Harry woke the next day rather early. The sun was just starting to set over the rooftops of Nocturne. Despite being tired, he hadn't slept that well.

He huffed and downed his morning potions before going for a run. It was early still when he got back, but he came downstairs after his shower to a steaming plate of French toast and crispy bacon from a very pleased Madame Morbid.

"You can come here any time kid. You're a good hard worker, and as long as you don't make no trouble, I always have space for good hard workers.

Harry beamed. This was the first time anyone had ever acknowledge his hard work and been pleased with it. It was a good feeling.

"Well I'm good with my hands and handy with a knife if you need extra help," he offered, "I noticed you seemed to be run ragged in the kitchen last night, and on the floor with it being so busy."

She pulled up a chair next to him and looked at him critically.

Finally, she said, "turn up at four to help prep for the dinner rush, then you can help pour drinks and carry food, do dishes and the like. If your as good at that as you are at cleaning, you can stay. If your crap, I'm not paying you."

"I won't be," Harry said, making her grin heartily.

They haggled a bit over wages. It seemed the goblins had rubbed off on nocturne culture. They'd almost settled on pay when Dobby and Winky popped in, demanded to be included too.

They ended up agreeing that, Harry would be paid 2 Galleons, 11 Sickles, and 20 Knuts an hour and would keep any tips he made. Dobby was allowed to help out in the inn, for a sickle a day and would answer when Morbid called, whenever Harry didn't have anything for him to do. Winky, would too, but refused to be paid. All four of them left rather pleased with themselves.

Madame Morbid, never having acquired house-elves for the inn was glad to have some part-time. She was also delighted to have another set of hands for the busy season when they were so understaffed. Dung really had run the place into the ground, but people still flocked to the cheap inn. Especially, now it was known to be under new management.

It also meant Dobby and Winky could help in the kitchens, so Harry could rest a little easier knowing his elves wouldn't let anything be slipped into his food. He'd test it anyway, but he felt a little better about it.

Harry cast a quick Tempus charm. He still had time before meeting Bill, and it wasn't too late yet...

He cast a privacy ward and pulled out the mirror he'd gotten from Bill and Charlie. He'd been itching to try it.

"Charlie Weasley." He said softly tapping it with his wand. It blinked, and Charlie's face appeared, sitting in some kind of mess hall, the noise of people filtering through in the background. Harry grinned and waved.

"Hey, Harry!" Charlie said grinning

"Hello Charlie," Harry said, feeling a bit awkward suddenly.

"Is this a social call or is something up?" He asked with a grin, "testing out your new mirror?"

"Yes," Harry said, "it's brilliant! Thank you so much for getting it for me."

"It was our pleasure," Charlie said, "now we can talk face to face instead of writing inches and inches of parchment every day."

Harry grinned and said, "how're the Dragons?"

Charlie grinned and proceeded to tell him all about the latest dragon news. Excitingly, they'd had a few funding donations since The Quibbler articles had been published in the Romanian Dragon magazine. They chatted easily for a while before Charlie said, "I can tell somethings eating at you, what do you want to ask?"

Harry blinked. Had he been so transparent? He blushed lightly. Charlie laughed at his expression and smiled, "well, what's biting at you?"

"Bills hiding something," Harry blurted out worriedly, remembering their odd conversation yesterday about Professor Snape.

Charlie chuckled, raising his eyebrows and said ruefully, "he's a curse breaker and does confidential work for Gringotts. He's up to his eyeballs in Magical Non-Disclosure Agreements. He hides a lot of things."

Harry huffed out a laugh, "that's not what I meant, Charlie! Whats Bill's deal with Professor Snape? He used his first name!"

Charlie snorted this time, then snickered, but pulled himself together and said, "their friends, Harry."

It was hard to see anyone being friends with the dour man, but he was intelligent. And Bill was pretty smart too. Maybe they bonded over smarts?

"Charlie, Professor Snape's horrible. He's angry and loud, and he's got a horrible temper. He'll be mean to Bill. I like Bill, he doesn't deserve that."

Charlie smiled fondly at Harry, "I hear you, Harry. But he's not actually that bad when he's not being forced to teach unappreciative idiots. He also hates kids in general (I don't blame him really). So when he's not being forced to do something he hates and doesn't want to, he's far less cranky." Charlie said reassuringly.

Harry stared.

