Harry and Daphne got some fake papers and new wands, mostly because they weren't sure if the tracker worked outside of England, and it surprised Harry at how different it was from what he'd known in his home country.
For starters, the entire wizarding population did not go to a single school - sure, there was a Hogwarts-like school called Ilvermorny half a country away, but there were also several little schools they could choose from, including one close enough to Daphne's apartment that they didn't even have to live in the dorms. It was an… Interesting enough school, sure. Mostly because the students didn't have an uniform, houses, or any sense of unity. Interesting stuff, really.
But then, again, did Hogwarts ever have a sense of unity other than that one brief time during the Triwizard Tournament, when everyone banded together after Cedric because they thought Harry was cheating? No, not really. Therefore, he preferred the local school simply for the convenience of not having to share a room with strangers.
And the best part was that, aside from the changed wand, Harry barely had to change his name! He just said he was Harry Evans, and Daphne went by Daphne Green, and no one knew who they were.
During lunch, when the school let them out to go buy food for themselves or eat in the dingy cafeteria, Daphne took him to eat pizza and explained.
"British wizards are too isolated to, you know, matter in the grand scheme of things." She said, her new wand behind her ear like it was nothing. No one even seemed to notice it was something magical. "Voldemort hadn't made the news here when he started his conquest, and when he died, it was sort of a footnote, but of ridicule. I mean, is a Dark Lord one at all if a baby can kill him?"
She snorted at that, and Harry had to concede.
"So I'm not famous?"
"You're barely known. It's like, everyone knows there was a baby in the equation, but American press never released the name." Daphne snorted again, and Harry took the moment to bite into his too-greasy pizza slice. It was good, but in a bad way. "Probably they would claim that it was an American baby or something and Dumbledore must've blocked it, I don't know. But no, no one knows who Harry Potter is."
"So we changed names to avoid being found out by… Tourists? Wouldn't they know what I look like?" Harry pointed out, and Daphne shrugged.
"What, like you're the only sixteen-year-old with black hair and green eyes around these parts? Don't flatter yourself, Harry." She looked at the clock on her wrist, hissing as she rose from her seat, one hand going to her school bag. "Okay, grab that and let's go, or we're going to be late for class!"
Harry nodded, grabbed his bag with one hand and the remaining slice of pizza with the other, and started to run back to the school building - it looked like any other school when you knew the secret to it, but he assumed onlookers (if not spelled to look away by a Notice-Me-Not) found it weird to see a bunch of teens going to hang out at an abandoned, derelict church. Or not, who knew.
In the mornings, Harry had taken to running, when light had barely broken the darkness of the night. There weren't any visible stars, not like Hogwarts, mostly because of the light pollution, but that was fine.
At the beginning, he had been alone, and midway meeting a group of old women, hair as grey as a rain cloud, who walked every day from one side of the pier to the other. Or, at least, Harry felt like that was what they were doing: when he passed by them on his way to go, they were going; when he passed them to come back to the apartment, they were still going.
After a while, they took to saying hi to him as he passed, and wished him a nice day as he went back. Harry did the same out of politeness. They were nice to him, so Harry was nice to them, even though he half-expected them to be all sort of like aunt Petunia, craned necks and gossiping. He didn't expect aunt Petunia to care about his death, were he honest.
(unbeknown to him, aunt Petunia mourned the death of her sister's only son, cursed the wizarding world for taking another part of her family so young and not allowing her to visit his grave)
At some point, he started walking with them, and when he was free from school-related duties, he went to their houses and fixed whatever little problems they had. For payment, it varied: from baked goods to money and even weed, once. Mrs. White had winked at him and told Harry to not spill the beans, and he pocketed it.
Next day, he auctioned it off on his school, and he and Daphne used the extra money to get themselves the best pizza they could buy.
It tasted exactly like the shitty, cheap pizza.
Perhaps the reason Harry enjoyed waking up early and running was because when he got home, Daphne was sitting on the breakfast table, slowly chewing blackened toast while still clearly half-asleep. Harry would grab her a cup of coffee and put it on the chipped mug they got on a secondhand store, and she'd mumble something that was half "thanks" and half some random syllables.
When he came back from the bath, she seemed more human, awake and already with her nose buried in a book, dressed for school in her worst, most grunge clothes. She looked like one of the goths hanging out under bridges, though. He supposed it was the black hair. After his bath, he'd eat breakfast while she read, commenting on her book as she went, and they'd go to school.
It had been a morning like any other when Harry found her not buried in a book, sitting prim and proper, wand behind one ear and a pencil on another, going through the slew of Arithmancy problems that was an exam revision.
"Did you do number five?" She asked, and Harry couldn't help but notice the bite marks around the pencil's eraser. Harry sat down on the table, and she pushed towards him a bowl of cereal. "Here. Not much milk, right?"
