xlii. home is nowhere

In the southern parts of Oxfordshire, in between here and there, at a crossroads that didn't lead anywhere in particular, sat a bespectacled witch on an antique trunk and a large serpent lazing in a bed of bluebells.

Harriet Potter turned the crumpled map in her hands and squinted at the lettering, the paper made too bright by the cheery sunshine and the writing refusing to cooperate. She had little experience with mundane maps let alone magical ones, and this map did everything it could to confound the frustrated girl. She turned it again and huffed.

"Set?"

At her feet, the shadows peeled away from the thick patches splayed between the grass and bluebells to form a vague question mark shape.

"Could you—?"

The shadow lifted itself from the dirt like rain in reverse, coming together to form a nebulous umbrella of watery darkness hanging above the girl's bent head.

"Excellent, cheers," Harriet said as she went back to the map.

When term came to an end and Harriet arrived in London a month prior, she made no attempt to return to her relatives in Little Whinging. No, she had no desire to see Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon, or her cousin Dudley ever again, and she guessed they were be pleased to be shut of her anyway. Rather, Harriet disembarked from the Hogwarts Express and—at Set's prompting—returned to Diagon Alley.

At first, Harriet rather enjoyed her stay in the Alley. She ate lunch at Florean Fortescue's or Pofferton's Puddings on Toad Road, explored the many nooks and crannies of the varied shops, and fell asleep in her bed at the Leaky Cauldron. Diagon Alley and its adjoining streets comprised the biggest magical district in England—but the Wizarding community was really rather small, and it had a very long memory. While everyone didn't actually know everyone else, they at least knew of each other, or their families, or had a mate who knew someone who knew them. Anonymity was not really a thing for wizards and witches.

Tom, the landlord for the Leaky Cauldron, remembered Harriet from last summer—as did housekeeping, Florean Fortescue and quite a few of the shop owners about the district. She ran into Professor Sinistra once in the pub and had to dive behind a cart to avoid being seen by Professor Snape as he came out of the Apothecary. The manager at Flourish and Blotts always frowned when Harriet passed by his shop. They started to ask…questions, questions about why a scruffy kid was always out and about on her own without her guardians, and she soon began to worry they might write to the magical equivalent of child services. Harriet never wanted to be trapped with people like the Dursleys again.

So, she stayed two nights at the Leaky Cauldron, a third at the Niffler's Nest in Horizont Alley, a fourth at the Hopping Pot down Carkitt Market, and afterward Harriet visited Globus Mundi Travel Agents to buy a map of Britain's Wizarding settlements and scrounged up an old, Charmed tent in The Junk Shop. Diagon Alley may have been the largest magical district in England—but it was not the only one.

From there, Harriet set out on an arduous journey of Floo hopping from Diagon Alley to the smaller district of The Cobbled Lane in Blackburn, then on to the Tarland Tavern in Edinburgh, where Harriet exhausted herself and had to spend the night. She'd thought traveling through the Floo Network would be a simple thing, but apparently a body as small as hers was subject to magical exhaustion, as the distance flickering between Floo to Floo to Floo took its toll. Harriet could barely keep her eyes open as she promised the witch behind the bar that her parents would be along later that evening, and she snuck out before dawn.

Afterward, Harriet spent one week on the Isle of Skye, camping in the fens and rolling hills and rocky tors, not far from the village of Giant's Rest near The Storr. The area was populated by some of the barmiest wizards Harriet had ever met, including a batty potioneer named Ernestine Elderberry, who claimed to be three hundred and fourteen years old and brewed with spit from the fairies she'd met near the Bruach na Frithe. The woman shoved a glass cauldron full of curious, light blue crystals into Harriet's arms one day—said it was a gift—then went off chasing a flying sheep toward the mountains. The crystals glowed softly whenever Harriet spoke in Parseltongue, and she had no clue what to make of that.

Harriet stayed another week at Elva Hill in Cumbria, where a night market popped into existence every evening after nightfall and one could buy all manner of strange local flora—though not with Galleons. The shopkeepers didn't look, well, human to Harriet, what with their glowing eyes and sharp ears, and they bartered with puzzling things like a sigh captured in a bottle, or a name, or two hops, or a joke. The stalls would appear in the shadow of the hill itself as the sun dipped into the horizon, and Harriet saw vampires there, and goblins and green-skinned hags, wizards with teeth like wolves, Centaurs and beautiful, white-haired women who the wizards chased after like hungry dogs.

After midnight, she could sometimes see distant lights outside her tent's walls, and sometimes she heard whispers asking her to come out and play and dance. Fortunately for Harriet, she was adept at ignoring cajoling little voices, and so she stayed cozy in her bed.

