Izuku clenches his fist in the fabric of his gym pants. A rock. Of everything, a rock. "Maybe it's… part of it?" he tries, but catching the look on Dumbledore's face… it's not.

It's just a rock, basalt grey and ordinary.

Dumbledore shuffles the bag and its rock off his desk, setting down the two pieces of weird paper between them. The handwriting is tidy, at least, making it easier for Izuku to read the English words.

"It looks like I'm going to be here for a very long time," he says. Speaking the words out loud, even in English, sends a spear of grief through him.

"Yes, Mr. Midoriya, it does appear to be that way," Dumbledore agrees. "I believe the best course of action would be for you to remain at Hogwarts for a few days while we iron out your… entrance to our world. After all, legally, you do not exist. The Unspeakables very well could have secreted you away to the deepest depths of the Department of Mysteries and no one would have ever found you."

A vault by any other name, First's voice whispers in his ear. Normally, the vestiges don't speak to him this way, when he's awake, but ever since the full-body yank that brought him into this world, First and Seven have been hovering close to the surface.

"What… does it all mean for me?" Izuku asks. Frowns, because that's not exactly what he means. "The plans?"

"Moving forward, considering you have magic, I believe that it would be in your best interests to enroll in a school of magic while you are here. Excuse me for assuming, but… you are from Japan?"

Izuku nods. "Yes."

"Then, if that would make you comfortable, I could arrange for you to attend one of the magical schools in Japan. You are, of course, welcome to attend Hogwarts as well."

Well… going to this world's Japan, huh? He can't help but admit that it's an attractive possibility. He'd be in his home country, speaking his native tongue, in a culture he is familiar with.

There's also the lingering knowledge that it wouldn't be his Japan.

None of the people he cares about would be there.

"I… have always been interested in being part of an exchange program, sir," he says. "If you'll have me."

"Of course," Dumbledore agrees. "We will have to arrange for your accommodations outside of Hogwarts, but I already have somewhere in mind."

"Oh?" Izuku tilts his head. "Where?"

"There is a close personal friend of mine by the name of Molly Weasley," Dumbledore replies. "All seven of her children are attending or have attended Hogwarts."

"Oh, real sneaky, getting the kid in with some of your favorites…" one of the moving paintings mutters.

"I'm… not going to be… too much, will I?" Izuku asks. Seven kids? That's a lot of kids. There's a possibility she could be Yaomomo rich, but that's… well, that's unlikely. Not many people are Yaomomo rich.

"She will be receiving full financial compensation for your care, if that is what you're asking about. Her eldest two are out of the house, so I'm sure she'll appreciate having an extra pair of hands around to help, as well."

Izuku nods. "Okay. What about… clothes, and… school supplies?"

"All taken care of. All you'll need to do is focus on catching up to your year-level. On that note, how old are you?"

"Sixteen," Izuku replies, not even having to think about it. "Turning seventeen, this July."

Dumbledore chuckles. "Well, considering that it is currently July…"

"What? It's March," Izuku snaps, freezing in place.

"It appears our worlds have some time discrepancies, as well." Dumbledore tuts. "However intelligent you may be, I have my doubts that you would be capable of catching up on five years of schooling in less than two months."

Izuku laughs, his chuckle coming out breathless and strained. "Yeah… I don't think even Yaomomo or Tenya could manage that…"

"Perhaps we'll have to submit the forms for an underage magic allowance to help you get caught up," Dumbledore adds. "Since you said it was March in your world…"

"The second of March, actually." He had been so close to finishing his first year of schooling… Only a couple weeks away from being able to call himself a second-year UA student.

"And the date of your birthday?"

"Fifteenth July."

"…Then, biologically, I believe your birthday is now the fifth of December."

Izuku frowns. "And this is… important?"

"The Trace on an underage witch or wizard breaks on the day of their seventeenth birthday. The Trace is a charm that logs whenever someone underage uses magic. The use of magic outside of school, while underage, is illegal."

"Oh. I… suppose that's good information to know, then."

