Just a small slice of young!Harry life fic.

"And now I add the lizard's toes…lizard's toes?" Harry demanded, interrupting his reading of the potion recipe.

From his position next to the fledging wizard, Bob nodded. "Yes, you add three of them."

Shaking his head, the 11 year old looked around the kitchen where they were conducting the day's lesson. Finding the appropriately marked bag, he held it up and pulled a face. "This is so gross," he muttered as he stared at the tiny severed digits.

"Harry, if you are to be a competent wizard you must learn to conquer this distaste you have for standard potion materials," lectured the ghost. "They're all perfectly natural ingredients."

"Easy for you to say," said Harry, gingerly plucking out three lizard toes and dropping them into the bubbling bowl. "You don't have to drink this thing when it's done."

"There is more nutritional value in that potion than in those orange sticks you insist on eating."

"A Cheeto-flavored lizard's toe I'll eat." He gave the mixture a good stir and watched it turn from light brown to a darker brown. The smell already promised what sort of taste to expect. "Can I add sugar to this?" Harry asked, wrinkling his nose.

Bob looked faintly affronted. "Absolutely not."

"Honey?"

"No."

"Anything that'll make it NOT taste like crap?"

The ghost heaved a sigh. "Yes, Harry," he said, dryly. "You can add sugar and while it will mutate the transportation potion so that only your skin travels while the rest of you remains, at least it will have a pleasing taste."

Harry winced at the image and silently stirred the ever darkening potion. He looked back at the sheet of paper that listed the rest of the ingredients and steadied himself as he looked down the list. Ground dragon's teeth, feather of a sparrow, fish scales. Okay, those are doable, he told himself. He grimaced a little at spider's eyes, but they were at least small. Hair of a bat, amniotic fluid of a pig-"

Oh, YUCK!" Harry exclaimed. "I gotta drink amniotic juice from a pig fetus!?"

"It softens your landing," Bob explained, patiently.

In disgust, Harry threw down the spoon he'd been using to mix the potion onto the kitchen counter, paying no heed to the sludge that flew off the utensil, splattering the black table top as well as the ancient skull that sat next to the jar of the aforementioned fluid. "Why can't wizards make potions out of normal stuff?" demanded Harry.

"This is 'normal stuff' as you so eloquently put it," Bob replied testily.

"I'll stick to just walking to my locations, thanks," Harry decided, shoving the list of ingredients away. "Nothing's worth all of this."

"Drinking that," stated the ghost, pointing a pale finger at the abandoned mixture. "Is a very small price to pay for what you gain in return. Have you any idea the kind of freedom such a spell gives you?" The utter coldness in Bob's voice killed any retort Harry had forming in his mind. The fledgling wizard looked over at his teacher whose fierce expression quickly subsided at Harry's startled face.

With a leveling sigh, the spirit spoke again in a softer tone. "A strong enough transportation spell can take its user to any place he or she wishes. They only need to concentrate and think of the location and there they will be. You haven't used such a potion so your appreciation is thus limited," he added, generously. "But trust me, Harry. Tasting something unpleasant is more than a fair trade for the liberties it gives you."

The somewhat wistful tone in his teacher's voice didn't escape Harry's notice. He looked from the ghost to the stained skull that sat a few inches from him. Uncle Justin had told him early on that Bob's soul was trapped in the skull. Meaning wherever the bones went, the spirit had to follow whether he liked it or not. Centuries might have gone by since Bob was alive, but Harry imagined to go from being able to travel across the world in an instant to being unable to move past a few feet still had to suck.

Feeling guilty about his earlier complaints, Harry obediently reached for the container of spiders' eyes. "Six of these, right?"

Bob nodded. "Yes."

Time slid by silently as Harry continued to add the rest of the ingredients and stir the heating mixture. "So," he asked after a bit. "When you used this potion, could you really travel to the other side of the world?"

"Yes," the ghost answered, shortly.

