Disclaimer: See Chapter 1.


August 1991

In the morning, Harry crawled back out of his trunk and looked at the house. It was just after dawn, not quite six. He'd been waking at that time for so long that he did it automatically now. He didn't want to go back in there. He didn't want to see how angry they still were. He didn't want another beating. He definitely didn't want to die.

And that's when the idea hit him. Did he have to go back? Ever? He had money. With his trunk, he could take a place to sleep with him. In fact, he could go back to Diagon Alley and have that compartment made bigger. He had money to buy food and a place to sleep. And he only had a month before school started. After this until he turned eighteen, he'd be living at school all but two or three months during the summer.

He didn't have to go back to the Dursleys. He never had to go back.

He spent a long time just staring at the house that had been his prison for so many years. He could get away. He didn't have to wait until he was eighteen.

With a slightly manic grin, he rushed back into the shed and packed up his trunk. He looked at the owl then. He didn't want to have to drag her around all day, drawing attention to himself. "Um, hey girl," he said cautiously. "Hagrid said that you'd know where to find him if I had a letter for him. Is there any chance you'd be able to find me like that?"

She bobbed her head in what seemed to be an affirmative.

Harry blinked at the response, then shook himself. He had a snake that could talk, he shouldn't be surprised that an owl could understand him and respond. Maybe it was because he was a wizard, or maybe it was something about the kind of animals they were. Either way, he was glad for it. "Great. Can I just let you out then, and you can find me tonight?"

Another bob. He opened the cage, not sure if he was hoping that he'd understood her properly or if he was hoping that he'd never see her again. He certainly didn't need another pet, but he was slightly attached to her already. She was very pretty and she seemed very smart. Oh well. He decided not to be disappointed either way. She gave a warning glare toward Rhast, then took to the sky.

Harry quickly put her cage in his trunk and stuck that in his pocket, then headed for the train station again.

Still feeling giddy about his newfound freedom and the ability to just buy a train ticket because he, Harry Potter, had his very own money, he boarded the train for London. He had gotten a concerned look from the lady at the ticket counter, but he'd just babbled quickly about his dad dropping him off and how excited he was about meeting his mum in London and the woman had just smiled at him and wished him a good morning. If there was one thing he'd learned about adults, it was that they loved to convince themselves that everything was fine. It never took much for him to nudge them in that direction.

"Are we running away?" Rhast inquired once the train was moving.

Harry shrugged, "I think that implies someone will miss us. But we're not going back there. Not until we're ready to repay them their last ten years of 'kindness' at least."

Rhast heartily approved of the plan and they spent most of the ride to London chatting quietly about Hogwarts.

When they arrived, Harry stopped at the same little café that he and Hagrid had visited last night and got a quick breakfast before retracing their path to Diagon Alley. Harry didn't head for the Alley immediately though. There were many shops along the road, and Harry found his way into a clothing shop first. When he was dressed in Dudley's rags, he found that people tended to look at him like he might try to rob them. That was only more pronounced without Hagrid there drawing most of their attention.

He bought a few packages of underwear and socks, then enough jeans and t-shirts to last him a whole week since he figured he'd have to find a public laundry when they got dirty and he didn't want to have to do that more than once a week. He added a few jumpers as well. It was beyond amazing how good it felt to be dressed in new clothes that fit him properly. The luxury of that was something that he'd rarely even thought to wish for.

He found a shoe store next and actually got a little teary at the sensation of shoes that fit, settled snugly around his feet over his clean socks. The salesman looked at his old shoes with something like horror and when he offered to dispose of them for Harry, he thanked the man and bid goodbye to the horrid things and hopefully to the blisters he always got from walking very far in them. He picked up a comfortable pair of trainers and some of the most comfortable black dress shoes. From what he recalled of the Hogwarts uniform robes, he thought his trainers might look pretty strange with them.

