On receiving his class timetable the next morning, Harry frowned at it. There was a distinct lack as regards to certain subjects that he would have expected from an educational establishment. Now, granted, there hadn't been anything in his letter to indicate that such courses would be offered... All the same, he was mildly frustrated that they weren't.
In which case, he supposed, it was just as well that he'd listened to Professor Loki's advice and bought a number of second-hand text books on his venture through Portobello Road. He would work his way through each of them after he finished whatever homework was assigned in his classes.
Classes which, really, weren't that hard. Herbology was little more than gardening with a different selection of plants, Astrology was really nothing more than memorising star-charts and the shifts that came with the seasons, History of Magic was best spent with earplugs in and working on homework or reading a text ordered from Italy (again on Professor Loki's advice), and Defence Against the Dark Arts was currently basic defensive spells, little things that might allow the person casting them to get away faster. Charms and Transfiguration were fairly theory-heavy at the moment, but with the promise of practical lessons later in the term. Potions...
Harry quickly saw what the woman in the apothecary had meant about the professor, and was glad that his upbringing (cooking for the Dursleys every day just about from the moment he could stand up without having to be held up) and his own personal needs (cooking for himself when he finally escaped them) had seen to his knowing a little bit more than just the basics.
Still, he hadn't known the answers to the questions Professor Snape had sprung on him beyond the one about the beozar. It's ability to counter most poisons meant it also got used in a few healing potions that he'd concocted prior to arriving at Hogwarts.
"Clearly, fame isn't everything," Snape had stated with a sneer.
"If I could not be famous, Sir, I would much prefer it," Harry had answered seriously.
An answer which seemed to surprise the man, though he hadn't done more than twitch one eyebrow in response. Harry figured that was his way of communicating an incredulous "Indeed?" but without speaking.
Still, he got on well enough, and paired with Dean who, owing to having younger half-siblings, had some experience of helping his mother in the kitchen. It wasn't quite potion making, but Dean knew how to stir the cauldron while Harry did the chopping, slicing, dicing, paring, measuring, and adding. Essentially everything else. Dean did the stirring and the double-checking, but Harry did the rest.
They had a pretty good potion to hand in at the end of the lesson as well. More than could be said for Ron Weasley where he was working with Seamus Finnegan. Their potion had burped a half-hour in and turned grey before hardening in the cauldron. Complete failure. Neville Longbottom had almost caused an explosion, but Hermione (who he'd been partnered with) had caught the near-error and saved their potion.
As promised, the twins showed Harry down to where the kitchens were on Sunday, and explained along the way about the elves that lived and worked there – and that he was not to insult them, as it was the elves who always provided the supplies for any parties that were thrown in the common room.
~oOo~
Halloween was... well, when Quirrell had burst in on the evening feast yelling about a troll, Harry's faith in the supposedly safest place in Britain (apart from Gingotts) took a nose dive. And he hadn't exactly had a mountain of it to begin with. Being ordered to leave the safety of the Great Hall to wander the corridors to get to common rooms... well, Harry was just glad that they had all made it to their common rooms.
Hermione had tried to get Harry interested in investigating what a troll was doing in the castle, but Harry had flatly refused to become involved. He'd accidentally killed an evil man as a child, yes, but that did not make him a Hero (capital letter and all), as they had a propensity for getting themselves unnecessarily killed. He had little to no faith in authority figures, granted, but he also knew that cleaning up that sort of mess was their job, and not his.
Hermione had pouted for a while, but let the matter go and returned to her homework.
When the Christmas holidays rolled around, Harry was content to pack up his trunk and accept Hermione's invitation to spend the first night of the holidays at her house. The Weasley twins (and their two other brothers still in schooling) were remaining at Hogwarts for the holidays as their parents and younger sister were going to Romania for the holiday, Lee had chosen to stay as well, and Dean had suggested Harry might prefer to visit him during the summer break, when things wouldn't be so frantic about the coming of Santa and such. He had a couple of younger half-siblings after all, and they'd be all mad fired up about presents.
Harry was only going to stay with Hermione and her parents for one night though. He was a free and independent individual now, and after living for a month on his own in an English field, and then with lots of other people in a Scottish castle, Harry wanted to see more of the world.
From the Granger's house, Harry would be able to make travel arrangements.