"By age, you would be entering your sixth year here," Dumbledore continues. "I will arrange for you to receive an assessment, a few days before term starts, from my teaching staff, in all the core subjects. As for the electives, you could enter them with the third years, or attempt to test into those, as well."

"What are the courses offered here?"

Dumbledore offers him a quick breakdown of the classes, and Izuku has to frown. No math or language classes? No sciences? Even hero students, with their highly-specialized course of study, have to take the general education requirements.

Maybe magic is just… different?

"Ancient Runes and Arithmancy…" he murmurs, thinking about the two electives. Leaning forward, he eyes the sheets given by the Unspeakables. "Those sound like they may be useful."

"These are very advanced," Dumbledore cautions. "To get on the level required to understand this magic requires years of study beyond what Hogwarts has to offer, including a dedicated apprenticeship to a runes master."

Izuku looks up and meets Dumbledore's eyes.

"I'll figure it out."

After the lengthy meeting in Dumbledore's office, Izuku is shown to the room where he'll be staying. The school doesn't have guest quarters, according to Dumbledore, but unused teacher's quarters will do just fine. They're empty, with plain furniture and bare stone walls, but the bed is comfortable, and Dumbledore promises the bath will be hot.

"I'll also arrange to have some spare clothing sent up." With a conspiratory smile, like they're sharing an inside joke, he adds: "I'll do my best to color-coordinate them, hm?"

Considering the fact that Dumbledore is wearing bright orange robes with a green belt around his waist and a pattern of twinkling magenta stars, Izuku… has his doubts about the man's ability to color-coordinate.

Doubts which First and Seven both echo.

As soon as Dumbledore leaves and Izuku is (relatively) alone for the first time since arriving, he makes a beeline for the bathroom. First and Seven both… sink away, is the best term he has to describe the feeling. He begins running the bath, and strips, climbing in as soon as the water is toasty hot.

Formerly a fine connoisseur of the so-hot-it-scalds-you shower, Izuku has, since busting up his arm first in the Sports Festival and then again at the training camp and then again facing a reborn Shigaraki, found a new passion for so-hot-you're-soup baths. The heat sinks into his sore muscles and his mangled arms, melting away the tension and leaving him deliriously loose. He only wishes he had somehow brought the balm All Might had given him along… that stuff was almost magical, and he can say that with quite a bit of authority now that he's seen actual magic.

The price for that was just potentially losing everything he's ever known. No big deal.

At least he's not dead.

Once he's thoroughly soaked himself, he takes a couple minutes to handwash his clothes. There's no telling what sort of eye-searing monstrosity he's been left with, so at least he can make sure he's not going to keep marinating in his sweat.

Of all the times for weird magic rituals to grab him, it had to be while he was on his morning run.

God, what are his classmates going to think? His teachers? His mom? He left to go run at five in the morning, Tenya and Kacchan and Shouto and Kirishima all barely awake, and…

Vanished.

He vanished, off of UA's campus.

Considering all the blows to their reputation over the course of this year… what if that's the incident to do them in?

He shakes his head. No, it can't be. UA's survived more than just his disappearance. It'll still be there if—when—he gets back.

(Will he be too old for school, though? Will too much time have passed? The world will move on without him.)

(What will be left for him there if everyone moves on without him?)

Once his clothes are thoroughly soaking wet, Izuku hangs them up to dry and towels off before wrapping the towel around his waist and tip-toeing into the bedroom. There are some clothes laid out on the bed that weren't there before, along with a stack of books on the table, and he shivers at the thought of people being able to get in and out without him noticing, even if, logically, magic was employed.

The clothes are not the garish creations he was expecting. Rather, they are much more respectable clothes, of the kind Izuku only wears to school and formal events. Black slacks, dress shirts of varying colors, bowties, straight ties, and even a waistcoat.

These will go great with his bright red shoes.

Not.

He'll have to ask about whether these are just being loaned or gifted. If they're just loans, he'll feel much less bad about being, quite frankly, disgruntled at the thought of wearing clothes like that around casually. Comfort over style is his preference, although… they might not be too uncomfortable?

