A week later Harry realised he had intensely underestimated the amount that teenagers texted. It was also apparently weird that he didn't have social media.

Jake had apparently decided that his new cousin's lack of tech savvy was his personal responsibility to fix. Within days he found himself with an Instagram account, apparently, he could get away with mysterious if he had an Instagram but if he didn't have anything everyone would assume he was Amish.

Harry tucked that away as a research topic for another time, maybe pretending to be Amish was a good option if the alternative was working out how to take selfies.

Harry dug in to catching up with school. Over the years he'd gotten over his teenage aversion to books, with no Hermione to provide the answers he'd had to get used to teaching himself.

However, getting a high school diploma had never been on the list of research topics so he was starting from scratch.

He reckoned he could get away with less knowledge of US history if he muttered something about Tudors and World War II. How much history could a country less than 250 years old have anyway? He at least had a vague grasp of world history from primary school and Dudley's abandoned Encyclopaedia Britanica set.

Literature was an ongoing process with a very large book list.

Maths was surprisingly easy, one of Hermione's destressing techniques had been going through muggle maths textbooks and after too many sleepless nights together Harry had picked up enough to be mediocre at it.

He already spoke French fluently and was eager to improve his middling Spanish.

Science though. Science was a bitch.

Apparently, everything that he thought he knew about chemistry was completely wrong and potions knowledge did not help. He was pretty solid on human anatomy but the rest of Biology might as well be gobbledygook to him.

Physics he found a bit more instinctive. At least it was mostly maths.

He had never been so thankful that he practiced occlumency. Remembering all this would be a nightmare otherwise. Until he actually understood the material he could at least regurgitate facts to hide that he really had no idea what an electron was or why it was important to anyone what it was doing.

He hadn't studied like this since his Auror exams and he found himself instinctively turning to check Ron's notes or ask Hermione a question.

Sometimes he felt like he could hear them bickering, Hermione telling them at length about covalent bonds and Ron interrupting to ask any of this information would actually be on the exam.

"All information is important Ronald! If you don't know about covalent bonds how are you meant to ever understand polymers."

At least he'd worked out why the magical world never used plastic, he'd accio'd his calculator and the casing had actually melted.

He'd runed his electrical equipment to withstand ambient magic but it looks like he would be sticking to organic materials if he wanted to keep things less puddle shaped.

Midway through the week Billy text him to say that the postman was struggling to find his address and could he resend his coordinates. Harry had, without thinking, put up his standard muggle repelling wards.

Dammit.

Harry approached warding like he approached quidditch, his wards were instinctive and reactive. It frustrated Bill no end, apparently that wasn't the way wards worked, they needed structure and strong walls to fuse with.

Harry's magic had always been a little bit different. After he united the Hallows his magic became wilder, working more on instinct than spell work. At first, they'd chalked it down to trauma and decided to wait to see if it settled.

Then he'd tried to help Bill reset the Hogwarts wards and they realised something weirder was going on.

When he touched the ward stone magic just seemed to erupt around him, sealing off the ward room - no words or runes needed. It had taken two hours for the room to reopen and when it did the wards were back up and far more comprehensive than before.

Three death eaters, still in hiding, had been physically thrown from the grounds. Piles of dangerous magical objects had been stacked neatly in the main hall for destruction. The acromantula herd were confined to the forest by an impenetrable barrier but the thestrals and unicorns were still free to roam on to the grounds.

You could no longer cast unforgivables on Hogwarts land.

Bill had never been angrier with him than when Harry had no way of explaining how he'd done it.

Working with his wards now he was careful not to sink into the magic completely, he wanted to make some intentional changes rather than chaotic ones.

It took him two days of careful poking. He ended up with a flexible, intent ward. If you knew the address you could find the cabin, if someone approached the cabin nothing would stand out as abnormal, they could even look through the door or windows and they would only see normality until Harry invited them in. Then it would be up to him to not do anything weird.

He was hidden from scrying, owl deliveries, location magic. Above all the wards would hide magical activity from both magical and non-magical eyes. Harry planned on living like a muggle to a point, he still wanted to be able to use magic without anyone spotting him.

If someone approached with bad intentions the wards would hold them off and confuse them, like a muggle repelling charm. They would remember they'd left the stove on or that they had something important to do elsewhere.

According to Bill wards shouldn't be able to sense people's intentions, it sent Hermione off into a research binge, Ron just shrugged it off as a Harry Potter thing.

He ended up having to distribute ward stones throughout his property to help dissipate any concentrated magical energy so no unnaturally high readings alerted anyone.

