Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Kudos go to J.F.C. for allowing me to adopt his ideas and allowing me to bounce ideas off him as well as suggesting or improving quite a few of the ideas that are going into this.

Chapter 1

Harry had lived with his 'Aunt' Carina, as she always told him to call her, for as long as he could remember. He did on occasion have vague memories of a woman with green eyes and red hair and a man that had untidy hair like he did. He assumed these two were his parents as Aunt Carina tended to be very straightforward about things unless they were better left unsaid.

He had known that she was not his birth mother from a very young age. She was his mother though, even if they did not share the same blood. She was the one that had raise him and not the red-haired woman he remembered only vaguely. He had told her so on many occasions and Aunt Carina had only ever laughed with a very pleased look in her eye but still never allowed him to call her 'Mother' or anything vaguely resembling the position she held in his life.

It was a couple of days before he turned fifteen and he had to admit that he was excited. Aunt Carina usually organized a party for him every year and he wondered what she was planning this year. No matter how hard he tried to find out what she had planned for him, he never figured it out until she was ready for him to find out which meant he only found out when he arrived at his birthday party. It was frustrating in a sense that he never knew how to prepare for his party.

His friends never helped either. They always managed to drop hints that said a lot but did not really tell him what his party would be like or even the theme. He could almost swear that Alex and Marcus talked with Aunt Carina and they discussed what to say that would excite him the most and exactly when to mention it. He would had it not been for the fact that he never saw them actually talk with Aunt Carina for much longer than the usual greeting and questions on her health.

The other reason for him being excited was because Aunt Dorea and Uncle Charlus visited them for his birthday every year. Aunt Carina told him that they were the only family she had left when he had asked her who they were when he had been younger.

He liked it when Aunt Dorea and Uncle Charlus visited because they always brought the strangest things with them. When he had been younger, they had brought a different flavor of ice-cream every year with the strangest flavors he had ever heard of. He often wondered where they had gotten such strange flavors from because none of the local ice-cream stores sold flavors like apple, pear and pineapple and even the more common ice-cream flavors they brought were nothing like the usual ones.

Last year they had gifted him with a diary that looked so beautiful he hadn't dared to open it yet. He was too afraid that he would ruin the entire thing. He had not even given a thought to writing in it because his atrocious handwriting would be terrible to look at in such an exquisite book. He had promised to get his handwriting to improve before he wrote in the journal. The journal was still sitting on his table in his room and his writing had made no improvements in the last year.

Harry really wished that for once he could figure out the plans Aunt Carina had for his birthday party. It would ruin the surprise but it would also be different and he wouldn't be as inquisitive as he was yearly during the week that led up to his birthday. He knew he tended to annoy Aunt Carina every year during that time as she usually got rather irritable but that was not his fault. He hated being kept out of the proverbial loop.

He was going to start Year 11 in September and he could finally see the end of his schooling career in the relatively close future. Of course over the next couple of school years he would probably be working harder than he ever had before but this was a good holiday from the work that would begin in little over a month's time, once September began.

He was not thinking about that right now though. He would deal with that as it came and hopefully not procrastinate as he was wont to do on occasion. He would focus on the mystery of his currently impending birthday party for now.

Sometimes Harry honestly wished he could read his Aunt's mind. He knew that was impossible but it had always been one of the childish desires that had never gone away even as he had grown older. Harry then winced at the thought of being able to read minds when some of the dating couples he knew were in the room. He highly doubted he would like that and that thought had always stopped his desire to read minds in its tracks like suddenly hitting the breaks.

He sighed again and glanced once again at the kitchen door behind which he knew his Aunt sat planning his party. She had locked the door of course, learning from the one time when he had opened the door slightly to listen in to her phone call when he had been younger. She never made that mistake again, unless she was purposefully giving him a hint to get him more excited and he really did not want to hear whatever she was saying if it was the latter case. It would drive him up the walls.

It was at this point that Harry wished he had a pet again so that he could distract himself from thinking about what Aunt Carina could possibly be planning but his Aunt was allergic to fur in general and had strictly forbidden anything even remotely dangerous in her house so Harry hadn't been able to get a pet.

He couldn't go and visit Marcus or Alex either. Marcus and his family had gone on holiday. He hadn't asked for more details about it but Marcus had assured him that they would be back in time for his birthday and Alex was visiting his sick grandmother so he would not be at home either.

Harry sighed as he moved outside to lie on the grass under the shade of the biggest tree in their garden. The day was not as horribly hot as the previous days had been, there was even a cool breeze that drifted past every once in a while that kept him cool. It was close to midday, the sun was high in the sky, and he knew that Aunt Carina would be calling him back inside soon.

There was barely anyone in the sun or even outside their houses right now. He saw Mr. and Mrs. Paul and their two children Andrea and Brian get into their car down the road. He vaguely remembered them apologizing to Aunt Carina for not being able to make his birthday because they were going on holiday. They had apologized to him too but he did not really mind. He was not particularly close to them and from what he had heard from Aunt Carina, they deserved the holiday anyway. He wasn't about to complain about their absence. He saw them waving at him and he waved back before the car doors slammed shut and the engine started with a low growl.

When the smell of food wafted out of the kitchen window, Harry's stomach grumbled in response. Aunt Carina's voice followed the smell as she called him in for lunch. He stood quickly, dusted himself off and entered the kitchen at a pace that was perhaps a bit quicker than it usually was. Breakfast had seemed like such a long time ago and he had only eaten a couple of slices of toast.

Aunt Carina gave him a knowing look as she had been visiting one of the neighbors when he had woken up in the morning. Harry gave her a sheepish smile before digging into the food that Aunt Carina had served him. It tasted heavenly as it always did. Aunt Carina was the best cook he knew and he had tasted many people's cooking when they had been invited over to their neighbors' and friends' houses. He was not the only one that thought so either as Aunt Carina was always praised for her food by their guests as well. If Harry didn't know better, he would have thought that Alex and Marcus on stayed until it became extremely late so that they could have some of his aunt's cooking.

The cakes she baked were even better than the ones they sold in the bakeries and he had managed to get her to promise to always cook his birthday cakes after the first time. She had baked a cake for his fifth birthday party because they had somehow managed to forget about the cake that time. That had been the first time he had tasted a cake baked by her and he had never gone back.

Harry had tried to learn to cook once from Aunt Carina. She had been amused at his desire to learn how to cook and had patiently taught him until he could cook a variety of things that would ensure that he would never starve if he was left alone. He wasn't anywhere near the level of Aunt Carina's cooking though but she had assured him that it would come with practice and experience with the food. He only cooked once in a while though, mainly because he did not want to miss the opportunity of eating Aunt Carina's food. It was something he would never get tired of.

It was the one thing that he knew meant he was home.