Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Last of a kind.

Harry had been called a lot of things over his life, besides his name, that is: Freak, Boy, both before he knew his actual name, which said plenty about his early lot in life; The-Boy-Who-Lived, Triwizard Champion, The Chosen One, Undesirable Number One, The-Man-Who-Conquered, and all that hyphenated rot; but the latest title he received hadn’t even come up in his most cynical thoughts.

“Hey, mate, congrats on your thirty-fourth birthday!”

And it all began on a day that began as normally as any day for him in the years after the battle of Hogwarts.

“Ron, there’s nothing special about thirty-four,” Harry sighed, peeling his best mate’s arm off his shoulder. Birthdays weren’t very special, after all, especially not for him. Yeah, his eleventh birthday had been very special, for those few blissful hours where he thought he wasn’t the odd one out any longer, and his seventeenth, which meant the end of the Trace and his helplessness away from Hogwarts. But for most people, birthdays faded into irrelevance after childhood, and basically all of his birthdays up until his seventeenth hadn’t been…good anyway, so he was rather soured on the subject.

Especially now it was unwelcome. He’d been in the middle of accepting an important job after quite a long period on ‘mundane duty’, as he and his few colleagues liked to call it, when he’d been called away from the office. If he’d ever actually found birthdays important he would’ve paid attention to the date and expected the ‘Surprise!’ that almost made him hex the depressingly small but jovial crowd hidden inside his apartment.

“I dunno Harry, this cake tastes pretty special to me,” Ron joked, eyeing his licked clean plate and the half-eaten, snitch-shaped cake resting on the table.

“Oi, leave some for the rest of us, you glutton!” Neville called out playfully as he floated the thing across the room with a flick of his wand, right out of Ron’s reach, its delicate, animated wings flapping about hilariously for the oversized thing.

“It’s not my fault Hermione’s bloody banned sweets in the house,” Ron pouted as he watched the cake levitate away. “It’s like she can’t figure out there’s a reason we don’t have those dentists of hers over here.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s just habit for her, Ron,” Harry shrugged, eyeing George, who was suspiciously quiet as he approached the cake behind Neville, and averted his eyes. “And I rather not experience another one of your rows tonight, you know, so don’t say that when she’s around.”

He glanced across the room, pointedly ignoring the ton-tongue toffee George was hiding in the piece of cake Neville had set aside. “Where’s Hermione anyway? Still at work?” The only other person that was missing who could feasibly come was Ginny, but things had been a bit awkward for a long while, when just a few years after settling down they’d tried for a family, only to realise that not one, but two killing curses had…killed off any chances for him.

‘One for each ball,’ Ron had joked once, when enough years had passed for the painful revelation to lose its edge, but Harry hadn’t found it very funny, no matter how well-intentioned the joke may have been.

In those years, Ginny instead had gone back to the more independent, proactive girl he’d remembered her as in her youth, joining the Harpies and, after a year, quietly calling an end to their rather short-lived marriage once they both realised there wasn’t really much going on between the two of them any longer, especially with Harry so preoccupied with going crazy jumping between jobs without her or a family around to incentivise the need for a stable income, trying and failing to find something he could actually settle for.

It was in contemplative moments like these that Harry wondered if the female Weasleys just had that strongly familial instinct, and what Molly would’ve been up to now if Arthur had had similar problems in the past.

Not that he could really blame Ginny for deciding to focus on things other than family. Adoption wasn’t really a thing in the wizarding world. Not that there were many wizarding children put up for adoption anyway, thanks to how much magical children were cherished compared to the muggle world…in their own pureblood-prejudiced ways for part of the population.

Any other of his friends were too busy. According to her last birthday card to him a year ago, Harry figured Luna was still off with Rolf on their around-the-world expedition that was lasting over a decade by now. That last card told them they’d changed the course of their journey to China, based on another one of Luna’s ‘gut insights’. They all had a running bet on which of Harry’s birthdays they’d finally receive a card ending with ‘Luna and Rolf Scamander’ rather than ‘Luna Lovegood and Rolf Scamander’. Maybe it’d be this year? The yearly card was due any day now.

Bill was busy for basically the exact same reason Harry had been grumpy to be called away. Now that he thought about it, that bastard was probably in on it, and had told him he’d take the job for that exact reason.

Anyway, the only remaining person who could’ve technically come was Teddy, as this was his summer between fifth and sixth year, but eyeing the metaphorical barrel of untouched Firewhisky bottles in the corner, he didn’t think Ron and the others wanted an angry Andromeda on their doorstep after having her underage grandson come back stupid drunk from the party they’d clearly envisioned.

Ron sighed, sinking down on the couch. “Yeah, she’s been working overtime every day for the past month. I wish she could just bloody talk about any of it. Bad enough we had to call off that reunion at the World Cup earlier this month. We don’t even get to know why,” he moped.

“Hey, she’s working on it,” Harry said, laughing. Somehow, Unspeakable at the Department of Mysteries had been so fitting for her, yet nobody had actually expected it up to the point it was revealed.

They all assumed she was aiming for something like Minister or Department of Magical Creatures, aiming to reform the whole lot like she’d been fantasising about for all those years. And when she brought news of her acceptance at the Ministry of Magic they’d all celebrated. If it hadn’t been for some rare circumstances where they’d caught Hermione in a lie, they never would’ve realised it. Especially not when she couldn’t tell them herself.

That said, she was still very much in the business of reforming the entire system. She was predictably horrified at the Unspeakable Seal that kept the mysteries in the DoM mysteries; it was basically the exact opposite of what a scientific institution was supposed to be. She’d already been working on turning the DoM into a proper, transparent academic institution for several years by this point, and she was hopefully starting to see some results soon. The current string of extra work sounded promising, anyway.

Any response from Ron, or the sudden gagging sound as Neville’s tongue swelled out of his mouth after an unsuspecting bite accompanied by George’s chuckles were drowned out by the flaming woosh and green light that signalled an arriving floo.

A mane of bushy brown hair bobbed around as the arrival turned to vanish the disrupted ash of the fireplace with a mumbled Evanesco.

“‘Mione, there you are!” Ron called out, having moved on from the cake to a more hearty…chicken wing. Harry couldn’t exactly fault him from being ravenous after a full day of looking after Rose. It’d practically become a full-time job for him once he’d quit the aurors shortly after Harry left himself, even if she was already eight years old.

Predictably, his wife didn’t look very pleased at the situation she’d entered. “Don’t call me that Ronald, honestly. A full mouth isn’t an excuse,” Hermione huffed, before a tired smile graced her face. “I’m not too late, am I, Harry?” She asked, diverting her view from Ron, who was sheepishly wiping his mouth with a napkin.

Harry shrugged. “I didn’t really expect anything, so I can’t really be mad at someone being late for it, can I?”

Hermione gave him a look, but couldn’t find any fault in his logic. Not before Ron finished making himself presentable and spoke up, anyway.

“So…is our constant pestering getting any closer to annoying that seal of yours into breaking?” he asked cheekily.

Hermione rolled her eyes, a slight grin telling her true feelings. “By the time you get even close to chipping it, I’ll have already gotten rid of that heinous practice.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “Actually, speaking of- No, nevermind.” She shook her head. “This is your party, Harry.”

“Nono, we’ve already exhausted every topic. Not that there’s much different to talk about compared to yesterday,” he responded. “Please rant about something interesting before George decides to floo-call Percy to talk about their business’s quarterly returns.” he said, jokingly.

In the background, a George who was undoing his prank on Neville perked up, a grin spreading over his face, which Hermione evidently saw forming as well, as she hurriedly responded.

“Well, if you’re sure…” Her face shifted into the type that made it evident there was no stopping her now, even if they wanted to. “I’ve finally gotten one of my proposals through,” she said proudly.

“Which one?” Ron joked. “The one in notebook four or number seven?”