The sudden torrential downpour made wandering around in the wilderness burying rocks and putting up fences deeply unpleasant.

By the end of the week Harry was a mess.

Between dead friends having arguments in his head, the niggling feeling he was missing something with the new ward set up and the fact that he was having to read Dickens. Harry was having a rough week.

A camp out sounded lovely.

He'd bought a muggle tent which was just as claustrophobic as he remembered. He had a sleeping bag. He bought a torch.

It was about as far from the camping trip from hell as camping could be. Granted, it was also likely to be more uncomfortable.

He had only minimally expanded his new backpack. The list of things Jake had sporadically text him over the last week seemed minimal for 2 nights in the great outdoors so he had supplemented using his newly acquired google skills and the camping store in Forks.

Billy was right, people were definitely keeping an eye on him. And cooing. It had been years since someone had genuinely cooed at him. 17-year-old Harry was adorable according to every adult female he had encountered so far.

He was struggling not to glare at people. Partly because he didn't want to make a bad impression and partly because his ego could not take the blow if his glare made them coo louder.

By the time Friday came around Harry was so eager to leave his textbooks and his copy of Oliver Twist behind that he arrived at the Black's cabin 2 hours early.

Luckily Jake didn't seem to think it was weird, too distracted by his work on the bikes. However, he did have some strong opinions on Harry's driving. Apparently, cars weren't meant to make a squealing sound every time you parked.

Harry tried to claim this was a cultural difference and that cars in the UK weren't nearly so ornery but that apparently wasn't a thing.

"Are you used to driving an automatic or something?"

Harry took the earnest concern in Jake's eyes as an indication that he should agree or be thought even stranger.

This devolved in to a 2-hour driving lesson focused on what a gear box was and why it shouldn't sound like that unless you wanted to set your car on fire.

There were so many ways to set cars on fire apparently. Harry was never going anywhere near a gas station.

They ended up leaving late to meet Jake's friends but on the plus side Harry was allowed to drive so hopefully that meant he was getting better.

Jake's friends seemed nice, they piled into the back somehow how wedging all three of them and bags. A quick round of names - Quil, Embry and Seth. Harry guessed he'd work out who was who later.

Merlin they were all huge. The biggest one leant forward over the centre console a grin splitting his face into friendly lines, "So Jake tells us you're British and have come to the US to be mysterious and hide in the woods."

"I'm certainly British and if I could go full hermit I definitely would but people keep telling me that's unhealthy." Harry grinned back at him, a yelp from Jake gave him enough warning to swerve and avoid a mailbox. "Whoops! Sorry still not used to driving on the right."

A muffled voice came from behind one of the bags. "I was going to mention we are on the wrong side of the road but I thought you might be doing it on purpose."

"Oops," Harry course corrected and pulled up a smaller road at Jakes instruction.

"Whereabouts in the UK are you from?"

"I was born in London, grew up in France but moved back to London when I was 11. Went to school in Scotland though." When they had decided he would grow up in France the plan had still been Beauxbatons. He just couldn't bear to waste all the research Hermoine had done for him. And all the French lessons.

The big one whistled, "Jesus I'm glad you're not coming to our school. British accent and speaks French, none of us would stand a chance of getting a date. Say something in French!"

Harry just winked at him in the rearview mirror. "Qu'est-ce qui te fait penser que je charmerais juste les filles?"

Jake laughed pushing at his friend, "I don't know what you just got told but you definitely got told it."

"As if you stand a chance anyway Quil!" The other friend currently not swallowed by a bag, pulled possibly-Quil back into his seat. "Especially when they've got me as an option." He gestured to all of himself, holding a pose with his chest out for a couple of moments before possibly-Quil punched him, all his breath leaving him in a rush.

The number of jabbing elbows flying in the back didn't seem to match the number of bodies and the conversation quickly turned to who was the handsomest.

It took another half an hour to get up to the trailhead and they all piled out of the car in a rush of arguing teenagers and rucksacks.

As they started on the hike up to where they were camping Harry came to theconclusion that his earlier impression had been correct.

They were all huge.

A childhood in a cupboard had left him on the small side but Harry was a perfectly respectable 5"5. Seth, who seemed to be the youngest, was still at least half a foot taller than him. Jake was still the tallest but, Merlin, they were all massive.

Not even skinny Weasley tall, Quil looked like he would give Goyle a run for his money. It didn't help that Harry still had his seeker's build, his weight had stabilised as he got over the malnourishment but he would always be lean. Quil's bicep was the size of his head.

