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One ordinary day on a boring street in a house that looks like all the others around it, Harry Potter is pruning the roses like he always does when someone with red hair and an earring lands in the hedge with a swear and a thump.
“Um.” Petunia never told Harry what to do in this situation. She practically always has a list of what Harry’s done wrong, but he doesn’t know if even she would know how to handle this right. “Hello. Do you need a plaster?”
He has a stack pilfered from Petunia’s purse in his back pocket. She never remembers to give him gardening gloves, and she wants him to make dinner later. They’re having salmon with lemon slices on top. It’ll hurt to cut without the plasters.
“Merlin’s sake,” the person groans. “Are you—hang on. Are you Harry Potter?”
“How do you know my name?” This person doesn’t look like anyone from Privet Drive. And Petunia would have muttered more than one comment about the earring, even if Harry thinks it looks wicked. “Nice earring.”
The person touches it. “Thanks. How do I—Harry, what are you doing in a muggle neighborhood?”
People call Harry lots of names he doesn’t understand. They’re never good, though.
“I don’t think I’m going to give you a plaster,” Harry decides. “Because you called me a name.”
“Muggle?” The person wrinkles their nose. “Harry, do you know what magic is?”
Oh. Now he knows what Petunia would think is right.
“You should go.” Harry sighs. And this person was so interesting, too. A shame. “My aunt and uncle would be furious to find a stranger in the back garden.”
“Your aunt and—“ Bill swears under his breath. “Kid, that is one gnarly bruise. Where’d it come from?”
Harry puts a hand to his neck. “You know. The usual place. Look, I really will get in trouble if you don’t go. Especially if they hear you talking about m—that.”
“That,” the person says slowly. “Harry? Do you like it here?”
“Well, I’m doing chores.” Being fair, it doesn’t seem anyone likes those. It’s just that Harry does more of them than most people he knows.
“What do you do, besides chores?”
“Get smacked if you don’t leave. Please.”
“What if I can promise you a place with no bruises?” The person is talking fast. “And less chores—Godric, look at your poor hands—and, er. More food. Better clothes. Would you come with me?”
“Please go,” Harry says.
Wouldn’t do to wish for things that will never happen. He stopped playing make-believe when he was five and his primary teacher told him she couldn’t help him get away from his family, because they loved him. Adults play enough make-believe for everyone.
“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” the person says. “I just want to talk. Can I come back tonight after your bedtime? Maybe you can tell me more about your bruise.”
“I get locked in my cupboard after dinner.” Harry cuts another leaf off the rosebush. “So you can’t come then. Bye.”
“Cupboard?” The person swears. Then he grabs Harry’s arm, and the world spins, and Harry hits his head on something when he falls down.
“I’m so so so sorry, Harry.” The person, whose name is Bill, is holding out an ice pack. “I didn’t mean—I just wanted to make sure you were safe. Does your head hurt?”
Harry puts the ice pack on his ribs instead. Dudley and Piers got him good yesterday, and the ice helps. “When are you taking me back? I’m meant to have dinner ready by six.”
“I don’t really want to? Take you back, that is.” Bill leans in close to Harry’s face.
He set Harry up very nicely on a sofa, and the sitting room they’re in is draped in colorful curtains. There are frames all over the walls. Coloring pages and a diploma and photos. But Harry must have hit his head harder than usual, because the photos are swimming in front of his eyes. Kind of wobbling so it looks like the people in them are moving. One waves at him.
“Do you want me to take you back?” Bill asks, out of nowhere. As though Harry gets a say.
“Well,” Harry tries, “I do need to sleep somewhere.”
“I think we could do better than a cupboard.” Bill smiles at him.
Harry blinks, because he doesn’t see smiles aimed his way much. “We?”
“Me and you.” Bill pats Harry’s knee. “Kid, we can find you something better.”
Better. If that’s on the table, then: “Could you—would you mind, er. I don’t like to be called kid like that.”
Bill doesn’t laugh or sneer or call him names or anything. Maybe it really will be better. “Okay. Okay, let’s make each other a few promises. Alright? It might help.”
“You don’t have to promise me anything.”
“I want to. I want it to be better for you than it seems like it’s been.”
It has not been very good, no. Harry would never say so, of course.
“So,” Bill says. He claps his hands together and rubs them.
Harry does his best to play off his flinch. He’s pathetic.
But Bill notices and puts a hand on Harry’s own hand where it holds the ice pack in place. “It’s fine. It is. Here, promise one: If you tell me something is wrong, I’ll listen and try to fix it.”
Pull the bloody other one. Bill seems younger than a lot of grown-ups, but he must still be one of them.
“I’m just nine,” Harry says. “And pretty stupid. I’ll probably be wrong, if I say something’s wrong.”
“Promise two,” Bill says. “I have to believe you, when you tell me something.”
No one’s ever—okay. He maybe can stay, if Bill’s going to believe him.
“Can I please write these down?” Harry asks. He really is pretty stupid. Maybe he’ll forget or remember them wrong. “Would that be—is that okay?”
Bill grabs him a long sheet of paper that curls at the ends and a dull drafting pencil.
Harry can’t quite figure it all out, with the ice pack against his stomach and all. No desk.
Bill brushes Harry’s fringe back softly. Not like Petunia when she’s mad about how messy it is again. Kind of like he wants to help Harry, maybe. His hair was getting in his eyes.
“I’ll write. Did I get the first two down right?”
Harry reads them over, then nods.
“What else? What can I do that’ll make you feel safe here?”
Oh, there’s no way to ask that isn’t awful. “Er, will you make me do stuff? Like, even if I’m sick maybe.”
Bill’s lips press together, but he bends over the paper and writes. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“But I never want to do some things,” Harry says. “I never like to make my uncle’s coffee because the machine spits hot water and I get burns. So you can make me do that. Just maybe not when I’m sick? I passed out in the garden a month ago and it was…scary.”
“I already wrote down the promise,” Bill tells him. “And anyway I don’t even drink coffee. I also can make my own drinks.”
“Oh.” Hm. “Are you really sure? I don’t want you to—I’d rather have to do stuff and stay? It would be worse to go.”
“Next promise. Four. You are staying with me.”
“How old are you? Do you really want to be landed with me?”
“I’m twenty. You’re nine, you said?”
Harry eyes Bill suspiciously. “Twenty’s not that old. You want to get stuck with a stupid kid?”
“Now, I need you to make some promises too. First, you’ll try to stop calling yourself names.”
“Why?”
Bill looks up from the weird paper. “Well, I think you’re wonderful. I don’t want to hear bad things about you. Not even from you.”
“You think I’m—but you don’t know me.”
“I know enough. I know that you offered me a plaster the very moment I met you. That was a nice thing to do.”
“You didn’t even get one, though.”
“Shush. Okay, this next one is harder. Ready? Can you promise to tell me the truth, even if it’s just that you don’t want to tell me something?”
Oh. That one is a problem, isn’t it? He might ask about the Dursleys.
“What will you do,” Harry asks, weighing each word before he says it, “if I don’t want to tell you?”
“It’ll depend,” Bill says. “Like, if you don’t want to tell me what you want for breakfast I’ll just pick. And then you’ll get sick of eggy bread and tell me eventually.”
“And if I don’t want to tell you about my aunt and uncle?” He needs to know. If he’s going to stay, it’s better to know now.
“Then we won’t talk about them right now. I might ask again later, though.”
Feels too easy. But he nods so Bill can write it down.
“Two more for you. Then we’ll match and I’ll sort your pillows. I have clean sheets somewhere. Three is that you have to come find me if you’re upset. You can be by yourself after. But I need to know first.”
“Upset?”
“Like if you want to cry or yell.”
He doesn’t really do that anymore. Easy enough. When he nods again, Bill writes again.
“Any ideas for the last promise you’d like to make?”
“I’ll be really quiet?” Harry offers. “I can do it.”
“But then how will you keep your other promises?” Bill taps his chin with the pencil. “You’ll remember that my family is your family.”
“I don’t have family.” Harry frowns. He’s heard it enough. “My parents are dead, and my aunt and uncle didn’t want me, so I’m all by myself.”
“I want you.” Bill puts a soft hand on Harry’s cheek. It’s very warm. Harry can feel the warmth in his tiptoes. “My family will want you. You have a family now.”
