warnings: implied/referenced child abuse (wrt harry's living situation)
The days pass, and Izuku begins to settle into a routine. He wakes up early, says hi to Percy, exercises, eats breakfast, and spends the morning helping the other kids with chores. Afternoons are spent either studying or out in the orchard with Mrs. Weasley, learning spells.
Evenings, he learns, are Family Time. The only exceptions to Family Time are Mr. Weasley and Percy, the nights they run late at work. Mostly it's Percy, who seems to spend as little time at home as he can get away with.
An interruption to this routine comes the evening of the thirtieth. Rather than retreating to the living room with their parents, Fred, and George, Ginny and Ron instead remain in the kitchen.
"What are you doing?" Izuku asks, wandering over to peer around Ginny's shoulder (she's already taller than him, and she's thirteen, it's unfair) at what she's reading. It's a cookbook, turned to a dogeared page with cake recipes.
"It's our mate Harry's birthday tomorrow," Ron replies, measuring out flour. "We're making him a cake. And sending it to him."
"Oh." Izuku's naturally heard a little bit about Ron's friends. Harry and Hermione pop up in conversation often: Harry is a whiz at Quidditch, Hermione is the smartest student in their year, Harry flew a hippogriff (whatever that is), Hermione punched Malfoy in the face. Basic things. "That's nice of you. Do you want help?"
"Sure," Ginny replies, shoving a spoon into his hands. "We mess up the frosting every time. Maybe you'll be neater at frosting the cake, too."
"Maybe not." Izuku holds up his right hand, showing her the fine tremor which runs through it and his crooked fingers. "My left is a bit better, though?"
Ginny cringes. "How did that happen?"
"Repeated injuries," Izuku replies. "Where's the frosting recipe?"
Ginny pulls out a piece of paper with a handwritten recipe on it and passes it to him. "You know …. I wonder if Madame Pomfrey would be able to help with that. You didn't have access to magic and potions before, right? I'm sure there's something she or another healer could do to help."
Recovery Girl's quirk might as well be magic. Rather than addressing the inherent questions in Ginny's suggestion, Izuku asks: "Who is Madame Pomfrey?"
"She's the school nurse," Ron replies. "She's great. Our useless Defence professor accidentally removed all the bones from Harry's arm in our second year and she regrew them in a night."
Izuku almost drops everything he's holding. "His bones? Were removed?"
"Right?" Ron exclaims, turning around to point his spoon at Izuku and splatter both him and Ginny with batter. "Sorry. But that's exactly what happened! Harry was hit by a Bludger and broke his arm and so Lockhart tried to fix it with a spell and accidentally removed all the bones in his arm. All of them. It was so gross."
Izuku's injuries may have been bad, but at least he can safely say he's never lost his bones.
"It wasn't any less gross than the hours you spent puking slugs," Ginny fires back.
Oh, ew. Izuku's stomach rolls at the very thought. At least this is a very good lesson in what can go wrong with magic when you're being careless.
Izuku sticks with Ron and Ginny as they wait for the cake to bake. The fresh bowls of frosting—one yellow and one red—sit off to the side, waiting for the cake to come out of the oven and cool.
At one point, Ginny leaves, and Ron sidles up to Izuku.
"So, er, tell me to screw off if I'm being rude, but how did you hurt your hands?"
Shit, Izuku should have planned for this question. He scrambles for a believable lie, and thankfully, one is easy to come up with. "Magical accidents. I think. Now that I know about magic, it seems like that would be what it was. No one could quite figure out why exactly I was injuring myself like that."
"Oh." Ron is quiet for a moment, staring at the floor. "Did your folks hate magic? Is that why?"
Izuku shrugs. "I … never knew about magic until I met Professor Dumbledore, so I really couldn't say."
"Okay. Alright." Ron nods.
The two of them fall silent. Yelling and laughing drifts in from the living room, where the rest of the Weasleys are playing some kind of game.
"Is there any particular reason you're asking?" Izuku asks, looking up at Ron and tilting his head.
"Er … no?"
Try again, that was a terrible lie. Izuku comes up with a more polite way to say that and asks, "Are you lying?"
Ron's cheeks flush bright red. "I'm just asking because Harry's family hates magic. Thought you might know something he could do about that or …. I dunno, I wasn't really thinking. It was dumb."