Harry felt like a child following a group of weirdly hairy trees.

The ribbing started about halfway up the trail, tired of making fun of Quil's luck with the ladies they all seemed to notice the height difference simultaneously.

Harry was used to far worse from Bill Weasley over the years and George had never gotten over his habit of using Harry's head as an armrest no matter how many times Harry hexed him. Didn't mean he was going to take it from a bunch of teenagers though.

If Harry was destined to be surrounded by sassy giants, he was at least determined he would be the most vengeful man of average height in the immediate vicinity.

"If you get tired just let me know," Jake called from back of their group, "I've got space in my pocket if you want a ride." The laughs from the rest of group were quick, including Harrys. If there was one way Harry knew how to bond it was through revenge.

"Sorry couldn't hear you up there!" Harry grinned, he slipped a little something from his pocket and under the guise of fastening his shoe he stretched something over the path. A couple of moments later there was a very unmanly squeak as Jake toppled over feet tangled together.

Harry scooped the quick release tripwire back in his pocket before anyone noticed and leant down to smile a Jake, "Ah! That's better, thanks for coming down to my level."

Quil, Seth and Embry were just as quick to laugh at their friend's new position on the forest floor.

Over the next hour the group found themselves in an interesting set of situations. When Quil expressed concern about whether or not Harry would drown in the small stream they were crossing he got another laugh but he also found himself being chased by a curiously amorous squirrel. Embry asked if he could use Harry's head as an armrest on a break Harry laughed and agreed. Embry's biggest mistake was accepting the chewing gum Harry offered him because 2 minutes later his voice would only come out in a high squeak.

Seth caught on quickest and Harry winked at him when he managed to goad Jake into claiming that Harry would need a ladder to get over a small log in their path. Seth also laughed the hardest when Jake's hand glued fast to the back of his jeans the next time he tried to itch.

Embry was next to clue in when Quil managed to pour the entirety of his water bottle on his crotch when the lid got stuck and then loosened rapidly. Embry connected that to Quil's latest offer of one of his socks Harry could borrow for a sleeping bag. Embry's hysterical laughter was apparently enough of a clue for Quil and the three of them just waited with bated breath for the next prank.

Harry managed to fill Jake's packet with goo, nudge him to step into what looked and smelt like fox poo and seal his jumper sleeves before he tried to put it back on. They took advantage of a blind Jake with his arms over his head and Quil pushed him into a bush.

Next Harry exploded a can of coke over him and dyed part of Jake's face orange when he took a napkin from Harry to clean up the coke spray.

Jake was happily bouncing along next to them all, keeping up a good level of chatter whilst occasionally trying to wipe his feet off on the grass.

They finally reached the lake at about midday; the water was crystal clear and there was a mirror like reflection of the peaks to the north on the surface. Forest surrounded them on all sides, a small stretch of rocky beach further round the lake breaking the verdant green.

They settled along the bank of the river, a small campfire circle indicating frequent enough use. Rucksacks were soon piled up on one side of the small pile of stones and they started pulling their stuff out.

"Mine and Seth's tent is only a 2-person but I am sure we can spare you a corner Harry, stretch it to 2 and a half people." Quil, Embry and Seth turned wide eyed to Harry who just grinned at them.

He finished pulling the tent canvas out of his bag before moving over to Jake. "Luckily, I brought my own so you won't have to worry about me snuggling up with your socks." He made eye contact with Quil as he pulled a familiar package out of his pocket and offered it to Jake. "Mint?"

"Thanks!" Jake happily chewed on the mint before slowly becoming aware of the silent staring.

Harry was happily humming to himself as he started putting up his tent. Every other eye was fixed on Jake. "What?"

"How does the mint taste?" Seth asked his voice wavering and high, Quil looked like he was trying to physically hold his mouth shut and Embry's face was gradually turning purple.

Jake spat the mint and stared at in horror. He glanced towards his cousin who just smiled, his green eyes wide and innocent.

Jake had never seen anything more clearly devious in his life.

He started to back away, putting space between him and the devil spawn that had clearly joined them on this hike.

His heel caught on something behind him and before he could make heads or tails of what was happening, he was falling off the bank, head over tail into the lake behind him.

He emerged from the water to the sound of hysterical laughter. Quil was collapsed on the ground, Embry was crying and Seth was urgently trying to draw breath around his high pitched giggles.

Harry was crouched at the edge of the bank above him grinning down at him. "My friends back home stopped calling me short, they usually just described me as concentrated evil."

