Three hours later Harry had pulled out every book he had on vampires, magical creatures, and forms of mindreading.

He'd never be a natural researcher like Hermione who wanted to know everything about everything. If he didn't have a pressing need like a looming emergency to push him to hit the books, he would usually stick to whatever interested him that day. Drifting from topic to topic like an apathetic jellyfish.

Now moving like a jellyfish with lifegoals Harry took stock of how many books on vampires he owned, surprised to find that he had more than one haphazard pile. How to identify a vampire, how to kill a vampire, what vampire magic looked like, how to turn a vampire into potions ingredients. That one had to be from the Black family library.

All of the references he found clearly described the type of vampire he was familiar with, the only variety being the 'style' choices of the covens. The European covens were all focused on the gothic castles dotted through the Carpathian mountains and the American ones seemed to be focused down near New Orleans. The only difference between the covens looked to be cultural with the Europeans sticking to the old worldy gothic vibes and the Americans seeming to lean into the whole tattoos and dragon teeth aesthetic.

It was all very interesting but didn't mention golden eyes or mind reading capabilities. And clearly the muggle vamps could go out in the daytime unlike any other vampire he'd ever heard of.

Harry narrowed his eyes. The daytime but maybe not in sunshine. The Cullens had missed the first very sunny day of school. If they relied on cloud cover it would make sense that they chose to live in Forks.

It was becoming clear that whatever they were they weren't vampires, in the same way that whatever Jake was it wasn't quite a werewolf.

He sighed. Not for the first time he wished the wizarding world had caught up with the whole digitisation thing. It would be so much simpler if he could just google this.

Whatever the Cullens were and regular vampires would probably be indistinguishable to a muggle. Scary things from the dark that sucked blood. They probably didn't have much time when they encountered one to take note of any differences.

Surely Wixen had encountered them and noticed the obvious differences. Surely.

It wasn't until he was absent-mindedly paging through a book on treaties between vampires and the wizarding world he noticed an old agreement with a group called the Volturi. It was just a note to indicate a leadership change in 500AD, the Volturi were apparently the new leaders of a group of vampires.

What was caught his eye was the vampire group were listed as non-magical, the note in the summary indicated that they would only revisit the group if there was a change of leadership. Similar to the way they kept muggle prime ministers and presidents informed.

He scanned the summary again, the leaders were listed as Aro, Marcus and Caius and their residence was listed as Volterra, Italy.

Harry flipped forward scanning for any further mentions.

The ICW hadn't formed until the 1690's so this treaty was probably initially made by the Italian Wixen, or in that time period maybe Roman? The Wixen timeline when it came to empires was really strange.

The ICW wasn't as useless as the British Ministry, they actually checked on things, so surely there would be a follow up at some point.

There.

1840 – visit to renew treaty with Volturi under the umbrella of the ICW and to negotiate additional clauses around the statute of secrecy. Only 150 years late.

Only one problem there.

There were no vampire covens in Italy, not ICW recognised ones. Harry had been intimately aware of the vampire covens of Europe, after all he had basically been a one-man dark creature response unit for the ICW for the last 30 years.

And the same leaders were listed.

He kept the book open for reference and pulled out some of the more detailed treaty records he'd stolen over the years, he hoped the books he had contained something more detailed because he really didn't want to go the records department in Germany.

He'd started stealing copies of everything he found useful in the first place because of their filing system, the record department was the worst organised mess of paperwork he'd ever seen. If he put a book back without taking a copy, he'd never find the bloody thing again.

He'd be there for weeks.

And he was a muggle now, that too. He had school, he couldn't just fuck off to Germany for 2 weeks.

He found a copy of the original treaty which was mostly an acknowledgement of their existence written in ancient Greek and translated into what looked like Middle English. Harry could barely follow it. Even the translator had given up on word for word translation of the Greek and just listed off the standard breakdown of threats that Wixen tended to approach diplomacy with.

Basically, our magic is better than whatever you have going on so don't piss us off otherwise we'll delete you from existence.

Standard wizard bullshit.

They had finally removed that blasted fountain of slavish devotion in the Ministry's atrium, but most Wixen still seemed confused by why anyone would bother. Wizards were the best, of course everyone else looked up to them. The rest of them only seemed to be on board with tearing it down because Voldemort had touched it and therefore it was bad.

Wixen would hopefully at some point realise that other sentient beings deserved respect but honestly at this point Harry had given up doing anything beyond putting his weight behind bills that established creature rights and throwing money behind any research that might help.

The follow up in 1840 was in Italian and seemed far less immediately aggressive but amounted to the same thing.

Thankfully the treaty was accompanied by an ICW report on the 'diplomatic mission'. The wizard, someone with the unlikely name Fingof Hurgenstein, lead the mission and thankfully wrote his report in English. He described the vampires as red-eyed demons "in coats that indicated a slavish attention to muggle sensibilities, with much gaudy adornment and overdone attention to the appearance of wealth".