If Bill says so. Harry’s increasingly sure this is a daydream. Or maybe he died in the cupboard and this is heaven, even though Petunia said he’d never get in.
“Can you say I’ll try? Like the first one. I don’t want to break the promise.”
Bill leaves his hand where it is. He writes with his other hand, even though he held the pencil with the hand on Harry’s face before. “You’ll try to remember that my family is your family.”
“I will.” Harry sighs. “Okay. Where are your stairs? Are you going to lock the cupboard?”
“What kind of monster puts a wonderful boy in a cupboard?” Bill wrinkles his nose. “Don’t you want to see your room?”
A room? Well, Bill could have started with that. Bugger all the promises. He’d do anything for a bed of his own.
He jumps to his feet and sways when he overbalances. Bill catches him and ruffles his hair. It feels…nice. Strange. He normally doesn’t like touching.
“Come on,” Bill tells him. “We’ll decorate later, but I’d like to see you take a long nap. Merlin knows you need it.”
He gets naps too? Harry hopes he daydreams forever.
When they meet with Bill’s parents and someone who calls himself a headmaster even though Harry’s not even in magic school, it feels less like a dream and more like usual. They go to a place called the Burrow and Harry wants to leave immediately.
“I’m afraid this won’t work,” the teacher tells them. He’s got very long hair and glasses that look kind of hard to see out of. “Harry needs the protections of his family’s home. His home.”
“That’s not happening,” Bill says. “Those people weren’t protecting him.”
But his dad, who’s named Arthur like the old king even though he’s only asked Harry about rubber ducks and lawn mowers, shakes his head and agrees with the teacher. “Bill, there are some things you and Harry don’t understand.”
“Then tell us,” Bill says. “It’s Harry’s life. It was Harry’s neck with a bruise around it. Right, Mum?”
A woman named Molly who gave him some paste to make that bruise hurt less nods hard. “It was. And his ribs and hands.”
“Regrettable,” the teacher man says. “I’ll have a word with Petunia. When I return Harry home.”
His name is something about a door, but Harry wasn’t listening because Bill told him not to worry. Stupid of him. He should know better than to trust comments like that by now.
“That’s not my home,” Harry says. Maybe the old man is confused like Mrs. Figg gets sometimes. “I slept in a cupboard there. Bill gave me a bed, so his flat is my home.”
It’s something he and Bill have been talking about loads. It’s unspeakably nice to have someone who believes him.
“A cupboard?” Molly shrieks, just as the teacher man looks at Harry too sharply.
Well, Harry knows what to do with looks like that. He dives under the table.
“Come on out, H.” Bill puts a hand on his back, but it’s just a soft one. Bill listened, when Harry said he doesn’t like to be pulled around. “Dumbledore knows better than to say a word to you about how you feel. I trust he does.”
The teacher—Dumbledore—sighs. Harry knows that sound; it means the person doing it thinks Harry’s a problem. “Well, that would do it,” he says under his breath. “Harry, are you sure? Your family must miss you.”
“Not usually,” Harry says.
“What’s that, my boy?”
Harry meets his eyes. “When they try to hit me. They don’t miss much.”
Arthur puts his head in his hands, and Molly starts crying. Harry looks at Bill. At the start of this meeting, they told him they wanted to hear what he had to say, but maybe they were lying.
“They’re just sad,” Bill says. “They’re upset that happened to you. It shouldn’t have.”
“The wards—“ Dumbledore starts to say, but Bill cuts him off with a sharp tut. He kind of sounds like Molly sometimes.
“The wards couldn’t keep me out, even when Harry was there. I popped right into his hedge unharmed when I was on Gringotts assignment. Apparated Harry right out without issue.”
Dumbledore curses under his breath. “Harry, have you ever considered that house your home?”
He looks very old suddenly, and he already seemed kind of ancient.
“Uh,” Harry says. “I think you’re supposed to have a bed at a home.”
Dumbledore nods slowly and puts one of his hands to his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he says.
Harry has no idea what for, but it seems like he might not have to go back. So he waits.
“Maybe you could come stay with us,” Molly says. Her voice is still kind of wobbly and wet, but at least she’s not crying. “I have a boy your age, and a daughter a year younger.”
But Bill said—
“No, Mum. Harry’s staying with me.”
“Really, Bill,” Arthur says. “Parenthood isn’t as easy as you might think. What will you do when it stops being fun?”
“Too right,” Molly says. “I’d rather have him with me now than in two months when you get bored.”
“You were always a promising young man,” Dumbledore says. “I’d hate to see you throw your future away. Gringotts, you said? A demanding course of study until you’re certified.”
Oh. But if—it’s just that Bill promised, is all. Harry really does know better than to trust it, but he kind of did anyway.
“Merlin,” Bill says. “Do you three hear yourselves? Mum, you told me last week that I was old enough to start thinking of settling down.”
“What your mother meant was—“
Bill waves his dad off. “And I’m not throwing a bloody thing away. I love having Harry with me. He’s the best. Helps me study, and he’s dead funny.”
Harry makes sure he’s looking at his hands so no one can see the smile he can feel stretching his face.
“Bill,” Dumbledore says.
Bill clears his throat. “When did you last check on Harry, Professor? If you didn’t even know about the bed. I know you never cast him a Fidelius there.”
Harry doesn’t know what a Fidelius is. Probably one of the spells Bill is always studying. But he can admire how Bill’s sticking up for him, even if he doesn’t feel worthy of it.
“Be that as it, er, may,” Arthur says delicately. “We could put Harry in with Ron. We can take him. I don’t want you falling behind at work.”
“Stop it,” Bill says. “I promised Harry. He’s staying with me as long as he wants to.”
“I want to,” Harry says quickly. “I really want to.”
Dumbledore sighs. “I hope your wards are strong, Mr. Weasley. I truly hope they are.”
Harry looks at Dumbledore. He thought this man was supposed to be smart. “He’s a cursebreaker. He knows tons of wards.”
“Thanks, H.” Bill pats Harry’s shoulder. It doesn’t even hurt or anything. “Go get your shoes, eh? I’m going to have a quick word with my dad and then we’re going out for dinner.”
Bill said they’ll get him new shoes and clothes this weekend, so Harry laces up his old trainers for what he hopes is the last time. But once they’re on, he—they’re stuck. He can’t move. Can’t go back to Bill, even though he pulls hard.
“Brilliantly done, if I may say so,” a kid’s voice says from the stairs above him.
There are two kids grinning down at him, when he looks. Oh, no. He really has to go.
But even unlacing the shoes doesn’t work. Doesn’t help that his fingers get shaky and nervous. He can’t work his foot out, so he goes back to trying to run.
The two boys—bigger than him, of course, because his luck is shite—slowly advance. Dudley and his cronies did that sometimes, when Harry was backed into a corner. They smiled, too.
“We had to promise Bill,” one of them says. “No pulling pranks on you.”
The other one jumps in. “But we didn’t make any promises about your things. Your shoes were fair game.”
They’re smart. Sneaky. That’s not good.
The boys keep talking—something about a welcome to the family—but Harry’s not listening. One of them laughs. He finally gets one shoe up, just in time to overbalance and land extra hard on his left arm. He hears a crunch and closes his eyes.
Well, that’s that. He’s doomed.
But there’s a shriek again, and too many voices talking over each other. Harry squeezes his eyes tighter and tries to get his knee up to cover his stomach. He hates to be kicked there.
“H?”
That’s Bill. Good. He can—Harry doesn’t even know what. Maybe learn what he’s in for, with Harry.
“H, what’s happened? Here, I’m getting your shoe up. You already got one? You legend, I’ve never been able to pull one up without the antidote to the sticking potion.”
“I wanted to go,” Harry says. He hasn’t opened his eyes yet. “I was just trying to run away. Not a legend.”
“I see.” Bill’s voice goes hard. “Running away? I’m sorry, mate. Dad, this is exactly what I was talking about. Harry and I are going home.”
Molly is yelling again, but when Harry does open one eye he sees she’s not doing it at him. Instead she’s yelling at the two boys about the difference between pranking and bullying.
“I didn’t mean to get anyone in trouble,” Harry whispers. “I wasn’t trying to tattle or anything. I really wasn’t.”
“We know,” Arthur says. “We—well. We should have been watching closer.”