Hermione huffed. “Notebook three, for your information.” She grimaced, realising she’d fallen for his joke, before shrugging it off. “From now on, any discovery or previously existing information that is going to significantly influence the wizarding world, regardless of secrecy, will be unsealed and communicated through a press release. Like a proper scientific field,” she finished in a grumble.

“What did it take to push that through? Even the last time they did ‘press releases’, those were just made up bollocks from the Death Eaters.” Neville asked, coming up behind them, tongue back where it was supposed to be and George rubbing his arse from the overpowered stinging hex he received. “Must be some news if they’ve decided it was worth giving in for.”

Hermione gave Neville a graceful nod at the bridging question. “Yes. Do you remember that news article on a glowing baby being born in China back in February?”

“You mean the headline of the Imbolc edition of the Daily Prophet?” Ron asked incredulously. “The one everyone thought spelled the end of the Statute because some obliviators couldn’t decide on what to do with the baby’s accidental magic? Wasn’t that handled?”

Harry remembered that day too, if only for the spike of anxiety he and all of wizarding Britain had gone through in the days following that article.

What had started as a routine, if slightly unusual display of accidental magic, the obliviators hit a snag when they realised the muggleborn baby couldn’t…turn it off, nor could they. By that point, a doctor had already filmed and posted a video of the child. Thankfully, the relatively new ICW internet intervention crew had already made sure the event was called out as an elaborate hoax, and the parents of the child had been informed of the magical world before discreetly being spirited away to a safer place.

A few more cases of this unusual type of accidental magic had popped up all over the world, according to the occasional article in the Daily Prophet, relegated to the umpteenth page now that everyone had decided this was just some new weird thing with magic that could be handled. Maybe something that could only be noticed nowadays with that nifty ‘worldwide web’ and ‘social media’ spread all over the globe, was the collective thought.

“So what about it?” Harry asked, intrigued about what was so important about it now, several months later. “Go on, spill.”

“Well…we’ve recently gotten a few cases like that over here,” Hermione started slowly.

Ah, the typical self-interest of the wizarding ‘world’ of the United Kingdom. Why wasn’t he surprised at all.

That said, Hermione was looking very nervous about what she was going to say next.

“And…one of them is a seven year old squib,” she concluded, waiting for the penny to drop.

“So the squib isn’t actually a squib?” Ron asked, apparently not understanding there was a penny, and thankfully hiding the fact Harry wasn’t getting it either.

“No, Ronald. He’s as much a squib as he was hidden in the family manor for until now,” Hermione huffed. “They paid for a whole magic detecting test during infancy and all.” She, along with the rest of them, clearly wasn’t happy with that little, more recent practice.

“I dunno,” George chimed in, waddling over. “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck…”

“We checked,” Hermione interrupted impatiently. “If it’s magic, it’s nothing like the kind we’re familiar with. It took us nearly all month to figure out any decent hypotheses. Now that we have one, it’ll be part of the first press release tomorrow morning, which is why I can actually talk about the specifics now.”

If she’d been hoping to get them hooked on her story, then she certainly succeeded. She certainly looked rather happy with the way they’d finally put their full attention on her. Harry certainly had pushed any thoughts of his thirty-fourth birthday aside.

“Thanks to another change I managed to push through, we’ve collaborated with the ICW to compare international findings, and the only real links we’ve found so far is that it only happens in children less than five years old, with an occasional outlier, and they’re all squibs, or directly descended from squibs,” Hermione amended.

She paused, looking thoughtful. “Our current theory is that this is Magic’s response to the lower magical births in-”

“Wait, wait, wait, hold up,” Ron interrupted, giving an incredulous look. “Don’t tell me you’re now spouting that Lady Magic rot those pureblood nutters preach.”

“Absolutely not!” Hermione huffed indignantly, hair frizzing up. “Is Magic as a whole a self-correcting, balanced system? Absolutely. Is it sentient to a degree like an animal? Good chance of that. Is it sapient? Most certainly not. I sincerely hope not, anyway.”

She composed herself, her hair calming back down. “We did a more physical study, on my insistence, and we discovered these children have all found a way to physically incorporate magic into their biology.”

“Wait, that’s different from us?” Harry butted in. “I thought we all had some…some…” he trailed off as Hermione started rubbing her forehead.

“Why doesn’t Hogwarts have magical theory in the curriculum beyond Flitwick’s introductory lessons?” she mumbled, before realising everyone had heard it in the anticipatory silence of the room.

“Sorry. I’m just, really tired.” And she sounded the part too. “And now I’m butting into your party. Oh Harry, I-”

“Hey, I asked, didn’t I?” Harry responded. “Do you want to have a kip on the couch for a bit?” he asked worriedly.

Hermione brushed it off with a “No, no, I’m fine. I’ll finish this first.”

She pinched herself back to lecture mode. “We don’t have some magic gene in our DNA, or some additional gland in our brain, or a metaphysical magical core connected to our body, or some magic bile sack attached to our heart. We’re functionally identical to muggles, except we can manipulate the ambient magic and its currents, and channel it through our bodies and focus it through our wands to force it into doing something. Actually storing, concentrating, and integrating magic into a physical body isn’t something we can do.”

Harry felt heat rising to his cheeks as a misconception he hadn’t even realised he had was corrected. Though how magic got inherited then…? Oh well, magic having some unexplainable peculiarities was what made it magical. “So, this is different then. What- What were you going to say about Magic doing…” He trailed off, prompting her into answering.

“Right. So, the Ministry’s done its best at hiding it, but our magical birth rates haven’t recovered at all after the past three wars. We’re just too small a population by this point,” Hermione said wearily. Huh, it seemed even people like Hermione could get pulled in by the small-mindedness of Wizarding Britain. As far as Harry knew, everywhere outside of Europe was probably doing fine.

“So the theory now is that Magic is attempting to raise the amount of magic users in the world by…forcefully manifesting the weak, unusable magic channelling abilities of the latest generation of squibs and squib descendants into this new, physical variant,” Hermione continued. “But due to their weak channelling ability, the physical manifestation is limited to a single spell or effect, even if they’re spells or variants of spells or enchantments we’ve never seen invented or discovered before, akin to a bout of accidental magic.”

The room fell into a silence.

“Wait, hold on a minute!” Ron butted in. “But there’d have to be millions of squib descendants out there nowadays!”

They got a grim-faced Hermione in return. “Yes, Ron. Even if this process is only limited to magically ‘undiluted’ enough squib descendants, the ones that have a squib ancestor within the past two or three generations, there’ll be hundreds of thousands of these cases waiting out there. And as far as we can tell, the physical manifestation extends all the way down to their genetic material too.”

It was a credit to Hermione’s insistence on explaining muggle concepts to her pureblooded friends over the years that none of the apartment’s occupants looked confused at the several mentions of DNA.

“So what you’re saying is the world as we know it is going to change irreversibly soon?” George asked, before a grin split his face. “I can’t wait to see the results.”

Harry silently agreed on the first part, but he was far less enthusiastic about the potential consequences. Hopefully nothing too absurd would come of it for him. But he had a bad feeling the infamous Potter Luck had plenty more in store for his life.

April, 2246

“Illegal quirk usage during rush hour, as well as robbery and assault?” the Japanese man in a costume even the most eccentric of wizards would back away from shouted. “You are the incarnation of evil!”

Up high, looking down at the scene on the train tracks, hidden beneath his ancient Invisibility Cloak, Harry frowned, wondering if his translation spell was translating things a bit too literally.

As the ‘pro hero’ got ready to use his ability, Harry shook his head and moved away from the ledge, making his way over the rooftops of the shopping district. This was honestly a terrible spot to apparate onto, though that’s what you get when your mental instruction is simply ‘Musutafu City’, and without any actual familiarity the magic simply threw him at a random spot.

