Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and its characters at all.
Here are my thanks to JK Rowling for letting me borrow them for a while, as I only intended to make better shipping.
I'm very grateful to my Beta, Phoenix4Dragon, for her careful readings, comments and thoughts.
The quality of this story increased so much since she touched it. Thanks again, Phoenix!
Harry closed the door behind him, feeling the light rain that had started falling when he arrived in London. The townhouse stood there, the windows silent, lights out, as it was still empty. He knew, though, boxes were now scattered through the floor, half open, some clothes spilling out, his few possessions thrown around as he started to unpack. He should have brought everything in his trunk, as he had planned, but Hermione thought he had to have boxes, so he got boxes.
He sighed. The street was calm, only a few people wandered by, and he started to walk towards the closest takeaway. It was Thai, and he felt a little warm inside thinking how mundane his life was right now. It was a random Thursday night and he would have Thai. In his house. In Muggle London. Vague memories of the months before Ron and Hermione's wedding ran through his mind. After the war, his face was everywhere, everyday. His very green eyes mixed up with the fine print in the newspaper that made even less sense than the words. The trials were a collage of blurry scenes, noisy voices and solemn silence. Sometimes, he was the one speaking, but he could only hear his speeches as if they were someone else's. Diagon Alley was too loud, too full. The whispers still haunted him in quiet moments. "That's Harry Potter!", "Harry, a picture, please!", "A word on Greyback's sentence?".
Grimmauld Place was, again, a solitude fortress. He knew people were starting to go back to their lives. Hermione and Ginny went back to Hogwarts after the reconstruction, to take their final year and get their N.E.W.T.s. Ron was looking after the shop with George, as he was in no condition to do it by himself. And Harry was just there. He read his owls as they came, answered some - but Shacklebolt's kept piling up, sometimes unopened, full of polite requests to meet the Head Auror about a job position, and even more polite offers of help. Help, why would he ever need help? There was nothing else to do - or to say - anymore. It was over, done. His wand felt foreign in his hand and his magic was unstable. Everyone knew his name, his face, his hair and his eyes, and everyone seemed to think he was wise and sure of what was right and what was not. And if you asked him, a few months before, he was sure. He knew what was right: coming back, defeating Voldemort, keeping people safe. But then? Nothing he did now could change this world anymore.
So he didn't do anything.
Ron was in and out of Grimmauld Place from the beginning. Eventually Molly and some of the boys would visit. Hermione and Ginny came by during their winter break, and the first Weasley Christmas Dinner was easy to avoid. Fred wasn't there. No one could really celebrate, not yet. When the summer arrived, though, and the girls came back from school, Ginny had been selected by the Holyhead Harpies, and not a week after went directly into training. But even as heavily involved with the Ministry's business as Hermione became when she was asked to work in the Magical Beings Law and Diplomacy Office, she was always the one to start noticing things. Harry put on quite a show for the first few months, changing outfits, keeping the cupboards full, even renovating some of the dark rooms in the old Black Manor. But soon she sat with him, with that know-it-all look on her face, to ask if he had actually been out of the house. He looked at his cup of tea, and didn't bother to answer.
That was when the interventions started. The Weasleys sent him invitation after invitation to dinners, teas, breakfasts, brunches, any and everything. Neville kept sending him a few plants to look after, sometimes with beautiful pictures of him travelling the world to study tropical magical flora. Ginny tried to Floo over more often, talk to him, ask him - begging, even - to come watch her matches, but he wouldn't make it out the door. And he saw it was driving her mental. Eventually, between angry shouts, desperate sobs, warm hugs and kind words, they broke up. It was okay, honestly, he couldn't see anything for him in the world anymore. But she had the right to live her life.
Ron and Hermione were his consistent company. He knew those two would never back out on him. One day, they came to announce their wedding. He could see they were both very excited about it, but so sad they knew their best friend would not make it there. In one or two glances, he noticed part of them blamed him too. It didn't really affect him - it was his fault from the very beginning. What was there to do? That was until the first time Luna came by. She never tried to take him out of the house, she just stayed for a visit, drank some tea, and talked about the latest discovery she had published in The Quibbler. Once, though, he asked her if one of those could explain why he couldn't get out of the house. "Oh, Harry, there's nothing magical keeping you inside," she laughed soundly, "your problem is you can't get out of your head."
