Well, it was certainly remote. Harry looked at the trees around him, they were dark and huge. Much bigger than the trees he was used to back home.
He shuddered.
No. This was home now.
The trees were different enough that it didn't remind him of the camping trip from hell. Hermoine had continued for years to try and convince him that the Forest of Dean would be a nice holiday destination. He had said it would take another Horcrux hunt to get him back there. She had just laughed.
When they were starting to heal talking about it felt like ripping open stiches. Slowly the war became the past, far enough in the past that they could joke about it in their present.
Ron had said they should go camping again, for old times sake, but maybe somewhere warm and with a different tent. Harry said as long as they never had to eat cat food again he was up for anything.
Months spent in a tent, even a magically expanded one was bound to leave its mark. Ron voted to burn it but after the war Harry could never get out of the habit of saving anything that might be useful.
Harry still had it, still used it. Setting it up by the river should have been easy with his familiarity but Crookshanks was doing his level best to make it difficult, stepping on the guy lines and scratching at the tent canvas.
"Stop being a git and go bother some local wildlife." Harry shook off the cat's latest attempt to be annoying and then watched as the orange fluffball finally sauntered off towards the woods.
He knew the forest stretched for miles in every direction, but he wasn't worried about Crookshanks. On one of his trips to the Amazon he'd once watched the grumpy feline eviscerate an anaconda, even the Caipora had given Crookshanks a wide berth after that.
"Don't kill anything you're not planning on eating!" Harry yelled after the fluffy tail that was already disappearing into the undergrowth. Basic responsible pet ownership, make sure your vicious beasty doesn't decimate the local fauna out of boredom. Something Hagrid had never quite grasped.
He wasn't in as remote a wilderness as he had initially planned. Molly had made him promise he wouldn't become a hermit and that apparently meant being within walking distance of civilisation. He knew he was stretching the definition of civilisation to mean a tiny town in the middle of the pacific northwest, but he was only an hour's walk from Forks. If he jogged.
He scoffed. Forks. What a stupid name for a town. His brief walk through this morning had identified a couple of shops, a diner, a school and a sign that indicated there might be a hospital. Well, he wouldn't need that.
The scars that littered his skin were covered in a glamour; he'd manage to get rid of most of the regular ones over the years. Unfortunately, cursed scars tended to stick around do matter what he did to them.
They were disturbing enough to people when he looked like his older self, a scarred middle aged man was excusable. However, at the moment he looked 17 and there is no way that would pass without comment.
He rubbed at his forehead, the habit hard to get rid of even almost 40 years after it had stopped hurting for good.
He had used some of his stock of Polyjuice to pose as a family lawyer a couple of days ago to purchase a plot of land from a realtor in the nearby city of Port Angeles. Taking on the familiar persona of Draco Malfoy, with his usual aura of disdain, had meant the realtor was eager to sell the land to him and get him out of her office as soon as possible.
Good to know that Draco's personality could still annoy people thousands of miles away, it was the gift that kept giving.
Forks seemed like a nice town; the diner seemed to serve the type of meals Harry remembered Dudley drooling over on the TV when he was younger. Mmm American food. There was something deeply comforting about the muggleness of it. He didn't have to worry about anyone recognising him, no people hovering to see what he might say or who he might say it to.
He kept his usual shields up of course; the muggle world may be comforting in its muggleness but that didn't mean he wasn't paranoid as fuck. George called it PTSD; Harry called it being sensible about his Potter Luck.
Harry hadn't quite thrown a dart a board to decide where to escape to. Apparently, he had some distant Black relatives somewhere around here, that had been another way he had been able to reassure Molly.
"It's so nice that you'll have family nearby," her eyes had teared up, her now mostly white hair making her look frail in a way Harry was unwilling to accept in the closest thing he'd ever had to a mother. "Promise you'll introduce yourself dear, I don't want to see your hermiting yourself away somewhere. Everyone needs people sometimes love." Harry had a feeling he could be 500 years old with a Dumbledore-level beard and she would still pat his cheeks and coo at him. George had already checked if being coated in flames, ice or slime would make a difference and Molly had continued to give Harry hugs. He had drawn the line at flobberworm mucus, the smell of that stuff lingered.
Molly had distracted herself in the weeks leading up to his departure by listing off all the things he was going to need to remember to take with him. "My recipe for marmalade of course, I'm not sure you'll get the right oranges in America but you must promise me you'll try. I know how much you like it on your toast. I'll send you away with a stock of it anyway."