Harry doesn’t think that requires him to talk, at least not to anyone but Bill, so he lets Bill help him up and tries to hold his broken wrist still. He’ll deal with it later.
But then, as they go toward the Floo, Molly catches up with them and tuts over his poor shoes. Then she grabs his wrist, the bad one, and the world goes black.
He comes to in his bed at home. Bill’s pushing his fringe back and smiling at him.
“H, you gave me a scare. How are you feeling?”
“Sorry,” Harry says. “I’m sorry. Dudley always says I’m asking for it when I get hurt, but I don’t know how to stop.”
“You did not do a single thing wrong,” Bill says firmly. “Hey. I’m happy you’re here with me. I’m happy this is home for you.”
Harry tries to smile, but his mouth is all wobbly.
“Let’s get you something to eat,” Bill says. “Mum feels just awful about your wrist, so she sent a pile of casseroles. There’s pie. There’s plenty. Let’s get some food into you.”
Harry lifts his arm to examine the damage and exclaims when he can move his wrist. There’s not a cast or anything.
“Magic can be wicked.” Bill puts a hand in his hair and then cuts him a thick slice of raspberry tart.
It really seems like it can be.
“Fred and George are still grounded,” a girl named Ginny tells Harry the next time he’s at the Burrow.
Family dinner, Molly said. She cried again when she asked, so Harry told Bill it was okay.
He’d like to stick closer to Bill, but he’s got something to give to one of the bigger kids. Percy. He’s upstairs, and Harry’s stuck in the sitting room.
“Oh,” Harry settles on. “I bet they hate me, then.”
Ginny’s eyes go bright and kind of angry. She might hate him too, but Bill said his family was excited to meet Harry. He doesn’t want to run to Bill without a reason. His new shoes are charmed against a lot of pranks.
“They were rotten,” she says. Oh. Alright. “That was a rotten thing to do to you. You didn’t even know us yet. But Ron and I thumped them good at breakfast for you.”
“Ron?”
Ginny beckons another redhead over. He’s bigger than Harry too, but at least he’s smiling.
“Do you like chocolate frog cards? I’m not supposed to ask you about your family.”
Ginny whacks the back of Ron’s head, but it makes Harry laugh. At least this one’s honest.
“I don’t know what those are,” he says. “But the Healer gave me a handful of chocolate frogs at my last appointment because I’m too small for my age.”
Ron looks him over. “Come on. I have crisps hidden under my bed, and I’ll show you the best cards to look out for.”
Ginny follows them, and she even tells Harry stories about all the Hogwarts founders when Ron shows off his complete set of their cards.
At dinner, those two crowd around him and take the seats on both of his sides. Ginny flicks gravy at him and makes a face when Arthur says something about how Harry’s staying with Bill for now, and it even makes Harry laugh. And Ron eats every bit of his leftover chicken, so Molly can’t cluck at him at all.
Some of the Weasleys really are brilliant.
“Am I supposed to call you something?” Harry slips the question in between flashcards. Bill’s got a licensing exam in a month.
“That rune means protection. But like, against intruders. Not the elements. Call me what?”
Harry shrugs. “The cursebreaker who looked at my scar asked who you were to me. What am I supposed to say? You’re just Bill. What happens if you put an expanded trunk into a Gringotts vault that’s been extended?”
“Wormhole. Call me whatever you want. I’m good at being a big brother. Do you want one?”
That one was the end of the stack, so Harry hands it over. “You seem prepared to me. I dunno. It doesn’t feel like you’re my brother.”
Bill’s face goes kind of pinched. “Dad? Does that sound as weird as it feels?”
“Weirder.” Harry represses a shiver. “I don’t need an uncle. I don’t like the one I have.”
“Maybe I’m just Bill to you.” A warm hand touches the back of Harry’s neck. “Maybe we’re just mates.”
“Mates shouldn’t nag about making the bed.”
“Nag?” Bill says, outraged. “I was offering to wash your sheets. Wouldn’t it be nice to come back to clean sheets after your Burrow trip?”
Harry gets a weird feeling in his stomach when he thinks about Bill’s upcoming work trip and the five nights he’s spending with Molly, but he does his best to push it down. Ron promised they could have a sleepover, at least. He’s never had one of those.
“Mates,” he decides. “As your mate, I have to tell you that the pasta is burning.”
Bill swears and runs for the hob.
Arthur is fighting Molly about Harry. It’s the worst he’s ever felt, including when Dudley broke his collarbone.
“He deserves to at least meet him,” Arthur says. Harry holds his breath when the floorboards creak. One of them is pacing. “Remus was a great friend to James. The only one left.”
James is his dad’s name. Molly showed him two pictures of his parents in a big group. They looked nice, smiling with their friends.
“Then where has he been?” Molly counters. Her voice has gone high like it does when she’s mad. If she finds Harry now, it doesn’t bear thinking about. “Anyway, it’s not our decision.”
Arthur says something about Bill seeing reason that makes Harry’s eyes water. He knew that Arthur hated him, but hearing it is just—oh. Oh, no.
He wipes at his eyes. Shite. The promises.
The awful bit is, he wasn’t even worried about keeping these ones. Molly is so nice, and the twins can be funny now that they’ve apologized, and Ron and Gin are the best. Percy’s good for a chat. Charlie wrote him a letter and it’s pinned up over his bed because it feels like someone thought it was worth their time to talk to him. But Arthur didn’t want Bill to keep him.
And Harry needs to try to remember that Bill’s family is his family, even so. He sniffles. That’s not the worst bit. He has to tell Bill, because he’s crying.
Then a bit of hope: Harry is stupid. Maybe he remembered wrong, because he’s awful. He tiptoes away from the kitchen door and up the stairs to his little cubby by the ghoul so he can check his list of promises. Oh, no. He remembered right. So he needs an owl, which means he needs to write down how bad he is.
He tries his best to dry his eyes, and also tries his best to write with the quill Percy lends him. But he’s not very good at it, because he’s good for nothing, actually, just like Vernon always tells him.
Shite. He scrawls one more line about breaking the promise to not call himself names and rolls the letter up. Can Errol even make it to Hong Kong without keeling over?
He knocks timidly on the kitchen door. They’re going to hate him, but he has to keep his promise. Maybe if he’s bad enough at his promises Bill can break his own promises and do what Arthur wants.
“Sorry,” he says when Molly opens the door wide and clucks a question about where his red eyes came from. “I need to—could I please send Bill a letter?”
“He’s at work, Harry,” Arthur says. He’s smiling like he wants Harry to mess up. Like Dudley did when the head teacher called them both in to talk about what happened on the playground. “He’s too busy right now. Maybe you could talk to us.”
“No,” Harry says. “I need to. I promised. I really promised I would tell him if—I have to tell him this. Please? I’ll be so quiet until he comes back and you don’t even have to give me food.”
“Sweetheart,” Molly says. She sounds like she’s mad but also sad? Confusing. Harry doesn’t know if he needs to run. “Harry. There’s a time difference, and Errol is getting on, the dear. It’ll take days. Bill will be home before the letter even gets there. So maybe—“
But Harry isn’t listening anymore. He’s going to—Bill’s got his excuse, then. Harry can’t keep his promise. He tried, but that never matters. Not when it counts. So the Dursleys are going to whack him so hard, and he doesn’t even remember half the dinner recipes, and he’ll have to burn his fingers on the coffeemaker again, and—
“Harry?” A voice he doesn’t deserve. There’s green fire. Oh. Oh, Bill’s getting rid of him right now. He came back to send Harry away, and then he can go back to China like he was supposed to, because he’s twenty and Harry’s awful and Bill is a promising young man. “H, what’s wrong? Come here, come sit with me. Mate, do you hear me?”
“Sorry,” Harry gasps. “I tried to tell you, like I promised. I’m awful. I’m bad at it. I’m so sorry. I’ll go. Can I keep my shoes? I’ll go right now.”
Someone takes the paper from his hand. Yeah, he stole their parchment too. Godric. He’s scum. He’s as bad as Petunia says.
“You are not,” Bill says hotly. When Harry peeks one eye open, he’s reading. So Harry closes his eyes again. “H, love. Harry, you did it. You told me. You kept your promise.”