"What are your plans Harry?" Hermione asked while the group of friends were sat around their chosen table, playing a card game. Just normal cards though, rather than with an Exploding Snap deck. They'd been discussing holiday plans already, so it was hardly out of line with the conversation. "After your over-night stay with me, I mean."
"Let me grab an atlas," he excused himself quickly, and dashed up to his dorm to get the book from his bag, as well as the match he'd been practising transfiguring with. The match-to-needle lesson was not the most recent one from McGonagall, but he was working on making it a different sort of needle or progressively more elaborate pins, working on his creativity.
He set the book down, closed, transfigured the match into a small dart rather than a needle or pin – on a side note, he was rather pleased with how it came out – and with a grin, opened the book to a random page before throwing the dart. Not even looking where he threw it.
"I guess I'm going to Brazil," Harry answered with a smile. The idea appealed to him, and he wondered absently if that python from the zoo had ever made it. Probably not.
"Harry!" Hermione objected, wide-eyed. "You can't just decide where to go to like that!"
Harry smiled serenely at the girl. "But I just did," he pointed out.
Hermione's response to this was to look like she was ready to blow her top. "You have no idea about what sort of safety considerations you will need to make for such a place," she started. "You don't speak the language, or know anything about the culture, or- or- or anything!"
Harry chuckled. "But that's why I'm going," he said easily. "To learn those sorts of things. Eventually I hope to see the whole world. What does it matter where I go first?" he asked.
"Really Hermione," Lee said kindly, laying a hand on the young witch's shoulder. "I'm sure Harry will be fine."
"But there are diseases he could catch! He could be robbed! Murdered!" Hermione objected.
"Wizards don't get muggle diseases Granger," Fred (or possibly George) said.
"Our magic just... stops 'em before they can get hold," George (we'll go with that until proven otherwise) added.
"A real nice perk," Lee added with a grin.
"Oh," Hermione said softly, stunned a moment. It didn't take her long to rally though. "That still leaves the possibility of being mugged and murdered though!" she rallied.
"Oi," Dean said, a frown on his face as he turned to Harry. "I thought you said you'd made a potion to boost your immune system so you wouldn't get sick as easy."
Harry nodded. "It's a rare one," he admitted. "Generally used on magical children who have a weaker disposition. Our magic can fight off muggle illnesses, but it still wears us out a bit. You see a wizard or witch who's feeling tired or sluggish or taking more naps than usual, they could be fighting off anything from a cold to the plague. But the energy for the magic to fight off the illness has to come from somewhere. If I've got a better immune system in the first place, then my magic won't have to work so hard."
"Didn't know that," Fred and George admitted as Dean and Hermione both made "Oh" sounds of understanding.
And then Hermione got back to berating Harry for not taking the dangers of travelling seriously enough. Harry just smiled through it all though, and when she demanded to know if he even had a passport, Harry was happy to produce one. He'd been planning on travelling the world since October, so he was ready in that department at least.
~oOo~
He'd started in the Amazon. Took a canoe down the Amazon River, in fact, and got to speak with many interesting people (and more than a few interesting snakes) as he travelled slowly down one of the longest rivers in the world. Once he'd hit the ocean, he'd skipped over to Bahia (which had been fun), moved on to enjoy Christmas Eve and Day in Rio (as well as a few other surrounding days), and now he was in Sao Paulo for the New Year before he'd have to head back to the chill of Scotland in winter.
"Mr Potter," a cool, cultured, and most interestingly of all, British-accented voice greeted with a hint of surprise.
Harry turned from his breakfast (some local delicacy he wasn't sure he dared question the contents of, but it was good and it didn't weigh on his stomach the way Hogwarts fare had done), and was surprised to see Professor Loki standing there. In black skinny jeans and a loose green collared shirt (top two buttons undone, and with short sleeves in deference to the heat). It was really quite a different look for the man.
"Professor," he greeted in return, a smile on his face. "What a pleasant surprise. Would you care to join me for breakfast?" he offered with a gesture towards the free chair that was propped up at the table he'd chosen.
Loki lowered himself onto the white-pained wrought-iron chair.
"You are looking healthier than the last time we shared a meal at a street vendor's stall," Loki noted with a smile after the waiter took his order and left them. "Though I must say, I am surprised to see you all the way out here."
Harry smiled in non-answer. After all, Professor Loki hadn't asked him a question yet.
A smile spread over Loki's face when he realised what Harry was doing. "Smart lad," he approved softly. "If I were to ask you, Mr Potter, would you tell me how you come to be in Brazil?"
