Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts just after the drama with the Chamber of Secrets is concluded.

It’s Ron who makes the suggestion. “We need a place to meet up without anyone hearing us, all the whispering and shite is getting on my nerves an’ I can tell it’s getting on yours.”

Harry nods. “But where would we find a place like that?”

Ron shrugs. “I’ve no clue. Ask the headmaster?”

Harry gives a shrug in return, “Couldn’t hurt, I guess.”

So, Harry walks to the gargoyle and fires off a guess that the password hadn’t changed since his last visit, luckily it seems it didn’t, as the Gargoyle just slides out of the way.

When he gets up to the headmaster’s office, Fawkes immediately glides from his perch and starts playing with Harry’s hair. Dumbledore smiles at Harry from his desk. “Are you feeling better, Mr. Potter?”

Harry nods, “Much, thank you Headmaster. I, ehm, have a question, if that’s alright.”

The Headmaster raises a brow. “Oh, what is it?”

“Well, me and my friends like to study and talk, but we’re, a bit… Annoyed, that people overhear us. There are a lot of loud people in Gryffindor.” Harry says, and while he doesn’t miss the concerned look the headmaster gives, he still continues. “So, we’d like to be able to just… meet somewhere that we know nobody can walk in on.”

“That sounds an awful lot like you’re forming a club.” Dumbledore says, giving a half-smile.

“Yea, the ‘Keep the boy-who-lived alive’ club.” Harry remarks sarcastically.

“Perfect then. There’s a room that you can use. Come with me.” Dumbledore says, standing up. Fawkes lets out a trill and the Headmaster looks at the bird. “You may come with too, Fawkes, but I don’t think Mr. Potter would enjoy the attention you being perched on him will bring.”

Harry can tell that Fawkes did the bird equivalent of eye-rolling, he’d seen Hedwig do it before, and the pheonix hops from Harry’s shoulder to Dumbledore’s.

“Now, Mr. Potter, have you learned to speak Draconic at will?” Dumbledore asks as they get on the the odd spiral staircase that slowly floats them back down to the gargoyle.

“Could I, sir?” If he could learn to speak it at will that might be nice… and intimidating to those that annoy him.

Dumbledore nods. “You’re a Draconic Speaker, a bloodline trait that your mother had as well.” Harry’s eyes widen. “It’s a trait that can be a great boon. It powers wards, protections, and healing spells to be much stronger than latin counterparts. That is, of course, if you were to learn how to speak it at will, otherwise you end up a great conversationalist to the dragons and not much else.”

“Is… Is that how my mum’s magic is still active after all this time?” Harry asks.

Dumbledore gives a half-nod. “Yes and no, it was both powered by her speaking Draconic to make it happen, and then was further boosted by her sacrifice. That’s my theory anyways.”

“Now, since you can’t speak draconic at will, we’ll have to walk back and forth, in front of the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. Think of the kind of room you want, such as a secure speaking and studying space, and it should appear.”

“And… What if I could speak Draconic?”

“Then I suspect you’d just have to say what room you want to the Hogwarts crest positioned right there.” Dumbledore points at a shield oddly high up on the wall depicting the four-houses crest. Directly across from the tapesstry. “That’s what’s known as a Founder’s Backdoor. Your mother discovered one when she hissed at the prefect’s bathroom door because she couldn’t remember the password she was given.”

Harry looks at the Hogwarts crest and focuses on the Snake of Slytherin. He feels something click in the back of his mind as he starts Hissing. ~I need a secure speaking and studying space for myself and my friends. Let nobody but they and Dumbledore inside.~

A door appears as the Slytherin section of the crest glows, and Harry smiles at Dumbledore. “If I act like I’m speaking to the picture of a snake then I found out I could switch languages easily enough. It’s how I got into the Chamber. But I will work on speaking Draconic at will. Thank you for the advice, Headmaster. I made it so you but no other Professors can come inside the room.”

Dumbledore seems on the brink of letting out a loud laugh, instead he just chuckles and walks inside with Harry.

There are several couches inside, along with many rows of bookshelves lining the walls. Empty, until Harry wanders over with his mind focused on getting something about Draconic Speakers, then a book appears on the end of the shelf.

“… This is… Odd.”

“What is, Mr. Potter?”

“I can tell what everything in the room does. It’s like something is whispering in my ear about how exactly it all works. I knew that if I walked over here with my mind on a subject to learn about then a book would appear for me to read. I know that those couches are the comfiest couches that the room could get. And I know that if I look at the Hogwarts crest and hiss out anything I’d like to change about the room that it just… Will.”

“Ah, the Spirit of Hogwarts finds you interesting then.” Dumbledore says.

“The what?” Harry asks.

“The spirit of Hogwarts. The castle has been enchanted in every way possible so as to defend it. As the Founders were a little paranoid about humans making it inside the castle somehow. Have you felt that your broom seems a little bit more intelligent than just a broom?”

Harry nods.

“It’s because of the enchantments. Enchantments placed onto things without use of a Mana Stone tend to make the items enchanted a little more sentient than normal. The enchantments on brooms make them about as sentient as a horse. The enchantments on Hogwarts have nearly brought it to fully human sentience. Though it can’t seem to speak, or is just unwilling.”

“… And the hat didn’t have a visible Mana Stone yet it still had enough enchantments to be able to decide where we should go in the houses…” Harry mutters, and Dumbledore nods.

“Anyways, Mr. Potter, I find myself curious, why haven’t you accepted your Heir ring?”

“My what?” Harry asks, and Dumbledore’s face goes pale.

“… I seem to have done you a disservice. Next time you find yourself in Diagon Alley, I’d urge you to ask the Dragons at Gringotts to let you speak with Skith, the Potter Hoard-Keeper.”

“I met him, but nobody told me who he was…”

Dumbledore lets out a weary sigh. “It seems, in everyone’s excitement, you have been left in the dark of a great many things. Mr Potter, if you ever find yourself in need of asking questions, please, come speak with me. If it is a question I am able to answer I will do so. If it is not I will almost always try and direct you towards someone else who could answer the question.”

“… Are. Are you serious?” Harry asks, and Dumbledore nods. Harry can practically taste the sincerity in the air. Thus, he takes a deep breath. And starts from the first year.

“Why are wands necessary? If we can do accidental magic surely it’s possible to control wandless magic.”

“Focus and intent are hard to nail down for Mages. Sure, I believe that training first without a wand to get a number of things down before moving on to using a wand would greatly benefit the caster, but I can’t teach it to first years because of the danger they could potentially become. It’s a Gaia-Wide law.”

Harry would be stunned that the man actually answered, but that reminds him of another question he had. “I get that we are on a separate plane of existence now. Gaia. And I know that it was a Ruler decision, but who are the Rulers and why did they decide to move Magical Creatures and People from Earth to Gaia?”

“Rulers, Mr Potter, are quite simply major Spirits. They’re called Rulers because they are the Ruler Spirits of whatever it is. As an example; Amaterasu is the Ruler Spirit of Light and Life. She rules over all spirits that fall under those elements. It can even be said that she Rules those elements period, but it’s quite impossible to actually know what that entails.”

“Another example is Grim, the Ruler of the Crossing. They rule over the metaphysical land between life and death. Sending people off to their proper afterlives.”

“And then there are technically Living Rulers. Or the Rulers who are not yet Spirits. Titania, the Ruler of the Fae, and her husband, Ignis, Ruler of Dragons. Both of them are immortal and very powerful, but they aren’t spirits.”

“… Wouldn’t Ignis be seen around if he were the Ruler of Dragons?”

Dumbledore chuckles. “Yes and no, Mr Potter. He lives in the Faewild with his wife. He has been spotted a total of once by humankind, when he appeared to destroy another dragon that was intent on being the Ruler of Dragons. That dragon was a massive and destructive Hydra, and their battle didn’t last past Ignis’ first strike, which turned a mountainous region into a flatland.”

“He’s less of an actual leader and ruler, and more of a spiritual leader, what many Dragons aspire to become.”

“… Is there a way to become better connected with my magic? It feels… Oddly distant.”

“The proper term is Mana. Magic is the effect, Mana is the energy that creates it.” Dumbledore idly says, then strokes his beard. “Yes, there is something you can do. Once again it’s something you should have learned in your formative years but weren’t told about because unlike human-born students you’ve been done a disservice as you weren’t told about it when you did your shopping for attending Hogwarts.”

Dumbledore moves to the bookshelf and taps a hand to it, thinking about the book that Harry would likely need to use in order to learn the technique.

‘Art of Meditation’ appears on the shelf and Dumbledore hands it over to Harry. “That book will introduce you to the technique that most pure-bloods use starting at age seven. To help with the prevention of accidental magic.”

Dumbledore hums and looks at the time. “I’m afraid I’ll have to cut this little session short, Mr Potter. I’ve other things that need doing. But stop by my office before the end of the year, I’ll have something ready for you so that you won’t need the Weasleys to abduct you from those… People.”

Harry’s eyebrow raises. Dumbledore sighs glumly.

“I’m going to be Honest, Mr Potter. I know the Dursleys treat you horribly. However, I cannot house you, as I am not in any shape or form good at taking care of myself, I fear I would be worse at taking care of a child. And much of your family’s enemies are on Gaia, so the safest place for you to relax would be Earth, had they not ruined that feeling…” Harry slowly blinks at the Headmaster.

“Anyhow, I will be giving you a Portkey to Diagon Alley. Unpleasant feeling though they may be, they’ll get you to and from Gaia. And another thing will be a Notice-Me-Not necklace. It makes you hard to perceive or think about unless someone genuinely has need for you. Not perfect, but the most I can do for magical objects that won’t breach the Satute.”

“I would also recommend, while on Gaia, that you be a little bit more liberal in your use of the heirloom your father passed down. That cloak is impossible to detect and thus it is extremely hard to detect the person under it. Unless you were to walk loudly it would make you imperceivable by Mortal means. The only reason I can detect it is because my current Wand seems to reach out to it.” Dumbledore gives Harry a slight smile.

“I’ll tell you that particular tale later, however, as it’s getting quite late. You should bring your friends here tomorrow. Get them used to the space. I have a feeling you will spend a lot of time here.”

“But… Mione isn’t…” Harry feels his throat shrink in size.

“She and all other petrified students will be unpetrified by tomorrow. Or I will hunt down Mandrakes myself.” Dumbledore says, turning to leave.

Harry stares after him as he disappears mind blanking for a few moments, before Harry looks around the room again. It feels so… Comfortable. Like he could spend hours in here studying and talking with his friends and not care about how stressful he normally finds talking.

He looks at the Hogwarts Crest again and hisses out ~Thank You.~ before leaving to go find Ron and tell him he secured a room. Weirdly, the corridors and floating stairs seem to lead him to Gryffindor Tower really quickly. He tells the Fat Lady portrait the password, idly noting the Hogwarts Crest above the painting, meaning if he forgot the password he could just hiss at the painting

“Harry! You’re Back! What did the Headmaster say?” Ron asks, standing up and walking closer to Harry without getting within arms distance. Which was nice.

Harry smiles a little. “He showed me a room we can use. I’ll tell you about it later.”

Ron nods, and the two move to sit on the couch and watch the fire for a bit before going up to bed.

—

The next day, as Dumbledore promised, Hermione enters the great hall and Harry stands up from the Gryffindor table to welcome her back. She slams into Harry and Ron with a hug. “What happened? Madam Pomfrey wouldn’t tell me and I swear to all above if you two do the same I will find a way to strangle you-“

“Later, Hermione.” Ron whispers. “When we’re all more comfortable.”

Harry nods a little, and Hermione lets out an annoyed growl but doesn’t try to strangle either of them, instead she releases the hug and all three of them sit down.

There’s the sound of a hollow thunk, and Harry looks up to the high table to see Dumbledore standing at his announcements lectern. His Scowl is practically radiating anger.

“It has been brought to my attention that while I was away from Hogwarts there was a rather vicious bullying campaign against a student with a Bloodline ability. One that is perfectly natural.” His face is utterly agitated, but weirdly Harry doesn’t feel it’s pointed towards him. “To everyone but that student, and those who stood by his side, I am highly disappointed in all of you.” Harry oddly feels like several people are staring at him, but he wasn’t being bullied, was he?

“There will be no House Cup this year. As None of you are fit for it, evidenced by those that actively participated, and those that let it happen. That is all.” He returns to his seat at the High Table, scowl still present.

Harry just decides to finish his food then leave early with his friends. As they’re walking, the currently attending Weasleys follow alongside Ron.

“Okay, I can understand Ron and Ginny, but the rest of you?” Harry asks, still walking but asking questions as he does.

The twins shrug. “Curiosity.”

Percy grimaces. “Honestly the same as the twins, but also to make sure you don’t get dragged for what the Headmaster just announced.”

Harry nods a little. “Just so you’re all aware, I’m not a parselmouth. That’s an ability specific to snake charmers. I’m a Draconic Speaker. Very different, sounds a little close to the same.” He’d managed to read a little bit of the book on Draconic Speaking before bed last night.

And as if to demonstrate, he looks at the crest on the wall where he knows the Room will be. He hisses at it. ~I need a room where myself and my friends can talk and study. Let nobody else enter or hear the noises within except the Headmaster and Professors.~

The others seem to blink and look at him. “Wha…” Ron starts, but doesn’t get to finish as the Door appears and Harry steps forwards, opening it.

“The Headmaster showed me this room yesterday. It’s a room that I can essentially ask to change to suit my needs, and it will. Though that only really works with Draconic Speakers. Currently it’s set to be a place where we can hang out and study, and nobody will bother us unless they’re professors.”

The others just stand there, staring, and Harry rolls his eyes. “Come on, get in.”

Harry feels his chest unclench as he lets out a sigh of relief when everyone and him are in the Room.

“Why’re you so tense, Harry?” Percy asks.

“Egh… I’m not quite sure. I mean, I’m not normally all that caring about people hearing my words, but lately it’s as if I’m jumping at shadows, waiting for everyone to misinterpret what I’m saying so they can go ‘Ha! Gotcha!’ or whatever.”

“And in here, they can’t do that.” Twin Right says.

Twin Left continues. “So you feel a little more at peace.”

Harry nods. “Yeah. Plus this way none of the Grffindors will be crawling up my arse about reading. They won’t be able to get curious about what me and Ron are talking about… It’s nice.”

Harry then snorts. “For people proud of being in Gryffindor, they’re awfully obsessed with knowing everything.” He sighs. “Anyways, apparently this is called The ‘Keeping the Boy-Who-Lived Alive’ Club. I said it as a joke, but I wouldn’t be surprised if The Headmaster took it seriously to tease me.”

“Those bookshelves search every book in Hogwarts to find what you need, unless it’s a possession of someone. The chairs seem like they’ll be comfy, and the fireplace is a fireplace. If you want something added on just ask me and I’ll try and figure something out.” Harry yawns a little, then looks at the crest. “Right, hold on.”

He starts hissing. ~I want a clock that’ll chime when we need to start heading to class.~

A blur forms on one of the walls, a clock forming. “That’ll chime when we should start heading to class. Now, Ron, what did you want to talk about yesterday?”

Chapter Text

Ron sighs as he sits in one of the chairs. Harry was right, they Are comfortable. “We need a plan for if shite goes to hell next year too. Harry, you and Hermione are really good for people who know next to nothing about the magical world. But you need to know more. We all do. We need to be prepared should something like this happen again.”

“I have a few ideas about it, but the plan could use some ironing. Will you four help us?” Ron asks his siblings.

Ginny is the first who nods. “I can teach… Rather creative hexes. And how to make them.”

The twins wince, and then nod their heads at the plan ironing. “Myself and George are quite good at Apothic theory. Professor Snape hates the fact that he has to give us points for it.” They say, alternating their speech as they go.

“I know just about all the rules in the handbook… And have made notes of the loopholes. Same with actual laws.” Percy says, nodding.

“I’m just good at planning and strategy.” The twins, Percy, and Ginny all give Ron bland looks, clearly remembering that they’ve never won a single chess game against him, as the look practically Seeps ‘We Know’ energy.

“I can handle note-taking and duplicating notes should we end up studying multiple books.” Hermione offers.

Harry just stares… “I eh… Can only really offer Danger at this point. But I do find Defense Against the Dark Arts fairly easy and a little fun.”

The older ones give affirming nods. “We heard you nearly beat Malfoy in a duel before he pulled out the Serpent Summon Charm. And considering how useless our DADA instructors have been, and that you definitely haven’t gotten tutoring, that is fairly impressive.” Percy says. “Get a bit more study and some spells under your belt, and you’ll probably be fairly proficient on the battlefield.”

“Either way, it’s likely going to be us seniors teaching you youngsters,” First twin says.

Second Twin continues, “Except for Ginny, We sincerely have no idea how she comes up with the spells that she does, and how she made me throw up slugs still confuses me.”

“… That’s a standard spell though?” Ginny asks. “The ones I’ve made up are the Bat Bogeys, the Nails-to-Toes, the Pulsing Joints, and Unwilling Contortionist. None are too harmful, but they are unsettling.” She waves off the concerned look the other people besides the Weasleys in the room give her.

“Speaking as someone who has had all of those spells cast on him. Yeah, they don’t hurt much and have simple counters or just some waiting time. They just feel really odd.” Twin Left says.

Harry shrugs and starts towards the bookshelf, once again tapping it while hoping for a book on meditation. “Headmaster gave me a bit of advice, so I’ll be studying Meditation and such for a while.”

He ignores the lightly pitying looks from the purebloods in the room, and goes to sit next to the place Hermione had claimed after grabbing the book that appeared.

—~—

After a few days of consistently meeting up in the Club Room they have a decently ironed-out plan of action should things go to hell in a handbasket next year.

Harry decides to go to the Headmaster’s office the day after they’d managed to iron it all out. Dumbledore greets him kindly and briefly looks around the room for something before finding it and putting a box on his desk.

“I managed to acquire what you needed. This…” He holds up a Bracelet with a plate on it. “Is a portkey that’ll take you to the Leaky Cauldron. Tom has already agreed to allow the use of this object. The code to make it activate is Peanuts. And in order to activate it you need to say ‘Code:’ and then the code. I’ve left instructions in the case in the event that you forget.”

Harry blinks, feeling a little dizzy at the new information, but still he nods. “I think I managed to get all that.”

Dumbledore nods. “Okay, this next thing is a bit… Tacky, considering the shape of your scar, but I’ve also gotten my hands on an enchanted necklace that will, in essence, make you hard to think about and focus on.”

“The Notice-Me-Not thing?”

“Yes. It’s not nearly as effective as your Invisibility Cloak for stealth, but if someone isn’t looking for you, and isn’t genuinely in need of you, then as long as this thing is charged and you have it on, people will find it very hard to focus or think about you.”

“… What’s tacky about it?” Harry asks, and Dumbledore’s mouth pinches a little as he holds up the charm on the necklace to show a slim lightning bolt. “Oh.”

“Yes. Anyways, I would recommend against wearing either item in these halls… Ah, right, there’s also this.” He places something on the desk that makes Harry blink in confusion. It’s a black screen encased in iron and wood, with a few glowing crystals on the case. “This is a Phone. It’s something a Human-Born mage designed after seeing how awful us mages can be with communication.”

“I… I didn’t think you had those.” Harry mutters.

Dumbledore shrugs. “Us mages are very impractical, as you’ll come to learn. Magic does interfere with technology, so we had to adapt, instead of asking ‘How do we make technology work with magic’ like we had been, some human-born mages decided the question should be ‘How can we create the same effect with magic.’”

“Did you see the large tower in the center of Central City?” Harry nods. It was pretty hard to miss. “That tower relays to a bunch of other smaller towers across Gaia that have begun going up. It uses various detection magics to then make a reliable map that is relayed to these phones. It can also facilitate communication via calls and messages.”

“… Anyways, this phone already has my number and the number of the Weasley patriarch input in. Just in case you want or need advice after traveling here. And this way any friends you make will also be able to contact you should they need to speak with you. But, this will only work on Gaia. Earth doesn’t have the proper enchantments or relays to make it work.”

Harry nods. “Why are you so sure I’m going to be spending a lot of time on Gaia?”

Dumbledore sighs a little glumly. “I’m hoping that you do. Earth clearly causes you a lot of stress.” Harry makes to argue, for reasons unknown even to him, but Dumbledore gives him a look and continues. “I looked over the medical reports from Pomfrey, Mr Potter. Signs of severe anxiety that recently calmed down only to resurface during the Halloween feast. Severe malnutrition until around the middle of the year where it went down to heavy.”

“I could go on to talk about the number of scars you have hidden across your body. The odd hexes that were caused by your own accidental magic, and everything else, but I want this meeting to be a bit brief.” Headmaster says, sighing.

“As I said yesterday, I am your Guardian on Gaia, yet I cannot take care of you. I’m not nearly good enough at taking care of Myself, much less a child. The Weasleys would certainly try but the financial strain on them would make you feel guilty, and you paying for your own meals would in turn make them feel guilty, and the guilt-spiral would lead to a stressful environment. I’m trying to figure something out, but I doubt you would trust many people besides myself and the Weasleys.”

Harry grimaces, but nods, accepting that point.

“And I don’t want you to have to live like an explorer as a twelve-year-old, so I’m hoping that if you go to the bank during the summer, you’ll be able to get some idea of who your parents would’ve left you with. Their wills were sealed upon their deaths to prevent usage of them to find you or anyone else close to them. But as a Lone Heir you have the right to get copies from the bank and may execute them as you want.”

“But, all of that is best explained by your Hoard Keeper. I’ve never been part of a Noble or Ancient house, so I’ve never really known much about those laws except for the ones I encounter as Chief Warlock.”

Dumbledore places the items into the wooden box he’d pulled them from and locks it. He places a hand on the latch and mutters something. An incantation of some sort. “Now, I need you to put a little bit of blood on the latch here.”

Harry just nods, extending a hand, Dumbledore taps his finger and blood starts dripping out. Harry rubs the finger on the latch, then Dumbledore casts a quick healing spell on the wound and tries to open the latch on the box. It doesn’t budge even as he visibly strains. Dumbledore then turns the box and gestures at Harry to signal him to try. Harry finds the latch easy to open.

“There, now the box will only unlock for you… Next, there’s an idea I have that you may or may not like.” Dumbledore says, and Harry tilts his head.

“I want you to leave King’s Cross and return to 4 Privet Drive, but after everyone is sleeping you should immediately use the Portkey. Purchase a room at the Leaky Cauldron and go to the bank the next day.”

“… Why go all the way back just to return?” Harry questions.

“Portkeys make a whip-cracking noise when used to travel between planes. Essentially I want you to play a little bit of a prank on your guardians… To get back at them for all the years of getting paid out of the Potter vaults for your care and not using any of it on you.” Dumbledore glares at his desk. “If you could use it in the backyard it would have even greater effect.”

Harry takes a deep breath. “So you’re giving me permission to run away?” He asks, and the Headmaster nods.

“Yes. As I suspect you will find far more comfort on your own than with your relatives, I am, with a heavy heart, giving you permission to run away from that house and live on your own until you can find someone that will raise you.”

Harry nods, mind running through a possible action and reaction tree of what’ll happen with this. But at some point his mental processes stumble and he finds himself giving up on the thought process entirely.

“Okay. I’ll try.” He says.

Dumbledore nods. “Thank you, Mr Potter. I sincerely hope this will lead you to a better life in the future. Now, I have other duties to attend to, so I’m sorry to say this will be the end of our meeting today. Have a good rest of your day.”

Harry nods, deciding that he can talk to the Headmaster about making sure the club is official later.

—~—

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore sighs in relief as Harry leaves the office.

‘I feel bad about manipulating him like that, calling getting them arrested for child abuse and possibly murder a Small Prank was definitely a lie. Still, I won’t feel too guilty about it when I see those Bastards put into jail.’

The Portkeys can make a whip-crack noise when travelling through the planes, but well versed Portkey makers can make the noise different.

Hagrid had mentioned to Albus at one point that during the time he had to track Harry down he had a human weapon, a shotgun from Albus’ research, pointed at him.

And if a few undetectable agents put a spent shell in a trashcan and splatter just a little bit of magical imitation blood in their backyard… Well, it’s not like an arrest on earth would affect Gaia much, now would it?

Ah, Albus always loved that feeling. Of planning something and letting it all fall like dominoes. Not to mention it being to help someone. It’s like looking directly into the eyes of people that think Slytherins are universally evil and spitting on their shoes.

Not that he was in Slytherin, but after seeing so much confirmation bias since becoming headmaster… It agitates him. A lot.

He’s honestly disappointed Harry didn’t go to Slytherin. It would have done the house’s PR a world of good to have someone light aligned in their midst, but Albus can see why he wouldn’t and shouldn’t have.

Sure, having someone who is light aligned while still clever and ambitious would have been good, it would also have painted him a target for even worse bullying than what happened this most recent year. The boy has no idea about the customs of Gaia, and will need to learn them. All Albus needs to do is figure out How to point him in the right direction.

Chapter Text

It’s the going away feast for the year. Harry eats and chats with his friends, laughing and feeling quite good about everything.

Draco Malfoy approaches the table with a face blank of all emotion. “Heir Potter.”

Harry feels confusion tickle at the back of his mind. Still, he responds in a way he thinks he likely should. “Heir Malfoy.”

He ignores the shocked feeling looks sent his way.

“I would like to offer an apology, if that would be appropriate.”

Harry squints a little, and gets up from the Gryffindor table. “Then let us resolve this in private. I see no need to make you air your house’s misdeeds in public.”

Malfoy seems a bit curious about his phrasing or something, but still nods and follows Harry’s lead. They leave the Great Hall and walk for a while before entering an empty classroom that Harry felt lightly led to. Likely the spirit of Hogwarts, who has been a bit more active lately as Harry started speaking more and more to the different Crests.

Speaking of, he hisses out at a Crest above the door. ~Seal the room, no sound gets in or out, nobody can even so much as see inside here.~

The walls of the classroom comply, and Harry suppresses a smirk as Draco marvels at the effect his voice has on the castle.

