The following weeks were of a very similar manner, the school week going by with Harry and Kelsi meeting up during the free periods they had nothing to do during and the pair would work on the songs for the musical and Kelsi would teach Harry how to sing. On the weekends, Harry would spend one of the two days of the weekend at Kelsi's house doing more of the same as well as her giving him some beginner lessons on the acoustic guitar. He was picking it up very quickly surprisingly and Kelsi was running out of advice to help his voice sound better. Kelsi loved having someone around to help her out on the music for the winter musical. She had been on her own and without any close friends for a few years since her best friend moved out of town a couple years before getting into high school.
Before Harry came along, she couldn't fully relax and enjoy what she was writing. She did to a certain extent overall because she had to feel it to really get the songs the best they could be. However, with Harry getting a better understanding of music the longer he was around Kelsi, Kelsi was able to close her eyes and let the music and chords flow over her while Harry sang through what they had written to that point. It was also really helpful for when she had to write the duets or a song for the male lead because he was able to sing it for her or with her.
The song Kelsi enjoyed singing the most with him was "What I Was Looking For". It was the song the two of them had started working on first and every time they had gone through Kelsi found herself watching Harry out of the corner of her eye throughout the song until she caught herself and made herself look back at the sheet music. It felt like the song had written itself as a note from her to him. He had been around so often with her siblings, playing and laughing with them, helping her mom cook, helping her with the songs she was writing...he fit so many if the things she really was looking for in a guy. While he may not have always been around, it felt like she had known him all her life. It was easy to talk to him and she didn't feel as shy when interacting with him.
School continued on as it had been, but Harry had begun to mingle more. He was still kind of in that outsider group so he could pop up in different circles and not seem too out of place. One of the friends he made that surprised Kelsi though was Zeke. It turns out that Zeke was also a huge fan of baking and the two traded some tips and tricks they had learned, though that mostly happened outside of school since Zeke wasn't sure how his friends would react. Troy was another of the 'jocks' that warmed up to Harry easily enough and accepted him to the table with little trouble or question when Zeke introduced him to the table. Harry even tried his hand at basketball, surprisingly the newly made friendships lasted even that horrendous experience.
Sharpay had started backing off on critiquing Harry's fashion choice as he slowly better understood what she was paying attention to. Mostly he could wear what he wanted to as long as he followed some very specific guidelines on what went with what. Ryan had even offered some of his older hats that he didn't wear anymore for Harry to try sometimes. It didn't happen often, but there were a few times a hat just seemed to work with the clothes he chose for the day. Magical classes were also going smoothly with Harry having little trouble keeping up with the lessons he was being sent. Though there had been a couple close calls with one of the Evans family members who just so happen to have walked in just as he was coming back out of the pensieve. Overall things were going very well for Harry.
Kelsi noticed, she had decided that since Harry was getting so good at playing the guitar and singing that she would sign him up to do a set at an open mic event that happened annually a little ways off the beaten path in terms of who all knows about it, but she thought it would be a perfect place for Harry to try out singing in front of other people than just her and her family. Kelsi and the host had been friends for quite a few years after her parents did something similar to her and more or less threw her onto the stage despite her stage fright. She loved it halfway into it and had never looked back since.
She shot an email to her friend who put everything together for it and told him she had a new recruit for the schedule. After pressing send, she sat back and thought about what songs Harry could do for it. He had recently taken to listening to the Lumineers, Gavin DeGraw, Bruno Mars, some Paramore, The Script and a few others recently and there were some great, very well known songs sung by them. Her mind ran through ones she knew from them and then her thoughts jumped to a different track and sat forward. Harry had just introduced her to a band he had found recently and she loved a song that they did, it was a duet and while Harry could really sing out on the higher notes as a tenor, "Barton Hollow" by The Civil Wars really showcased his baritone and bass range. The other good thing about the song is she figured that she would have an easier time convincing Harry to get on the stage with her if it was her asking him to help her sing a duet for the open mic event.
