A boring, but necessary filler chapter this week. :) Merry whatever-you-celebrate! I've spent most of my Christmas day revising and editing this but I always manage to miss something. :) Leftover lamb roast to whoever spots my mistakes! (RobbiAshes: Lamb for you! :D)

Earth

So apparently Boxy had bragged about her hair to all the kids in her block, because right after Harry finished eating, a boy around her age had scrounged up the courage to come and ask him for 'magic hair too'. Obligingly imbuing his hair with the colour-changing charm had been something of a mistake, as every other kid (and some teens) at the impromptu party had promptly swamped him. He gave half a dozen the same charm before off-handedly mentioning that single colours would last longer - and that longer hair was something he could manage that would last until they cut it off. (Like the plants, it was just a matter of feeding energy into a process that already happened naturally.)

Under the guidance of their parents (and Jerry, who seemed pretty intent on making sure Harry didn't suffer for his party tricks) they started bringing him pre-packaged snacks and sweets as 'payment'. Harry munched steadily away as he gave one girl sky-blue hair down to her ankles and her little brother an eye-wateringly white-pink. After twenty minutes or so of this, he saw a woman tap Jerry on the shoulder and lean down to murmur something. The look on Jerry's face went from amused to alert in a heartbeat. Harry straightened in alarm, then stood as the man beckoned first to him and then Buddy.

"What's wrong?" He asked.

"Someone's gone and called the swarm." Jerry answered cryptically, then to Buddy: "Can you 'n Mia spare him some time until the storm passes?"

Buddy nodded immediately and reached out as if to grab Harry's arm before changing his mind and just plucking at his sleeve instead.

"C'mon." The other boy said in his gravelly voice. "Before they see you."

"Before who sees me?" Harry asked, but followed readily enough. What was a swarm?

Mia fell into step with them, Boxy high on her hip and whining about having to go inside.

"Come on, Boxy." Buddy cajoled. "We're gonna show Harry where we live!"

Boxy perked right up, wriggling out of Mia's arms as they entered the apartment block and grabbing Harry by the hand.

"I wanna show him, I wanna show him!" She demanded, pulling him towards the stairwell. Harry eyed the corridor as he followed. It was very… normal-looking. Oddly wide and high, but with no glowing walls or built-in aquarium filtration systems. What was odd were the wide rectangles bolted to the ceiling, about half a metre thick and only as long as the space between doors. Storage units maybe?

"What's a swarm, and why am I hiding from it?" He asked, consciously keeping his breathing even and his pace steady as they climbed. Merlin, he was out of shape.

"News crews, independents, random eyeballers." Buddy explained. "Someone must have called in what you did. The fact that a swarm - a whole bunch of people - showed means that they probably called around trying to cut a deal - like an idiot." Harry nodded his understanding but didn't say any more for fear of panting.

The four of them climbed eight flights of stairs, Harry trying not to show the strain, Mia wheezing somewhat alarmingly and Boxy practically bouncing off the walls in glee.

"We live in a section!" She informed him as they exited the stairwell. "A whole section, all to ourselves!"

"A section?" Harry parroted. Hadn't Mike said these guys were street kids?

"Yeah, it's got a window!" Boxy boasted, pulling him all the way down to the end of the corridor. The wall at the end was frosted glass - or something like it. It let in light without showing what was probably an ugly view of the next building. Boxy pulled him to a halt outside the last door in the hall and Buddy leaned forward to press his watch against a plain silver plate of metal - staring intently at a black plastic rectangle at the same time - until with stiff clicking sound, ten thin rectangles pushed out of the wall - not part of the pattern as he'd assumed, but a concealed ladder. He glanced back down the hall - were all those patterns ladders? - and then up as Buddy ignored the door to climb up to the rectangle above them - which was now open on one side.

…A section. This was 'a section'.

Boxy climb up next, one step at a time, then Mia was gesturing for him to precede her. Harry obeyed. The rungs were no thicker than a centimetre and with reasonably sharp edges. They looked… unfinished? Like they'd just been thrown on the shelves direct from the factory, with no polishing or rubber grip applied. It only took a couple of moments to reach the section, which was slightly smaller on the inside.

It was too small to sit up in, unless you were Boxy's size. And even she couldn't stand. If he had to guess it was around 1.5 meters wide and maybe 4 meters long. Maybe.

And only half a meter high.