So in translation, they looked like rich muggles and lived in a close approximation to Malfoy Manor levels of splendour but because they weren't pureblood wixen this was a moral failing.

Fingof went on to describe their tacky use of marble and works of muggle art and speculated that this pretend wealth was there to distract from their dark and blackened souls.

Merlin's balls, projecting much.

These guys could be saints and Fingolf would condemn them to muggle hell for their use of decorative gold.

According to the discerning eye of Fingof the vampires were not really vampires but rather pale magic-less imitations.

Unlike the magical world's Vampire these creatures do not have an adverse response to either sunlight or garlic but instead assiduously avoid fire. They do not even have that shadowy affinity to darker magics that typify the Vampire. They are entirely muggle in their understanding of our world and if they did not clearly subsist on blood, I would doubt any relation between the two creatures at all.

It sounded like Harry's assumption that the Cullens weren't vampires might be correct. Or would be if they had red eyes? The red eyes were really throwing him off.

These Volturi guys didn't necessarily had anything to do with the golden eyed Cullens but they certainly sounded like they were more similar to each other than they were to any vampire Harry had ever encountered.

The conclusion of the report was that they should be kept on the need-to-know reporting list and checked in with if their leadership changed. "They could provide some threat to a wizard as they are incredibly quick and strong, but our blood doesn't seem to appeal to them. The risk to individual Wixen is very small. The Volturi police their kind worldwide and have assured us that they aim to avoid ever revealing themselves to the humans they feed from."

A police force for an apparently independent, worldwide collection of potentially dangerous creatures. All run by a rich, elite set of leaders, leaders that apparently hadn't changed in the last 1500 years. Maybe they were hereditary titles?

Merlin, the ICW was frustrating sometimes. They clearly had no follow up questions as there were no further updates or reports, the vampire-like creatures were killing muggles and being relatively subtle about it so no need to check in over the last 180 years.

Harry sighed, he wasn't going to get anything more from treaty reports and his books on creatures were unlikely to give him anything if the creatures he was looking for had never been considered magical in the first place.

He pulled out some parchment and wrote out a request to Sharptooth, his account manager at Gringotts, asking him to make some subtle and anonymous enquiries about the Volturi. He sent along copies of the references he had found so far and hoped his account manager would be his usual level of efficient and discrete.

He certainly didn't want anyone to know Harry Potter was looking into knock-off vampires.

Jasper walked out of Spanish like he was walking on air. A whole hour in Harrison's company, this time with the freedom to speak to him, left him reeling.

Harrison's Spanish was not fluent but he spoke confidently, his accent curling around Jasper and making him feel like he was back in South America on one of his and Alice's adventures. He now desperately wanted to retrace their steps, this time with Harrison at his side.

Jasper was leaking joy, he could feel it bouncing out of him in waves. His government class with Mr Jefferson was weirdly cheerful for everyone else, he couldn't concentrate on anything but getting his next glimpse of Harrison.

By the time he had settled against the passenger door of Edward's car Harrison was already emerging from the changing rooms, he walked quickly but had a clear bounce to his step.

Exercise clearly agreed with him, Harrison's cheeks were tinted pink and his thin yellow t-shirt was pulled taut over his chest. He was beautiful. Jasper smiled brightly when they made eye contact, still drinking in the sight of his mate. Hopefully his mate.

Jesus, he hoped.

Edward hadn't had the mate pull with Bella, just the singing of her blood and the fascination of a quiet mind.

Carlisle and Esme were the same, they loved each other but there was no supernatural pull there.

The mate pull was rare, most vampires never found their true mates.

But Rose and Emmett were true mates. Rose had described it once as a gravitational force and Jasper couldn't help but revel in the magnetism he felt from Harrison.

He watched as Harrison glanced behind him, the whispered argument between Edward and Bella probably drawing his focus. When Harrison narrowed his eyes, Jasper looked back to give Edward a warning, he had drawn attention.

Edward and Bella were both looking in Harrison's direction, Edward looked confused and frustrated and when Jasper looked back Harrison was already in his jeep. Even Jasper's eyesight struggled to make out detail at this distance but he looked pale. A contrast to how he'd looked just seconds ago.

Harrison pulled out of the car park quickly, almost clipping the sidewalk on his way out. Maybe he was a terrible driver like Charlie Swan suspected. He looked back at Edward who was still staring at where Harrison's car had disappeared around the corner. Or maybe Edward had done something.

Edward met his eyes and shook his head gesturing to the car, "Bella I will come update you after the family meeting, you need to head back. Charlie is expecting you."

Bella huffed and turned back to her ancient truck sending one last beseeching look at Edward before she climbed in and started it up with a deafening rumble.

Jasper folded himself into the car and spent the silent trip home trying to plan conversation topics for tomorrow. Would it be too weird if Jasper tried to sit with Harrison at lunch? The other students would probably think it was weird but if he wasn't Edward level intense about it maybe Harrison wouldn't think it was strange.