Well, it's drafty, so he caves and slides on the slacks and one of the undershirts. Now fully clothed, he checks the books on the table. There's a note on top, written in loopy script that takes him a few moments to decipher.

These are copies of the first-year textbooks. If you find yourself getting bored, you could get jump-started on your studies.

It's unsigned, but there's no question of who wrote it. Nine books sit on the table, one of them thicker than his hand from thumb-tip to pinky if he spreads out all his fingers, while the rest of them are various sizes and shapes and do not look like standard textbooks. Magical Theory, a slender volume by Adalbert Waffling, looks like a good place to start, and he slides it out of the stack and curls up on the bed to read.

Thanks to growing up on the internet, and continued communication with Melissa, Izuku is plenty fluent at written English. This book, however, gives him pause. Half the words he doesn't know, and the rest of them are so rambly that even Izuku is struggling to parse them, and he knows he rambles with the best of them.

He sighs and sets it aside. Maybe, if he does stay with Molly Weasley, he can ask for notes? If she's put seven kids through Hogwarts, then there's bound to be one of them who understands what the hell this book is trying to say.

Having given up on that one, he pulls out A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration. There's at least a glossary in this one, which is a good sign and a good place to start.

The next morning rolls around, and Izuku's up before dawn. Routine is a powerful thing, and while his circadian rhythm may not be entirely synched up to the time zone for whatever reason, he's damn well going to keep as much of his routine intact as possible.

If that means going for a run around an old Scottish castle and the shore of the lake it's situated on just as the sun's starting to peek over the horizon, then so be it. The grey of the sky lightens as he runs. Crisp morning air stings his nose. Dew glitters on blades of grass and soft splashes reach Izuku's sensitive hearing as he runs across the Hogwarts grounds. He avoids the forest, having been warned away from it the night before, and the muddy shore of the lake. While not incredibly vain about the state of his shoes, he's still loathe to get them muddy, especially when he doesn't know if he'll have a chance to find another pair like them.

Once finished with his run, he moves through as many of his morning stretches and exercises as he can without his equipment. He can't do any weightlifting, unfortunately, but maybe he can ask around if there's any possibility of finding equipment for that? Or, if worse comes to worst, he can improvise, the same way he did on Dagobah beach for ten months.

There's still time left before Dumbledore told him breakfast would… appear, and Izuku understands that to mean literally appear, so he rinses off the sweat of his workout, tosses on one of the loaned undershirts, and puts his gym pants and jacket back on before curling back up on the bed with Magical Draughts and Potions, another useful text, the same as The Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration. He'll need to review these texts at a later point, too, when he has a notebook and time to really tear them apart.

Breakfast appears on the table with a pop. The tray has been laden with what he normally has for breakfast, Dumbledore having been kind enough to ask what he prefers to eat, which means Izuku's not going to be slacking from his meal plan… hopefully. Who knows if Molly Weasley will be able or willing to follow it…

He won't be ungrateful to her, though. Not when she's (probably?) housing and feeding him for the foreseeable future (if she agrees to…).

He eats his breakfast while continuing to read Magical Draughts and Potions, careful not to drop any of his rice on the pages. They were even thoughtful enough to provide chopsticks, which he had forgotten to mention wanting at all.

The morning is whittled away by alternating between reading on the bed and pacing around the room, mumbling about magic to try and assimilate the topics he's reading about into his knowledge and memory.

His hands twitch and long for a pen, while he himself longs for his painkillers. An ache runs through his right hand and up his arm, the standard chronic pain that's been with him for months. Only recently has he moved from occasionally taking painkillers to taking them almost daily, and the renewed pain only reminds him of why he had done that.

At least it's mostly ignorable, for the moment. It had been worse in March, with the dregs of winter still cleaning themselves out. He has time to figure out what the heck he's going to do when winter rolls around here.

Mid-morning, Dumbledore comes to call, knocking on the door to Izuku's temporary quarters. Izuku hastens to put his bookmark in his book and run to the door, opening it to reveal the headmaster in a brand-new eye-searing robe.

"Good morning, Mr. Midoriya," Dumbledore says. "I hope you slept well.

