Title: Fall- back

Chapter five: A Meeting in Madness

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

Disclaimer: Anything you recognise…. Isn't mine. Though I probably wish it is. Now I'm sad.

AN: Hi all!

Omigosh, you guys! I can't believe the response to last chapter and the little contest. You guys rock, seriously. Having said that, we do have a winner ^^ I'm not going to say who yet – cause I know people are sneaky and will try and see who this person guessed-, but I have alerted them, and I'll say who it was when I reveal the character in the story. Not this chapter, maybe the next. Probably the one after that, though.

Oh, and a response to all the people guessing Blaine…. Guys, I said in the AN in either the first or second chapter that this story started between 2x05 and 2x06, so we haven't met Blaine yet. Emphasis on yet. He'll be here. But still, he's not in the story yet, and certainly not a person at McKinley, since he's a student at Dalton... Keep your eyes peeled for when he does show though^^

This chapter is a bit longer than usual… yay^^

So, having abused my AN more than I probably should, it's time to get on with the story^^ Enjoy and please let me know your thoughts?

The first thing Harry did when he came home that afternoon was fling himself face first onto the couch in the living room. He contemplated just lying there till dinner. Then he realised that would be impossible, since he actually had to cook dinner. Remus couldn't be trusted in the kitchen. No matter how great the werewolf was at potions (and Harry was immensely grateful to him for coaching him through his NEWT), he couldn't even make a grilled cheese sandwich without burning it. Harry had banned him from doing anything more than pouring drinks and chopping up lettuce after having found that out.

Okay, so maybe not till dinner. But no- one said he couldn't lie there for at least another hour. The couch was comfy. Just soft enough, and it still had that smell furniture had when you just bought it. He inhaled deeply and nearly choked on the fabric as it came up a little. Didn't matter. The couch was soft and comfy, and he was going to spend the next hour just lying there.

"Unca?"

Or maybe not. Harry peeled one of his eyes open –and when had he closed those anyway?- and turned his head a little to look at his godson. Teddy was sitting on his knees in front of the couch, holding on to the edge with his small hands.

"Hiya Teddy," Harry muttered, mouth still buried in the fabric of the couch. "What is it?"

The little boy grinned up at him, a single tooth prominently on display. The sight of it never failed to make Harry grin. Remus on the other hand, tended to panic a bit. When they had first noticed the tooth growing he had started to question whether Teddy was early teething, or if he was late, and if it hurt (Harry was pretty sure it had to hurt, judging by all the crying Teddy was doing at the time) and if they could do anything to stop the process. He did that whenever Teddy showed signs of growing though. When he had started crawling, Remus had installed childproof locks on all the cabinets and doors in the house and had run after the child with his arms waving madly about whenever he started crawling somewhere.

"Up!", Teddy demanded, still grinning and with his little arms raised hopefully. Harry grinned back at him and reached over the couch edge to pick him up, turning himself around to lie on his back at the same time. Teddy snuggled into his chest, muttering another 'unca', before closing his eyes and seemingly going to sleep.

"I still can't believe he calls you that," Harry heard Remus say, and he lifted his head up a bit so that he could see him standing in the doorway, leaning against one side. Harry snorted.

"You're just still sore his first word was 'unca' and not 'dada'," he answered. Remus mock- glared at him.

"No, I got over that. I'd be more concerned if he had actually called you 'dada' instead of 'unca'."

Harry couldn't help but concede the point. While he loved being Teddy's godfather and being seen as his unofficial uncle (though with all the interbreeding the pureblood families did, he was pretty sure he was related to Teddy in some way), he wasn't quite ready to be a dad yet. Certainly not this early, at eighteen. Also, he'd prefer to have a partner before even thinking of having children.

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he glanced at the clock. It was later than he had thought it would be. Didn't matter, he was not moving from his comfortable spot just yet.

"So, how was your day?", he asked instead as Remus sat down on the loveseat.

Remus raised an eyebrow. "Shouldn't I be asking you that? You just had your first day of muggle high school."

Harry shrugged. "I asked first."

"You're right at that," Remus answered. "Let's see. I went grocery shopping today. Got some weird looks doing it though. Have people never moved here before or something? It was like they'd never seen a foreigner before."