Finally, he headed for the Leaky Cauldron. It wasn't too hard to find, being much darker and dingier and more old-fashioned than any of the shops in the area. Harry hurried through the pub and into the back. Three up and two across, he remembered, finding the brick that Hagrid had located yesterday. He tapped it thrice with his wand and was relieved when the archway opened. He'd been concerned that there might be more to it that he hadn't seen.

He made for the bank first since his clothes shopping had exhausted a lot of the muggle money that he had. He bowed to the goblins on his way in again and was pleased when he spotted the same goblin they'd first spoken to yesterday.

"Hello, Mr. Stonecrusher," he greeted with a small smile.

Again, the goblin lifted an eyebrow at him. "Hello, Mr. Potter. How can Gringotts assist you today?"

"Well, I had a question, actually. Is it possible to get money out of my vault without going all the way down there?"

"Of course," the goblin replied at once. "If you have your key, I can use it to authorize a withdrawal."

Harry smiled with relief and passed over his key. He hadn't minded the trip down, but Rhast was not fond of it and Harry preferred it when the blood could actually get into his feet, thankyouverymuch. "I was also wondering if it was possible to get like a statement of my account, so I know exactly how much I have?"

"Of course, Mr. Potter," the goblin frowned. "Gringotts sends out statements quarterly. Have you not been receiving them?"

Harry blinked. "Quarterly? Um. No. I've never gotten a statement. I didn't even know that I had a vault here until yesterday."

Stonecrusher's face darkened. "I see," he said stiffly. "One moment, Mr. Potter." He hopped down off his stool and disappeared into one of the many doors. Harry shifted impatiently while he waited, but he didn't take too long. Maybe a minute later, he reappeared with another goblin, who looked older. "Mr. Potter, this is Grubrok. He is in charge of your account. If you would accompany him to his office, I believe that the two of you have some things to discuss." He passed Harry his key back.

"Okay," Harry said uncertainly. "Thank you, Mr. Stonecrusher."

He was led back through the door that the goblins had just exited, and Harry found that it did indeed look like an office with a desk and many cabinets. There was even an in and outbox, though they contained rolls of parchment instead of sheets of paper.

"Have a seat, Mr. Potter," Grubrok instructed as the goblin settled into his own chair behind the desk.

Harry sat down in front of it.

"Stonecrusher tells me that you haven't been receiving your statements, though I have record of sending them off once every season for the last ten years."

Harry shook his head helplessly. "I'm sorry, Mr. Grubrok, I haven't gotten them. In fact, I haven't gotten any mail before my letter came from Hogwarts. Do you think someone's been stealing my mail all these years?"

"I have absolutely no doubt of it," the goblin nodded. "You, Mr. Potter, are the most famous wizard in Britain. You have more than likely been receiving a great deal of fan mail and gifts throughout your life, especially on holidays, your birth anniversary, and the anniversary of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's defeat."

Harry sighed, though he supposed he shouldn't be surprised. He didn't like it that he wasn't getting his mail, but he wasn't sure if he wanted a bunch of strangers sending him things either.

"I would speculate that someone has set wards preventing you from receiving your mail in order to prevent any hexed, cursed, or otherwise dangerous items from reaching you. The ministry perhaps, but more likely Albus Dumbledore."

Harry scowled. Dumbledore again. Why was that man so involved in his life?

"I take it that you were unaware of this?"

"Yes," Harry frowned. "I don't even remember ever meeting Dumbledore. It's possible to set wards on my person?"

Grubrok nodded, "Yes, quite. If you would like, Gringotts can remove the wards from you – for a fee, of course. We also offer a service to collect all of your mail and dispose of anything cursed or otherwise dangerous before sending it off again. There is a monthly fee for that."

"How much is it?"

"Removal of the wards is a fairly simple ritual that will cost you twenty galleons. The monthly fee to sort your mail is thirty galleons with a start-up cost of twenty galleons, which covers the wards that we need to set in order to route your mail through us. Also, of course, your mail will arrive approximately one day later as it does take time to examine and repost it, however, for an additional one-time fee of fifty galleons, we can supply you with a pair of charmed trunks. One of them will remain here and the other with you, allowing us to place your mail into our trunk and it will arrive directly in yours."