Her email dinged as a new message appeared and she clicked into her friend's response that said he had a spot saved for him and then asked if she would like one also. She replied with her plans of just doing a duet with her friend though she said she was open to do another song if people were being shy. She sent off her reply and moved over to mark the date of the event on her calendar. It was usually held a couple weeks before Christmas so hopefully the Evans family didn't have plans to go out of town.
She sent a text to Harry asking if he knew whether his family had plans to go anywhere for Christmas. A few moments later he sends a reply saying that they were not since he had friends coming in from London to visit him for the holidays. He asked if her family was planning to and she quickly sent back that they were not and that she hoped to meet his friends when they came in. The pair sent texts back and forth for a couple more hours before retiring to bed for the night.
Time passed quickly, Harry thankfully didn't have any terrible or life and death situations on Halloween other than trying to survive the costume Sharpay had more or less forced him to wear so that he could match with the theme her and Ryan had decided on: Witches and Wizards. Harry was quick to send off a penseive memory to his friends so that they could enjoy what the non-magical people thought were what witches and wizards looked like. Though from some people he had seen in the magical world…maybe they weren't too far off. Christmas break was upon the students at West High before they hardly even realized it. Kelsi and Harry had begun practicing the song Kelsi wanted them to do for the duet at the open mic as well as a couple of the other duets by the Civil Wars and Harry had invited his friends to come with them. He also explained that one of his friends, Ron, was a little on the slow side at times and might make a big deal about something random or common. Ron, Hermione, and Ginny were the ones who were coming to visit with Hermione's parents coming as chaperones rather than the Weasley family since the Evans family and those around Harry right now weren't supposed to know about magic. Out of his three friends, Ron was going to be the most worrisome since half the time he couldn't control what he said, and the other half of the time, he was simply to lazy to think about what he would say next, hence most of his fights with Hermione. Ginny had been dating Dean last year so she should know a little bit more about a 'muggle' lifestyle since his mother raised him outside of the magical world.
Harry did have to put up with more than a few extra shopping trips than usual since it was break and they twins didn't have to wait for the weekend to do any shopping, but he had slowly begun to enjoy it a little more, not much, but he could now mostly tolerate it since he halfway knew what he was supposed to be looking for. Most of the time though, Harry was able to slip out and go hang out at Kelsi's or Zeke's house. While at Kelsie's they would either be working on the winter musical, which the twins knew about now, or the duet the pair would be doing. While he was at Zeke's house he was usually baking or playing some video games.
They had reached the week of the open mic, which was scheduled for a Friday, and Harry's friends arrived in town and checked into a hotel nearby on the Tuesday before and after taking the rest of the day to adjust and catch up on sleep from the jet lag, they met up with Harry for lunch on Wednesday. Harry had been given a ride with the Evans to a restaurant after they had stopped to pick up Kelsi from her house. Harry had barely made it through the doors of the restaurant before a pair of red and brown haired young ladies flew into him, followed leisurely by a red haired young man. The two near tackles nearly knocked the wind out of him. A huge grin split out across his face and he returned the crushing hug from Hermione and Ginny and nodded with a happy smile to Ron.
"It's so good to see you three again. It feels like ages!" Harry said as well as he could with the limited amount of breathing he could manage from the pair of hugs. He gave a friendly nod to Mr. and Mrs. Granger as they walked up behind Ron. Harry gave a half chuckle before patting the two girls on the back and moving backwards slightly to end the hug. As they let go, Harry moved to shake Ron and Mr. and Mrs. Granger's hands in greeting. "Mr. and Mrs. Granger, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, this is my family," Pointing to each as he introduced them. "And this is my friend Kelsi Nielson. Everybody, this is Hermione, Ron, and Ginny with Hermione's parents there behind them. Ron is Ginny's older sister, and the three of them were my first friends. We all met at the private school I started attending when I was 11 in Scotland."
Kelsi gave him a strange look, as did Ryan and Sharpay, though after a few moments their faces cleared once again but there was still some contemplation that each of them were taking part in. Ryan and Sharpay had talked with Harry about school but thought he had been homeschooled the whole time, though they had heard of some homeschool students getting together once or twice a week to have other friends who were also homeschooling, but Harry had never mentioned it before when they talked. Kelsi on the other hand was worried about the statement "First friends" in conjunction to him being 11 years old when he gained his "first friends." Little did she know, that would come to her mind multiple times throughout the night. The three shared questioning looks between the three of them and shrugged in curiosity since none of them had heard any of those things from Harry before, each resolving to talk with him about it at a later time.
