In loving memory.
Little Mum.
There are no words.

Even in the fancy bed, in his private room at the Marseille seaside resort, the summer heat was intense, unforgiving, unrelenting.

Harry tossed and turned for what felt like hours as he lay and stared up at the dark ceiling above him. His whole room, barely illuminated by the muggle streetlights reflecting back of the Gulf of Lion, was full of heavy air that seemed to sit heavily, weighing Harry down with the heat and stickiness of the night. Neither the open windows, the cooling runes carved into the window frames, nor the silk sheets on the resort's double-bed seemed to help.

Crookshanks had stalked out to find relief in the breeze outside, and from Crow's silence Harry assumed the black-feathered bird was also finding its own rest in the cooler outside, leaving Harry to suffer in solitude. He pushed the bedsheet down further from his hips, but it didn't seem to help. The air itself felt thick enough to touch.

Hair plastered flat to his forehead with sweat, Harry's tongue darted out to ease the dryness of his lips and found them rough, salty, and a little bit cracked already.

Longing for the release of sleep, he didn't notice when his heavy eyelids finally fell closed.

He found himself wandering blind in the darkness, his own footsteps echoing strangely on, from the sound of it, a badly gravelled road. The lonely crunching rhythm kept Harry occupied for some time, he didn't know how long, until the thought occurred to him that he might discover where he was. Or where he was going.

All around Harry, there was nothing to be seen. Only darkness pressed around him closely and, as Harry turned back to stare at the path he had already walked, that too was covered by darkness and indistinguishable from the empty surrounds even before his own shoes – he must be wearing some kind of shoes because the gravel didn't hurt – came into view.

His gaze flickering around in a search for light, for a glimpse of location or direction, Harry continued walking in the direction his feet pointed. Here, too, the air pressed down on him, made him feel small.

"Hello?" Harry tried, his voice slipping thinly into the darkness that had swallowed him up. "Is anyone there?"

But there was only the heavy press of silence in the wake of his call.

He kept walking.

"Where is this?" he tried sometime later, but there was no reply. "Where am I, can someone tell me?"

"How do I get out?"

"Where am I going?"

With nothing else to do, his steps kept trudging on. Hopefully, Harry mused, continuing on in a more-or-less straight line that would eventually reach somewhere.

"Where am I going?" he asked the blackness. It swallowed up his voice.

"Sirius? Remus?" Harry tried, having been walking now for some time, five minutes or five hours he wasn't quite sure. "Crookshanks? Crow?" Surely they would be here, the constant babysitters that they were. "Kreacher? Dobby?"

None of them replied.

His feet slowing now, cautious, confused, Harry didn't know what he was dealing with but felt he should be arriving somewhere, soon enough. Even if he couldn't see it yet, in the darkness.

He hoped.

He probably hadn't been walking in circles.

Brow furrowing, Harry fumbled for his wand as the silence pressed more heavily upon him. His fingertips grasped for that familiar warmth of holly that could always be found in his arm holster but came up clasping only air.

Where was his wand?

More urgently now, Harry patted himself down blindly for pockets, bags or backpacks, the mokeskin pouch and necklets that should hang safely at his chest.

Nothing. Where was his wand? Where was he going?

Footsteps stopped. Harry turned backwards again to squint his eyes and peer into the darkness through which he had already walked.

Where had he even come from?

"Lumos," Harry tried, after a moment of his chest clenching so tight he almost couldn't breathe. But being a Wandless Wonder was a huge public lie, and his fingertips trembled as he cupped his hands together and almost prayed the word. "Lumos," Harry demanded again. "Lumos. Lumos. Lumos. Damn it."

Despite his lack of destination, or perhaps because of it, Harry felt his failure like a slam in the gut.

"Lumos! Please, lumos. Lumos, lumos, lumos."

He swore.

"Come on, come on, please come on. Please? Merlin damn it all…"

It was without any surprise that failure followed failure, and he finally gave in. He wasn't really any kind of magical prodigy, wandless wonder, boy genius.

His lie hadn't become truth.

The temptation to give up was strong. Harry could have stopped there, or panicked, but…

Harry Potter might not be the Wunderkind his reputation made him out to be, but he wasn't a quitter either.

Biting his lip, Harry turned back towards the direction where he had – hopefully – been walking before, and forced his cautious feet to move.

They…crunched, perhaps was the word. The sound of his footsteps was harsh and loud in a place so devoid of anything else to focus on.

Had the road changed? Was the sound different now, or had Harry's ears simply adjusted to the heavy darkness and complete and utter solitude? Was he walking on dirt now? Stone? Some gravel road or forest path?

"How do I get out of here?" Harry asked the emptiness.