Quil snorted and that set them all off again.

Harry reached out to help Jake out of the water and let himself be pulled in. Jake went for Seth next, dragging him kicking and screaming by one foot. Harry managed to get the jump on Embry whilst he was laughing at Seth's attempts to shake out his hair like a wet dog. It took all four of them to drag Quil into the lake and all of them ended up bruised and wet, cackling like hyenas.

Jake caught a glance of his still mostly orange face and Harry would treasure the look of confusion and betrayal for a long time. "How?!"

"Magic, of course." Harry wiggled his fingers dramatically. "Or at least a creative use of special ink."

Jake laughed, loud and bright. For a moment all Harry could see was Sirius, his barking laugh whenever Harry managed to slip something past him.

It only took one splash from Embry for everything to descend back into wrestling.

After Quil managed to launch Harry 3 or 4 metres further into the lake the new game was to see how far they could throw with Harry being a very unwilling ball.

This kind of Harry Hunting he could get behind. Harry swam between Jake's legs to avoid Embry and both of them collided.

But Merlin, Jake and his friends were incredibly fast.

Eventually Harry pulled himself out of the water, after years of practice it didn't take long to finish setting up the tent. It was a rare sunny day in northern Washington and he lay back letting the sun dry his shorts, his shirt was stretched over a rock and he'd dropped his shoes somewhere they could hopefully drain.

"Buddy", Harry cracked an eye to see Quil hovering at the lakeside, if he'd had a tail it would be wagging. "You need to show me how you did the orange dye thing."

Harry grinned, always happy to bring someone into the fold but it wouldn't do to make it too easy. "A Magician never reveals his secrets." He closed his eyes and waited.

"Jaaake, your cousin won't tell us how he dyed your face orange." Quil whined and Harry was sure if he opened his eyes Quil would be pouting.

He felt a poke on his side, Seth had apparently finished collecting firewood. "Haaarry, please teach us your wiley English ways."

"Yeah, it's the least you can do after setting a squirrel on me." Definitely pouting.

This time someone poked his face, the size of the shadow now blocking his sun indicated it was probably Jake which made Embry the one currently poking his foot.

Harry opened his eyes and sat up suddenly which almost sent Embry back into the water. Puppy eyes everywhere. Jake was even managing a lip tremble. "It's a family secret, I can't go telling just anyone."

Jake's eyes lit up and Embry groaned, "Yes! Black family secrets! Revenge will be mine," he crowed, "Clan Black will dye you all orange."

Harry laughed at the three boys who were now looking at Jake with horror. "It doesn't seem to fair to arm Jake and leave the rest of you defenceless so I am happy to teach you all, but first you have to do something for me."

That made them all look very concerned.

He straightened dramatically. "I require you take the Marauder's Oath!" The original marauders hadn't needed anything of the sort but when Remus met Fred and George he was terrified of the potential chaos and decided they needed some form of restraint.

"With great power comes great responsibility, I will teach you the art of pranks but in return you must swear to never use your power for evil." Harry waggled his eyebrows threateningly.

No longer quite so terrified they might be selling their souls in order to be able summon vengeful squirrels the four of them struck dramatic poses with their hands over their hearts.

"Repeat after me, I swear on my honour as a Marauder."

All of them did bad English accents. Harry grimaced, they'd have to work on that.

"To uphold the three great tenets of pranking spirit, firstly to never do what cannot be undone. Secondly, to pay attention to the wellbeing of your target and only target those who can respond in kind. Thirdly, to never resent a prank returned and always prepare enact revenge." Harry eyed them all, this was the important distinction. "Finally that when my pranking prowess is required to respond to an injustice I swear to match like for like and not over act in response to petty injustices. As a Marauder I so swear."

Despite the inherent silliness of five half naked teenaged boys gathering around a log to swear a prank-based oath of responsibility there was a sort of muted quiet in their campsite.

"As for the squirrel I wiped peanut butter on to the back of your rucksack. It doesn't always work so I had a backup but it's the right time of year for excitable squirrels." Harry walked them through how he'd got them so many times today, the portable trip wire was much admired. "Most of the time it's about distracting people from what you're planning on doing. You'll get caught a lot the beginning. Mint anyone?"

Jake narrowed his eyes. "That was just a distraction wasn't it? To make sure I didn't notice you placing the trip wire."

Harry just smiled knowingly and passed around the mints.

Soon they were all chewing away thinking of ways they could get each other with tricks they wouldn't expect.

"Of course, that doesn't mean all my mints are distractions."