"It's not exactly a big town," Harry reasoned, "Chances are they haven't."

"Right," Remus nodded. "And that was it really. Cleaned the house some and made sure Teddy didn't crawl anywhere he's not supposed to. Now, let's hear about your day."

Before Harry could answer him, he noticed Teddy's hair shift colours on his chest. He looked down at the now bright- green haired toddler, then back up at Remus, who had noticed it as well.

"We really need to think of something for that in case we have company over."

Harry nodded.

The next morning Harry woke up slowly. Never having been a morning person he put on some house slippers and stumbled his way downstairs. He passed through the kitchen without even noticing Remus feeding Teddy his breakfast and ambled straight on to the tea kettle. Giving a little groan of relief at finding it to be hot already, he quickly grabbed a mug and poured the tea. A tired chuckle from behind him made him turn.

"Morning, Remus," he muttered, giving Teddy a little wave. Teddy returned it, waving his arms around excitedly and causing the food Remus had been trying to feed him to fly around. Remus looked at Harry with a look that basically screamed 'You have got to be kidding me' and Harry just returned it with an innocent smile. This was part of their everyday morning routine. Once Remus had cleared away the mess with a flick of his wand, he asked:

"What classes do you have today?"

Harry shrugged, not having a clue. Remus looked at him through narrowed eyes and pointed at the fridge. Sure enough, the man had printed out a copy of Harry's schedule, already anticipating Harry to lose his. Harry wondered why Remus hadn't just looked at it himself instead of asking the question, but walked over to the fridge anyway. And groaned.

"Two study blocks, gym, AP French and Home Ec.," he answered. Remus snorted behind him. So the bastard had already looked at the schedule and just wanted to see the look on his face. Not fair.

"Yup," Remus grinned at him. "And you've got about twenty minutes left to get dressed and drive to school. I suggest you start now."

Harry glanced at the clock above the fridge and sighed at what he saw. Remus was right, unfortunately. He clucked back his last two sips of tea, put the mug in the dishwasher and grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl -Teddy looking at him accusingly because that was his favourite fruit- before taking the stairs two steps at a time. Time to start another day.

Harry had forgotten how rowdy boys could get in the dressing room after gym class. Towels were flying around, names were called, and more than one body hit a locker. Harry tried to dress quickly to escape the madness of it all, but was surprised to find that while he was still struggling with his socks –and when had Ron found the time to smuggle some Cannons- socks into his suitcase anyway?- everyone else had already left. Harry shrugged and decided to just take his time.

He was still working on tying his shoelaces together when someone entered the dressing room from the gym hall. Harry instinctively looked up and let his eyes fall on the form of the boy he vaguely recalled sitting next to Mercedes at lunch the day before. Something about blue gunk, too. Huh.

"Hi," Harry said. "You might want to get a move on, class will start in about twenty minutes, I think."

The boy looked at him confusedly. "Yeah, I will," he said, before seemingly having an epiphany.

"Oh, hey," he said, "Now I remember. You're Harry right? Artie introduced you."

"Yeah," Harry answered, tying the laces of the second shoe before getting up and reaching out a hand, "I am. I don't think I caught your name yesterday, though."

The boy , still in his gym uniform for some reason, looked at the hand warily for a few seconds before gingerly shaking it.

"I'm Kurt," the boy –Kurt- said, before letting go. He smiled a little. "What are you still doing here?"

Harry shrugged, walking back to the bench he had sat on a bit to sloppily fold his gym clothes so he could throw them in his bag later.

"I'm a bit slow compared to the rest, I suppose," he answered. "What about you? You haven't even started changing yet. Did the coach want something from you or something?"

Kurt looked at him as if he were crazy. "I always stay back a bit. The boys prefer it when I change after they've gone."

Harry furrowed his eyebrow, not looking at Kurt but focussing on getting his shirt folded straight before giving up.

"Why?", he asked. "It's not like you carry a terrible stench with you or something."

Kurt let out a surprised snort and Harry looked up to find that the boy had moved to a shower cubicle and had somehow gotten undressed while Harry had his back turned.