“So, sorry to say I don’t know the proper etiquette. I just ripped what I said out of a fantasy novel.”

Malfoy rapid-blinks and lets out a breathy laugh accidentally. He tries to cover it with a cough, but Harry is unimpressed with the attempt.

“Right, still, My father wishes to offer his sincerest apologies for the… Incident, this year.”

“You mean the one that led to my best friend being petrified? I thought he didn’t have anything to do with that.” Harry says, sarcastically for the last statement.

Malfoy winces. “Yes, that one. He thought that passing the journal to someone who should know the proper handling of a magical artifact that seems sentient would be the best way to keep… Certain individuals within a certain circle, out of his hair and unsuspicious of his actual leanings. It did not work out like that.”

Harry resists a derisive snort. “And the spell he cast at me?”

“Once again, purposeful act. And to prove it, Dobby!”

Harry’s eyes widen as an elf pops into existence next to Draco. “Young Master Draco calls?” He asks.

“Wh… How?” Harry asks.

“Ah, Hello again, Harry Potter.” Dobby says, smiling at Harry. “I’m sorry for the part I played in Master Lucius’ ruse. And before I am asked, I was genuinely freed, but rather than return to the Faewild I stayed and formed a contract with Young Master Draco here.”

“All of it’s willing.” Malfoy admits, though he seems annoyed. “We’ve been trying to get Dobby to retire for ages, and used this plan as a way to do it. Then the little shite went and found a loophole around it. And now he’s continuing to dodge our attempts to sever his contract.”

“Why are you trying so desperately?” Harry asks.

Draco blinks. “Right, no knowledge of Gaia.” He says in a whisper, before continuing “Basically if one were to abuse their spirit or familiar, were it given by Titania, the Ruler of the Fae would put you on Trial for your actions. We’re trying to avoid getting put on trial in case You-Know-Who comes back.”

Dobby rolls his eyes. “And I keep telling Masters that so long as I do not call for the Trial, Queen Titania will not interfere with my life.” He then looks at Harry. “I enjoy working for the Malfoys and only played up the part of an abused familiar to make Master Lucius seem evil.”

“And the fact that all of them still ended up petrified?” Harry asks, feeling a headache coming on with all of the new information.

“… That, we are hoping, is something you can help us work on.” Draco says.

“… Okay. Fine. If only to finally be able to get the Weasleys to accept some kind of compensation for this Nonsense happening to their daughter.” Harry rolls his eyes, remembering the argument he had At Length with the currently attending Weasleys about appropriate gifts and such.

“I assume you want to give me money to then spread out among the affected, so that your family wouldn’t be implicated in the reparations, and since I’m publicly the one who put an end to the nonsense it’ll be taken as me finding the person who did this and forcing their hand at the cost of them remaining anonymous, and/or me just being charitable enough to pay compensation from my family’s massive wealth for the trouble. I’ll need to phrase it as the first one to get the Weasleys to accept it.”

Malfoy blinks. “Yes. I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting you to deduce it.”

Harry shrugs. “I have a bad habit of hiding my intelligence unless I’m comfortable.”

“… Yes, I suppose I can see that.” Malfoy says, thinking aloud. “Anyways, I would also like to offer a personal apology for what I said on the train during first year. I had meant to say I would teach you the Dark houses to avoid. Ones that followed the Dark Lord and don’t regret it. It… Came off far snarkier and loads less sincere than I meant to.”

Harry nods, seeing how that could have been what he was trying to say. “Okay. I’ll accept your apology. I still think I should be the one to decide who I associate with, but if you do have information on those families it would be a boon to have it. Also I really need to learn this etiquette stuff. I have a vague feeling like I’ve snubbed a lot of people accidentally, since so many people seem ready to believe I’m secretly a Dark Lord.”

Malfoy breathes a sigh of relief, and nods. “Yes, you have. You severely snubbed me by not shaking my hand. It’s a sign that you won’t be enemies with someone. I had to have several messages between myself and my mother before we realized you just had no idea about the culture.”

“… Ah, that explains a lot. My apologies, Heir Malfoy.”

Malfoy waves it off. “You didn’t know and I had slighted you just earlier in the conversation. We’re even.”

Harry smiles a little. “If we’re even, then why not agree on a truce now then?” Harry asks. “Not sure I can call you a friend so soon, but I can declare you a non-enemy. That is, you as a person… Sorry, but I really don’t think I can give your father that same benefit of the doubt right now.”

Malfoy seems intrigued, even if he gained a grimace at Harry’s admittance to not being able to forgive his father quite the same.

After a while, he nods. “Truce then, between us.” Draco extends a hand, and Harry does the same with his. They shake, and Harry smiles a little.

“Perfect. There are some things I’m real curious about and you’re probably a fountain of information for that kind of thing. Do you have a phone? The Headmaster got me one as part of an apology. We can use that to plan out when Myself and your father should make the exchange.”

“We could just leave it up to the Dragons.”

Harry tilts his head a little. “We could, yes, that would also make it less likely to leak that he’s the one distributing reparations. Hm… Okay, fine, but I still want to talk with your father when he’s not in the full ‘I’m an evil death eater, Nyargh foiled again’ persona.”

Draco looks like someone threw a water balloon of ice water at his face at the voice Harry uses for his father in ‘evil’ mode. “We have a home phone.” He says instead of unpacking how odd it was to hear someone so casually mock his father’s intimidating persona.

Well, at least, Harry’s pretty sure that’s what he’s doing.

“Oh, right, I’ve been told that the more exhausted I get the more ehm… Blunt, I get when it comes to my perceptions. Apologies if that offended you.”

Draco shakes his head. “No, it wasn’t personally offensive or even all that mocking to my father since it was just a comment on the persona he used to fool you… It was just odd to hear.”

Harry shrugs. “I’m starting to get a headache from all the new information, so write down your home phone and we’ll part ways for today.”

Draco seems a bit surprised when Harry hands him a slip of paper and a pen, still he does as asked and Harry puts the slip into his pocket.

Harry then looks at the Crest and hisses out ~Unseal~

Everything he altered about the room undoes itself. “Well, this was a productive meeting, Heir Malfoy.” Harry bows his head a little.

“… Now that I’ve delivered my apology, you don’t have to continue with the etiquette.”

Harry snorts. “That bad, huh?” Draco nods, and Harry huffs. “Well, this was nice. I hope that we continue this truce.”

“Agreed.” Draco nods.

And thus they both leave, Harry gets ambushed by his friends when he’s far enough away, while Draco meets up with Crabbe and Goyle, who had no idea where the two went.

—

“So, you’re still heading back?” Ron asks after they’ve settled in for the long ride back to King’s Cross, concern etching his features.

Harry shrugs. “Like I said, I’ll be back to Gaia within the day, and once I’m done with my business with the Dragons I’ll be able to get some real studying done.”

“Oh? Plan to bury your nose in books like the rest of us mortals?” Hermione asks, and Harry rolls his eyes a little.

“Yes, Mione, I plan on stealing your only hobby from you.” He laughs a little as he gets lightly punched in the shoulder. “I’ll try and take some notes for you to go over later.”

Hermione smiles her thanks before turning back to her reading.

“My family was planning to take a trip to the Desert over the summer, but with the shit that happened to Ginny, Bill and Charlie decided to return of their own accord for the summer. So the rest of the family and Ginny don’t have to feel guilty about the money for the trip instead being used on Ginny’s recovery.”

“I’ll have to stop by, then.” Harry nods. “Gotta meet the few Weasleys I haven’t yet.”

Ron snorts. “You realize that means our mum is going to mother-hen you into oblivion. ‘Specially after you saved Ginny.”

Harry gives a half smile. “That’s what I’m hoping for.”

Ron rolls his eyes.

Harry then plants his fist into his palm. “Oh, and once I’m free I can buy everyone who gave me presents for christmas their own gifts.”

Ron gives Harry a glare, and the Boy-Who-Lived returns him an eyebrow raise in challenge. “You cannot possibly say that me giving you and yours late christmas gifts is charity… Besides, I can think of various reasons as to why I would want to give some of these things. Decently selfish reasons.”

“Like what?”

“You need a new wand, and because I can’t help but feel a little scared every time you try and cast a spell it would help my peace of mind to just buy you a new one. The twins are the best beaters around, so if I get them better brooms, then they’ll be even better and thus I’ll have a better time being the Gryffindor seeker. Ginny has been teaching me all kinds of useful hexes so I think giving her a book on different ones would improve her teaching.”

“I’m not sure about your mother, father, or brothers besides the twins, but yeah.”

Ron blinks. “Shite.” He curses, and Harry gives a winning grin.

Harry decides not to tell them that he’s also getting an audit on his trust vault so he can also thoroughly tell them how little his gifts affect him. He’s still not exactly sure how the currency works, but he’ll probably figure it out.

—

Considering the level of anxiety he feels, it was almost trivial to get out the backdoor of the Dursleys after everyone was asleep.

As soon as they’d made it home, Vernon locked him in his cupboard, but also left Harry with all his stuff, citing that he didn’t want any ‘freakish’ stuff in his room.

After that, Harry grabbed the box Dumbledore had given him and put on the Notice-Me-Not necklace and the bracelet that has ‘Allergic to Peanuts’ engraved on it’s plate. He charges the necklace using the instructions Dumbledore left, then waited for night. Nobody called him out of the cupboard to make their food, so he assumes the necklace worked.

After he was fairly certain everyone in the house was asleep, Harry opens the door, grimacing at the chain they’d apparently wrapped around the door handle, and feeling a want for the lock to open reach out from his hand to do exactly that.

He briefly blinks at it, before grabbing the chain and carefully setting it on the floor so as to not make a racket. He then grabs his trunk and leaves through the backdoor, closing it.

He goes to the middle of the backyard so there’s less chance of dampening the sound, and lets out a breathy laugh. “Code: Peanuts.”

Harry doesn’t hear the sound of a whipcrack, but he does feel how disorienting the travel is, as was warned by the instructions. He holds on tightly to his trunk as he reappears on Gaia. With a loud Slam, he impacts the ground with his trunk.

Luckily the impact was softened, so despite the loud noise the real reason he stays laying on the floor is the nausea.

“… Harry Potter?” Someone asks. Harry looks up to see the person that’s normally behind the bar. Tom, he’s pretty sure Dumbledore had said.

“Yea?” He asks.

“Not good with magical travel, eh?”

“Probably doesn’t help that this was my first time using a portkey.” Harry grumbles, making to stand and feeling the nausea ebb away. “D’you have rooms available? I’d like to take one for the night.”

“Sure. It’s six sickles a night.” Harry squints a little, trying to figure out if he had any sickles.

“Does magic currency have an automatic conversion function? ‘Cause I think I’ve only got galleons on me.”

“Unless you have an enchanted wallet from the bank, no, it doesn’t. and I doubt you want me to go get 94 sickles to dump on you. Though I can hold onto a galleon from here till you check out from your room. Or until your stay elapses sixteen days.”

Harry nods, that sounds fair. Besides, he already planned on going to the bank tomorrow, so he can get the necessary sickles while there.

Harry pays for his room and settles into a bed for the night after locking the door, letting Hedwig out to go hunt, and briefly wondering if he could hiss at this door to seal itself. He tries it and it doesn’t work, though he feels like he could probably do it if he learned a bit about draconic casting.

Chapter Text

Skith looks up from his papers at the telltale significantly weaker feeling of one of his fellow dragons being in the room with him, a feeling that all Potters give off.

“Hello.” Harry Potter says, smiling a little. “Um… May your Hoard never diminish?” He asks, wondering if it’s the proper greeting.

Skith nods. “And may your enemies bleed gold.” He shrugs and moves on. “What brings you to Gringotts today, Heir Potter?”

“Apparently you and me are due a long conversation about things I don’t know.” He says, and there’s something very sharp in Harry’s eyes as he speaks. A feeling his mother gave a lot.

Skith nods and gets up from his seat. “Alright. To get things out of your Trust Vault I didn’t need to do this, but to get everything else from your family in order I will need you to take a scan for any magical or physical ailments, and then get said ailments fully remedied.”

Harry nods, and the two walk deeper into Gringotts.

“May I ask, Heir Potter, why you decided to drop by today?”

“Got some advice from someone I trust. Decided to follow it. Oh, and so you know, my relatives on earth aren’t the best people, so try not to be too surprised. My guardian on Gaia looked ready to kill when he informed me that he knew. I’d hate to imagine what he looked like when he actually learned.”

He finds it easy to admit such things lately. Hanging out with his friends in the Club Room had opened him up even more than he thought, he guesses.

Skith gives him an odd look, some mix of protective anger and curiosity.

Soon enough they exit Gringotts and enter a strange hospital building after crossing a field with several magical animals laying about and being tended to. Harry could swear he saw a head of red hair that matches with the majority of his friend group, but he’s ushered into the white building with the medical symbol on it before he could confirm.

It’s… A hospital. Harry’s pretty sure, at least. He’d never really been inside one, but it certainly has the look and feel of a hospital from those Dramas Petunia liked to watch as a ‘Guilty Pleasure.’

Well, it has the feel except for the fact that there’s a small Dragon manning the reception.

Said dragon, soft pink colored with neon green eyes, looks up at them. “Business here?” they ask.

Skith takes over. “Full check-up and treatment for any magical and non-magical ailments.”

The dragon nods and taps a button with their tail. Another dragon, this one soft blue with vibrant red eyes comes out from around the corner. “Gie will take you to a private room, then we’ll have a nurse do the scan.”

Harry blinks a little, and nods, moving to follow the dragon as Skith nudges him.

Eventually they reach a room with a few chairs and one of those weird looking chairs that were also on the Hospital Dramas.

Gie flaps their wings a little and taps a button high up on the wall, making Privacy Wards pop into existence, then a cabinet opens up and a hospital gown floats out to hover in front of Harry.

Skith moves to leave the Privacy Wards as Gie explains. “Put that on, don’t wear anything under it, then if you want Skith in here you can poke your head out of the wards.”

Skith and the dragon then leave while Harry is staring at the gown.

He grabs the gown out of the air after a few moments and grimaces, pulling off his clothes down to his underwear before pulling on the gown, and then taking off his underwear.

It still feels far too exposed for his liking, but at least he wasn’t starkers at any point. He then pokes his head out of the wards and whispers “I’m done changing, come back in.”

Skith nods and walks inside. Harry can practically feel the Dragon’s grimace at seeing the clothes he was wearing. “Er, sorry. I wasn’t sure where I should put them… It feels rude.”

Skith snorts and snaps his fingers, pointing at the clothes, then the counter. “Heir Potter, you’re still wearing your enchanted necklace as well as that portkey bracelet.”

Harry blinks and looks down. Sure enough, Skith was right. “Ah, sorry.” He unclasps the necklace and bracelet, handing them off to Skith, who then places them with the rest of Harry’s clothes, which had folded themselves into a neat stack on the counter. Strangely it feels a little odd to not have a necklace on now.

“Not a problem. Now, who was this person you trusted?”

“Dumbledore.” Harry answers easily. “Same as my Gaia Guardian.”

Skith grimaces. “That makes things… Complicated.”

“Why?”

“Certain rules within our nation about healing. When a child comes to us with injuries or ailments we charge the perpetrator. When it comes to children harmed by their parents who aren’t governed by the Gaian rules, we charge the Gaia Guardian. And we Have to do this, so do not try and talk us out of it. We can send a notification to Dumbledore if you want though.”

Harry nods, after a while of frowning and thinking. “Just… Let me notify him first?”

Skith nods. “Of course.”

The pair wait in silence for a while, until a Dragon in Human form walks through the veil of Privacy wards. She has tanned skin, white hair and horns, and soft pink eyes.

“Mr Potter?” She questions, and Harry nods.

“Alright, I’m going to cast a spell at you that’s going to search you for any issues at all. Magical or physical. It almost always feels invasive and odd, but we need this information to perform our best care. Do I have your permission to cast?”

Harry blinks, surprised by how forthright she’s being about this, and nods. “Yes.”

Harry feels a wave of magic pass over and through him, looking at things and seeming curious, searching for things that might be dangerous to him.

Eventually the wave returns to the nurse, who blinks and squints angrily, grumbling something in a hissed voice. ~Who the fuck…~ She sighs and grabs a stack of paper and casts a spell on it, forming words on the page. She then casts another spell and hands a duplicate of the stack to Skith, who starts reading it over.

Harry blinks in surprise when Skith hisses. ~Okay, I want all of these magical effects tracked to whoever cast them, then we’ll start with his treatment.~

Harry nods and hisses ~Thanks.~

~… He’s a Speaker?~ the nurse hisses in confusion.

~His mother was one. Didn’t know it managed to pass down until now though.~ Skith confirms.

~Right, okay. Mr Potter, I’m going to cast another spell on you that’s going to find the magical signatures of all the magical effects on you so we can figure out what to do from there, is that okay?~

Harry nods, and once again he feels a wave of magic enter him, this one seeming a bit more insightful with their curiosity, returning with more information than the last one could detect.

The nurse makes a growling hissing sound. ~Child Abuse.~ is all she says, grabbing yet another stack of paper and casting the same two spells, handing a copy to Skith.

~Dammit. We’re definitely going to have to charge Dumbledore for this then. It seems the old man had not a clue what happened to Harry until recently and was furious, so we won’t have to hold a trial.~

The nurse nods, seeming to calm upon knowing Harry has an adult in his corner.

“So, Mr Potter, you have quite a few problems, and one of them is inside your scar… The operations are likely to be very painful.” The Nurse says.

Harry sighs a little. “As long as you heal me up and make sure there are no issues still attached to me then I’ll be grateful even if it hurts.”

The nurse nods. “It’s going to be a number of days before you are able to leave here… Is there anything you need to do?”

Harry sighs. “Yeah, there is.”

“Okay, sadly we can’t let you leave until the operation is over. Part of our training to make sure someone doesn’t end up going the rest of their life with something just because they can live with it. Could you let Skith do whatever it is that needs doing?”

Harry nods. “That should be fine. Tom at the Leaky Cauldron needs six sickles, and I need my trunk brought from my room there to here so I can make some calls. I ended up giving Tom a Galleon to pay for my room for the night since I don’t have sickles on me. So don’t be surprised if he gives you a galleon back.”

—~—

Arthur Weasley blinks as his phone rings. He blinks again as he doesn’t recognize the number. Still, it’s verified and not marked as possible spam, so he answers. “Hello? Who’s this?”

“Harry Potter, sir.” A young voice on the other end answers. “Decided to go talk to the dragons about some stuff and apparently to get anything other than my Trust Vault I need to get any and all ailments purged. I just got scanned and they’re saying it’ll take a few days for me to be released. Just calling to tell you that I promised Ron I’d visit at some point this summer, so if you could tell him not to get too antsy if I don’t pop up for a while, that would be great.”

Arthur blinks, and slowly nods. “You said you’re with the Dragons? My son, Charlie, works in the familiar care division there, and another son, Bill, works as a Curse-Breaker for them.”

“I might’ve seen Charlie on the way to the hospital… Anyway, I have more calls to make, Goodbye.”

Arthur hums. “Alright, talk to you later, Harry.”

“Harry?” Ron asks. “He made it back to Gaia?”

Arthur nods. “Yes, and apparently he needs to have an operation done by the Dragons that’ll take a few days for him to be allowed out after. He called to tell me to tell you that.”

“Could we visit?” Molly asks worry etching her tone and features.

Arthur blinks. “I didn’t think to ask that.” He pulls up his phone again and redials the boy’s number.

“Hello?” Harry asks, sounding nervous.

“Would you or the dragons mind if we visited over the days you’re stuck in?”

“Um…” Harry hums. “No idea, one moment.” There’s a muffled conversation in the background, then Harry pulls the phone back to his ear, it seems. “Okay, not today and tomorrow isn’t recommended, but anytime after that is fine. Go to a receptionist in Gringotts and ask for Skith. Skith’ll tell them that he’s expecting the Weasleys to visit him.”

Arthur nods and gives Harry his goodbyes again before relaying the information to the rest of the family.

“Good.” Ron nods. “And before either of you wonder and try and bombard Harry, it seems Dumbledore has discovered Harry’s relatives on earth are the worst to him. He gave Harry a portkey to the Leaky and a Notice-Me-Not necklace so he could return to Gaia as soon as he made it back to his Relative’s house, as a bit of a prank, apparently.”

… From what Arthur knows about Dumbledore, that man doesn’t play small pranks. Doesn’t view them as worth much of his time. But he decides against telling Ron that.

“And the phone?”

“Also provided by the Headmaster. So Harry could ask for advice or help should he come across something he doesn’t understand. Dumbledore can’t watch over Harry because of his own admitted ineptitude, and both of them decided that him coming here to stay would be too much stress, as the financial strain on us would make him feel guilty, and him providing for himself would make you feel guilty, which would, in turn, make him feel guilty, so it’s bad all around.”

Arthur chuckles a little at Molly’s lightly offended crossed arms, while he just nods, accepting the point.

“So, Harry is trying to find out who would’ve been the one to take care of him had the wills not been sealed.”

“… I know they had multiple people listed, as during the war there was no way to know who would die when, but the only one I actually knew was on the list was Alice Longbottom.” Molly says.

Arthur grimaces. That doesn’t look good for Harry’s chances of finding someone to take care of him.

—~—

Albus picks up his phone as it rings. “Yes?” He asks, having read the caller ID of Harry.

“Hi… Headmaster. J-Just calling to tell that I made it to Gaia, and currently the Dragons are getting ready to get rid of my various ailments…”

Albus blinks, and realizes why Harry was so nervous. “Mr Potter, I do not mind at all if they charge me for your care. It’s my duty as your magical guardian anyway, and even one of my jobs could set me up to live in a castle for the rest of my life. One that Isn’t Hogwarts. I live a fairly frugal life, my largest expenditure is in sweets. If the dragons need to bring me down for a trial tell them that I will come as soon as I get the letter.”

Albus can hear Harry’s relieved breath. “They said they won’t need to bring you in for a trial. Though Skith would like to speak with you regarding something he won’t hiss about in Draconic since they learned I understand it.” Albus would dare to say Harry was annoyed by that fact.

He chuckles. “Alright, just tell him to send a letter or message and I will be by at any appointed time, so long as it’s not during any of the events I’m required to attend.”

Harry does just that, pulling the phone away from his ear to say something to someone before speaking into the phone again. “A-Anyway, I need to do some stuff still… Bye.”

“Goodbye, Mr Potter.” Albus says, hitting the hang-up button and sighing a little, relaxing into his chair. Hearing Harry so nervous had instantly made his spine straighten.

He grabs some more documents that he was supposed to read and gets back to work, hitting a button on his desk to play relaxing rain sounds through his office using runes.

—~—

Lucius Malfoy’s eyebrows draw together as his son comes into the room. “Heir Potter would like to speak with you, Father.” He waves the home phone a bit.

“… Understood, thank you again for conveying my apologies, son.” Lucius says, accepting the phone as his son beams proudly.

“Heir Potter? To what do I owe the pleasure of a call?”

“Lord Malfoy, I’ve called to inform you of the fact that I will be unavailable for a few days regarding the Reparations plan. My apologies for being Curt with you, but I feel it necessary to keep my nerves down.” He’s clearly reading off a script in his head. Which is understandable given the recent conversation with Draco revealing that the Potter Heir has no idea about the Etiquette.

‘Still scared of me, but willing to speak over the phone. Understandable.’ Lucius nods. “Perhaps speaking through Draco’s mother would be a solution to this problem? I would rather not speak of these things over the phone. These calls can be spied on.”

“That… That would probably be a solution, yes. But that is not the purpose of this call still. I am saying that I will be in the hospital for a few days concerning some health issues that have been brought to light, I am calling to inform you that I will be unavailable for any meetings or such things until I am fully recovered from the operations.”

“Ah, well thank you for the information.” If he’s able to just intuitively understand that it would be rude to not give a call regarding that, then he can most definitely learn etiquette.

Though the medical procedure thing is worrying… Narcissa is going to be angry with him if he doesn’t share that information with her.

“… Good Day then.” Heir Potter states.

“Indeed. Good day to you as well. I wish you a safe recovery.” He hangs up as the boy stumbles over his words, and gets up from his desk to find where they normally put the home phone in the house.

Turns out Draco was standing outside his office door. “So?” Draco asks.

“Potter’s business is his own, he managed not to insult or slight me in the conversation, though his understanding of Etiquette is clearly rudimentary.”

Draco nods. “I heard it too…” He snorts. “He told me while I was delivering the apology that he ripped what he said to me to get us out of the great hall out of a fantasy novel. It works a little well in a pinch like he is, but the phrasing is a bit off.”

“Have you offered to teach him and his friends the proper etiquette?”

Draco blinks, then his eyes widen. “No. I didn’t think of that. It could give me an in with their friend group… Though it’s unlikely very many of them will like me… He did imply that he wanted to inquire about it though…”

“Yes, however, you told me that Potter seems to be their leader, so they will listen if he thinks it’s a good idea. Then as long as you’re not rude like you were before, it is unlikely they will outright hate you, which is all that can be asked of you.”

He felt bad for his son, not making any friends. Crabbe and Goyle don’t count because they stick by him on accounts of Draco being a Death Eater’s child. Plus by Draco’s own accounts, they’re both dull and boorish to hang out with. Not to mention how much he detests Parkinson who keeps trying to force herself into his friend space.

Which is part of why Lucius is hoping that Draco will make friends with that group. Both so the Boy-Who-Lived might protect their family should the Dark Lord rise again, and so Draco can actually have a proper group of friends that will keep his interest.

Now all Lucius has to do is tell Narcissa of his conversation without getting sent to the moon for not asking for more details on what her best friend’s kid was about to go through.

—~—

Harry stares, in a bit of fear, as he’s finally done with his phone calls and stuff.

The Nurse gives him a gentle nod. “Now, there’s an order that we’ll have to do this stuff. First off is removing a parasitic soul fragment from your forehead. We’ve already summoned a master cursebreaker to do it, but it will hurt like nothing else could and you will probably pass out. By the time you wake up we’ll have done all the other treatments, and we’ll have likely kept you medically asleep for a day or two depending on how strongly your Mana Core reacts to the stimuli we’ll put it through to get cure it all.”