“Not the other—I just called myself—“
“I know you’re trying,” Bill soothes. His voice dips and coos. His hand’s in Harry’s hair, brushing his fringe to the side over and over. “You did everything exactly right. You did. I’ll give you the Floo address next time I go on a work trip so you can call me when you need me.”
“Bill,” Arthur says.
“Dad, go to the shed.” Bill’s voice goes hard. “Never say a single word about me coming to my senses where Harry can hear you again.”
Molly gasps. “Harry, dear. No one meant—“
“Mum, go with him if you can’t be quiet.” Bill doesn’t take his eyes off Harry. “Are you alright, H? Do you need a glass of water?”
Harry nods, ashamed. He shouldn’t take anything else; it’s only that he forgot what crying is like. It hurts after.
“I’ll get it,” Molly says. “His gran will get it. Harry, I’ve got it.”
Harry pulls up his knees and rests his chin on them. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I know you’re busy, and I’m so much trouble.”
“I’m never too busy for you,” Bill says. His voice is firm like when he talks to his supervisors at work after hours. “You did everything just right.”
“I don’t want to hurt Errol,” Harry says. Feels important. “I know you were far away. I didn’t mean that he should fly too hard or hurt himself.”
“No one thinks that.” Bill’s fingers are still in his hair. It’s—he’s probably going to miss this feeling most of all. “How are you feeling? Oh, thanks Mum.”
Molly hands him a glass of cool water. Harry downs it immediately.
“I’m ready,” he decides. No use putting it off. He’ll just be more of a mess in the end.
“Ready?” Molly touches his shoulder. He wishes she would have given him nice touches before. He didn’t know they’d feel so soft against his skin. They don’t even hurt at all. Grans must be their own kind of magic.
Harry sighs. Maybe the Dursleys will let him go to Hogwarts. He might see Ron again, at least. Ten months away from them versus magic. It’s a tough balance for someone like Vernon to think about.
Anyway, he’s not going to cry again. He has to remember that it’s not safe to do, when he goes back.
“What do you mean?” Molly draws him back to the Burrow sitting room. “Harry, ready for what?”
“Bill’s sending me back,” Harry says. “Because I didn’t keep my promises, so he doesn’t have to keep his. He doesn’t have to let me stay with him.”
Bill swears. “That’s not true. H, that’s very wrong. I do so get to keep you with me. I keep my promises, and you kept yours. Even if you didn’t keep yours I would keep you. If you want.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Harry says. Bugger. He’s crying again. “I need to get my list, because I’m too stupid to remember, but I don’t think that’s right.”
“It’s right,” Bill says. “You’re not stupid. Stop talking about my best mate like that.”
Molly’s crying too, at least. Better than doing it alone. “Harry, you can stay with Bill. No one wants you to go.”
Bill blows out a breath amid all the sniffles echoing around the room. “I’m taking him with me,” he says. “H, would you like to try hot pot?”
“I dunno what that is,” Harry says. There’s snot all down his front, but he thinks he sounds dignified. Under the circumstances. “I can really come? I’ll be so quiet.”
“You’ll be perfect, I know.” Bill squeezes his shoulder. “Let’s go get your bag.”
Harry leads him up and up and up the stairs.
Bill makes a disagreeable noise when they get to the ghoul’s room. “They didn’t put you in with Ron? You were excited about a sleepover.”
Harry shrugs and pops the traveling cap on his toothbrush. “Molly said it was a full house with me here. So I thought it would be better if I was out of the way. Was that wrong? Did I do it bad?”
“You aren’t bad. You didn’t do anything wrong. But next time, have the sleepover. Mum and Dad want you to have fun and be comfortable.”
They were just fine when he came up here. Plus, Arthur will never let him back in the house. But he doesn’t want to tell Bill that if he doesn’t know it yet.
“I don’t want to be trouble for you,” Harry says instead of making a promise he can’t keep. “I can stay here until Thursday like you wanted. I won’t be a problem or talk to Molly and, and Arthur.”
“You’re my trouble.” Bill tilts his head toward the stairs and slings Harry’s bag over his shoulder. “I get you. You’re mine. And we have to try hot pot, right? Come on. Time difference will have you all twisted up tonight. Best get settled as quick as we can.”
Molly hugs him before he and Bill reach the Floo. It’s interesting. Her shoulders are shaking; Harry hopes she isn’t cold. She’s so good at knitting, though. Maybe it’s like the cobbler’s wife having bad shoes.
Bill pulls her in for a hug, too. Harry tries to keep the jealousy out of his eyes. Of course Bill wants to hug his mum. She’s probably earned it.
Then Bill holds a hand out to Harry. “Come on. Time for another adventure.”
Harry grabs on, and goes.
“Harry,” a man named Remus Lupin says. Molly says he’s been waiting to meet Harry for weeks, but Harry never heard from him once when he lived with the Dursleys. “Oh, you look just like your dad. Mum’s eyes. You must get that all the time.”
Harry shakes his head. From over his shoulder, Molly tuts.
“He hasn’t exactly been getting stories,” she says. She puts a hand on Harry’s arm and smiles at him. Like she means it, even. “We had a few pictures of the whole crowd, but none of them specifically.”
“It was still nice,” Harry assures her. “I hadn’t seen them at all before that.”
“What?” Mr. Lupin cuts in. He sounds upset. “They’d hate that. They’d be so mad Harry doesn’t know more about them.”
“Sorry,” Harry offers. “Uh, I can go. If you’re mad at me too.”
Molly tuts again. Harry’s really mucking this up.
“Not you, Harry dear. Can you go see if Percy wants to play checkers? Ron’s still kicking everyone’s arse with chess, so we’re trying some new games. Board’s in the sitting room.”
Harry goes, because that’s his sort-of gran and she’s smiling like she doesn’t hate him the way Mr. Lupin says his dead parents would.
Percy leads him back downstairs, but he nearly falls down the last five steps when Scabbers rushes out of his pocket and toward the Floo.
Luckily, Harry’s good at running. Loads of practice. He ducks around Percy and gets to Scabbers just in time; the rat’s almost into the jar of powder. That could be annoying, if he accidentally got lost in the Floo network. Percy would be sad.
The grown-ups’ voices—slightly louder than before he went upstairs—cut off when they hear the commotion. Percy’s thanking Harry over and over, and trying to grab Scabbers by the stomach because pulling his tail is bad form, he’s said before, when Mr. Lupin comes in and yells.
Harry ducks behind the sofa, because he knows what it is to be yelled at. How to get away.
In the hubbub, Scabbers tries to follow after him. Mr. Lupin, too. That can’t be a good sign. When that happened with Vernon, it wasn’t one.
So Harry keeps scooting further and further into the corner and debating the babyishness of running to hide behind Molly versus the central goal of remaining unbeaten. When Mr. Lupin gets too close, though, he just scoops up the rat and hisses something about his tail looking like a worm.
Rude of him. It’s not Scabbers’s fault he’s a pathetic excuse for a pet. Percy doesn’t seem to mind.
But then Mr. Lupin casts a spell and the rat is a man, and the room explodes into sound.
Harry stays where he is and closes his eyes.
He only cracks one open when someone who huffs out a laugh and says “hey, H,” comes to sit with him. Bill. Thank Merlin.
“You can’t leave me behind for your next trip,” Harry says. “Things always go wrong when you do.”
Bill promises and coaxes him out from his corner so Molly can tell them both the full story.
“What do you think?” Bill asks after Molly’s told them about a traitor and a finger and an Animagus. “Will you ever let me send you to your gran’s again after that?”
A gran. Harry checks Molly’s expression, but she’s already fluttering away about how none of this was her fault and really, she’s going to find this Pettigrew person and demand answers, and anyway she’s going to make Harry’s favorite for dinner just as soon as he tells her what it is.
Having a gran is a problem for another day. He’s just glad Mr. Lupin left when the rat man did.
“I’m your godfather,” Sirius Black tells Harry, when Bill lets him through the Floo they only use for company. “I don’t know if anyone told you.”
Harry smiles. His gran told him to be gentle with Sirius, because he’d been through too much in his too-few years. He’d never bring it up—even Bill doesn’t know what exactly happened there—but Harry knows the feeling of too many bad things.
“I’m glad to know now.” Arthur said chocolate was important, also. Harry’s been saving all the chocolate frogs people give him for a week, just for Mr. Black. “Do you like chocolate frog cards? Maybe you can find an Agrippa in there. If I get one before Ron he’ll have to trade me his Morgana.”