Their squeaky voices made Harry laugh until tears were streaming down his cheeks.

Two days later the five of them made their way back down to Harry's car looking happy in various shades of neon.

Seth had been the first to get Harry. With one of Harry's own mints no less, only to find himself covered in goo a couple of seconds later. Revenge was swift. As far as Harry was concerned the high-pitched giggles were worth it for Seth's conflicted face.

He'd discovered that Seth had uncannily good hearing, making it very hard to sneak up on him. With no invisibility cloak to help him Harry had to use some of his more extensive pranking kit. By the end of the weekend, they were all terrified of what Harry could produce from various pockets.

Harry hadn't resorted to magic for any of his pranks so far – well, except for summoning the squirrel but that had been too funny to pass up.

All of their senses were slightly too good to be entirely human. No matter where he hid the mints they seemed to manage to find them and it only took a bit of experimenting with a notice me not to work out they were managing it entirely based on smell.

This combined with their collective hugeness, warmness and overall reflexes Harry was absolutely sure they weren't human. Or at least not entirely human.

Either way they were clearly not dangerous, sure, their eyes glowed a bit when they got angry but none of them had actually lost their temper with him. Even when he repeatedly attempted to scare Jake into tripping into the lake.

Seth had become very good at placing the tripwire.

Harry had always been good at hiding.

Jake was managing to avoid the wire about 50% of the time by the time they left, "With all this practice I will soon be very zen under pressure. No jump scares for me."

Embry chose that moment to spring on Jake from his hiding place. Dropping on to him from a branch above, like a deranged howler monkey.

Jake took one more dip in the lake.

He'd promised them each a pranking basics kit when he next saw them. Hopefully soon, this had been the most fun he'd had in years. With no real worries waiting for him back at his new home he could just sink into acting like the teenager he never really got to be.

Even mucking around with Teddy when he was younger never had the same level of carefree. Too conscious of Teddy's missing parents, his responsibility to keep him safe, his responsibility to keep everyone safe.

It was a bit sad it had taken him until he was 47 to work out how to be a child but better late than never.

The upshot was that by the time he got home he was ready to jump headfirst back into chemistry, biology and the convoluted moaning of Charles bloody Dickens. At least the Artful Dodger was cool, and he was starting to understand where the Dursleys had found inspiration for his childhood threats of being dropped off at an orphanage.

He'd not read fiction since he was a child when he would sneak books that had been abandoned by Dudley for not having enough pictures or thrown out by Petunia for having too much magic in them. The closest the wizarding world seemed to have were fairytales and the works of Gilderoy Lockhart. No wonder the Daily Prophet was always so full of shit; it was the only way for Wixen to get their creative fix.

So far he'd enjoyed A Picture of Dorian Grey, the portrait seemed very Horcruxy. He didn't understand The Catcher in the Rye at all. So whiny.

He was slowly concluding that he might need some more cultural or historical background to understand what the hell was happening with Animal Farm. The foreword mentioned something about communism and Harry only had a vague idea what that was.

Despite living alongside each other there was a surprising lack of cross pollination between the wizard and muggle world.

It took most of the summer for him to slowly make his way through his coursebooks, making his way through 6 years of content at once meant a lot of it was blurring together but the practice test he took showed some of it was sticking.

He kept his promise and delivered prank kits to the new Marauders. One glare from Billy at the next weekly dinner and he decided he needed to make it clear that pranking the elders was a very bad idea. As a matter of urgency.

Harry's summer was filled with weekly dinners with Billy and Jake, film nights with Jake and the guys and campfires on the beach with the entire teenaged population of La Push. Quil, Seth and Embry became good friends quickly and he already felt closer to Jake than he had to anyone new in a long time. He was also slowly getting better at understanding pop culture references, Seth had given him a run down on Beyonce in exchange for promising to get a Spotify subscription.

Jake still had quiet moments but having someone else to focus on seemed to help. The last time Billy brought up Bella at dinner Jake had barely flinched.

Harry's opinion hadn't changed, Bella sounded horrible.

Harry was trying to build up Jake's confidence but he had never been particularly good at subtle. The first time Harry complimented Jake both had cringed.

"Don't take this the wrong way bud, but never try to do that again."

They stuck to low level insults from that point onwards.

The rest of Jakes friends seemed to be trying to keep Jake distracted as well, Harry had never had a social calendar this full.

Well, people had tried to make his social calendar this full but he had just hidden behind the Black wards and spread rumours that he was allergic to Draco Malfoy.

