Title: Fall- back

Chapter two: Tour Guide

Rating: T

Summary: After the war Harry moves to Lima, Ohio to try and live a normal life as just another invisible teenager. You know what they say about best laid plans, though. KH/HP

Hi all!

I want to start by saying I'm just overwhelmed by the response so far! I've got about two hundred emails after posting the first chapter alone, that's insane! I want to thank you for your favourites, and alerts, and most of all your reviews! They really made my day.

For the person pointing me to my spelling mistakes in last chapter: thanks for that. That'll teach me to spell check at two AM, right? Thanks for noticing, but I can't really be arsed to change it right now. Maybe later. Having said that, English is not my first language and I don't have a beta, so there will probably be some more minor faults somewhere along the line.

Just to clear some things up: Remus, as you've noticed, is still alive for the basic reason that I didn't want him dead. Artistic license and all that. Same goes for Fred, though I don't think we'll see much of him or his twin here. Tonks bit the dust though.

Also, this takes place somewhere between 2x05 and 2x06. No Dalton or Blaine in sight yet. Yet.

In this chapter, Harry meets Puck.

Enjoy reading and please let me know what you think about it, okay? :)

Finding the principal's office was a lot easier than Harry thought it would be. All he had to do was follow the sounds of a woman shouting. While he walked in the direction of the voice he saw students giving him warning glances, as if they were trying to tell him to save himself and run in the other direction as fast as he could. Too bad that Harry had never run away from possible danger before and he wasn't planning on starting now.

The shouting, as it turned out, came from a very tall, blonde woman in a tracksuit. She was raging at an Indian- looking man behind a desk and her words pierced straight through the glass doors that surrounded them. Harry swallowed, praying that she wouldn't be the teacher for any of his subjects, and walked up to the secretary who was busy filing her nails like this was an everyday occurrence.

"Name?", she snippily asked after having deemed the nail of her right thumb – which Harry personally thought looked right ridiculous all covered in green and purple stars like that- perfect.

"Harry Potter," he answered. "I'm new here and I was supposed to meet with the principal to go over my file and transfer papers?"

She looked at him as if she doubted that very much.

"Are you sure?", she asked.

"Fairly sure," Harry answered, pulling a sheet of paper from his bag. "I've got the email detailing the meeting right here."

It wasn't really like him to have things like printed out emails with him. In fact, Harry would be the first to admit that he was one of the most disorganised people on the planet. He could never find anything and was always secretly relieved whenever Hermione would get him and Ron something for Christmas that would help them be more organised, no matter how much he groaned and claimed to hate them.

The reason he had the email with him today was simple. Remus had printed it out for him. As it turned out, Remus was a muggle enthusiast like Mr Weasley and had insisted on them getting both a computer and a laptop, a printer, television and muggle kitchen appliances. This wasn't because he was curious about them, but because he was used to them. Being a werewolf had severely limited his job options in the wizarding world and he had started working in the muggle world instead. Add that to the fact that Remus was a bit of an organisational nut, and you have an overly prepared Harry starting his first day of muggle high school.

The secretary snatched the paper from him hand and started looking it over like she didn't believe a word he was saying. She looked it over, made a few noises Harry suspected were meant to make her sound smarter but in reality only made her look like she knew less than he had previously assumed.

"Fine then," she finally said, before handing back the paper. Harry quickly slipped it back into his bag. "I'll let him know you're here. Take a seat next to Noah over there."

She motioned to the other side of the room, where Harry noticed a guy with a mohawk was sat. He didn't really seem like a Noah to Harry. The name somehow seemed too sweet for someone slouched in his seat like that, with a looked in his eyes that basically screamed not to get any closer if he wanted to keep all his fingers. Harry sat down next to him anyways.

After seeing the secretary go back to filing her nails and not making any attempt to notify the principal that he was there, Harry figured she didn't really want to come in between the screaming lady and the principal either. He cautiously leaned back in the uncomfortable seat against the wall, mindful of the shady looking guy next to him. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, the guy with the mohawk decided to speak:

"So, what are you in for?" he said, looking at Harry from the corner of his eyes.

"Just transferred here," Harry answered. "I'm supposed to go over my file with the principal, but he seems….busy."

The guy barked out a laugh. "Yeah, I suppose that's a word for it. Where'd you transfer from, short stuff?"

Harry balked a little at that. Sure, he wasn't exactly as tall as this guy, but he wasn't as short as he had been either. He'd never be able to reach the uttermost top shelves in the stores, but at least he didn't get mistaken for a twelve year old everywhere he went anymore.

"A school in Schotland," he answered shortly, not sure if he liked the guy next to him. Still, he was as curious as ever – something that had never failed to give Hermione miniature heart attacks every time he thought he saw something interesting during their school days- and asked:

"Why are you here then?"