He had ended up with 2 crates of Molly's famous marmalade, as well as the recipe and a promise he would let her know how it turned out when he tried it.
2 crates of marmalade, packed meals for the next 2 weeks, a copy of Molly's favourite household charms. Even Hermoine's famous beaded bag would have struggled with the sheer amount of stuff he had brought with him.
A selection box of Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes from George. Apparently they were muggle safe but Harry would believe that more if George hadn't also included a feedback form for him to keep track of any 'side-effects'. WWW may no longer do product testing on unsuspecting 1st and 2nd years but that didn't mean their new standards were what you would call safe by any measure of the word.
"Can't have you go without some Weasley-style protection." George's wink was unsettling, always missing the mirror image. "The ones tagged in red have some more *ahem* permanent effects. So make sure you really don't like the target before you use them."
If the Weasley twins hadn't been so obsessed with pranks they would have been excellent Dark Lord material.
The second box of pranking items from Teddy, was likely to be marginally safer to use. Teddy who had inherited his mother's sense of fun but Remus' focus on details. Slightly less likely to traumatise any unfortunate muggles.
Teddy had taken the mantle of Marauder's child more seriously than Andromeda would have liked. She had almost received as many letters from McGonagall as Molly had received concerning the twins. It had surprised no one when he announced his apprenticeship with George, his hair switching to Weasley red as he ducked around his grandmother to grin at Harry. His eyes were always Lily Potter's green when he saw Harry, switching from Remus's amber the moment their eyes met. Even more than 10 years later Harry still remembered the absolute horror on Andromeda's face, Filch had resigned immediately.
Percy had left him with a handshake, never sure what to make of his world famous almost brother.
Charlie had popped in just long enough to handover a new dragonhide jacket, winking up at Harry when he refused payment yet again. Charlie had been supplying him with body armour for years, turning up at random times with new pieces and refusing to let him pay for it. "I get it for free at the reserve, I can choose who I give it to."
Harry hadn't really known Charlie until after the war, most of their interactions were these odd clothing deliveries. So, he just took it and made another donation to the reserve in Romania.
Bill was the last to seek him out, grabbing him as he headed outside to apparate back to Grimmauld Place on his last night in the UK. In some ways he had been Harry's closest friend over the last couple of decades, he'd run in to him in France, Egypt, Russia and one memorable time in Brazil. Wherever Harry was in his travels every couple of months there always seemed to be a tomb full of curses and Bill's Gringotts team nearby. When he was younger it probably would have bothered him to have someone so obviously checking up on him but most of time, he couldn't resent a familiar face. Even if hurt sometimes.
"You'll let us know you're okay?" Bill was always so earnest, blue eyes reminding him so sharply of Ron in that moment that he almost gasped.
"I'll send a message when I'm settled."
"And after that?"
Harry just shrugged, non-committal. He needed this. Needed some distance.
Bill just closed his eyes briefly before he handed over what looked like a spoon. When Harry looked at him blankly, he nodded in the direction of Molly's clock. "For your clock."
Harry hadn't been able to speak after that, his knuckles showing white as he gripped the clock hand.
"We all need other people sometimes Harry."
Sometimes the Weasleys were too canny for their own good.
They had extracted enough promises from him over the last month, but they hadn't stopped him from leaving. He was finally here. He let out a long breath and breathed in the fresh, crisp air around him.
Here might look like a damp clearing in the middle of the woods somewhere in the US, but it was his damp clearing in the middle of the woods.
The next morning the damp clearing had progressed into decidedly wet and Harry decided that today might be a day for planning rather than doing.
Something Crookshanks appeared to be 100% on board with, he looked out over the wet grass and sniffed before climbing back into Harry's expanded rucksack. Years of travelling all over the world hadn't made Crookshanks to be any more willing to be wet, just better at avoiding it. Sometimes Harry regretted add the apartment space he kept in his backpack. At this point it was more Crookshank's than his but at least it stopped the cat from tearing apart any more of his towels when he did get wet.
He had been promised by the realtor that they were actually moving into the dry season, but her face had said that he shouldn't expect much. He was never sure how much Crookshanks understood from inside the backpack flat, but he appeared to have picked up on enough to be pissed off at Harry.
So that left The Plan. The Plan that had been slowly forming since Ginny pointed out he wasn't aging the way other wizards aged, in fact he wasn't aging at all. Sure, on its own that would have been pretty depressing, no one sensible wanted to be a teenager for the rest of their lives.
But they had been working on versions of The Plan since the aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts made it clear that Wizarding Britain was never going to let Harry go.