It didn't work very well as it wasn't like Draco and him socialised particularly frequently but it had been worth it for the look on Draco's face next time they bumped in to each other at the ministry.

"Potter, stop sneezing and tell the minister it is not my fault you didn't turn up to his last dinner."

"Dammit Potter, why are you turning orange that's not even an allergy symptom. Come back here."

Good times.

They became a comfortable group of five, Harry started bringing some of his books down to the reservation so he could study while Jake worked on his bikes or fixed up the cars of his neighbours.

At least Jake could answer some of his questions about what memes meant and how selfies worked, Crookshanks hadn't been much help.

Jake seemed personally affronted that there wasn't anything wrong with Harry's Jeep, which he had dubbed Harry's Lemon.

"I don't understand how your gear box isn't completely fucked."

Jake even got him a little lemon charm to hang from the rearview mirror for his birthday.

Harry had a feeling he was missing something when Jake laughed at his now lemon themed car but he didn't really care, he loved his lemon.

And he was getting better, towards the end of the summer he was only crashing once a week and still hadn't hit any other cars. Most of his issues seemed to be with inanimate objects.

His new mates were weird but equally seemed to be very accepting of Harry's own weirdness even if they waved most it away as a symptom of him being British.

They were obviously hiding something, the other large, looming, warm people that turned up to campfires and then didn't talk to anyone but the four of them were a dead giveaway. That and the whispered conversations about patrols and leeches.

Harry had never been very good at holding back his curiosity. In fact, you could probably point most of the unfortunate things that happened in his life back to a moment of overwhelming curiosity. The rest of it was his terrible Potter Luck.

Luck, like his only family in a tiny town being involved in something to do with patrolling, leeches and overly tall teenagers.

Well. He wasn't going to do it. He had smothered the curiosity. Killed the cat. Cremated the remains. Buried them at sea.

After all they weren't the only people hiding something, it wasn't his business.

"The red-haired leech has been spotted along the eastern border. Sam is going to want to up patrols."

Damn his hearing.

None of his business.

Summer was finally drawing to a close which meant school would be starting soon.

It wasn't like Hogwarts there wasn't a supply list so he bought the laptop Jacob recommended, realised there wasn't a uniform and panic bought an extraordinary number of graphic tees. He then discovered a truly terrible thing.

Amazon next day delivery.

There was even a whole back to school section.

Muggles didn't even need to leave the house. It was magnificent.

The second thing summer ending was making inevitable was he was going to have to invite people to his cabin at some point.

The fact that he had held off so long had convinced the entire group he was hiding something. Which was unfortunate because he was in fact hiding quite a lot.

The last weekend before term, he bit the bullet and invited everyone over for a dinner and a film. Apparently, it was criminal that he hadn't seen How to train your dragon. Even though he was pretty sure Charlie had given him a book about that at some point.

So he had two days left to get his cabin finished.

He'd picked up other bits of furniture over the last couple of months and his cabin looked perfectly comfy and cosy. The runework from the walls was starting to seep into the atmosphere and there was a tranquillity to his space. It was hard to be stressed here.

He was managing it though because he had been putting this off for weeks.

Sighing heavily, he dragged his backpack over to the wall of his bedroom. He'd left space on the wall for a door but now he was regretting deciding to do it this way. It was going to be exhausting. Spacial magic always left him with a pounding headache.

Pulling out his rune kit he started marking up the wall, using a combination of carved runes and paint he inscribed the array he needed to pull on the space he needed. Pressing the backpack to the centre of the new doorway Harry double checked to make sure Crookshanks hadn't snuck back in whilst he was distracted.

Pulling on his magic he powered the array, usually adding space like this would take a couple of wizards a week or more but lucky for him power had never been a problem. Precision however. Very difficult.

As soon as he finished pushing he knew he'd overdone it. He'd barely used magic in weeks and he had definitely just used too much. Some of the excess will have bled into walls and the wards dissipated the rest.

He still didn't really want to open the door though.

The headache was already forming.

The door in front of him was incredibly ornate. Dammit. His magic had no chill.

He reached for the golden doorknob and pushed the door open. Got to rip the band aid off.

The space beyond the door was huge and mostly featureless. If you ignored the humongous piles of loose stuff towering in every direction. It was giving Room of Hidden Things except unfortunately he recognised all this stuff and it was all his. Just in one giant disorganised mess.

It looks like when the room expanded the storage spaces got disrupted. Not that the storage spaces were particularly organised but at least they were out of sight.

Part of him just wanted to shoo all the blatantly magical things from the rest of the cabin through the door and leave it but he knew if he closed the door on this now he was never opening this door again.