Now Harriet sat at the side of a road leading nowhere at all, in front of a sign with no directions, with hot sunshine pounding on the top of her head and Kevin, her snake-golem, coiled in her hair. A wizard at the Hopping Pot tavern with a beard longer than Dumbledore's had—in a thick, rambling brogue—told her about the Wizarding hamlet of Bantiaumyrddin, which was supposed to be somewhere in Oxfordshire, but Harriet was beginning to think that the old wizard had been a nutter.

Chewing her lip, she pulled her wand out of its brace and rapped the map. "Bantiaumyrddin!"

The ink swirled, searching, and hazy patterns of the path she'd trod appeared, but the way forward remained foggy. Little question marks blossomed from Harriet's stick figure like anxious sweat.

"Probably saying it wrong," Harriet grumbled as she stashed her wand away again and folded the map. Hermione would've pronounced it correctly, and Harriet wished she was there with her. "Sounds bloody Welsh anyway. Barmy wizard…."

Sighing, Harriet slipped off her trunk and laid in the cooler grass, shifting until a wispy tree branch blocked the sun from hitting her eyes. Livi stirred from his nap to investigate.

"Sss…do you know the way?" he asked as his tongue flicked and smelled the air, Kevin mirroring the move against Harriet's damp temple.

"No, I'm not sure," she replied. Harriet took a Chocolate Frog out of her shorts' pocket, and though it resembled a melted lump more than an actual frog, she popped it into her mouth and chewed, flipping the card over for her inspection. "Dumbledore again."

"When do we return to the ssstone placcce?"

"Hogwarts? Not for a while."

The Horned Serpent hissed as he slithered through the plants and over Harriet's torso, raising himself so his snout hovered close to her face and Harriet blinked. His eyes burned a luminescent blue, black scales hot to the touch, the gem upon the ridge of his brow glittering in the sunshine. "Exxxplain."

"We don't go back until it's time for school."

"Why not now?"

"Because school doesn't start until September. We've been over this, you know."

Livi hissed and twitched as he did whenever Harriet tried to explain something he wasn't familiar with. Snakes didn't have much comprehension of school—or time, for that matter, since Livi referred to winter as "the cold time" and summer as "the warm time" with little distinction in between. He ate, slept, and drank as he pleased, be it day or night. "Humansss are ssstupid," he said, remorseless and uncaring of Harriet's scandalized expression. "Wasssteful. We ssshould ssstay at the ssstone placcce. The air…." The serpent paused and sent his violet tongue flickering once more. "The air isss besst there."

Harriet took that to mean he liked the magic at Hogwarts, since Livi didn't much approve of the Muggle places they passed through. They smelled "wrong" to him.

She didn't reply. Harriet went to stroke his scales and Livi reared back to inspect her hand, licking the smudges of chocolate from her fingertips. Truth be told, Harriet very much wished they could stay at Hogwarts year round too—but, unlike her classmates, she lacked anywhere else to go, so she supposed everyone else would be a bit peeved if they were stuck at the castle all the time.

Lost in thought, Harriet didn't spot the pair of owls descending on her until Livi hissed a warning, and she had barely enough time to sit up before Elara's bird, Cygnus, landed on her head. Kevin let out a sound of fear and she quickly tucked him down the front of her blouse before surly Cygnus decided to eat him. The other post-carrier—a spotted barn owl Harriet didn't recognize—landed a polite distance away, leg extended for her to accept the attached package.

"Ouch, Cygnus, geroff—."

The black owl pecked at Harriet's raised hand, then fluttered down to her knee, giving both Harriet and Livi an imperious look that dared them to object. The witch huffed as she rubbed her sore hand.

"And what's your problem, you daft bird? That hurt."

Cygnus hooted, louder than before, and held out his leg like the other owl did. Nervous of having her fingers nipped to ribbons, Harriet hesitated before loosening the twine binding the small package in place, but once it dropped, Cygnus took to the air without a backward glance, cuffing Harriet in the head for her efforts. The barn owl acted with better manners and stuck around for Harriet to give him a piece of a Licorice Wand from her pocket.

"What's this?" Harriet wondered aloud as she opened the lumpy envelope from Elara. Two folded letters fell out, as did two parcels carefully wrapped in plain parchment and spare bits of ribbon. She unfolded the first letter, and grinned as she recognized Hermione's tidy handwriting. The bushy-haired witch went on at some length about the summer Defense assignment and even included a list of book references Harriet might want to include in her Charms essay, having correctly surmised the bespectacled witch hadn't finished all her assignments yet. The letter concluded with—

Happy birthday, Harriet. I do hope you like your present. I Transfigured it from a bit of silver I liberated from the Malfoys. Stolen silver is the only kind of metal that can hold the Honor Among Thieves Charm—which makes it so items in your possession cannot be Summoned from you. Your wand, for example. I do hope it's not needed, but it never hurts to be prepared. Stay safe, and don't go looking for trouble!