Charlie laughed and said, "Bill says he's pretty funny, very reserved, but sarcastic and has a wicked sense of humour. Now, I'm not in school he's not actually that bad. Not that I've interacted with him much, but Bill likes him."

Harry did narrow his eyes this time, still worried.

"Bill's okay," Charlie reassured, "he can look after himself and hold his own if Snape does to get snarky with him, I promise. Bill's okay."

Harry looked at him a long moment, meeting Charlie's eyes for once. Then he nodded slowly feeling a little reassured but frowned when remembering their conversation, "he's hiding something though, he felt weird."

Bill had felt fond when he'd talked about Professor Snape. He had been sure of what he was saying, but there had been an undercurrent of mild embarrassment now that Harry thought about it. But there had been more too it than that. There had been something else. Harry wasn't very good at deciphering feelings.

"What do you mean weird?" Charlie asked, not questioning that Harry felt something, but more questioning the weirdness.

"He shrugged as if it were nothing when he said they were friends, but felt defensive and a bit embarrassed. And I don't know... felt defensive of Snape when he talked about him, he felt… I don't know, squirmy."

Charlie snorted, but said, "your empathy has gotten stronger since the blocks came off."

"It has," Harry said nodding, "before it was mild. It was more is it a threat or not and how strong it was. Now I notice a more comprehensive range of emotions. I can focus it now. And don't change the subject!"

"Ask Bill," Charlie said with a smile and a shrug, "just because I know all his secrets doesn't mean I'm going to tell them. And that doesn't mean there's a secret to tell," he added hurriedly.

Harry didn't narrow his eyes at this, but let it go instead. He trusted Charlie and Bill. But he was reassured by Charlie openly keeping Bill's secrets.

"So you have empathy too then?" Harry said, changing the subject, "how's it work?"

Harry's Occlumency was improving, and despite being tired, he managed to push Bill out of his mind more reliably in his lesson that morning. He was starting to expand his magic into a shield against Bill's probes and was able to spread it more widely and more quickly now. But he still hadn't managed to shape his inner mind into something that made sense yet. Ordering his mind was just as tricky as he had expected it to be.

In the end, Bill did a guided meditation with Harry. And over an hour, Harry sank deep into his magic and into his mind. He actually managed to, not shape it into something, but see what shape it actually already had. The centre of his mind was a his cupboard under the stairs. It was dark, but warn and seemed to be cluttered with blankets and pillows and floaty coloured strands, laying about all over the place. The colour strands seemed to be his memories.

It was an odd process of touching one of the bits of swirling colour, watching the memory then learning how to shape the swirling strand of colour into an object to hide and store the memory in.

It was odd, and the task of sorting all his memories was both daunting and seemingly impossible. There was so much! He had to be intimately familiar with each and every bit of his mind, and who he was as a person! That and a lot of his memoirs were rather painful and unpleasant.

After Occlumency, they moved on to look at estate management, the role of being a lord and being on the Wizengamot. Aver lunch, Bill started teaching Harry more about warding and curse-breaking now that he could feel his magic.

"Its a fascinating and versatile field Harry." Bill said, "I became a master warder to become better curse breaker, which also has quite a lot of study into Ancient Runes and Arithmancy. Not everyone does it that way, but it helps. And with someone out for your head, having strong wards will help you. Wards are not just about stopping someone entering a place or picking out your wallet." He'd explained, going on to show Harry how to embed some wards into his clothes and even starting to touch on blood wards.

It helped Harry along a lot in working out how to transfer the shielding ward on his bracelet into one of the tiny earrings he's baught. He'd been working on placing wards and shield onto smaller pieces of jewellery ever since Bill had sent him the fang earring.

They planned out the rest of the week too, so they can really knuckle down and make the most of the time they had before school went back. If they wanted Harry to be ready to take up his Lordship's when he was 15, if he can managed emancipateion, then they had a lot to cover.

Bill drew up a timetable and everything. So they had an hour of Occlumency every morning, an hour on warding and duelling, then an hour on lords, heirs and pureblood things before lunch.

Bill gave Harry books too, lots of them and they knuckled down to try and get it all done. They had to, especially if Harry wanted to sit some of his OWLs over the summer.

Harry spent the rest of the afternoon working on his Occlumency back in his room at Morbid's. Sorting out his memories was just as painful and unpleasant as he thought, but it was powerfully cathartic as well.

