Chapter 6

AN: It has taken a bit longer than before but this chapter is beta'ed by Nachoman1. I hope that the reactions to this one are as positive as before.

Books' list:

Quiddich through the ages
Modern Magical History
Magical History since the 9th century
The adventures of Casius
The travels of Merlin
Williams Wildlife Reserve
Fairytales and legends
The muggleborn guide to the magical world
Potions for dummies
Your talents under your control
Young Wizards Dictionary
Young Wizards Encyclopaedia
An appraisal of magical education in Europe
The international community of Atlantis
A guide to magical France
A guide to magical Italy
A guide to magical Europe

Chapter 4

Back home, there wasn't much time left before school started. Not enough to really enjoy the last few days of the holidays before starting the school routine again, not with the long lists of chores. Even so, Harry did manage to finish the potions book, picking the guide to Italy as his second book to read.

He actually made a list of which books to read in what order, trying to determine what would be the most helpful books. 'Magical History since the 9th century' was at the bottom, while the 'Young Wizards' Dictionary' wasn't even in the list per se: helpful as he expected it to be while reading the other books, he just didn't plan on being bored enough to try reading through the dictionary. Not until he had nothing else to do, anyway. About the enormous history tome, he guessed it would be quite difficult, so better learn what he could before starting that one.
Not that he went through his books really fast, anyway. After school started, he could only read for an hour or an hour and a half each day, after dinner. Some of the books he had picked were written for children, a bit older than him in some cases but Harry's reading skills and understanding was up to it. The adult books, however, expected a basic understanding of magic and wizarding life that Harry did not yet have, so Harry had to rearrange the list. The novels, too: those actually contained much information; they didn't explain why some things were tradition, or how games were played but they provided a background to the entries in the encyclopaedia and the information in the other books.

He finished all his books but the last one before the end of the Christmas holiday, finishing 'The international community of Atlantis' on New Year's Day. He had now as many or more questions he had before visiting Diagon Alley, so he studied the owl order catalogue and decided to order 'Fantastic beast and where to find them', 'A parents guide to pre-Hogwarts schooling', 'The Dark lords of the 20th century' and 'The diary of Anne Grey'. The last one seemed a bit girlish, but it was a novel and it might tell him something about the life of a young witch in detail; it was a diary wasn't it. Should be a lot trust worthier than an adventure story, at the very least.
The ordering, as it turned out, wasn't all that difficult: you write a note to Flourish and Blott's on a special form provided in the catalogue, imprint it with your vault key to allow the withdrawal and send it by owl, the last being the most difficult for Harry to achieve. According to the Guide to Magical Italy, there was supposed to be a post office in downtown Turin where he should be able to rent an owl. In order to do so, though, he had to sneak out on a Saturday with enough money to take the bus, send the owl and go back again. And the owl delivering the books was almost seen by aunt Petunia: all considered it was not something he wanted to repeat again.

His learning of Italian language was going quite well, as his reading the wizarding books didn't bite into the time spent on learning Italian. After the summer holiday he had approached a group of children playing a couple streets down and now played with them often, providing him company and language lessons, not that he really considered them lessons once he had made the initial contact. First he would learn, then he would test himself on those children and afterwards he could play.
Even Harry, with the many disillusions he had to go trough at a young age, still was a child. He still had something of a children's ignorance, naïveté and innocence, still wasn't able to oversee more than the basic consequences of his actions. He had been forced to grow up faster than his age mates, but not that fast, not yet.

The conversations between his aunt and uncle about France turned out to be indeed about next year and their next destination. Vernon had first been offered a place in Berlin; however, Petunia had refused to go that close to the iron curtain so now they were going to Paris.
This time Petunia had decided that she would not live in a halfway packed house for half of the year again, though. Thus, she made plans to keep it simple: enrolled them in the international school of Paris, found a house; made sure that all was arranged and ready. All they had to do was pack in the last two weeks. By now they had plenty of experience, and not the same amount of things and decorative objects as they had left Britain with.
Even Dudley was supposed to help, being given 6 large boxes for his stuff, to pack whatever he could and leave everything else behind. Harry still didn't get how Dudley managed to fill the six whole boxes. He had two: one box for clothing, the other for his school stuff and linens. Dudley didn't even pack his school stuff. He expected to get new binders, new pencils and everything else. Not that Harry got a chance to have much, he just had the bare essentials, but he could not imagine needing more than three boxes.

