It showed all the secret passages in Hogwarts, and where everyone was.”

Harry grunts and taps the map in front of him. This one shows the whole world, so it’s clearly better, but it doesn’t show people on it. If Sirius could make this show everyone, it’d be the best map ever.

At night, Sirius tries to get Harry to point at stars as Harry spins and flaps so the stars blur in the sky.

Sirius keeps saying they need to go back to Diagon Alley to get a wand, even though Harry isn’t going to Hogwarts. Harry and Logan disagree about going back there. For now, Sirius fetches sticks that are about the same size as a wand and shows Harry the movements for spells like Wingardium Leviosa.

Sirius gets frustrated when Harry doesn’t copy them, instead twirling the stick between his fingers or drumming it on surfaces. Harry snaps several sticks with his drumming, then throws them, hoping Sirius will turn back into Snuffles and play fetch.

He wanted a dog, not a teacher. 

Sirius seems about as frustrated as Harry, though he admits maybe Hogwarts wouldn’t work out so well, because clearly Harry doesn’t learn the same way as other students.

“Moony would be a better tutor.” Sirius says after they’ve given up for the day. “I’ve been meaning to meet him, anyway.” 

Harry grins at the name and howls like a wolf at the moon. Sirius has loads of stories of Moony turning into a wolf every month. Once, he mentions the rat guy, Wormtail, slipping between the branches of a whomping willow tree, but then he growls and doesn’t bring him up again.

Sirius and Harry both want to go find Remus, but Logan has no interest in looking. “We ain’t formin’ a whole happy family.” Logan growls at Sirius “Harry and I were fine before ya came along.”

Sirius says he’ll look for Moony, but he still doesn’t leave Harry’s side.

The next time there’s a full moon, Harry sneaks out of the truck, stepping over Padfoot. Logan says the whole truck reeks of dog now, but it’s not like it smelled great before either. 

Hedwig’s out hunting and Harry mounts his broom, ready to fly at the moon. He pauses, humming thoughtfully. Sirius wants to see cool places and meet Moony- surely he’d want to go to the moon too?

Before Harry’s decided if he should wake Sirius or not, Logan comes stomping out of the truck. Logan’s stomps never scare Harry, even if stomping meant bad things before. “Get back in here.”

Harry howls again but doesn’t dismount his broom. Logan said wolves are dangerous, but Sirius isn’t dangerous as a dog. Surely Moony’s a safe wolf, Harry thinks. Sirius’ stories certainly sound like grand adventures.

Padfoot lumbers out of the truck and shifts into Sirius. Logan snarls “Yer stories had him goin’ to chase the moon.”

Sirius sighs and explains that, while he had adventures with Moony, it wouldn’t be safe for Harry. Harry huffs. He’s done unsafe things before, like fighting in pubs, and turned out fine.

“In wolf form, Moony’s wilder than any of us.” Sirius tells him. “He can’t control it, but he’ll bite any human he’s near. Your dad and I learned to be Animagi so he wouldn’t be alone. Animals are safe around werewolves, but people aren’t.”

Sirius says something about how werewolves are perfectly safe anytime except the full moon, and how they still deserve friends, but Harry’s too busy thinking of the obvious solution Sirius mentioned.

He needs to be an animal.

Harry doesn’t want to be a deer like his dad was Prongs. Maybe Sirius can turn him into an owl. He flaps his hands, but now that he has his Nimbus Two Thousand, he doesn’t need wings to fly. 

Harry looks over his parade of animals. Being a real wolverine could be fun, but being a wolf sounds great too. He presses the wolf between himself and Sirius, howling.

Sirius says it took until their fifth year to figure out how to become Anamagi. Harry’s older than five, but Sirius says he meant fifteen.

Harry frowns and reluctantly goes back to bed. He doesn’t want to wait that long.