Love, Hermione.

"Oh," Harriet said, blinking. It was her birthday? She'd forgotten all about it, which wasn't surprising, given that Harriet had never had a birthday before she much looked forward to, last year's being the best in her memory. She opened up the parcel and found a thin, gleaming bangle with the adjustable ends shaped like a snake eating its own tail. The design was rather crude, but Harriet loved it and quickly snapped the bracelet into place on her wrist. "Lovely."

Grinning, she opened Elara's gift—and out tumbled a small white teaspoon attached to a long strip of leather. The handle was riddled in tiny runes and inscriptions, and the top bore a familiar crest of a skull and three black birds. Harriet turned the spoon over in her hand, puzzled, then checked Elara's letter.

Harriet—

I hope this letter finds you. I've had trouble sending the last few, and Cygnus has been put out that he hasn't been able to deliver.

"That would explain the biting," Harriet grumbled, reading on.

I've enclosed your birthday gift, along with Hermione's, who wished for me to send hers on. Mine is a bit odd, but I think you'll appreciate it. My ancestors proved to be a pack of highly paranoid individuals, most of them convinced the house-elves were out to get them. To that end, I think it was our great-great aunt Cassiopeia who paid the Bavarians to carve a set of cutlery from the bones of Erklings. However they came about, the set's Charmed to be self-cleaning and turns black in the presence of most known poisons.

Harriet studied at the strange spoon with new consideration. The misadventure with the poisoned tea last term had greatly turned Harriet off the food in the Great Hall, so it would be nice to have a smidgen of reassurance if she was worried. Harriet guessed both Elara and Hermione were still concerned about her if this was what they'd decided to get her for her birthday.

Kevin hissed as she looped the leather about her neck and dropped the spoon down her shirt before she kept reading.

I would like it if you came to stay with me for the rest of summer. If you want. Livius is welcome, too. I live at 12 Grimmauld Place, London—the Borough of Islington, to be precise. It's imperative to remember the address, or it's quite tricky to find.

Hoping to see you soon,

Elara.

"Excellent," Harriet said, grinning ear to ear. Livi began to nose the parchment, clearly wishing to know what had pleased her, so she told him, "Elara has invited us to come stay with her."

"At the ssstone placcce?"

"No, not Hogwarts. At her home. I've not been there before."

Displeased, Livi moved away, receding into the bluebells with a final utterance of "Fine." The Horned Serpent disliked when plans didn't coincide with his whims and had no problem letting Harriet know that, so she ignored him and opened her final gift, this one from Hogwarts' groundskeeper, Hagrid. Inside the torn paper she found a wood flute that appeared hand-carved, and when Harriet blew on the end, it emitted a loud hoot like an owl. She would have to send the half-giant a thank you note.

Harriet laid again in the flowers and folded her hands over her letters, holding them against her chest, as she gazed at the summer sky. A little over a year ago, Harriet knew nothing at all of magic; she had no friends, no prospects. She lived in a cupboard and served her relatives, always terrified the next time Uncle Vernon yelled, he'd start strangling her and wouldn't let go. One year ago, she traveled into the magical world and met Elara, and Livius. Hogwarts sometimes seemed a very distant dream, but now, in her hands, she held proof of the friendships she'd made, letters signed with "love," and "hoping to see you soon," and a "dear Harry" from Hagrid. People cared about strange, orphan Harriet Potter, and she didn't know if she'd ever get used to it.

"Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place," she repeated aloud. Her shadow lay still at her side, and Harriet half-fancied Set had his arms crossed over his middle and was staring at the sky, too. If shadows could do such a thing. "We'll camp out here tonight, then, and set off for London in the morning. I wonder if Elara has a telly?"

She shut her eyes and soaked in the sunshine.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into my world-building for the UK magical community! As for magical traveling, I've considered what their limitations would be, and I believe that 1) a portkey is an object connecting one space to another via a wizard/witch's magic. The object thus absorbs the impact from the distance and uses the magic it stores as the inertia for travel. I consider this to be one of the reasons why they're illegal to create, because I'd say only powerful magical folks would be able to successfully create them. 2) In Floo traveling, the traveler is subjected to extreme velocity and pressure for a duration of time, that time being longer the farther you have to "flit" through the network. 3) Apparition is powered by an individual's magic. The more powerful you are, the farther you can propel yourself through time and space without your being disintegrating—aka, splinching. Sorry for the long note!