That wasn't all he had done, though. He spent a good bit of time studying and reading the various books Bill had given him. He also started the ones his mum had and spent time playing with his magic. And of course, working on his various projects. He was hoping to put blood wards into his cupboard.

Now he had better control over his magic he could ward it up properly. He was hoping that he could manage it to coax Hogwarts into letting him use one of the stones in the cupboard wall as a ward stone. That way, he could anchor his wards around his cupboard into her central wards, making them stronger.

That evening Morbid set Harry to work helping in the kitchen, under Furloff. Birdie was sceptical at first, at having an unknown in their kitchen, and glared at him. But after seeing how well Harry could chop, slice and prepare vegetables, and how effectively he could manage mountains of dishes, she relaxed as was less hostile, marginally.

In the kitchen, dirty dishes washed themselves, spells were used to dry then and another spell put them away on their correct shelves. The bin vanished rubbish, banished the glass bottles to the recycling crate and the bin also banished any compostable items to the compost bin out the back.

Harry was rather impressed. The Glass bottles were sent back to the supplier, and in return, they got a discount on their next order. The compost was also collected once a week by a shop that made fertiliser for many of the greenhouses in wizarding Britain.

The kitchens did more than that with magic too. While some ingredients could be prepared with a spell and set to chop themselves, some magical ingredients like venomous tentacular shoots had to be hand prepared. It was good work; it kept him busy, and he learned to make a few Wizarding dishes and a few other creature cuisines as well. It was fun.

Working in the kitchen wasn't the only thing he did, however. Once the dinner rush really started, he was sent to the floor to help Madame Morbid. He waited on tables, poured drinks, took orders and payment, and was a general busy body.

Some of the less regular locals eye him suspiciously. But they'd seen him around now, cleaning and working hard, So they eventually warmed up to him. Relatively quickly by Nocturne standards anyway. And really, a magical inn was so different! It was endlessly fascinating.

For example, the tables wiped themselves down, with a mere flick of a wand, the trays of food would float over to the tables, and places themselves in front of people. Though it was better to take them yourself to big tables or the dish's would get confused over who belonged to who. The taps of beer poured themselves. All Harry had to do was put a mug underneath the tap, and it would pore itself, magicly knowing when to stop.

It turned out that there was also an option of self-ordering. Guests could tap a menu and speak what they wanted. The order would update on their tab, and be sent to the kitchen. Morbid only activated that option though, when they were reasonably busy. She thought it was too impersonal for everyday use.

"I like to know my customers," she'd told him when she gave him the rundown of the place.

A muttered spell and plates of food would put themselves on trays and levitate over to one of the waiters to be directed across the floor or taken to a table. At the end of the night, they would send themselves off to the kitchens to be washed. The brooms and mops would take care of the floors automatically as well.

Harry met all sorts of people too. Not all of them were humans, and he slowly started picking up bits and pieces about the Darke culture and Nocture Culture. It was certainly informative and in some ways, more so than his books on the Darke.

That evening alone he learnt how to light candles just by blowing on them or pinching the wick from a vampire, called Klaus. Harry had seen him lightning a candle and had wanted to ask, but knew better. So he just watched.

Klaus had first looked at him with suspicion for a long moment but then smiled cooly and blew out the candle.

The next time Harry brought him a drink, Klaus repeated the trick slowly, so Harry could see how he'd done it, a sly smile on his face. It was brilliant! Harry was fairly sure Klaus followed the Old ways of the Darke and also worships Hekate. But he wasn't compliantly sure.

But he picked up all sorts of useful things and ended up getting a lot of advice about worshipping the old gods from the vampire. Harry never asked, but Klaus often let things slip when Harry passed or offered him the odd explanatory comments. Harry was starting to seriously consider dedicating himself to Hekate like his mother had.

He liked his job, and it gave him a few extra coins on the side, especially if he got tips.

0o0o0o0o0o

NOTES

Tempus, is a time charm.

Note toenail growing hex, incantation I made up using a latin translator and messing around with the letters a bit. Basically I butchered it till it sounded right. I don't speak latin, so apologies, but deal with it.

Wage equates to $20AUD hour which is what my own base wage was when I started working in retail.

In this a time turner can go back a full 12 hours or a day. Depending on which ring you spin. Theirs an hour spinner and a day

Reference to Six of Crows be Leigh Bardugo and Chris D'lacy's Fire Within. Both books were not out at the time Lily would have read them. But I'm bending the rules