At some point, Sirius mentions that being bitten by a werewolf turns you into one too. He makes it sound awful, but Harry bites his own hand in anticipation. Seeing Harry bite himself makes Sirius upset for some reason. Maybe because he doesn’t heal as fast as Logan, but Harry’s not even drawing blood, just gnawing his hands and fingers.

He’s not a wolf yet, though, so biting himself doesn’t turn him into one.

When Sirius turns back into Padfoot, Harry tries to get bitten, but Padfoot doesn’t bite like Ripper. Then Harry remembers that Ripper had bitten him when he was smaller, and Harry can’t turn into a bulldog. Or maybe he just doesn’t know how, like he doesn’t know how to make stuff float when he wants.

Harry still flies towards the moon when they fly at night, but he’s not really looking for Moony anymore. Unless he can be Harry’s wolf buddy, Harry’s not too interested in meeting him. 

“You’re betraying me too?” Sirius asks. He’s smiling and insists he’s joking, but Harry doesn’t see how that’s funny.

Chapter Text

Trackin’ Harry down on foot was never too hard- Logan’s got a good nose, so even when Harry did pigheaded stuff like wander out of the camper during a storm, Logan always found him.

Sirius had to go and ruin that with his goddamn gift. The broomstick lets Harry travel farther, faster, even if Logan can still track his scent in the wind.

Logan growls, revving his engine into a roar as he races down the road. He’d caught Harry before he’d tried flyin’ to the moon before, but Harry seems determined to go on these little solo adventures. Logan can easily imagine Harry wanderin’ into some dangerous dungeon if he did attend that wizard school.

Logan would rather stick to the ground, but Harry disappeared somewhere into the skies. Sirius is already swoopin’ around on his flying bike, calling Harry’s name like it isn’t his damn fault Harry disappeared. 

“If he’s hurt, I’m turnin’ you into a shish-kabob.” Logan snarls as he makes his motorcycle lift off the ground. Sirius seems like he’s ready to beat himself up, but Logan would be all too happy to help. “Harry doesn’t come when he’s called, unlike you, Snuffles.”

Sirius keeps calling Harry’s name anyway, not even shifting into Snuffles to help sniff him down.

It should be easy to track Harry visually up here- there’s nowhere to hide in the sky, unlike the forest below them. They can see for miles, and Harry really shouldn’t be miles away by now.

Logan expects to see Harry’s silhouette against the moon- he’s been fascinated with Sirius’s tales of werewolves. It’s funny; Logan’s been trying to run from his own beast within, while Harry wants to become one. From the sound of it, Remus has a similar mindset to Logan, tryin’ to fight the wild animal lurkin’ inside.

Harry’s nowhere to be seen, and Logan keeps sniffing.

Logan catches Harry’s scent and gladly returns his bike to the ground. Although Harry loves flying, it’s just as likely he’s tryin’ to get bit by some creature, like Sirius’s stories about werewolves. 

Logan hopes Harry won’t get bitten by anything rabid. 

“This wouldn’t happen if you didn’t share all your adventure stories.” Logan scowls. Many of Sirius’s escapades with Harry’s father seemed to happen at night.

“You’re the one who’s been roaming around with him for years.” Sirius doesn’t back down. “You’ve never settled down anywhere, of course he’s off wandering.”

“Who’s the one who wants to go sightseeing all the time?” Logan chomps his cigar, though it’s not lit so he can better track Harry’s scent. “I don’t see you settlin’ down either, bub.”

“Well, I can hardly raise him in Grimmauld Place, and you turned down Hogwarts. And you’re talking about going to Japan!”

“Harry turned down Hogwarts too.” Logan huffs. “He shredded his letters.”

“Those were the best years of my life.” Sirius says, sounding insulted and wistful at the same time.

“Well, Harry’s life ain’t yer life.” Logan huffs. “Ya might want him to be just like his dad, but he’s on his own path.”

“I didn’t want him on this path.” Sirius scowls down at the patch of forest they’re searchin’. “The forest at Hogwarts is forbidden for a reason.”