"But Dumbledore – if he is the one responsible – will know that the ward was removed," he noted.

"If he has been receiving all of your mail prior to now, then yes. He will."

Harry sighed, but nodded. He was wary of rocking the boat with regard to this man about whom he seemed to become more and more concerned the more he learned about him, but there was no way that he was going to let him get away with stealing all of his mail any longer. How many Christmas and birthday presents had Dumbledore stolen from him? How many of them might have been expensive? He'd never met him, but he was coming to seriously hate him.

"All right. I'll do that, and with the trunks." Thirty galleons a month was a lot, but it was either that or not get any of his mail that Dumbledore didn't feel like sending on to him. He couldn't risk getting mail with curses on it since he didn't know how to check for them. According to the book he'd read last night, he couldn't even use magic outside of school until he was seventeen. He did the math quickly in his head. Thirty galleons a month, twelve months a year, for the next seven years… Just over twenty-five hundred galleons. Almost four times as much as his trunk, but even more valuable. He deemed it worth it, and he figured he could afford it. "Can I get a statement now? I don't even know how much I have. I'm just guessing by what I saw yesterday."

"Of course, Mr. Potter." Grubrok slid out of his chair and opened one of the cabinets at the back of the room. He rifled around in it for a while before coming out with a scroll, which he passed over the desk.

Harry unrolled it and started scanning down it. He had over twenty-six thousand galleons and a bunch of sickles and knuts. That was about what he'd guessed. God, that was over a hundred thousand pounds. He glanced at the next page then and froze. He frowned, then looked back up at the goblin. "I have more than one vault?"

"Of course, Mr. Potter," Grubrok said as though it was absurd that he hadn't known that. "The vault that you visited yesterday was only your trust. The Potters have been one of the wealthiest families in Magical Britain for over a thousand years. You won't be eligible to claim the family lordship until you turn fifteen. If, at that time, you choose to become Lord Potter, you will have full access to the family vault. If you wait, you will automatically receive the title upon your seventeenth birthday."

Seventeen was considered adult in the magical world, Harry recalled reading.

He shook himself and decided to examine the "Lord" thing later. Hopefully, some of his reading would give him some information on exactly what that meant. He looked back down at his statement and blinked, then carefully counted the numbers to be sure he was reading it right. Holy freaking God. He had over a billion galleons in his family vault. And if he could access that at fifteen, then the twenty-six thousand in his trust only had to last him four years. Even if he spent another six thousand this summer, he'd still have more than five thousand galleons a year until he turned fifteen in the summer after his fourth year. Three hundred sixty a year for his mail suddenly wasn't seeming very significant.

He flipped to the next page and frowned. Then flipped through three more. Finally, he looked at Grubrok again.

The goblin was actually looking somewhat amused. "As I said, Mr. Potter, you are the most famous wizard in Britain. Quite a few people have willed assets to you in the last decade."

"Oh." Harry looked at the numbers again. Between the four extra vaults, he had another six hundred and twenty eight thousand galleons. He shook his head, then took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He'd freak out about finding out that he was filthy rich later. Right now, he had things to do. "Okay. So when can we do the mail thing?"

"We can set up an appointment for tomorrow if that works for you, Mr. Potter."

"That would be great."

"Very well. Is nine in the morning acceptable?"

"Yes."

The goblin gave a sharp nod and picked up a quill to make a note in a book on his desk. "It will take about two hours. Now, is there anything else you needed today, Mr. Potter?"

"Um. Is it possible to combine my trust with these other four vaults?" Harry wondered.

"That can be done," Grubrok nodded. "Would you like to add the contents of the others to your trust vault?"

"That would be good."

The goblin made another note. "It will be done today."