"Yeah, thanks. Also, the answer is..." He grabbed a spoon, mindlessly repeating the answer of the homework as Daphne took notes, nodding along to it.
Getting caught up in the years of Arithmancy he hadn't done had been hellish, but now he enjoyed the subject. At least it was better than Runes, or History. Those he was just plain awful, and no amount of tutoring could aid Harry.
"Thanks." Daphne said, back to biting her pencil in-between scratching on the soft paper. "You're not so bad."
"Wow, just took you what, three months of daily life together?" He quipped, and she smiled. If it made his heart race faster on his ribcage, no one needed to know.
"Don't take me for granted, Harry." She said, and then focused back on her paper. "Do you know how to solve number six?"
He did. Bringing his chair closer to hers, Harry leaned over the work and helped Daphne finish it.
During summer, Daphne and Harry go to New York for fun. They stayed in a terrible hotel and ate even more terrible takeout and sneaked inside theaters to watch musicals and plays. Harry missed his Invisibility Cape, but Daphne said he hadn't been buried with it; Harry presumed Dumbledore took it back from him. A shame, really. Daphne just said sneaking in made it more fun, and Harry went with the flow.
They were pouring over the Broadway guide, trying to decide what to watch today as they walked through the streets when they heard a shrill scream. Usually, both would've ignored it - it was New York, people screamed all the time, hadn't the voice been familiar.
"Harry!" Hermione called, clearly braving through the too-thick crowd to find the two. Frozen in place, Harry and Daphne exchanged a look. A whole conversation passed between their eyes, and the conclusion was the same: their daily life would not be interrupted by things such as "going back to England to fight some sort of war". Harry hadn't been keeping up with the news outside of America, lately.
"You grab her and go somewhere private, I Obliviate her." Daphne said, plain, and Harry, who had literally faked his death for some sense of normalcy, nodded in agreement.
Daphne disappeared in the crowd, and Harry turned, looking at Hermione with an expression he hoped was shocked as he pocketed the Broadway guide.
Hermione grabbed his arms, like she couldn't believe he was real. Harry blinked, confused, hoping that his months with Daphne had taught him some sort of acting skills.
Probably not.
"Harry! Oh, Merlin, you're alive!" No, no he wasn't. Harry Potter was dead and buried.
"I'm sorry. Do I know you?" Harry could fake an American accent pretty well at this point, egged on by his school friends - who, in turn, could do a pretty hilarious British accent.
"Don't - don't joke with me, Harry!" She said, with tears in her eyes, and he cocked his head. This was an oddly pleasurable fun. Maybe he had lived with Daphne too much.
"No, I'm not. I don't know who you are." He paused, once more, and smiled at her. Hermione sniffled, loudly. "But you seem upset. Do you want to have coffee somewhere until you're calm?"
Harry saw her fingering the place her wand holster was, and pretended he did not see it. What she planned, he wondered? Deciding to not let Hermione have him back, he gently grabbed her by the elbow, taking her off the main street into one that wasn't as crowded, which was kind of hard.
Harry felt the Notice-Me-Not spell before Hermione, used to the feeling of Daphne's magic, and smiled at the air. Hermione stopped, glancing at him.
She opened her mouth, and Daphne jumped out of her dark corner, wand in hand. Hermione looked around in a panic, not seemingly noticing that no one was paying attention, and then glared at Daphne.
"Greengrass! I knew you had something to do with this. Let me take back Harry, and I won't tell Dumbledore what you really did." Harry took off his wand from its holster, keeping it aimed at Hermione carefully. "And put your wand back in place, we're in the middle of the Muggle world!"
"I don't really give a shit where we are, idiot." She hissed, weaving the spell into the last syllable of her phrase. Hermione went still, and with a gesture of her head, Harry helped manhandle Hermione into a small alley.
Did he feel bad, watching Daphne take off memories from Hermione's head with a weirdly practiced maneuver? A little. Did the relief outweigh feeling bad? By a lot. Harry simply watched as Daphne let the white, glowing fluid fall down the drain, holding a stiff Hermione in her arms.
When it was over, Daphne gently set Hermione straight, planted some memories of getting lost, and sent her on her way, all but kicking her out of the alleyway. Then, with a heavy sigh, she rested her back against a wall that looked covered in grease.
"Merlin be damned, they're planning on asking for help from the MACUSA to fight Voldemort." A wry smile took her face. "I wish I was a fly on the wall to see her getting laughed out of there, though."
Harry blinked and took the guide out of his pocket. He really didn't care about England anymore.
"Yeah, sounds laughable. Now, what should we watch?" He asked, opening the book again, and Daphne's eyes shone in the low light, approaching and leaning over the book, close enough to Harry feel the heat of her body.
It was familiar. Comfortable.
"We could see Cats."
"On principle, no."
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