"I did, thank you." As well as he could possibly sleep, stuck in a new place without any comfort items.

"Molly has agreed to come into Hogwarts and meet with you first, before deciding whether or not to bring you into her home. She'll be here soon. We'll go wait for her in my office."

Izuku nods and follows Dumbledore back to his office. The way there takes them through a corridor along the eastern wall, light filtering in through the windows and lending a deeper mystical quality to an already magical place.

Up in the office, they're only waiting for a few minutes, until the fire in the fireplace turns green and out pops a frazzled red-headed woman. Her pale skin is dotted with freckles, just as numerous as Izuku's own, and her brown eyes are warm despite the irritation clear in her features.

"I apologize for being late," she says. "The twins got into some trouble, again, honestly, they keep blowing up their pillows—oh, hello." She pauses, noticing Izuku. "You must be—how do you prefer to be called? Albus told me your name, but if I remember right, your culture has different ideas of politeness…"

"Ah, just Midoriya," he replies, ducking his head. "Thank you."

"Albus also gave me the basics of your story," she continues, looking him up and down. "Terrible, just terrible, being denied your birthright for so long… we'll do our best to get you up to speed as fast as possible, although I doubt we'll be able to get you to a sixth year level…"

"That's okay, I know I'll probably be placed a few grades down from where I should be," he replies. "Thank you."

"So you'll take him?"

"Of course!" She gives Dumbledore an offended look, and then turns back to Izuku, muttering, "at least this one looks well-fed."

Somehow, he gets the feeling he wasn't supposed to hear that part.

"Thank you very much for agreeing to house me," Izuku says, bowing to her.

"There's no need to be so formal with me, dear, you're very welcome." He straightens back up in time to catch her smile, and, feeling bold, smiles in return.

After giving them a moment, Dumbledore clears his throat, pulling their attention to him. "I believe that's settled, then. Mr. Midoriya, once you have a wand, you'll have to join me on a trip to the Ministry to get the paperwork sent through for an underage magic waiver. Aside from that and the placement tests, I believe everything is taken care of here."

"His sorting?" Mrs. Weasley asks.

"Will be done when he's here for placement tests," Dumbledore replies.

Mrs. Weasley nods, once, curt, before turning to Izuku. "Do you need to pack?"

He glances at Dumbledore. "Ah… I don't have much?"

"Well, we'll keep you company as you do," Mrs. Weasley speaks it into being, and so it is.

Somehow, Izuku manages to politely turn down keeping the formalwear on a permanent basis, especially after Mrs. Weasley mentions that she has some of her kids' old casual clothes stored away and they'll probably be more comfortable to wear around the countryside than slacks and dress shirts. Dumbledore seems to pout upon hearing this, but a fancy Izuku was just not meant to be.

Considering that the Weasley family also has copies of all the Hogwarts textbooks, Izuku can leave the copies loaned to him by Dumbledore at the school. All in all, he's leaving with… the clothes he came in?

Mrs. Weasley tuts at the very sorry state of him, what with the whole only having a set of gym clothes to his name.

"We'll get you fixed up right quick with some things of your own. Actually, if you're feeling up for it, we could swing by Diagon Alley and pick up your wand before heading back to the Burrow."

"I would like that," Izuku replies, glancing at Dumbledore, who nods.

Back in Dumbledore's office, he counts out gold, silver, and bronze coins, puts them in a pouch, and hands them over to Mrs. Weasley.

"There should be enough in there to get him a few new personal things, as well," Dumbledore adds, smiling at Izuku. "Just owl me when you're ready to take your cohort school shopping, and I will send along money for that."

"Thank you, Professor," Mrs. Weasley says, a sentiment Izuku echoes with a bow.

"Thank you for helping me so much," he says, to which Dumbledore just smiles.

"Of course. I am, at my heart, a teacher, after all. It's my responsibility to look after all the children of our world."

Izuku straightens up, nods, and—oh. He has no clue what's happening next. He turns to Mrs. Weasley to see her standing next to the fireplace.