"You're damn right I don't," Kurt answered while turning on the shower. "It's them that smell like they've been bathing in garbage for three days straight."

Harry chuckled, throwing his gym clothes in his bag while Kurt showered.

"I did catch a whiff of that, yeah," he said. "Why then?"

Kurt turned off the shower and Harry politely averted his eyes so that he could towel off and change into some underwear.

"You seriously don't see why?", Kurt asked, prompting Harry to look up again to see him dressed in a pair of incredibly tight black pants. Harry shrugged.

"No," he slowly answered. "Should I?"

Kurt slipped on a shirt that looked way too complicated to actually be called a shirt before answering him.

"I'm gay. They prefer that I stay out of their way whenever possible. Especially when they're getting changed."

Harry chuckled. "Why, cause they're all such lookers? That's ridiculous."

Kurt laughed with him in surprise, lacing up a pair of black boots. "So, it doesn't bother you?"

"Not at all," Harry answered. And truly, he didn't. He spent six years sleeping in the same dorm as Seamus, after all. The Irish boy had started hitting on anything with two legs when he came back from the summer holidays in third year. Including Harry and a very distraught Ron.

Kurt slung his bag over his shoulder, causing Harry to stand up and do the same. The taller boy smiled at him.

"That's great," he said. "Most people here aren't as accepting."

Harry shrugged, following him out the door. "Most people are idiots."

Kurt chuckled. "True."

AP French had been a bust. Harry didn't understand how he ever got into the class. He was terrible. Hermione had tried teaching him, as had Fleur, but he had never been able to get past introducing himself and asking for directions. And hey, that was fine by him. Too bad for him, though, that the French teacher turned out to be one of the very few at McKinley that actually stayed with the class and set them to work ….and actually walked around to check on progress. So yeah, he was screwed.

Home Ec. was a breeze though. The teacher had told them that they couldn't do what had been on their schedule for the day due to some damage to some fancy kitchen equipment Harry had never heard of before and as such they were free to bake something. Anything. As long as she could have a piece.

Kurt had sat down beside him at his workbench with his ingredients and was busy whipping up something that looked much too healthy for Harry's tastes. He himself was busy making the yummiest thing he could think of: Triple chocolate muffins with a toffee chocolate fudgy centre. The kind that can give you cavities just by looking at them. It was one of the first things he had ever learned to bake at the Dursley's, and he still made them regularly (though mostly because Remus claimed to be addicted to them and would stoop so low as to fake withdrawal symptoms to get Harry to bake them) .

When their baking time was up, both Kurt and Harry had a small tray with ten muffins on it in front of them. Harry's was filled with ten perfect muffins he affectionately called 'Death By Chocolate', while Kurt's overly healthy ingredients had turned into quite yummy looking muffins as well. They looked at each other as their teacher started doing her final rounds and wordlessly traded a muffin. Surprisingly enough, Kurt's muffins actually tasted really good, if a little dry. Harry looked over to see what Kurt though about his muffin only to see Kurt sitting with his eyes closed and a blissed out expression on his face, holding the remaining half of the muffin in his hand.

"….Kurt?", Harry hesitatingly asked. Kurt's eyes shot open.

"Harry! Oh my God, this muffin is amazing! How did you get the filling so fudge- like? It always hardens when I try to do something like that."

Before Harry could answer, Kurt took another big bite and swallowed it quickly.

"Never mind, don't answer that. Darn, this is heavenly."

He happily finished the muffin while Harry looked at him in astonishment, having figured Kurt wouldn't be one to be so boisterous. He shrugged.

"I could show you, if you'd like?" he offered, not really sure if that would be a wise idea.

Kurt looked up at him again, a bit of chocolate in the corner of his mouth. "Really?"

"Yeah, sure," Harry answered, missing the way Kurt's face lit up. "You can come over sometime and we'll bake."

"I'd like that," Kurt answered softly. "How about today? You teach me to bake these muffins and I help you with French?"

Harry winced. "Caught that, huh?"

"Yeah," Kurt smirked at him. "You kind of suck."

Well, that's it for this time! I hope you enjoyed reading it. Let me know what you thought about it?

Till next time!

-Robin.