The journey home seemed to take no time at all and Jasper was quickly ushered into the living room where Esme and Carlisle were waiting for them. Clearly his family had some questions.

Esme was holding back a smile and Alice looked delighted.

Carlisle's eyes seemed to twinkle at him from his perch on the couch with Esme, "So we hear your first day back was exciting for more than just academic reasons?"

Esme couldn't hold back her smile anymore; her excitement was palpable. "Is he really your mate?" she whispered, her eyes bright with anticipated happiness.

Jasper knew he'd had human parents at some point, and he was already over 100 years old when Alice and he joined the Cullens, but Esme had been his mother for the last 73 years. He felt the burst of maternal pride from her and in that moment, he felt human again, telling his parents about who he wanted to love. Something he'd never had the chance to do.

His human parents would have been horrified, Harrison was both male and British. His vampire parents would never be anything but delighted.

Jasper found himself leaning forwards, the words seemed to burst out of him. "His name is Harrison. He is 17, he was born in London but moved to France when he was young. He went to school in Scotland until the end of last year and moved here because he has family in the area."

Rosalie was looking at him like he'd sprouted horns and Esme looked like she was about to cry. "He speaks Spanish with a Columbian accent, he wants to visit Japan one day because he refuses to believe exported Wasabi is ever actually Wasabi and he wants to try it when it isn't just horseradish dyed green. He has recently decided that rap music is both terrible and hilarious and he wants to see Beyonce live because he thinks she's superhuman." Harrison had gone into his Beyonce theory at length. At Esme's confused look he elaborated slightly. "She can sing and dance incredibly well at the same time and therefore she's either a mutant, an alien or some kind of fairy."

Jasper finally had to take an audible breath.

"He's my mate. Or at least I really hope he will be."

Carlisle and Esme were both smiling at him proudly. Rosalie had her hand clamped over Emmett's mouth to prevent him from laughing and Edward was staring at Alice.

Jasper looked at her hopefully, "Do you see anything?"

Alice still had a look of concentration on her face, she frowned. "I still can't see him."

Jasper felt his heart drop, he had hoped his efforts to get to know Harrison would have made Alice's visions clearer.

Alice opened her eyes and pulled on his hand. "I can't see him, but I can still see you." She patted his hand and smiled. "You look so happy."

Relief ran through him, just because Alice couldn't see Harrison didn't mean he wasn't there, Jasper would only be that happy if it was going well surely?

Edward was still frowning. "I can't read him."

Jasper thoughts flipped back to concerned. Bella was the only human Edward had ever encountered that he couldn't read at all.

Edward glanced at him, "It's not like Bella. I can vaguely feel his mind is there, it just feels like it's intangible. I can feel that he's there, but I can't hold on to anything."

They relied on Edward's and Alice's gifts to keep their family safe, to avoid any conflict with the humans around them and to give them warning of outside threats. Jasper wasn't surprised when Carlisle's excitement turned to concern, and Rosalie started boiling with frustration. It was her automatic to anything outside of their family.

He automatically sent out a pulse of calm and Esme sighed with relief, her hands fluttering calming motions over Carlisle's arm.

"He is my mate." Jasper wanted to make sure it was clear where his priorities were. "I will leave with him if we discover that he is any threat to our family or our life here, but I want this. I won't give it up."

Rosalie sighed loudly and muttered something about melodramatic men. "Of course. He's your mate, even I wouldn't argue with a mate bond." She sent a pointed glare over to Edward who glared back.

Carlisle still looked concerned, but he leant over the coffee table to grasp Jasper's hand. "We will do nothing to prevent you son. You have every right to pursue your mate." He glanced at Edward, "We will just have to be careful about how we introduce him to the family. I can do some digging and see what we can find out through our normal channels. See if there is anything to be concerned about." He squeezed Jasper's hand lightly. "Just so we can be prepared."

Jasper settled back into happiness, Harrison could be anything and Jasper would still want him. He didn't care if Edward could read his mind or not, Harrison was all he wanted now. He could already feel the pull intensifying now he was no longer nearby.

"So Jasper." Alice bounced in the seat next to him. "Did Harrison say anything else about his Beyonce theory?"

Jasper laughed and he and Alice settled into an easy back and forth on the subject of singing superpowers and mutant lungs.

As always, he was glad to call Alice his sister.

The next month passed in a blur, Harry slowly got used to the strange monotony of having exactly the same classes every day. He still preferred having a mixed schedule, the thought of daily potions lessons filled him with horror but without potions on the roster most of his classes were bearable.

His Spanish was improving in leaps and bounds, listening to Mrs Goff's daily lectures on Art, Literature and Politics helped him massively expand his vocabulary and get a better intuitive understanding of verb tenses.

The reading was finally improving his spelling and the conversations with Angela and Jasper were helping him remain sane.

He was getting closer and closer to murdering Merigue every chemistry lesson and came very close to asking the petite brunette vampire that shared his class to do it for him. He would give her a free pass, she would get a free meal and he would be able to try to understand chemistry finally. Seemed fair.