“Parasitic soul fragment?” Harry asks.

“The proper term is Horcrux. It’s a deeply disturbing and evil magic that some mage a while ago invented in search of immortality.” The nurse explains further. “Currently, from our scans, it’s signature traces back to one Tom Marvolo Riddle…” Harry shivers, the nurse gives him a concerned look before moving on. “And it’s draining about 80% of your mana constantly.”

“… Tom Marvolo Riddle is Voldemort’s real name.” Harry mutters, making eyes widen.

“Oh.” Skith says, and Harry looks at him to see him Grin. “We can use that.”

“… Anyway,” The nurse moves on. “When that’s done, we’ll rid you of several intelligence decreasing hexes that you cast on yourself. Accidental magic is a bastard in an abusive household. Then we’ll deal with the physical problems, such as poorly set broken bones, several scars that need to go, though we can turn your forehead scar into a birth mark so people don’t have trouble recognizing you.”

Harry nods. He doesn’t like the fact that people constantly want to see his scar, but having it does tend to work well as a sort-of identification.

“And then finally the other reason we want to keep you under for a while; Resolving your malnutrition as much as we can before prescribing you potions to take for a while.”

“… Why do you want to keep me under for my core though?”

“Abused mage children tend to end up using accidental magic a lot. Leaving you under while your body adapts to suddenly having a whole lot more Mana to work with than it normally does is so that you don’t accidentally magic everything. So your core gets time to stabilize.” Skith explains.

“Anyways, are you ready?” The nurse asks.

Harry still feels lightly scared of this, but he nods, wanting to get it all over with.

Chapter Text

“Bill!” He hears.

Bill Weasley looks up to see his mentor in Curse-Breaking, the dragon Aldriin, standing by the door.

He scrambles a little to get up and follow as the human formed dragon gestures with his chin.

Once they’re out in the halls of Gringotts, Aldriin explains. “We’ve got a kid who has a nasty Horcrux stuck in his forehead. I was going to go alone, but Skith told me you’d be at least somewhat familiar to the kid, so I figured I might drag you along and see if you could learn something about Horcrux extraction.”

“… Familiar?” Bill asks, squinting. “I’m not really friends with any kids, though he might know my brother.”

Aldriin shrugs, and they walk the rest of the way in silence.

—

Bill had no idea what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t Harry Potter in a hospital gown giving him a nervous wave.

“You’ve a horcrux stuck… In your forehead… Holy shit-” Bill mutters that last bit, and Harry snorts.

“Yea, and you’re… Bill, right? Arthur told me you’re a Curse-Breaker working here.”

Bill nods. “Yea, nice to meet one of my brother’s friends. All four of em’ wouldn’t shut up about you.” He chuckles, and Harry turns a little red.

“Sorry…”

“Don’t worry about it. Their stories are entertaining anyhow.” Bill waves off. “Anyways, you going to be alright for the procedure?”

“I heard it’ll hurt… But if it really is that bad for me, then I want it gone.”

Aldriin nods. “Good attitude to have.” Harry jolts and looks to the Dragon. “My name is Aldriin, and I’ll be the one to remove the blighter. Bill is just here to make you feel more comfortable.”

“Normally you’d need a ritual circle to get rid of a horcrux, but I’m a Stave user, so I’m able to perform rituals instantly if I have a totem for them.” He pulls out a staff totem with various runes etched into it. A skull of a large vulture with a crystal ball in it’s mouth as it’s topper. “It’s still going to hurt like nothing else, but at least this way you’ll be laying on something comfortable when the pain stops.”

“… I’d like to numb your muscles so you don’t thrash around in pain and possibly hurt yourself worse, is that alright?” The nurse asks.

Harry stares, and eventually, he nods. “Just.. Get it over with.”

The nurse nods, and Harry’s entire body seems to relax all at once. Aldriin gives everyone a slight nod, then plants his staff and speaks an incantation, several dead languages echoing off of eachother.

Harry screams in pain despite his normal muscles being relaxed. It makes everyone in the room tense.

Soon, the chant finishes, and with the sound of some kind of ripping, a black miasma explodes out of Harry’s scar and is sucked into the crystal ball on the staff.

Harry’s muscles seem to unrelax, as he squints tiredly. “That… Sucked.” He mutters, and a golden light surrounds his body. Soon, he floats off to dreamland, tears coming from his eyes.

“… What was that light?” Aldriin asks, slowly pulling the crystal from his staff’s beak.

“A spell called Sacrificial Protection. Spoken in Draconic and given his mother’s entire magical core to power it, and the real sacrifice was his mother’s life.” The Nurse says after briefly waving a hand to get that information.

Aldriin gives a whistle, impressed. “That won’t ever disappear. Hell, it might just become a new bloodline trait.” He mutters something under his breath and the crystal gains several runes that mean ‘Sealed’ around it.

“What?” Bill asks.

“Well, think about it. Protection spells cast using Draconic are doubly as powerful, and his mother sacrificed her entire life and magic to activate it.” Aldriin explains. “It’s not going to fade from the child ever, at least. And powerful magic like that has a lot of staying power in genetics as well.”

“So his mother, in trying to protect him from the killing curse and anything else Voldemort might try, probably created a bloodline trait that makes people immune to the killing curse?” Skith asks.

Aldriin nods. “We’ll never actually know unless the kid eventually has babies, but yes, that’s my thoughts.”

After a while, Aldriin adds. “This kid was particularly tough, too. Grown adults I’ve seen that had this kind of thing on them passed out During the ritual. He managed to stay awake and even say something before passing out. And I’m fairly sure the only reason he did sleep was because Sacrificial Protection activated for whatever reason.”

“Anyways, I’ll let you doctors get back to work, notify if anything weird happens that stems from the ritual.” Aldriin turns to leave, and Bill follows him.

—~—

“… Okay, this is weird.” Skith hears the Nurse say.

“What?” He asks, “Is everything okay?”

“More than okay, Mr Potter is recovering extremely well. As in, at this rate, the only thing we need to do is feed him nutrition potions and remove the spells he’s hurting himself with. All other spell residue has been cannibalized somehow.”

“Maybe it’s the protection? He did start glowing as soon as the Horcrux removal was over.” Skith questions.

The nurse snaps their fingers and after a moment, nods. “It’s the protection… What the hell… It’s healing the scars enough that they won’t be an issue in the future, but still leaving them visible. His bones are resetting themselves on microscales so he doesn’t feel pain from them healing… Still, it’s draining his resources fast, so we’re going to need to supply a lot of nutrient potions while he sleeps the healing off.”

Skith nods in return. “Charge Dumbledore for it.”

The Nurse bustles out of the room and Skith watches on with a smirk. He’s both Hoard Keeper for Evans and for Potter, though they merged. Evans was a very smart woman, and she had a little bit of an obsession with bloodline abilities. If she ever found out that her protection for her kid ended up becoming very close to a bloodline ability he expects she’d be giddy at the idea.

They’re going to keep the kid under for a long while, so Skith stands up to go find some things he’ll need prepared for when the Heir to the Potters woke up.

—~—

Harry tried to stay awake after the ritual, a little bit of stubbornness to prove that he could keeping him up, but then he felt a warm hand on his back and a hissed out ~Sleep, kiddo.~ and he couldn’t stay awake anymore, tears falling from his eyes as his heart and soul recognized the voice.

Mum…

He had a vague recollection of a dream when he woke up what feels like seconds later but must’ve been hours as the Weasleys were already crowded around his bed.

“Wh…” His voice comes out in a rasp, and Ginny, without freaking out luckily, hands him a water bottle.

“What happened?” He croaks after taking a sip.

Skith hisses. ~You fell asleep after the ritual was completed, and a spell your mother cast, probably on that shit night, started healing all of the physical problems. We had to hurry to get Nutrient potions in you so it could keep going, then it discovered the spells that you accidentally cast and seemed to take a moment to analyze them before cannibalizing them to further power the spell.~

~We ended up not needing to do anything but give you nutrient potions and get rid of the Horcrux. Everything else was your mother’s work.~ the nurse says, smiling sadly.

Harry holds a hand over his chest, feeling the golden light that had helped him pulse in response. He hisses out a ~Mum…~ before choking and crying.

Ron hugs his side, quietly rubbing circles into his back without a word.

Eventually, Harry collects himself and takes a deep breath. “… H-How long was I out?”

“68 hours.” The nurse replies, this time in english. “Took that long to get you from ‘Extreme Malnutrition’ to just normal levels, as well as getting your body caught up on growth that should’ve already happened. The hair is a side-effect.”

Harry blinks. ‘The hair?’ he questions, feeling the top of his head. He grabs a few strands and pulls it into view. They’re Long, like, nearly touching his lap while he’s sitting long. And while it does have a bit of curl, it doesn’t seem nearly as untameable as his normal hair. It almost looks like his mother’s did in pictures.

“… I kinda like it.” He mutters, rubbing a hand through it.

The man Harry could swear he saw in the Familiar care field smiles. “Long hair buddies.” He says, pointing to his currently tied-up hair. “Just so you know, when it’s that long and curly, it’ll almost double in length when wet, so showering is a real pain sometimes.”

“Harry, meet Charlie.” Ron says, waving between the two. “Magical creature and monster obsessed brother of mine.”

Harry nods. “Nice to meet you.”

“Same to you.” Charlie gives a nod in return.

“And now I’ve met all of you.” Harry mutters, making Ron snort.

“Alright, you’ve all seen him and he’s fine.” The nurse says. “Get out so we can get him checked out.”

Harry smiles as Ginny and Ron give him hugs, and has to tap out when Molly nearly crushes his ribs with a hug, the twins mess up his hair, which glows gold before returning to normal, to their annoyance, and both Arthur and Percy just give smiles and waves before leaving. Charlie and Bill both introduce themselves again with a handshake before leaving themselves.

The nurse turns back on the privacy wards, and looks at Harry. “So, first off, Draconic or English?”

Harry blinks a little, then says “English.”

“Basically put we found out that your mom’s sacrificial protection was using up most of it’s energy keeping the Horcrux isolated enough that it didn’t take over your body. After the Horcrux was removed it immediately started working on the rest of your body. It corrected your bones, got rid of harmful scar tissues while still leaving the ones on the skin visible, and so on. The protection won’t fade for the rest of your life, so now you basically have a permanent healing factor that might even pass on to your children if you decide to have any.”

“We’re not sure the extent of the protection though, so don’t go jumping into any dangerous situations unless you’re sure you can handle them.”

Harry gives her a tired look before she moves on, lifting up a bag containing something that sounds like it’s made of glass.

“These are nutrient draughts, to be drunk every morning with your breakfast for the next ten days. We were only able to bring you to a more normal level of malnutrition, the rest has to be done while you’re awake and moving.”

Harry nods, and she sets the bag down, gesturing at Skith. “Now, we seized all vaults owned by Tom Marvolo Riddle and for your service in finding us the real name of the blighter all money and non-cursed relics owned by him have been transferred into the Potter vaults. Specifically the money was transferred into your trust vault and the trinkets were put in the Heirloom vault.” He says. “The Potter family now also owns any shares he had before our seizure. Of which there weren’t any, but I figured you should know what to expect if you discover anymore evil bastards for us in the future.”

“… So I have even more money that I have no idea what to do with. Cool.”

Skith gives a nod. “I took the liberty of preparing various things back in my office for when you came to. Do you want an audit on your trust vault?”

“… Yes, I was planning on asking about that. And how currencies work around here. So far I think I have a decent understanding, but I’d like to know a bit more.”

“There’s a spell for it, luckily, so we won’t have to wait ages to count the coins by hand.”

“… If you two are done, Mr Potter should change and get out of here. Skith, you should take the trunk back to your office while he does that.”

Skith drags Harry’s trunk out and holds the bag of draughts the nurse prescribed as he leaves. The nurse also wanders out, and Harry grabs his underwear and puts it on underneath the gown before taking said gown off and looking down at himself.

‘… I’m going to need new underwear… And clothes in general. Bloody hell.’ He thinks, looking down at how grown his body had gotten while he slept. He’s a little surprised he didn’t stumble while getting up.

He puts on the clothes, and for the first time, he thinks he’s a little lucky that they’re Dudley’s cast-offs. He still has to wear a belt, but luckily the pants and shirt are long enough to keep his ankles and midriff covered. His trainers don’t fit at all, so he just picks them up and walks out of the room only wearing his socks.

The nurse is standing outside. “Shoes don’t fit anymore?”

Harry shakes his head, and she touches a hand to them. “You should still get new ones, but this should do for now.” The shoes just slightly shift in size and Harry puts them on. They fit snug.

“Thanks.” He says, and she nods.

“I’ll lead you back to Skith’s office, if you like.” She suggests, and Harry nods.

They walk out of the hospital, and Harry briefly greets Charlie again before they continue moving to Skith’s office, reaching it quickly.

They enter to see Skith sitting at his desk. The Nurse immediately leaves again upon reaching there. Skith hits a button on his desk to bring up privacy wards and gestures at a chair for Harry to sit in.

“So, let’s get started with the thing you need to do most before getting to the rest of it.” Skith waves a hand and a piece of paper appears in front of Harry.

“I, Skith, the Vice-Chieftain of the Independent Nation of Dragons, Gringotts, do bear witness to Harry James Potter receiving his Heirships.” Skith intones.

Harry blinks and reads the paper. “I, Harry James Potter, do accept my Heirships.”

A box on Skith’s desk creaks open, and four rings float out, then combine together and fly straight onto Harry’s left pointer finger.

A dragon tilts it’s head at him, curious about him, before it seems to grin and gesture with it’s wing, inviting him to look at a massive potion bottle. A small water droplet seems to be floating in the air within. The Water Drop gains a bright blue line, drawing from Harry’s chest and into it.

Then, a knight with a raven on his shoulder tilts his fully helmeted head at Harry, seeming to feel for Harry’s Mana potency before nodding and offering his sword.

A strange skeletal horse looks at him next, and lets loose a neigh of acceptance.

Finally, a snake appears to judge him, and after a moment of slithering around him, it nods in acceptance and slithers up and around Harry’s body to curl around Harry’s arm.

“… What the hell was that…” Harry asks, coming out of the strange visions.

“You are now marked as…” Skith shows a flicker of a pinched expression before smoothing it out. “Heir Potter, Heir Black, Heir Gaunt, and Heir Slytherin.” He’s reading off a paper of some sort.

“Why?”

“Well, for Heir Black it’s due to you being Sirius Black’s sole Heir. As he is the unclaimed Lord Black, him making you his sole Heir makes you the Heir of House Black.” Skith says, and he continues to read further, and he seems to grin a little vindictively.

“As for Gaunt and Slytherin, you are their Heir because of you besting their previous sole Heir in combat that he started. Essentially, since you beat Voldemort as a baby, you gained his Heirships. He was, however never the lord of these houses, for reasons only known to the family magics.”

Harry finds himself snorting despite himself. Actually, he finds it quite hilarious, so it’s not really despite himself. He giggles a little quietly before calming himself.

“And the visions?”

“Manifestations of your different family magics. No idea what they all mean, even if you described them to me.”

Harry nods a little, seeing how that might work. Plus if he really focuses he can feel a new connection being formed between him and another entity. He blinks as he also feels another connection, already formed and solid. He pulls on it.

His hand automatically pulls itself into a ready position, and the Sword of Gryffindor appears and the handle smacks into his palm satisfyingly.

“… That’s a thing.” Harry mutters, and lets go of the chord, forcing it back into it’s previous position and thus sending the sword back where it came from on instinct.

“Did you just… Summon the sword of Gryffindor?”

Harry nods. “I drew it from a hat to kill a basilisk earlier this year.”

“You… What?”

Harry takes a deep breath, and starts explaining what happened during the school year.

Chapter Text

“Ungh.” She says, squinting awake as she feels her contract finally connect with something. The Heir of Potter finally took up his ring.

She pulls herself up from her pool and walks around her family’s home. “Yeah, okay, I’ll need a lot of help with this, which means letting the Heir keep charging my pool back up until I have enough sprites.” She says after taking a tour of the grounds. She then returns to her pool, which luckily still had the enchantment to refill itself with water indefinitely on.

She steps back into the pool and relaxes, ready to wait a while for the Heir’s magic regeneration to fully restore her own.

She drifts off a bit, but after only ten minutes, she feels her energy fully restored. “… How much mana does their kid have?” She wonders aloud, before smiling and concluding that she really doesn’t care.

“Alright sprites, it’s time to get Potter Manor back up and running!” She says, clapping and making a hundred small water droplets float up from her pool.

The water droplets all immediately fly off, already having her orders installed. She, instead of following and doing maintenance with her sprites, squints and mentally brings up the list of tasks that she was supposed to do in the event that the last Lord and Lady Potter died.

‘I need to go to the Godric’s Hollow house, on earth, and retrieve all their items. Then find their wands, wedding rings, and the memento they prepared for Harry.’

She gives herself a nod and dives back into the pool, using it as a way of travel between the planes.

—~—

“… And thus, I guess, I can summon the sword of Gryffindor.” Harry concludes the story.

“… I’m suddenly much less concerned about you needing extra protection.” Skith says as Harry finishes his story.

Harry snorts and shrugs.

“Anyways. You wanted a more in-depth explanation of the monetary system, right?” Skith asks.

Harry nods a little.

“Well, we call the base currency ‘Crowns.’ A Knut, the bronze coins, are worth one crown. A single crown is roughly equal to a pent. So if you go up in the denominations, a pound is equal to a sickle, and a galleon is equal to 100 pounds.” Skith says.

Harry stares at him. “So, a knut is a pent, a Sickle is a pound, and a galleon is 100 pounds.” Skith nods. “And I assume the conversions are the same. Galleons are equal to 100 sickles, and sickles are equal to 100 knuts?” Another nod.

“… I’m almost afraid to ask, but how much money is in my trust vault?”

Skith gives a smirk. “Well, it started at 50 thousand galleons when you were first born.” Harry nods. “And if even a galleon was missing the deal was to just refill it on your birthday. But if it was at or greater than 50 thousand galleons, then it would gain an extra ten thousand.”

“When you first came to gringotts there were 160 thousand galleons in the vault, by that calculation. You took a handful of coins, and then didn’t come back until next year, when the vault then had 169 thousand galleons. After adding in the hoard of Tom Riddle, you are back up to a crisp 170 thousand galleons, and some change.”

“… My parents were Mad.” Harry says, making Skith snort. “I have the equivalent of 17 million pounds. As a trust fund. Bloody hell. And it refills to 5 million pounds every year on my birthday even if I did spend all the money, which I doubt I could find a reasonable way to do.”

“… If it helps, I don’t think they would’ve had this set up if they weren’t fearing they’d die any day during the war.”

“… It does, kind of. I guess this does guarantee I can live fairly comfortable even without a guardian to take care of me. But I still ought to have someone…” It’d feel odd, even for him, to live alone and provide only for himself.

“And that’s where we move from talking of your money to looking at your parent’s wills.” Skith places to slips of paper on the table after moving a number of the papers he was reading off of into a drawer.

“If there’s contradicting information in the wills, then you should probably follow your mother’s as she died after your father.”

Harry nods a little, and opens his father’s will first. The envelope struggles for just a moment before Harry’s heir ring flashes the Potter crest and it unseals.

Harry pulls out the slip and starts reading.

|I, James Fleamont Potter, of sound mind and sound body, write this last will and testament.|

|Okay, so this is stressful. Uh. Hi Harry, or Lily, if you’re reading this, it means I’m dead, which… Sucks.|

|If I die and Lily Jasmine Potter (Nee Evans) lives, custody of our son goes to her as well as all of my assets and houses.|

|If both myself and Lily Jasmine Potter are dead, then all of my assets are to be passed down to our son, Harry James Potter.|

|Should both myself and Lily be dead, then Harry’s custody is to go to one of these persons.|
|Sirius Black: Sworn Godfather|
|Alice Longbottom: Sworn Godmother|
|Remus Lupin: One of my Best Friends|
|Andromeda Tonks: Lily’s Best Friend|
|Amelia Bones: Friend of the family and a trustworthy person.|
|Never is Harry to be left in the care of Lily’s Sister: Petunia Evans|

|Harry, if you’re reading this, then I’m sorry I left you early.|

|Now, there are things I wish to distribute in the will. Everything besides these items will go to my son upon his age of majority|

|To Sirius Black: the full ownership of his motorcycle and 5 thousand galleons.|

|To Remus Lupin: The Marauder’s Grimoire, to be given to Harry when he reaches his age of majority. As well as 50 thousand galleons (Ha, can’t give it back to a dead guy.)|

|To Peter Pettigrew: 10 thousand galleons, unless he fails as our secret keeper.|

|To Alice Longbottom: 10 thousand galleons, to help take care of her son.|

|To Minerva McGonagall: copies of all my Transfiguration notes. So she can either correct my homework in death, or frame them.|

|Finally; To Severus Snape: 1 thousand galleons and whatever it is that Lily wants to give him in her will being paid for by my family accounts. I hope this works as an apology for the bullshit I put you through.|

|But eh, yeah. I hope this will never needs to be used, but who knows how this war will turn out. Harry, if you’re reading this, no matter who you are right now, I want you to know I love you.|

Harry smiles sadly at the last line of the will, all cried out for the day.

He looks up at Skith. “… What’s a Secret Keeper?” He asks.

“There’s a powerful charm called the Fidelius. It requires you giving a Secret to someone, and they become the only one besides those the secret involves to know the secret, and even anyone else who knows the secret can’t tell it. Only the secret keeper can.”

“… So my parents were keeping where we were living a secret, right?” Harry asks.

Skith nods.

“So this Peter Pettigrew failed as their secret keeper, and that’s why he was struck from the will. Got it.”

Skith blinks, shock evident on his features. “Pettigrew? Can I see the will?” Harry nods and hands it over.

“… Bloody hell!” Skith curses, dropping the will and rubbing his face. “Well, it’s quite obvious that the wrong man is in jail now. Or at least it’s obviously possible.” Skith sighs and shakes his head. “Nothing we can do about it, unless you can get Sirius some form of trial… Maybe mail the headmaster?”

Harry shrugs. “What should I say?”

“Just say that Sirius Black wasn’t the secret keeper, with a copy of the will.”

Harry nods a little and puts away that thought for later. Focusing back on the task at hand. He grabs his mom’s will, and once again the envelope hesitates a little before letting him open it.

He pulls out the paper.

|I, Lily Jasmine Potter, of sound mind and sound body, write this last will and testament.|

|Okay, let’s just get this over with.|

|If I die and James is still alive custody of our son and my assets goes to him.|

|If both of us are dead then Harry’s custody should go to one of these people:|
|Sirius Orion Black: Sworn Godfather|
|Alice Longbottom: Sworn Godmother|
|Andromeda Tonks: One of my best friends.|
|Amelia Bones: Friend of the family and trustworthy person.|
|Remus Lupin: Man is great but he doesn’t want kids. Only as a last resort.|
|If you put my son with Petunia Dursley I will find a way to haunt your arse.|

|Okay, onto bequeathments; besides these things, my son is to receive everything else that belonged to me.|

|To Alice Longbottom: Copies of my notebooks on draconic ward spells and how to cast them in latin.|

|To Andromeda Tonks: Copies of my notebooks on draconic healing spells and how to cast them in latin.|

|To Narcissa Malfoy: Letters exchanged during the war, to be returned so as to acquit both yourself and your husband of ever willfully participating in Moldy’s plot, and a copy of my charms notes.|

|To Amelia Bones: Copies of my notebooks on draconic protection spells and how to cast them in latin.|

|To Severus Snape: Letters exchanged during the war, to be returned so as to acquit you of ever willfully being a part of Moldy’s schemes, and…|

She goes on to list several apothecary reagents and a copy of her notes from apothecary class. Then a few more people are listed, namely each hogwarts teacher is receiving a copy of her notes in their class as a way of remembering her, with Dumbledore receiving a DADA copy. Harry blinks as he reaches the end.

|Everything not listed within this will is to be given to my son, Harry James Potter. Including the original sets of notes and journals.|

|Alright, Harry, if you’re reading this, Love yourself and others, I’m proud of you. And sorry I left you early.|

Harry takes a deep breath, and sets the will on the desk. “Okay. So now I need you to get a team that can retrieve… All of that.” He gestures to the list of reagents his mom made. “And I need to find everyone on these lists.” He gestures to the bequeathments and the potential guardians.

“Sirius Black is in Azkaban, a wizard prison, for both the betrayal of your parents and the murder of 12 Humans and Peter Pettigrew in an explosion. Though apparently the betrayal is on Peter Pettigrew.” Skith says clinically, and maintains the tone as he moves on to the next persons on the list.

“Alice Longbottom is hospitalized for the foreseeable future due to trauma inflicted by Cruciatus Curse torture.”

“Due to conflicts in the wills, you will go to Andromeda Tonks, who is so far as everyone knows, alive and well. I will send a message to her, and locate everyone else without sending letters until you bid me so.” Skith finishes.

Harry nods. “I have a few shopping trips to get done… ”

“I had a bag made for you while you were under.” Skith reaches under his desk and pulls out a leather messenger bag. “It’s enchanted so only you can open anything on it and there are several features to it. For example, three of the pockets hold money and are keyed to your Trust Vault. Grabbing from the right-most pocket produces Knuts, the middle pocket produces Sickles, and the left most pocket gives Galleons.”

“The biggest pocket is magically expanded and made featherlight. If you overfill the bag or just forget where you put something, you can think of the item you want and the enchantments on the bag will find said item for you.”

“…” Harry takes a moment, and sighs. “I’ll take it, thanks.” He mutters, extending a hand.

Skith hands over the bag. “Are you alright?”

“Too much stuff already today. Gotta reset my brain somehow. Probably gonna eat something before going shopping.”

Skith nods a little. “By the way, the ring acts as a notice-me-not for both the magical and non-magical, which you can turn off at-will. So there’s no need for your necklace anymore. It can hide itself if you think about it. And it can only be taken off by you and you alone.”