Bill runs a hand through Harry’s hair on his way to the kitchen. “Your gran would groan about your manners.”
“No, she’d send you a Howler about not teaching me any better.” Harry smiles tentatively when the comment makes Sirius laugh. It sounds kind of like a hacking cough. Harry hopes he won’t get phlegm all over the chocolate frog cards. “Bill takes care of me, but he acts like his mum is still in charge of him.”
Sirius really laughs at that. Then, like a topsy-turvy charm, his mood changes fast. “How long have you been here? Bill looks, er. Young.”
Harry nods. He can listen when Sirius talks, and answer his questions. People probably didn’t listen to him, if he was in prison for so long without having done anything wrong.
“Bill found me when he was twenty. Now he’s ancient.”
“Also known as twenty-one,” Bill says. He wants to laugh, though. Harry can tell. “Harry’s been here eleven months. Turns ten in two weeks, if you can believe it. I’m a curse-breaker with Gringotts. Was tracing some artifacts from the war and landed in Harry’s back hedge.”
“Oh?” Sirius sounds like all the adults do when they learn that bit. But apparently for a different reason. “And where was that? Were you with Remus, kid?”
“Please don’t call me that,” Harry says politely, just as Bill makes the same request. Bill forgets the please, though. Gran will so Howler him about manners first.
“I—alright,” Sirius says. “I’m sorry? So not Remus, then.”
“I met Mr. Lupin the day he said Scabbers was a person and not just the world’s stupidest pet,” Harry says, puzzled.
“Shite,” Sirius whispers. “Dumbledore wouldn’t—surely not.”
“He might,” Bill says meaningfully. He’s doing something funny with his eyebrows. “Harry was living in Surrey.”
The curse words Sirius lets loose would get him thoroughly walloped, if Percy was here to tattle to his parents. But Harry can respect hating Surrey.
“Have you been to Little Whinging? That’s where I grew up.”
Sirius puts a hand to his eyes. Oh, he might actually be crying. Poor man.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.” Harry hands Sirius a chocolate frog. “Molly says you should eat that, okay? It might help you feel better.”
Sirius sobs, but he also takes a huge bite. Good enough for Harry. “Are you happier here? Do you like it better than Little Whinging?”
Harry nods carefully. Bill says he can stay, but maybe he thinks Harry’s pathetic. Maybe Molly would let him stay, if Bill stops wanting him. Harry should probably stop calling her his gran, just in case she would send him away over it. Ron might hide him with the ghoul, if he asked. No other options he can see. Mr. Lupin talks about what his parents want too much. They’re dead, and Harry doesn’t know if he’s right besides.
“Good,” Bill says. His voice is like the blanket Molly made him. Soft and warm. “I like having you here, H.”
He turns to Sirius. “We’re going to Egypt in August. I’m on a dig for a while, but we should be back by the tenth. Want to plan on dinner then?”
Harry tries not to slump in relief. He wants to go to his room, but it would probably be rude while Sirius is here.
“Has Remus been back? I could bring him, too.”
Sirius’s mouth is doing something funny. Harry thinks he’s seen Vernon’s face do it too, but usually Vernon is yelling while it happens. At least Bill’s here. Just in case.
“I haven’t heard from Mr. Lupin,” Bill says meaningfully. Harry wonders if he ran into something weird at the bank that burrowed into his eyebrows. They keep going funny directions. “Harry, have you?”
And he really hasn’t, so he shakes his head. The eyebrow thing might be rude to say. Maybe Bill’s embarrassed.
Sirius stands up really fast. Tosses a few chocolate frog cards in Harry’s direction and stomps to the Floo. The flames roar green before he’s even said goodbye.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Bill says when the fire dies down. He looks very worried. Maybe Sirius isn’t supposed to go places by himself.
“Okay,” Harry says. He sorts through the cards; no Agrippa. If he liked chocolate frogs more, he’d open a few more to check. But he hates wasting food. “Could we maybe not see him when we’re back? I don’t think he liked me much.”
“I don’t think that’s the problem, H.” Bill sighs. “But you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Right?”
Oh. Good. The promises still matter. Harry nods quickly. “Do you think I can bring a book from the library to Egypt? Only, I’m halfway done and it’s dead interesting. I don’t want to return it before I finish.”
Bill waves a hand. “We can afford the late fees. Your trust vault is loaded. What do you want for your birthday? Should get you a present or two.”
The idea of Bill calling what he wants stupid makes Harry’s tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. Maybe it would be like that one time Dudley asked him and then told their whole primary class that Harry was a pathetic little baby who wanted a teddy. It got lonely in his cupboard, was all. And dark.
Also, Harry has no bloody clue what he’d even pick. He has a bed now. Chocolate frog cards, sometimes. A seat at the dining table. Bill hugged him yesterday. Just with one arm, but even so it was wicked.
So: “That’s alright. I have loads of things.”
Bill makes a noise with his teeth and whooshing air, sounding exactly like Molly with the twins. Harry pays attention. He doesn’t think he’s pranked anyone, unless it was by accident.
“I want to know. Maybe you’d like your own copy of that library book. Or something else that’s just for you.”
Harry shakes his head. He’s not going to be a baby about it. Not here.
“Suppose we can think on it,” Bill says. “Just for a few days. Your birthday’s soon.”
“We have ages. And I’m fine.”
“Mum’s at least going to make you a cake.” Bill tugs at Harry’s elbow and doesn’t even get mad when Harry pulls it away. “Sorry, H. I forgot. I’m trying to give you a hug.”
Oh. Stupid of Harry, not to know that. “That would be okay. If you don’t mind.”
“Mind?” Bill has very warm arms. And when he pulls Harry in close, if Harry closes his eyes he can hear Bill’s heartbeat thudding. “I want to. Are you excited for Egypt?”
Harry nods. Not too hard, and he doesn’t talk. He doesn’t know how he earned a hug, and he doesn’t know what makes it end. He doesn’t want it to.
“Okay,” Bill decides. “We’ll talk more later. Can I go over some of the enchantments I’m studying? You’re the best study buddy.”
Harry nods and tries to pull away, but Bill holds fast. “I can talk and hug at the same time. Now, what do you know about jewelry clasps? Dead tricky, for curses. Some pull tight, and some just never open.”
Harry closes his eyes again. He hopes Bill’s arms are like the second kind.
Harry’s birthday is also their Portkey day for Egypt; Bill says it’s perfect, because they can sightsee before the time difference really catches them.
Bill also says happy birthday, the very moment Harry blinks his eyes open. He’s looking at Bill, who’s smiling at him, and the muffin with a candle inside, and the stack of five wrapped packages on his nightstand, until his eyes go blurry.
“Sorry,” Harry says. “I’m not upset. I don’t know why—“
“I think you’re happy,” Bill tells him. “I’m glad you are. Here, open the top one first.”
Harry unwraps a photo album filled with pictures of his parents, and two enchanted toy dragons from Charlie who probably thought the nesting mother would make Bill laugh, and a whole boxed set of the series his library book’s in, and a notebook stamped with his initials from Molly and Arthur, and a giant box of plasters in a riot of colors.
“You didn’t have to,” he repeats. “It was so nice of you. I like these books.”
“I’m glad.” Bill lights the candle with the tip of his wand and sings the birthday song, quick as anything. “Make a wish and blow that out.”
Harry squeezes his eyes shut and concentrates as hard as he can. Stay, he thinks. The flame goes out with a whoosh.
The moment they’re through the front door August tenth, an owl’s tapping at the kitchen window.
Bill frowns. “Mum wouldn’t write that fast, would she? I guess let’s check.”
The owl isn’t Errol; it looks much too healthy.
When Bill passes it an owl treat and unties the letter, it doesn’t even leave. That means it’s waiting for a reply.
Bill tuts just like Molly as he reads. “H, what would you like to do today? What sounds like a good time?”
He’s just had the best time ever in Egypt. He got to see a tomb, and there were pyramids, and Bill showed him a place that made cool fruity drinks and let him get one every single day.
“I just want to sleep,” he says honestly. Portkeying home is like time traveling, because it’s hours earlier than it was.