The area directly in front of him seemed to be mostly storage, with a narrow entryway passing drawers, pulled-down roller doors and a tiny space for shoes. Noticing that Buddy - lying sprawled on his back and tapping on the ceiling, which was casting a glow onto his face - and Boxy had removed their shoes, he paused in entering and awkwardly did the same before continuing to crawl into the tiny home.

Some sort of thin padding was set into a shallow indent in the floor, making the 'main room' slightly easier on his elbows and knees. The other side of the storage space had a tiny cupboard backed against it with another roller-door - half open and full of pre-packed food. Both walls were covered in plastic strips - like the flyers on his desk at home - depicting beautiful scenes or cute animals or even just snatches of bright colours. By the window, several bits of coloured glass and plastic had been strung up and glued to the ceiling to hang, twinkling and throwing faint coloured shadows through the small space.

He crawled in further as Mia hit his foot impatiently. The window wasn't actually a window, it was the frosted glass wall outside. The end wall of this section thing had been chipped away to reveal it, the edges sealed with something. Buddy shuffled aside to make room for him and Harry followed his example and turned to lay on his back.

Oh.

The ceiling was similar to his computer-desk-window at home. One big interactive surface. Buddy was typing into it - having 'pulled' the display over with him - but it all seemed to be active and ready to use. Over a background of leaves, as though they lay under a canopy, lay various little digital indicators - daily pollution levels, temperature, police presence, weather etc - and there were two channels playing at once, in different corners of the room. Judging by the collection of kitten and… spider? Pictures in one corner, along with the baby-show playing, it was Boxy's play area. Or possibly her 'bedroom corner'.

"Harry, Harry!" The little girl demanded his attention. "Look, see? We have a window!"

"I see it." He promised. "It's very cool."

"Huh?"

"Oh, I mean. Uh." He slid a look at Buddy. "Boner?"

Mia burst out laughing as Buddy slapped his hands over his little sister's ears and glared at him. Harry felt his ears go red.

"Sorry!" He apologised. "I'm not-I'm still learning modern terms. Sorry, I thought-. Sorry."

Buddy softened pretty quick - even quirking a grin as his friend continued to cackle to herself in the storage area - and removed his hands.

"It's okay." He accepted. "Just-I think you got the meaning right, but it's, uh. Not the most polite way to say it. 'Specially in front of kids. Just a warning, so you don't go sayin' it in front of a bunch of moms or something." He grinned at the end, apparently highly entertained by the idea.

"Boner?" Mia mimicked him quietly, then laughed again - it sounded painful.

"Alright, alright." He grinned a little himself. "Let's all laugh at the guy from 1997."

Mia smiled at him as she finally joined them in the main area, pushing him aside and closer to Buddy. It was the friendliest he'd seen her so far. He tried not to blush at how close she was lying next to him - the tiny section barely fit them all side-by-side.

"Sorry it's so cramped." Buddy offered, apparently a mind reader. Behind him, closer to the window, Boxy had gotten distracted by her tv show and was lying on her back, singing to herself. "Sections are… kind of cheap housing? It's a government thing. There's a pay-per bathroom on the bottom floor, but a section is… a safe place to sleep, y'know? Away from people and weather, bio-locked, with some space for stuff. We own ours." The boy added, obviously proud. "My mom bought it, free and clear."

Harry nodded, not quite sure what to say. He tried to imagine himself in their position. He thought back to earlier that day when he was alone and lost on the street, nothing surrounding him but unknown danger and unfriendly, dirty buildings and tried to imagine the experience with nowhere to go.

He thought back to his last years in the Wizarding World, when he'd dreamed of taking what was left of his inheritance and buying a one-bedroom flat somewhere in the Muggle world, to just be away from it all with his own, private space. With walls he could decorate however he liked. To have somewhere he could call 'home', no strings attached.

"I think I get it." He shared softly. "I… I grew up in a cupboard. For the first ten years of my life, in a house full of people who hated me. The cupboard was small and cramped and I shared it with a couple of spiders but… it was my space. My aunt and uncle didn't go in there. Even when-" he caught himself before he said 'even when they locked me in, it was mine'. He liked Buddy and Boxy and maybe even Mia, but he didn't know them. And this was too private.

And they'd sold some of Boxy's charmed hair along with the information on who had done it, for money. He'd probably already shared too much with them.

There was a short silence where none of them looked at each other.

"Snap?" Mia suggested. Buddy lifted a hand to flick the ceiling around until most of it became just one moving image.

"Snap." He agreed, plainly relieved. "You, Me and Your Mother or that new Jackie Bell one?"