Harry nods a little. That makes sense. He makes the ring hide itself before getting up and opening his trunk.

When he touches his wand, he squints, frowning. It feels completely wrong now.

“Would Ollivander’s happen to be open?” Harry asks.

Skith nods. “It’s around eight AM right now. I assume your wand is being temperamental?”

Harry nods in return. “Yeah. It feels… Wrong.” He squints and focuses. “The Pheonix Feather can’t draw in much of my Mana, while the wood just generally disagrees with my Mana somehow.”

Skith nods. “Well, you’d better go to Ollivander then. I’ll get the other things assembled here while you’re out. Would you like a few recommendations for shops?”

Harry nods, and Skith pulls out a map and a page.

“I’d suggest looking around and finding things that you like as well as practical things. Don’t worry about hurrying back, myself and Andromeda will have a lot to discuss while you’re out.”

Harry nods and finally manages to get everything from his old trunk into his bag. He stands up, and gives Skith the proper draconic goodbye before returning to the alley and donning his invisibility cloak.

—~—

She looks around, and eventually nods to herself. “Yep! Perfect!” She says, having moved everything salvageable from the Potter Cottage in Godric’s Hollow to the Potter Mansion. Finding places for it all in the storehouse was difficult, but she managed it.

She couldn’t find their wands or wedding rings though. She did find Harry’s memento, but those things were also important to get. ‘Don’t tell me they buried James and Lily with their wands and rings…’

She sighs as she moves back over to the Potter Cottage and eventually finds the graves of her previous lord and lady at a nearby church. “They did… Dammit. Sorry Grim…” She sends up a quick prayer, and dives through the earth, instantly finding the rings and wands, and then dragging them back up with her before disappearing back to Potter Mansion.

She takes a breath as she feels Grim look at her, then move on. Not approving, but understanding.

She floats over to a frame she found in the Cottage, clearly made to house the rings and wands, and places said items inside.

‘Alright, that’s it for my immediate tasks, time to start on the normal maintenance. First, getting the Floo up and running. So that if the Heir wants to come by, he can.’

Chapter Text

Harry stops by Ollivander’s first, taking off the hood and moving his cloak so the front of his body can be seen.

“My, Harry Potter enters my shop again?” Garrick immediately asks, turning towards him as soon as the cloak was moved. “What brings you here?”

“I need a new wand. Current one isn’t being cooperative.” Harry reaches into his bag and pulls out the wand in question.

Garrick’s eyes immediately look at the wand and he tilts his head. “Odd. Very odd. Anything change about you these last few days, Mr Potter?”

“A lot. Had to get the dragons to cure me of all sorts of ailments.”

“Ah yes, that would make things rather different… Very well, would you like a custom wand this time? Far more expensive than that one, but certain to work.”

Harry nods. “If you could, that would be great.” He did not want to have to go through the nonsense of wand-testing again.

Garrick gives a nod, “Follow me, please.” He walks to the door and flips the sign to closed before leading Harry into a room within the shop. Well-lit with shelves upon shelves of materials on the walls. There’s a ritual circle on the floor, etched in stone. There are also seven raised pillars around the circle.

“This room allows me to perform a ritual that will find the perfect materials for your wand. Just stand in the center and I can begin.”

Harry gives a nervous nod, and does as asked. As soon as his feet are planted in the center of the circle, Garrick starts chanting, and several dead languages echo off of eachother as power fills the room.

Items float down from the shelves. A pheonix feather, a few white hairs, and… Harry thinks the material is called a Heartstring? All float down and land on the different pillars. A jar that contains some kind of metal dust and some kind of wood float down with a sense of finality.

It takes a moment for Harry to realize that Ollivander was done chanting. He looks at the eccentric man to see a face that really makes his legs want to carry him to the nearest auror.

“Pheonix Feather, Victory in battle, bravery, and rebirth. Unicorn hairs… Interesting that a boy would have them. Faith, Charity, and Kindness. Wyvern Heartstring, Stubbornness, Determination, and Protective Rage relating to bonds. Elder Wood, Potency and Wisdom. Mythril, Strength.” He rattles off, eyes seeming to glaze over for a moment.

He looks at Harry. “I will make your new wand. It’ll be back to you within the next two hours. Is there anything you’d like it customized with? Colors?”

Harry takes a moment to respond. “… Red and silver, to match my family crest. What did you mean by ‘Interesting that a boy would have them’?”

Ollivander shrugs. He picks up Harry’s old wand and whispers a word to it before pulling off the handle and pulling out the pheonix feather within. “Just that Unicorn Hair wands usually don’t like men or boys much. They tend to want after feminine people. Nothing against you, of course, but you don’t seem the most feminine person except the hair.”

Harry blinks, and just decides not to try and understand the madman. He leaves the shop with a sigh, rubbing his head to move his hair out of his face.

“Potter?” Harry jolts and turns to see none other than Susan Bones looking at him with surprise.

“Bones?” He replies dryly.

“… You know my name?” Susan asks, and Harry shrugs.

“Yea.” He says, deciding against letting her know it’s because he learned the names of anyone who could’ve possibly been the ones spreading rumors about him attacks students with the basilisk.

“What’s with the hair?” She asks.

“Had to go through a bit of a growth phase. Decided I liked the hair.” Harry answers. “Anyways, I have more shopping to do…” He might end up seeing her later if Harry has to deal with Amelia Bones. “Good Day.” He moves his cloak so it covers him once again and disappears.

—

He shuffles his cloak again when he enters Malkins’. The woman at the counter greets him and he walks up to her. “What are you here for, dearie?”

“Casual clothes. Stuff I can just wear during the day without drawing eyes.”

She nods and gestures to a box. “Stand on that, and I’ll get your measurements, then you can try on some things, see what you like.”

She waves her wand a little and Harry feels the Magic wash over him.

She tilts her head a little and nods. “Okay, I’ll gather some things for you to try, then if you want something in a different color or want multiples of the same thing you can order em’. I’ll take you to the changing booths.”

Harry is ushered into a booth and spends what feels like hours just changing clothes.

Eventually he gets to the bottom of the pile to find a skirt.

He blinks at it, half expecting it to blink back and be revealed to be some sort of odd illusion. It doesn’t.

He picks it up. The cloth is nice and soft. He holds it over his waist in the mirror. “… What the hell…” He mutters, feeling his heartbeat steadily thump harder and harder.

He’s jolted from his trance and tosses the skirt into the keep pile as Malkins knocks on the side of the stall. “You ready dear?”

Harry stares at the keep pile for a moment, before nodding. ‘Why not?’ He questions, shrugging. He gets dressed in his worn-out clothes and leaves the stall, nodding to Malkins.

She floats the keep pile out of the room with her wand while the other clothes seem to unwrinkle themselves and move back to their places in the store.

“I assume you’d like to wear some of these out? You can go back to the changing booth after the purchase goes through if that’s the case.”

Harry nods, and thanks all existing above that she doesn’t so much as give a second thought when putting all of his purchases into a bag then setting the bag on a large rune. Letters and numbers appear in the air above the bag.

|1 G, 59 S, 89 K|

Harry stutters a little before reaching into his bag and pulling out the exact change, 89 knuts appear shrunk in his hand until he puts them on the counter, then the same happened with the 59 sickles. But the galleon just appeared at full size. Malkins places the money on the till and once the numbers above the rune zeroed out, she nods to Harry.

“Have a good day, Mr Potter. The stall is still open, so go quick before someone takes it.”

Harry nods quickly and darts into the changing room with his new purchases. Eventually he settles on a pair of black pants, a white undershirt, and a white button-up under a long black cardigan.

He stows his other purchases, face still burning lightly when he sees the skirt, then leaves the shop under the invisibility cloak after briefly giving Madam Malkins a wave.

He quickly goes to his next destination, ‘Explorer’s Emporium’ being a shop that sells equipment for explorers. He was recommended the shop for getting comfortable footwear.

He does as Skith recommended and looks around a bit at different items in the shop that he thinks might be useful, eventually finding a wyvern leather bracer that’d latch onto his wand arm and any wand holster and had several enchanted pockets. One of which would hold outer robes such as his invisibility cloak. Another would hold his phone, and the third one would hold a tent. It also has a compass and watch built in when Harry rubbed certain runes on the bracer.

He quickly bought it along with a pair of comfortable and durable boots that would resize to fit him each time he put them on. He decides against getting a tent this time, and leaves quickly to go to his next destination, to get a wand holster.

‘Duelist’s Parlor’ is exactly how it sounds, an eccentric shop for duellists.

“Potter?”

“And the second time today goes to…” Harry murmurs, looking over to see a girl with icy blue eyes and black hair. “… Greengrass, right?” He asks, expression pinching a little.

“Indeed. What are you doing here?” She asks.

Harry grimaces a little internally, she seems like a Draco type. “… Okay, look, I don’t know much about Mage etiquette. So please don’t expect me to talk ‘appropriately’ because I’ll just embarrass both of us. I’m looking for a wand holster.”

“Budget?” she questions.

Harry shrugs. “Ten galleons.” He spits out a number.

“… I doubt you’ll find one that expensive.” She says, eyes glittering in the same way that Dumbledore’s do when he wants to laugh but knows he shouldn’t.

Harry shrugs. “Yeah, well, can’t expect me to know much about pricing on Gaia.”

She blinks at him. “… So the rumors are true then. You were raised on Earth.”

Harry nods. “Yea. And because everyone just expected me to know things, I perhaps know even less than a Human-Born Mage.” He says sourly.

Greengrass frowns a little and she looks around. “Are you okay with a very expensive holster, or are you just looking for something that works?”

“… Well, I’d like something that’ll give me a bit of an edge in any surprise duels if someone decides to pick a fight with me again next year.”

“Something expensive then.” She looks around and eventually finds what she’s looking for. “Wyvern Leather. Auto draw feature, anti-summoning enchantments, resizing feature, and other small things. Costs 2 Galleons.” She says, pointing at a holster sitting on a stand.

Harry blinks, and nods. “Well worth the price then.” He mutters “You’re an enthusiast, aren’t you?” He asks a little bit more loudly.

Greengrass blinks at him, then slowly nods.

“I’ve been tutoring my friends a bit in Defense, since apparently I have ‘Talent’ in it.” Harry shrugs. “I just tend to pick up on things like that quickly. And I enjoy it. Might be fun to have a friendly duel against you, if you’re amenable.”

Greengrass stares at him oddly. “Are you serious? You do know I’m part of Slytherin and therefore ‘Dark’, right?”

“And I was almost put into Slytherin. Had to beg the hat not to put me there. What does that tell you about me?” Harry asks, single brow raising.

“… You… What?”

“Yeah, said my ambition and drive would do well there, but the only Slytherin I knew at the time was Malfoy and he was being a bit of a Ponce back on the train. Plus I was told that the bastard that murdered my parents was in Slytherin too. So the hat decided that I needed some work in the bravery department, and put me in with the Gryffindors.”

Greengrass just stares for a while, facial muscles not moving, yet Harry can tell her emotions anyway. Confusion, shock, curiosity.

“Just think about it and get back to me when the school year starts back up.” Harry says, smiling a little and grabbing a box containing the wand holster.

He purchases the holster and quickly checks to make sure Greengrass wasn’t still frozen. She happens to be looking at him when he finds her and he gives her a polite nod before leaving the shop to go find his next destination. He quickly puts on the holster then grabs the bracer and puts it on as well. He then shuffles the cloak back into place and starts towards his next objective.

Twilfitt and Tattings is a store that sells formal wear and custom clothing to basically only the rich.

Harry enters the shop and a man looks at him with a critical eye. “Oh my, we’ve a celebrity, Teddy.” The man says. Harry rolls his eyes. Hard.

‘Teddy’ presumably, pokes his head out of the doorway behind the counter and gives Harry a once-over before leveling a flat look at the other man. “Terry, help the boy out. Without scaring him.”

“Me? Scaring a kid? Perish the thought!” Terry holds a hand over his heart like Teddy had stabbed him. He then reaches underneath the counter he’s manning and pulls up a book. “Now, Mr Potter, what’re you here for?”

“… Clothes.” Harry states, snorting to himself at the flat look Terry gives him before shrugging. “Honestly I’m not sure. I heard this place would be best for formal wear, but I…” Harry trails off as the man starts flipping through pages, occasionally looking up at Harry and squinting before flipping another page.

Eventually he arrives at something, the design drawing itself onto the page.

A long coat that seems like a mix between a formal suit jacket and a duster, a vest underneath that, and a tieless button-up. Black pants and dress shoes. “Someone of your particular stature likely won’t need this kind of thing for at least a year yet, but being prepared is a good thing.”

“The way you walk and talk lends itself a little bit more to a formally-informal style, which is why there’s no tie and your jacket is a long-coat. Now if you put your hair up into a braid or something to keep it from showing as a mane then a tie could go with this ensemble.” Harry blinks at the drawing on the page.

“Now, most nobles like to have something to symbolize their house. The Potter colors are red and silver, correct?”

Harry nods absently.

“Then if you would like we can make the outer coat a dark red and embroider a design on the back with silver thread.”

“… A dragon, perched on a potion bottle.” Harry mutters, eyes briefly tracing his Heir ring which shifts to show the Potter coat of arms.

“Are you alright with Silver being the main accent? Red accents don’t really get along with formal occasions.”

Harry nods.

“I think you’d get along with darker colors in general. Maroon for the shirt underneath the vest?”

“Whatever you think is best, sir. I already like the styling of this outfit. I’m not very suited to fashion or anything like that.”

The man nods and stares into his tome “I’ll work on the design then, as long as you don’t currently have an appointment that needs this form of attire?”

Harry tilts his head a little, thinking on that. “I think anyone I’m meeting with over the next few days wouldn’t mind if I didn’t have formal clothing.”

“Okay, I’ll get your measurements recorded really quickly. The tome is unopenable and unreadable by anyone other than myself, Teddy, and in the case that the customer is looking at their page specifically, the customer.”

Harry nods and lets the magic wash over him. Terry mutters a spell and taps his wand to the page after the feeling goes away, whatever he does creates a list of numbers on the page. “We’ll owl you when the idea is finalized, then you’ll have to come in to discuss material and payment.”

Harry nods and leaves the store.

He feels himself hanging on by a thread, so he decides to stop by Fortescue’s for a quick break and recharge of his blood sugars.

He sits down at the chair out front, and soon gets served some icecream from Fortescue. He eats it, thanking the man and paying him.

“I won’t take your money, boy.” Florean says after Harry tried to pay him five sickles, and Harry, having dealt with the Weasleys propensity for not accepting money or gifts too often lately, pulls out five more sickles and places them on the counter.

“Every time you refuse, I’m going to double it.” He states, making Florean flounder for a moment before sighing and accepting the payment at ten sickles after Harry reached into his pocket to pull out ten more sickles.

Harry checks the time using his new Bracer and hums. “Okay, it’s been two hours since I left Gringotts… Guess I should go to Ollivander’s again.”

He lets the cloak fall back into place and disappears into the crowds to return to Ollivander’s.

—

When he makes it there, Garrick is just flipping his sign back to open. Harry moves his cloak again and Garrick excitedly opens the door.

“Come in, come in!” He whispers, ushering Harry in and flipping the sign to closed again.

He picks up a box on the odd bar thing he’s normally standing behind and hands it to Harry. There’s an inscription on the box, silver on red.

Animus

“I took a few liberties in making the wand look unique based both on your color scheming and the materials… I also named it Animus, being the latin word for Soul, mind, heart, affections, purpose, and feeling.”

Harry blinks, and slowly opens the box.

The first thing he notices is the wand is longer than his older wand, around four extra inches, he’s fairly sure. The wood is twisted a little slightly, the mythril peeking through to emphasize that, making the shaft of the wand look like that of a unicorn horn, dyed red with silver accents. The part where the handle meets the shaft is shaped like a wyvern’s head, mouth open so as to ‘Breathe out’ the horn. The handle is pretty standard, a spiral pattern carved into the wood to make it easier to grip, and finally the pommel is shaped like a pheonix’s head.

Harry gulps a little looking at the thing. Unsure as to whether or not it will actually be a good wand for him. When he picks it up, however, it instantly feels right.

Pheonix songs on the roars of wyverns and neighs of unicorns. His body glows gold, and not because of his mother’s protection. Wind swirls around the shop, and Harry feels like he’s breathing well for the first time in a long while.

The wand shrinks down to fit perfectly in his hand, accepting him, and Garrick looks on with ecstatic glee.

Harry puts the wand into his wand holster, and asks Garrick for the price.

Garrick shakes his head. “No, I could never ask for payment. Not after getting the chance to work on such a tremendous wand.”

Harry glares at him, and decides on the same trick he did for Florean, just with bigger coins. He places ten Galleons on the counter. “If you argue, I’m doubling it.”

“… Mr Potter…” Garrick makes to argue, and Harry raises an eyebrow, reaching into his bag again to retrieve ten more coins. “Okay, fine.” Garrick surrenders. “Can I get you a wand care kit? The work and materials for the wand are worth much less than this, but I can see that you won’t let up about it.”

Harry nods, both to the statement about him not letting up on this matter, and to getting a wand care kit.

It takes barely a moment for Garrick to return from somewhere in his shop with a wand care kit. He sets it on the counter and gives Harry a nod. “If you ever need something involving wands, you need only owl me.”

Harry gives a nod and pauses with his hand on the door. “If Ronald Weasley comes here to get a new wand without me, pay for it using the money I just paid.”

Garrick nods. “I’ll make note of it.”

Harry adjusts his cloak again and decides to go to the Broom supply store to see if there’s anything there, and to check the broom prices.

He looks around at the various brooms and hums. While they would all be rather good replacements for the twins’ brooms, Harry’s fairly sure the Weasleys would try and pay him back with the reparations from the Malfoys if he got them something like this.

He decides to figure out what to do about that later, and grabs a pair of flight goggles instead.

After leaving the store with his purchase, he stretches his arms to the sky and lets his cloak hide him again to return to Gringotts.

Chapter Text

She enters the Painting Gallery to the sound of cheerful voices talking back and forth about her sprites. “Ah, Carnation, you’ve made it. Does this mean our next Heir Potter has taken up his ring?”

She nods, floating up to the proper hangings and placing James and Lily Potter’s portraits on their hooks. “Yes. Though I haven’t visited him since I can tell through the Contract he’s currently very busy.”

As soon as their Portraits are stabilized, the magic in James and Lily’s paintings activate and connect throughout the house as a surveillance system, and they start speaking.

“Oh…” Lily’s portrait rubs her eyes, as though just waking up. “Last thing I saw was James dying. What’s happened? Is Harry okay?” The questions are pointed at Carnation. The James Portrait asks the same kind of thing.

Said girl shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t really know yet.” The portraits gasp, and she waves her hand. “I mean, I know he’s safe, but I haven’t had time to check in on him. He’s far too busy right now for me to make myself known. Plus I’m working on getting Potter Mansion to an acceptable state. All I know is it’s been just a bit more than eleven years since you both died. Since I was able to stay afloat that long using spare Wild Mana I stored in the water here.”

She and the other paintings talk for a few more moments before Carnation starts working on other tasks, such as culling a few pests that tried to make themselves nests in her family’s home.

—~—

Andromeda Tonks blinks as a letter flies into her hand. Sender is… Gringotts. She sighs a little at the thought of having work to do even when on break.

|Mrs. Andromeda Tonks,|

|You were listed int the wills of James and Lily Potter as a possible caretaker of their Son.|

|Please come to Gringotts at your earliest convenience to speak of this matter.|

|~Skith|
|The Potter Hoard Keeper|
|Vice-Chieftain of the Independent Dragon Nation|

It’s a short letter, but it says way too much. Andromeda stares at it for a moment, and checks the signature. Indeed, it feels like a dragon was standing in front of her.

She gets up from her seat. “Looks like I have business to take care of.”

She leaves the hospital, cashing in a favor with one of her friends to have her take over the shift.

She walks into Gringotts and is led to another office.

“… Where’s Harry?” She asks Skith after giving proper greetings.

“He has some errands he felt he should run, and I told him to run them while sending the message to you. There are things we need to speak of that Heir Potter doesn’t need to be here for.” Skith answers, steepling his fingers. “Harry won’t be returning for at least two hours. So, let’s get to it.”

Andromeda nods, sitting down to talk with the Hoard Keeper.

—~—

Harry steps into Skith’s office, which had privacy wards up, and feels someone’s rage, wind ripping through the room.

He looks to Skith, who gestures at the woman sitting across from him. “Harry, meet Andromeda Tonks, your new Guardian. Both here and on Earth after she does the Guardianship ritual.” He says, the wind dying down.

Harry looks at her and tilts his head a little. Questioning as to whether or not he should use proper language.

“Nice to meet you, Harry.” She waves, unknowingly answering his question.

“To you as well.” Harry says in response.

The meeting takes a long time and Harry’s fairly certain he dissociates for most of it until they’re saying their goodbyes to Skith.

“So, did you get everything you’ll need?” Andromeda asks as they leave Gringotts, and Harry nods absently.

His eyes widen as he realizes he’s out of the building and not under his cloak. “I don’t really think either of us want anyone to know I’m in your care now, so I’m going to put my cloak back on. I’ll be following you the whole time.” Harry shuffles on his cloak again.

“… I doubt anyone would really recognize you, but if that makes you feel safe.” Andromeda mutters, and starts walking towards a lot where the ministry allows take-off and landings for any magic forms of travel. They step onto an Away platform, and Andromeda holds out her arm for Harry to take. Harry firmly grasps it, and the tugging sensation is just barely better than the portkey.

Harry takes a few moments to breathe and let his stomach settle before moving his cloak out of the way with a sigh.

“Okay, so, all magical travel is just the worst for me.” Harry says, shuddering a little.

Andromeda smiles a little ruefully and pats him on the back. “Flying?” She asks.

Harry thinks about it for a second. “Fair.” He sighs and stands to his full height. “Okay, anyone else you need to introduce me to, or can I go take a nap?”

Andromeda shakes her head. “No, you can just go take a nap if you need. I’ll introduce my Husband and Daughter to you when you wake up.”

Pretty much as soon as Harry is shown the guest room - His room now - he hangs Hedwig’s cage near a window, sets his bag on a desk, and flops onto the bed, passing out instantly.

—

The next week consists of Harry settling in with and getting to know the Tonks family.

Andromeda Tonks is a kind woman who still seemed to struggle with some of the things she learned while being a member of the Black family. Harry showed her his Heirship ring and she nearly snorted at the fact that Harry’s a Half-blood like her daughter, yet the family magics accepted him.

She also taught him a Control exercise after he practiced a stinging hex he’d been studying and overpowered it so hard he exploded the empty bottle he’d been using as aiming practice.

He meets Edward ‘Ted’ Tonks first of the rest of the family. A Mage version of a Solicitor and hobbyist Apothecary. After around a day of getting used to things, Harry starts helping the man cook since the others can’t do it and Ted doesn’t really seem to enjoy it. Harry, despite the stress usually associated with the task, does actually quite enjoy cooking.

The next person was the two’s daughter, Nymphadora ‘Don’t Call Me That’ Tonks. Harry decides to just call her Dora and she seems fine with that. They chatted about Hogwarts a bit. She was a little annoyed to learn that even more absurd shit happened this year than last year.

Three days in he went back to Twilfitt and looked at their design, approving it with a smile. Especially the embroidered symbol of the Potters on it’s back

He also got a call about five days after he’d left from a very irate Ron on his dad’s phone.

“Well, that’s what you get for trying to get ahead of me, Ron. You’re a chess player, you should know this.” Harry says into the phone, making Ron sigh frustratedly. “How’s the wand feel?”

“Oh, much better actually.” Ron answers easily, mind switching gears from annoyed-with-friend to excited-about-new-thing. “Had to get a custom one because of you paying Ollivander. Casted Lumos with it as a test and nearly blinded myself though. Mum taught me an exercise for it.”

“Good.” Harry hums, maybe wand holsters for all of his friends would make a good across the board gift.

“So, how’s the new place?” Ron asks.

“Oh, it’s great actually.” Harry says. “They let me practice magic now that I’ve got a bit more of a handle on the amount of power I’ve been putting into it. And they leave me alone when I ask. It’s soooo nice.”

Ron snorts. “Yet another good reason why you shouldn’t stay with us. If you asked to be left alone here everyone would become instantly worried.”

Harry feels a shiver. “Ron, I love your family, but if they ever decide to raid my home because I choose to hole up for a few days I will simply stab someone.”

Ron chuckles, and Harry does too.

As he talks to Ron, Harry feels his stress melt away feeling much better having talked to a friend.

It takes two more days before something odd happens to Harry.

He’s meditating to develop his magical control further, when he notices the strands again. A glowing blue strand and a ruby red one. There’s also a green frayed connection and a dark gray dotted line, but those first two connections feel like he could grab hold and tug them over.

He knows the ruby red one is the Sword of Gryffindor. And he felt the blue one form when he put on his Potter Heirship ring, but up until now it felt too new to properly feel out and tug.

So, now that it feels less like it might come apart, he puts a metaphorical hand around the connection. Feelings of happiness and curiosity explode into his mind from the connection. “Who are you?” He wonders.

“Carnation.” A squeaky voice of a girl answers, the connection vibrating lightly with her words. “I was a familiar summoned by a Potter ancestor of yours. I decided since I liked working for him and his next of kin I would stick around, and thus formed a different sort of contract where the Heir, Lord, Lady, and Consort rings would form a connection to me and thus bond me to your bloodline, in a way.”

“Why was your connection so frayed in the beginning?” Harry asks, heart thumping a little because this person could tell me more about my parents and I won’t feel bad about taking up her time.

“Because I’d been without a contract on Gaia for eleven going on twelve years. Summoned Familiars are meant to return to the Faewild after at most a year. The only reason I was able to stay awake for ten was because I had infused Wild Magic into the water surrounding Potter Manor and was using it sparingly. At the dawn of eleven years I went to sleep in my pool and Titania told me I’d wake up a year later. And I did!” Carnation cheers.