"Thank you. Then I guess the only other thing I wanted was to withdraw some money from my trust vault. In muggle pounds, please."

"Of course. How much do you wish?"

"Um. A thousand pounds." Even after today's shopping spree, the fact that he could get that kind of money just by asking for it made his heart flutter. Stupid wizarding world. How could they have made him live ten years like… well, like he did, when he was rich?

The goblin snapped his fingers as Griphook had done yesterday and a pile of twenty pound notes appeared on the desk. Harry scooped it up and put it into his wallet.

"Thank you, Mr. Grubrok. You've been very helpful," Harry said politely as he stood.

"It's been my pleasure, Mr. Potter," Grubrok smiled in return, though it was a slightly unsettling sight given all those sharp teeth.

Harry left the bank feeling somewhat dazed. He'd been walking down the Alley for a few minutes before a sign caught his eye and he paused. Alcmaeon's Optic Remedies, since 487 BC. Well, that was interesting. There were glasses displayed in the window though, and Harry's were old and busted and they looked uglier than ever in contrast to his new clothes.

He stepped inside and found a pleasant room that bore the combination of modern and ancient that he was coming to expect on Diagon Alley. The lighting was all candles in sconces on the walls. Mirrors and white wooden racks were all over, displaying a huge variety of eyeglasses and a way to see how they looked on you.

"Hello, there!" a cheerful female voice greeted.

Harry started slightly before he turned to face the speaker. She looked about thirty with bright blond hair, fair skin, and hazel eyes, and she was smiling warmly until she saw his glasses, at which point her eyes widened in horror.

"Oh, you poor dear! Look at those things! Cracked and chipped, and terrible with your face shape, to boot. Please tell me that you're here for new ones!"

Harry smiled, finding her amusing so far. "Yes, ma'am."

"Oh, well you just come right on back and we'll have a look at your eyes." She bustled him into a leather chair in the back room and immediately pulled off his glasses and drew her wand. She pointed it right at his eye, which was a little unnerving, and muttered a long string of words he couldn't make out, then repeated it on his other eye. She then moved over to a nearby table and picked up a piece of parchment. She shook her head as she looked it over. "Oh, you poor thing. I betcha you can't see much of nothin' without those glasses, can you? Well, I can sell you new glasses if you want, or we can just fix your eyes up properly."

Harry frowned as he put his glasses back on to see her more clearly. "You can fix my eyes? With a spell?"

"Of course! Oh, you must be muggleborn, huh? Well, yes, I can most certainly fix your eyes today if you'd like."

"And I wouldn't need glasses at all anymore?"

"Definitely not."

Harry shook his head slowly. "I'm sorry, but if you can fix my eyes up just like that, then why does anyone in the wizarding world wear glasses?" He'd seen people in the Alley wearing glasses.

She harrumphed expressively. "Silly superstitions, that's why. Around the Mediterranean, this procedure is routinely used on anyone with the need. Some places though – including most of northern Europe – eye surgery is considered dangerous to the soul. Now, I promise you that I've done this procedure almost a thousand times and not once has anyone complained about noticing any problems after, not with their eyes and certainly not with their soul. It just comes from old Norse superstitions that say the eyes are the windows to the soul and therefore any tampering with the eyes tampers with the soul." She shook her head in disgust and took a deep breath after that rapid rant. "I don't think most pureblood families even remember why they disdain the practice, but they love their traditions and usually refuse to question them. You don't need to worry about that though. I can get you fixed right up."

She hesitated and then added, "Of course, it is a little on the spendy side…"

"Oh, that's not a problem," he assured her.

Her smile popped immediately back onto her face. "Wonderful! Would you like to do that then?"

"Um. How much does it cost?" he felt compelled to ask.

"Given how bad your eyes are, it'll take two potions, three spells, and about half an hour. Two hundred galleons."

"Oh. That's not a problem then," he nodded. Two hundred galleons to throw away his glasses and never need any ever again? He'd have paid ten times that without flinching. "We can do it now?"