If he ever wanted normal, he was going to have to start over somewhere else and not be the boy-who-lived anymore. The challenge has always been how recognisable he was but if he visibly aged in public when he wanted to start over who would connect him with some teenager. It meant that he was probably going to have to do school again, but he would have to set up qualifications for his new life anyway.
Hermoine helped him with the glamour and age up potions he needed in order to look the same age as his friends. Made sure everyone saw him aging like everyone else. They worked out what he'd need to come across as a 'home schooled son of a squib line', what paperwork he'd need, what things he'd need to know to be someone completely different. Someone a lot younger.
"You could even finish off your NEWTS at Beauxbatons, or Durmstrang." Hermoine had been over the moon when they'd worked out that the ministry didn't have any way of tracking underage wizards past the trace and reported exam results. No one would think it was strange if he didn't turn up in their records until he was 17, not if he'd been travelling. Sometimes the ineptitude of the Ministry of Magic really worked in their favour.
"Or you could play professional quidditch!"
"For the Cannons!"
Both Ron and Ginny had been enthusiastic about that idea, Ginny had just finished up her first season with the Holyhead Harpies and Ron had never let go of the dream that Harry would take his beloved Cannons to the big leagues.
Initially The Plan had included staying in contact with Ginny, Ron, and Hermione. Staying on the peripherals but establishing enough of an identity for him elsewhere that he had a space to be normal for once.
Then one day he could just disappear. Still be Harry Potter if they needed him for something desperately, but he could be someone else too and choose when he went back.
Of course, they had only been 20 then, it hadn't been much of plan yet. Just the beginnings of one.
Without them The Plan felt empty.
Why go to Beauxbatons if he couldn't tell Hermoine all about it. Find her new ideas for educational reform and finally being able to report back on what a normal school year looked like.
Why go through his teenage years again without being able to ask Ron for relationship advice. Advice that would always be, "just be yourself". Awkward back pats. A request that he didn't try and date any more Weasleys.
Why try to be normal if Ginny wouldn't help him finally fix his hair, so it didn't look like a permanent bird's nest. Ginny wouldn't be there to laugh at his social awkwardness and compulsive need to be rude to authority figures.
He couldn't stay either. Listen to another long debate by people who weren't him about how he should use his political power next. How he should join the Wizengamot or tear down the Wizengamot. Join the ministry or oppose it. Run Hogwarts. Run the ministry. Fight more bad guys when they pointed them out. But only those ones.
So, he was a muggle now.
No Beauxbatons, no squib line, no links to the Wizarding World at all.
He was Harrison Black, born in Britain but raised in France (he didn't want to let all the French lessons he'd taken to go to Beauxbatons go to waste). His parents were murdered when he was young leaving him a small fortune. He was left with unsuitable carers but went to boarding school in Scotland and emancipated himself when he was 16. He had a new identity he'd crafted, close enough to his real experience that he wouldn't have to lie too much.
He'd only have to lie about his name, his magic, his age and most of his experiences.
A couple of his muggle contacts were able to insert his information where he needed it on various systems. It was done so smoothly they didn't even remember doing it. Harry had become very good at obliviations over the years.
So back to The Plan. The Weasleys had a couple of ways of contacting him if he was needed urgently. Harry Potter had become increasingly reclusive over the years, it had been at least 6 years since he last made a public appearance. Kreacher had orders to make minimal attempts to make Grimmauld Place look lived in from the outside. Neville had offered to make use of Kreacher at Hogwarts so the grumpy elf wouldn't be going mad by himself alone.
A redirect on his mail to his lawyers office where any important would be sent on to Shell Cottage, Bill had agreed to take up stewardship of his titles and deal with any Harry Potter admin. He was even letting Harry pay him for it which had always been an uphill battle with the Weasley family.
He had been reassured by Neville that his students spoke about Harry Potter as if he was a figure from distant legend and absolutely refused to believe that Professor Longbottom had ever met him. Let alone shared a dorm with him for 6 years.
Step 1, build paperwork trail of New Harry and Step 2, make Harry Potter a Cryptid. Complete.
Now to Step 3, establish a convincing new Harry identity.
He was going to need to build a house. As comfy as he'd made this tent over the years, he would need to live somewhere permanent looking. A 17-year-old living on their own was going to be weird enough without that 17-year-old in a tent in a clearing miles out of town.
He needed to look convincingly muggle, and 17. He'd already spent some time wandering around various parts of London surreptitiously watching teenagers. And if that wasn't enough to make him feel creepy and old, he also followed them shopping to work out what kind of clothes he should be buying. And music. And films.