He summoned a headache potion, at least he knew the vague direction his potions store had ended up.

Right. The first thing he did was build bookcases, putting in a mezzanine when it became clear that one 30ft bookshelf wasn't going to be particularly practical.

He pulled on the threads of the space and opened up a large window on the far wall, floor to ceiling and letting in bright sunlight. It made the space immediately feel incredibly dusty. Cleaning would have to come later.

He created a space for his potions equipment and sealed it off from the rest of the space, adding ventilation as he went. He added a smaller study for the extraordinary amount of paperwork he was sure was hiding under the surface.

If he'd learnt anything as an auror it was that there was always more paperwork.

Casting careful stasis charms to stop anything from tumbling he started to separate out books, using one of Hermione's favourite charms to set them to sorting themselves. The shelves quickly started to fill up so he added another set of bookcases.

He pulled out his potions gear and ingredients and piled them into his new lab, set up could be a future Harry's problem. The paperwork was just shoved into his 'office' for now.

Money and valuables he shoved in another extended storage space, benign items in one truck, less benign items went into carefully separated boxes. It was never a good idea to let dark objects spend too much time in contact with each other, they tended to pick up bad habits. Harry had no doubt Grimmauld Place would have been much easier to deal with if it hadn't been housing a free roaming Horcrux for over a decade.

That left him with a lot of stuff remaining. He pushed furniture and home bits on to the newly created 1st floor to deal with later which left him with a lot of odds and ends.

His spare brooms went in a newly transfigured cupboard. His awards and certificates went into a box and then were buried under all the paperwork. Other bits and pieces he sorted into vague piles before flicking them into storage trunks an sending them to stack in a new room next to his study.

That left him with Crookshanks' favourite napping sofa, which he left in pride of place, and three battered school trunks.

Harry traced his fingers over the initials emblazoned on each of them. Gold and red.

Pulling the closest one open he looked down at old school robes, quills stacked in a neat case. Binders full of colour coordinated notes, one for each year.

A well worn copy of Hogwarts: A History.

Tears ran silently down his face, eyes staring unblinkingly down into Hermione's whole school life. Summed up in one trunk.

Sometimes he didn't think the grief would ever fade. It would just hide around corners, waiting for him to catch himself on a sharp corner so he could drown all over again.

23 years didn't seem to have even taken the edge off.

It still felt like disorienting gap, his world off kilter. 23 years and he still hadn't adjusted to his new weight.

He closed his eyes and closed the trunk.

Pushed away his desperate need to be closer. To see if Ron's jumpers still smelled like the Burrow. To see if Hermione's notes had anything left to say to him.

He'd drowned before. He couldn't do it again.

He opened the door back to his bedroom, ushered last of the traces of magic from his muggle house into the new space and cast the heaviest notice-me-not he could on the door.

He couldn't do it again.

By the time people were due Harry was reasonably confident that his home looked feasibly muggle. Old fashioned muggle. The amount of antique looking things he owned would probably be weird for a 17-year-old, he just couldn't bear to put away the pieces of furniture he'd rescued from Grimmauld or the various things he'd picked up on his travels.

The whole plastic melting thing didn't help either, he'd already lost a lot of cookware.

The wards pinged when his guests turned off the main road and he was ready to greet them at the door when Quil's beater pulled up.

"Harry!", Jake ran from the car and ruffled his hair grinning madly down at him. He took too much joy from making Harry's hair as messy as possible.

"Dude, your cabin is awesome!" Embry was already peering round him into the house, Seth and Quil following close behind.

They all seemed disappointed that they couldn't see anything immediately suspicious from the door way, Harry was pretty sure he heard Quil mutter something to Seth about the lack of 'murdery smells' whatever that meant.

"Welcome guys! Dinner will be ready in 10 mins or so, help yourself to drinks from the fridge." Harry had carefully sealed off his liqueur cabinet, he wasn't sure how he'd explain his scotch collection if it was accidentally discovered. "Come in, come in."

The guys filed in looking around the main room appreciatively, Seth went straight over to the bookshelves and Quil beelined straight for the snacks on the coffee table.

Embry wordlessly handed Jake 5 dollars and at Harry's look just shrugged, unrepentant. "No creepy dolls or weird old butler guy. I figured if you were hiding something it would be classic horror movie stuff."

Jake pocketed the cash smiling unabashed at Harry's raised eyebrow. "I said you'd never be so unoriginal, and you would have totally told us if you had a butler, creepy or otherwise."