The boy shrugged. "Got back from an unintended vacation. Have to report back in."

Harry eyed him, not sure if there was even any truth in what the boy was saying, but willing to go with it for now. Before he could question the boy further though, the screaming in the office stopped, and his gaze was drawn to the glass walls. The woman looked as if she was panting heavily while the man looked smug. Harry guessed the principal must have won the shouting match. The woman walked out of the office and Harry instinctively tried to blend in with the chair he was sitting on.

"This isn't over yet, Figgins! I'll get that budget back!", she shouted over her shoulder before barrelling out of the front office, leaving Harry to look at her retreating back in awed fear.

"Meet coach Sylvester," the guy beside him said, "Some advice for you, new kid; stay out of her way."

"Funnily enough," Harry answered, getting up and walking to the office because the secretary was pointing at him with her nail file and gesturing him to go in, "I had figured that much myself."

After about fifteen minutes of the principal talking excitedly at him in an accent he had difficulty making out, Harry walked out of the office, pinching the bridge of his nose. It appeared that because the Hogwarts papers that had been heavily modified to appear muggle made him seem like some sort of genius while really, had had trouble keeping up with Hermione in even the easiest subjects she had forced down his and Ron's throats during the lulls in their quest for Voldemort's horcruxes. As a result, Harry had been automatically signed up for AP classes. Not just one or two, because he could have handled AP English and AP Home Ec. Or something, but all of them. He had been signed up for every single AP class that seemed to correspond well with the classes he had taken at Hogwarts. Basically, Harry was screwed. Ron was going to get a kick out of this.

He walked up to the secretary, who by now has started flipping through a magazine with her nail file lying next to her on her desk like some sort of weapon, to get his class schedule from her. While she huffed and puffed her way through checking the computer and printing out the piece of paper, the guy he had sat beside earlier was being escorted out of the office by the principal, who walked up to the desk with him. Instead of addressing the secretary like he had expected though, the Indian man started speaking to Harry instead:

"Mr Potter. Mr Puckerman here will be your guide for the day, just until you know where everything is in the school."

Harry raised an eyebrow, a bit surprised at the offer, and not really believing that the boy with the mohawk would have offered to do such a thing. "Thank you, sir," he answered. "That's very kind of you."

The man nodded to him, nearly beaming, wished them a good day and disappeared back into his office. Harry was handed his class schedule and followed the boy out of the office, needing to walk faster than usual to be able to fall into step with him.

"So, thanks for doing this," he said to him, once had caught up.

"Yeah whatever, midget," the boy grunted. "What's your name anyways?"

"It's Harry," Harry answered. " And I'm not that short."

"For a hobbit maybe," the boy snorted. "I'm Puck. Schedule?"

Harry decided not to argue any further since he really couldn't afford to alienate the guy that was showing him around. He handed Puck the schedule and watched him look it over.

"So your parents named you Puck Puckerman?" he asked, disbelievingly.

"Of course not," Puck scoffed, but didn't comment further. "Jesus, don't you have any normal classes?"

Harry just shrugged, still walking beside Puck. He was a bit surprised when they stopped at the nurse's office instead of at a classroom. He looked at Puck confusedly, and frowned when he was handed back his schedule.

"Why are we here?", he asked.

"Because I have math," Puck said, as if that was exactly what Harry should have been thinking al along. At Harry's look, he continued: "I don't do math. See you later, Stunt."

And with that, he closed the door to the office behind him, leaving Harry to stand in the hallway without knowing where he was supposed to go. He also felt like his height had just been insulted again, but he couldn't be sure.

"Jerk," he muttered to himself while looking around him. "Where am I supposed to go now?"

Before he could contemplate it any further though, a deep, annoying buzzing sound sounded through the building and the doors to the classrooms in the halls swung open, dozens of students suddenly crowding the halls and making Harry feel even more disorientated. He spun around, deciding to just start walking in one direction and ask someone for the way to his classroom.

Before he could even get to the other side of the hall however, something icy splattered around his shins. He instinctively looked down and noticed that his shoes were covered in what seemed to be some sort of blue icy substance. He made a step forward and felt how his feet nearly stuck to the floor. A sticky blue icy substance then. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see a guy- who he was pretty sure was the same guy he had noticed picking rotten vegetables from his jacket- stomp to what he assumed to be a bathroom, entirely covered in the blue gunk.

Harry looked down again, walking forward down the hall. His shoes made a squelching sound with each step. So far today he had been placed in classes that were way too hard for him, lost his unconventional tour guide and had his shoes and the undersides of his jeans covered in blue gunk. He sighed to himself. And it was still only half past nine.

"Just bloody perfect," he muttered.

Let me know what you think?

Till next time!