He was lucky that over the years he hadn't kept separate from the muggle world as he travelled, he couldn't imagine what some of his pureblood classmates would do when confronted with the internet.
Even Ron, married to a muggleborn and with a father who studied muggles obsessively, never entirely grasped how to talk on the phone. And now muggles carried around computers in their pockets.
He also had to go to school.
This was his least favourite part, his experience with muggle school hadn't exactly been pleasant. It had also been over 30 years ago so he was pretty sure nothing he remembered would be particularly useful.
He had the summer to make it seem vaguely plausible that he had just transferred from England and not from another planet. As it was, he was hoping being British would at least make people forgive him for completely missing out on whoever Beyonce was.
Today he would focus on the easy bit. Building a house.
He pulled a couple of books on magical construction and a muggle architecture textbook. He didn't need another The Burrow on his hands, he needed it to at least look like his house stood up on its own.
He was excited, he'd never built anything from scratch before. He had so many ideas.
Harry got into a rhythm over the next couple of weeks, he'd spend the morning pouring over his hastily put together architectural plans, he'd managed to sneak into an architect's office to get them checked over. It had been embarrassing to realise he had completely forgotten to put in toilets. Luckily the land came with a building permit for a cabin, he didn't think his plans would pass a proper inspection if anyone looked too closely.
Using the muggle book as a guide he built a foundation instead of using a ground stability charm, he even poured the concrete himself rather than just transfiguring the dirt.
For the main body of the building, he built it out of interlocking natural stone, he carefully copied the composition of the stones he dug up around his clearing. For each rock he covered the top and bottom with runes for protection, stability, and comfort.
The process was painstaking and after a week and hundreds of pieces of stone Harry had developed a rhythm but also too many blisters to count.
He was building a home, he needed it to feel safe. The stones were meant to provide enough pressure on their own to be stable and weatherproofing charms would usually do the rest, but Harry made up a mortar using his stores of moonstone and unicorn horn. One of the construction books he was reading theorised it would help create a peaceful atmosphere. Usually it was used for a smaller space, like a nursery, but Harry had collected a lot of potions ingredients over the years and he might as well use them.
He laid out a wooden porch running around two sides of the cabin and built up a large chimney at the back. The roof was the slowest thing to go up, he got it wrong a couple of times and managed to make the cabin look like something out of a gothic horror before he went to check out some neighbouring roofs and used them as a template. He had just finished sealing the roof with anti-rodent, leakage, and rot charms when the workmen showed up.
He had to connect up utilities if this was ever going to be a believably muggle house and rather than using the questionable skills, he'd gained from his new plumbing for dummies book he thought he'd get in the experts.
He had to quietly confound them in to believing they had just completed a handover with the building crew that had built the actual house, but they seemed happy enough to get on with it.
He was far enough out that he couldn't connect to the grid, whatever that was, so they were here to install generators. They could hook up running water, apparently, he wasn't too far from the main line running into Forks. He didn't know exactly what a septic tank was, but he was glad he didn't need it. It sounded foul.
Internet would require a wizarding trick he'd learnt on a trip to Korea, he could hide that he was using anything magical with a fake satellite dish.
A few days later he was finally hooked up and ready to go shopping, he needed a kitchen and bathroom. A bedroom. Probably a couch? He definitely wanted a TV and from what he gathered it would look really strange if he didn't have one.
It took until he was watching the workmen drive away to realise he had forgotten something quite big.
He needed muggle transport.
He grinned.
He needed to buy a car.
He apparated just outside of Port Angeles under the invisibility cloak and walked confidently along the highway until he found a car dealership.
Luckily one of the things he'd sorted out was a driving licence. He'd passed his test a month ago in Port Angeles apparently, good to know.
He'd never actually driven a car, but he figured if he could learn how to ride a broom, how hard could a car be?
The man in the dealership seemed deeply confused by his simultaneous need to buy a car for cash immediately and his complete lack of any knowledge about cars. The guy refused to talk to him at all until he showed him that he did indeed have cash and then he became overwhelmingly smarmy.
After the guys third attempt to insinuate that Harry was suddenly a genius with a very discerning eye for cars he just pointed at one that looked familiar.
"That one please." It was kind of blocky and had ridiculous looking set of lights above the windshield, but he was reasonably sure he'd seen it in a film he'd watched recently. It was on a list he managed to get from Dean Thomas. Jurassic Park. If it was good enough for a park with dinosaurs it could probably make it to his cabin.