"Abso-posi-lutely," she grinned. "Let me just adjust your chair back a bit…" She swished her wand and the back of the chair tipped back so that he was looking at pictures stuck to the ceiling. A bubbling forest brook, a windswept sand dune, and a rainforest mid-downpour. They all moved. "You're going to focus on those pictures while your eyes adjust," she explained. "First, I'm going to put a few drops of a special potion in your eyes. It will relax your eyes and allow the spells to work faster and more effectively. Then I'm going to cast the spell. For ten minutes, you'll just lie there and look at those pictures. Then I'll cast it again, followed by ten more minutes, and a final time. After that, I'll check to make sure you're at the right visual acuity. If you're not, we'll do it one more time. If you are – and I think three should be enough – then I've got some more drops that will negate the first potion. Then we're all done!"

The next half hour was not fun. She hadn't mentioned that his eyes were going to itch terribly the entire time from the moment she put the drops in, but when he asked, he was informed that it was "normal". It was more than worth the discomfort though. As he lay there staring at the ceiling, he watched the pictures come into greater and greater focus. By the time the procedure was finished, Harry had discovered an entirely new level of clarity in the visual world. He honestly could not remember ever seeing so clearly. He could make out the flecks of gold and green in the woman's eyes, for God's sake.

He paid her happily when he was done and thanked her profusely before giving her permission to incinerate his old glasses and watching gleefully as they melted into a puddle of goo that vanished when she waved her wand.

His next stop was back at Luggin's Luggage. He spotted Graham partway down one aisle chatting with a twenty-something man over a few of the trunks. The shop owner glanced at him when he entered and called out, "I'll be right with you, young sir. Go ahead and browse a bit."

Harry just nodded in reply and started to wander, exploring the stacks of trunks. Ten minutes later, he'd set up camp in front of a rack of what the sign called "Portable Abodes". They were, quite literally, a flat in a trunk. Well, a small flat. The largest seemed to be about five by ten meters on the inside, and boasted artificial windows and fully functional kitchen and bath. By the diagram provided, it was basically a one-room flat with a small walk-in wardrobe, bathroom with toilet, sink, and shower, bed, sofa, table, and a tiny kitchen.

"Are you looking for the Hogwarts Special, young sir?" Graham asked as he finally found Harry.

Harry turned to face him and watched as it took a few seconds for Graham to place him. He knew the exact moment because his polite professionalism immediately shifted into a large grin. "Mr. Potter! I hardly recognized you! Did away with the glasses, huh?"

Harry nodded.

"Well, I didn't expect you back so soon, but it's a pleasure to see you again. Are you in the market for a portable abode, or just browsing?"

"I was actually interested in this one," Harry pointed to the largest interior trunk that he'd been examining.

"Ah, a very good choice, Mr. Potter. Very good. That's my deluxe abode. The very height of expansion charms. New this year, as a matter of fact. The portable abode is a bit on the expensive side, but well worth the price if you often find yourself away from home. It certainly beats letting a room at whatever inn happens to be available! That model comes fully furnished with a bed, table, sofa, and bookshelf as well as charmed pantry cabinets for cool, cold, and dry storage with preservation charms guaranteed to extend the life of your perishables by at least ten times. There's also fully charmed range and oven, no spells required on your part. For just ten galleons more, you can add the amenities package, which provides dishes, flatware, cookware, and linens.

"The same security packages can be added as for any trunk, though for this, it includes an Unmovable Charm that makes it impossible for anyone to pick it up and carry it away while you're inside. There's also an optional Disillusionment Charm for an additional fifty galleons, which is an effective, if imperfect form of invisibility. Activate that charm, and someone will have to trip over it to find it if they're not looking very carefully. Also, if you want to use it in a muggle-populated area, I can add a Muggle-Repelling Charm for just twenty extra galleons, which will make any muggle who comes within a couple meters of the trunk suddenly remember something else they need to do, or just divert around it without even realizing they've done it. So what do you think, Mr. Potter?"