It took another beat of silence before Harry realised the boy was asking him. Luckily, he'd already heard this term from Mike.

"Oh, either." He hurried to say. "I haven't really… I've watched some tv, but I haven't really sat down for any movies."

"'Movies'" Buddy grinned, but selected You, Me and Your Mother. Mia reached past him and swiped open a smaller window which she dragged closer to herself. Harry thought it was the other movie for a split second, before he recognised the scene. It was the square home-made garden area, half-emptied of the actual residents but freshly flush with people wearing shoulder equipment interviewing those who'd remained. Reporters. A flick of her fingers threw up four, tiny, screens each showing a different news channel. She tapped something else, then her right ear - something Harry recognised from tv advertisements as 'tapping in' to a private channel of sound via a tiny, cell-phone-like speaker injected into the flesh of the ear canal. His own finger-phone was considered pretty old-fashioned and low-tech by comparison. That explained why Boxy was so happy watching a silent tv show too. It wasn't silent at all, it was just that only Boxy could hear it.

Idly wondering if he could get one too (the finger-thing was cool, but actually pretty uncomfortable for long conversations), he turned his attention back to the movie.

Earth

Michael glanced down at his gauntlet. The tracer installed in his principal's watch had only begun to broadcast again after a surge of news reports had given him a notion of where to look for his wayward charge anyway. Even then, it kept dropping off the grid or threw inaccurate coordinates. Whatever had happened when Potter panicked and vanished, it had damaged the device beyond its ability to reboot and recover from. That was a problem that needed addressing, just as soon as he had the kid back within reach and preferably in a secured location.

For now, standing across the river to a grungy apartment block that was swarming with professional and amateur investigative teams both, all he knew was that somewhere in or around that mess was a principal he needed to recover as stealthily as possible. Protecting him, alone, from a crush of invasive reporters and members of the public would be a nightmare scenario. He turned back to his gauntlet,pulling up floor plans for the building and tracking local transport. It was the work of seconds to decide on three separate exit strategies, before he turned his attention to finding the metaphorical golden needle.

"SecOps, I take it?"

Body language very deliberately relaxed, he glanced over. A heavy-set man, plainly ex-military to anyone who'd been similarly employed, was watching him with critical eyes.

"I saw you on the sec-cams. Ran your face. Michael Creagh, an RDA security officer in good standing. You're registered as on personal leave, but those aren't standard toys you're carryin'."

Having confronted him, the man waited - supremely confident in this, his home base. If he had access to the local sec-cams, he was either a tech of some skill or a local landlord - both of which, on top of the man's military bearing - meant that simply shooting him with a tranq was probably a bad idea.

"I'm looking for a friend of mine." He offered, calm and steady. "Short guy, black hair, green eyes, goes around randomly bringing plants to life an' scarin' the crap outta me. You seen him?"

The other man cracked a grin.

"Nannyguard?" He asked knowingly. "The name's Jerry Goldwyn, ex-Navy." He waited whilst Michael, without ever taking his eyes off him, tapped the name into his gauntlet for an id-check. A simple beep gave him the all-clear regarding known or suspected criminal history and a lifted arm was all it took for a second beep to confirm that, based on facial recognition software, the man in front of him was who he said.

Both men wound down a notch.

"Yeah, I've seen him." Goldwyn admitted easily. "He knocked himself out, doin' all-" He waved a hand across the river, to where more and more people were crowding in to see the miracle of out-of-season, healthy growth. Michael had seen a shot himself, as the first reports had come in. The sheer depth of colour, the obvious vibrancy of life… even to someone who had no idea about which plants grew when, it really was amazing. "Not for long," He added, at Michael's almost invisible increase in tension. "The way he explained it, it was a security thing his body did automatically. Anyway, I fed him up and evacced him once the swarm showed. He's safe, inside. I figured they'd send someone to pick him up eventually, though I'm surprised you'd let him get lost in the first place - 'specially round these parts."

Michael ignored the bland criticism.

"Where is he, exactly." He asked in a tone that made no pretence at being anything other than a demand for intel, right now. Goldwyn just eyed him, then lifted a hand to type into his own, less-modern gauntlet. He spoke silently to someone in that manner before finally, genuinely, relaxing.

"Well," He said, looking back up. "the kid recognises you so I guess I'll show you to him. This way."