"Oh," the salesman looked at the car like it physically pained him, "Ah, I didn't think you'd want something so... bright?"
He'd always liked yellow. The Dursleys would have hated it.
Harry just smiled sunnily at the salesman. "That one please!"
It was strange how even so many years later the thought of their faces was still the only motivation Harry needed. He started counting out bills.
Harry spent the next week hunting down what he needed to make his cabin more than just a very calming husk. There was a website he could order his kitchen and bathroom through; they found a local workman to install for him. Muggles were so convenient,
Then he spent a week trawling through all of second hand and antique furniture shops he could find. He'd spent one miserable afternoon in shop that assured him that it was an entire land of sofas only to find he hated everything and everyone by the time he emerged.
He got tricked in to buying a mattress by a man who was way too good at describing a good nights sleep. The guy in the store spoke so quickly that he was still feeling kind of dazed an hour later when he was trying to strap his newly purchased mattress to the roof of his car. Dreaming of feathers and surface pressure and wondering if he was an orthopaedic whatever that was.
It took Crookshanks scratching at him to remind Harry that he was in fact still a wizard. A quick notice me not and he shrank the mattress and tucked it into his pocket.
And promptly swore off large single item themed stores.
The rest of the week he trawled second hand and antique shops all over the US. In New Orleans he found the comfiest sofa he had ever sat on, it looked kind of wonky and was the sort of bright blue you usually only found in crayons.
In Washington he found a desk chair that looked like an evil villain would sit in it, it even had the ominous squeak.
In San Francisco he picked up a series of Very Serious looking bookshelves and a bedroom set that at least fit the confounding mattress.
He also found an old globe, several weird looking busts of historical figures and a taxidermy toad that he called Trevor.
Just enough weird, he may be a muggle now, but he wasn't going to pretend that taxidermy toads weren't awesome.
His shopping adventures were exhilarating for Harry, he was able to wander freely. No second glances sent his way, no worry about reporters or angry busybodies. He got some weird looks for being a 17-year-old buying furniture but as soon as they heard him speak people seemed to write him off as just being eccentrically British.
Harry could deal with that.
He had more important things to do. Like decorate his new home.
It looked a lot less like the Gryffindor common room regurgitated than his first attempt at decorating had after school. Kreacher still hadn't forgiven him for painting the drawing room at Grimmauld Place red, it took over a decade of muttered insults for Harry to finally allow Kreacher to change things back.
Kreacher hadn't put the house elf heads back up last time Harry dropped by but he figured it was only a matter of time. It was basically Kreacher's house at this point, he'd only spent a couple of days at a time there in the last decade.
Remembering promise no. 12 to Molly Weasley he finally had enough furniture that if anyone popped over, he could feasibly pretend he'd moved in. He, at least, had functional plumbing and a kitchen. It was time to meet some people.
He'd sent a message a couple of days ago to the number he'd managed find for a distant cousin of the Black family. Billy Black was apparently descended from Marius Black who had moved over to the US in the 1900s.
Harry knew enough about Sirius' upbringing to know that there was a long list of reasons a squib born to the House of Black would decide to leave the country entirely. Not least of which was the fact that he had been blasted off the family portrait.
Harry had been unsure about claiming the relationship until he found letters between Marius and his sister, every letter was filled with affection and longing. Marius's last letter to Dorea letting her know he was leaving England was still crisp with dried tears.
Marius' sister Dorea had later married his grandfather Charlus Potter, Harry had never been particularly confident about what all the names meant but Kreacher had confidently told him that Billy Black was Harry's second cousin. Kreacher had spent the next 40 minutes berating Harry for his unbecoming ignorance of the Black family tree as well as letting him know that claiming a squib relative was equivalent to spitting on the graves of his ancestors. Harry had just snorted and pointed out that there were literally no members of the House of Black left to object.
Sirius had made Harry his heir and Harry had changed his legal name to Harry Potter-Black on the 3rd anniversary of Sirius' death. Everyone still called him Harry Potter, but he could at least treasure the last link he had to Sirius.
Sirius had been his second cousin too and the closest thing Harry had ever had to a father, however short his time with Sirius had been Harry knew without a doubt that Sirius had loved him. Harry wasn't interested in ignoring any of the family he had left.
Sirius hadn't passed on any instructions for how he wanted House Black to be run but since it was literally just Harry left now, he figured inspiring as many Black ancestors to turn in their graves as possible was a worthy aim.
Billy lived on a reservation the other side of Forks with his teenaged son, he seemed friendly over text and had invited his 'long lost nephew' to come introduce himself over dinner that evening.