Despite having been travelling for a few years now after waking up, this world was still quite overwhelming, and Japan was in a world all of its own when it came to ‘quirks’ and ‘heroes’. Harry really wasn’t sure how to handle the fact that hero was now an actual job. It certainly looked more glamorous and less harrowing than his time as one.

He sincerely wished that ‘waking up after a long sleep’ was the only reason he was so far removed from a time where mundanity looked like a reasonable prospect for his life, but he knew he would’ve gotten to this point without the unintended assistance of that…self-inflicted method anyway.

The reason for his thinking? The crux of it was currently keeping him invisible from the crowds below and news helicopter above.

Thinking of it as simply the family heirloom, one of the few bits belonging to his father, rather than ignoring its true identity and its accompanying set of artifacts, one sitting in his hand and the other dangling from the end of a necklace, was the only thing that stopped him from thinking too much about his situation and how he found out about it all.

You could probably guess the date that happened.

The Samhain Curse

October 31^st, 2014

Hogsmeade was positively brimming with Halloween decorations. If Harry thought the festive stuff back at Hogwarts was purely something Dumbledore did to bring more muggle traditions into the school for the muggleborns’ benefit, then that’d been disproven pretty quickly after graduation.

Surprisingly, the tradition of Halloween- or Samhain, if you were being culturally appropriate- being an awful day all-round mostly stopped after his proper graduation from Hogwarts. Yes, there were the important raids he got seriously injured in a few times, despite not even being an auror after the first two years, but most years the day passed rather quietly.

As he made his way to the Hog’s Head, where Aberforth Dumbledore was surprisingly still manning the bar in his advanced age, he had the very much not missed feeling that a penny was going to drop tonight, an unnaturally cold night, even for late October in the Highlands.

A dark cloak shielding him from the cold breeze, the comforting feeling of a locket he’d found in his mother’s dresser at the ruin of Potter Cottage just earlier today pressing against his skin, and the weight of his trusty Holly wand in his hand at least made him feel some sense of protection this night.

Thankfully, his stroll through the cold Hogsmeade streets ended quickly and with little fanfare, the warmth of a hearth and the chatter of several groups in the Hog’s Head hitting him at once as he stepped through the door.

“So then I was called on a job, and I realised ‘Hey, isn’t this the same location Harry was called to two hours ago?’” Harry easily spotted the group he was looking for, hearing the sound of Bill’s voice. Well, besides the fact that, despite recent renovations, the Hog’s Head was still rather seedy and not visited often, barring those who didn’t like the busy nature of the Three Broomsticks.

“And when I came there, I realised Harry had somehow managed to lock himself inside the wards!” Harry reached the table, thankfully behind Bill’s back, and watched as the group of friends stopped their collective laugh as they realised who’d walked up to them.

All except Bill, that is. “I don’t even know how he managed to do that during a standard ‘owner locked themselves out of their ward scheme’ job!” he kept regaling, expecting the others to laugh again, getting an awkward cough in return.

“Uh, hey Harry,” Ron slowly spoke up from the other side of the table, the ghost of a grin still on his face, and Harry could see Bill freeze up. “You’re back early from Godric’s Hollow.”

“I decided to finish up early,” Harry dismissed quickly, before moving for the empty chair. “So, Bill, please continue telling your funny work stories,” he said dryly.

After another instant of silence, he instantly took the opportunity to strike back. “You know what, I got a funny story,” Harry said jovially, seeing everyone but Bill lean forwards.

He eyed the eldest Weasley son with a wholly innocent smile. “Bill, remember when you were experimenting with a portable allure suppressing ward for Victoire a few years back at my place, but you crossed the runes wrong and instead artificially induced the effect so strongly you instantly busted a-”

“That was told to you in strict confidence!” Bill squeak-yelled as the table burst into roaring laughter.

Harry shrugged, smirking. “I guess we’re both being very forgetful tonight.” He adopted a thoughtful pose. “Must be the Samhain curse popping up and doing its thing again. Right, mate?”

Bill looked positively mortified, his head sinking into his hands, and Harry received a strong slap on the back from Ron for his efforts.

“Glad to have you, Harry,” he said warmly, still chuckling. “Hey, can we get another pint over here?” he called at Aberforth.

Harry couldn’t help but feel himself smile at the friendly banter surrounding him. It was probably just his paranoia surrounding the date that had been making him uncomfortable.

The bell to the Hog’s Head rang again as Neville started gushing about his work at the Hogwarts greenhouses.

“Ginny, what’re you doing here?” Ron called out, outraged, and interrupting Neville’s story. “This is a men’s only night,” he continued, looking rather miffed.

Ginny ignored his protests, seeming ready to speak up and say something to the group, before freezing at the sight of Harry. Apparently she hadn’t expected him to be with his friends tonight either.

“Uhm, hey…Harry,” she said awkwardly.

“Hi, Ginny.” It was at this point that he hoped one of his friends could just speak up.

“Your…beard looks nice? It suits you.”

Harry’s hand automatically rose up to stroke the soft layer of black hair covering his face, trimmed short and a far cry from those crumb catching drapes he’d seen on some wizards. According to Rita Skeeter’s loving speculation, he’d grown a beard to separate himself from his father, not wanting to look exactly like an older version of the man.

And wow, that was such a weird sentence to read, it’d taken a good hour for Harry to wrap his head around that. He’d gotten more than used to the annoyance Rita’s writing generated in him, but an existential crisis was a new one.

Harry grimaced, that article had soured him a bit on the subject. “Thanks…I’m not sure I’ll keep it though.”

“Right…” Ginny replied, cringing. “Uhm…” She started looking at the other members of the table now, before suddenly righting herself. “Look who I found wandering around Ottery St. Catchpole tonight,” she said, a bit too forced as she walked to the entrance, where someone was distractedly studying the ripped remains of years old posters, piled on top of each other.

Ginny nudged the cloaked figure in the right direction, taking several attempts before they finally got moving to their table. Before Harry could think too much on who exactly Ginny had found, two surprisingly dainty hands came from the cloak and lifted the hood off their head, revealing silvery misty eyes and blond hair that was clearly-

“Luna!” the entire group chorused simultaneously at the unexpected arrival.

The girl- woman now, she’d really aged like a fine wine, which, Luna probably didn’t care about her appearance anyway, but Harry certainly wouldn’t mind seeing those bullying Ravenclaw twits look at her in envy- smiled serenely, as if no time had passed. “Hello, everyone. The Nargles haven’t bothered any of you too much while I was away?”

Everyone chuckled good-naturedly. Even if none of them really believed in Luna’s mental menagerie any more than when they were in Hogwarts, they all knew it didn’t harm anyone, including Luna herself. Besides, it made for good inside jokes and codewords. For example, ‘Hold on, I think I just saw an Umgubular Slashkilter’ meant ‘I’m indecent, don’t come in yet!’ -don’t ask the reasoning behind that one. And she’d discovered quite a few undiscovered animals on her long journey across the world, so who knew?

Harry got up, feeling pretty rejuvenated at the pleasant surprise, and walked up to the new arrival, pulling her in a hug that surprised everyone. “Hello Luna, it’s good to see you again,” he said, still smiling as he stepped back.

“Hello, Harry Potter,” Luna said, smiling as well, but she almost looked…preoccupied now?

Perhaps that should’ve been his sign, but he’d been too happily surprised to greet an old friend he hadn’t seen in so long.

Her misty, permanently wide eyes almost seemed to clear up, scanning his body before…turning sad?

“You need to stop pretending, Harry.”

The murmuring around him stopped for Harry, blinking his eyes at the blunt, emotionally whiplashing statement.

“Uhm, what are you talking about, Luna?” he asked, quite confused. He was well aware at the blunt, straightforward statements she could make at the flip of a dime, or ones that made no sense, but never one that seemed demonstratively false.

‘I don’t think I’m pretending at anything. I mean, I wasn’t exactly very happy when I came into the pub, but right now I’m fine. Right?’

“The Wrackspurts have nested really deep in your mind,” she observed detachedly, with a hint of worry.