"I think it sounds brilliant," Harry smiled. "Can I go in and have a look?"

"Oh, of course. Of course. Let me get it down for you."

He floated the trunk down onto the floor and flipped open the lid. Inside, there was a ladder leading down. Graham went first and Harry followed him into the most beautiful room he'd ever seen in his life. Though that might have been influenced by the fact that it would be his first real home. The queen sized bed looked sinfully comfortable. The small sofa was very inviting. There was a small bookshelf. The kitchen area ran along one wall on the narrow side of the space while the other had two doors. A quick inspection revealed a walk-in wardrobe and a nice, if small, bathroom.

To Harry, given the way he'd had to live at the Dursleys, this looked like heaven. The kitchen was interesting for the fact that there was no refrigerator or any electronic appliances that he automatically associated with such an area. There was a range and oven that looked very old-fashioned, and a quick inspection of the cabinets proved that some were enchanted to be refrigerator temperature and some to freezer temperature while others were marked for dry food storage and others for nonperishable and nonfood storage. There also seemed to be fully functional plumbing that could only have worked through magic.

"It's excellent, Mr. Luggin. I'll take it."

"Oh, please, Mr. Potter. Call me Graham," the man said, his eyes shining with pleasure.

"You can call me Harry, then," he reciprocated which rendered the man briefly speechless. Harry attributed it to his fame and tried to politely ignore it.

When they exited the trunk, Harry requested a level 5 security package – he valued himself a little more than his luggage, after all. He also got all the optional packages, including amenities, disillusionment, and muggle-repelling. Graham apparently had a "the works" trunk already prepared in the back, so Harry was able to take it immediately. It cost him almost two thousand galleons, which probably would have been more than he was really comfortable paying before seeing how much money he actually had this morning.

So, feeling inordinately good about the accomplishments of the morning, Harry left Diagon Alley and went back into London to get lunch, then set out to find a place to camp. It took him an hour to locate and settle on a park, and he decided to set his portable abode up in a stand of bushes where muggles were unlikely to venture even without the repelling charm.

Once he was settled on a place, he headed out and found a market to pick up some food. It was a singularly wonderful experience to buy whatever he wanted – even if he did get a few odd looks. And, luckily, he was a very good cook, having been doing it for the Dursleys for years. He chuckled at the thought of them having to cook and clean for themselves from now on as he carried the many heavy bags into the first empty alley that he could find and quickly transferred it all into the general storage of his luggage trunk.

When he got back to the park, he set up his abode and activated the Disillusionment Charm, thoroughly impressed when it disappeared. Upon close inspection, he found that it wasn't completely invisible, but it was very nearly. Someone would definitely have to be looking for it to find it. He climbed down inside with Rhast and closed it up. He put away his food first, then spent probably half an hour between exploring in greater detail and just staring around the place. The walls, the floor, the furniture, the windows that gave light but no images. It was all singularly beautiful. The most amazing place in the world.

Most importantly, it was all his. No more beatings. No more chores that he couldn't do well enough for their satisfaction. No more being screamed at and belittled. No more Dursleys at all.

After a hot shower and a good while sprawled across the heavenly bed staring blankly around the room at random, Harry finally got out his books and set to learning more about this new magical world that had changed everything. He hated Dumbledore. He hated the fact that no one had told him sooner. He hated how ignorant he still felt. He loved magic. He loved galleons. He loved his new freedom that this world had given him. He loved clothes that fit and eyes that worked.

Harry knew that he was going to embrace this new world. He knew that he was going to discover more things that he hated about it, and thought it was possible that he'd find even more that he loved. He was going to learn everything about it. He was going to learn everything about magic, and he would die before he gave up his freedom again. Nothing could ever make him go back to those monsters.