"Oh." Izuku looks away, pressing his lips together. "Yeah, I …. Sorry. I don't know anything. But if I think of something, I'll tell you."
"Right. Yeah. Er …. Do you want to sign his birthday letter? Since you helped with the frosting?"
"Sure," Izuku agrees easily, glad for the subject change. As he follows Ron to the other counter, where a piece of parchment sits, suspicion turns his gut.
Harry's family hates magic …. There's only so many ways those words can be interpreted. And Izuku has the sinking feeling that the worst way may be the most applicable way.
Ron tries to hand him a quill, but Izuku has taken to carrying around pens in his pockets because there are never any pens around anywhere. He signs his name in kanji first without really thinking about it, before remembering that right, Harry probably doesn't know kanji (there's always the faint possibility he's multilingual, but Izuku won't bet on it). So he scrawls down his name in romaji beneath it.
After the cake is cooked and cooled, Izuku helps Ron and Ginny slather red frosting on it. They get frosting all over their hands and spread it everywhere they touch. Ginny, as the one with the neatest writing, is elected to pipe the yellow frosting on the cake until it spells out "Happy 14 Harry!". They box the cake up, attach the letter to it, tie the box shut, and send it off with Errol.
"Is he going to make it there?" Izuku asks, standing on the back step of the kitchen with Ron and Ginny while they watch Errol fly off.
"He may be old, but he's reliable," Ron says, crossing his arms. "He'll make it there, but it might take him a while to get back because he's gotta rest."
True to Ron's word, it does take Errol a while to get back. They fall back into their routine, Izuku burning through the first-year material and moving onto second-year.
The next interruption of routine comes in the form of a waifish blonde-haired girl who blinks up at Izuku with big silver-blue eyes. She interrupts him in the middle of his morning workout.
"Oh! You must be Midoriya," she says, smiling. "Ginny's told me about you. Even if she didn't describe you, though, I think I could've figured it out anyway: everything is different around you."
"Ah, thanks?" Izuku raises an eyebrow. "Are you Luna?"
"That's me!" she chirps, nodding like a bobble head before curtseying. "Luna Lovegood, the one and only."
"Ginny's inside. She's probably still waking up, if you're looking for her."
"Oh, no." Luna shakes her head. "Well, I am looking for her, but I think I'll stay and talk to you first! If that's okay with you. There's so many interesting things …."
She peers up at him, standing on her tiptoes to stare at his eyes. Danger Sense stays quiet, but he leans away still.
"Say, do you know why your eyes are like that? They're very pretty. Very unique."
"Ah, no? Not exactly, they just … did that, one day," Izuku responds. He's not lying—they don't know exactly why his pupils turned white, other than it's something to do with One For All.
"I see, I see." Luna sets back down and takes a couple steps away from Izuku. "And your hair? It's naturally green."
She's the first one to pick up on that. "Yeah, it is." It must be the eyebrows that gave him away.
"Do you know if you have any creature blood?"
"That's what everyone keeps guessing, but I don't know for sure."
She nods and hums. "Oh well! What was it you were doing? Do you mind if I join you?"
"Ah, I was just exercising, and sure?" While he enjoys having the mornings to himself, he's not exactly opposed to Luna's presence. At least she has a volume below 'full stage projection', unlike the rest of the Weasley family, who seems to spend all their time yelling at each other.
She doesn't actually join him in exercising. Instead, she sits down nearby, pulls out a journal, and begins to sketch.
After he's finished exercising and finished stretching, she follows him back to the Weasley house. Mrs. Weasley welcomes her in without a second thought, setting another spot at the table for her and waving her on to Ginny's room.
After that, Izuku begins to see more of her in the mornings. She doesn't always follow him back to the Burrow for breakfast, but when she does, she's welcomed with open arms.
Errol returns, carrying a letter in his beak and landing in a slump of feathers on the kitchen table. Izuku and Ginny had moved their studying out to the kitchen, so Izuku grabs the letter from his beak while Ginny picks him up and carries him to his perch.
"Was that Errol?" Ron yells as he thunders down the stairs.
Izuku cringes as Ginny yells back an affirmative.