"Have you ever traveled by Floo Powder before?" she asks, and he shakes his head. "It's simple. All you need to do is throw a pinch of this powder in the fire, state the location you want to go to very clearly, and then step in."

Izuku blinks and squints at the flames before reminding himself: magic. Still, being Shouto's classmate has given him a healthy respect for fire. He does as he's told, throwing the powder in and echoing the location Mrs. Weasley gives him, and cringes as he steps into the green flames.

He shouldn't have been worried about the fire. The spinning of Floo travel almost makes him sick, and he recall's Dumbledore's words on magic travel wreaking havoc on people.

The fireplace he stumbles out of is located in a dinghy pub, across the room from the long bar. Candlelight barely touches the darkest corners, helped only by the bits of natural light able to filter in through the filthy windows. Just a handful of people are here at, according to the clock, ten thirty in the morning. The barkeep is bald, and, when he smiles at Izuku, toothless.

Mrs. Weasley steps out of the fireplace much more gracefully than Izuku. The barkeep's face lights up in recognition as she approaches him.

"Got a new one, eh Molly?"

"I do," she replies. "Midoriya, this is Tom. Tom, this is Midoriya."

After briefly greeting the barkeep, Mrs. Weasley leads him back behind the Leaky Cauldron and draws her wand, tapping a specific brick (which she carefully points out to him). The wall peels away, revealing a bustling street filled with people in all manners of strange clothing (although, he often runs around in a bodysuit and what are, essentially, very functional thigh highs, so he can't talk).

"Some "alley"," he murmurs.

"What was that?" Mrs. Weasley asks.

"Oh, nothing, sorry," Izuku ducks his head. "Just…" He waves a hand at the street in front of them. "This is a bit more than an alley."

"This is the most popular magical shopping district in the UK," Mrs. Weasley replies. "Come on, wand first, wand first!"

The shop she leads him to is small, near the entrance of the street, and crowded with slender boxes. One wild half an hour later, and Izuku walks out with a scorch mark on his face and a wand of cypress, eleven and a half inches long (inches, ugh, he's going to have to figure those out at some point), with a core of dragon heartstring, tucked into his sleeve.

"Is there anything you want the most that we should prioritize?" Mrs. Weasley asks.

The internet, Izuku doesn't say. "A notebook? And pens?"

Mrs. Weasley frowns. "A journal… I can do that. And if you want pens specifically, my youngest son has a muggleborn friend who would be more than happy to send us some pens for you!"

Wizards… don't have pens? Okay, then.

They walk away from Diagon Alley that day with his wand and a few blank journals (because he burns through notebooks at an astounding rate). Mrs. Weasley Apparates them away, and they pop out the other end of the magical tube next to a tall house that can only be described as haphazard. It must be held up by magic, because there's no other way Izuku can see for it to be standing the way it is. A flock of chickens squawk at them and scatter at their arrival, and something nearby scampers away before Izuku can catch sight of it.

"Welcome to the Burrow," Mrs. Weasley says. "It's a little messy, but: here it is! Home. Home away from home, for you, I hope."

"Thank you for opening your home to me," Izuku replies, following her through a messy, yet somehow organized, garden. The stone step has several pairs of rubber boots sitting on it, and Mrs. Weasley has to yank the door open to lead him inside to a good-sized kitchen. However, given the large wooden table dominating the middle of it, it feels cramped, cookbooks and various family knick-knacks stored everywhere there's room.

There's one person sitting at the table as they enter. A girl, with long red hair, is bent over a textbook, writing something with a quill on a long piece of parchment. She looks up, and her eyes, the same color as her mom's, widen.

"Is this—"

"Ginny, this is Midoriya. He'll be staying in Bill's room, next to you. Midoriya, this is my youngest, and only daughter, Ginny."

He raises a hand and waves. "Hi."

"Hi." She nods.

What an auspicious meeting.

Dinner happens not long after Izuku has been introduced to his temporary room. He's introduced to all the present members of the Weasley family: Mr. Weasley babbles questions about Japan at him that he can only half-answer, Ron grunts and says hello, Fred and George greet him in a manner that reminds him strongly of Ashido and Kaminari, and Percy, the last sibling to make it to the table, greets him brusquely and shakes his hand.