Living in Paris, or at least the agglomeration around it, was quite different than the years before. Not that living in Amsterdam had been the same as living in Little Whinging or Turin. The house here was smaller than the one in Turin, meaning that Harry's room was quite small, with barely enough space for a bed with drawers and a board attached to the wall over the footboard of his bed to write on. And no guestroom this time, but since no one ever used that one, it didn't present any problems. Apparently, Aunt Marge did not want to visit them abroad, something which Harry didn't mind that at all. He hated her and her dogs.
While the house was smaller, you could definitely notice that Paris itself was big, or at least the boys did. The international school took them on several excursions to museums and into the historical centre. On one of those excursions, Harry even felt the same kind of tingling that Diagon Alley had produced. It took some thinking before he could place the feeling, though, since he had not been consciously aware of it back then. But they had been somewhere near the location of where the Rue Magique was supposed to be, as far as he could correlate some time later.

Since they had moved in March, again, they had not much left of the year at their new school. But the school definitely was bigger and therefore had more possibilities that than one in Turin. They gave a name to Harry's much praised learning talent before the summer holidays; 'eidetic memory' so they could move him into an advanced learners project. Here he took some extra and more in depth classes with some other children of different ages. Combined with his head start in French because of the classes in French he had had the years before, he settled in a lot better. Dudley, on the other hand, was starting to resent the constant moving and almost demanded to be able to finish at least next school year at this school, now he never had a chance at making friends. Actually, he rather wanted to move back to Turin, there he had had friends who joined in the only pastime that had always been open to him; bullying Harry. Not that they had such great opportunities but they liked to try, and otherwise there were enough other subjects. Here in Paris he had the same trouble as in Amsterdam; no one who understood him would join him in this past time. Maybe this time he would learn enough of the language to say more than a couple of words.

The end of year report card scene was this year even worse than the last ones: the perfect grades, 'eidetic memory' and advanced learners project were received with a lot of yelling and a couple of lashes. Before the Dursleys had been notified but had to ignore it, with plenty of nurses and watchful teachers at the school; now, however, they would not do so anymore. He ended up being locked in for a whole month; since he already had finished reading the books he had received by owl he read the enormous tome on history and the dictionary. A year after his visit to Diagon Alley, he had quite an understanding of the magical world and life, at least in Britain. He had his doubts about some places though; Atlantis did seem very different while most West-European seemed to be very much like Britain. The education in those countries was almost the same as well; they each had a speciality and different tests, not counting the sometimes returning ISWT's, but nothing really different. And while he had never seen a quiddich game of a chocolate frog card he knew what they were.
When he was let out of his room, Aunt Petunia had a full load waiting for him; so much that he spent three whole days doing chores. The fourth day, finally being free to come and go as he pleased, he executed his planned trip to the Rue Magique.

The Rue Magique had quite a different personality than Diagon Alley: it was calm and harmonic were Diagon Alley had been a cacophony of sound, colour and movement. There were no street vendors, the white marble Gringotts building looking less out of place and was even bigger than it had been in London. But it still was Gringotts, run by goblins, with many counters to help the customers and a queue of waiting people. When it was his turn he asked his prepared sentence in careful French; 'I wish to withdraw money from my vault in London,' which seemed to be no problem at all; he had to imprint his key like an owl order, write down the amount of galleons and the teller took the paper, checking if it had accepted the amount before giving him his galleons in exchange. And with a smile and 'thank you' he left again, while the goblin made a quick note for the goblins in London.

The bookshop proved to be interesting again, even if he wasn't near fluent in French. He picked up some new novels, a book on the modern French magical history (which covered almost none of the events the British had covered), one on the position of the muggleborn through the ages, a wizarding etiquette manual and an English-French dictionary. This store had quite an extensive society section, something Flourish and Blott's definitely didn't have. The kinds of books his father had been sending him for his birthday were sold here, while he hadn't seen any in Flourish & Blott's.

The next day was his 8th birthday, with new letters from his parents. This time his mother had picked muggle books as subject, talking about her favourite books when she was young, while his father told him about the heads of houses, about being one himself, about the wizengamot, and some more prank stories: apparently he and his friends had pranked a lot.
The last paragraph was not on pranking though, he told about the time the letters were written, about them going in hiding, the research his mother had done, Peter or Wormtail being appointed secret keeper, and it didn't add up with the story he read in 'Modern magical history.' Why would they have locked up Sirius Black if Peter Pettigrew had been the secret keeper? But he did not have enough facts to base any theories on, nor did he think about the possibility of Sirius never having had a trial. And due him having very little experience with trusting adults he decided against sending an inquiring letter to the authorities or ministry. So he just ignored it for now, instead paying attention to the books his father had sent: 'Tips and tricks for beginning lords' and 'The complete set of rituals, greetings, alliances and traditions associated with the Potter Lordship' written by his great-grandfather William Potter. By now it was very obvious that his father expected him to become Lord Potter, that he was being taught how to be a lord later, even with no one to teach him. Well, his father hadn't expected that of course, he had mentioned tutors and people helping him with the difficult books, but there was no one there so Harry did it by himself. He studied the books diligently, trying some of the methods for dealing with people mentioned, applying the things from the etiquette manual as well. And while that raised some eyebrows, it did seem to work, and even the Dursleys could be manipulated a bit with it.