Ron charges into the kitchen and snatches the letter from Izuku's hands, tearing it out of the envelope and reading it faster than Izuku's seen him read anything (not that anyone catches Ron reading all that often).
"Ah, he thanked you for helping with the frosting, Midoriya." Ron folds the letter back up and shoves it in the waistband of his trousers. "I wonder when we can have him over for the rest of the summer."
"Too bad you wrecked the Ford," Ginny says, leaving Izuku once again lost.
"We got in trouble for that, anyways. Maybe we could just fly over on our broomsticks? Or …. Oh! Midoriya!" Ron turns on Izuku with bright eyes. "You know how to do muggle transportation, right? And muggle money?"
"I'm familiar with Japanese currency, and the Japanese transit system, yeah," Izuku corrects, leaning back away from Ron's face. The taller boy had crowded closer while bleeding enthusiasm.
"British muggle money can't be that different," Ron counters. "And busses are busses."
Izuku is used to trains, not busses, but A for effort.
This is the scene Mrs. Weasley walks into when she shoulders open the kitchen door.
"You better not be conspiring to go kidnap Harry again," she warns, shaking her finger at them.
"What if we tell him to kidnap himself? Then it's not kidnapping." Ron points back at her.
"No, then it's just running away from home," Ginny mutters.
"You will be doing nothing of the sort. Arthur and I have been talking and working out a plan for the rest of the summer, so you will wait until—"
Boom!
The house rattles, and Izuku drops into a fighting stance on reflex. Danger Sense is quiet in his head, but he still glances around, looking for the cause of the explosion.
Mrs. Weasley is the first one to catch on. "Fred and George!" she bellows as she strides towards the stairs. "Out! Right now! So help me, if you've gone and blown yourselves up, I will ground you for the next ten years!"
They can hear her, clearly, as she stomps up the stairs, voice carrying through the whole house.
"Ooh," Ginny smirks. "They're in trouble."
"I think that was the biggest explosion yet," Ron agrees, nodding sagely.
Izuku, meanwhile, takes deep breaths and tries to calm his jangling nerves.
"Hey, mate, you okay?" Ron asks.
Izuku nods. "I'm, I'm fine, just startled."
"Some startle reflex."
The three of them retreat to Izuku's room as Mrs. Weasley's yelling picks up intensity. Even there, they can still pick out her words through the house.
"Order forms? Weasley's Wizard Wheezes?" Ron mutters, brow furrowed in confusion.
Ginny snaps her fingers, eyes widening. "I bet they were trying to start a mail-order joke shop! I overheard them talking about it once, when I was coming back downstairs."
"Ooh." Ron winces. "Yeah. That explains why she's mad."
Mrs. Weasley confiscates every single order form, all the experimental products, and the materials to make them.
Subsequently, Fred and George find themselves short of something to do to keep themselves entertained when they're not doing chores, so they turn their attention to Izuku.
Specifically, Izuku's skills at potion-making. Mrs. Weasley has helped him here and there, letting him help her with brewing and explaining how some of them work. Fred and George, however, take over that part of his tutoring with gusto.
They're not half-bad at teaching, although Izuku finds his overall progress slowing down now he's started spending so much time on potions.
As he transitions into third-year material, Fred and George spend more time tutoring him. Ron does his best to help, and he does provide some helpful insights, but he's the first to admit that he's out of his depth by trying to tutor.
The closer it gets to Izuku's impending test date (the twenty-first of August, as indicated on a letter Izuku receives from Dumbledore, sent via one friendly barn owl who tries to preen Izuku's hair), the less stressed he finds himself. It's weird and backwards, he knows, as Banjou has told him multiple times.
The thing is, he's okay with it if he tests into a lower grade level. It's still astonishing that he's managing to cram three years of study into a month, as Nana tells him so over and over again. And if he's in Ron's grade, then he'll be fine. At least he would be beginning magic school with a friend (perhaps more than one, if Harry and Hermione also like him enough for that).
And so, when the morning of the twenty-first dawns, it's with peaceful acceptance that he gets ready for the testing.
Molly has had an extra green-eyed child in her household for a week when she Floos into Hogwarts to speak with Albus.
The similarities between Midoriya and Harry are as numerous as their differences. They're both soft-spoken, easily put on edge, and watch the world through eyes that are too old. However, where Harry barely scrapes by most classes with Hermione's help, Midoriya soaks up information—and skills—like a bone-dry sponge. Where Harry is a prodigy on a broom, Midoriya seems content to keep his feet solidly on the ground.