Sensing that reminding Bob of the past was only further aggravating his teacher, Harry switched his questioning. "Will this take me wherever I want to go?"

"It's a weaker version," he answered, watching with approval as Harry churned out the lumps in the potion. "You'll only be able to travel within the grounds of your uncle's house."

That figures, thought Harry with a mental eye roll.

Giving it a last stir, he turned off the flames heating the potion and watched the bubbling cease. "So, if you do drink a strong one and you end up in China or somewhere," he began, turning the logic over in his mind. "How do you get back? Make some more when you're there?"

"No, you simply take some on your initial journey," said Bob. "Anything on your person will travel with you."

"Really?"

"Having taken into account that one would need clothes to travel as well, lest you arrive at your destination naked, the appropriate modifications were made to the potion long ago," stated the ghost, dryly.

"Oh, yeah," Harry realized with slight embarrassment. "That makes sense." Peering into the bowl, he tested the temperature. "I think it's done."

Seeing he was right, Bob took a step away from where they'd both crowded around the mixture. "Before you swallow the potion, you'll need to pick a place to go first. Once you have the location in mind, take one large mouthful and picture where you'd like to go."

Harry nodded. "Got it. So where should we go?"

"We?"

"Yeah. You're coming with me, right? If I hold your skull you can travel too. It's what you said. Or doesn't that work?"

The ghost remained silent, realizing that since he'd become bound to his skull he'd never once traveled along with another wizard on a transportation potion. Most had been somewhat squeamish about performing such a spell with a cursed object so close to them for fear they might somehow end up in some unspeakable place. Not that such reservations hadn't stopped them from performing other magic that eventually got them killed. Thinking on it, Bob smiled slightly at the idea that a boy who gagged at the sight of lizard toes had no issues handling a cursed soul.

Taking the smile as a yes, Harry gave a grin of his own before picking up the skull. "So where should we go?" he asked again. "You pick."

"Perhaps you should start with someplace simple," Bob suggested. "Like the library."

Harry snorted. "That's boring, Bob. Pick someplace cool." If he was going to drink this thing it was going to be for a place a little more interesting than the library.

"You recall we are confined to the limits of your uncle's property," Bob reminded with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, that's true," Harry scowled, realizing how much that cut down the choices.

"The library is as good a place as any," said the ghost.

"We spend all our time there," Harry argued. "Let's go outside."

"Outside where?"

The younger wizard thought on it for a moment before his dark eyes lit up. "I've got one," he said with a grin. Zipping up his sweatshirt with the skull tucked inside for safety, Harry grabbed the warm potion, mentally prepping his taste buds.

"Where exactly are we going?" asked Bob.

"Arrgg-OW!"

"Harry, are you alright?"

"Yeah, great," Harry replied, sourly. He rubbed his aching knees, which he'd crashed onto to prevent from falling completely onto his face when the potion unceremoniously dumped him down. "Jeez, that was a hard landing," he complained.

"It's what comes from not using the proper amount of amniotic fluid," replied Bob in a tone that didn't outwardly say, but merely suggested a faint 'I told you so.'

"Yeah, yeah." Climbing sorely onto his feet, Harry limped over to where the ghost stood. Standing next to his teacher, Harry took in the full view that was offered on the 2nd tier roof of his uncle's massive house. To his lower right hand side he could see the window of his own room where he'd sometimes looked out from. It was the late afternoon, but it had been a wonderfully clear, fall day in Chicago. And despite a slight chill, the view more than made up for it.

"Very lovely," Bob commented sincerely, staring out toward the city. It had been awhile since he'd seen any sort of landscape from this angle.

"The landing sucked but traveling like that was pretty cool," Harry admitted. "Potion didn't taste that bad either. You know, once I stopped thinking about it."

At the mention of the potion, Bob looked over at his student who was now holding the ancient skull in both hands and nothing else. "Harry, did you remember to bring some along with you to get back down?"

The boy's eyes widened a fraction at the question, which was all the answer Bob needed. "Aw, crap," Harry muttered.

THE END