“Will ya shaddup about Hogwarts?” Logan grumbles. Talk about not movin’ on.

“Well maybe I want more for him than living in a tiny box!” Sirius’s voice raises. “You’re keeping him in something barely bigger than my cell, and it hardly smells better.”

“Yer the one who smells like a wet dog.” Logan’s nose wrinkles over his cigar.

“That’s rich, when you smoke that stinking thing.” Sirius jabs a finger at the unlit cigar. “I want him to have friends, but you’re turning him into some sort of lone wolf like you.”

Logan snorts. From the sound of it, none of Sirius’s friendships ended well, all of them culminating in death or betrayal. Logan’s been there. He knows life is easier alone, though Harry clawed his way into Logan’s heart anyway.

Instead of saying that, Logan drawls “You’re the one tellin’ him all about yer werewolf friend, bub.”

Sirius whips out his wand. Logan pops his claws out, raising a challenging eyebrow.

A rock comes flyin’ outta nowhere, bouncing off the tree between them, and they both whip around to find Harry standing there.

Sirius immediately rushes over, crouching down to Harry’s level and gripping his arms. “Harry, Merlin’s beard, you had me worried.”

He checks over the scratches Harry must’ve gotten from flyin’ through branches, and heals them with his wand. Harry squirms out of Sirius’s grasp but reaches out to touch his beard with one of the sticks he’s holding, then pokes it into Sirus’s mouth like he’s going to play fetch.

Sirius sputters, spittin’ it out, and Logan snorts. 

“Ya didn’t get bit, did ya, bub?” Logan asks. 

Harry doesn’t really acknowledge that question, instead darting towards Logan- or rather, towards the rock he’d thrown at the tree. He picks it up and inspects it with the same care Sirius had inspected him.

“Is that for Ron?” Logan asks, glancin’ pointedly at Sirius. Harry still sends stuff to Ron sometimes via his owl, and Ron sends Harry letters and trinkets in return, but their friendship hasn’t extended beyond that. Not that Logan can talk; it’s more of a friendship than Logan has with anyone.

Harry hoots and flaps his hand, and his owl swoops down as if summoned. She nips Harry’s ear affectionately, holds the rock in her talons, and takes off again.

“Why were you making us chase you in the middle of the night?” Sirius asks, still shaken.

Harry gives an incredulous glance, as if he’s the one who had to go find them. He folds his hands like dog snouts and makes them bark at each other before smashing them together.

“You’ve been filling his head with yer goddamn stories.” Logan reminds him. “All yer full moon adventures. I’m surprised ya didn’t run off and join him right away.”

Sirius almost looks like he wishes he had.

“I’ve been trying to fill his head with all the stuff he’d be getting at Hogwarts!” Sirius says, like he’s forgotten Harry is standing right here. Harry pushes the stick in Sirius’s mouth again, cutting off his words, and Logan smirks.

“Yer right. Who needs magic, bub?”

“You are magic!” Sirius says after spitting out the stick again, gazing at Harry imploringly before rounding on Logan again when Harry doesn’t offer a response. “You’re saying I’m trying to force him into Hogwarts? Well, you’re trying to force him away from magic. Knives don’t make up for the fact he’s a wizard.”

“I’ve gotten by fine without a wand.” Logan says.

“Yeah, well, what if you weren’t allowed to use those claws of yours? That’s what denying his magic is doing.”

“I ain’t stoppin’ him!” Logan snarls back. “He made our bike soar before you ever showed up with yours. We were perfectly happy without you.”

Sirius barks a bitter laugh. “Really? I’ve never seen you happy. You’d fit right in at Grimmauld Place.”

“You hardly fit in our camper, ya mutt.” 