"Hey! How do I get out of here? I'm walking and walking, but where am I going?"

It might have been a mild breeze passed his ears, perhaps there were simply voices just beyond his hearing, or maybe he was hallucinating as the blackness crowded closer and closer around him.

"—eaks will never—" might have been Dudley, whining a long way away.

"—learn your lesson, or shall we have—" could have been Umbridge. Or Umbridge's ghost. Or just the whine of wind curling around Harry's neck.

"—shall see—"

"—o not mourn for those who are—"

Harry walked.

"—ust look after yourself, or—"

"—the best kind of—"

"Foolish boy."

"—ravery and cour—"

"What are you hid—"

His footsteps slowed without Harry even noticing. Why rush, when he didn't know where he was going anyway? Tension in his brow revealed to Harry his own growing worry-lines. He didn't like the voices, the almost-voices. He hunched his back and stumbled on in darkness.

"Of course it's happening inside your head…"

"—retending I'm not here—"

"Freak."

"—es not do to dwell on dreams—"

Harry found himself shrinking down, shoulders hunching and head ducking as the weight of the whispers grew and grew.

"Stop it!" he told the voices, not that they listened. "Go away! Leave me alone! I'm…I don't know where I'm going, but it's none of your business! I'm…I can get there without your help!" He stumbled over something in the road, wishing again for a light. For his wand. "I am wanted," he added, after a pause. "I'm fine. I'll be fine, I say, so leave me alone!"

His voice cracked, his heartbeat increasing as Harry shouted back against the oppressive darkness.

He gasped deeply for breath.

He woke up.

"You're up even earlier than I thought," was the first thing Sirius said when he found Harry sipping his breakfast tea in the mostly empty dining room on Le Chateau du Soleil's first floor sometime around six.

It was still dark, which might be why Sirius had decided it was okay to come to the resort dining room wearing only a pair of navy blue sleeping shorts and one of Remus' ratty old t-shirts for decency. Harry decided it was too early to address the topic when Sirius appeared in the doorway to the dining room, but instead only made note of his godfather's dazed, sleepy blinking before he looked back at his unset table with a yawn.

"Bloody heat," Harry muttered, bathing his half-closed eyes in the gently rising steam of a solitary hot drink, letting the last vestiges of his dream fade away. "I had a horrible night. Too Merlin-be-damned hot to do anything but flop around in bed in a sticky mess." Harry paused. "Not like that."

"Awww," Sirius grinned a little as he sat down at the table, sliding neatly into the seat opposite Harry's with an unfair impression of grace and comfort. "I was only going to congratulate you on a good time, and maybe encourage a bit of practice if the quality of your experience was lacking?"

"Bollocks." Harry snorted fondly. "We both know you were gonna take the mickey, and I'm not in the mood for ten minutes of you going on right now. I feel like I barely rested." Another sip of his hot tea had Harry closing his eyes to inhale the strong scent, his shoulders losing another inch of stress as he did so. "Crow and Crookshanks will know that it couldn't be helped, but don't tell Kreacher, will you? He made me promise I'd sleep at least eight hours a night and he'll be grumpy if he knows what time I woke up this morning."

"As if I'd ever talk to my mother's awful lapdog voluntarily," Sirius scowled. Now that Kreacher was the topic, all attention was promptly diverted from his awful sense of humour.

"Oh, go on, you know he's good to me," Harry protested habitually, this disagreement being familiar and well-practised by now. "He was fabulous over last holidays, and all throughout the tournament too."

"Humph. He's never lifted a finger to help me," his godfather protested. "you just watch out he doesn't stab you in the back when your guard is down."

"I'll be fine," Harry waved a hand.

"You can't assume that," Sirius warned. "He might be a house elf bound to the Black House, but you're not technically his actual master. And even in my case, the backstabbing bastard is tricky enough to find a way around most instructions he doesn't like."

Harry remembered Sirius' first death for a moment, the truth of Kreacher's abilities bringing a double rhythm to his heartbeat for a long, stressful second or two. "He likes – and respects – me," Harry reminded himself after a pause, "although, you be careful to watch yourself around him, now that you've raised the point. I'm pretty sure he's only putting up with you for my sake. You do know not to antagonise him, right?"

"Pssh." Sirius tired of the topic rapidly. "Ah, whatever. More importantly, how are you feeling about camp? No last-minute changes of mind? You're sure you're still keen to go?"

"I'm still going," Harry confirmed. "I…" He thought back to his dream. "I don't know where I'm going, so I need to keep up my momentum."

Sirius surfaced a bit more from sleepiness. "Momentum."