He glanced at her, she was staring out the window smiling at something he couldn't see. Or maybe not.

If she dyed her hair blonde and wore radish earrings, she would look a lot like Luna.

He still found Maths quite soothing, it helped that it was his only vampire-free lesson apart from gym.

He was still managing to aggressively avoid the cafeteria in case Maleficent managed to corner him, he'd faced down dark lords and yet he was still incapable of being rude unless provoked. Unfortunately, telling Mission Control to fuck off fell firmly under rude even if he was being provoked on the daily. Ron would've rolled his eyes and Hermione would've patted him sympathetically and told him to get some extra reading done.

Eric was a work in progress, they talked in literature. He had managed to introduce himself to the red head who sat with Eric at lunch, Austin was in his gym class and was deeply confused by Harry's complete lack of sports knowledge.

"But you keep up with Taylor for the whole hour, you've got to be into sports. I get basketball isn't exactly your sport but how can you not know what Baseball is?"

"I used to do a lot of running?" Harry hunting had to count for something. "I still can't dribble for love nor money, maybe sports just aren't my thing."

"What about soccer? You're British right?"

"Yeah never really saw the appeal of football. Again, the whole dribbling thing escapes me."

"Jesus dude, just pick a sport without a ball. With your fitness you'd rock at Athletics you need to join the school team or something. All that talent going to waste."

"Pfft, you call it talent. I call it a bloody-minded need to make sure tall people are always being annoyed." This was apparently the wrong thing to say judging by Austin groaning and thumping his head into his desk.

Harry concentrated on homework, reading ahead where he could. His notebook was now full of questions, words and references for him to google when he got home.

He now knew more about Adolf Hitler than he wanted to, most of the main catch phrases from Arnold Schwarzenegger and which member of BTS he liked most.

That had involved a quiz from Angela and the discovery that rap sounded just as stupid in Korean. His favourite apparently had to be Jin. Whoever that was. How his favourite food, favourite activity to do with friends and birth month decided that he had yet to find out.

His list of things to watch now included David Attenborough documentaries (it would apparently be really weird if he, a British teenager, was unaware of Mr Attenborough), the Simpsons and Doctor Who.

And he had a weird list of facts about the Cullens which he was vaguely embarrassed to realise were mostly about Jasper.

The blonde vampire was easy to talk to, he always had something interesting to say and was happy to listen when Harry needed to rant about the latest thing he had discovered.

This week it had mostly been about food. Why were Americans so obsessed with putting pumpkin in everything. He spent 6 years drinking pumpkin juice with most meals. Even he thought they'd gone too far.

He'd learnt that Jasper had no real opinions on food except to say that Southern food was better. Harry was not too surprised considering his suspicions about Jasper's diet.

He'd learnt that Jasper and his family were occasionally pulled out of school to go on camping trips. Harry had his suspicions about those trips coinciding with rare sunny days.

He's learnt that if he caught Jasper off guard he'd try and pull his chair out for him like he was in fact a southern lady and it never failed to make him laugh.

He'd learnt that Jasper had a surprising dry sense of humour and was just as confused about Edward and Bella's relationship as he was.

"She has no emotions. She's another one on my under-suspicion-of-being-an-alien list. I watched her reading Pride and Prejudice the other day before school, she didn't even smile. Either she doesn't understand Austen or she's dead inside."

Jasper looked at Harry seriously. "Edward once told me with a straight face that he didn't understand what the big deal was about the opening scene to UP."

"Maybe that's why they work as a couple, they are both aliens."

He'd learnt that Jasper loved John Steinbeck on a truly, madly, deeply level and that his favourite music was mostly old rock and roll but he had intense relationship with musicals and would hum Les Mis tunes under his breath when he was distracted.

He really needed to not be at school for a bit because the back of his notebook was frankly embarrassing, and they started Oliver Twist next week and just the thought of having to read Dickens again was sending him into a spiral.

By the time he reached Friday he was pathetically happy to head over to the Blacks for a family dinner.

He drove there straight from school, and as soon as Billy opened the door Harry collapsed into his lap dramatically. "Save me Billy. School is trying to kill me."

Billy laughed and wheeled Harry's limp body into their living room. The dinners had moved indoors now Forks' brief sunny season was over and Jake was stirring what smelled like chilli at the stove.

"Has Harry died?"

"Yep, done in by homework."

"We shall mourn him."

"I'll mourn him better with a bowl of chilli." Billy grabbed his bowl from the counter and wafted under Harry's nose.

"It's what he would have wanted." Jake pulled fresh cornbread out of the oven.

"Pity he's missing it."

Harry rolled off Billy's lap, "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated! Please may I have some chilli?"

Jake thrust a bowl at him laughing loudly at Harry's puppy dog eyes. "Glad you're not dead, though if you I see you gnawing on any brains I will not hesitate to shoot for the head."

"Agreed. Merlin this smells amazing." Harry dug in with a happy hum, Jake's chilli was incredible.