“Anyway, when you took up your Heir ring I woke up. I’ve been working at cleaning up Potter Manor for the past week. Speaking of, what have you been up to? I can feel how busy you are through the contract, which is why I haven’t appeared to introduce myself yet.”

Harry blinks. “Studying and settling in with some new guardians.”

“Ah, that was one of Lady Lily’s personality traits. Took me a while to discern the difference between ‘Busy Studying’ and ‘Normal Busy.’ Looks like your tells are different.” Carnation says, not sounding upset. “New Guardians? Where’s Siri?”

“In jail. Supposedly for betraying my parents and murdering twelve humans. Found out he was never my parent’s secret-keeper, but it’s been hard to figure out what to do with that information. ‘Specially because it doesn’t prove he didn’t murder the humans.”

“…” There’s a feeling of rage from Carnation, like a slowly forming tidal wave. “Pettigrew.” She says angrily. “That ratty bastard. I never liked him, but nooo never listen to the Spirit, what does she have other than nearly a thousand more years of wisdom on any Mage-” She rants, and cuts off when Harry feels like the wave had crashed. “Sorry.” She says.

Harry shrugs. “It’s fine. I’m with Andromeda Tonks as my guardian now.”

“And who was your guardian, if not Siri before?”

“… My mum’s sister.”

Okay, now it feels like a geyser is about to burst. Harry takes his hand off the strand, cutting off Carnation’s “PETUN-”

Harry takes a deep breath, and looks back at his Core. The untraceable mana storage organ. The books on Meditation Andromeda got him taught him a bit on how to visualize it, then Ted showed him a book on human biology.

Ted said if he was going to learn unfocused magic, then he was going to have to start with meditation and creating a path for magic to take out of his body without him thinking about it.

Ted figured imagining it as a sort-of nervous system would be best, and after briefly looking through the book, Harry agrees. Being able to cast magic wandlessly out of any limb and being able to cast it on himself without so much as waving a hand does seem nice.

Dora stared at them both in shock, asking Andromeda why she’d never learned any of this, and Andi shrugged “We tried, but little you was far too hyper for meditation. You can feel free to do it now though. One good thing about magic is that it’s never too late to learn something new.”

And thus Dora now joins Harry in meditation at night.

Harry slowly starts stretching out little veins for his Mana to flow into, eventually setting up an entire network of magic veins for him to use, and then it snaps away and he pouts a little.

As he comes back out of meditation, he stands up, ready to start the day. He goes to his bag to fish out his clothes, and blinks as the only set of clothes that comes out is a comfy sweater, an undershirt, a pair of black sleep pants he got basically only for wearing in his room, and The Skirt.

His chest flutters a little as he looks at the skirt, feeling the cloth, brain static-y at the idea of wearing it.

He changes into the clothes, and soon enough Dora knocks on his door. “You ready for the day yet, Small One?”

“Y-Yeah.” Harry answers, and Dora opens the door.

She blinks at him, smirks a little, but doesn’t say anything.

Harry finds that a little more scary than if she’d just teased him for wearing the thing. Instead they both go down the hall to the kitchen in silence. Harry helps Ted cook again, and while the man does blink at Harry’s choice of dress, he seems to shrug it off.

Andi just tilts her head a little. “Cute skirt Harry.” She says, then moves on after Harry stutters out a surprised ‘thank you.’

He really liked that she said that, and he has no idea why.

It bugs him a little, but the answer to his question of why that felt nice feels scary, so he neglects to ask.

When all the dishes are cleaned and put away, Harry retreats back to his room to study more.

He leans back in his personal recliner, and opens up the book on Meditation and Focusless casting.

The reason he has a recliner is because the Tonks’ urged him to buy a comfortable chair for his room. He bought the most comfortable one. And after a bit of ‘Yes you could sleep on a brick, but do you want to’ speeches from Ted, he also bought a very soft mattress and many soft pillows and blankets. Not to mention his desk chair being extremely comfy even if he can’t recline in it.

He loves all of it, and he nearly cries every night he goes to sleep because his bed is so comfortable that the relief of finally being able to sleep nearly overwhelms him.

“Ah, that’s what I was doing wrong. You need to be slow with the changes. Work it in over days rather than in a single meditation session…” Harry murmurs.

As he finishes reading, he thinks a little on what he learned, then looks through his mind for something to do with the rest of his day.

A his phone makes a tinny chiming noise. A message.

He opens it up to see Malfoy’s Home Phone asking for a call. Harry responds by calling.

“Hello?” The person, a woman judging by the voice, asks.

“Hi. I got a message from this phone asking for a phone call. May I ask who this is?”

“Narcissa Malfoy. Lady of the Ancient and Noble House of Malfoy.” She answers.

Harry decides to introduce himself. “Harry Potter. Heir to the Most Ancient and Noble House of Potter. And others.” He tacks on that last bit.

Narcissa seems amused, chortling a little. “This is not an official call, so I do not mind, but for future reference you’d also list off your other Heir titles as their proper names, and ranks should it be extremely formal or official.”

Harry groans. Rolling his eyes at the thought. “But that’d take a whole Minute to say.” He complains.

“You’ll not need to use it for much but extremely formal settings anyhow.” Narcissa retorts. “Onto the real reason for this call. Are you alright to have the meeting about reparations soon?”

Harry squints, thinking about it. Is he ready to meet with new people again? He very nearly had a mental breakdown before taking a nap last time. After a few moments, Harry decides if he doesn’t do it soon he won’t do it ever. Might as well take the leap.

“Tomorrow or the day after good for you?” Harry asks.

“Tomorrow then. Twelve sharp. Meet on the steps of Gringotts in Diagon Alley?”

Harry blinks, then nods. “Sure. What should I wear?”

“What you’d normally wear. Preferrably nothing that stands out.”

“Dull colored normal clothes… Got it.” He looks down at his current outfit and briefly thinks about wearing it. It could be funny and fits the theme, but no, he decides to get his other clothes washed.

“Would you mind terribly if I brought along Draco? He hasn’t been out all summer.”

Harry’s head lists to the side a little. From what little Harry knows of Draco’s actual personality, it might be fun. Harry shrugs. “Sure.”

They discuss a little bit about what to do on the day, then Narcissa hangs up after they exchange goodbyes.

Harry starts meditating again soon after, deciding to talk with Carnation once more.

Chapter Text

Carnation, as it turns out, is a Water Spirit. Which makes her specialization ‘Drinks and Cleaning’ according to the spirit herself.

According to Andi, who was very surprised to hear that the Water Spirit was still up and about, Carnation is much more powerful than just offering water and cleaning, but she does do that much better than most familiars could.

Carnation decided against explaining her full powerset, because Harry needs more time to settle into Gaia before dealing with yet more information. Harry had to admit that it’s fair considering how many naps he’s had to take for the information he keeps learning to settle.

Over the course of the day Harry also decides that the skirt is his new comfort wear. He’s not sure why, but even when he’s wearing pants under it, even though he Knows he’s wearing pants, he just feels more comfortable with it on.

Eventually Carnation is summoned to Harry’s side and she seems to materialize by burbling up from the ground. She’s shaped like a foot-or-so tall feminine humanoid, just far less textured and made of glowing blue water. The water also seems to form an outfit. A suit of some sort.

When asked, Carnation shrugs. “A few of your ancestors were disturbed by the foot-tall water child floating around their house ‘naked’. I was annoyed by that for a while, but decided I’d just go with it. Now I like the look quite a bit though. ‘Specially in adult form.”

“Adult form…?” Harry questions.

“Another ability you don’t really need to know about yet. It lets me store more water and thus act more in combat. Though I mostly use it when there are guests in Potter Manor.”

There’s a few seconds of silence, before Carnation speaks up again. “Anyways, since you’re informed of me, I’m going to go get some pests that made themselves at home in the manor to Skith. If you need anything simple done just ask this sprite.”

A floating glowing water droplet forms in the air, and as Harry squints he notices that it’s actually just a very small Carnation.

Harry asks the sprite to clean his clothes, which it does easily and quickly, so now he has clothes to wear to his meeting tomorrow.

After a few other conversations, he goes back to meditating and decides to just create the magic veins that’ll connect his core to his shoulders and hips. Those connections seem to solidify by the end of the day.

After dinner he gives Hedwig a couple of taps on the head and an owl treat before letting her out for the night so she can hunt on her own. She’d arrived on the second day of his stay at the Tonks’, letting out a very loud bark at the window during breakfast so Harry would let her in.

Apparently her ability to find him is abnormal even for Gaia-trained owls, as the Tonks’ were very surprised she found him. Harry decided not to question it too much.

Harry goes to sleep after preparing what he’d need for his trip into town tomorrow.

—~—

Narcissa Malfoy wasn’t honestly sure what to expect out of Harry Potter. Maybe his father’s cheekiness? His mother’s dry wit? A chaotic mix of both?

According to Draco, Potter never dressed quite well, sticking to Human casual clothes that seemed far too big for him when he wasn’t wearing the school robes.

He seemed rather dull to Draco, but that doesn’t really say much considering how they likely never interacted outside of classes, and all above know that there are talents outside of what’s taught in classes.

Narcissa does know, however, that the boy knows next to nothing about Mage customs. He’s good at taking stabs in the dark at what he should be saying, but he has a fundamental lack of knowledge on the subject from what both Lucius and Draco have said.

And according to Draco if the boy starts to get tired he will start becoming unfiltered. He wouldn’t admit to what brought him to that conclusion, but it apparently shocked Draco for a few moments and made the boy remember to tell her when he was asked about potential issues that might pop up during the meeting.

What Draco likely didn’t think to warn her about was the fact that the boy looks like Narcissa’s best female friend with black hair. She was expecting someone who only really resembled Lily through the eyes, so while she was looking for him on the steps to Gringotts she was not expecting the black-haired kid to approach and instantly click into place as Harry Potter when he said “Hi.”

But then Draco, who was standing next to Narcissa, tilts his head. “You cleaned up, though what did you do with your hair?” so clearly this was new.

Harry shrugs. “Needed to go through some growth that was stunted due to malnutrition. Hair growing is a side-effect. I kept it long, and I think I wanted to keep it long as a kid, too. But my aunt didn’t like it and chopped it all off.”

‘Aunt? But James was an only child… Don’t tell me they stuck Harry Potter with Petunia Evans…’ She questions in her head. “This aunt’s name?”

Harry shrugs. “Petunia. I know you’re on my mom’s will so you’re probably a friend of sorts, so I don’t mind giving that information. Oh, also, here.” He reaches into a messenger bag and pulls out a small bag. “Decided I’d go around to those on the wills and hand-deliver the bequeathments. Letters exchanged during stressful times and a copy of her notes on charms. To remember her by.”

Narcissa accepts the bag and puts it in her own magically expanded pouch. She then airs her thoughts on Harry’s plan to give the bequeathed items by hand. “… That doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

Harry raises a brow.

“One of those people probably betrayed your parents.”

“Oh, yeah. His name was crossed out. It’s not who everyone seems to think it is though. Skith swore in draconic for a while after learning and Andi released Presence.”

Wow, that was a lot to unpack in one statement. She decides against unpacking that Sirius likely wasn’t the betrayer was for later. “You’re living with Andromeda now?” Narcissa asks, and Draco looks at her, blinking rapidly. Right. She’d never really talked about her family near Draco.

Harry nods. “Yeah, she’s great. Leaves me alone when I don’t want to deal with people, all that.”

Draco stares at him. “That’s… Normal though?”

Harry gives Draco a bland look. “I have two experiences before Andi. Petunia, my abusive aunt who would make me cook since I was six, and Molly Weasley.”

Her name is enough to make Narcissa understand where Harry was going with this.

“I love the Weasley family, don’t get me wrong, but being just left alone for a while wasn’t a luxury I had for a very long time…” He seems to jolt after a moment. “Anyways, we need to have a meeting.”

Narcissa blinks, and realizes that she’s still standing on the steps to Gringotts. She nods and leads the pair of boys off to somewhere they could talk privately.

—~—

Once they’d settled into a private booth at a tavern, the three mages speak amicably about random topics until drinks came. Just waters.

With that out of the way, Narcissa announces that they would begin discussions about reparations with his take on what should be done.

“I’m going to be blunt and likely uncouth, so accept my apology ahead of time. What is your planned budget for this?” Harry asks.

“Twenty thousand galleons.”

Harry nods a little. “Good. I planned to fill in a little here or there if your budget couldn’t cover it, but this way I don’t have to lie. I know the Weasley family a bit too well. They’ll only accept as much as everyone else got. So split it evenly.”

“Five thousand to each sufferer?” Narcissa asks, and Harry nods. “Well, that makes things simpler. What do you mean by they won’t accept more than everyone else got?”

Harry sighs. “None of them have a greedy bone in their bodies. Ron tried to argue with me about getting them bloody Christmas Gifts. Hell, he tried to get a new wand before I could go with him probably because he wanted to avoid having me pay for it. Luckily I already had it paid for in advance because I had to get a new wand recently and thought it was something he would do. I’m already planning around how I’m going to have to manipulate them into even accepting the reparations.”

“‘Well, I have to give the money to somebody. I can’t take it, then I would feel guilty. I can’t give it to the other sufferers, since that would make them feel guilty. And the person that gave me the money won’t take it back, it’d shirk their honor.’” Harry says.

“And if that doesn’t work?” Draco asks.

“Well then I’ll just threaten to double it and use my own money to do it. I’ve the money to burn anyway.” Harry answers easily.

Narcissa grimaces, knowing very well that it would work against the Weasleys.

Draco squints. “If you have that much, why didn’t you buy better clothes before?”

“Didn’t know about it before and didn’t have time to explore Diagon on my own before.” Harry answers easily. “Plus I’m fairly sure no ‘Good clothes’ I owned would’ve survived at the place I used to live.”

Draco grimaces, and Narcissa can’t help but agree.

“So, we’ll split it among the four affected parties. Do you have a particular way you’d like to announce it?” She asks, switching subjects.

The way Harry grins and his eyes sharpen with mischief reminds Narcissa far too much of the boy’s father and mother at the same time.

—

“I probably will not be able to lie to anyone confidently enough that they’d believe it, so if they guess it was your family spreading the reparations then there’s nothing I can really do.” Harry says, and Narcissa nods easily enough.

“We can’t hide the fact that we made the reparations using magic, as if their suspicions are brought up in court we’d have no way to break the spell and reveal that we paid the proper reparations. It’ll be alright. If it goes wrong I’m hoping the less Impulsive of the Weasleys is the one to figure it out.”

Harry feels a bit chagrined that he can tell she means Arthur. He nods. “Okay, if I have to tell any one person, I’ll tell Arthur then.”

Narcissa returns his nod, then relaxes a little. “So that solves that issue. Draco wanted to speak with you about less impersonal matters, if you’ve the time?”

Harry activates the watch on his bracer and hums. “Should be okay.”

“So… What were you curious about?” Draco asks after a moment of silence, and Harry blinks, flashing back a bit to the conversation they’d had in the empty classroom.

“Oh. Etiquette, Potions, stuff I don’t know in general, that info about ol’ tommy noseless’ unrepentant followers.”

“Tommy?” Narcissa asks, not seeming to question the title or even who he’s referring to.

“Tom Marvolo Riddle is…” He waves his hands vaguely at his forehead, personally not liking that he shouldn’t say the man’s name, but knowing that it could possibly make others become fearful. “That guy’s real name.”

He can practically feel the questions they have for him, but both decide to hold off, and instead they tell him to ask his questions.

“Okay, so… This one has kinda been burning a hole in my brain for a while now. I’m not the most well-versed in Flower Language, but my mother, from what little I’ve read in her books is really into that kind of thing, not to mention my aunt was also versed in it. Snape’s question to me in first year… ‘What would I get if I added powdered root of Asphodel to an infusion of Wormwood?’”

“I know that Asphodel is a type of lily, and it means ‘My Regrets follow you into the grave,’ and Wormwood is ‘Absence, Bitter Sorrow,’ which… Seems a bit too appropriate to be coincidental. Not to mention that I read in my diary that he was my mother’s childhood friend, and he was in both of my parent’s wills, my dad’s citing his bequeathment as being reparations.”

“I have… Some idea as to what happened since I also read my some of my Dad’s books, which… Well, he wasn’t a kind person when attending Hogwarts.” Harry shakes his head. “Anyways, I don’t really think I have a question about any of that, other than if I should give some sort of proper response, or if I should just respond in the way I plan to.”

“There’s not a precedent for flower language… Except, I think, with Lady etiquette, right?” Draco asks his mother, who nods.

“But that’s only in cases of exchanging bouquets, not really when speaking. So unless you plan on sending him a vase along with the stuff from your parent’s wills, there’s no reason to reply in a particular way.”

Harry hums. Honestly sending a vase of flowers might be a bit more fun than just giving a verbal reply.

“Honestly I might just do that. Though knowing what my father did to him he might think it’s trapped to the gills, so I’ll do a combination of what I was planning.”

Draco nods. “That would be a good idea. He’s never been a fan of gifts without first being told about him receiving them.”

“… Hm. My dad might’ve been the cause of some of that… Could you tell me anything else?”

Draco blinks. “Okay, I have more experience with Uncle Severus. Tell me your plan and I’ll try and edit it around so it’s more palatable for him.” Harry nods and does just that.

Chapter Text

Over the course of the week, Harry contacts a few people outside of the Malfoys he feels he can trust not to spill about his plans and gets a number of new ideas, such as telling the Tonkses what he’ll be up to but not telling them where the reparations came from, even if Andromeda seems to immediately have the look of someone who knows.

They decide to let him go forward with the plan but make him bring along Dora, who gives herself the role of putting up temporary privacy wards to keep anything from potentially getting spilled out.

—~—

Colin Creevey nearly flinches out of his skin as a knock at the door reaches his ears.

“I’ll get it.” His dad says, giving Colin a sad smile, making it clear he’d seen Colin flinch.

He listens as the door opens and a small chat is heard. The voice of the person who was at the door felt familiar, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“Um, Colin, Does the name Harry Potter mean anything to you?”

Colin blinks and gets up from the couch, walking to the front door to see… Harry Potter with long hair. He blinks at the other boy for a few moments. “What happened to you?” He questions, before covering his mouth with wide eyes at the accidental insult.

Harry just snorts and smiles at him. “I can tell you didn’t mean anything by that. I had to get some medical procedures done. Side effect was my hair growing out. May I come in? I’ve a few things to say that shouldn’t really be said with Human audiences that don’t already know.” He looks to Colin’s Dad briefly, and the man looks to Colin, who nods.

“Harry was the one who took down what… Did this.” He says when his dad looks surprised. “He was also in a few of my pictures.”

Dad stares for a moment before widening the door and letting Harry inside. “So, try not to yell during this conversation.” Harry says as they settle onto a pair of couches. Harry seems vaguely uncomfortable, but not from anything he or his dad are doing.

“So, simply put, I did a bit of… work behind the scenes and found out who exactly was behind this incident. They err… They were being really stupid and were actually apologetic, and gave me a large sum of money to spread around to the affected parties of this incident.”

There’s a sharp sound to his dad’s “How much?”

“20 thousand galleons, which is roughly equal to 2 million pounds. I’m spreading it around equally, since I happen to know a certain family of an affected party and they simply will not take more than everyone else got. So 5 thousand galleons goes to every party. To be put towards the afflicted.” He gives Colin a pointed look.

Colin avoids his eyes by looking at his dad, who seems a bit thrown for a loop.

“And… You’re sure?”

Harry nods. “I had my Hoard Keeper, the mage equivalent of an accountant, put the money into four vaults at Gringotts. There are very specific conditions to make withdrawals, since I’m… Unsure of the trust I can put into parents to use the money for the child. Sorry if that offends you.”

Dad just shakes his head a little. “No, that’s fine. Understandable even, if what I heard about certain Mages from Colin was right.”

Harry takes a deep breath, and nods. “I wasn’t raised by Mages, but yes. I’ve heard from… Certain friends in high places, that professors don’t tend to teach Human-Born mages the way to get to-and-from Gaia without the train platform active or a portkey?”

“There’s a way to do that?”

Harry nods, gesturing with his head a little towards the front door. “I can show you, if you’d like. It’s how I’m getting around right now anyway.”

Colin slowly nods, wanting to know this information more than he’s scared of the outside right now.

The group of three walk out to the street and Harry looks at Colin. “Now, don’t get nervous, but I need you to point your wand across the street.” Colin stares at him.

“I… I didn’t bring it.” Colin mutters, and Harry nods a little, smiling kindly.

“That’s fine. I’ll just show you how to do it with my own and if you need to go to Gaia you’ll know how.” Harry flicks his wrist and a dark red rod appears in his hand. He points it across the street. “Arca Magorum” He pronounces. “Brace for loud noise.” He says, and Colin nods, shoving his hands over his ears.

Crack

A gaudy, purple, triple decker bus appears and slows to a stop in front of Harry “This is the Knight Bus, though it’s had a lot of names and appearances in the past, this is what it is now. It’s the only physical transport you can get between Earth and Gaia. It also doesn’t mind ferrying you to different locations on the plane you are currently on, though doing that does cost a bit more Mana than normal.”

He then waves at them. “If you go to gringotts next time you’re in Central, the Dragons will know where to bring you. See you next year, Colin. Good day, Mr. Creevey.” Colin just nods, mouth feeling a little like it’s sewn shut as Harry leaves.

A woman with bright purple hair steps on behind him, giving him and his father a cheery salute and the bus blasts away, making a loud noise.

Colin looks to his father, who seems quite stunned by the interaction as well. He jolts and looks at Colin. “Let’s go back inside, we can figure out what to do about all of this when it’s time to get your school supplies again.”

—~—

Harry takes a deep breath, and sighs a bit before knocking on the door of the next house he has to visit.

Luckily, it’s Justin himself who answers. He seems a bit out-of-sorts, but doesn’t seem to feel as bad as Creevey. “Potter?” He asks, eyebrows drawing together.

Harry nods. “Yea, I need to talk to you. Preferably alone, but if you’re comfortable with your family knowing that you now have quite a bit of money in mage coinage then by all means.”

Justin blinks at him. “I’m fine with my family knowing. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Harry shrugs. “During our first conversation you said something about your mom realizing how useful having a wizard in the family would be.”

“Ah… Wording was a bit off. Didn’t mean to make it sound like she was being greedy. She just… wasn’t sure I’d be able to get a job. Y’know? We’re fairly wealthy already anyway.”

Harry shakes his head. “I’m afraid I don’t, but if you’re comfortable I’ll take your word for it.”

He gives the family much the same speech he did the Creeveys, but then Justin’s father throws a curve-ball.

“But what if we want those bastards that hurt our son to be punished further?” He asks.

“… Okay, so this is very, very secret, but judging from the fact that you’re all experts at hiding your emotions even from me when I have a natural empath trait to my magic, I’m going to assume you can keep this shit secret.” Harry says, giving each person in the room a hard look and giving Dora, who is standing in the doorway a nod.

She does some wand waving and Justin looks up, feeling the privacy ward snap into place. “I’ve also put a privacy ward in place, just to make sure.” He says, more to Justin’s benefit than the parent’s.

“The real person behind this attack was the same man who murdered my parents and left this,” He gestures at his forehead. “On my face. It was… A cursed object of his that made it’s way into the hands of an innocent girl. I won’t go into details, but the cursed object had a mission, which was to essentially kill all human born mages at Hogwarts. The person who felt obscenely guilty about this whole fiasco was someone who used to be a spy on that man. The object managed to wriggle it’s way into his mind and made him give it to a hogwarts student. I already destroyed the cursed object, and the man who originally passed the book along was a victim in this as well.”

All of it is true, actually, though Lucius did pass the book a bit more willingly than implied the book did keep trying to get him to give it to his son.

The father nods a little. “And the child involved is probably even more a victim than Justin, though we should not compare. Alright, at least we’re getting a bit more support than just these free ‘Mind Healer’ House Calls.”

The mother nods a little as well, staying silent.

“Anyways, I can show you a more convenient way to travel to and from Gaia that you can use without needing to go to a specific place. Though you’ll still need Justin to come along with you to use it.” Harry says, and Justin’s eyes widen.

“Seriously? That would be a big help.”

So once again Harry shows the Human Born mage how to summon the Knight Bus and gets on, Dora joining him and giving the group of earth-living people a slightly fillipant salute.

Harry sighs as he gives the driver, a fire spirit, the next address. It’s time for possibly the hardest sell for this kind of thing, Mione will almost definitely know immediately who the reparations are coming from.

He sits down with Dora, who gives him a calming shoulder squeeze. He takes a deep breath, and soon enough the Fire Spirit delivers the message that they’re at his destination.

He’d told Dora that he was lying just a little bit about what happened to create this particular mess, but he wasn’t telling the opposite of the truth, just the truth with a bit of skew.

‘Right, let’s do this… No biggie, just have to lie to one of my closest friends.’ He sighs and stands up, knocking on the door to the detatched house.

—~—

Hermione blinks as her door is knocked on. Her Dad’s voice comes through. “Hermione? One of your friends, as he claims, is here to see you. Harry Potter?”

Hermione jolts up from her bed and rushes to the door. “Is he okay?” She asks, already slipping past her dad and down the stairs, hearing a ‘I can’t really tell.’

“Harry I swear if you’ve been lying this whole time I will hang you by your toes in the great hall-” She says, turning a couple of corners before being interrupted by seeing Harry standing there with a woman that Hermione vaguely recognizes.

She blinks rapidly as she takes in Harry’s new appearance. His eyes dimly glow green and he has black, long curly hair tied up in a ponytail. “You… You’re not wearing your glasses.”

“Yea. Kinda part of the whole healing thing. They fixed my eyes as part of the deal.” He says, teasing sarcasm riding his tone. She gives him a disdainful look and smacks him lightly on the shoulder.

“Well, you look okay. What brings you?” She asks.

He rubs his shoulder and pads through the room. “This is Dora, the metamorphmagus I told you about.” He gestures, still walking. “This isn’t necessarily a social visit though, so I’ll get to business.”