He turned his head to look at the table of friends, who were looking equally befuddled, with Ron giving an exaggerated ‘I dunno’ shrug, and George discreetly doing a cuckoo motion with his hand.

He turned back to Luna, only to notice her holding up her wand, her sorrowful eyes flicking between his cloak, holstered wand, and necklace tucked in his shirt.

Before he could react, her wand swished, a Finite Incantatem was mumbled, and Harry’s world blurred as he was thrown back, sliding over the floor until hitting the bar with a thump.

“Bloody hell, Luna! What was that?!” he yelled, both angry and disoriented at the sudden assault. Finite Incantatem’s weren’t supposed to be so…violent!

Luna, on her part, did look rather repentant. “I’m sorry, Harry. The illusion was very strong and long-lived, constantly adapting.”

‘Illusion?’

Harry had never worn an illusion in his life. There just hadn’t ever been any need for one, and from the way he’d heard girls complaining, they usually weren’t very practical for concealing your own body anyway, even if self-transfigurations and potions were much more effort and more risky. And the way she’d just described it sounded way too advanced for someone who’d never even cast one.

“I don’t understand,” he managed to get out, his eyes shifting to his friends as he got his wand out of his holster.

To his ever-growing surprise, the four Weasleys plus Neville were gaping at his crumpled form, making everything even more confusing.

Grunting, Harry got up, ignoring the odd colouring of his cloak shifting past his knee as he did so. ‘Wait, why do I feel-’

“Uh, mate, I think you need to take a look at yourself,” Ron said unsurely, pointing at the wall behind Harry.

Taking in the shocked looks of his friends, Harry slowly turned around to face the large mirror hanging behind the bar.

Framed in aged bronze, the only other person visible was a mournful Luna in the background, her eyes staring directly at his through the reflected surface.

Staring at the figure draped in aethereal silver, the knobby shape of his wand suddenly became noticeable in his clenching hand. Looking back at him was his cleanly shaven face, not looking a day older than seventeen.

The framed Luna came closer, a hand resting on his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, Harry,” he heard vaguely through the loud buzzing of his mind, vision tunnelling in on the mark of the Deathly Hallows mockingly staring back at him from within the black, diamond-shaped stone resting on his chest, dangling in place of the locket from the necklace he was sure he’d only found an hour ago.

April, 2246

Harry sighed as he finally came across a forested area, bordering a more suburban neighbourhood, and flipped the hood of his hoodie off his head, his figure shimmering back into existence as he stepped between the trees.

During his seventh year, he’d never put much thought in the title Master of Death. Dumbledore certainly didn’t, even if, at one point in time, he had.

He wasn’t exactly sure when he’d gained the title. Had it been when his first ever caught snitch ‘opened at the close’ for his lips and the black stone turned in the palm of his hand? When he’d pocketed it without much of a second thought, rather than dropping it on the forest floor? He didn’t like to think of that option, as that meant there was a good chance his mum’s protection hadn’t been what had made Voldemort’s defeat possible. Or had it instead been when he’d properly claimed the Elder Wand, after catching it mid-air as Voldemort’s fractured life was finally snuffed out by his own rebound killing curse a second time?

Either way, Master of Death was a title he bore now, had borne since the Battle of Hogwarts, even if his mind required an outside shove to catch up to his subconscious, and there finally was a proper answer to what that actually meant.

On some days, Harry wished it actually included some eldritch embodiment of Death having a chat with him over some tea and biscuits, or some fate sworn duty that allowed him to traverse time and the multiverse, or ‘I am become Death, destroyer of worlds’ becoming frighteningly accurate.

But no, Dumbledore’s theory of the artefacts being handcrafted and enchanted by the Peverell brothers seemed the most truthful.

That didn’t make the set of artefacts any less mythical, though. Sure, on their own they were amazingly powerful yet imperfect instruments with unheard of effects, which already made them legendary. But when they operated under the magic of a single master? One who had fairly claimed ownership of all three?

Then the three artefacts cooperated with each other through their user in ways never seen or heard of before, interacting in numerous, impossibly intricate, easily overlooked connections and synergies that perfectly corrected the small imperfections and amplified the effects, building up to the point where the three items became scarily Perfect in a way that required the improper capitalisation to properly convey what it felt like to handle them.

The close to eldritch nature of the three items brought together had made Harry and his old friends rethink the possibility of some otherworldly force or Being having had at least a hand in their creation in some way.

The Invisibility Cloak, for example. During his years at Hogwarts, the Cloak had simply hidden him from sight. It still had its unusual properties. For example, when he wore it, it also made no noise, no ruffling of fabric. It didn’t smell like anything, despite being centuries old, and it felt like you were touching nothing at all when draped under it. It never seemed to age or tear, and magic couldn’t affect the cloth, but none of those properties extended to whoever was underneath. Petrification, locator spells, a particularly persistent cat named Mrs. Norris- where the Mrs came from, nobody wanted to know- and the magical eye worn by a rather perverted man pretending to be a battle worn auror all could notice him under it in their own way.

It also, rather annoyingly, was stuck shaped like a big bloody carpet, requiring you to get under it completely, and not taking into account the fact some people were rather large, and could accidentally slip a part of themselves out from under it.

But now, none of that was the case. First of all, the silvery material reshaped like putty in its Master’s hands. It could even be shaped into a rather thick, comfortable hoodie, covered with an illusion that made it look like the real thing, exactly how Harry liked to wear it most of the time nowadays.

When the hood went up, all of its properties fully extended to him as well. He didn’t even need to have his face covered or worry about an arm slipping out of its hidey-hole as long as he could still be considered to be properly wearing the blasted thing. If he really wanted to, he could even shape it into a fashionable, but non-functioning wristwatch, with it activating on him if he pulled out its crown. Anyway, beyond being unable to be seen, he couldn’t be heard, couldn’t be smelled, couldn’t be felt, and it went way further than even that.

He couldn’t be ‘seen’ by magic either when the hood was up, as spells, even the killing curse- as he’d found out during an unfortunate ambush during his last infiltration mission as an auror on his twentieth- went straight through him with the hood up, and wards, as long-lived sets of charms bound to something material through runes, just felt like the air they surrounded as he walked through them, not that there were any left any longer. Sadly, that also meant he couldn’t channel any magic to cast spells from under it while active, but you win some, you lose some.

And some effects were just bound to him permanently, which was where the crux of his issues lied. For example, Fate couldn’t ‘see’ him any longer, as he’d found out when a soothsayer he’d approached at a dare on his twenty-fifth freaked out, unable to read anything through his palms, or any other method she tried. He probably should’ve expected something was seriously wrong with him after those two incidents he mentioned, but he’d dismissed it as his stupid luck. He certainly didn’t mind that aspect though, but it also meant any awful situations he found himself in now were wholly his own fault.

But the problem that plagued his every moment of living was the final aspect, the one mentioned directly in the story of the Three Brothers. The ability to hide from death.

Not as in the actual lead-up to and process of death. He could still get injured, mind you, quite seriously too, very much hurt like hell, though that couldn’t actually kill him any harder for other reasons. And he couldn’t even get injured when the Cloak was properly worn, if someone actually targeted the space he was hidden at. No, he meant ‘ignoring death,’ as in, unable to age.

Ever since he became the Master of the three Hallows, he’d stopped aging, completely, frozen in time. It was also, unlike what they’d thought before, the actual reason for his infertility. Why that part of him was affected like that, when he still needed to breathe and eat and drink and could heal, he had no idea. Maybe it was Fate’s way of payback for being removed from their sight after all the entertainment his years at Hogwarts must’ve provided.

Who knew, maybe this whole quirk business was a good ol’ practical joke from the old crone herself, rather than magic being magic! That prankster!

Reaching a good spot in the small forest, Harry crouched down and hissed a Serpensortia, a bed of snakes springing up from the Elder Wand.