Dinner passed easily without the Statute of Secrecy being broken by Ron, and great conversation to be had by all. While the three young wizards that had come to visit Harry didn't quite live up to the dress standards usually held by the Evans twins, Ryan and Sharpay were very easy going and engaging in conversation, asking questions about England and the private school they attended. Someone had miraculously tamed Ron some to where he was semi-respectable while eating at the table, Harry wondered if he needed to check his first best friend for the imperious curse from one of the girls because of how well mannered he was acting. Maybe Hermione found a charm or something.
Kelsi was enjoying the time with Harry's friends though she had felt weird when the two girls had greeted Harry with such a big and long hug. Harry had said a lot about Hermione and Ron when he told he about some of his background before moving in with the Evans, though most of it was vague or he didn't say much, Ginny however was one she hadn't heard hardly anything about other than, "She is Ron's little sister." Kelsi wasn't too sure if there was some attraction there on either side, but the way Ginny had hugged Harry, there seemed to be a little something there. It stuck out to her again however, the statement "first friends." She had never heard anyone refer to a friend like that, she hoped it was just a different way of him saying 'Best Friend' because if it was taken literally, then Harry didn't have a single friend growing up until he turned 11 and went to school.
Even the short time since her friend had moved had been tough for her since there wasn't really anyone else to hang out with, but to go eleven years without a friend, especially the first eleven years of life… She shuddered at the thought of being alone that long, even most kids in a foster home had better living standards than that. Harry's home life was also something he had never really talked about before. He had said his family didn't like him much and left it at that. She bit her lip lightly as she worried about her friend, keeping pain and grief buried was never a good thing. Something she noticed, though most of the others probably wouldn't, was a level of tension between Harry and his three friends, not angry or hurt tension, but what she would often experience from her parents when they were talking about a big issue that they didn't want to tell the kids about yet. She would usually end up hearing about it after her brother and sister went to bed which is why she had become attuned to the feeling, but she wondered at what kind of secret they were keeping that they couldn't talk about openly.
Ryan and Sharpay were surprised with themselves as they enjoyed conversing with Hermione and Ginny. At first, Harry hadn't thought they would have much in common, but Hermione had ended up getting Ryan to come out of his shell more by asking very open-ended questions about growing up, why he chose to dress like he did, what his favorite outfit was, what classes he enjoyed at school and many other topics that he usually didn't get a long enough pause to get his say in when he was talking with his sister. Sharpay was experiencing the opposite; for once she had found someone that was able to talk as much as she could and she was enjoying the conversation. Her and Ginny had gotten into a few topics of fashion and who knows what else. Sharpay was enjoying talking with a person who didn't mind jumping in to the middle of what she was saying. Talking with her brother could get a little tiresome because it seemed like he was always content to stay silent.
Both siblings had a chance to see the other in a very different light between the two different conversations the other twin was having. Sharpay began realizing that Ryan actually had a lot to say, but she more often than not just ran straight from one topic to the next, leaving Ryan very little time to get his thoughts in on the subject. Ryan was realizing how he needed to deal with Sharpay if he wanted to get a few words in. Harry and Kelsi watched the four new friends talking as they talked with each other and put in a few comments here and there on either conversations. While Ron wasn't scarfing food down in a disgusting manner, he didn't do much else than eat, maybe speaking here and there on one matter or another, but Harry could tell there wasn't much Ron really knew about when it came to the part of the world that doesn't know about magic.
While the kids were talking, The Evans and Granger parents were enjoying the company of other adults, though the Grangers felt a little out of place when they were told what the Evans parents did for work and the kind of lavish lives they lived. While the Grangers weren't poor by any means, since their dental practice was well known in Crawley, they didn't have anywhere near that much money. The dinner and ultimately evening ended well and the visiting friends from England were once more invited to the open mic night that Harry and Kelsi were going to be involved in.