Hermione notices both of her parents sharpening in presence as she also does, mind mulling over what Harry means by that.

“So, I did some work behind the scenes after killing the basilisk, to find who was the true culprit behind all of this, and found them when they actually came forward. The identity and how this all happened is best kept secret. The ‘Culprit’ was rather apologetic towards me and those affected by the basilisk. Overjoyed that nobody died.”

“They gave me twenty thousand galleons to spread among the affected. I decided to split it evenly among the four since I know the family of a certain victim will not accept money if they get more than everyone else. And if I gave less to that family I know everyone would feel guilty, so best to just split it evenly.”

“Among the four…? Harry, you didn’t take any yourself?”

Harry gives her a flat look before realizing that she probably doesn’t know. “My family was a bit paranoid when they set up my trust vault. I do not need any of this. If anything it would just become more of a burden on my mind. Besides, I’m the only one that got a face-to-face apology.”

Hermione squints and slowly starts piecing together a likely suspect, but Harry stops her. “Before you try and figure it out, Hermione, figuring out that person’s identity puts them in more danger than they already were for… Being in the position that they are.”

Hermione gives him a flat look before humming. “Okay. Fine. I really hate this, but fine. If you’re okay keeping it secret then it’s probably for good reason.”

Harry nods and gives her a thankful smile before moving on. “Anyways, you now have a vault in Gringotts with 5 thousand Galleons to be used specifically for the care of Hermione. I set up some rather… Difficult checks to make sure you’re doing the correct thing with the money, since I’m… Reluctant.”

Mom just nods at him. “Hermione’s told us a bit about your… previous situation.” She grimaces a little. “It’s quite understandable you’d be paranoid. From what little I understand, 5 thousand galleons is a lot of money?”

“It’s 500,000 pounds, ma’am.” Harry answers with a nod.

Dad coughs up some of the water he had the misfortune of drinking when Harry said the number.

“Yea, I suppose that’s the normal reaction.” Harry says, snorting as Dora pokes him in the side. He seems to think for a moment before nodding. “I’ll let the dragons do the more complex talk. I’m just here to tell you about it and teach Hermione a new spell.”

“What?” Hermione asks, and Harry seems to take that as his cue.

“Bring your wand,” Harry says, “It’s something we can do on Earth without getting in trouble, as long as there’s no humans around.”

Hermione gives a slow nod and pulls her wand from her hoodie pocket.

Harry hums. “Yea, definitely getting everyone wand holsters for christmas this year.” He mutters.

—~—

After successfully teaching Hermione how to summon the bus, Harry and Dora board the bus for the last time today.

“You lead an exhausting life, Harry.” Dora says as they eventually get off the bus. “I do not envy any minders you gain in the future.”

Harry snorts and rolls his eyes a little. “I don’t envy them any more than you do.” He says back. “This is exhausting even for me. I’m going to sleep in a seven layer blanket cocoon when we get home.”

The pair walk up to the door and seemingly as soon as they knock, Molly Weasley bursts from the door and wraps Harry up in a hug.

There’s some talking happening, but Harry couldn’t really understand any of it since Molly’s arms seemed to absorb most understandable sound.

Eventually Harry is released from the hug though, and he and Dora walk into the house.

Soon enough the living room is populated by nothing but vibrant red-heads.

Harry takes a deep breath. “Right, so, the person who put the diary into Ginny’s cauldron approached me.” He waves a hand at their concerned faces. “Surprisingly, it was to apologize.”

He explains the whole ‘The Diary is a cursed object given to the person who was a spy during the latest wartimes. He, unfortunately, did not bury the damn book seven billion lightyears away or offer it up to Odin for study, as the book had already managed to get it’s hooks in him. It steered him to give it to a Hogwarts Student.’

“He can’t, unfortunately, go public. due to his position and the fact that he knows there are still Members of… That, around. So he approached me instead.”

“Why you?” Bill asks a valid question.

“Because as the one who put an end to the basilisk and someone who is very rich, this can be seen as a solo act or as me hunting down the guy and doing a lot of arm twisting. Either way, if the public finds out about the reparations, it doesn’t damage his position among the scum of the past.” Harry answers easily.

“So it’s self-preservation and self hatred for what happened that motivated this.” Charlie huffs a little.

“We… We can’t accept-” Arthur starts to say.

Ron flinches as Harry’s eyes sharpen and focus on the speaker. “You can and will. It’d shirk my honor were I to give back agreed upon money. Shirks the giver’s honor to take it back. Makes the other parties recieving reparations feel guilt, and finally, can you imagine how annoyed your hoard keeper would be with you if you decided to move all that money from your vault?”

“But…” Arthur starts, but Molly places a hand on Arthur’s shoulder.

“Dear, Harry’s right. Plus it’s not like it’s gift. It’s someone trying to make things right with us. We don’t have to forgive them, right Harry?”

Harry shakes his head. “Honestly I think the one giving these reparations would prefer you didn’t. He’d feel weird about it. But if it makes you feel better, he’s also felt the pain of castration. His wife found out about that particular ‘Brilliant’ plan of giving an eleven year-old a cursed book and, well…” Harry does a clench-fisted twisting motion with his hand, making most of the boys at the table wince.

Arthur looks at Harry. “Then this is all sincere?”

Harry nods. “Yeah.” He wants to explain further, but any further information he could give would almost certainly lead both Arthur and Molly straight to the correct answer.

Arthur sighs. “Alright.”

Harry sighs in relief and moves on. “Oh, right, and this is for you, Molly.” He pulls a small bag from his own bag. “I’m going around and handing out my parent’s bequests.”

“That…” Molly starts, staring at the bag.

Harry sighs through his nose. “Anyone who could potentially harm me that I don’t already have personal acquaintance with would be punished rather severely if they tried.” He waves off, not really feeling up to explaining the whole thing.

Ron seems to notice, placing a hand on Harry’s shoulder. Though he doesn’t seem to understand how to politely steer conversation away, as he just bluntly says “Harry seems to be getting tired of speaking.”

Harry gives him a flat look but doesn’t deny it.

Other conversations still start, and as soon as someone points a question Harry’s way, he ends up entirely spaced out for the rest of the evening, only coming back into lucidity the next day.

Luckily, it seems Dora had noticed, as she told him during breakfast that the rest of the night went off without a hiccup. Molly and Arthur accepted the reparations and his mom’s bequest, though in his spaced out state he did have to tell Molly that he still had the real copies of the notes his mom decided to gift her.

Chapter Text

Harry lets out a breathy laugh as he finally connects his core to the palms of his hands and the heels of his feet. The veins have stuck, and now he can probably do magic without needing a wand to expedite the travel of his magic.

At least, he’s fairly sure he doesn’t. Now that he has the pathways, according to the book on wandless, it’s just a matter of understanding how Mana moves and the rules he can operate in, which means more studying for him.

He does have a bit of an idea already, that it’s a matter of knowing how magic can operate then willing his own magic to do what’s needed. He’d seen a couple of lockpicking tutorials before and thus knew, logically, how locks work. Push the pins out of the way, twist the key cylinder. So his magic unlocking the lock on his door was pretty much just that.

Then there’s the matter of ‘What magic can do,’ which is pretty damn vague considering he’s fairly sure apparation and porkeys create temporary wormholes and that explains everything about why he hates that particular form of travel.

Still, Arca Magorum or the Knight Bus still achieved fast travel without causing stress on the user, so there must be some way to ward away the sickness caused by that kind of magic travel.

He opens his more Club Friendly notebook and writes down a note about potential enchanted items that ward against g-forces and other affects that are likely caused by magic travel.

Club friendly just means it doesn’t have his notes on his parent’s affiliations and friendships and how Harry should interact with those people going forward. That notebook is locked and keyed to Harry’s blood. Automatically closing itself and turning blank when he says a phrase so even if someone got past Harry’s blood lock they wouldn’t be able to read the information inside.

Reading the notes his parents had on several subjects was very very helpful in advancing his studies quickly. Especially his mom’s since she seemed to write all of her notes so they might be read by someone else, and thus lacked weird jargon that his dad seems addicted to.

Well, except the apothecary journal. That subject is filled to the gills with jargon from both of his parents so he relies on Ted’s old schoolbooks for that subject.

The days pass by peacefully and happily for Harry, who finds studying far far more interesting than he thought he would.

—

One day, about a week before his birthday, Ted and Andi sit down with him on the couch and he can feel their prodding looks.

“Yes?” He asks, closing his notes on wandless magic.

“What sort of party do you want for your birthday this year?” Andi says, tone like she was ripping off a bandage in her mind.

Harry just stares at them for a moment, stunned that the topic was even a question at the moment.

“Um… I don’t think I would do well with anything too exciting.” Harry says, already overwhelmed by all of the options his brain decided to supply him with all at once.

“So, something quiet. Small?” Ted asks

“Just my friends and you all, yea.” Harry answers. “Also I’d rather not make anyone feel obligated to get me gifts… Though that’d probably give the Weasleys the room to call me a hypocrite since I keep forcing them to accept things from me.”

“It almost certainly would. Just don’t mention it anywhere and if they get you gifts accept them and move on.” Andi says. “It’d put a lot of pressure all around were you to say anything about gifts, like what if Mrs. Weasley was already preparing something for you then decided to give you a gift anyway? And how would the others feel about it?”

Harry nods, understanding a little. Still he sniffs in annoyance.

“So you said your friends. We know you’re friends with basically all of the Weasleys, but who else is on that list?” Ted asks after a few moments of silence.

“Hermione Granger definitely… Neville Longbottom isn’t as close to me but I think I want to amend that. And Draco Malfoy.”

Andi stiffens and blinks rapidly. “H… Huh?” She asks.

“Yeah. It’s not a very good idea, But Draco rarely gets out of the house during the summer unless it’s for private tutoring or some fancy gala nonsense, so I want to help him with that a bit. I think he’d be more comfortable with his mother also in attendance but if you two would rather not meet again then I’m fine just not inviting him at all.”

“No, if he’s one of your friends you should invite him. And if it’d make him more comfortable, Narcissa is allowed as well.” Andi says. “Wait, I never said…”

Harry shrugs, “Narcissa Black and Andromeda Black weren’t listed on my mother’s will, but they were in her journals, which aren’t automatically kept up-to-date by Grim. Wasn’t very hard at all to connect the dots. Especially since you seemed to immediately understand who was likely feeling apologetic towards their supposed victims.”

Andi stares for a few moments before sighing. “Your Empath ability is far too convenient.” He just snorts and shrugs again.

“Other than those three and the Weasleys, there’s no other people I would quite trust enough to have here.” Harry says.

Andi nods, apparently putting aside her incredulity. “Okay. Neville’s birthday is the day before yours, so I would send him an invite sometime before then.”

Harry nods, then blinks and tilts his head. “Wait, nobody told me that.” He scratches his head as he tries to think of potential gifts for the other boy.

“… Screw it. I’ll just ask him what he wants.” He mutters eventually. “And if he responds with nothing I’m dragging him to Diagon.”

Harry stands up with finality, the questions the Tonks’ had for him are over anyway.

“Decorations?” Andromeda asks, making him realize that no, they actually weren’t.

“I don’t know.” Harry shrugs. “As long as it’s nothing that makes noise or is overly harsh on the eyes I doubt I’ll mind.”

Both adults nod, “Any potential activities?”

Harry hums. “Might fly around a bit, maybe do some ‘club activities’ for funsies. Club activities are mostly just studying, practice duels, trick candy making, and hexing the twins for pranking us as well as getting practice with more creative hexes.”

"… Seriously?” Andromeda asks. “You have a club that revolves around that?”

Harry snorts a little. “Yes. The goal is to help us all learn and train enough that when shit inevitably hits the fan, we can get things done if need be. It also helps us all unwind. Even Percy participates and he’s viewed as the ‘Serious One’ of the Weasleys.”

—~—

Unbeknownst to anyone at the house, Albus Dumbledore is currently sitting in his office staring at a notebook that had been stabbed by Harry.

“… I need to make a number of calls.” He says, sighing. ‘So glad I went and had a communion with Loki before I came back to Hogwarts. This notebook is so obviously a soul fragment and I doubt I would’ve noticed anything with Harry’s own horcrux mind whammying me.’

First, he makes a call to Skith, having the dragon’s phone number was helpful. After barely a ring, the Dragon answers.

“Skith, Hoard Keeper to the Potters and Secondary Chieftain of the Nation of Dragons, may your enemies bleed gold.” The dragon says. Dumbledore gives the appropriate greeting in return. “What do you need, Albus?”

“Harry defeated a basilisk in the chamber of secrets on my school’s grounds this year. I was wondering whether you’d be willing to send a team here to help render it down and put everything into the Materials vault that James Potter set up.” Albus says.

There’s silence on the other end, then a smacking sound. “I forgot to show him the miscellaneous and library vaults. Ugh, James really needed to learn to write things on paper.” Skith mutters to himself, then continues into the phone. “Of course we’d be happy to take it off your hands. Harry already told me the story. How soon do you want us to take a team down there?”

“As soon as possible.” Albus says in return. “I’ll pay for the rendering and the transport of materials. It’s my school that made this fight happen anyways.”

“Alright, we’ll have a team assembled and sent down there at the earliest possible time.” Skith says. “May your hoards never diminish.” He says the formal goodbye, and Albus gives the goodbye response in return before hanging up.

“… Alright, next is something I should have done as soon as this damned diary came into my possession.” He dials up a mysterious Department.

“Saul Croaker, Department of Mysteries. What’s the situation?”

“Albus Dumbledore here, sir.” He hears a lightly confused snort from the younger man at the term of respect. “I seem to have in my possession the remainder of a Horcrux. And, now that my mind is clearer, I know exactly whose it is. I’d like to set up an appointment, if possible, so I can get this tainted item to the unspeakables and tell the story in person.”

“… Okay, we can do that. When would you like to have this meeting?” Croaker questions.

“Whenever is next convenient for you. The soul fragment in the item has been destroyed via basilisk venom, so it’s probably of no danger. I’d just prefer to have it in the more capable hands of the DOM.”

“Does this mean you’ll let Harry Potter view the prophecy?” Croaker questions.

Albus’ face pinches. He really wants Harry to see it, but at the same time, it would be quite… Emotional, for the young man.

“Sometime during the summer, for sure.” He eventually answers. “The boy should hear the prophecy, I’m just not sure of his emotional state, as I am not his guardian anymore.”

Croaker hums. “And who is his new Gaia Guardian?”

“That I will keep to myself. Can’t know who’s listening and all that.”

“Alright, I’ll pen you in for the day after tomorrow. Good day.” Croaker says, and Albus gives a slight nod.

“Good day.” He hangs up.

Both things he needed to get done completed, Albus steeples his hands on his desk and closes his eyes, entering meditation.

—~—

Neville smiles to himself and wipes the sweat off his forehead as he finishes replanting some of his more difficult magical plants.

He blinks as a white blur lands on one of the trees in the greenhouse. A very recognizable snowy owl barks at him, so he extends an arm, knowing his work glove will protect his hand so Hedwig can land on it.

The snowy owl glides down and perches on his hand. “What are you doing here, girl? Harry should be back on earth by now…” The owl barks and extends her right leg, a message on it.

Neville unwraps her leg, taking the letter, then turns to the dirt. “Chrys, are you there?”

The Longbottom family Familiar, an earth spirit, rises out of the dirt and looks at him, curiosity in her eyes. “Could you get her some owl treats? This is a friend’s owl.” He extends the hand Hedwig is perching on to Chrys, who extends her own. Hedwig accepts the change in perch, then Chrys walks off.

Neville opens the letter.

|Hey Neville.|

|Sorry I didn’t manage to send this message to you beforehand, but I’m staying on Gaia from now on.|

|There’s a lot to talk about with you. I want to be friends. Hell, if things had gone different we would have been practically siblings! Your mum is second on my mum’s will for guardians that I’d go to were they unavailable.|

|Anyway, you’re invited to my birthday thing. No formal stuff, since I don’t know how to do that crap.|

|Oh, and you’re allowed to bring a guardian if that’d make you feel more comfortable, but it’s not required and if they cause friction or something I and my guardians reserve the right to kick them out.|

|… Also my current guardian said she’s the sister of a woman named Bellatrix LeStrange. She’s very kind. Healer at Saint Mungos in fact. But Andi wanted me to warn you that she looks like the woman just with lighter hair and far more sanity.|

|Also I kinda invited Draco Malfoy as well. We’d… Made a truce over the summer. He’s admitted to being an ass and honestly I just think he doesn’t get out much.|

|Anyway, I instructed Hedwig to wait for your reply. Feel free to reply with anything. Even ‘Message Received’ if you’re too busy to reply fully.|

|Kind Regards,|
|Harry James Potter|
|Heir Potter|

“…” Neville has a number of reactions throughout the letter, happiness, sadness, confusion, and a snort at the last three statements. “Honestly, it’s like he thinks I didn’t grow up magical.”

He writes out a reply after returning to his room and taking off his work gloves.

|Hey Harry.|

|Good on you that you’re living on Gaia now! I could tell after last school year you’d been stressed out living on earth, though I didn’t know what to do about it.|

|I knew about the god-siblings thing, but didn’t want to hold it over your head while you were still getting used to Gaia and all that. Great that you know now though. I’d be happy to be friends!|

|I’ll be happy to come to your ‘Birthday Thing.’ It’ll be interesting to see Draco outside of school since his parents stopped throwing huge absurd parties for his birthdays. He’d seemed lonely the last couple years, so I’m glad you decided to build a bridge.|

|As for your guardian, thanks for the warning. I already knew that ‘The Woman’ had two sisters, one I’ve already met and gotten used to since I went to Draco’s parties, but I haven’t met ‘Andi.’ Should be interesting. Really hope I don’t panic, but I know that the trauma might still blindside me.|

|When and where should I go? Also, do you have a phone?|

|Kind Regards,|
|Neville Longbottom|
|Heir Longbottom|

Funnily enough, soon after he signs it, Chrys comes into his room with Hedwig. He sends the owl off with the letter, then decides to wait at his desk, already having finished his garden work for the day beforehand anyways.

Soon enough, Hedwig lands on the window sill and Neville accepts the small slip that Harry had sent, it was a phone number with just the phrase ‘Yea, I have a phone.’ Written above it. Hedwig takes back off as soon as Neville puts her rubber band back around her leg.

He pulls his phone out from it’s stand, and quickly creates a contact for Harry, then calls.

“Hey Nev! I’m… Not really good on the whole talking thing right now, but Andi does want to tell you how to get here. Also are you having a celebration for your birthday?”

“… I’m not all that good with things celebrating me, Harry.” Neville says. “I get gifts and such, but a party isn’t really something I’d enjoy.”

Harry chuckles a little. “Fair enough. The only reason I agreed to this is because I want to hang out with my friends and it’ll be a small party if it’s just them. I doubt I’ll be all that present for the whole ‘Cake and Song’ crap if they do that… I might even ask they not do that.”

“Who all is coming?”

“The whole Weasley family has an invite, Hermione, Draco, Draco’s Mum, then finally you.”

“Wow, by small you meant small.” Neville says. “The Weasley family makes up more than half the invited people.”

“I don’t like talking very much in person. I’ve gone mute a couple times before simply because too many things happened and I was just… Done talking.” Harry says, then hums. “Though that rarely happens when I’m somewhere nobody will be around other than my friends. Anyways, I’m going to hand you off to Andi and she’ll tell you how to get here.”

He does so, and Andi introduces herself as ‘Andromeda Tonks’.

They had set up in the Floo they have to allow a certain list of people through the floo while using the password ‘Harry’s Birthday’ for the day.

Chapter Text

Harry meditates the day of his party, hoping to avoid going mute during the events.

He watches his Mana pulse through the complex veins he’d set up, his core still obvious even as he’d used quite a bit of it’s mass to create the veins.

After watching for a bit, he starts making the section that’ll be going up to his head. For some reason his books all suggested he do that bit last. He starts creating the channel, and strangely enough he finds it easy. Once it reaches his mind, his brain pulses, and the core connects easily.

Suddenly the mana spreads through his brain into his eyes and as he watches he feels something like a new pull make itself known. Different from the pull of him entering meditation to look at his core, the pull that lets him look at the connections to his core, and the pull of just entering a state of calm, unthinking, silence in his mind.

He decides to follow the pull, feeling as he enters his own mind, oddly.

He blinks, and suddenly he’s floating in space, nothing but stars above and below him. It terrifies him so much that he ends up exiting meditation accidentally.

“What the bloody hell was that?” He questions, alone in his room.

He grabs the books he has on meditation and flips through the one designed to overview everything about the technique. He blinks as he reaches a chapter after the wandless thing.

|Occlumency|

|Occlumency is the ability of mages to create a ‘Mindscape’ to sort and protect their memories and other absorbed information. To first create a mindscape one needs to connect their core to their brain, and that is usually a hard task to complete.|

|Occlumency shields are usually naturally around the mind, which is what makes it hard for mages to connect their core to their brain. They need to get through the natural shields to connect the core to the brain.|

|If the connection is easy, either the mage has a natural affinity towards mind magic, or their mind has been thoroughly raided by a legilimens, or a mage mind reader.|

|Either way, once that is done a mage feels a pull during meditation that’ll take them towards their mindscape. At first the mindscape will be chaotic and scary, but as with getting to find their core, visualization will help the mage here.|

|Specifically, if the mage visualizes what they want their mindscape to be, whether a massive sprawling labyrinth or just a single room in the void, it will form around them.|

|Solidifying this image usually requires several days of entering the mindscape and affirming your visualization while your Mana adapts to it.|

|There’s normally these things needed for a fully operational mindscape;|

|Loose Memories: Memories that have just formed and are therefore not sorted away just yet. They have emotions attached to them, usually.|

|Sorted Memories: Memories that have been sorted. Usually mages separate their emotions from the memories, but that seems to be more of a preference than a rule.|

|Sorters: Little helpers that organize the user’s memories in the way the user wants them organized. Can take on any form the user subconsciously desires.|

|Questions: questions sorting and answering is usually what a mage spends the most time in their mindscape doing, since they can make ‘Sorters’ or helpers that tend to put away their memories and bring forward useful memories to help answer questions they had.|

|Place for Memories: A place to put the memories for sorting, such as a filing cabinet or bottle.|

|Place for Questions: A place to put the questions the user has answered.|

|Traps: things to scare off and force out intruders and eliminate the chance of mind magic working. These take the most effort to set up.|

“… Okay.” Harry says after going on a muttering tangent trying to figure out what he should do. “I think I’ll go with making myself an office.”

He enters meditation again and once he feels the different pulls, he lets himself get dragged into the mindscape.

The void still terrifies him, but it quickly fades away. As though a light had turned on, the world around him becomes an ordinary office, if you don’t look at the wall of filing cabinets on one side, and the bookshelf wall behind his desk, which is facing a door to this room. The door is shaped like the one he’d seen on his trust vault door’s back. A lever on the desk can open the door so others might come in that he allows.

As he moves to sit in his desk, he also visualizes a fireplace, creating it to the left of the desk while he sits in it. As he sits down, he creates Sorters. Four small versions of himself that can fly around the space. Each wearing a deep blue dress, for… some reason.

After a moment of digging through his brain, he shrugs, snapping his fingers.

Loose memories become a tornado of rapidly moving letters in envelopes above his head. The sorters immediately go to work. Grabbing an envelope each and wrestling them to a drawer. Once a sorter reaches a drawer with a memory, the envelope turns into a file with paper in it.

A stack of files appear on his desk, which are the questions he has, then a stack of blank sheets of paper, a pen in a pen holder, and a pair of stamps along with their own ink pads appear after it in various places on his desk.

A fifth sorter appears near the files and begins rapidly reorganizing the stack, then disappears after it finishes it’s job.

The sorters, Harry can tell instinctively, manage to sort his memories by chronological order very quickly. After a moment of thought, specifically remembering what Lockhart tried to do, Harry makes them copy and resort the files by their emotions, which can now be deduced by the color of a file, as the outer file is the envelope of the letter and the envelope of the letters are what creates his emotions.

The sorters get that done even faster than it had taken them to organize things chronologically. Finally he also makes them do it again, this time sorting it by event.

Once they finish with that, Harry realizes that he now has essentially three copies of all of his life stored in his mindscape.

“Huh, that’s… Weird to think about. Anyway,” he picks up the first question in his stack, and looks at the tab of the file. ‘How does magic work? (Basics)’

The sorters start rapidly flying around and copying papers from different files, stacking them on Harry’s desk. Once they’ve stopped flying around, Harry taps his hand on top of the stack.

He sees through his younger eyes, watching, as he goes through his first class on ‘Basics of magic’ with Flitwick.

“So, first off is Mana. All things have Mana, it’s impossible to avoid, but Mages have much larger and more versatile cores than humans do. Animals, humans, and mages absorb Mana through the air and via skin. The absorbtion of natural mana allows for the prediction of air currents and weather phenomena. It allows a sort-of danger sense when a predator is nearby, though humans and mages have gotten rid of their own presences over the years due to our reliance on community.”

“Mana is the energy we use to cast spells. Current prevailing theory, mostly because it was created by Odin the Ruler of Knowledge, is that at the center of the multiverse there’s the Heart of Magic, and it continues to grow ad infinitum, or infinitely.” He explains.

“And this cosmic entity’s energy allows the people who can conduct it the ability to break the rules of reality by using up it’s energy. There’s no theory as to why this is, but that’s how it is.” Flitwick huffs.

“Anyway, back to the point, Mana is the energy we use to cast spells. Magic can be broken up in many ways, the most major way being by ‘Element.’”

“Mcgonagall, later in the day, will teach you about the seven primary elements. In this class you will learn about Pure Mana as an element, or ‘Force’ as it’s called.”

He then taught them their first spell, lifting something with the Force element. In their case a feather.

“This spell is in many ways the foundation of the ‘Force’ element, as the main aspect of the element is the ability to just Move things, though as you get the hang of manipulating pure mana you’ll become able to do much more than just that.”