And of course, he continued his study in French for the summer, so that his parents would be proud and he might read the French books. He started reading in the etiquette book first of his new French ones, being the one that went well with the books his father had sent, but it still required loads of dictionary work.
He visited the library and played with some children, which had become more difficult since Dudley was getting older as well; he now had to search friends a little farther from home.
The garden here was not that much, so he had to do almost no gardening here. That didn't diminish his chores though. His aunt had decided that he was old enough to cook dinner, so she would point out a dish in a cookbook, kookboek, libro di cucina or livre de cuisine, and expect him to prepare it for that evening. The French recipes' proving to be the most difficult since his French wasn't up to it yet. Not that his aunt could read them mind you, she managed to talk a bit in French since she had studied that in her youth and spoke some words Dutch and Italian. Nor was she such a great cook. So Harry did the best he could, applied the precise methods he first had learned when packing and studying and usually produced something edible and improved over time.

Starting 4th grade didn't change much for Harry; he studied hard, chose Spanish as his third language now that French had become his 2nd, read in the school library during the lunch break and played during recess. After school he still played with the French children in the playground near the library, where he spent his time reading and learning French. Cooking had become one of his daily chores on his list of chores. Over time his aunt let him use the cookbooks less and less, forcing him to learn which spices went with what other things, how to improvise and to adapt the recipes to his family's tastes. All in all he became a good cook, far better than his aunt had ever been.
Petunia even had him making Christmas dinner later in the year since he, by then, could do better than she could.

He ran out of magical material to read somewhere late November, and he got his aunt to sign a permission slip for the library so he could return to reading muggle books, still practicing the skills the had learned; etiquette, developing his talents, and of course making sure he had memorised all of his books. The school library even had some of his mother's favourites and of course many books in French, some in Italian and Dutch as well. He read some of those as well, just to keep his skill.

Vernon Dursley did not seem to be much appreciated: the only sister company who did not want him to leave after a year had been Turin, the others making ridiculous complains about an 'attitude problem' of his. So he was given one last chance: he should impress in Madrid and stay there for two years or more. Otherwise they would get him back in Britain, with a simple desk job and a lot less pay. So the moving circus was put into motion again. Getting a house, signing up for a new school which by now was a bit more trouble than last time; both Harry and Dudley had to write essays about themselves and what they had learned in the past year. They would move in early August, giving them a month to pack all the stuff after school had finished. So plans were made for this new schedule and Dudley would go to the summer camp Spanish program to give him a head start, not that he appreciated once he heard what it actually was. He had wanted it because one of his friends was going to do it; he never knew what he was asking for.

During the Easter holiday Harry made some new selections in his owl order catalogue, this time broadening his fields of study since the parental guide had mentioned a basic understanding of some other aspects as well.
So he visited Rue Magique one last time, owl ordering 'Magical Theory', 'The properties of potion ingredients', 'Brewing techniques explained', 'One thousand magical herbs and fungi', 'Latin, the first steps' and the 'English-Latin' dictionary, hoping that his aunt wouldn't see the owl bringing them. After that he spent some time selecting their French counterparts; Magical Theory, Potion ingredients manual and the magical plants encyclopaedia, wondering if those fields would show big differences like history did.
With those additions to his little library, Harry decided that it would be useful to sort out his books in categories; reference books, history, potions & herbology, society, novels and miscellaneous, besides one shelf for the schoolbooks he would need in a couple of years. He wrote down the titles of all his books sorted by shelf and glued that to the lid: now he could easily see if he had a book and where. He did save some of his new books for the summer hols: the Latin ones and the ones on potions. He worked through the magical theory, being exactly the same in both languages, just explained differently, and because it was explained different it was a lot easier to understand. Not that Harry had much problems understanding it, he had inherited his parents' intuitive grasp of magic.
The books on plants were quite different in the two languages though; the French encyclopaedia had more plants with a bit less detailed information, the British 'thousand herbs' had more details, it just had less plants.