Michael followed him, always alert for any hint of a trap despite the man's clean record. As the man led him over a private pass and into the building through a back door, he considered how best to discourage his principal from ever coming back here. He'd been briefed on teen psychology and knew that any attempt to simply say he shouldn't would likely be met with deliberate attempts to - sans bodyguard. But a man didn't need a criminal history to try his hand at kidnapping, extortion or coercion. He, more than anyone, knew the kid was lonely. Goldwyn and anyone else the kid had met here represented a threat simply for the influence over and leverage with Mr Potter that their 'friendship' gained them. Be it for money, personal glory or worse - Harry wouldn't expect what any one of them could so easily do to him.

How could he keep him away from this place and these people, without seeming like he was? He would report this to McGregor of course, his orders were clear, and the man would do his best to filter undesirables from Mr Potter's field of view and contact points but…

The kid could damned well teleport. And explode things.

If he wanted something bad enough… he didn't see many ways they could stop him.

Earth

The trip home was quiet. Harry had been prepared for a scolding at the very least, but the only emotion he'd been able to pick up from his bodyguard had been - very briefly, upon seeing him upright and alive - relief. Then the man had slid back into the blank-faced, aggressively professional soldier whose number one job was to keep Harry alive. Even then, though, he'd asked Harry if he was finished there before providing a temporary mask and guiding him out the back way, Jerry promising to keep it clear for them.

They'd walked for only a few minutes before a sleek black car pulled up beside them and - after a brief security code confirmation - Michael had bundled the both of them into the back seat. The driver was behind a black screen, invisible and silent. When the car was closed, the outside world seemed shut out with it. Not even the rattling trams made it into the quiet of the private car.

"I'm sorry." Harry said it straight, turning to look his guard in the eye. "About- losing control like that. I'm sorry for any damage I caused - and I hope Clio wasn't hurt. I'm s-"

"Boss, it wasn't your fault." Michael seemed surprised that they were even talking about it. He'd turned from his watchful stare out the window to blink instead at Harry. "I told that stupid- that woman, to cancel the load. I saw your stats spike and I ordered her to drop you out, right then and there. She gave me some bullshit line about how the best way was to push through, it often happened, etcetera - I was just leaning in to hit the kill-switch myself when uh.. you took care of it."

The man hesitated, glancing around out the windows again, but returned his gaze to Harry.

"I was pissed, but not at you. I was pissed at her. When it blew… shit, Boss, I thought you'd been hurt. And, yeah, I'd appreciate it if next time you maybe didn't vanish right after - or at least take me with you - but you weren't hurt and nobody got to you before I found you and that's all that matters."

Case closed, his guard's tone seemed to say, the man settling back again and checking his gauntlet as the car slowed. Harry metaphorically sat back himself, stunned anew by how different this Muggle guard was to his Wizarding ones. Maybe it was because this one was a 'real' guard, whereas Order guards had just been random people with a few hours to spare? A trainee auror and an ex-auror had been the best Dumbledore had been able to muster. A drunken thief and a Death Eather had been the worst. Who knew who the in-betweens had been.

They'd been brave, but they'd been amateurs. Compared to Michael, they'd been bumbling children, playing at protecting him. Bumbling, demanding, bossy children, sometimes.

The car came to a halt and, as first his guard then he exited, he realised they must be in the underground parking for his building. Only minutes later they were back in his apartment and Harry realised… this place felt like 'home' now. Not a home, maybe, but his. It didn't have the mess of pictures and personalisation of Buddy's - nor the Weasley's - but since Harry had never been allowed to collect things and bring them home to display, he didn't actually like too much clutter. He liked his apartment the way it was, with its clean lines and sleek efficiency. And yeah, maybe he'd roll up his sleeves and work out how to change the colour of the walls before he said to hell with the state of the world and charmed them different, but… this was his. His space. His home. Seeing Buddy and Boxy's 'section' only drove home how lucky he was to have what he did.

Though he'd feel better about it if he could somehow buy it off of the RDA… living indebted to them felt worse the more invested he became in this place.

Earth

The next morning saw Harry munching on cereal that didn't even pretend to be healthy, but tasted pleasantly of honey and wasn't tasteless nutritious slop, sitting on his couch cross-legged as Michael set something up on the tv-window.

"I spent a couple of hours last night putting this together." Mike - and he was Mike this morning, with just jeans and a shirt on and only visibly wearing one knife. "You've been pretty good about this whole bodyguard thing so far and I appreciate it. Some primaries treat their guards like disposable lives for their entertainment."

Harry made an appropriate face about those kind of people, but hesitantly raised his spoon in question.