“Good answer. I’m going to owl Sirius and Remus back, and then maybe we can settle in on the couch? Maybe you’d like to watch a movie and rest with me.”
Oh. He could be with Bill? Then absolutely he wants that. Bill’s dad sent over some films ages ago, but it’s clear that he tinkered with them first. The images always go wonky halfway through. But the library is good for a whole host of things, so they’ve been able to keep themselves in movies. Bill’s even taken to buying a few of their favorites.
Harry grabs his blanket from Molly and waits. If Bill sits down first, maybe he can pretend to stumble and kind of cuddle in. Sneaky, like.
“Would you share your blanket? There’s a love.” Bill uses gentle hands—no tugging or yanking—to put Harry exactly where he wants most to be. But he doesn’t turn on the television quite yet. “You didn’t want to see Sirius. Is that right?”
“I don’t think he liked me. And Mr. Lupin said my parents wouldn’t.”
“He what.”
Harry shrugs as tightly as he can. He doesn’t want to dislodge Bill’s arm around his shoulders. “It’s okay. Lots of people say I’m a disappointment. My aunt and uncle did too.”
“Then a lot of people are wrong.” Bill runs his fingers through Harry’s hair. “Harry, you are not a disappointment. No names, remember? Can you try?”
“I’m trying.” Harry blinks hard. “Oh. I’m upset.”
“We don’t have to talk about it.” Bill grabs the remote. “Sirius and Remus asked about you coming to visit for a few weeks. I wanted to know what you thought. But that would be a big step, wouldn’t it?”
“It would. I don’t want that. I would be okay with maybe lunch, if we did it here and you came.”
“Do you want that? Or are you trying to be polite?”
“I think they’re both very sad,” Harry says slowly. He has to tell Bill the truth, but he doesn’t exactly know what it is yet. “I wanted—when Mr. Lupin first came, I thought maybe he would know stories about my parents. But then he said they’d be mad at me for not knowing them already and didn’t tell me anything.”
“Oh, Harry.” Bill pats his shoulder. “Maybe I can tell Sirius and Remus we can try lunch. Of course I’ll come. Do you want your gran, too?”
“Is it weird that I think of her like that? Am I supposed to? Ginny’s younger than me.”
“She likes it,” Bill promises. “She’s been ready to be a gran maybe forever. You see how much she knits.”
Harry grabs the edge of his blanket. “I like that she knits.”
“Then it’s good she’s your gran.” Bill pokes Harry’s side, but not like Dudley did before. Like a joke they both get to laugh about. Not like Harry’s the joke. “Alright. Lunch with your dad’s friends and your gran and me. I’ll owl them back right now. That bird might peck me otherwise.”
Harry giggles and hands over a drafting pencil when Bill can’t find one. It’s just sitting on the side table. He hopes Bill’s more detail-oriented at work than at home.
Two days later, Harry’s practically vibrating in the kitchen as Bill unpacks all the takeaway onto their dishes.
“Our secret,” Bill says sternly. “Don’t tell your gran I didn’t cook this.”
Harry picks up a piece of parsley on the rice and shows it to Bill. “Tell me what herb this is, first. I’m not getting caught with you.”
Bill sighs. “Okay. We’ll tell her I burnt the dish I made and we got this after.”
Bill doesn’t cook much, and he definitely didn’t cook today. Still, Harry splashes a bit of stock on the hob and lets it kind of burn onto the rings. Then he turns the oven on really hot so it’ll still be warm to the touch when Molly comes.
“Brilliant,” Bill tells him. “Makings of a proper accomplice, you.”
Maybe that means he’s helping. Harry smiles and takes the chicken to the table.
Then he tells Bill he should put a preservation charm on until people come, like Molly does for family dinners. Bill kisses his head. Harry goes warmer than the oven he just turned off.
The fire flares green while Bill is trying to distract him with questions about cursed currency. Harry just listens when he talks, is all, but Bill is always surprised by Harry’s questions. Says he has a good memory.
“Hi,” Bill says when Mr. Lupin and Mr. Black step through as Harry observes an Incendio’s effect on a Knut, for science. “Do either of you know anything about fire curses? I’ve got a devil of a problem with glowing Sickles at work. Harry and I are stumped.”
Mr. Lupin frowns like usual. Harry scoots a little so Bill’s more in front of him. He doesn’t like faces like that. Things don’t tend to go well, when they’re aimed at him.
Mr. Black drops a huge bag with a Honeyduke’s logo on an armchair. “Not a clue. We brought you sweets, Harry. I don’t think I was very polite with your chocolate frogs last time I was here.”
Oh. People give Harry lots of sweets now, but he doesn’t like the way they make his teeth feel. So sticky.
Even so, he’s not an idiot. “Thank you. Sorry I made you upset last time.”
“You didn’t make me upset,” Mr. Black lies. Odd, because Harry was there. He’s sure he did. “What’s for lunch, then?”
“We just got takeaway,” Bill says. “Kitchen disaster.”
Harry tries not to smile. He has to be a proper accomplice. These two might be easier to fool than his gran, though. They just nod. Mr. Lupin tells a story about how he once burnt soup that’s even kind of funny.
Then Molly pops through the company Floo. She’s got flour on her nose and a pie in her hands. Smells like apples.
“Oh,” she says, stopping short when she sees the table. “Takeaway? Bill, I sent you a recipe.”
“I had a kitchen disaster,” Bill says again. His eyes kind of dart up and to the side. He’s going to blow this.
“My fault,” Harry says. He looks right at Molly. “See? I spilled on the hob, and now it’s burnt and a little sticky.”
Molly goes kind of soft and nice, which isn’t what he expected from that confession. She waves her wand and the hob is back to normal.
“Well, I’m sure you two picked a good place.” She holds her arms open and beckons Harry over while he’s busy wondering what she’s waiting for. It’s a nice hug. She kind of moves his arms so he’s wrapped around her too. Different, but decent.
There’s a whisper from behind him. Right. Mr. Lupin might think he’s doing this wrong, too.
“Sorry,” he says as he pulls back.
Molly’s glaring at their guests on the couch when he looks up. “No sorries,” she tells him. “Bill, drinks? Harry, I know you want water.”
He can’t stand pumpkin juice, actually. It made him sick the first time. Bill said it was because there wasn’t any food in Harry’s stomach yet, but Harry thinks it’s just one of those weird magic things.
Bill gets everyone glasses and butterbeers and pumpkin juices. Then he pulls Harry to sit next to him when they all go to the table. Harry doesn’t even mind the pulling.
“Alright,” Mr. Black says. “Kid, tell me everything about yourself.”
“Please don’t call me that.” Harry’s sure he told Mr. Black that already. “And I don’t think I’m very interesting. What do you want me to say?”
“What’s your favorite quidditch team? Your dad loved Puddlemere United.”
“I don’t know. Ron likes the Chudley Cannons, and Bill likes the Harpies from…somewhere.”
“Holyhead,” Bill says. “We’re going to a match next month, right after my next work trip.”
“Last September before school,” Mr. Lupin says. “Getting all your fun in now?”
Harry frowns, because he’s not going to Hogwarts when he’s eleven. The professor McSomething already said that was fine.
“He’s got two Septembers,” Molly says. “Summer birthday. He’ll go just after he turns twelve. With my youngest, Ginny.”
Mr. Lupin looks at Harry funny. Harry decides the salad at least won’t narrow its eyes, so he focuses on it.
“You need an extra year? Have you had any magical tutoring at all?”
There’s a thump like someone knocked against the bottom of the table.
“I mean, interesting.” Mr. Lupin tries to smile and reaches down to rub his leg. “Why?”
“Summer birthday.” Bill just repeats what Molly said. “It’ll be good. Harry will have some more time to settle in and catch up on the basics.”
Well now Harry sounds like an idiot who doesn’t even know the basics. Bet Mr. Lupin won’t like that.
“Gives us some extra time,” Mr. Black says quickly. “Maybe you’d like to come spend a few weeks with us, Harry. We have a cottage in Wales. We can find somewhere to put you.”
Somewhere. So he wouldn’t even have a bed? That doesn’t sound promising.
“You’re pretty small,” Mr. Black continues. He’s smiling like a joke that Harry isn’t in on. “Maybe you’d fit on a shelf. In a closet. When we were in fourth year, your dad—“
But Harry doesn’t care what his dad did. “No thank you. I don’t want to be in a closet again.”