Not long after that, Hermione managed to convince him to start therapy. Mr. Argus, a mediwizard in his forties, started to come for an hour every day. After a few months, Harry was given some challenges. Going out to Ron and Hermione's new flat, for example. That came to be his second home. His improvement seemed to add to his best friends overall happiness, he even offered ideas about the reception, and they had great dinner parties every Thursday. Seeing anyone besides them, though, was a setback. But those dinners started to get crowded, full of loving faces of people he could only feel affection and gratitude for. Even Gin got used to this new state of things, where they were building a friendship they never really had before, in which she wasn't anyone's sister, and they didn't have to keep up with each other's romantic expectations.
His public appearances, though, were a whole different story. People didn't really stop him or touch him at all. They stared in awe, frozen in place, at the Saviour of the Wizarding World. Some were curious, most were afraid. As if he had saved them again from a dark wizard while getting a coffee from the cafe in Diagon Alley. Every single stroll on a wizarding street ended up in the next day's morning newspaper. He was getting used to it, and that made it worse. The attention was frustrating and the normality of it was even more frustrating. He decided wandering around Muggle London was preferable, even though people did still look at him - he knew since a young age his dark complexion, tall figure, topped with messy hair and bright green eyes were an attention getter in any place of England, no matter how little magic was around - but they did so with the acknowledgement that he was no more than an ordinary funny looking stranger. He savoured that word in every look - it felt so good to be ordinary again.
When he realised he had accomplished his last challenge: attend the wedding. It was a night full of kindness, he could see how the love poured out of the bushy-haired girl and the tall freckled boy he had met ten years before. Their magic danced around the place, binding them up in a union that was far from bureaucratic. It wrapped every single guest, every family member, in sparkling energy that started to soothe some of Harry's wounds. Some he didn't even know he had. Some things, then, started to fall into place. The new couple's house couldn't be his refuge whenever he felt like Grimmauld Place was pulling him in again. But going back to where he was after the war was not an option. He started to make visits. He was going from house to house, showing people how they ended up helping him in the end. He started visiting the graves of the friends he had said goodbye to, but hadn't really let go.
Andromeda's place was one of the last houses he visited, and definitely the hardest. Teddy was already three years old, and while Harry knew Andromeda would never let anything get in the way of the little boy's happiness, he was also aware that the blue-haired kid was his responsibility too. He made himself swear to her - but mostly to himself - that he would be present to see his godson grow up, and make sure Teddy's memory of his parents grew up with him also. Harry went back to Hogwarts, once. Let the emotions come upon him as he watched the Quidditch practice from the stands. In this place lived an ingenuous kind of happiness that didn't belong to him anymore. And never would. But Harry made peace with it. And when he went back to Grimmauld Place, he decided it was time to sell.
The Muggle townhouse should help him forget all about houses flooded with magic that pull you in when you are at your darkest moments. But it wasn't the house as much as it was the rain or the promised Thai food. He was feeling peaceful being by himself for the first time in a long time. His steps echoed on the sidewalk, and even though he could feel the weight of his wand in the loop sewn into his hoodie's right arm, no one else in the street could tell. It was his secret to keep. It was his secret to share.
When he walked by the door of a fresh-looking pub, he felt like going in. Everyone there seemed to be around his age, even the blue-eyed girl who gave him a half-smile when he approached the bar.
"Hey, what are you having?" she poured two pints and slid them towards a couple on the right side of the bar.
"Do you have anything to eat?" and she offered him the options in their pizzeria. Soon after he saw his slice came accompanied with a pint of their local brew. He ate in silence, taking in the sound of laughing in the background, bets being placed over darts in one corner and the soft music that made the place feel warmer.
"You're new around here, aren't you?" she asked, as she motioned to refill his pint, to which he nodded. "I figured, most of our clients are locals, but you are a fresh face. I'm Ellie, by the way."
"Harry," he said, taking a sip. "I just bought a house a few blocks down from here. I was going to get some takeaway, but this place seemed nice. Is it yours?"