"Primaries?"

"The person to be protected." Mike explained. "But bodyguards are more than just meat-shields. We scope out safe routes, keep watch for any hostiles, check buildings and transports and even people for danger. It's a big job and made more difficult by being just one person doing it, so I just wanted to thank you for being pretty good at making my job easier. And also, to please bear in mind that future vanishing tricks that don't include me are bad for my health."

Harry grinned a little, since Mike was smiling, and nodded. He couldn't promise to drag Mike along, so he didn't. Accidental, stress-induced magic tended to be too sudden and wild to promise anything.

"However," Mike turned serious. "It's also my job to make sure you are aware of the dangers out there, so you can be careful as and when caution is advisable. Especially those dangers that don't announce themselves first with gunfire or threats."

He touched something on his gauntlet and the tv began showing some footage. A huge crowd of people were flocking around a woman - four bodyguards surrounded her, allowing no-one close enough to touch. Despite them, the woman was smiling and reaching out to take and sign things. Although she couldn't be heard over the roar of the crowd, she was visibly speaking to those closest to her and was in no hurry to move on.

She looked nice, Harry thought vaguely. Nothing at all like Gilderoy Lockhart, with his blindingly narcissistic smiles. The image paused on a zoomed-in shot of her, eyes crinkling slightly as she laughed at something someone said.

"This is Raina Fairglen. An overnight sensation after one minor, low-budget snap became hugely and unexpectedly popular with the masses."

The footage cut away - it had been taken from a news show, judging by the split second of a talking head that had been visible - to one of the girls from the crowd weeping with joy as she spoke to the camera - or whoever was wearing the camera.

"She's just-just so nice, you know? She's so good and beautiful!" Face blotchy and wet, the girl beamed through her tears. "She looked right at me and said 'hi' and 'thanks so much for coming' and, and - she's just so wonderful!"

The image froze on her face, messy and worshipful and ecstatically happy.

"This girl lived nearby." Michael said quietly. "She ran home, called her mom, picked up her home-defence-issue gun and ran back."

The image changed again, splitting into four different images - two of them moving, the other two just a series of still images. People churning and screaming, trampling each other. The weeping girl, now smiling and content as she was forced to the ground by a bloodied bodyguard. Raina Fairglen, sprawled on the ground, ash-blond hair soaked red.

"I had to do it." The girl, calm and earnest and still so creepily content explained, hands cuffed and wearing prison clothes. "She was perfect. She was good. She'd never be like that again, not once the studios ruined her. They always ruin people. It happened to Laetitia Belaire and cute little Lín An - I couldn't let them do it to her too. I owed it to her, you know? I did it for her. Even knowing the cost. It's worth it."

Harry stared, wide-eyed. He'd seen men and women tortured and killed, he'd seen Voldemort's rebirth - but none of them, not even Bellatrix's insane cavorting was as unnerving as the woman he was looking at right now.

"She was examined and found to be in full possession of her mental faculties." Michael continued soberly. "She showed no regret, only an unwavering belief that she'd done the right thing, out of love and admiration. She'd known she would be facing the death penalty before she ever picked up her gun, and she'd made her decision despite it. And more importantly: Her victim, Raina Fairglen, had six times as many bodyguards as you do, and she still died. Because all it takes is a second, but sometimes that second is enough - if you're wary - to dodge the right way. Sometimes. If you're not wary? You don't even have that second."

Harry dragged his gaze from the tv to Michael. His guard's return stare was intent.

"I'm telling you this for two reasons." He said quietly. "One, because you need to know in general. Two, because not all assailants will be the weepy or aggressive sort."

He tapped his gauntlet. The image changed again, to a young man smiling outside a large building.

"This guy got into a prestigious job, was well-liked by his colleagues and worked hard for four years. He got a promotion, had a kid and was on-track for an even better future. Until one day, when he offered a co-worker coffee laced with an aggressive bacteria that ate the man alive from the inside within a week. Investigators found absolutely no reason for the attack. No infidelity, no back-room dealings for power or promotions, no workplace tension. Nothing. When questioned, the man said he'd 'just felt like doing it'."

Harry swallowed. Michael wasn't finished.

"I looked up the statistics, Harry. Cases such as these have increased by more than 700%, within American-tethered nations, since you went to sleep. All kinds of explanations have been offered, from social ill-health to pollution to undiscovered genetic errors - but really? We don't know why it's happening, but we do know that over 60% of all victims are people who are or have been in the public eye."