Harry gets a few flashes of textbooks after that, things that help him understand Force magic, and hears a few answers to questions students asked in that class, then he finds himself sitting in his first class with McGonagall, who shapeshifts into a human from a cat form.

Harry blinks as McGonagall starts pacing while speaking. “By now you’ve heard Flitwick’s speech on Magic’s basics, so I won’t repeat him. There are seven basic elements of magic.” She reaches the far side of her stage and puts her wand up at the cieling. “Air,” a small tornado of jade air spins out from the tip of her wand. It stays there as she takes a few steps to the left.

“Earth.” She points at the ground and a rock comes up out of it and floats, once again remaining as she moves. “Water.” A jet of water comes from the tip of her wand and forms a ball in the air, rippling. “Fire.” The tip of her wand ignites, once again creating a ball not unlike the ball of water.

“Dark,” A pitch void appears at the tip of her wand. “Light,” A bright ball of light appears, “And Spatial, which you wouldn’t be able to see the effect of if I tried to make an example.”

“These basic elements create the foundation for much greater things you can do with magic. For example, I personally mastered Transfiguration.” She dismisses the examples she’d created and taps her wand on her desk and it turns into a pig, even oinks a little, before she turns it back. “Which is an art that requires quite a bit of focus and skill. It relies on the Light, Earth, and Water elements.”

“In this class you will learn the basics of each of the four ‘Primal’ elements, or the elements that you can naturally see and touch. Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. You will not learn about the obscure elements until second year. This class is very dangerous, anyone caught fooling around will be severely punished. Is that understood?” The class responds with affirmatives.

Thus she teaches them their first spell, creating a ball of water from thin air, then changing it’s shape. Harry had the assignment of turning his into a bird, which he succeeded at fairly quickly.

“By now some of you have noticed that you are finding this oddly easy, while others are finding it difficult.” McGonagall says. “That is rather natural, as most mages have a natural affinity for certain elements.” She snaps her fingers and Harry jumps a little as a small object appears in front of him. “Dismiss your water spells, and touch a hand to the device in front of you.”

Harry does as asked, easily destroying the ball of water without really thinking about it. A thought appears in his mind as he touches the device, almost like a note.

|Major Affinities:|
|Water|
|Air|
|Dark|
|Light|
|Spatial|

|Minor Affinity:|
|Fire|

|No Affinity:|
|Earth|

“You should have immediately known your own affinities from this. Do not worry if you wish to learn how to use a certain element but it isn’t within your affinities, these things are trained, and while many mages have inborn affinities and choose to stick with them rather than master something outside of them, as you learn to use the elements, your affinity for that element will go up. Our goal in this class is to at least get all of you up to minor affinity for each of the primal elements.”

“Your assignment now is to write down your list of affinities, and turn it in to me as you leave class.”

Harry, at the time, shrugged and just scribbled down the list. Ron almost coughed up a lung as he inhaled spit gasping after Harry leaned away.

“Bloody hell, it’s rare for a starting mage child to have even one major affinity, Harry.” Ron said after class. “You having five and only having no affinity starting out for Earth is just ridiculous- but I can tell you’re not lying. Your tells aren’t there.” He says as Harry flinches a bit.

“Honestly it’s believable that you would, more believable than Granger with her minor affinity in all elements, not that I think she’s lying either.” He once again tacks on. “She’s much too smart for me to think she’d lie about it. It’s just a tad ridiculous. I’ve only got a major Fire affinity, and that’s something that’s been in my family for ages. I’m thinkin’ a’ picking up Earth and Light magic, be a botanist or somethin’.”

Harry snorts and gives him a bland look. “With your grades in botany?” It earns him a swat on the shoulder.

“Oi, I try!” Ron says, laughing.

From there the memories become more fragmented, showing the different explanations the teachers had for elements.

“Force is just willing something to happen.” Flitwick explained. “You grab at your magic and urge it to move a thing, break a thing, help a thing heal, so on and so forth.”

The memory switches to McGonagall. “Air is freedom personified. It makes it a fairly temperamental element but also makes it quite useful for mages wanting to move fast or fly.” The wind had picked up around her and she’d begun to float as she said this. “Of course, this would be exhausting for you all, instead, we will revisit one of Flitwick’s examples, try to create an updraft to lift a feather into the air.”

“Earth is stillness, nurturing, and hardiness.” She’d said on a different day, the floor below her turning lightly green. “You need to mold it to your will more than air, this shall pose significant challenge to those with water affinities, as it’s the same concept but just more.” It was difficult for Harry to grasp how to make earth do what he wanted it to, but eventually he managed to get a spike to form without crumbling.

A professor who normally teaches Post NEWT level classes outside of Hogwarts came in for the lesson on Fire. A spanish Veela man who called himself ‘Alex.’ He’d conjured a small tornado of fire. “Fire is best imagined as a protective rage, much like a mother dragon. It will burn all for the sake of those it wants to protect, and those it wants to protect flourish. It’s heat as well, which is useful for you British mages.”

Once again, it was a bit annoying for Harry to get it right, but he was much faster at it than with the earth spike. Soon enough he had a floating ball of fire that gave off no smoke as it was just pure heat in Mana form making the air around it burn.

The final set of classes for McGonagall’s first year class was on Water, which Harry enjoyed to no end.

“Water is creativity incarnate. It can take on any form and is known as the most gentle of elements. Of course, this doesn’t mean it can’t be dangerous.” As she said this, McGonagall had created a cat, which after she finished her sentence transformed into a massive and detailed lion made of Water.

Those classes were by far Harry’s favorite, water magic was just way too much fun to use.

Finally he sees flashes of passages and classes from this year. It seems the sorters had taken into account his preferred method of figuring out these particular elements, as rather than forcing him to listen to long lectures by Snape, McGonagall, and Flitwick again, it just shows the passages he was reading in the textbooks.

|Dark Elemental Magic works as so; it is destruction. The removal of something. That annoying eyelash, your enemy’s arm, a sickness a patient caught.|

|Light Elemental Magic works the opposite. It is creation. It adds something. An annoying eyelash into your enemy’s eye, your arm back, a rather debilitating cancer.|

|Finally, Spatial Elemental Magic. That one is… Hard to explain. It’s the only magic you actually and genuinely cannot see or feel. This branch of magic focuses around the manipulation of Physics itself. Purest form being the ability to manipulate the space between one point and another.|

For dark their first assignment was to cut a piece of paper in half, then the next day they learned the Light spell to return it to normal.

Spatial was a bit funny because Flitwick asked the class to do something that Harry had already done a number of times before. Change where he was standing to be the other side of the room without moving more than a step. The chant was ‘Mutatio Procul Gradus’ and Harry without so much as a prompt did it wordlessly and wandlessly. He was then told to blip to stand beside Flitwick, which he did.

“Can I assume this was a way your accidental magic manifested?” Flitwick asked, and Harry nodded.

“Blipped to my school rooftop once while I was running away from bullies.” Harry says with a shrug.

“Huh, well feel free to return to your seat, or if you want you can get a head-start on the next assignment.”

The next assignment was to change the distance between an inanimate object and his hand. Once again he’d achieved it easily because it’s something he did before, though that one he never actually did on purpose so it took a bit more time to work out.

Flitwick checked his work after that and just chuckled wryly. “I can only allow you to go one assignment ahead, Mr Potter, other stuff will have to wait for next lecture.” Harry had just nodded. Spatial magic was never all that fun and exciting for him like Water magic. Too many rules and technicalities, not enough just playing with it. It was still a bit interesting to play with, but there was always the danger of splinching himself or another object.

After that last vision, Harry blinks a bit of strain out of his eyes as he returns to his mindscape.

The papers have all combined into one, representing a combination of all of the memory fragments that explain the basics on how Magic works. He slips the page into the file, then takes up the pen and a blank sheet of paper, writing down in his own words exactly what he thinks the basics of magic are.

Strangely it’s as though the page keeps getting more room while he writes, and when he puts the sheet into the file, he stamps it with the green ‘Answered’ stamp. As soon as he does that, the file transforms into a book.

|The Basics of Magic (As I know them)|
|By Harry James Potter|

The fifth sorter that had arranged the question files grabs the book and flies off with it, placing it on one of the shelves behind him.

Harry blinks and looks up as a new letter appears and the four sorters quickly stow it away. It feels like the memory of the question, which is… interesting to think about. Anyways, he begins sorting through more questions.

Eventually he reaches near the bottom, and finds a question that feels a bit more personal.

‘Why do I hate the title The-Boy-Who-Lived?’

Due to being in his own mindscape, he doesn’t feel any particular emotions, so he gestures for his sorters to do their thing. By the time they stop, Harry is touching his hand to the top of a stack nearly over a hundred pages long.

The memories mostly give him feelings that the title caused. Isolation, pity, a feeling of not having any damn privacy because everyone seems to want to know what’s happening with the damn boy who lived.

Not to mention the word ‘Boy’ being in it, every time that word is pointed at him, no matter the context, it makes him flinch and makes his pulse rise.

He hates it. Hates the term. Hates the feeling it gives him. Hates the fact that he can’t wear cute clothes without feeling tickly-

The visions abruptly end and he blinks. “Well, I think those are my reasons…” He mutters, putting the paper in the file and writing down the answer to the question in his own words. The title of this one is just ‘Why I Hate The Title ‘The Boy Who Lived’’

Once again the book is sorted away and soon after a new file is also sorted away.

He blinks as suddenly a new file appears on the desk. ‘Why do I hate being called a boy?’

He hums at the question and once again getsures for the Sorters to do their thing.

Once again the sorters organize a very large stack of papers, and Harry taps his hand to the top of it.

Emotions flood him rather than memories. Sure, there’s the fear of it, stemming from prior trauma, but there’s something deeper than that.

He hates the connotations behind it. That he’ll someday grow up to be a man is disgusting in his mind for some reason. It’s never really fit with what he imagines his future self to look like. Small images flash by his mind of who he wants to be.

The amount of nervousness attached to those images is palpable. He can’t even put his finger on it, but he’s never liked the ‘Shape’ of the male body.

He’s never really felt those labels ever stuck to him. ‘Boy’ ‘Young Man’ ‘Mr Potter,’ none of them ever really felt right. It always creeped him out, even when you strip away the trauma factor, it’s just… Gross in his mind.

He repeats the process of ‘Question Answered’ after the visions fade, eyebrows drawn together as a new question appears yet again.

‘If I’m not a boy, not male, then what am I?’

And thus the process repeats, and Harry touches his hand to a much smaller stack of papers than usual.

Visions of Ollivander ‘Unicorn Hairs tend to like more feminine people’, the feeling of his heartbeat fluttering over that word.

A few small times she’d squeeze past a crowd in the Aisles, and someone would say ‘Scuse me miss’ and his brain would take a moment to just… reboot from the sheer happiness that gets injected into it.

How much he loves his more feminine clothing style since coming to Gaia.

As the visions fade, Harry stares at the piece of paper in front of them for a while.

And she takes a deep breath, followed by letting out a deep sigh and a tired “Oh.”

Suddenly a stack of files appears on her desk, and she decides against even looking at those questions, knowing she doesn’t actually have answers for them, since they were ones she was currently asking. Once again she writes the answer down in her own words. Just ‘I’m a Girl, somehow.’ Then puts it into the file with the compilation and stamps it with ‘Answered.’

That done, she walks over to the door out of her mindscape and exits it, leaving meditation for the day.

Chapter Text

Harry blinks awake, wiping her eyes a little as she spots a blur of a human standing in front of her comfy chair. “Oh, good, you’re up. Was about to wake you. Everyone just got here.” Andromeda says, gesturing to the door.

“…” Harry looks at her, smiles a little, then sighs loudly. “Of course some shite like this would happen on my birthday.”

“What?” Andromeda asks, seeming really confused.

“I got to the stage of meditation called occlumency.” Harry explains, noting that Andromeda suddenly seems a little less tense. “Turns out I have a lot of questions up here” she gestures to her brain “That have gone unanswered for a long time. There was, as I was getting to the bottom of my questions pile, three questions left.”

“Why did I hate the title of the boy who lived. There’s the whole ‘Why am I getting recognition for something my parents did,’ ‘my parents died and you bastards are celebrating it,’ and finally ‘I just really hate being called a boy.’”

“Thus ‘Why do I hate being called a boy’ came up, and all of those reasons were odd. Like, sure, there’s the trauma aspect. I’m used to the word ‘Boy!’ being said by anyone being a very bad thing, but there’s a different layer to it when you strip away that aspect.”

“It feels… Disgusting. Uncomfortable. Just awfully itchy. At some point I figured out ‘the discomfort is likely because it just never seems all that… like me.’ So then the question became ‘If I’m not a boy, what am I?’”

“The answer to that was discovered to be ‘Somehow, I’m a girl,’ because I really like being called ‘Miss,’ I love the wardrobe I have now because it’s much less boyish, and Ollivander said Unicorn Hair wands tend to prefer those that are feminine when I got my new wand and the way my heart nearly exploded was very memorable. Though I had no idea why.”

Andromeda stares at Harry for a solid moment, then huffs a light laugh. “Honestly I was wondering when you’d notice.”

“Wh- Huh?!”

“Harry. Your ‘Heir’ rings have a very specific design. The rings have a distinct shape to them when they are heir and when they are heiress. Your house rings are shaped like the heiress rings.” Andromeda says. “Honestly it’s not a very big deal. There have always been girls, boys, and androgynous people like you in our world. In fact there’s a stage of meditation where you meet your own soul by entering your core. It’s how many mages find their animagus shape, as well as their truest form.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” Harry questions, feeling a little annoyed.

“If we told you, it’d be… odd. There’s a great chance for people like you to thicken up your walls if you don’t figure these things out on your own. Or it’d send you down a spiral. Either way, I’m glad it waited until you had Occlumency before you found out, because that could’ve been disastrous. Basically put Mages tend to get more-or-less taught that the rule when you come across someone who might not fully understand their proper, internal self is to just stay silent and support them in doing things that help them figure it out.”

“Is that why you said ‘Nice Skirt?’”

Andromeda nods. “Though I also think it is actually a nice skirt.”

“Well, I am mortally embarrassed.” Harry says, rubbing her face a little and sighing.

Andromeda smiles wryly. “Yes, this is rather awful timing for such a revelation. I doubt you’d feel comfortable coming out right now, but it’ll also be fairly grating to deal with your guests saying the things that bother you now that you really know why it bothers you. So, do you have a plan?”

“I’ll walk out there and say ‘guess what, it’s a girl’ and throw pink illusion glitter all over the guests before running the hell away.” Harry says, snorting and falling deeper into her chair at the disapproving look Andromeda gives. “That was a joke.”

“I’m sure.” Andromeda says, lowering her eyebrow of disapproval.

“Truly though, we’re lucky I’m a Gryffindor. Otherwise I doubt I’d feel this comfortable with the idea of actually just going out and saying it.” She says, “Because I know how much of a weight this will be off of my mind, it’d much outweigh the anxiety I feel right now.”

“Really? When you don’t even have a name?”

“Ah, but I do.” Harry says with a light smirk, wandlessly pulling her notes on her mum’s journals to her hands. “I did some research, and Potters tend to give the first name of the parent of matching gender as a child’s middle name. My dad’s name was ‘James Fleamont’ and his father was ‘Fleamont Henry,’ therefore, my middle name should probably be Lily.”

“My mother’s side of the family named girls after flowers. Cute, if a little sexist. Figured I’d continue tradition, and lo and behold my mother actually had a list of names she’d give her kids in her seventh year notes. Holly Lily Potter seems to be the most appropriate name.” Holly says. “Plus I like it, I think.” She continues, blushing a bit as she suddenly realized she’d never actually thought about why this particular thing felt important to her.

“You sure about that, Holly?” Andromeda questions.

It’s like something inside her core cracks open, finally freed, it spreads warmth through her whole body as Holly gives a sincere smile and giggles. “Yes. Very very sure now.”

“Alright.” Andromeda gets up, and Holly blinks, having not realized the taller woman had knelt down to head height. “Now come on, the guests are waiting for the birthday girl.”

Holly grins and feels a form of steel reinforce her spine as she gets up from her chair.

POW!

A pair of confetti poppers go off. She magically grabs the confetti from the air and gathers it into two balls before throwing them back at the Weasley Twins’ faces.

“No.” She simply states, and, amid snickering from the other Weasleys, the twins nod.

“I told you not to do that!” Ron says. “Though bloody hell, Harry, how did you do that so fast?”

Holly shrugs. “It’s Holly, and I’ve been doing Meditation basically the whole summer. I’ve worked my way up to now having occlumency.”

“…” Neville stares at her rather openly, being the only person who hasn’t seen her in person since the school year ended. After a moment, he snorts. “So you’ve figured out your inner self?”

Holly gives a grin and nod to him, thoroughly trying to ignore the prickling nerves she feels. “Yea, took a bit of a roundabout route, but I figured it out.”

“For those not in the know,” Andromeda says after Holly starts walking over to greet some of her guests. “What Holly is trying to say is that she found out she’s a girl because she rooted through her memories using occlumency to try and figure out why she hated being called a boy so much.”

“Turns out, not a boy. The term and title never really agreed with my inner perceptions.” Holly says with a shrug. “Anyway, what’s first?”

Draco seems to have come out of a stupor. “Just like that?” He questions.

“Yea.” Holly shrugs again. “I’m a girl, my name’s Holly Lily Potter. That’s really all that needs to be said. It’s not like my interests besides how I like to dress are all that different. Sure, how I’m expected to talk at a formal thing is probably supposed to change, but I don’t know how to act in those spaces anyway and this isn’t exactly a formal thing now is it?”

She hears Molly Weasley say to Ginny ‘You know, that does explain…” but before she can finish the sentence Ginny shushes her, face reddening.

“Anyways, what are we doing?” Holly questions. “There’s a good spot for dueling practice in the backyard, and luckily we actually have a healer here.”

“Wait, you were serious?” Dora asks, eyes wide. “I thought it was a joke.”

The other members of the club just look at her in confusion.

Hermione snorts. “Wow H-Holly, you must have better self control than I thought, somehow keeping it secret that you’re a dueling maniac from someone living in the same house as you.”

Holly shrugs, giving a slight bow. “I live to surprise.” She says. “Anyway, I’m feeling claustrophobic in here with all of you, so c’mon, I’ll show you the spot.”

—~—

Andromeda huffs a laugh as she and the other guardians move to sit in the chairs in the back-garden. Having prepared for a day spent outside, there’s plenty on the paved part of things.

Narcissa seems a bit out of sorts, and the Weasley parents are definitely getting an inkling of whose fault it was that their daughter was possessed, however briefly.

After a moment, they all hear “Holly! Not my Brother’s perfect face!” stated jokingly from one of the twins.

“Do not worry brother, I will always be prettier than you…” the other twin says, giving a dramatic sigh and falling limp.

“I gave him a green line on his forehead, you two are so damn dramatic!” Holly shouts, Andi can almost hear her eyes rolling.

“Language!” Andromeda shouts.

“English!” Dora retorts from where she’s standing amongst the children whilst Holly had started loudly hissing a retort in Draconic.

“… Dora you are a horrible influence on me.” Holly says after a moment, as though she didn’t even consciously think of swapping to Draconic. The laughter from Dora at that statement would probably deafen anyone standing too close.

“What are they doing?” Narcissa asks.

“It’s their way of practicing fighting. I had Holly draw up the rules for me beforehand to make sure, but it’s perfectly safe. Direct attack spells are essentially just the paint charms we learned in school and any other spell is allowed unless it causes damage to the opponent.”

“Sadly nobody has ever been able to get Holly with the safe rules after she’d managed to get some stronger understandings of fighting with magic.” Percy Weasley says. “Sometimes we’ve managed to surprise her though.”

Holly appears in mid-air and floats freely for a moment, sending several paint charms down at her new Opponent, Ginny Weasley. A few leaves ripping themselves free of a nearby tree telling that she’s using air magic to gently fall back down.

“And, it seems, she’s become more of a menace.” Percy says, seeming unsurprised, but lightly annoyed.

Ginny seems to easily ward off the charms sent her way, despite her initial surprise when her friend took to the air.

Holly seems to purse her lips for a moment, fluidly dodging Ginny’s orange colored paint charm assault rather than blocking anything. Her mouth morphs into a grin after a moment though, and Andromeda can feel as the children’s hackles rise.

Holly stops for a moment, a ward blocking off a few paint charms, and with a wave of her wand and a look of concentration, a green cloud appears over the battlefield and begins raining down on Ginny, quickly covering the girl in bright green paint.

Holly banishes the cloud. “See, that would at least be worth being dramatic about, Forge!” She jabs at the twins, who laugh as she does a quick and silent cleaning charm on Ginny, who is on the verge of pouting at the other girl.

Still, the girl leaves the field and Holly’s next opponent approaches. Draco Malfoy seems a bit scared.

“Alright, I didn’t ask the others because we’ve had loads of sparring duels like this before, but have you understood the rules fully? Nothing but paint charms against the opponent, anything else goes for yourself. You get hit anywhere vital, you’re out.”

“… What’s the counter for the paint charm?” Draco asks.

“Ah, it’s a cleaning and drying charm or ward that works a bit like a very powerful umbrella. It’s what I used to clean Ginny there, since if you cause massive amounts of paint to cover a person you’re the one to clean it.” Holly says. “Erm. It happens to be in my affinities, so I don’t really remember the incantation or anythin’. All I remember is ‘Destroy magic paint’ and just kinda willing my Mana to do it’s thing.”

“The curse of the gifted!” Ron shouts snarkily.

“Ron I will make you come up next! Draco and Nev both need to practice the charm a bit and get used to it anyway. Percy, you wanna help them with that?”

The older boy just nods a little and steps out from the shade, stepping over to the younger students.

“Ohhh Ronald~” Holly calls sweetly, and Andromeda hears a few snickers from the older Weasleys. “You called this the curse of the gifted, shall I demonstrate how gifted I am right here?” She questions.

“Welp. It was nice knowing you, my family.” He says, still stepping into the ring, making it obvious he meant it as a joke. As soon as Hermione calls start, he draws his wand up in a blocking motion and creates a ward variant of the paint counter-charm.

Meanwhile, on Holly’s side of the battlefield, several sea animals made of paint burst into existence. With a flick of her wand, the constructs surge forwards, swimming through the air and crashing into Ron’s barrier.

Against all odds, Ronald’s barrier holds against the initial assault, one tiny fish getting through after he relaxed and slapping him in the forehead puts him out of the match though.

Ron stares at his opponent, shocked, then snorts and shakes with laughter as he cleans his own forehead. He walks over to where the Twins seem to just be enjoying the shade and flops sideways onto their stomachs, making both boys react with an ‘Uff’ though they don’t respond by shoving him off, just let him lay there.

“What the hell was that?” Bill questions. “What are they feeding you kids at hogwarts nowadays?” He questions Ginny, who had come over to the shade for a break.

“Nothin’ new.” Holly says, suddenly within the shade and making a number of people jump. “Sorry. Tend to blip around when I’m hyperactive.” She says. “We eat what everyone else eats. And the teaching is normal. It’s the fact that we started a club because of all the crap that keeps happening around me that accelerated things to such an odd degree. Heck, we only started it after the chamber fiasco was done and things have already gotten to this point.”

“Ron really likes Earth Magic, which is really good for reinforcing barriers and wards. At least, their ideas of hardness. Meanwhile I really love the creativity intrinsic to water magic and the spontaneity to do with Air magic. Which makes me particularly good at this exercise and most combat situations. Air magic to help me get out of the way of spells, water magic to create the paint constructs. Not to mention I found out I have a bit of War Mage in me. Just enough to make me hyper perceptive in combat. Nothin’ that lets me use a blade as a focus.”

Suddenly, Neville walks back into the shade with a morose energy.

After a moment of quiet confusion as to why he seems saddened, Holly hums. “Hold on a second.” She suddenly disappears, an afterimage floating away on an unseen wind. After a few seconds, she reappears, this time holding a small blade that definitely looks like a War Mage focus. “This is what I used to see if I could be a war mage.” She grabs Neville by the arm and presses the handle into his hand.

“Give it a wave.” Holly says after letting his hand go.

Neville blinks, and after a moment, starts to do as asked when a golden glow surrounds the blade and the boy’s hands. Holly grins as Neville stares, wide-eyed at the thing.

“Congrats, Nev. You’re a war mage. Or a mage whose magic never would have accepted anything but a blade as a focus. Also from what I read, War Mages tend to have more subtle accidental magic, their bodies being designed to reinforce itself with magic makes it easier for a War Mage to just block obstacles and other such things at a bodily level. Either that or traversal magic, and since I doubt you’ve had to run from many things, it’s likely your magic just healed you faster than most.”

After a moment of shocked silence, which apparently Holly only spent thinking of more ways to stun her now captive audience, Holly snaps her fingers. “Ooh. I wonder…”

She puts her hand out, and after a moment, as though lightning struck her hand, the Sword of Gryffindor appears in her hand. “Here, try this.” At Neville’s stuttered denials, Holly’s mouth purses a bit and she relaxes the arm holding the sword.

“Nev, here’s the thing. I can tell I’m not the one who should truly use this. The sword only comes to me because it knows I will use it for what it is want to do. I’m no full-fledged War Mage. Just a strong mage with a lot of Dragon traits. I’ve been trying to figure out who it is that should use the sword for a while though, since it’s connection feels saddened.”

Neville seems to give Holly a flat glare and shakes his head, holding his hand out with a huffed sigh. Holly grins and presses the handle into Neville’s hand.

Red light seems to flow from Neville and the sword. Holly backs up, and once the glow fades, she grins slyly. “Heir Gryffindor,” She says with a slight bow.

Neville huffs, and gives her a light bow in return. “Heiress Slytherin.”

Holly’s grin just seems to get wider, and her heiress ring shifts, becoming silver and green, causing gasps amid the audience.

“I know how I know it’s you, but how did you know it was me?” Neville questions.

“My ring saw fit to tell me.” Holly says with a shrug. “You’ll need to actually learn a bit more about dueling before I won’t feel like a bully in fighting you, so, care to sit on the sidelines?”