“You can’t kick me out! I’m his godfather!” Sirius’s expression grows thunderous and he seems to force himself to take a breath, though his anger ain’t leavin’. “I appreciate you looking after him, but are you even considering his future? What’s your plan, just roam around aimlessly forever? Go to Japan, then what? He needs school. Every kid needs school.”

Harry lets out a mix between a sigh and an exasperated groan; likely a staple of every pre-teen. He’s shaking his head, fast, clearly sick o’ their argument. He mounts his broom and flies off, and Sirius chases after him. “Harry! …Harry? Where are you going?”

Logan climbs back on his bike, scowling. He hardly ever gets alone time these days, and thinks perhaps that was the reason Harry wandered off in the first place. Sirius can be a bit much, desperate for human interaction after bein’ locked up for so long, a far cry from Harry and Logan’s prolonged silences where they’re left to their own thoughts.

Logan will never admit it aloud, but Sirius has a point; Logan has no clue what Harry’s future will be like. He hadn’t really planned on formin’ a family with Harry, and Sirius certainly ain’t supposed to be a part of it, but Sirius is stubbornly refusing to leave them be, just like the rest of the wizarding world.

Harry lets out a wordless shout as a dark jet materializes in midair; Sirius had assured them the bikes and broomsticks were invisible to Muggles, but the jet had been invisible just a moment before, and even Logan hadn’t picked up the sound of engines.

Logan growls. More visitors. They’ll never get a moment of alone time again, will they?

Chapter Text

Harry’s sure the plane just came out of nowhere, and Sirius somehow finds a way to bring up Harry’s dad again, mentioning a cloak. 

This plane doesn’t look anything like the one he and Logan snuck onto, with all the dogs caged underneath. This plane is like a shadow in the night sky, sleek and silent, almost invisible still. It soars past, and Harry grips his Nimbus tightly to shoot after it. Maybe there are dogs they have to free in there, too.

Even if there aren’t dogs to save, curiosity lances through Harry like Logan’s claws through the turban guy with two faces. Sirius (and Ron and Dumbledore) made it quite clear that wizards don’t use planes, so how was this one invisible? Muggles can’t turn invisible. 

Well, they said wizards don’t use planes, but Mr. Weasley had a car and Sirius had his flying motorbike before Harry was born. Clearly someone’s wrong, and Harry’s curious who.

Harry speeds after the plane, though it seems to be slowing down. Gripping the handle of his Nimbus tightly, Harry races to peer in the window.

A woman with dark skin and hair as white as Hedwig’s feathers seems to be piloting, but Harry’s eyes are drawn to another woman with long silky red hair. Like Sirius’s endless stories of his mother.

Everyone said Harry’s mum died, but Harry somehow survived. Maybe Mum did, too, because she was a powerful witch who fought against Voldemort. Why would she have died when Harry lived? He was a baby who couldn’t do anything, and couldn’t stop the Dursleys from hurting him.

Maybe she got blasted away and was searching for him all these years. 

“Harry! Where are you going?!” Sirius demands behind him, like he’s not the one trying to talk Harry into going to school all the time, where Harry could chase planes or something without Sirius chasing him. Except they probably don’t have planes at Hogwarts, not even invisible midnight jets that look like the Batmobile.

Logan and his own motorbike growl together as they join Harry in the air. “We’re supposed to be avoidin’ these guys, remember?”

Then, Logan sort of whistles at Harry’s mum “I wouldn’t mind getting to know her.”

Harry’s face scrunches in disgust before he realizes that it would go perfectly. He’d have his mum back, and Logan’s already sort of his dad. Would his mum want to kiss Logan with that cigar, though? Harry gags, because imagining Logan and his mum kissing is nauseating, maybe even grosser than Vernon and Petunia kissing.

Harry sways slightly on his broom, like how Mum would’ve rocked him as a baby.

Sirius said Harry’s name right away, and wanted to hug him when he met, but now he doesn’t say “Lily” when he sees Harry’s mum, and he doesn’t seem to want to hug her.