“Sssearch the territory for the undying two-legger,” he hissed, still getting surprised at the way the magical language shaped his words into ones that were close, but not exactly what he’d set out to say, as the snakes slithered away in all directions. Of course, he’d meant to say ‘search this city for an immortal man’, but apparently snakes wouldn’t understand it that way if it was translated into parseltongue literally. It was a step up from the translator charms he'd been forced to use for much of his time in Asia, which clearly weren’t intended for handling the translation between the vastly differently constructed European languages and the more syllabic ones in the east.

Watching the last snake disappear in the grass, Harry sighed and got up. Now that he had to wait for a day or two before the somewhat magical snakes had searched through the entire city and report back to him, he could go explore and take in the sights.

Moving back on the streets, now fully visible to the public, Harry pondered what exactly he would do once one of his snakes actually found whoever he was looking for. It’s not like he’d planned to be around today. If things hadn’t gotten so screwed up in his absence, he would still be having his lovely, eternal beauty sleep, which hadn’t even been a good one, anyway. His kip on a ratty old couch in a windy, abandoned apartment the day after had left him feeling more refreshed!

2243

Vibrant green eyes fluttered open, wincing at the crust that had formed.

Slowly, as the sight of the greenly lit, cracked masonry ceiling came into focus, the previously sleeping figure groaned, moving to sit on the side of the stone surface, wincing at the way his body hurt from the rough surface, and harshly rubbing their head from the aches.

Maybe they should’ve thought of the ergonomics of flat stone, but there hadn’t been much thinking about ever actually waking up after-

They paused, mind finally starting up enough to think through the implications of being awake.

“Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT! That should’ve worked!” Harry Potter howled, the harsh, desperate noise echoing through the small room.

His fist cracked painfully as it slammed down on the stone next to him, harsh coughs from disuse racking his body.

With heavy breathing, he stood up, beginning to pace around his resting place. “Okay, okay, calm down, Harry. Gotta figure out what went wrong first. And then you’ll find a fix for it and lie back down in peace in no time.” He mumbled, not caring if anyone could hear how crazy he sounded. No time to mourn, no time to rage, no time to worry. Get to business, and hopefully there’d be no need to put any attention on any of those things.

Given that nobody had found their way here to wake him up, there must’ve been some kind of failure with the draught. It thankfully also meant there was nothing drastic enough to warrant his assistance, or else Fawkes would’ve informed someone of his existence, flamed them nearby, and told them the secret to the Fidelius. He certainly wasn’t that conceited to think of himself as a last-ditch option, but he figured someone with the Deathly Hallows, and all that that entailed, had a good chance at doing a decent job.

Speaking of…Harry wandlessly summoned his glasses, one of the few wandless spells he actually mastered, and flicked at their side as he put them on, activating the ward-seeing enchantments.

Yes, the Fidelius was still there, but…rather weak and flickery. Actually, the enchantments on his glasses weren’t as strong as he recalled either, though they were starting to get more stable now.

There was also something else, some inherent feeling of wrongness, that he felt he should know, but didn’t.

With a frown, Harry realised he had to get out of his little, Fideliused section of the Chamber and go up to see what was going on. He’d picked up a lot on his travels from before, but he still wasn’t a Hermione. He’d need some outside help to figure out what had gone wrong. Maybe it was simply his immortality that screwed things up?

With a frown, Harry twisted into Myrtle’s bathroom, and then his frown intensified a hundredfold.

He’d forgotten to call on the Cloak, put it on, and activate it in his still dazed state. He shouldn’t have been able to apparate within Hogwarts like that.

And where was Myrtle, anyway? Shouldn’t she have been accosting him by now?

He flicked the ward-sight on again, and froze, before falling to his knees with a sob.

The vibrant, intricate complex of a thousand year old set of wards that would’ve turned him blind for an hour at the sight of it, and why he’d turned the enchantment off in the first place, had become a dim, dried-up husk; a useless, magicless, dead shell that stayed in a fragile memory of its original shape because it simply hadn’t been poked hard enough yet.

In a daze, Harry got back up from the tiled floor and stepped out of the second floor bathroom. As he encountered not a single ghost, his mind began to wander, and he finally realised the off-putting feeling.

He never even really knew he’d always been feeling it until it was gone, but the ripples and distortions of active magic being used, a feeling in his gut that was impossible to describe with words, was gone, even the faintest perturbations of magic being cast hundreds of miles away were absent. The only thing he could feel was the passive, faint flow of magic sluggishly traversing the planet, the stuff that kept life on earth and the movement of souls churning.

It was like staring at a pool of water after coming back in the morning: complete flatness, absolutely dull, nothing at all, eliciting the upsetting feeling that something was wrong at the sight of it.

He entered the Great Hall, the arches holding up the ceiling plainly visible, even a bit of the sky visible through a collapsed part of the structure.

Was…did the seemingly permanent, self-sufficient aspects of magic: enchantments, wards, artefacts, curses, potions, ghosts…did they all require active interaction with magic…somewhere, anywhere nearby to actually keep going? Was that why the draught-

A horrifying realisation hit him.

Nobody was using magic anywhere near him, in all of Wizarding Britain.

Nothing.

How long had he been asleep?

What had happened?

What was waiting for him, out there?

Harry gulped, coming to a halt in front of the gargoyle guarding the Headmaster’s office.

“Uhm, can I come in?” he asked warily.

At the instinctive feeling of deadness within the statue, Harry pushed aside the thought and twisted into the office.

Instantly, the sight of hundreds of dead eyes of still, flaking portraits staring ahead in empty space caused a shiver to run down his spine.

The ripples of his disapparation downstairs reached the office, extremely obvious when nothing else was distorting it, and for a moment he saw the unobserving eyes liven up, just for a fraction of a second, before dying again.

The aged, empty bird stand in the corner told him Fawkes, his one possible option of a companion, had moved away to who knew where. Harry couldn’t blame the ageless bird. Why would anything magical want to stay in a place as silent and dead as this? Could he even stay in here, as an animal that no doubt relied on some type of magic for its Burning Day?

What had happened? How had all wizards and witches just…stopped? Disappeared? Buggered off?

Could things really have gone so wrong in the time he wasn’t around? Things had started to actually look up, last he’d checked. It was why he felt comfortable going through with his plan in the first place. That, and the fact that-

Shaking his head, Harry’s eyes scanned over the dusty office- clearly house-elves had buggered off too, was the Forbidden Forest not very Forbidden anymore either?

His eyes landed on a glass case, hanging on the wall behind the throne-like chair, and on the object it contained, exactly where he’d expected the Headmaster back then to keep it when he gave it.

Harry walked up to it, eyeing the half-rotten, patchy brown wizard’s hat that probably couldn’t even speak up if it still could, and vanished the glass, gripping the object by the handle.

He experimentally swung the sword at its ruby-encrusted hilt, feeling its familiar weight shift in his hand. With a thought, he flicked the holster strapped to his wrist, before remembering he’d given his Holly wand to Fawkes for safe-keeping.

“Fawkes?”

Well, it was being kept safe, that’s for sure…ruddy fiery chicken.

With nary a thought, the three Hallows came at his call, like three pets realising their owner had arrived after a long vacation, appearing draped over his shoulders, hanging from his neck by a chain, and held in his palm respectively.

He conjured a sheath for Gryffindor’s sword and a decent shoulder strap, took one last glance at the deserted Headmaster’s office, and disapparated, the structure of ancient, dead wards crumbling, losing their barely held together shape and dissipating into the aether as he blipped through.

The Last of Magic

April, 2246

‘Wouldn’t it be nice if this immortal guy was just a friendly bloke?’ Harry pondered as he wandered back into downtown Musutafu.