Harry had discovered on his adventures this week that driving was a little bit more complicated than flying brooms. He had a stick in the middle of the car that seemed to decide when the engine would yell at him and whilst he'd mostly got the hang of moving forward, he had yet to really work out reversing.
His newest for dummies book had explained some of the laws he would be breaking if he went too fast or didn't stop in designated places.
He had already worked out how to transfigure something like petrol to power the thing, gas stations freaked him out. On a basic level he didn't trust a building whose entire purpose was to sell incredibly flammable liquid. Every action film he watched seemed to have a gas station exploding and he didn't know how frequently that happened in the muggle world yet, but he figured he'd avoid the risk.
The steering wouldn't be difficult if he didn't have so many other things to try and concentrate on. The map function on his new phone was confusing but seemed to point him in the right direction.
The drive over to La Push was pretty low on the scale of terrible driving experiences he'd had in the last 10 days, but he still had to pull over twice to repair various bits and pieces when he got distracted and clipped a tree.
He still had some vegetation sticking out of the wheel arch when he grumbled to a halt outside the address Billy had sent him that morning. He had never been so relieved to see a driveway, the longer he could stay away from parking manoeuvres the better.
Clambering out the door hadn't become particularly graceful yet, partially because he kept forgetting about his seat belt, but he made it to the ground without tripping. He straightened in time to send a smile at the bemused man in a wheelchair staring at him from the porch.
Sometimes he was glad he looked 17, it would have been more embarrassing to watch a middle-aged man struggle to exit a car, he was sure.
"Hello!" He waved awkwardly in the hopes of covering his nerves but he had a feeling it just made him look manic. This was family, his only family in this new world. It would be totally fine.
"You must be Harrison!" Billy wasn't exactly smiling back at him, but his eyes sparkled with welcome, and he gestured the door behind him. "We're just getting started with dinner, come grab a drink."
"Thank you! Please call me Harry!" God he hadn't done this in a long time. Small talk. "Um, how is the, um, summer break going?"
"As with every teacher everywhere I am currently embracing the peace that comes with the absence of children but I am sure by the end of the summer I will be willing the embrace chaos again."
"You teach at the tribal school?"
"Yes, have done for almost 30 years."
"You must be good at it."
"I hope so."
Merlin, Harry hadn't even made it through the door yet.
Harry followed Billy into the small house, Billy glanced back at him. "What do you think of Forks so far?"
"It's certainly different to London." No shit Harry. Different to London. "The trees are different." Fuck.
"What made you want to move here?"
He really should have prepared an answer to this question. Right, the whole point of his back story was that is was close enough to his own that it made it easier to talk to people without looking like a moron.
"I didn't have the best life in England, the family I grew up with weren't the best people", there that sounded reasonable.
"And there was a lot of pressure because of who my parents were." That was honest enough, he'd managed to build a bit of history using old Black muggle political connections so as far as everyone was concerned his parents had been minor aristocracy and had been murdered by a Irish terrorist organisation.
"And then my best friends died." Shit. Too honest.
"So I wanted to move somewhere with nice trees." Nice Harry, trees were safe ground. "It's so peaceful here and I'd always wanted to visit the US. And I hear you have bears which is really cool. And moose? Or Elk? I don't know but its better than badgers." Shit, never tell Susan Bones he said that about Badgers.
Billy just nodded. "We get Elk and Bears, you'd have to head a bit east for Moose." Billy nodded in a direction that Harry assumed was east. "Plenty of nice trees too. Do you want a coke or a sprite?"
Billy seemed to accept that it was completely normal for a 17-year-old orphan to move from London to Washington to live in the woods.
Hopefully that trend would continue.
No more blurting out of things.
The kitchen opened straight into a comfy living room with a double door on the far wall that led out to a deck with a gorgeous view of the woods. A black-haired guy wearing only a pair of loose sweatpants was stood on the deck doing something to the grill in front of him.
As Harry walked through the house his head whipped up and Harry was surprised to meet eyes that briefly seemed to flash amber. Before he had even blinked, they were back to a dark brown, familiar already from Billy's face. He had a sudden almost violent flashback to Remus in the last days of the war when the wolf seemed to so close to surface that his eyes glowed.
The tall teen looked tense, smiling tightly in a way that looked more like he just bared his teeth. Harry moved cautiously forward on to the deck, Billy rolling in behind him.