"You think people like Buddy and Jerry might do that." Harry inferred. "That's why you're telling me all this all of a sudden."

"Them." Michael shrugged. "Their neighbours. Any of the people you met yesterday. Anyone on the street tomorrow. The news channels were slow to pick it up at first, figuring it for a hoax - until someone provided security footage showing you doing it. Some people are still claiming it's a hoax, but less than before. Hell, Boss, we were lucky that none of the locals reacted badly. I've seen the footage myself, you passed out cold with only a couple of kids nearby. You were vulnerable. Anyone could have killed you - or taken you. Now I'm not trying to scare you - I meant what I said before, about not being here to restrict your movements. It's just… well. Ignorance kills."

The words resonated. How much had he hated the Order keeping him ignorant? And hadn't that ignorance led in part to Sirius' death in the Ministry? Harry firmly felt that it was always better to know, for better or worse. Even when, as now, that knowledge left him feeling vaguely sick.

He nodded dumbly, having nothing more to say. Michael just nodded back, a little uncomfortable himself.

"Oh, uh, McGregor called earlier." Mike moved to change the subject, clearing the tv and moving to sit on the other couch. "Something about a publishing deal? Might wanna check your tags."

Seeing the invitation to get some space and gather himself for what it was, Harry left his half-eaten cereal bowl in the sink and made his way to his office. The first thing that caught his eye was the holographic letter from Hermione, floating serenely over his desk.

He sat down behind it, eyes tracing over the replicated writing.

If you are reading this… you are alone.

He looked away and slapped his hand down, banishing the letter. The desk, reacting to the sign of life, booted up his alerts automatically and Harry gratefully sank into the mess of educative directives, emails, search results and headline news reports.

He wasn't alone. It was time to stop acting like it. There were over nine billion people on this planet, nine billion lives all a part of something he was now part of too. He might have lost his friends, but he'd also lost a diseased culture whose only redeeming feature had been the magic its people took for granted. No more 'chosen one' no more 'boy who lived'. If there was ever a time he could be just Harry - could forge his own identity - it was now.

He read David's proposition - to publish some or selections from his many ancient books - and slowly typed a willing agreement, insisting on final choice of selections, publisher and royalties. This was just one way he could gain himself financial independence from the RDA. Following that, he finally wrote a reply to Madeline Roux explaining his ability to 'revive' plants from a dormant, dead state and expressing his interest in a partnership with any scientific institute that could demonstrate an ability to care for and put to best use the results. He attached the top fifty results his computer had found when searching for potentially helpful plants as an example and sent it off. He received and read an email from Mary-Jane thanking him for accepting a place on her show - it was warm and friendly, as if they'd been friends for years instead of total strangers. It made him want to reply straight away, but he didn't - he wanted to have something worth saying first.

Next he sent his computer to searching for biggest and best museums around. He wanted the relics of the Wizarding World to last well beyond his own eventual death. His galleons, sickles and knuts in particular were unique and numerous, and could be either sold or distributed freely for display. He had more galleons than either sickles or knuts and thanks to his science education, he was starting to suspect Mr Maine had not been entirely truthful to him about their value. Gold could be and was synthesised - if expensively - but more importantly it hadn't actually been used as the basis for currency for any country since 2013. It wasn't linked to wealth, to money, except as a commodity to be bought and sold. But it was still useful. In technology, in medicine, in adornment.

And Earth's mines had almost run dry.

He set his computer to research the current value of gold for him and moved on. David had passed on requests from several different universities - only the most prestigious of all enquirers - for interviews with him as part of their historical research but he wasn't too keen on the idea. It sounded kind of like a bunch of Rita Skeeters just looking to boost their own careers off of his life. Still, a few of the requests seemed genuinely urgent about the value inherent in a real, living person from the past - regardless of any rumoured special ability - who hadn't yet been 'contaminated' by modern perspectives. He put that aside for now, thinking that even if he did agree - it'd be with a British university just because.

Finally, work done, he pulled up the rest of You, Me and Your Mother and crossed the room to his tiny couch. A snap of his fingers started the movie and he settled in to finish it. It was time to start living, in more ways than one.

Earth

The 2013 thing is a true story - according to wikipedia. ;)

Sorry for the boring chapter, I needed Harry to come to terms with his situation and be less of a reeling 'huh?' character and more of a 'FU, this is my life and I'm gonna live it' character. He's had enough time and exposure to acclimatise him somewhat. Now it's time to make waves.