Billy gave him a weird look as he snagged a cornbread from the tray on the table. "Merlin?"

"What?"

Jake nudged him, "You say that a lot, Merlin."

"Oh."

"Is it a British thing?"

Harry screwed up his face, urgh. He needed to curb that. "No, it was something we used to say at school instead of swearing. Bit weird, isn't it? Need to get out of the habit."

"Your old school sounds totally insane if you and your friends played half the pranks you said you played and got away with it." Jake was eying him speculatively.

Harry was reasonably sure Jake was trying to work out if Harry had been exaggerating any of his Weasley twin stories.

Thing is, Hogwarts was insane.

He'd only told them about the milder pranks because some of the major ones had some pretty insane consequences if you didn't have access to magical healing. And even then.

Goyle had thrown porcupine quills in his cauldron once as a 'prank' and if Harry hadn't had seeker reflexes and a decent protego most of Gryffindor would have ended up with chunks of hot metal sticking out of them.

Even Snape had to take points off Goyle for that, although Harry was pretty sure it was only because he got caught.

They kept a three headed dog in the school during his first year, there was a colony of murder spiders in the forest and there was a tree that would literally try to kill you if you got too close on the grounds.

And then there was the fact that Voldemort seemed to manage to get in every other year to fuck with Harry.

"Yeah," he rubbed his forehead, "It was lax on the whole health and safety thing. Part of the reason I left." More accurately it was part of the reason he never went back. Hogwarts never felt safe again after the Battle. The first couple of years afterwards he could barely sleep behind the wards at Grimmauld, let alone in a dormitory with other survivors.

There was another couple of minutes of happy chewing before Jake asked another question.

"Where'd you get that scar anyway?" Jake stuffed some chilli loaded cornbread into his mouth completely missing Billy's warning glare.

"Hmm?" Harry zoned back in, still absently rubbing his forehead.

"The scar on your forehead, the squiggly one."

Oh. Shit, he knew he'd forgotten something this week. If that one was starting to show through his usual glamour it was on the edge of failing completely. He'd have to be carefully when he re-glamoured to leave something behind, so it didn't look like he had disappearing and reappearing scars.

"I got it when my parents died, must have fallen or something." Harry shrugged to take any bite out of his words. Technically he'd only assumed it was the whole Voldemort curse thing, it wasn't like he could really remember it. Maybe he'd fallen and hit his head on a cursed crib or something. "It's faded quite well the last couple of years, used to open up all the time but it turned out it just had something stuck in it so once that was removed it healed up fine."

Harry took a weird amount of joy out of referring to Voldyshort's soul as just something that got stuck in his scar once.

"Weird."

"Yeah."

Jake seemed to have no concerns about this story and continued stuffing himself with cornbread. He looked like a chipmunk with his cheeks all puffed out. "Did Quil tell you he managed to trip over a bench at school? Absolutely nailed Embry in the face with his lunch. It was great. Embry got him back by gluing him to a bench in gym."

Billy had his head in his hands. Mourning the fact that tact seemed to have skipped a generation.

Harry didn't mind, it was only awkward if you made it awkward.

Delicious chilli. That's all he needed.

He sank into stories about school, fishing anecdotes and updates about what was happening at the Tribal council this week.

These weekly dinners and the occasional movie meetup with the rest of the guys were always the high point of his week.

Here was something that wasn't complicated.

By the time he was ready to drive home he was comfortably full and calm, he made his way across town to his cabin, stopping to pick up some groceries and smiling at the now familiar cashier.

Reaching the cabin felt like sinking into a warm bath. Worries leaked out of him, and he settled on his couch playing absently with Crookshank's tail which coiled gently around his fingers.

Month one done. Only many more to go.

The next afternoon he resigned himself to letter writing. Not before finishing off the last of his homework and walking the ward line to check for any changes. And then he had to feed Crookshanks and sort out some more of his storage in the library. And bake some cookies.

Finally, out of ways to procrastinate without feeling like he was summoning a disapproving Mrs Weasley, he pulled out a piece of parchment and summoned a pen. Quills made no sense to him now he was regularly writing with a pen again. If he wasn't etching runes that required quill use he was determined to never use a quill again.

He'd promised to update the Weasleys when he was settled into school, maybe he'd send along some pen designs to George and see if he'd be willing to work out how to combine the two for muggleborn students. The thought of all those poor students still using quills filled him with horror.

So much spilled ink. So many accidental stabbings with quill knives. So many not so accidental stabbings.

Discarding his first two attempts which made it sound like he was pining, he finally got back into the rhythm of reassurance he needed to send their way if he wanted to avoid any hysterics.

He described his new cabin but gave no hints on location, focusing on his new furniture rather than any defining features. He mentioned that he was in contact with family and how much he was enjoying getting to know them.

I own a sofa I picked myself for the first time in my life and the shopping experience was terrifying enough that I never want to do it again.

He told them he hated chemistry and grumbled at length about how much wixen and muggle history had nothing in common, except that often muggles had made up something insane to cover up wixen involvement.