"I might," Harry agreed with a nod. "It might be a smart-arse answer though," he warned happily.
Loki's smile stretched a little wider in approval. "Good lad," he praised. "No professor has any right to any answers from you out of term unless they pertain directly to your schooling."
"Professor Loki, if you're warning me about the Headmaster's possible motives as regards to my property and person, you did that quite successfully the day we met," Harry said lightly.
Loki chuckled. "You've an adult tongue in your head," he informed the eleven-year-old with amusement and veiled approval.
Harry stuck it out childishly.
Loki only laughed a little louder, and then his order was brought out. The same whatever-it-was that Harry had ordered. "Then I'll ask an academic question," Loki suggested as he separated a mouthful-worth from the rest of the dish. "How are you getting on with the languages?" he asked, before scooping up the portion from his plate and closing his mouth over it.
Harry nodded absently. "I'm getting on fairly well I think," he said. "I bought a primer and a bi-lingual dictionary before I left England, studied them on the plane flight over," he offered.
Loki nodded in approval. Translation charms were all very well, but they were also cheating, to an extent, and were not actually any good for learning languages.
The rest of the breakfast was companionable, but they parted ways when they had both finished eating. They'd be back at Hogwarts soon enough, so it wasn't like they weren't ever going to see each other again, even if Harry wasn't old enough to be in Loki's class yet.
Later that day, Harry stopped briefly to join the crowd as they stood well back and watched as a hospital burned. Harry didn't know that Loki also stood at the back of another part of the crowd and, with an inscrutable expression on his face, kept his eyes locked on a woman with red hair, rather than the raging fire that matched it.
~oOo~
There was a small pile of gifts waiting for Harry on his assigned four-posted bed when he returned, lightly tanned, from his holiday. Mostly sweets, but Hermione had sent him a book. He'd sent his friends interesting trinkets that he'd found in Brazil. Apart from the book and the large pile of various types of lollies and chocolates, there were two other packages. A carved wooden flute from Hagrid was inside one, and the other didn't list who it was from, save that whatever-it-was had been left in this person's care by Harry's dad.
Harry narrowed his eyes at that, checked the package with the glasses that spotted jinxes, and unwrapped the package when he was assured that there weren't any.
It was a cloak.
Harry swapped his glasses again, this time for the pair that could see tracking spells and frowned to see that the cloak was playing host to three of the things. He didn't know how to remove tracking spells himself. It hadn't been covered in class, and he hadn't directed his personal studies in that direction yet. The goblins knew how though. They'd removed all those spells from him before term, after all. Taking the cloak to them would be something to do when the next holiday rolled around.
If he hadn't learned on his own by then.
Apart from that, Harry was careful to separate the sweets that Dean had given him from the pile that came courtesy of the practical-joking third years – no, Lee wasn't as bad as the twins, and he certainly wasn't as creative, but he'd have a go if he saw an opportunity. Any foodstuffs from them would be shared, rather than simply indulged in.
Just in case.
The rest of the school year passed fairly uneventfully. Neville joined the group of friends for study since he was always Hermione's partner in Potions class – she'd been trying to get him to join them since the very first Potions class, but it was only after Christmas that he caved and joined them – but that was really the only change.
And Quirrell disappeared the week of the exams, shortly after Hagrid was discovered keeping a young dragon in his wooden hut – its tail had been seen sticking out the window, and Harry had personally thought the large man had done very well to keep his wooden hut from catching fire and going up like a torch. But nothing else all that remarkable happened with the year.
Well, apart from the news in The Daily Prophet that a six-hundred-plus couple were finally writing their wills since their Philosopher's Stone had been destroyed, and that the stone had been made in an accident anyway, one unlikely to ever be replicated, so they couldn't make another one.
~oOo~
If Hermione had known where his carelessly thrown dart had landed on the randomly opened atlas this time, she would have had a fit. Harry was in Afghanistan. Not much of a holiday spot, granted, but he'd bought himself a camel (didn't need a license to drive one of those after all, and he could re-sell it before leaving the country), and he and Sif had headed off into the desert. Though, granted, not before Harry was certain he'd at least partially mastered the spell that would condense water out of the air, so he didn't have to worry about running out of water in the desert.
About three weeks into his desert wanderings – which he'd personally really enjoyed, and he was fairly sure Sif had too – he saw some big explosion a few dunes away and something being spat out in roughly his direction.