"Ah, you know…" Harry stared down into his teacup as if the milky black tea held the answers to all of life's questions. "I've got to keep moving," he explained. "I…I don't know what to do now, so I can't let myself stop in general or I'll…just stop completely."

Sirius took a moment to raise his arms over his head, squeezing out a canine yawn as he stretched out in a long and languid extension. Then, a dog-like headshake had him sitting up straighter, his grey eyes fixed more alertly on Harry. "What do you mean, 'now'?"

"I mean, y'know, from now on." Harry shrugged.

"…As opposed to…?"

"Oh, er. Just…other things, I guess," Harry tried to deflect. Was he just too used to keeping secrets now? Was now the time to...?

Sirius scoffed back a disbelieving chuckle and leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table. "Harry, kiddo…Crowley me lad. You're just a kid. You don't need to have a, a fixed goal for the future at your age!"

"Well, I always had before."

"And what was that?"

To Harry's frustration, it was getting harder and harder not to say, 'I needed to 'Vanquish the Dark Lord', fulfil a prophecy and save hundreds or thousands of lives,' but he managed to bite the words back successfully. He couldn't trust Sirius with any secrets until he knew his godfather wouldn't blabber them – which seemed likely considering his general mood these past few days.

Er. Bringing up a topic like Voldemort just before disappearing for a few weeks would be terrible timing.

"I mean, er…" The thoughts were coming so slowly. Maybe he could have sounded less like an idiot if only he'd slept better. He hoped his breakfast came soon. "I had all these, um, Hogwarts goals, needed to learn how this new 'magic thing' worked, you know? After I got this weird letter in my mailbox. I've kinda managed that mostly now, I reckon, so..."

"So…You think you've solved 'adjusting the magic world' and now you must plan your whole future, at – what are you – fourteen?"

That sounded a lot less impressive than having just fulfilled your life goal of exterminating Voldemort. Harry pursed his lips.

"Fifteen any day now, actually. And…well, we get, um, career counselling's this year? I think it's this year," Harry finally managed to mutter out. "Yeah, that works out. McGon—Professor McGonagall will be so disappointed in me if I don't have any plans for my future, but I can only think of things I don't want to do at the moment – no aurors, thank you very much; I've very over fighting – so…So I need to find a direction."

"Thank Merlin for that. Bloody Tournament." Sirius huffed, before his look shifted into a bemused squint that had Harry suppress a wry eye-roll or two. "But there's no rush. Just tell Old Minnie that you'll live off my family's blood money until we've purged the house of its ill-gotten gains. That's a worthy goal to live for."

"Whatever you say, Sirius."

"Obviously."

Sirius looked so proud of himself that Harry felt compelled to let him have the point. He cast his gaze around the room again, one of the staff bustling in to add new things to the drinks corner, the kitchen's noises swelling as the chefs began the process of preparing for breakfast proper out of sight.

After one final deep draught that had Harry emptying his teacup of all but the dregs, Harry clinked his saucer and cup together. "Why are you down here so early anyway, Sirius? Isn't this way too early for you?"

"We heard you moving around your room," the animagus explained casually, "and Remus sent me down to check on you when we didn't hear you come back again. Isn't your guide person arriving at some stupidly early time too?"

"Yes," Harry nodded, "but not for almost an hour. Did I wake you?"

"Yeah, but no worries. If you're so determined to leave me for this quidditch thing, I might as well spend as much time with you as I can before you go."

His heart twinged in recognition of Sirius' years of isolation. "I, er…I do want to go to it, but I'm really sorry that you'll be left behind for the m—"

"Yeah, yeah. The betrayal still stings. But anyway, if I'm going to have to argue your guide around to letting you have your wand with you, it's probably best that I'm awake and thinking and all, you know?" At that, Sirius stood up, finally finding a reason to banish his early morning lethargy for his usual energy and liveliness. "Speaking of which, where does this place keep its good coffee? Merlin, but I could do with a strong cuppa right now."

Now this was an easier conversation for Harry to have. "You'll have to pop your head into the kitchen, they've only just started setting up now because I spoke to them last night about leaving early," he explained. "And then maybe you might want to put on some proper clothes? In case you embarrass Remus with your current public image, I mean."

Sirius glanced down at himself. "Ah, if the wizarding world won't even give an innocent-ex-convict a little grace, then what benefits can I…? Oh alright, I'll sort that out too."

"Actually, that guide should be here for me in a little under half an hour," Harry pointed out. "Not to judge you personally, but you being dressed might make your arguments a tad more convincing…"

"Haven't we had this conversation before? I'm feeling déjà vu."

"Has the validity of my point changed?"