Did you know that the muggles still don't know what happens to all the ships in the Bermuda Triangle? They have all sorts of theories abouts ghosts, aliens and weird electrical energy and apparently every time they send scientists there something goes wrong. You'd think that at some point the ICW would do something about the sea serpent.

He couldn't mention any of the weird creatures that seemed to be congregating in Forks because inevitably Bill would turn up somehow.

He was confident in his wards, but Bill was Gringotts' top cursebreaker for a reason and he knew Harry's habits uncannily well.

He just needed to make sure he gave the Weasleys no reason to be concerned.

Everything is good here, muggles are weird but interesting. Learning all sorts. Mrs. Weasley, I highly recommend you listen to Nat King Cole when you get some time, reckon he'd be right up your street. Very Celestina Warbeck but with less cauldrons full of love and more muggle Christmas traditions.

Hope you're all well, pass on anything you want to send my way to Sharptooth (letters only please, I still have plenty of marmalade).

Love you all,

HP.

He missed the Weasleys, but he was building something here that made him feel peaceful for the first time in over a decade.

They would be happy for him; they always were but they never really understood why he needed to leave in the first place.

PS. I have inducted my new cousin and his friends into the Marauders, we are now spreading chaos muggle-style. Please let Teddy know we've made mischief international and pass on all my love.

He opened his vanishing case to send the note on its one-way trip to Gringotts and noticed a new package from his account manager. Pulling it out he absent-mindedly banished his letter across the ocean to Sharptooth's office.

The package had the goblin's neat cursive on the outside, so Harry pulled it open revealing two books and a note.

Dear Mr Potter,

Here is all the information we could find. The group you are interested in has very little written about them, what I have found is likely to be all there is and some of the few remaining copies of that information. If we discover any more, we will of course send it your way for a fee.

As you are a friend of the Goblin Nation, I also asked our chroniclers to summarise any information we possessed in our archives which you can find below.

May your gold grow and your enemies quiver,

Sharptooth

Potter and Black Account Manager

Dammit, he'd completely forgotten about this. He needed to check the box more frequently. There were a couple of business enquiries tucked under the package as well and he had a feeling Sharptooth would send him something obnoxious if he didn't answer them soon.

He really didn't want to know what kind of Howler equivalent Goblins had tucked up their sleeves.

Harry had been grateful over the years that Hermione made them all troop to Gringotts after the war to apologise for their break in. The goblins hadn't been pleased with him but were equally quite relieved Voldemort was no longer randomly murdering their employees. They had sunk into an uneasy truce over the years.

Things Harry defeated often had assets he needed to liquify and the goblins were happy to be on hand. He spent too much time in general trying to work out what to do with all the weird shit he'd picked up over the years.

He had magpie tendencies and always kept anything he thought might be useful down the line but that still left property, dark magic items and other valuables that he tended to just leave up to Gringotts to deal with.

The moment their relationship changed from begrudging to enthusiastic was when Harry managed to rediscover a veritable hoard of Goblin weapons.

The Dark Lord he'd defeated in Russia in the mid 2000's had apparently been stock piling and as the wixen world still operated on a right of conquest basis the hoard of weaponry became Harry's.

He figured that amount of Goblin weaponry was going to be much safer in the hands of the Goblins, he didn't fancy the next dark wizards he ran into wielding armour piercing knives and with his luck that is exactly what would happen if any of it reached the free market.

In exchange for a lifetime lease of the Sword of Gryffindor, and a couple of smaller weapons, Harry handed the whole hoard over to the Goblin Nation.

And that had convinced them he was a friend.

They gave him a little plaque and everything. Apparently being a friend of the Goblin Nation came with all sorts of benefits, he was invited to various parties, he could get warding and cursebreaking for a considerable discount and he was given a dedicated account manager.

He could also add Goblin-friend to his titles in the Wizengamot which he did immediately just to watch the purebloods squirm. He put it before all of his other titles and dared anyone to even mention it.

The goblin ambassador had been delighted and managed to get all of Harry's official awards edited to display his new title, including his chocolate frog card. The one thing he and most of the goblins he'd met had in common was an incredible commitment to petty revenge.

And now he apparently got notes from the Goblin Archivists, Hermione would be so jealous.

The note was short and to the point, no references, or indications of who had compiled this research.

Even the handwriting was non-descript. It almost looked typed.

The creatures that call themselves the Volturi appear to be the result of an accident. Originating from one of Herpo the foul's experiments. He focused on soul magic and immortality; an area we believe you are familiar with.

Whilst they refer to themselves as Vampires the more accurate term would be Revenants. Herpo the foul was attempting to replicate the work of Asclepius who resurrected several people using the blood of Medusa. Herpo the foul attempted the same using his basilisk, the ritual he created served to bind the souls of his experiments to their bodies. In combination with the blood and venom of his basilisk this served to freeze their bodies in time.