The first thing he’d done, three years ago, was to try and figure out how wizardkind had disappeared off the face of the earth. Last he remembered, the muggleborns and half-bloods had all started integrating into muggle society, using one specific spell as their cover ability, and settling down with a nice muggle job. Even a good amount of purebloods started mingling, the business-savvy ones anyway. The anti-muggle kind had mostly just isolated themselves from the wizarding community as a whole, only their children really appearing at Hogwarts to be schooled.

What had happened in the hundred years between then and now was the real mystery.

Harry had…borrowed some books on squib magic, as the wizards and witches of the time had so lovingly decided to call it in their usual condescending ways- which were now called quirks, clearly superior, and tried to figure out how exactly wizardkind had disappeared whilst he’d been snoozing away.

In the end, it seemed to be for two reasons.

Firstly, the way quirks used magic was incompatible with traditional, all-purpose magic. Turns out, quirk usage didn’t actually count as magic, Harry had deduced based on the fact he’d never detected any ripples or distortions from magic use other than his own over the past three years. Quirk users were still very much like their squib ancestors in that regard. Oh, the magic they stored within their bodies certainly acted as a fuel source for the physics-breaking abilities- how else could you just pull mass out of your arsehole as if it was a good fart?- but it wasn’t the means of performing the abilities.

Fire created by a magical spell was simply magic converted into fire, but a fire quirk only used the magical energy to start a chemical reaction to ignite some combustible gas, or some other rot like that. The physical details didn’t matter one bit to him, it was bloody magic!

It was a pretty clever workaround for the whole ‘squibs can’t channel or use magic’ problem, all things considered. Just passively collect enough of it to then use it through biological means. Harry would compliment Magic’s resourcefulness…if it was sapient, and he wasn’t already cursing it out for causing the current lack of magical practices in the first place.

You see, the second important fact is that the genetic material that carries quirks, which Harry had to read up on again, was dominant. And not just in the ‘the dominant allele from the parent overpowers the recessive allele from the other parent’ type of way. No, it was far more aggressive. As in, the quirked reproductive cells in the parent had some aspect to them that literally killed off the unquirked reproductive cells. If you had at least one quirked parent, there was a 100% chance you’d get a quirk in some way, shape, or form.

Combine this aggressive spread of quirks through reproduction with the way it subsumed any magical ability, and the tiny, insular, usually stubborn and slow to act population of the wizarding world had no time or choice but to accept their fate and watch as their only offspring all turned out magicless, and had a more muggle life expectancy.

Because even the smallest, most insignificant ‘squib magic’ completely overwrote the potential of magical ability. Even the simple, constant use of a colouring charm to their own eyes would do it. And by the time the usually unaware wizards and witches would realise the problem and actually decided to do something about it, they’d already be too intermingled with muggles and ‘magical squibs’ to put a stop to it, too delighted in the freedom the excuse of quirks gave them to have paid any mind to possible long-term consequences.

And so, in maybe two generations time, no more magical children were being born, and the last magical user of that final generation had died of old age- which wasn’t that old compared to wizards of Harry’s time- some time before Harry had woken up.

Wizardkind had been outbred into extinction by squibs.

That revelation had left Harry reeling with uncontrollable laughter for at least an hour.

The ones they’d thrown out in the muggle world in infancy, had squirrelled away in some suburb upon reaching their ‘magical’ majority, or simply ostracised into moving out through awful jobs afterwards, had come back to royally fuck them over, without even intending to.

By the time he’d finished laughing, he mentally apologised to all the other apartment dwellers and went on with his day.

You see, he was pretty sure his original plan, or any kind of magical solution, would simply fail a certain amount of time after he’d fallen asleep and stopped using magic, so that easy solution was right out.

There were very good reasons as to why he figured an immortal guy like him shouldn’t actually be around to mess about with stuff, and those were things he’d been freaking out over for at least every other day for several months, but the fact there was literally no other option somewhat soothed him.

After that, he’d decided to explore the new United Kingdom and properly learn about culture and the century and a bit of history he’d skipped out on, like the average session of History with Binns. For a time, he’d been aimlessly wandering about, meeting people and exploring before having to run away when someone realised he had absolutely zero documentation he could present.

On other days, he sat despondently in whatever rooming he’d found, wallowing in self-pity. Wishing for Fate or whatever asshole or general force up there to just give him something to do. Some role to fulfil. With the way he lived, he couldn’t just pick up a regular job. He’d have to relocate every few decades or change his identity, which he knew would feel like it was going by fast once he got going, given his immortality and all, so settling down in a normal job wasn’t a long-term option for him. And the one passion he’d stumbled upon, the one thing that’d reignited his passion for all things magic, was completely destroyed, and basically impossible to start back up when your wizarding population was a grand total of one bloke who was too stubborn to die.

Eventually, however, he ran into a rumour. One talking of a human embodiment of the boogieman. A Japanese person born in the first generation of quirks, when Harry had still been awake, who could transfer quirks, and who’d been rumoured to have attained and combined enough quirks to make themselves functionally immortal.

Now, Harry’s first reaction had been to find them, and hopefully have a nice mate to share experiences with. But on second thought, he figured he’d get the short end of the stick, and he’d have to put down another immortal megalomaniac who ate babies and raised zombie armies, one nobody else had managed to finish off.

At least it was familiar territory, and no horcrux-like quirks existed, so there’d only be one simple target.

And with that mindset, Harry set off to Japan.

A few problems. He didn’t know how portkeys were created. He also knew Apparition didn’t work over distances much longer than the width of England, and especially not over any bodies of water that completely separated two pieces of land. And lastly, of course, the lacking documentation that proved he was a person who existed and had rights.

So his travels to the east had been slow and steady. And why not? Not like either him or the boogieman had any rush. And now that he had an end goal in mind, he could go and explore a bit, knowing there was always a bigger end to come back to once he’d exhausted the new experiences. What better way to distract yourself from everything you’d already lost and left behind?

No, he wasn’t staving off the eventual end of said goal and distraction. Does he look and act like a bratty, moody teenager to you? Well, when he wasn’t using an illusion or a well-practiced bit of self-transfiguration…he was, both physically and probably mentally too. But…shut up.

After only a short three years, Harry had finally arrived in Japan. Now was just the task of finding the guy, who hopefully wasn’t aware of his existence just yet.

As Harry moved past quite a suspicious alley, the squelching of something disgusting moving around piqued his attention. The mutant type quirks were the most interesting to him. Because emitter types were descended from your run-of-the-mill charms, and transformation types were just transfiguration, but mutant types were something completely new. Almost like it was derived from some type of human-creature crossbreeding magic.

Had traditional magic been capable of that? Part-veela certainly existed, as did Professor Flitwick, and Hagrid and Maxime, but those were just a rare few, and required creature ancestry, and if there were any other wizards and witches with creature inheritance, they’d all hidden it from society quite well. And none of those had been done through magical means anyway. Except maybe how Hagrid was born. How had his father done that?

“Don’t worry, I’m just hijacking your body,” a garbled voice spoke up. “It’ll only hurt for about forty-five seconds. Then it’ll all be over.”

He peeked around the corner, and only now could Harry register the muffled moans of a small teenager, literally and figuratively drowned out by gallons upon gallons of sludge violating the boy.

Grimacing at the sickening display of inhumanity, Harry discreetly flicked the Elder Wand and created a small, remote bubblehead charm around the boy’s mouth, an Elder Wand exclusive, before pulling up the hoodie of the Cloak and walking over.

Despite the Elder Wand’s unique qualities, which he wasn’t gonna go over in a situation like this, his magic had quite a significant downside in this new era.

You see, the concentrated amount of passive magic, sitting stockpiled and completely static within a person’s body, effectively functioned as a body-shaped, always active, constantly replenishing Protego: muffling the incoming magic and sometimes even greedily gulping it up rather than bouncing it off.

As a result, any magic that directly affected a person was absolutely useless on literally every human alive, except maybe those few quirkless muggles out there in retirement homes. It was basically like everyone was a dragon, mountain troll, or a werewolf on the night of the full moon.