Thoroughly overwhelmed after dinner, Izuku retreats to his room and curls up on the bed. A few minutes later, someone knocks on his door.

Izuku walks over and opens it, revealing Ron, who thrusts his fist out at him.

"Mum said you wanted pens. Hermione left some the last time she was here."

A handful of pens in various shapes are dropped in Izuku's open hand.

"I don't know if they still work," Ron adds.

"That's okay." Izuku smiles. "Thank you very much."

"Yeah. Sure. Let me know if you need anything else, yeah?"

Izuku nods, thanks Ron again, and the two of them separate, Ron to head upstairs, and Izuku back to the bed to begin filling his first notebook with everything he's learned so far about magic.

He's interrupted again an hour or so later. This time, when he opens the door, it's to Mrs. Weasley, who is accompanied by a floating box.

"I've pulled out some of Fred and George's old things for you. I hope they fit, but I can hem the pants and cuff the sleeves if they're a little too long!"

With a wave of her wand, the box floats forward, and Izuku steps to the side to let it float past him and into the room, where it sets itself down on the bed.

"Thank you, Mrs. Weasley."

"You're welcome, dear!" she replies. "Do let me know if there's anything else you need tonight!" With that, she leaves him alone.

Izuku closes the door behind her and returns to the bed, where he opens the box. The clothes inside definitely smell like they've been in storage, something stale and dusty clinging to them, but they haven't been badly taken care of.

He pulls the first few items of clothing out, unfolding them and holding the shirts up to his chest to eyeball size. They look like they might be a little wide in the shoulders for him, but that's okay. If given the chance, he prefers loose clothes over tight clothes, so he'll take it.

The pants also look like they'll be a little long, the ends of the pantlegs brushing against the floor when he holds them up, next to his waist.

It takes him a few minutes to sort through the clothes. A few of them have holes burnt through them where sparks landed, but, again, that's hardly an issue: he grew up with Kacchan, after all.

One of the pieces of furniture in the room is a wooden dresser, seemingly hand-hewn and stood in the corner opposite the bed. Most of the room is empty of the last user's personal belongings apart from a few odds-and-ends: a poster advertising the Kenmare Kestrels, a sports team for a sport called Quidditch, which evidently involves flying on broomsticks; a handful of quills at the bottom of a drawer; a beat-up long coat in the closet.

Izuku spends a few minutes putting the clothes away in the dresser before curling back up on the bed with the handful of pens Ron brought him and his notebook. It takes him a few minutes to test each pen, scribbling on the first page to figure out whether they still work or not. Most of them do, thankfully. He only has to toss a couple into the wastebasket in the corner.

Later in the evening, he ventures out of the room again to brush his teeth. Ginny is the one who shoves a new toothbrush into his hands, because apparently, all the Weasley kids have the uncanny psychic ability to independently choose the same time to brush their teeth.

Well, it's probably just a lifetime's worth of routine, but still. He brushes his teeth with the others and retreats back to the room to curl up and try to sleep.

The worst thing about trying to sleep in a new place is just how different everything smells. If you don't have your own blankets, and your own pillow, then nothing smells like you.

It all smells wrong.

He spends a while tossing and turning. Eventually, he does make it to sleep, just to be woken by loud knocking on his door.

"It's breakfast," Ginny yells through the door.

"I'm getting up," he yells back, in Japanese, before remembering that Ginny doesn't speak a lick of Japanese. "I'm awake!"

He throws the covers off and quickly changes out of his gym uniform, which he slept in for the familiarity, and into some of the clothes Mrs. Weasley brought down for him. They are a little big, the ends of the sleeves hanging down over his hands and the hems of the pants brushing the floor.

"Oh, if you bring me the pants, I can hem them for you," Mrs. Weasley says when she sees him enter.

"It's okay," Izuku replies with a smile. "I still have growing left to do."

"If you're sure," she says, and he nods.

There's a few open spaces at the table, so he sits next to … Fred? He thinks this is Fred, since his hair is an inch or so longer than George's. Ginny, Mr. Weasley, and Mrs. Weasley are the only other ones up: Ron and Percy aren't anywhere to be seen.