He turns to Bill. “Can I go? Please?”
“Come on, Harry, I only meant—“
Bill doesn’t pay any attention to his mum hissing to Mr. Black and Mr. Lupin. “Of course you can. Do you want to take your plate?”
Harry shakes his head and runs for his room.
“Again?” He hears Mr. Lupin ask behind him. “What does he mean, again?”
Great. Now they’ll hate him even more. But his room has a lock on the inside now, so he flips it until it catches, and then he does some catching of his own. His breath, mostly. His heart, where it’s threatening to beat right out of his chest.
He hears Molly’s voice getting loud, but she already knows about the cupboard. Maybe Bill spilled the beans about the takeaway. He has too honest of a face.
He grabs the third book in his box set, because he needs a distraction and because he likes it, and tries to hum songs he remembers from muggle radio. He’s not a Celestina Warbeck fan, even if Molly likes her and Bill says he likes it because he’s homesick sometimes.
Once he’s three chapters in and halfway through another round of a Celine Dion song he mostly remembers, there’s a knock on his door.
“Harry?” Sounds like Mr. Lupin. “I’m here with Bill. May we come in?”
If Bill’s there, then it’s not really a question. He unlocks the door and opens it a crack, just to be sure.
“Hey, H.” Bill smiles at him, but his hair’s all messed up. Seems like something happened out there. “We can go out to the sitting room, if you’d rather.”
More witnesses there. He opens the door the rest of the way. “Here’s fine. Er, what do you want?”
Mr. Lupin leans against the wall while Bill nudges Harry to climb onto the foot of the bed. Then he sits on the floor, back leaned against the mattress.
For some reason, Mr. Lupin sighs even though Harry’s done everything he’s asked so far. It kind of makes Harry mad if he thinks on it, so he tries to ignore the sound and pay attention. “I’m sorry, Harry. I don’t think I’ve done a very good job of getting to know you.”
“Were you trying to?” That’s news to Harry.
Mr. Lupin laughs, but it doesn’t sound like a joke at all. Sounds kind of sad. “Believe it or not, yes. I feel…very badly. That I never tried to visit earlier. That you—it doesn’t seem like you grew up with very nice people, before you came here.”
None of that seems like Harry needs to talk, so he just waits.
“Anyway,” Mr. Lupin says. “I also heard—Bill and Molly told me—I didn’t say it right, when I was talking about your parents last time we met.”
Last time was also the first time, but maybe that would be harder for Mr. Lupin to say. Harry folds his arms, because he doesn’t really want to hear more about why he’s a disappointment.
“Harry, your parents would love you. I made you think otherwise, which was downright rotten of me.”
“You said they’d be mad.”
“Not at you,” Mr. Lupin says. “Not at you at all. Me, probably.”
“But you’re their friend. I don’t even know them. You were right about that. I have more pictures now, though.”
“I—that’s good. I’m glad you got more pictures.” Mr. Lupin wipes his eyes. “Harry, it’s the job of grown-ups to make sure you know about them. If you don’t, it means we did something wrong. Not you. Never, ever you.”
“You’re sure? Only, last time it seemed different.”
“I’m sure. I’m so sorry, Harry.”
Bill hasn’t said anything yet, but he nods when Mr. Lupin is done talking.
Well, if he’s satisfied. “It’s okay. I’m not mad at you, Mr. Lupin.”
“Mister—“ The man sighs again. Wipes his eyes some more. “Fair enough. Well, I brought you a fizzing whizbee, and I could—would you like to show me the pictures you have? You don’t have to.”
He’s crying, though. Harry doesn’t want to make him cry more. “Sure. You can have the sweet, though.”
Then, a horrible thought. “Er, could you leave for just a minute? I just need to get the album out.”
Bill looks at him funny, but he follows Mr. Lupin out. Breathing a sigh of relief, Harry jimmies the loose floorboard under his bed and grabs the album. Once he’s got everything back in place, he cracks the door open again.
Mr. Lupin comes in and hesitates by the bed like it’ll bite.
“You can sit down,” Harry says. “I promise the bedspread is clean.”
Mr. Lupin kind of hiccup-sob-laughs and does. “Alright. What are we working with, here? Oh, look at that. That was their wedding day.”
He’s still crying. Harry wishes he could give him a handkerchief or something, but all he has is socks. That would be gross. So he just waits.
“We don’t have to, if it’s hard for you. They might be mad, but they’re not here. I don’t mind so much.”
That just makes Mr. Lupin cry harder, though. Oops.
Bill eventually chivvies Mr. Lupin out of the room and to the hall bathroom. He tells Harry nothing was his fault, even though he’s the one who made the man sob like that.
Harry just flips the lock again and grabs his book. That’s enough for today.
Mr. Black knocks to say goodbye a bit later, but the door stays closed. Harry doesn’t want to let anyone else in. Maybe not even Bill.
Bill makes it easier, though. He comes and does a secret knock they decided on last week, then starts talking after Harry knocks back. “You did great, H. Kept all your promises. I’ve got your plate out here in the hall so you can grab it if you want it. If you want me, I’ll be in the sitting room. I’m not busy, alright? I’m just reading.”
“Did Molly—sorry.”
“Your gran went home, but she saved you the biggest slice of pie. It’s out here, too.”
“Pie would be okay,” Harry says. “You’re not mad at me? I made Mr. Lupin cry.”
“He made himself cry,” Bill says firmly. He does the knock again, so Harry does his half too. “Come get me if you want. I’m eating my pie, too.”
Harry waits until the footsteps fade, then unlocks the door to get his food. There’s definitely more rice and chicken on his plate than there was before, and the pie is enormous. Delicious, though.
If it’s a bribe, it’s a good one. He still doesn’t want to go with those two. It would be no fun to make Mr. Lupin cry again. Or to stay in a closet.
Ginny and Ron welcome him into the Burrow with Quidditch balls and brooms and overlapping chatter about learning how to fly, the next day.
Bill says he should have company after a hard day yesterday, but Harry doesn’t know why. He does fine at Bill’s by himself usually.
“Quidditch is wicked,” Ron tells him. “Bill’s alright, but Charlie made the Gryffindor team. Fred and George are trying out this year.”
Not ideal. If the twins are coming, they might try to prank him again. Even if they said they were sorry and gave him a chocolate frog.
Ginny bumps his shoulder. “It’s just us out there today,” she says. “Mum has a monitoring charm on the brooms, too. No jokes.”
Okay. That’ll have to be good enough for him. Bill’s coming here for dinner later, so he just has to make it until then.
And it’s fun, even! He swoops and dives and catches the Quaffle a few times when Ron and Ginny throw it.
But best of all, there’s a Snitch. Wicked fun to chase, and he catches it three times before they go back inside.
“He’s a Seeker,” Ron bellows once they’re in the sitting room. “He’s brilliant! We need to do a full game when Charlie’s back.”
Three sets of feet come down the stairs. The twins surround him with questions, but they back off when Ginny glares at them. Percy even listens to him and answers his questions about fouling rules, when he asks during lunch.
This is kind of his family. Today, it even feels like it.
“I want to see,” Bill says the minute Ron ambushes him and tells him about Harry’s flying. “I bet you’re great. Here, I’ll let the Snitch loose. Let’s go.”
Ginny follows them out after she kicks the twins in the shins to keep them in the house. Thank Merlin.
She whoops when Harry catches the Snitch the fastest he has yet. “Told you so,” Harry hears as he soars through the air and drops the Snitch onto Bill’s head.
It just makes Bill laugh, though. “Again? We can probably get one more in before Mum yells about letting you rest.”
Harry nods eagerly and zooms after the ball when it flits up and away.
When he lands, legs a little shaky and breaths coming a little fast, Bill wraps him into a huge hug. Both arms.
“Look at you go, H. Great flying.”
“Thank you,” Harry says. Then, even though it’s hard: “I really liked it. Flying was wicked.”
“Good. Great. That match is coming up, huh? Maybe you can get some ideas. Strategies.”
Harry bounces on his feet and follows Bill inside.
Ginny wraps an arm around his shoulders and pushes him at Molly once they’re through the kitchen door. “He needs water. Mum, he’s brilliant.”
Harry looks at the ground. “I don’t know.”