I’m not your mom, a voice says in Harry’s head. It’s a woman’s voice, but it’s not British. The voice is kind, though, not harsh like Aunt Petunia, who said she wasn’t Harry’s mum while pushing Harry away, back when Harry was really little.

Harry feels the back of his head, hoping nobody’s face popped out of his skull like under Quirrel’s turban. Would Logan have to stab through his face, too? Would Harry survive that, if he survived the killing curse?

She disappears from the plane’s cockpit’s window, then a ramp lowers and the woman steps down. She doesn’t have a broom, but she just floats all by herself.

Harry’s jaw drops. Why doesn’t she need a broom to fly? Why is she riding in a plane if she can fly by herself? Sure, the plane can turn invisible, but feeling the wind whipping in your hair is so much better.

Her fiery red hair is whipping around her almost like real flames. She’s not Harry’s mum, but maybe she’s another Weasley? 

“My name is Jean Grey,” she says, in the same voice that was in Harry’s head, but now it’s outside, ringing through the air. “I’m a professor at Xavier’s Institute for Gifted Youngsters.”

Harry hates the idea of Hogwarts- the Dursley said Harry would need a special school, and Hogwarts is a special school, and he’d be away from Logan- but if this school teaches you how to fly without a broom… 

Harry’s not entirely listening as Jean Grey tells them about how the school teaches gifted individuals to control their powers. 

Harry flicks his fingers, remembering how his hands burned the turban man’s flesh.

Suddenly, the woman’s burning, actually burning instead of just looking like it with her fiery hair whipping around in the wind. Flames surround her, in the shape of a bird. 

Harry gasps, jerking back but staying on his broom. He hadn’t even touched her. Did he set her on fire with his mind? 

He really does need to learn control, but what school would take him if he burns people? 

“This is one of my powers,” Jean Grey tells him. “You’re not doing anything wrong. I know you’re scared. It’s okay. Many of our students are scared of their gifts at first, when they’re beyond their control.”

Harry frowns. He’s brave, he just doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Well, burning the evil wizard was fine, because he was evil, but what if he hurts Logan? Logan would heal, sure, but Harry doesn’t want to burn him.

He does want to fly, and make the truck shrink by himself, and turn into a wolf.

“We can help you control your powers,” she says, like she’s reading his head, and Harry had heard her voice in there earlier, when he doesn’t even really hear his own voice in his head. It’s nice that she’s not treating him like he’s stupid.

“You’re not alone, Harry.” she tells him. She beckons towards the jet. “Come on, we can give you a ride, and a tour. The Professor’s been wanting to meet you.”

Professor Dumbledore? Professor McGonagall? But they already met. Professor McGonagall hadn’t been this understanding, acting like Harry was some spoiled tantrum-throwing brat like Dudley.

Sirius might finally stop talking about Hogwarts if Harry at least looks at this other school. Sirius said Hogwarts teaches how to fly a broomstick, but Harry already knows that.

“What Professor?” Logan asks the same thing Harry’s thinking. “We already told Dumbledore and McGonagall no.”

“Professor Xavier,” Jean Grey says. “You know, it’s not just Harry we can help. We can help you, too, Logan. We can help you remember.”

Logan raises an eyebrow and kind of smiles. “If it’s you helpin’ me, gorgeous…”

“I have a partner,” Jean Grey says, her voice a bit flatter. 

Sirius snickers, and Logan scowls at him.

Harry flies his broom into the jet and walks to the front, where the other woman’s still flying it. Her hair’s as white as Hedwig- can she turn into a snowy owl? 

She introduces herself as Ororo, or Storm, and says she can control weather, like Harry’s lightning scar, and lightning flashes outside the plane.

“What happened to keepin’ away from them?” Logan grumbles behind Harry, even as he settles into the plane. Harry turns, roaming back to look for trapped dogs, but the only dog here is Sirius, and he’s not even Padfoot.