There are further differences, which are what Molly is here to speak with Dumbledore about today.
Harry is, even with his upbringing, a relatively well-adjusted child, magically.
(She will not think on how maladjusted he is, emotionally, when there's so little she can do to help there.)
Midoriya, on the other hand ….
Well, that's why she's here.
Albus is waiting for her when she steps out of his fireplace. Fawkes sits on his shoulder, tugging at the sleeve of his robes. He busily finishes scrawling something out, trailing feathers of his fluffy quill shaking with the motion.
"Ah, Molly," he says, setting the quill to rest in the inkwell. "It's good to see you. How has Mr. Midoriya been settling in?"
"It's been going well. Ginny gets along with him, Ron likes him, and the twins seem to put up with him well enough." She rearranges her skirts as she sits down across from him, backside sinking into the generous velvet cushioning.
"That's good to hear. And his education?"
"His intelligence and the speed at which he picks up information rivals Hermione. They're going to be terrifyingly good friends, I can just feel it." A younger Molly would say that would be a good thing—Ron could use some level-headed logic in his life, as could Harry.
Level-headed logic is not something Hermione brings to the table. And if Midoriya makes friends with Ron, Hermione, and Harry as easily as Molly thinks he will, then level-headed logic is not something he brings to the table, either.
"I will be sure to warn the rest of the staff ahead of time." Albus scribbles down a note on a piece of scrap parchment. "And his magic?"
Molly frowns. "He's taking to it like he's been practicing it for years. I'm … concerned, though. You sent me those books, and I took the time to read them—"—it was a bit difficult for her to make time for it, between five kids and a husband and a house to take care of, but she did it—"and I have to wonder. Is it possible for an obscurial to control their obscurus?"
Albus inhales sharply and shakes his head. "There's never been a case of that in recorded history. Why do you ask? If he's able to learn regular spellwork, then that contraindicates him being an obscurial."
"Because …." Molly pauses and purses her lips. How is the best way she can explain what she saw? "He has a habit of leaving his wand tucked behind his ear. I explained why he shouldn't do that, and he told me that it was okay, because things he puts there don't fall. He showed me, actually, shaking his head and everything, and just like that, it stuck."
Albus hums and nods, eyes fixed on her. Once, she found that gaze heavy and unsettling, but after years of friendship, it's more comforting than anything. When those eyes are on her, she knows he's paying full attention to her words and giving them an incredible weight of importance.
"A couple days later, I came across him doing … something in the orchard. It was early morning—he's an incredibly early riser—and I was curious about what he was doing so early in the morning. Well, when I approach, I see these …." She gestures vaguely, wiggling her fingers. "He had these tentacles coming out of his arms, they were, they were coming through his clothes but when I looked later there was no damage to his sleeves. They were …. I don't even know how to describe them. Like …. Like staring at the stars, on a cloudless night, far away from any light pollution. And they shimmered green, like his eyes."
Albus raises his eyebrows. "What was he doing with them?"
And here's the other part that leaves her scratching her head: "He was picking up apples with them, windfalls, and pulling them into his hands, and then putting them back."
"Interesting." Albus frowns, reaching up to run his fingers over Fawkes' back. "I believe I can safely say that child is no obscurial. There is more going on in his history, but I think that disclosing any more about him than I already have would be a breach of his trust. Hopefully, he will come forward and tell you about it in his own time, although I would not be holding my breath."
"Alright." One more thing is eating at Molly. "Tell me, I have to know: is there any possibility that he could be a threat to my family?"
"I cannot say for sure, but Molly." Albus pauses, tilting his chin down to peer at her over the tops of his glasses. "I would not have asked you to take him in if I thought he posed a serious threat."
She sighs, tension leaving her shoulders. "Thank you. He's a delightful young man—it would be my honor to look after him for however long he needs."
"Thank you, and I appreciate your diligence of care. I know how busy young Messrs. Fred and George keep you. Thank you for making the time to look after Mr. Midoriya."
"Of course. You're very welcome." Molly stands, smiling wryly at him as she does. "You know I can't very well turn away any child in need of a family."