"Dad, where's Percy?" Ginny asks before shoving a forkful of egg in her mouth.

"Mr. Crouch called him into the Ministry early today," Mr. Weasley replies. "Needed his help at a meeting, he did."

Eventually, Ron makes his way down the stairs, and takes one of the open chairs left next to Ginny.

After breakfast, Izuku wanders outside, pulling his shoes on and tucking the ends of the pants into the tops of his shoes.

"Where you off to?" Ginny asks.

Izuku turns around to see her leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. "Just … looking around?"

"I'll show you," Ginny replies, pulling on a pair of rubber boots and picking up a basket that was sitting just inside the door. "Come on. Chickens first."

Izuku, obligingly, follows her, accompanying her as she collects the eggs and feeds the chickens. She takes the basket of eggs back to the kitchen, and then they set off to venture around the area. Ginny shows him the garden, the field behind the house, takes him up the hill to the orchard.

"There's another family who lives nearby," she says, leading him to the edge of the orchard and pointing across the hills. "You might not see them often, but Luna comes over occasionally. I'll introduce you."

"Thank you," Izuku replies. He can just make out a tall house, almost a tower, on the other side of a hill in the direction Ginny is pointing.

She starts leading him back towards the house.

"What sorts of chores do you do?" he asks, glancing back at the field. It looks like it may be a pasture, of some kind, unused, with grasses growing tall.

Ginny shrugs. "We're mostly in charge of the garden and things like that. De-gnoming the lawn, clipping the grass. When Charlie comes to visit he helps us prune the trees. Mum runs the kitchen, so we don't do much there, but everything else? Yeah."

After following Ginny back to the house, Izuku wanders back out to the orchard, which is now, for the moment, empty except for him. It's large, with well-beaten tracks around and through it, so after spending a few minutes stretching, he takes off at a jog around it.

Despite the overcast sky, it's warm, and he pushes his sleeves up as he goes. The rhythm of his feet eventually pulls him into his thoughts as he turns his attention inwards.

He'll have to figure out some way to maintain his fitness while he's here. He doesn't exactly have his weights, so he'll just have to improvise.

Hell yeah you will. Seems like there will be plenty of opportunities for that, though.

Hello, Fifth, Izuku responds.

Nothing like hard labor to get you fit as fuck, and it looks like this place could use some TLC.

Yeah, it really could, but Izuku won't judge them for that. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley have their hands full, with seven kids and a full-time job.

Izuku runs for a long time, probably longer than he really should in the heat. He returns, sweaty and sticky, with the realization that they probably have limited shower capacity.

"What were you doing out there? You're soaked," Mrs. Weasley remarks as Izuku enters the house.

"Running," he replies. "How do, ah, how does showering work here? Eh, with …. Is there limited water?"

"There is not limited water, although I would shower earlier—Ron and the twins and Percy all prefer to shower at night," Mrs. Weasley replies.

Izuku nods, "Thank you," and returns to the room. He can live with being sweaty for a few more hours, and then shower in the late afternoon.

Picking up the old first-year textbooks Mrs. Weasley had put on his bed at some point while he was out, Izuku walks across the hallway to knock on Ginny's door.

She opens it and frowns. "You're soaked."

"Mhm." Izuku nods. "Ah, I was wondering—would you help me study? I have placement tests in a month …. I'm starting from first year."

"Sure," Ginny agrees, opening the door wider and beckoning for Izuku to enter. "But you are not sitting on my bed like that."

"The floor's fine with me," Izuku replies, plopping down on the floor with his legs crossed. Ginny sits down across from him, and he sets the textbooks down. "I'm understanding most of what I'm reading, I just have some trouble with some of the words."

Ginny nods. "I've only finished my second year, so you might have to ask Ron or the twins for help, or Hermione, when she comes to visit. I'm sure she'd love to help you study. She's a real bookworm, has the best grades in her year."

"I'll be sure to ask her, then," Izuku agrees, and bends over the books with Ginny.