And with his progress in these books, the year's end neared, goodbyes, some mild scenes about his report card but since he had to help with the packing he only spent a week locked away. His birthday was in the middle of their busy packing scheme, with on the 31st itself no spare time, even more chores and packing as only acknowledgement by the Dursleys. So he stayed up late that night, reading his parents Birthday wishes, stories from their youths and their time at Hogwarts. His mother listed her favourite subjects at school; charms, arithmancy and runes, laced with many examples and anecdotes. She also advised him not to pick divination as an elective, as it was useless.
A bit early but an early warning is better than no warning at all. She even remarked that, and Harry loved her for the detail.
His father's letter this year told him about the possibility to claim the lordship at his 11th birthday if he had been accepted in a magical school, but he advised to wait until he was seventeen so that he could make his own decisions instead of being lord in only name. And the book added this year was on underage magic restrictions with the comment; 'Find the loopholes son'. That would have to wait until after they had settled in Madrid, though.

With the temperatures around the 40 ˚C it was hot in Madrid, when they arrived in early August, far too warm to unpack the boxes in the maddened tempo aunt Petunia demanded. Luckily, the temperatures dropped in the evenings, cooling down the house and its new inhabitants. By the end of the week all of them were irritated and tired. Turin had known its hot days but the average summer temperature had been in the high twenty's, maybe low thirties. Nor had they moved in the warmest period. So Petunia revised the unpacking schedule, allowing more time. But Harry, the one doing the most, had to pick up the slack every day. He could almost say it was slave labour. And he didn't have any time to himself in the first several days, after which only Dudley had any packed stuff left.

The rest of the summer was spent with chores; anything Petunia could think of, while the spare moments he had were spent in the nearest library and in his room with the magical books he hadn't read yet. His room here was almost back to Turin size; definitely an improvement on Paris. If they had moved here directly from Britain he probably would have ended in the cupboard that this house had: for the first time since Britain they lived in a house with a cupboard. But by now the Dursleys didn't dare anymore, nor did Dudley require a 2nd bedroom: even with him having the most junk of the whole family, it was nothing compared to what it could have been without moving since neither was he allowed to take his broken toys with him, nor did he get as much presents.

To Harry the new school was a bit of a disappointment: he had really enjoyed the extra programme he was offered in Paris and wasn't here. The school was a lot smaller, with fewer options when dealing with special needs, either under or above average. He now was allowed to study things on his own, using the school library after finishing his normal work, but that could not add up to what Paris had offered. He changed his B or 3rd language back to French, although if given a year more in Paris he probably would have been able to get it up to native speaker level, which was an A language.
This move proved to be one to many in the library sense as well, his aunt actually looked at the permission form that would have allowed him to take books home from school. And well, you would not expect her to sign that for him, would you? So he now spent his evenings trying his memory, seeing if he could recite his magical books from memory. Randomly checking himself against the books, looking up the pieces he didn't remember perfectly. Or reading the Latin dictionary, especially paying attention to the phonetic script since that was actually what he needed for magic.
But his aunt could not deny him access to the school library; he would read in the long lunch break, opting to stay at school and spend his 'siesta' that way. The recess he usually played with some classmates, but if Dudley was too much of a bother he would retreat to the library then as well.

In October he made a visit into town. The local Diagon Alley, Paseo de los Jardines, was easily reached by public transport. There are enough busses going to the hospital, and the park in which the entrance was located was right in front of a big one. Finding the actual entrance did take a bit of wandering around, trying to sense that tingling his 'magic sense' could pick up. He spent the afternoon looking around a bit, but his Spanish wasn't that good yet, he had not even approached Spanish children in the library area to play with. He did not expect to find many useful books either, and those he did manage to find he would have to read with loads of dictionary help. But he did pick up some books; a dictionary, some novels, a book on magical items and devices and magical history of the 19th and 20th century. Those would keep him busy for a couple of months.

The Dursleys would spend Christmas in Britain, having found the parents of one of Harry's friends willing to let him stay over for the holiday. And Harry didn't mind at all, spending two weeks at Aunt Marge's wasn't his idea of a nice holiday. He got to spent lots of time playing with Niels, impressing Niels' mother by volunteering to do the dishes, and doing it with practiced ease. It did give him a look into 'normal life', life how it might have been with loving parents or guardians. He was definitely looking forward to going to Hogwarts, finally leaving the Dursleys. Getting a wand, learning to do actual magic, living in a boarding school. Having money would be a nice bonus, too.
He hoped that because he had skipped a grade his letter would somehow be a year early. He did not really expect it to happen though. Nor did the Dursleys show any signs of expecting it; he was to follow the middle year's program at his current school in their eyes. Not that they would ever acknowledge magic if they didn't have to. Harry fully expected them to take his letter, if they ever found it. They would not pay, help or give permission to go. Hopefully someone would come to explain it all to him, being muggle raised and all. Or he could ask for help, use that stupid boy-who-lived name he had read in recent magical history.

Edited by Nachoman1, a.k.a. Ignacio Ramírez