"You just bought a house? But you look so young! Well, it's mine, Jack's," she pointed at a man with shaggy hair and a big smile at one of the tables, "and Chiara's, who's in the kitchen. She's the cook, I'm the bartender, and Jack's the kid with the money, like you, I guess. What do you do?"
"Hm, nothing to be honest." Harry gave her a sad smile, thinking about how that would soon be a poor excuse if he kept interacting with Muggles as he intended. He lifted his hand to grab his cup absentmindedly, but ended up knocking it to the floor. He stopped the fall and levitated it back to his hand out of instinct, wandless magic that seemed to pour out of him as needed from time-to-time. Maybe it was the whole dying-and-coming-back-thing, but it was sure a problem in a Muggle pub. Ellie was clearly startled, but he saw the relief in her face, as he placed the cup back on the counter, almost as full as it was before. "I tend to break things though."
"That catch was impressive, actually. You must be a private school jock, am I right? Let me guess? Lacrosse?"
"Well, not really. I'm just a wizard, Ellie." She laughed wholeheartedly, his truth-joke coming out exactly as he intended. He smiled with her. "Is guessing what people do a hobby of yours?"
"It gets quite boring here sometimes. When someone new comes in, I like to imagine their stories. It's good to memorise the faces too."
They chatted up a little more, between orders and customers, as the young woman seemed to not notice how Harry kept dodging her personal questions. It seemed more obvious to him now how hard it is for witches and wizards to make friends with Muggles. Absolutely no questions were answerable: what do you do? Oh, casual dark lord defeating. Where did you go to school? Your usual magic castle up in Scotland. Where's your family? All dead in the First Wizarding War. Why did you move? Post-war panic syndrome. Nope, it didn't sound like good conversation at all. It sounded more like an imminent owl coming from the Ministry to attest he had broken the Statute of Secrecy and should turn in his wand immediately. This was going to be more complicated than he anticipated
Harry paid up, and left the pub slowly. It was far from empty, and the young crowd already seemed to be not as sober as they were when he arrived. When he bumped into one of the guys it took more effort than normal to regain his footing, Harry noticed he was probably more on the drunk-ish side too. As he looked to the door, he noticed how the Muggle people seemed so carefree on the street. They smiled and played around as though no war had ended only three years ago. Well, for them, it didn't, he thought, with a little envy. The only exception was the guy leaning on the doorframe, his shoulders broad and stiff, brows furrowed, as if he had had his own share of real stress. He was typing quickly on one of those Muggle mobiles, pressing each button a couple of times before going to the next one. His face was half hidden by the long white-blond hair, but his pointy features were softened by a stubble and an easy smirk.
He stood like so many people Harry had met before - the ones who were taught how to stand properly, where to put their shoulders, with the royal posture that should go with their names. Like Sirius used to, though this bloke made a conscious effort to slack, maybe aided by the plain white tee and the beat-up jacket. He looked like the pictures he had seen of his parents and their friends when they were young, celebrating Christmases and Halloweens, with their cool looks even in the middle of the Order's tasks. The high cheekbones and strong jaw really looked like one of the Blacks, if only Sirius could have pulled off the blond hair. He smiled at the possibility. The guy straightened up from the doorframe and, pulling one of the strands of his hair out of his face, disappeared in the noisy crowd on the street.
Harry got the hint and started walking again, noticing how the faces he was used to in the Wizarding World were not common among Muggles. There was something, maybe it was their magic, even, that used to make every witch or wizard stand out. He knew his unusual features got him stares, but he also knew it was not only that. Muggles could notice, as the Dursleys did, that there was something about him. He felt little tingles of magic, as he used to when it seemed to work by itself, running up and down his arms, rolling around his chest, wrapping up every single hair. Somethings you just couldn't deny. And that guy, why did he remind him so much of Sirius? He didn't have his hair, or his eyes, or laugh with loud barks. He smirked instead. He clearly hadn't been locked up for twelve years, either. Maybe, a voice said inside his head, he was just a wizard. It could be, he didn't seem to notice Harry, to react to him in any way, as wizards would, so he had no way to know. He remembered the easy smile and careless hair fumble.
Or, maybe, the voice went on, he was just bloody fit.