“He is,” Bill says. Like he’s sure. “Water, though. I’m writing to Charlie tonight. He’s no longer the best Weasley Seeker.”
Oh, that feels so nice to hear. Probably they’re just saying so, but it’s nice that they even want to pretend.
Molly descends on him, tutting over his skinny frame and how hungry he must be after all that flying. Silly, because he was sitting the whole time. But it’s nice. He gets another huge slice of pie, and George sits next to him at dinner and talks about how if he makes the Gryffindor team in a few years he and Fred can stop any Bludgers from getting near him.
Arthur even pulls Harry aside after dinner and says he’d like to see him fly next time. Harry’s still too afraid to say something stupid or bad in front of Bill’s dad, so he just nods and bolts up the stairs after Ron when he asks to go trade chocolate frog cards.
So. Flying is the best.
“They want to do it again?” That doesn’t make any sense to Harry. “But it was awful last time. They cried, and Molly yelled at them.”
“Your gran will yell at them as much as they deserve,” Bill says patiently. “And you don’t have to say yes. But Remus says he has some new pictures for you, if you want them.”
“New pictures would be okay.” Harry thinks harder. “Can you tell them no thank you on any more sweets?”
The last huge bag is still sitting under a preservation charm on the kitchen counter. Bill’s been taking sweets to work with his lunches, and Harry’s fobbed off as much as he could get away with on Ron and Ginny before Molly got mad about Harry not keeping anything for himself, but they’ve got a heap left.
“Not one for sugar, huh?” Bill beckons Harry over to the hob. “Taste this.”
Harry obediently takes the bit of roast off the proffered fork. “Erm, that’s very…spicy. And it’s definitely not raw at all.”
He coughs into his sleeve after he chokes the bite down.
Bill snorts and vanishes the lot. “Yeah, I was worried about that. Getting better though, hey?”
Harry nods politely. “You might try less pepper and more broth,” he offers. “Next time. Or I can still do the cooking.”
Bill shakes his head immediately. “You have had plenty of chores. Now you just need to have good days. Do things you like.”
Harry likes to eat edible food, but decides not to say so. “Maybe we could order that veggie pizza,” he says instead. “The one from Diagon with the asparagus and that salty cheese.”
“Parmesan. Good shout.” Bill tosses some powder and sticks his head through to place the order. “And if your gran asks?”
“You made roast beef and—“ Harry checks the blackened half-moons that used to be a vegetable on the sheet pan— “courgettes. And I ate asparagus, too.”
Bill points at him and grins. “Little legend.”
Harry beams back.
“I’ll tell them we can do tomorrow, alright? It’s the weekend. Lunch at your gran’s. She can give you a fruit, even.”
“Pie has fruit,” Harry offers.
“Good spin,” Bill says. “I wish you luck pitching it to her.”
The next day isn’t even so bad. Molly sends the twins to visit a friend, which is thoughtful of her. But Ron goes too, which is less than perfect. Still, Ginny’s there, and Percy. Bill, of course.
Mr. Lupin doesn’t cry before they eat, at least. Even if he looks like he wants to once or twice. Molly makes shepherd’s pie. If Harry eats around the meat it’s very tasty. He loves potatoes.
Bill makes a sharp noise when Mr. Black asks again about Harry coming to visit. “Let’s try this a few more times,” he says. “Then you can decide, Harry.”
But that doesn’t make Mr. Black very happy. “Harry, your parents would want us to know you better.”
Harry sets his fork down. He hates this. He was actually enjoying his meal. “Mr. Lupin said it wasn’t my fault. Is that true?”
“It’s not,” Mr. Lupin says quickly. “We just—we do want to try. Now. To get to know you, and tell you stories if you want them.”
“I don’t feel like you want to know me.” Harry’s head feels too hot. He’s so tired of being this nervous around these people. “I feel like you just want me to be someone else. I’m not someone else.”
“You don’t have to be anyone else,” Molly says hotly. “Alright. Sirius is going to try talking again, but if he makes you upset one more time he’s leaving. Remus too.”
Harry isn’t entirely sure which one of them is which when people use their first names. They’re both weird ones.
Mr. Black sighs. A very long one. “Remus said you don’t like sweets. Why?”
Harry shrugs. “Never had many. What’s your favorite?”
“I prefer muggle sweets. I like Aero bars.”
“I like anything chocolate,” Mr. Lupin—who must be Remus—adds. “Muggle or magical.”
Harry perks up. “Bill, did you bring—“
Bill nods. He’s biting his lip kind of hard, but he lets it loose to talk. “Harry’s trying to find a chocolate frog card. He’d love some help working through his stash.”
Harry nods fervently. Agrippa’s close. He can feel it. “Ginny can help, too. Percy?”
Percy says something about getting a headache from too much sugar. Makes sense. Then he asks Mr. Black about the book of crosswords sticking out of his jacket pocket, and that keeps the two of them busy enough.
Mr. Lupin flops onto the carpet in front of the sofa when Harry leads him and Ginny into the sitting room with Bill’s bag.
“That’s quite a stack,” Mr. Lupin says when Harry dumps his pile out. He looks almost excited, though.
“Weird, right? People keep giving me treats, even though I didn’t know any of them before. I think they feel kind of guilty, but it’s not like I could’ve kept the sweets if they saw me at the Dursleys’ house.”
Ginny sighs. “Mum will cry again if she hears you talking about them.”
Harry pitches his voice to a whisper. “I had a really rotten cousin,” he tells Mr. Lupin. “He would’ve nicked everything. But it’s okay. I don’t like sweets much anyway, on account of I never tried them until last summer.”
“Last summer,” Mr. Lupin says in a strangled-sounding kind of way. Then he shakes his head like dogs do sometimes. “Okay, what am I working with here? Which one feels like our best bet?”
Harry hands him the frog Arthur gave him just yesterday. “Gin, pick whatever you want. You can have any card you get.”
“Except Agrippa,” Ginny insists. “You’ve been looking for that one forever.”
Harry sips his water and waits. “Mr. Lupin, did you ever collect the cards?”
“I’m begging you to call me Remus,” the man says. “What treats do you actually like? I’ll bribe if I have to.”
“I like fruit,” Harry says. “Except mealy apples, of course.”
“Of course,” he—Remus—says. He bites the head off the frog first. Harry thought he’d be practical about it, and he was right. “Alright. There’s a pomegranate in it for you if you call the other one Sirius.”
“Wicked.” Harry pokes Ginny’s elbow. “What will you give me if I never call you Ginevra again?”
“Your continued ability to breathe without Healer support,” Ginny says dryly. “Shoot. Another Dumbledore.”
“Stick it in the Ron pile,” Harry advises. He’s stocking up to trade at school next term. He’ll take their slush cards happily.
“Ron? Which one’s Ron? I’ve got Helga Hufflepuff.” Remus hands it to Harry.
“My older brother,” Ginny says, tucking two Ravenclaws into her pocket.
“Doesn’t really narrow it down,” Harry says.
Ginny elbows him, even though he’s right. “Next older. A little older than Harry, even. And taller, not that that’s hard.”
Harry throws a cushion at her and accepts the Merlin Remus hands him. “And nicer than Ginny. Not that that’s hard, either.”
“Respect your aunt,” Ginny says solemnly. “I can probably ground you.”
“She’s loads better than my other aunt,” Harry tells Remus. “Huffy as anything, though.”
Remus wipes a tear away, but this time it’s from laughing. Harry decides that’s fine. The Galileo card he gives over next is more than fine; Harry’s got an astronomer collection that’s been missing him.
Mr. Black—Sirius—coughs politely from the doorway. “I’ve got a mind healer appointment,” he says apologetically. “Harry, I’m sorry. I don’t want you to be anyone but you. I’d like to do another lunch, alright? Could we?”
“Okay,” Harry says. “Sirius.”
Then he turns to Remus. “Don’t forget the pomegranate.”
Remus promises, then opens his arms wide. “Can I hug you, Harry?”
Might as well. He’s been downright pleasant this time around. Harry dives in for a very brief hug and pretends not to notice when Sirius looks at him like Harry’s the Agrippa card.
While the fire rises and turns green, Remus ruffles his hair and hands him one last card with a wink before stepping through.
He flips it over and reads the name he’s been chasing for months now. He bloody well knew something good was waiting for him in there.