Herpo the foul does not record much information after he established that the new creatures he created would not obey him and contained no magic. His further experiments established that the process would even render wixen, goblin and house elf corpses magicless. After this was proved beyond reasonable doubt, he abandoned this line of experimentation.

Based on the information we have the creatures were released or escaped into the general populace at some point in 800BC, and they managed to reproduce. From all accounts they are venomous and spread their disease by biting, so it is presumed that they accidentally turned the next generation whilst trying to feed.

More extensive notes on their ongoing existence, their strengths and weaknesses can be found in the reading material provided.

If you end up collecting more information than that contained above the Goblin Nation would appreciate any contributions to the archive.

Well shit.

It sounded like the Goblins had some of Herpo the foul's experimental journals and Harry had never been so happy to get a summary rather than the original source.

He had mostly blocked out his and Hermione's Horcrux research, they had burned all of their notes afterwards and Harry had locked the books away in his vault. Hermione couldn't bear to destroy knowledge, no matter how foul that knowledge was.

From what he remembered, after successfully creating his Horcrux Herpo had become fascinated by the soul. With tangible proof that the soul both existed and was capable of being modified, he became fixated on the power manipulating the soul might give him. Some of his experiments had been horrifying, there was a reason soul magic was still treated with suspicion despite its use in healing.

Before he disappeared Herpo had killed and mutilated thousands in his experiments, the fact that a type of creature he created was still potentially alive and kicking was concerning. Must had been destroyed, too dangerous and completely insane.

Harry knew that origins didn't have to define you and the Revenants, if that was what the Cullens were, were just as likely to be good as they were to be bad. Or more likely a mix of both like most people.

He sighed. This had just become more complicated.

If their bodies were frozen in time and their souls were bound to their bodies nothing short of absolute destruction would make them stay dead. Suddenly Mr Annoying and Judgemental's description of their aversion to fire made a lot of sense. There probably wasn't much else that could kill them.

His mind shied away from the conclusion he was coming to.

Immortality.

Merlin that made his brain itch, something deep and uncomfortable settling over him.

He was ignoring that feeling.

Ignoring it.

He pulled the books back towards him and started reading, looked like another late night for him.

When Jasper had imagined what it would be like to have a mate, he had pictured someone soft and quiet. Someone built for long evenings by the fire, walks through forest, someone nice and pleasant and just like the vague memories he still had of his human parents.

Or something fiery and intense like Emmett and Rosalie.

Or something comfortable and easy like Carlisle and Esme.

Before they found the Cullens, Alice and Jasper had wandered for a couple of years and one of their favourite games had been imagining their mates. Wondering if they would be lucky enough to find them, Alice said she saw visions of someone sometimes, but it was never clear enough to make out.

Jasper assumed that Alice would have seen it if he was ever going to have one and just immersed himself in the joy of pretending.

They wondered if they were alive yet or turned yet, what they would look like and built scenarios of how they would meet.

Someone built just for him. Someone he could trust not to use him the way Maria had, someone he could be completely at home with.

He never could have imagined Harrison.

The first month of school passed in a haze, the two hours a day he spent near Harrison became his entire focus.

Harrison was bright and confident, he smiled easy and frequently. He clearly adored Angela and spent a lot of their Spanish lessons trying to convince her to abandon her boyfriend Ben and abscond with him to Canada.

If Jasper hadn't been able to feel occasional bursts of humour from Harrison, he would have been jealous, but it was clearly a platonic obsession. And judging by Angela's joy every time Ben was mentioned it wouldn't have gone far anyway.

Harrison seemed to take joy from everything, he spent one literature class raving about how cool Roombas were to Eric and his eyes went huge when Jasper described the robots they were making at Boston Dynamics.

"They made them look like dogs?" He whispered, his green eyes almost seemed to glow with excitement.

"Well it have four legs at least, I think it's name is Spot."

"Spot the robot dog." Harrison sounded awed, "And they just sell them to people?"

"They are very expensive; I think companies mostly use them to go check on things so they don't have to send people."

Eric nodded, "Yeah, I think the army was trying to work out how to use them to check for hazards."

Harrison was just mouthing "Robot Dog" and visibly sinking into his own imagination.

Sometimes Harrison seemed like a normal teenager, just with an incredible amount of enthusiasm.

Sometimes he seemed a lot older.

He didn't talk about his past much, anything he did mention he skated past quickly. One breath telling them he didn't have parents, the next telling them about his favourite Columbian drink. Upbeat and distracting.

But sometimes he would sink into himself and Jasper would feel like he had gone to a different time and place entirely.

The smallest things would cause him to withdraw. Angela mentioned her parent's dog, showing Harrison a picture of the large black wolfhound. Harrison had smiled tightly and made noises about how cute he was.

But he didn't speak for the rest of the lesson.

One of the gym teachers was huge, the guy hand fists the size of hams and he was built big. He was a sweetheart; he had chickens and would show anyone who stood near him too long pictures. The one time Jasper had seen him interact with Harrison, the younger boy flinched. Moving away from him so rapidly that Jasper didn't think he was going to stop. Just keep running.