"This is Jake, he's my youngest, my daughters are off making us proud at college. He's a little younger than you, goes to the school on the reservation." Billy seemed to be trying to ignore the death glare his son was giving Harry.
Clutching his coke, which had become a recent favourite, Harry looked up at the teen who towered at least a foot taller than him.
Jake looked ready to bolt. Harry glanced at Billy who was just staring at Jake, concerned.
"It seems I was always destined to be the shortest in the family." Harry reached forward with an open hand, and the friendliest smile he could muster.
This was his only chance of family in the muggle world not counting the Dursleys (and he refused to count them), he wasn't going to let a teenager glaring at him stop him.
Jake took his hand cautiously; he seemed surprised by something. Eventually he cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck in a way that finally made him look his age and not like some form of late-stage changeling with too much testosterone. "Erm, Hi."
Harry just kept smiling, Neville described it as his be my friend or else smile and it had worked wonders for him over the years. "Your dad said you were interested in motorcycles? It must run in the family; my godfather Sirius was an absolute motorcycle nut." Well, flying motorcycles at least.
Jake looked sad for a moment but seemed to pull himself together quickly, Billy had apparently got an accurate read on Harry's small talk skills and taken pity on him. Billy filled any silence with prompts, mostly around motorcycles, and soon Jake was chatting away.
Harry's complete ignorance didn't seem to be a barrier to Jake's enthusiasm and ten minutes later he was dragging Harry out to the garage. Promising to an exasperated Billy that they be back in time for dinner, Jake wanted to show Harry the two bikes he had just finished building.
"I built this one for Bella, she paid for the parts on both the bikes, but I did all the labour." This was apparently both very impressive and very sad judging by Jake's expression.
"Wow," Harry patted his arm in a way that he hoped communicated that he was sorry for his loss and also very impressed with his mechanicking. "How do they drive?" Harry desperately tried to distract the angsty teen, the hormones were thick in air and Harry had had enough of that when he was a teenager the first time round.
"Me and Bella took them out last month but she's a terrible rider," Jake briefly grins before the sad pout is back.
Harry held back a sigh. He was 17 at the moment, he was going to have to get used to talking to teenagers again. "Who is Bella? You sound close."
That was all that was needed apparently.
Jake seemed excited to talk about his crush, from the anxious looks he was throwing Harry he had probably long exceeded any patience his friends had on this topic.
His crush who had been ignoring him after getting back together with her boyfriend a couple of weeks ago and now she wanted to talk but Jake was now avoiding her in return. Very teenager.
"She even invited me to the cinema with her friends, she's the same year as you. And we had a bit of a misunderstanding about some, er, health stuff. But it seemed like we'd sorted that out. And she was so understanding."
Right, health stuff. It could be his paranoia talking but something about Jake was a bit off.
Harry had used a quick diagnostic from his Auror days as soon as Jake was distracted by the bikes and despite the earlier aggression and strange coloured eyes Jake wasn't a werewolf.
But he was something.
Even sat a couple of feet away Harry could feel the heat pouring off him, his eyes hadn't flashed again but it was a cool day and he was sat outside shirtless so there was something there beyond a particularly good metabolism.
"And now her boyfriend is back and suddenly everything is forgiven even though he and the rest of his family suddenly left town months ago with no warning. It completely broke her heart."
Woah he really must hate the boyfriend. Glowing amber again.
"That really sucks." Harry patted his arm lightly. He had never been good at this.
Jake apparently appreciated the attempt at comfort at least, he just nodded sadly. "She was in pieces when they all left, no warning just left one weekend. She almost died in the woods and then didn't speak for months. Charlie – that's her dad – almost sent her back to her mum in Florida."
This Bella was apparently not the most stable of people.
Harry continued to pat him lightly. Luckily Jake didn't seem to notice, describing months of slowly trying to help Bella feel better. Her weird sudden enthusiasm for motorcycles and cliff jumping.
"I just don't know what I am to her anymore. It's like her feelings have changed on a dime and now I am just back to being a distant family friend. And I am just left here with all my feelings whilst she's pretending the last 6 months didn't happen."
"That's really hard." Harry patted slightly harder. Bella sounded like a bitch. He had a feeling saying that out loud wouldn't go down well. Maybe Hermione's lectures on tact had actually sunk in after all.
"I just feel so angry all the time." Jake's fist made violent content with the metal shelf he was leaning against. Harry just stared at the dent he'd left with mild curiosity. Definitely something. "I want her back; he wasn't even here and he won."
Oh god tears.
He was probably meant to have advice here. He was 43, he should have good relationship advice.