"Fine, fine. Whatever." Sirius hauled himself standing. "Have my coffee on the table by the time I come back, won't you? And something for Remus – I'm sure he'll be down any minute."

Merlin bless these quidditch nuts.

A deeply scowling Madam Midgen told Sirius first thing, "Not even the famed Harry Potter will be given special privileges at the U17 Quidditch Camp," letting not a speck of fannish admiration bleed into her very dismal tone.

While it didn't sound good for him personally, Harry's shoulders still relaxed at the complete lack of respect she showed for his recent fame.

"Ah!" Sirius raised a pointed finger hopefully. "You see, the situati—"

"While I'm sure that the world at large is very grateful to Mr Potter for ridding the world of its biggest existential threat since Grindelwald," Madam Midgen continued, her slight and sporty figure practically swelling with righteous judgement, "this so-called 'service' means nothing to our scouts, coaches or any of the professional quidditch teams who run our camps. In fact, if Mr Potter is hoping to use his fame for rule-bending of any kind—"

"We're trying to prevent his magic from exploding him," Remus – uncharacteristically – interrupted.

Harry's eyes flicked to his adopted uncle in mild surprise.

Remus continued, smooth as melted butter. "I'm not sure what you heard about the highly illegal blood rituals that the Dark Lord forced our Harry through, but he's been judged by a number of different Healers and medi-witches as being—" Here Remus paused for thought, just long enough to emphasise the words without giving her a chance to jump in; Harry remembered all over again that Remus had once been a Marauder – "'magically unstable'. Now, as dedicated to quidditch as Harry is, he simply can't bear the thought of missing out on an opportunity to improve his game due to something as ethereal as a 'threat' of ritual backlash; at the same time, his godfather and I believe that it would be a crime to lose his blossoming quidditch talent for something as simple to resolve as improperly channelled magic."

Harry was interested to note that Madam Midgen's scowl could deepen further. Even her close-cropped blonde hair seemed to bristle with indignation.

"Well, you make a fair point, but still—"

"I have the Healer reports here," Remus forced a bunch of parchment into the reluctant woman's hand, "and obviously Harry will be held to the same standard – rules, regulations and so forth – as the other young hopefuls, but we have it on good authority that merely keeping his wand on his body should be enough to guide any magical bleed beyond his body."

"I'm really not—"

"You'll obviously agree with me," Remus continued inexorably, "that having our Harry here offload a few inadvertent fireworks or accidentally transfiguring a duck or whatever, through his wand, will be much better for the future of British Quidditch than if he explodes himself – or a teammate – in a moment of inattention."

"Well," the displeased witch visibly deflated as Remus completed his sentence, "when you put it that way…"

Out of the witches' line of sight, Sirius elbowed Harry enthusiastically in the ribs and shot him a childishly hopeful grin.

"I'm afraid I must contact headquarters about this," the woman said, even as she cast an absent tempus with her wand and pursed her lips in thought. "We only have a twenty-minute window before you miss check-in for camp and lose your place, but your quidditch skills really are too impressive for the world to lose to a malcontent Dark Lord's whims, so…allow me a moment to step outside and contact our administrator for a discussion."

It was exactly like Oliver Wood's ability to ignore all rules and obstacles if they got in the way of the Gryffindor team training. Apparently, quidditch nuts were really easy to manipulate. For Remus, Harry remembered to add with an inner smirk.

Thank Merlin that quidditch nuts were so easy to manipulate for Remus.

Ten minutes later, Madam Midgen hustled back inside from Le Chateau du Soleil's dining room deck, her sporty robes swishing swiftly. "The paperwork is legit, all of your Healers have an international reputation, and Young Mister Potter's predicted quidditch growth has been deemed worth the risk. There'll be a contract for you to sign as a guarantee of good behaviour if we arrive at camp on time," the witch told Harry with an efficient bustle, "and we'll need to leave now if you want to keep your place. You're not the only pick-up I've got this morning. I hope you have all your things?"

"Yes, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am!" Harry managed, but now that all signs of displeasure had been organised away, the quidditch camp guide before him transformed into a being of hustle and business.

"Chop chop, now. We don't have all day."

"Sirius, Remus," Harry turned to say. "Look afte—"

"No time for protracted goodbyes!" Madam Midgen snapped. "Is this all your luggage? Grab anything I've missed and take a generous pinch of Floo Powder, then repeat after me: Terminal International de Paris."

She disappeared through the dining room Floo in a swirl of green flames.

Harry swallowed loudly. "Bye, I guess," he managed to choke out. "Wish me good luck!"

He followed.