Instead, he was forced to use spells that caused something physical to affect them. That also meant perception altering spells didn’t affect anyone either, which was why he couldn’t just whip up one of those handy muggle cards or papers that changed to whatever official stuff that muggle was expecting to see. At least illusions still worked, given they cloaked someone or something else rather than affecting an observer’s senses.

The only spells Harry speculated would still work directly were the killing curse and Fiendfyre, as they were both designed to completely erase or burn up magic, not manipulate the magic flowing through another person. But he wasn’t exactly keen on testing that hypothesis on anyone, given that both of them would assuredly lead to death upon success.

Wondering how he was going to actually rescue this kid without being seen, which was especially hard when the crowd-favourite, Lockhart tested and approved Memory charm was useless, he was about to cave in and reveal himself, Summoning the kid to him by his uniform when a grate further down the alley burst into the air, and an absolute wall of the Japanese American stereotype appeared from below, practically begging for an orchestra to swell in volume in the background.

Recognising the hulk of a man as that one hero he’d spotted way too often on billboards, Harry sat back and watched the spectacle, assured he wasn’t leaving the kid at the mercy of an even bigger villain.

He could clearly see why the hero showed up on everything. That gust of wind, just from a punch, all from pure strength alone! When it came to quirks, he must be like the equivalent of Dumbledore when it came to how much he towered over the rest!

But, as the mountain of a man started scooping up the scattered slime and waited for the kid to sit back up from his dazed state, Harry noticed something odd. There was a weird feeling, weird enough for him to notice, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He felt…weirdly drawn to him.

Was it simply the pure strength of that man? Was there something else going on? He certainly had that air of charisma hanging around him.

He silently waited as the kid finally realised who was talking to him and got extremely excited over an autograph- Oh Merlin, he was one of those types. At least these heroes got the choice and were actively looking for that type of attention- and eventually did the most idiotic, fanboy move he’d ever witnessed, and that included illegally trying to love-potion your idol: clinging onto the hero’s pantleg as he blasted off.

If Harry hadn’t already had incentive to chase after…he had to rack his mind, All Might? Yeah. If he didn’t already have the incentive to tail All Might, he most certainly did now.

Harry decided to use his favourite function of the Cloak, which required his full attention: that of ‘hiding’ from gravity and air resistance. Yes, he could hide from the physical forces too, though he’d never dare to experiment with anything other than those two, at the fear of falling apart into his constituent atoms or getting stuck within a solid object, and wondering how the Hallows were going to fix that up for him. That they would was assured, but the method and the experience was what scared him.

He pushed himself off the ground, floating up as if he was on a broom, and a well-aimed Banishing charm or two on the air behind him, perfectly timed with temporarily deactivating and reactivating the Cloak to allow him to cast the spell, had him shooting off in the hero’s direction.

If he actually knew how brooms were enchanted he would’ve made one, obviously. Alternatively, he could actually practice attaining his Animagus form and do it that way, but the moment he’d known what his form was, he backed off. If it’d been before the big revelation he’d have happily accepted the chance of flying freely through the air, no matter through which form, but the obvious symbolism in regards to his status put him off. Was it petty? And impractical? Very much so. But with fun alternatives like these? Who cares!

Spotting the duo on an approaching rooftop, Harry stopped focusing on ignoring gravity, and began his tumble downwards, casting a slowing charm on himself to slow his fall into a gentle landing near the ledge, right into a cloud of billowing smoke. When’d that happen?

What came after the smoke dissipated seemed enough to explain that weird sensation he was feeling. And from what his translation charm was telling him, this wasn’t a happy situation.

And despite the fact that the wall of muscle that was revered by Japanese society as the be-all and end-all of heroism had deflated into a blood-vomiting skeleton with a missing lung and an involuntary gastric bypass, there was something else that alarmed Harry more.

The way the kid rambled on about his hopes and dreams, the sincere, bordering on desperate hope for belonging and approval, the way he opened up the depths of his heart and mind to this celebrity he’d never encountered before, followed by the dejected acceptance, as if he deep down already knew he’d just been kidding himself all along, that he truly was completely alone, the odd one out, the freak, and the absolute powerlessness in the hung shoulders as he was left behind on that roof with the loud, terminal slam of a door closing on him, small trembles wracking his painfully lanky body as the wind took over from the silence.

This kid is being abused. Is used to being abused.

Harry hated thinking about it, didn’t even want to acknowledge what he’d gone through as anything like it. But seeing this child, he could easily see how it manifested in the way he talked, moved, acted, and that manifestation smugly looked back at him and said ‘See? Just like you! Go bond with him, you moron.’

Maybe it wasn’t done by his family. Dear Merlin, he hoped that wasn’t the case. But from the view pieces of information he had, and the way he hadn’t even heard a single thing about ‘quirkless’ people- though, looking at the green hair, the kid clearly had some form of quirk, even if it wasn’t considered one by today’s standards- the child was at the very least being abused by society as a whole. Which was both less intense, and so much worse at the same time.

Even Harry, back before Hogwarts, had been able to get out of Privet Drive, away from the neighbourhood he lived in, and experience what it was like to exist in places where nobody looked at him funny or dismissed him out of hand.

Sure, he hadn’t exactly interacted with anyone much during those times, and the way he thought he was supposed to act around them probably gave them a funny impression of him anyway, but it was a temporary relief.

You didn’t get that if people part of the same society as you abused you simply because you were.

The quirkless bit sounded wrong though. Though, then again, what these folks might not consider a quirk was still a quirk from Harry’s point of view. The only qualification he needed was ‘is this something only magic could’ve caused?’ And green hair easily ticked that box. Maybe it was better to say the boy might be quirkless, but he wasn’t exactly a muggle either. Just very unfortunate all way ‘round.

A far-off explosion snapped the both of them out of their contemplative moods, and Harry watched as the kid walked to the rooftop entry, stopping to stare off in the distance for a moment, and Harry realised he was wasting his chance to actually do something.

Both hurrying while also trying not to hurry, Harry pushed back his hoodie’s hood, gently stepping forward to avoid making any loud noises as he shimmered back into existence.

“Hey, kid,” he began, calmly, hoping his translation charm was working well in the other direction. “Are you-”

The kid swirled around and screamed, stumbling backwards.

Okay, he should’ve expected the kid to be a bit jumpy and anxious. At least there was a-

And then his body hit the waist high railing, and the metal thing actually gave way at the force.

‘Oh, bugger.’

On instinct, Harry pointed the Elder Wand and performed the first spell he remembered, completely forgetting it wouldn’t work.

‘Wingardium Leviosa.’

Immediately, Harry realised his error, and corrected himself to Summon the kid by his clothes, but…

He didn’t need to?

In front of him, the kid was floating in the air, clearly expecting the feeling of gravity pulling him down.

He got a bewildered look, and Harry realised he was just standing there, uselessly gaping at the kid.

With a mutter and a swing of his wand, the boy was moved back onto the safety of the roof, and he cancelled the spell, his mind starting to race for explanations of what had just happened.

As he did so, the wide-eyed kid was still gaping at him, his eyes focusing on the curious stick that’d just been used to stop his fall.

“Were- Were you the one who let me breathe in the slime?”

Harry’s thoughts screeched to a halt. How’d he figure that out?!

Obviously, suddenly being able to breathe was going to catch someone’s attention, but how’d he gotten to that conclusion just from two spells and the sight of his wand?

He was awful at coming up with a lie on the spot.

“I was,” he agreed with a casual nod, hoping he looked unphased. “I stumbled on you before…” ‘What was his name again?’ “All Might showed up. And I chased after you when you latched onto him. Didn’t want to let you fall to your death after I tried to save you once before already,” he said jokingly.

His attempt at light-hearted humour failed at the sight of the kid hunching in on himself. “I’m sorry for burdening you. I-” He froze up, standing up stiff in fear. “Y-You saw all that?”