The owl did find him that night, and he decided to call her Athena, since she was a proud, fierce creature. She seemed to approve of the name. She soon took to going off on her own when Harry was out, then turning up at the trunk around the time that he decided to settle in for a while. She also developed a habit of settling on the back of his sofa or the headboard of his bed and reading over his shoulder. He couldn't figure out if she could read or if she just liked looking at the pages, and she wouldn't answer him when he asked. Maybe she didn't understand the question or maybe she was just being cheeky. Rhast agreed fairly quickly not to eat her, but it took some time for him to actually warm up to her. It took even longer for her to start to warm up to him.

Harry warmed up to her, too. Though she couldn't talk to him like Rhast, he suspected that she might be just as smart.

Trips to Diagon Alley became frequent for Harry over the next month. He mostly tried to keep himself unremarkable and avoided giving anyone his name. He really didn't want to incite any mobs. He did end up buying more robes. The casual, everyday kind, so that he'd blend in better when he visited Diagon. Once he was dressed in them, most people didn't even give him a second glance.

Removing the wards that were stealing his mail was an uncomfortable procedure, but not difficult. It involved him standing in just his pants under a magical waterfall in some ritual room at Gringotts for close to an hour while a pair of goblins chanted something in their language. It felt exceptionally strange, almost like sweating profusely, but not. It also left him feeling quite tired. The ritual to reassign his mail to go directly to Gringotts unless it was from Gringotts was easier. All he had to do was bleed into a bowl. The goblins did the rest. When it was over, the blood had been made into something that looked like a blood-red semi-precious stone engraved with markings that he'd never seen before. Grubrok explained that it contained a copy of his magical signature and had been specifically designed so that any owl seeking him would home in on the stone instead, thereby delivering their parcels to a room in Gringotts utilized just for him where the goblins could sort his mail, then resend it via the linked trunks.

Apparently, whoever had stolen his mail must have done something very similar at some point. The first ritual had bled off his magical signature and disconnected anything that had been tied to it leading up to that point. Grubrok had mentioned in passing that the procedure could be done every summer to ensure he was clean of any magical tampering or tracking. He did note that it could have the "adverse" effect of removing the Trace, which was applied to all of the students during the trip to Hogwarts – part of the enchantments on the train, apparently.

That was the first time that Harry ever wanted to hug a goblin. He restrained himself, of course, but he now officially loved goblins.

It took him two weeks to read through all of his supplementary books, and he then switched to his course books. He made it through those in a week, then returned to Flourish and Blotts and bought more books to increase his comprehension of the magical world, and a couple more beginner books on magical theory. He could have read more than that, of course, but he wasn't going to spend every minute of every day reading. He was enjoying his newfound freedom far too much to do just that.

He spent most of his days when he wasn't visiting Diagon wandering in muggle parks. He'd taken to picking a new park every week so that no one started to wonder about the eleven-year-old that seemed to spend too much time there. The last thing he needed was for someone to report him and get sent back to the Dursleys. He walked and ran and even played a little, but he spent most of his time sitting on a bench and reading one of his books or just watching life move around him. Muggles, he'd found quite by accident, didn't seem able to notice the titles of the books, so there wasn't any worry for that. He guessed that it was some kind of muggle-repelling charm built in.

And he spent some time trying out some of the spells in his books as well. They were harder than he'd expected and it took a ridiculous amount of practice to not only get the pronunciation just right but to move his wand just so. It was also exhausting if he tried to do too much at once. His magic wasn't used to it yet, or that's what he'd been able to infer from his reading on magical theory.

He did notice, however, that when he was casting, he could feel it like a warmth right in the center of his chest. The exact place that Rhast had once told him contained his "power". Somehow, he gathered, the snake had always known that he was magical, even if he didn't understand exactly what it was or what it meant. He must have been able to sense it.


A/N: Next Chapter: Harry goes to Hogwarts.

A huge thank you to all of my kind reviewers. I write for myself, but I post it for you guys.