Whatever it was, it hadn't blown up on impact, and Harry decided to investigate. After all, it could have been something interesting or valuable that had been lifted high and flung out by the explosion.
What it turned out to be was a person. An injured person in the remains of plate armour and a mess of wires.
"The crusaders could have told you that plate armour in the desert doesn't work out so well," Harry joked to the man as he helped get the debris off him and pull him out of the sand.
"Who are you?" the man asked.
"Harry, pleased to meet you Mr...?"
The man blinked. "Tony Stark," he answered, a little bewildered.
Harry smiled. "Well, at least you can remember your own name after a crash landing like that," he said, "and it's probably thanks to the sand here being so soft, even if it's causing problems now."
"Probably right kid," Tony Stark agreed.
"Harry, not 'kid'," Harry said firmly as he helped the grown man to his feet. "How'd you get out here?"
"Kidnapped by, and only just escaped from, a pack of terrorists," Tony answered. There was an unhappy snarl on his face that wasn't directed at Harry when he said that.
"Sorry I asked," Harry said, and walked over to where he'd had the camel sit down and grabbed the water bottle that, really, he only had strapped there because it came with the camel. A bonus for paying in cash. Still, he'd kept it full. "Here you go Mr Stark," he offered as he returned with it, and held it out to the man. "Being blown up probably left you thirsty."
"Blown up? I wasn't blown up!"
"So that big ka-boom I saw you being propelled out of wasn't an explosion?" Harry countered dryly, still holding out the water bottle.
"Smart-ass kid," Tony grumbled. "Thanks," he added as he accepted the water. That was definitely a sigh of grateful relief when he finally lowered it from his mouth. "Don't suppose you know which way it is from here to the closest thing resembling civilisation?" he asked hopefully. "I'd settle for tagging along with your caravan or whatever until we hit a city."
Harry chuckled. "No caravan Mr Stark," he answered. "Just me, the camel, and Sif."
"Sif?" Tony asked.
Harry pointed to where Sif was perched, hooded for now, on the saddle horn.
"Oh."
Harry chuckled. "Come on Mr Stark," he urged. "I've been travelling north since my holiday started. We just turn around and head south. I only passed through a town three days ago."
Actually, he'd seen Professor Loki there too. They'd shared a plate of candied locusts and exchanged reviews of their holiday reading so far. A very pleasant conversation really.
Tony sighed gratefully. "Thank you," he said sincerely, and let Harry help him onto the back of the camel's saddle.
For the three days they travelled together, Harry learned about Tony Stark – and why the man had been so surprised that Harry hadn't heard of him – and Tony Stark learned about Harry... and just why Harry hadn't heard of him. Tony got to spend three days being impressed by Harry's ability to take care of himself as well. Well, himself, two animals, and a recently not-a-hostage-any-more billionaire.
Sif brought in small game that Harry (and it had to be Harry, Tony had learned that Sif did not like him, but while she was hooded she pretended that he wasn't there) accepted from her, then skinned, gutted, and cooked over an open fire which he made himself with just a bit of rock and that odd knife of his that he wouldn't let Tony touch. Harry would also stop at seemingly random and dig up something that got added to the fire in the evenings and proved to be very tasty. And somehow, there was always firewood. Slightly more impressive was that the water never ran out. Tony wasn't sure if that was because Harry rationed it really well, or if he went to find water in the night while Tony was sleeping, or what, but... it didn't run out.
"I owe you Harry," Tony informed the boy as the town came into sight. "I owe you big."
"Write to me," Harry answered with a smile. "Even if it's complicated science stuff that I probably won't understand, write to me anyway."
One of the first things to happen to him as a result of getting... purged of all the spells on him by the goblins was that he'd suddenly gotten a lot of mail. Eleven years worth of mail, in point of fact. It had taken a while, but he'd gotten it all sorted through and answered and now he didn't get fan mail any more (thank goodness). But still, actually getting mail was something to be enjoyed when it happened.
"You have a P/O box or something?" Tony asked. "You said your boarding school wasn't on the grid. I'm not sure I believe that, but..."
Harry nodded. "If it makes you feel better, I didn't believe it either until I got there," he offered with a slightly resigned smile. "When we find somewhere with paper and pen, I'll write the mailing address down for you," he said.
Tony nodded in agreement.
Harry urged his camel to pick up the pace for the home-stretch. The animal could smell the water of the wells already. It didn't need much encouragement.