The only real crushes he'd had at school had been Cho and Ginny. One had been confusing and damp and the other one had been confusing and weirdly familial. It took until his late twenties for the bi panic to set in and he hadn't had an actual relationship since he broke up with Ginny in 6th year to go Horcrux hunting.
So, he did what Hermione always did for him when he was hovering between too many emotions and couldn't decide how to feel.
Pulling Jake into a hug was awkward, the teenager was huge. They were sat awkwardly next to each other on the floor, so Harry just pulled as much of the not-quite-a-werewolf into his lap as possible. It was surprising similar to hugging Hagrid, similarly damp too – Hagrid always had been an easy crier.
Jake sobbed heavily into Harry's shoulder, clutching at him, and taking deep heaving breaths. Harry cast a subtle silencing spell at the door to the garage. They were close enough to the neighbours and he was pretty sure Jake wouldn't appreciate being overheard.
He ran his hand gently through Jake's hair, whispering nonsensical, calming nonsense the way Luna had calmed him after nightmares those first few months after the war. When none of them could bear to be apart. All piled in to Grimmauld Place, permanent hot chocolate on the stove and always someone willing to talk. Or just cuddle. He focused on breathing deep and easy.
Jake sobs quieted slowly until his breath matched Harry's. If Harry hadn't been able to feel him occasionally clench his fists in Harry's now slightly deformed shirt he would be convinced Jake had fallen asleep.
Eventually Jake made to sit up, his eyes were red rimmed, but he seemed calmer.
Harry just wordlessly produced a pack of tissues from his pocket.
Jake wiped his eyes and stared miserably down at his hands. Harry kept his hand on Jake's shoulder, just soothing circles.
He conjured a bottle of water that he pretended to pull from his backpack and handed it over silently.
After a couple of minutes Harry rocked sideways to nudge Jake with a shoulder. They were nowhere near shoulder to shoulder so he just ended up poking Jake somewhere in the chest, the tall bastard.
"So do you reckon your dad's burnt the food?"
Jake laughed, rubbing his hand quickly through his hair. "Never, Billy Black's been grilling since before either of us were born."
Harry jumped up and offered Jake a hand, hauling him back to his feet. "Wouldn't miss that for the world! I've heard Americans worship at the altar of the grill and I am eager to compare it to BBQs back home." Not that he'd ever actually attended a BBQ when he lived in England, but he'd watched the Dursleys enough that he had a vague recollection of rain and burnt sausages.
Jake launched into a convoluted description of all the ways grilling was different to BBQ, it seemed to mostly down to smoke. Harry just tried to nod sagely.
As they walked back into the house Jake nudged him. "Thanks."
Harry didn't look back at him, he remembered enough about his own angsty teen years that everything became harder with eye contact. "I know you don't really know me yet, but you and your dad are family of a sort and I don't have much of that left. I'm always here to listen if you need it."
Billy was pulling burgers off the grill when they came back into the house. "Hope you're hungry boys," Billy's eyes flicked over to Jacob but he didn't comment. Grabbing a plate each, sitting out on the deck, eating off their laps; They soon relaxed into easy conversation.
According to Billy word of his move had spread around Forks, Harry who thought he'd been keeping a reasonably low profile was offended.
"But I've barely been in town!"
Billy tapped his nose and leaned forward to stage whisper in a high reedy voice, "He's come in to do groceries twice this week, I wonder about that poor dear living up there on his own."
Jake leaned in, "I've heard he's British!"
"He's so polite, always says please and thank you."
"He asked me what a twinkie was, it was so cute!"
"Jeff went up to install his new kitchen and he said the new cabin is really nice, apparently he spent his inheritance on it."
"His eyes are so green, he's adorable!" Jacob fluttered his eyelashes.
Harry groaned, covering his face in his hands. He has clearly massively underestimated the interest a small town would have in a new person.
Jake patted him on the head, "Don't worry in a couple of years another new person will arrive, and people will stop talking about you so much."
Billy rolled himself over to poke him until he raised his head again, "You'll only be the new kid in town for 10 years or so, then you'll just be a local like everyone else."
Both laughed at Harry's face.
By the end of the evening Harry had promised to come back for weekly dinners and join Billy on his next fishing trip. Billy had been horrified to realise that Harry had never been. Something warmed in Harry's chest. It sounded like something family did together.
"You should come up to the res next weekend, me and some friends are doing a camp out." Billy seemed surprised when Jake made the offer, but Harry was keen to spend more time with his new family.
"I'd love to," Harry paused "What is a camp out?"