Mrs Goff had a light cough one week and every time she cleared her throat Harrison flinched. After that lesson he just went home. Nodding goodbye to Jasper and Angela with his shoulders hunched up by his ears.

But then the next day he was back to telling Jasper he needed to save his brother from Bella because she was going to take him up to the mothership for experiments and laughing at Angela's defence of Bella which consisted of one muttered, "She just doesn't like smiling."

He had yet to work up the courage to ask Harrison to sit with him for lunch. Mostly because he had yet to catch him in the cafeteria and following him outside felt weird when he hadn't been asked.

Sometimes he felt like he was really 17, nervous about a crush. Sometimes Angela would say something about how long ago the 2000's was, and he would feel all 180 of his years.

Jesus he was old. He tried not to think about age differences, Edward made a big deal about the difference between him and Bella and seemed delighted to have someone to talk to about it. Jasper had a whole 70 years on Edward, and he really wished Edward would stop bringing it up.

Weekends became too long.

He distracted himself with books and music and singing increasingly discordant songs in his head every time Edward sat down to compose.

Even forcing Edward to brood to the half-remembered soundtrack from Hairspray eventually lost its appeal.

Alice tried to convince him to take up needle point.

Emmett suggested Mario Kart.

Rosalie just shrugged and told him to bother someone else.

Edward's suggestion that he go visit Harrison was unappreciated and inspired him to see if he could remember the lyrics to any music from the Beach Boys.

He wasn't going to turn into a creepy stalker, he wanted to know everything about Harrison but he wanted to know it because Harrison had told him.

So 2 hours later Jasper was trying to work out what exactly had gone wrong for his embroidery to look like that and had moved on to half remembered Elton John songs.

Jasper was buzzing out of his skin by the time Monday came around, he had killed every instinct that told him to seek Harrison out over the weekends but it was hard to resist the part of him that was screaming that his mate was too far away.

He hovered by the door until his family took pity and drove into school early. He waited by the car whilst the rest of them made themselves scarce, waiting for Harrison's eye-catching jeep to pull in.

By the time bell rang for first period Jasper was struggling to stop himself from pacing. Harrison had never been late before.

He heard a squealing sound as a familiar neon vehicle screeched around the corner and precariously came to a stop just before Harrison ploughed into the side of Edward's Volvo.

Harrison abandoned the car, glancing back only to check that it was at least partially in a car parking space.

Jasper stared; Harrison looked exhausted. He was pale and the shadows under his eyes looked bruised and purple.

He looked up as he got closer to Jasper but just blinked at him before he continued his way towards literature.

Jasper followed, noticing Harrison's eyes were fixed on the floor. "Are you okay?"

After a couple of seconds Harrison seemed to realise Jasper was speaking to him. "Yep." His voice sounded hoarse, whether it was from lack of use or lack of sleep Jasper wasn't sure. Maybe he was getting ill?

Jasper trailed him quietly to the classroom and filed in behind him, taking the seat across the aisle from him. Suddenly that felt like too far.

Mr Mason passed out a couple of fact sheets on the Victorian period and a summary of the plot of Oliver Twist and gestured for them to get into their usual discussion groups.

Jasper pulled his chair over to join Harrison and Eric, quickly scanning down the fact sheet and trying to steal glances at the boy sat next to him.

Harrison was staring blankly at the paper in front of him.

Eric was glancing between the paper and Harrison, a smile on his face. After weeks of concentrated moaning Harrison's hatred of Dickens had become a running joke for the whole class and several people were listening in.

They probably took Harrison's dead eyed stare as the latest expression of his particular dislike for Oliver Twist.

Eric nudged Harrison with an elbow and Harrison plastered on a smile. "I know you hate Dickens but what's your beef with Oliver Twist? I loved the musical growing up, it can't be that bad!"

Harry creaked out a laugh. "Ah, but you've forgotten that even if it was a good story Dickens would still manage to make it terrible."

"I would have thought liking Dickens was some kind of requirement for the English, like defending sweet tea if you're from the south." Eric glanced at Jasper, his smile now teasing.

Jasper smiled back, "That's not a duty, it's an honour."

"Why do you think I left England? You burn one copy of Bleak House and apparently, you're a threat to all that is good and English and you're out on your arse." Harry's smile looked a bit more genuine.

"So come on, what's the worst thing about Oliver Twist?" Eric nudged him.

"Well, the orphanage is pretty bloody terrible."

"Do they still have orphanages in the UK?" Eric seemed bemused by Harry's quiet loathing.

Jasper felt a flash of rage fill the room, just for an instant, in a moment it was gone again leaving him feeling on edge, his fingers twitching with the need to touch Harrison.

That rage couldn't have come from anywhere else, the only give away that Harrison was even angry was a slight tremble in his hands.

Jasper couldn't help but be impressed at how little showed on Harrison's face.

This wasn't going to be good.