Harry had really thought that, given his frequent use of wizarding transport, he was getting used to wizarding transportation. However, when he was dragged out of the final fireplace by the still-energetic Madam Midgen, he was reeling with a dizziness comparable to the first time he'd ever used the Floo.

"Urgh," he managed, before stumbling left and bumping his shoulder against the brick mantel of the fireplace in question.

"Your first multi-stage Floo journey?" Madam Midgen asked him with a quirk of her blonde eyebrow, some of her anxious haste evaporating now that they'd arrived wherever they were going.

"Hmm? Well, yeah," Harry agreed after shaking his head clear. "I thought I'd adjusted. I've used the Floo tons before."

"Multiple jumps are the hardest," the woman agreed, her eyes glinting in sympathetic amusement, "but the experience will be good for your quidditch. The inner ear, you know."

"Sorry?"

But Harry didn't get a chance to pursue the thought, because the witch took the moment to drop his leather trunk to the floor and flicked the soot off her own robes with a twitch of her wand.

"Now, you're here, and we've hit our nine-thirty deadline. I can't stay to settle you in, Potter, I have another pickup in Belarus before noon. When you recover, take yourself and your luggage just outside the door to the table set up outside – there shouldn't be a long queue – and someone will sign you in, explain the rules and take you to your tent. Your contract should be waiting for you there and you'll be thrown out unceremoniously if you're unwilling to sign. There's nothing scheduled today until evening because of the scattered arrivals, but I remind you that no wandwork is allowed on campus. Any questions?"

Despite her words, Harry got the distinct impression that questions were unwelcome, so he waved her offer away and she sent him a distracted nod of goodbye before visibly setting her shoulders and stepping back towards the flames.

A small toss of floo powder, and a mumbled word that Harry didn't catch, and she was gone in another whoosh of green flames, leaving Harry to himself.

He took a startled moment to blink before finally directing his attention to wherever he had arrived.

The room was darker than he'd first realised, his conversation with the witch having been lit by the flames in the fireplace. It was also smaller than he'd first assumed: brick walls in a slightly browner tone than Hogwart's grey limestone enclosed a hardwearing stone floor covered in a sooty grey rug, a handful of wooden benches lined the walls and a chandelier made of enchanted candles – probably everlit, from the look of their magelight – worked hard to make up for the tiny puddles of light that barely made it into the room beyond the deep windowsills on two sides of the room. The fault of the midday sunshine, Harry identified, and it was delightfully cooler than he had felt for days.

A second glance had him notice the bare walls and lack of useful furniture – desks, cupboards, that sort of thing – and Harry decided that he was probably in an entrance hall of some kind, which made his next steps obvious.

With a moment's pause to grab his trunk again, Harry made it out of the door towards this mysterious 'table' that waited for him, and pushed open the stiff wooden door to step into the dazzling midday sun outside.

Even when his eyesight cleared, Harry found himself stopped midstride to take in the view.

He was in the mountains, was his first realisation, although the temperature should have made that apparent. Wherever he had arrived was stuck near the top of a mountain range, and the v-shaped valley below him was spotted with the brackish green of grass fighting for purchase amongst the rocky ground. Dozens and dozens of metres below that, the dark green blurs of mountainous pine started specking the view, until their colours all blurred together near the bottom of the valley into an alpine forest, which Harry could only assume hid the snow-fed stream that had cut its way through the earth.

The sky above him was a stark and intense blue and as Harry stared at the incredible vista, a flash of sparkling magelight-where-magelight-was-normally-not caught his eye; in fact, there were three huge globs of it.

He raised his free hand to shade his eyes and peered up into the brightness.

Well above the base of the valley – in fact, a little above Harry's elevation too – were three…he could only call them floating 'grids' made of white ribbon and magic, which floated over the valley.

Each grid was bookended by circles of fire-red flame, and Harry found himself swallowing loudly as the charmwork of the temporary quidditch pitches registered in his mind.

"We'll play up there?" Harry muttered out loud, the dazzling brightness of the charmwork shining brighter as he stared.

The registration table, twenty feet away, positively paled in comparison, and the tiny cluster of…four, five, six squat stone buildings a bit further on were practically beyond notice.

Then a sparse chatter drifted to Harry's ears, and he tore his eyes back down from the quidditch pitches to notice a couple of sitting adults and a bunch of teens in colourful robes wandering around not too far from him.

The realisation settled on him all of a sudden. Harry was at quidditch camp. International quidditch camp, with the best of the best. He had his goals for the next few weeks all set up; all his worries about his future and Hogwarts and Sirius faded into background noise.

This camp was new in this timeline. It wasn't for Voldemort, or Sirius, or Mr Lloyd-Elliot or anyone. This camp was for Harry.

He couldn't wait.