"It's so cool you live here on your own." Quil had already settled on the sofa and commandeered a bowl of peanuts.

Seth was looking slightly confused by Harry's extensive 'for Dummies' collection but was also eying some of his early edition Austen with an eager eye. Harry just nudged him slightly and gestured to his bookcases. "Borrow anything you want, a lot of them are from the family library so I am only just making my way through them now."

Seth quietly picked up a copy of Ulysses and opened the cover, he flinched at the signature on the bookplate and reverently put it back on the bookcase. He picked up the US History for Dummies book Harry had been digging through to try and at least get the timeline down before Monday.

"Where the fuck did you get a sword?" Jake's eyes were huge, and Harry realised belatedly that just because it wasn't magical didn't mean it wasn't suspicious as fuck. Hopefully it would be shrugged off as a weird hobby.

Although Quil smirking at Embry made that possibility seem infinitesimally small.

"My, er, dad brought it back from Sudan. It think it's 15th century." He nodded towards the axe hanging next to it. Hopefully this would be a distraction from what he was now realising was a shocking amount of antique weaponry on his walls. "That one's a Black family Heirloom. It was given to the family by one of the King Edwards I think. I have a couple of things I put aside that you and your dad might be interested in, it's your family too."

Harry had started digging through things from the Blacks for anything not obviously magical or seriously disturbing. There wasn't much that fell into the category of Muggle safe but he was determined to share as much of the Black heritage as he could with his new family. The Black heritage that wouldn't make them change their names and flee to Australia in any case.

Jake whistled, "Dad said that the Blacks were meant to be an old family from England but he didn't say anything about hanging out with kings. That's awesome."

"I think we were French originally? It's not all good history, I think we were given the axe as a thank you for violently putting down a peasant rebellion." Harry wrinkled his nose, some of the books he'd found in the Black library made it clear that it had been less of a favour to the muggle monarch and more a fun family outing.

Embry was already setting up the TV, "Stop talking about old, dead white people and get ready to watch the greatest piece of cinema Dreamworks has ever produced."

Seth scoffed, "I think you've forgotten Shrek 2."

Quil grumbled through a mouthful of peanuts. "Who cares, Disney's better."

This was apparently deeply offensive Harry gathered from the pillow Jake launched at Quil's face.

"How dare you."

Harry pulled out the cottage pie from the oven and brought it over to the table. The possibility of food seemed to head off the argument before it started but Jake continued to mutter something about pandas that did Kung Fu into his bowl of meaty, potatoey goodness. Harry barely paused to watch the chaos before he went to pull out the other two pies.

The sigh of delight that echoed around the room was almost worth the number of carrots he'd had to chop.

Whatever kind of creature these guys were, it clearly required a lot of feeding and Harry had gotten used to their insane portion sizes over the summer. Although the wards definitely didn't register them as magical so Harry was a bit confused about what they could be.

But he wasn't curious. It wasn't like he was investigating. The wards just gave him this kind of information on visitors.

Or they did as of this afternoon when he updated them to do screenings. That was just a normal part of a ward array that he'd neglected to add to any of his previous houses.

No curiosity at all.

The cottage pies were a hit and the dishes were scraped clean rapidly.

Quil sniffed out the baking Harry had hidden in the pantry and they were soon tucking in to Mrs Weasley's famous apple crumble and chocolate cookies.

Yes, Harry wasn't curious at all.

"Right, so what's this about a dragon then?"

Three films later, after Seth insisted they follow up with Shrek and Shrek 2, the teenagers were all slumped around the room in various states of food coma. Harry had taken his hosting duties seriously and apparently now he had his own home he was turning into Mrs Weasley.

He was going to need to make sure they took some of the cookies home with them, there was no way he would make his way through them on his own.

"So the fairy godmother is different than the tooth fairy?" Harry was propped against the overstuffed armchair that Seth was curled up in.

"Yeah the tooth fairy just collects your teeth and gives you money. A fairy godmother grants wishes, like taking Cinderella to the ball."

The only fairies Harry was aware of just glowed and made mushroom circles in magical forests. These muggle ones seemed far more intense.

"And Cinderella is the one with all the birds that fight for her?"

"No that's another Disney princess, Snow White, she doesn't have a fairy godmother, just an evil stepmother. She only has the battle birds in Shrek, usually she'd just followed around by seven dwarves."

Harry was clearly going to have to do some more reading. And potentially work out what Disney was, he already sensed that telling anyone he had no idea what a Disney princess was would raise some serious flags.