Neville huffs at her. “That’s what I was going to do before you turned my life upside-down.”

“You- You’re the heir to Slytherin?!” Draco questions. “I was right?!”

Holly snorts and shakes her head. “Slytherin house operates by old rules. Primary heir started combat with me and I won, therefore by right of conquest I am now Heiress Slytherin. Plus technically it’s also by right of blood, since my mother is related to the Slytherin line. Our eyes should have been a dead giveaway but everyone focused so much on being able to speak Draconic. How I know is my mum’s journals. She apparently had a conversation with a portrait of Slytherin… somehow.”

As though sensing that everyone was gearing up for an interrogation, Holly holds up a hand. “I know I probably made everyone real curious, but I am in no mood to talk about any of that today. I just wanna have some fun. Draco, you ready?”

The blond boy blinks at her, then nods.

They walk towards the makeshift arena, and Holly hums. “For this I’m going to only use wandless, since I want to test it and didn’t think about it until now.”

Draco seems annoyed at her handicapping herself, but still nods and the pair bow at eachother before starting the duel.

Holly stands there, hands at the ready, while Draco squints at her.

With a flourish, Draco casts, and Holly blocks it with one hand, sending a paint bullet at him with her other hand. He swaps from attacking to warding the bullet using a sweeping motion.

Andromeda squints at the look on Holly’s face. It’s far more concentrated than the one she’d given her friends.

Another bullet is sent at Draco’s other side, then while he’s warding that one off Holly sends another bullet that arcs around to the back of Draco’s head. Smacking him.

“And that’s the end of the match.” Holly says, snapping her fingers and cleaning Draco’s hair. “Now, go talk with Ron. He’ll probably have some notes for you, since I can’t really seem to talk about this stuff without coming across mean.”

“Alright, Hermione, your turn.” Holly says, and said brown haired girl rolls her eyes, stepping into the spot Draco was in.

The two manage to count down as one, then say ‘Go!’

The fact that Holly immediately does a twisting backwards flip, lands on a pane of ice hovering in the air, then jumps and somehow teleports behind Hermione all while being shot at by hundreds of red paint rounds was just the start.

Ribbons of red paint wrap around Holly’s wrists and ankles, well, they try to but quickly get dispelled while Holly conjures a bunch of green snakes made of paint. She hisses something that makes Ginny nearly snort tea out of her nose, and the snakes slither across the grass and start trying to wrap around Hermione’s legs.

Key word being try as they all get stopped by her anti-paint barrier.

While Hermione is distracted at keeping her barrier up, however, Holly flicks her wand, and a massive whale’s tail forms out of the ground and slaps down before dissipating, creating a loud noise and sending paint flying in all directions.

All that really seems to achieve is annoying Hermione, red birds made of paint form and start fluttering around in the air, their bodies firing paint bullets down on Holly, who deftly dodges out of the way of them while sending missile versions of the anti-paint spell at the birds, destroying them.

When she’s distracted with one, a pair of ribbons made of red paint wrap around her ankles, and she only notices when it’s too late.

She pouts at Hermione. “Alright, I surrender.” She says, holding her hands up after Hermione kept her wand pointed at her threateningly.

Hermione nods and grins a little, releasing Holly’s legs and letting the other girl deal with the paint on her.

When all’s said and done, the back garden is covered in paint, and most of the kids are giggling their heads off from the exercise being finished. Holly seems to focus for a moment, then gestures with her wand. All of the paint on the ground warps and seems to suck to a single point in the air, where it turns into clear water, then explodes in a rain that soaks anyone still out of the shade.

Ron gestures with his own wand and steam seems to come off of everyone as their clothes instantly dry along with their hair.

“And like that, we’ve had a bit of fun and exercised.” Holly says, moving to the shade with everyone else. “Anyone of you wanna try? Percy doesn’t like fighting us since to him it feels like he’s bullying us.”

“Really…?” Charlie sends a questioning eyebrow at Percy, who’s face reddens.

“It’s like attacking babies.” He mutters, making Andromeda laugh a little.

“Alright, I think I got enough of an understanding of how this goes to give it a shot. Let’s go, Percy.” Nymphadora gestures with her wand to the section they were using, and color seems to drain from Percy’s face.

“I… I plan on getting a desk job.” He says, and Nymphadora snorts.

“Doesn’t mean knowing how to fight isn’t always important on this bitch of a plane we call Gaia.”

Percy sighs and walks over to the dueling area with her.

“So ehm, Holly, how did you come up with that name?” Molly questions.

“Ah, I’ve been studying my parent’s journals. My dad was given a middle name after his father and so on. Decided to take my mum’s name as my middle name because of that, then I took a first name from a list my mum had made of future possible kid names. Why?”

“… You chose well.” Molly says with a laugh and a shake of her head. “I remember the letter I got from your mum the day before she was due. They’d foregone sex-detection and came up with two names for you. ‘Harry James’ and ‘Holly Lily.’”

Holly gives a light laugh, her face flushing red as her eyes get a bit too wet for Andromeda to not notice. A gust begins blowing through the shade as the sky darkens. The older woman gets up and squats down in front of Holly’s chair.

“Take a deep breath, kiddo.” She softly speaks, extending a hand forward and letting Holly take it. Everyone who thought there was just a sudden gust of wind realizes as it calms that it was not at all that. “That’s it Thunderbird, you got this.”

Holly giggles a little, and the cloud overhead that everyone living at the Tonks house knew was gathering overhead clears. Holly takes a few more deep breaths, and the wind finally stills.

“I’m sorry dear.” Molly says after Andromeda gets up to move back to her seat.

Holly barks out an almost numbingly cold laugh. “Trust me, Mrs. Weasley, this is not on you. I love hearing about my parents, actually. Sometimes though… Well I remember who exactly took them away from me, a-and the pain becomes a bit too much. If-if we hadn’t noticed… W-Well…” She looks at Andromeda.

“Last time we had to replant or revive most of the garden because of a sudden downpour that flooded everything nearby. Not to mention the lightning strikes that kept happening.” Andromeda explains. “Turns out; Holly’s magical signature is a dark and endless storm. And the water that comes down is most definitely not a warm summer’s rain.”

“And when I get enraged I tend to just… Do that.” She gestures vaguely upwards. “It’s been happening ever since I got my ailments cleaned. If you’re wondering how I’m still standing after going through all of my friends in duels; look no further than the fact that me just getting angry enough causes large-scale weather phenomena.”

“It was a bit expected that she’d have large-scale accidental magic episodes after she’d got her ailments cured… But nothing really prepares you for the sun to be blotted out because a twelve-year-old got angry.” Andromeda finishes with a sigh.

“Oi!” Andromeda jolts and looks towards the little arena. “Holly! Wanna go a round?” Nymphadora asks. Percy was already back with them, seeming a little rumpled, but otherwise in good spirits.

When Holly seems excited at the idea but looks around at everyone, Andromeda waves her off. “It’s your party. There’s only a few planned things. If you want to fight an auror trainee go right ahead.”

Holly grins and gets up from her seat before jogging to the area.

Once again, the two bow at each-other, it’s a bit over-acted and silly, but once they are in place, they take stances, and stare at eachother for a few moments.

“Now that she said she has some traits of a War Mage, her being able to soundly defeat all of them except Granger makes sense.” Narcissa idly notes.

Molly looks to the woman. “What d’you mean?”

Narcissa looks at her and seems a bit scared to speak, but soldiers on anyway. “War Mages are, as she said, excellent combat magi, mostly good at enhancing the self and casting through weapons. But she now has the instinct of a War Mage. Which means she’s probably a very very strong combatant. Against anyone and anything. Add on top of that the creative and whimsical natures of Water and Air as elements, and you get a very creative combatant who has a sense of when an attack is coming at them.”

“And how do I factor into this?” Hermione asks.

Narcissa jumps a little at the question. “You’re… The one with book smarts, right?” Hermione seems a bit offended at that, but nods. “Then you’re likely the only one here who can challenge Holly when it comes to creativity simply because you know a lot about magic and can thus fight in a lot more of a refined way than her.”

“True, but she’s not taking this fight very seriously. It’s just a warm-up. Trust me, I still can’t beat her when she’s on a war-path.” Hermione says, “In fact, I think Tonks out there is trying to draw out that ‘War-Path’ mode.” She points down at the fight and the two combatants are staring at eachother still. It’s clear they’ve attacked, there’s green paint now splashed around with the blue-white that comes from Dora and the velvety red that comes from Percy.

Chapter Text

Holly takes a breath, and releases it as she looks at Dora, who’s still standing at the ready.

“Come on!” Dora shouts. “I’m starting to get bored!”

Holly gives a slight pout, then shrugs. “Fine.”

Once again hundreds of species of paint-construct fish burst into existence behind her and she points her wand at Dora. This time instead of charging directly into a shield, they begin swirling around her, obscuring her view of Holly, who quickly does something she only normally does during ‘Unfair Fight’ scenarios in the club room.

Water flows out from her and forms into clones, paint charms letting them all become very real looking paint clones. She flicks her wand and all eight of them do the same before running off to surround Dora. Dora who eventually manages to make a spell that gets rid of all of the constructs swimming around her at once.

Holly swallows a little, then speaks as one with her clones. “Hello Dora.” She says.

She fires a bolt of anti-paint, but it gets blocked by the clone she shoots it at, said clone firing off a ‘spell’ of paint at the bolt at the same time. “The Great Whale demands sacrifice.” She says, and all of her clones put out their wands at once.

Dora runs, teleporting out of the circle and behind Holly, who raises a wall of paint surrounded in an anti-paint barrier as she finishes focusing.

With a circle, then a flick towards Dora, a whale emerges from the ground, a great, green, whale made of paint. It briefly flies over Holly’s head in an arc, then goes crashing down on Tonks, who manages to block it, as it was hollow on the inside and thus easily countered.

While she was celebrating a little at having blocked the whale, Holly gestures to her clones, who immediately begin running at Dora in a sprint.

One of them leaps at her in a hug, but she manages to stumble back. As soon as it hits the ground it explodes in a torrent of paint, making Dora’s eyes widen comically as she begins outright running.

“GIVE US A HUG, DORA~!” The clones teasingly sing as Holly continues to create more.

“NO!” Dora screeches.

—~—

Albus Dumbledore blinks as he exits the house of the Tonkses with Ted Tonks, who had come to answer his floo call and let him in. Watching as around five clones of Harry Potter are chasing Nymphadora Tonks around the backyard while chanting ‘Hug me, hug me, hug me’ to the terrified auror in training.

“What’s going on?” He quietly asks Molly, who looks a little entertained but also a bit worried. The woman jumps and looks up at Albus. “Apologies for the scare. Have a present to give Harry.”

“Tonks challenged Holly to a practice duel of sorts, then acted bored when Holly did her normal style of combat… She threw a whale at Tonks just before this circus started.”

“A whale?” Albus questions, blinking a little and chuckling. “Absurd. What do you mean ‘Holly’?”

One of the clones leaps at Tonks and the Trainee manages do just barely get out of the way before the clone hits the ground, exploding in green paint.

The remaining four then hum in annoyance. “Dora doesn’t want to hug us… But we want to hug her…” They seem to be pouting, before their fists all hit their palms. “Ah, we know!”

“Distracted.” The real Holly says, and Albus blinks at the fact that Dora already has green paint on the back of her head.

“Harry goes by Holly now. She’s a girl.” Andromeda Tonks says, eyes narrowed at him.

“Ah, okay.” Albus nods a little as that piece of information slides into place in his mental vault. “I’d heard she’d been going through all of the meditation techniques this summer. Figured at some point she’d get to a point where this might come up.”

“Interesting method of practice… Is this how your club does things?” He questions one of the twins, who is seated nearby.

“Yeah, every combat spell we use we also make a ‘paint’ counterpart. This one is the training version of the one Holly plans on using if she ever needs to get out of a situation and the lives of those attacking her either stop mattering or don’t matter in the first place.” The twin says, smiling a little.

“The real ones turn into spiked balls of ice mid-jump, then explode when they make contact.” Holly says, appearing at the table while a worn out Tonks slumps over into a chair. “Hello Headmaster. What brings you by?”

“Ah, just delivering my present.” He replies. “Ted just led me out here to see the festivities a bit before I have to return to the school. Lots of paperwork involved between school years.” He pulls a stack of books from his robe pocket. “It’s a few copies of my own journals over the years. Edited and watered down for… Well, lots of reasons but mostly because of my own embarassment.”

The young girl grins a bit, holding out her hands to accept the gift. “Thank you sir. I love it.”

He places the journals in her hands and smiles a bit. He watches her eyes, careful not to accidentally use Legilimency. They spark with sated hunger for a moment as she takes the journals in hand, confirming his theory.

He stops analyzing to smile calmly. “I thought you might. Minerva also felt it appropriate to get you a gift, I gave it to Ted to give to you later. I just wanted to see your reaction to my gift. Oh, also, I’ll need you to come to the castle at some point to deal with… The issue of last year. Turns out it’s impossible for anyone but someone with the magical signature of a House Member of Slytherin to open the chamber.”

Holly gives a nod, a solemn look on her face, though it’s also a bit curious in expression. “Honestly I wanted to go down there next year to explore anyway. Would… Would it be possible to bring the people who suffered from the attack down into the chamber to see the thing’s body as well? I think it might bring closure to a few of them.”

Albus blinks at the request. “Of course. That’s a wonderful idea.”

Holly takes a breath, and smiles a bit.

“Well, anyway, I’ll get out of everyone’s hair. You know how to contact me.” Albus says after a few moments of silence. He turns around and lets Ted guide him back to the fireplace. Comfortable silence between them while Albus thinks.

‘Maybe I should bring the press down there as well? For a short story rather than anything heavy. Luckily I have a pair of contacts in the papers.’ He hums a bit. ‘Though, I doubt Holly really wants the attention.’

He sighs a bit in his mind. Pained by the fact that he might not have a choice in teaching his young student about politics.

He himself has had to do many very dark things that could be spun against him if the papers weren’t extremely biased towards their ‘Savior’, and for someone like the Girl-Who-Lived, Heiress to the Potter line, the press is going to follow her no matter what. She needs to be able to conduct herself well.

‘Bugger.’ He thinks as he walks through green flames into his office. Settling into his seat at his desk and placing his forehead on steepled hands, a tired sigh escaping his lips.

—~—

After a few more paint-spars between adults, they all return inside so Holly can open presents.

“This is terrifying.” Holly quietly admits. “I’ve… Never gotten gifts before.”

Hermione rubs a hand down Holly’s back quietly. “You’ll get through it.” The fact that it sounds sarcastic but Holly can tell Hermione is being completely sincere makes the green eyed girl giggle a bit, nerves relaxing.

First gift rights apparently went to Hermione, who got Holly a strange… toy? It looks and feels like a butterfly knife, but it’s entirely dull. It came with a book of tricks she can do with it. “… It’s to help with your studying. I know you tend to feel like standing up and wandering around when you’re reading and not just sorting information or taking notes, so…” She trails off as Holly flicks her wrist and lets the toy spin around and unfold in one smoothe motion.

Holly then flushes red as everyone stares at her. She pulls Hermione closer a bit.

“Thanks Mione. I actually used to have one of these I’d repaired and kept. Cousin stole it after he thought it looked cool. Didn’t have the dexterity to pull off anything and wound up getting it confiscated at school though.”

She doesn’t mention that it was a real butterfly knife and thus definitely was not something she should have had at nine years old, but most adults in the room definitely seem to have heard it. She spins it back into a folded position before full-on hugging Hermione.

“Thank you.” She mutters.

Hermione mutters something along the lines of ‘No problem’ into Holly’s chest. It tickles a bit. Holly releases the hug after a moment, then continues to play with the new thing until she’s hurried to open another present. Something from Ron this time. It turns out to be what looks like a quartz crystal that glows a soft orange, set into a little metal stand, a bit like a handheld candle holder.

“I was utterly confused about what to get you for a while, honestly.” He ignores her quiet ‘I didn’t want anyone to get me anything’ and powers on. “But while I was wandering around the Burrow I remembered you talking about that rock you’d kept in your trunk and nearly threw me back onto my bed over.”

He laughs off the glare Holly sends his way and continues the story. “Figured if a random woman gave you a shiny rock and you just decided it was going with you the rest of your life, I’d get something from around the burrow. These crystals tend to grow around our place. They contain Fire Mana and help with keeping the inside of the house warm in dead winter. Plus once it goes inert, you can recharge it with your Mana.”

“… You could’ve done without telling everyone about the rock, but I love it. Thank you.” She says, half tempted to hug him, but knowing he’s not one for those in front of others, she abstains.

Ginny gives her a box of a hundred enchanted ‘Apothecary’s Hair Ties’. Holly blinked at it and questioned the number, making the younger girl snort. “Trust me, you will lose a good half in a month of owning them. They automatically tie your hair and keep it from falling off of your head. They can do a few different styles, but you’ll have to read the manual for that since I tend to just toss one in my hair for potions class.”

Holly smiles at Ginny and hugs her while giving thanks for the gift. Something in her doesn’t like the fact that it’s something actually useful, but the knowledge that these things exist is quite a gift in itself.

Hermione questions how much something like this costs, and Ginny shrugs, saying ‘5 sickles.’

“I definitely need those then.” She says, “Can you tell me where you get them?”

Ginny nods and says “Madame Malkins has them, though Pomfrey also gives them out to anyone with long hair who asks.”

Hermione thanks her, and Holly is given a new gift to open. The twins had made a pair of wooden lion statues that’ll apparently play fight with eachother if she puts them on a flat surface together and says ‘Fight.’

She grins very happily at the twins and thanks them, also having a feeling they wouldn’t enjoy getting hugs.

Percy got her a snake-shaped metal cuff that’ll wrap around her forearm. “It’s a training item for Parselmouths. You can hiss at it and it’ll follow commands to change shape or use it as a weak channel for Parsel Magic. Though since you speak Draconic it might not work…”

Holly gives a shrug and looks at the snake. ~Change shape so that you may sit on a flat surface.~ The snake obliges after a moment of looking at her.

“I don’t feel a connection to my Mana, so I don’t think it’ll work for casting Draconic stuff, but it’s still very nice. Plus it might be fun to walk around with a silver snake around my arm after the utter nonsense that was last year. Thank you.” Holly says, smiling at Percy a bit.

“Well I guess I should give mine next, since it’s also snake themed.” Draco says, tossing a box at Holly, who catches it out of the air easily.

She opens the box to find another snake, this one a bracelet. “It’s enchanted to detect potions and bite you if you put your hand on one. It’s modeled after a python though, so it doesn’t really have fangs. It’ll just pinch you.”

Holly smirks. “Suppose you couldn’t find anything not snake-themed anywhere you’d go, eh Draco?”

The boy snorts. “Naturally.” He states.

Neville grabs a bag from the non-existent space that Holly cant see. “I also brought a gift, though if I’m honest I don’t know if you’ll enjoy it.”

“I actually have a late gift for you too, Nev. Hold on a second.” Holly stands up and blips into her room. She grabs the ‘Encyclopedia of Magical Plants’ copy off her desk and blips back into the living room.

“-Don’t know, she just does it.” Andromeda finishes a sentence.

“As long as I know where the location I want my foot to land is, I can generally travel there. Even if there are obstacles. According to Flitwick it probably can be explained away as me turning myself into Air shortly before blinking. It’s why my afterimage seems to blow away on the wind rather than folding in on itself like normal Apparation.”

“Anyway Nev, here.” She sets the book on the table, and Neville coughs, his eyes bugging out of his head. “I already read through it and took my notes, but it’s not nearly as interesting to me as it will be for you. Is… Is it good?”

“More than good, Holly.” Neville says, sounding a bit scared. “How much did you pay for this?”

Holly shrugs. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Holly…” Ron says.

“Ron, it’s his present.” Holly states with a light glower before turning back to Neville.

“If you must know I’ll answer, but No You Are Not Allowed To Feel Guilty.” She emphasizes. “Do not get into a monetary contest with me. You will not like the results. Plus I prefer little things as compared to stuff that costs a lot, so even if you manage to pay me back in the same cost of present I probably won’t like it as much as the little lion figurines or the toy knife.”

Neville holds his hands up in surrender. “Alright, I won’t ask. Thank you though. This is for you.”

His gift is a little figurine of a Whomping Willow. She grins as it tries to swipe at her fingers when he sets it in her palm. “I love it, thanks.”

Holly gets the gift from McGonagall next. Three books, the first book being ‘On The Animagus Powers’ with a note saying ‘Read through this before trying the ritual please.’ She snorts at the note and shakes her head.

“My dad went through the animagus ritual without fully knowing what he was doing. Wound up with only the ability to shapeshift into a deer.” She elaborates to those who don’t know.

She also got a pair of books on other things to do with meditation, ‘Trapping the Mind’ and ‘Exploring the Core’

“… Well I should probably get more specialized knowledge books now that I think about it.” She mutters. “Still, I like it.”

“Don’t start doing that yet.” Andromeda says. “You’ve still got a library in Potter Manor to look through.”

“Mh.” Holly nods a bit.

“Speaking of!” Everyone in the room jumps a little as Carnation takes this time to appear. “Once you’re done with presents, Potter Manor is fully up and operational.”

That being said, Holly receives a new jumper from Molly, since she isn’t able to wear the old one from growing too much. Holly hugs the woman back after putting the article of clothing on.

Arthur got her a mundane watch, which actually belonged to her father when he was in hiding, but it got busted and he’d given it to Arthur for repairs shortly before the Halloween of That year. She smiles and decides to put it on one of her shelves rather than wear it.

Dora gives her an actual knife. “Considering you had a butterfly knife before this, and don’t even think about saying it was fake, I doubt I have to tell you how to be safe with this.”

She partially pulls it out of it’s sheath. It’s a survival knife, large and quite intimidating. “Thanks Dora, but I really don’t know if I trust myself with this kinda thing quite yet.” She puts it back in the sheath and sets it on the table with a hum.

“The dagger you gave me is bigger.” Neville gives her a flat look.

Holly just shrugs. “Yeah, but it’s strictly for casting purposes. I couldn’t stab a pillow and get stuffing with the thing it’s that dull.”

“Oh, the knife’s dull. You didn’t think I’d get a knife like that for a Thirteen year-old, did you?” Dora says, having looked weirdly confused the entire time.

“I wouldn’t put it past you.” Holly says with a huff. Ignoring the indignant ‘Hey!’ Dora lets out, she pulls the knife back to her hand and unsheathes it again, carefully looking at the blade. “Yea, it’s dull. Really hard to see, but the blade is actually rounded over. Why did you get me this?”

Dora shrugs. “It’s a practice knife. I saw you buy that dagger and thought you might think it’s cool. Now that I’ve fought you I think you might actually do well with physical blades on you in combat.”

Holly smiles and nods a little. “Thanks then.” The knife returns to it’s place on the table after she sheathes it.

Andromeda got her a shrinking trunk that unpacks to make a drafting and drawing station for designing things from clothes and furniture all the way to weapons, enchantments, and arithmancy-requiring spells. “You don’t know a lot about the Potters quite yet, but I did some talking with Carnation. There’s several bloodline traits wrapped up in the Potter line.”

“First is the ability to speak Draconic, which you inherited from your mother because of some issues on the Potter side of things. Then there’s the Potter Luck, which is born from the Peverell line’s working relationship with Grim. One in every ten spells cast that do harm upon you are reflected back on the attacker. Finally there’s the one that doesn’t show up as an ability. Potters tend to develop a fascination with a craft, whether magical or mundane. Your father’s fascination was in Enchanting, his father’s being in Spellcraft.”

“It’s why the Potters are excessively rich.” Andromeda continues after taking a moment to sip tea. “Since Linfred of Stinchcombe, ‘the Potterer’ as he was known, the Potters have been the inventors among the Lords and Ladies of the British Aisles. The oven and stove you raved about? The original design was created by a Potter, then further refined through the years by other companies, but they still have to work off of the Potter design, which deepens the Potter coffers. And that goes for many other magical items.”

“Of course, anything can be a craft. There have been a number of Potters who are just combat maniacs, like Charlus.” Arthur says. “When asked, according to certain accounts, his ‘Potter Craft’ was the art of ‘Warcraft.’ He then proceeded to carve a bloody canyon through Grendelwald’s army.”

“Yes, well, still.” Andromeda shrugs. “That trunk was one of my things from school. I took Arithmancy to better my healing magic.”

“And that present goes kind-of hand-in-hand with my own present…s.” Ted says, pulling a cloth bag out of the weird hidden space that they’d used to hide the gifts from Holly. Holly pulls out a book from the bag.

It’s a mundane book on the basics of drawing techniques. “Okay, at this point I feel like you two are trying to tell me to get a hobby.” She says, pulling a few more books out of the bag to reveal more mundane books, meaning books from earth, on various arts and crafts like metalworking, clothing design, and woodworking. “That’s… Definitely what you’re telling me. Isn’t it?” Holly questions.

She huffs a laugh and rolls her eyes as both of them seem sheepish. “Well, I’m interested in this stuff anyway, but now I’m also offended.”

“You’ve done nothing but meditate and study all summer, Holly. You really do need a hobby.” Dora says with a flat look. “And no, cooking does not count. You may enjoy it, but the only reasonable time to do that is three times throughout the day.”

Molly seems to jolt in shock. “You like to cook?” She questions.

Holly shrugs. “It’s relaxing and I get to eat my food when it’s hot.”

‘I also get anxious when I don’t at least help with the cooking.’ She firmly dodges saying that, unwilling to overshare and invite even more questions. Ted and Andromeda both seem to notice her ducking that, but they don’t comment on it.

She idly flicks the toy Hermione got her, opening and closing it before looking at Carnation, who’s still floating in the air. “So, should we go to Potter Manor next? Or is there more?”

The guests all look to where Holly can’t see the presents, then shake their heads. “Nope, nothing left.” Dora says.

Holly smiles, “Then I successfully avoided crying. Yay.” She cheers flatly, making her friends snort.