The kid barely saw his nod before breaking down in a panic. “Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods, I screwed everything up already! Do I need to tell All Might? Is he gonna ban me from having merch? Oh gods, he’s totally gonna ban me now. He’ll lock me up for spilling his secret!” ‘Why did getting locked up come after the merch ban?’

Through the panicked mumbling, Harry had to push down the sudden comparison to a bushy-haired bookworm, and her ‘or worse, expelled!’

“Hey, kid.” He cringed at the dismissive addressal he had to use. “I’m not gonna spill anything. I just wanted to check if you’re okay after what he said.”

“Oh…you’re- Okay,” the kid said, seeming like he wanted to say quite a bit mo- “Was that your quirk? Is it like general telekinesis? Or psychokinesis? Did you fly after me and All Might? But why didn’t I see you? Were you invisible? Or- no wait, you could’ve been hiding below the ledge. Was that what you did? Why do you need a stick? Is it like a support item? Is your quirk not as strong without it? Are you a hero? You don’t look that old. A hero student? Are you from UA? Are you not? Were you breaking quirk usage laws? For me? I’m so sorry!”

Okay, now he was reminded of an eleven-year-old Hermione, asking rather upsetting questions without an ounce of malice in her body, simply innocence, except much, much faster. And wow, did the kid bounce back from just moments earlier.

Though it was more likely he was just gladly forgetting it all for the moment, no doubt to get hit by it all during the next quiet moment he’d have.

“How about exchanging names first?” Harry asked dryly, trying to avert the disaster of answering those questions. Though he wouldn’t have been able to remember any of the questions he’d just been asked anyway, let alone answer them.

The kid froze up, before sheepishly shrinking in on himself. “S-Sorry,” he stuttered out. “I’m- My name’s Midoriya, Midoriya Izuku.”

Okay…Wait, didn’t Japanese do the names in the opposite order? Or did the translation charm automatically swap the two around? Oh bollocks, which one sounded more like a family name?

“Nice to meet you, Midoriya…” Wait, there were honorifics too, and the charm didn’t work with those since the more common ones didn’t have an equivalent in English, so he’d have to add one manually. ‘Bloody- Which one was the standard, formal one? Ended with -an, right?’ “…-tan?”

Based on the mortified shaking of Midoriya’s head, along with the serious blush covering his cheeks, that was apparently the absolute worst option he could’ve picked. Bugger.

“-san?” he immediately corrected, receiving a relieved nod in return. ‘Okay, then why where the best and worst options so similar phonetically?!’

When the halting, turned awkward, conversation came to a standstill, Harry realised the kid- Midoriya was waiting for him to give an answer in return.

“Oh, right. I’m…” No need to risk using his full name for this, right? “Harry.”

Midoriya blinked, tilting his head. “Harii?”

Where’d that come from?

He shook his head. “Nono, Harry,” he corrected.

“Harii-san?” Midoriya echoed his prior answer.

Oh wait, the translation charm went the other way too, and he had no idea what sounds his mouth was twisted into making.

So, rather than continuing the extremely awkward conversation, Harry used the tried and true method used by all dumb tourists. “Do you speak English?” he asked, resigned.

Midoriya practically lit up. “Yes! Any real All Might fan would have to if they wanted to follow his early interviews in America!” Oh thank Merlin, that was clearly English.

Harry immediately cancelled the charm, relieved as the muffled filter effect it placed on his ears and the cottony feeling in his throat disappeared.

“-so I guess you must be foreign then? I mean, it’s hard to tell sometimes with all the heteromorphic quirks,” Midoriya continued rambling in English. “What are heroes like in your country? What country are you-” He suddenly froze up. “Oh gods, I’ve been asking you questions nonstop! I’m so sorry!”

This kid was way too used to apologising for everything.

Again, not a good sign.

“Hello, I’m Harry. No last name at present.” And this time he’d gotten the correct pronunciation through, signalled by the silent ‘O’ he got in response.

“And maybe you can answer a question of mine, so we’re even?” he said, taking the opportunity to confirm something.

“Y-Yes, of course,” was the sheepish reply.

Alright then. This question was gonna be a bit insensitive, but it needed to be asked, for his peace of mind. Because he’d been pretty sure he’d had the whole quirks and magic interaction figured out, and this was really bugging him. “You said you don’t have a quirk. What about your parents?”

As predicted, even though he didn’t like it, the kid winced, before answering. “My father could breathe fire…and my mom has a really cool quirk that-”

Harry let Midoriya ramble away, wondering what this meant.

Before this, there’d still been the tiny chance he’d come from a very rare, surviving line of true muggles, and the green hair had been a dye job. But now it was clear he’d just been very unfortunate, and had only gotten the aspect from one particularly unfortunate squib who’d manifested a singular green colour changing charm applied to their hair, which had been the only thing Midoriya had inherited from his parents.

It was pretty interesting to see how much stronger the magic stockpiling abilities of quirks had grown over time though, strong enough to be able to manifest several spell effects rather than just one, and able to pick which ones to pass down.

But this didn’t help the frustrating feeling.

Despite only having the green hair, Midoriya still should’ve had a stockpile of static magic in his body, uselessly sitting there after its only function of permanently changing his hair colour to green in the womb had been fulfilled.

So how had Harry’s magic been able to properly affect him?!

He didn’t even know why he’d gotten so obsessed over this tiny error. He’d only wanted to quickly check up on the kid, especially after that hero had done a piss poor job at comforting him. Harry could’ve chased after All Might, and seen what that weird feeling he felt was all about. Maybe blackmail him into helping him find the immortal guy? He probably could take the hero on long enough to hang the blackmail material over him.

Except…

The feeling was still here…on this rooftop.

Harry’s eyes widened as pieces of the puzzle came together.

“Could…Could I ask what your quirk is?” he was asked. Apparently he’d missed Midoriya finishing his ramble.

“Give- Give me a moment, kid. I’ll answer in a moment,” Harry responded, his mind running several miles a minute as he eyed the Elder Wand.

Probably not a good idea to try it with that one.

Instead, he pulsed a spell with it, a small stream of gold flames flowing out of it in a small arch as he mentally called out, ‘Fawkes!’

Only a few months back, when he’d been moving through Tibet, Harry had finally reunited with Fawkes…in a way.

His thought of the phoenix having fled to hide from the lack of magic had been correct. More precisely, to whatever realm or plane of existence it was that phoenixes Flamed through. All phoenixes that would’ve stayed on earth as the last magicals died out would’ve gone down with the sinking ship.

And even with Harry up and about, casting magic left and right, it still wasn’t anywhere near enough to guarantee a safe stay for the bird. So Fawkes was instead left with Flaming items in and out from his side of his realm to Harry at the call of a beacon-like spell, which was honestly becoming his favourite, flashiest, safest way of storing items.

He grinned at the awed look on Midoriya’s face, scarily similar green eyes glowing in the reflected light as Harry reached out to the golden crescent and pulled a familiar, old friend from the heatless flames.

As the last licks of flame drifted off, Harry eyed his old Holly wand, before holding it out in front of him, wand-end pointed at him. “Hold this for me?” he asked, the strange feeling of attraction seemed to increase in anticipation. He just hoped it wasn’t his imagination, or else he’d have to explain all this to someone who wasn’t even affected by it.

Midoriya, clearly too overwhelmed at the sudden display of flashy magic, dazedly took the wand from him without question, starting to frown when nothing happened.

Harry grinned as he tried to imagine if this anticipation was what the old man with identical eyes to Luna had felt, standing behind his counter in that dusty old wand shop, every single time a new kid entered the room.

“Give it a wave.”

He did.

Brilliant sparks and a warm ripple in magic greeted Harry in a way he’d missed for so long. The soft warbles of phoenix song echoing in his ears.

Maybe…Maybe he had another role he could fulfil now.

Maybe the last title he’d received wasn’t quite right.

Or maybe he had to see if the kid was actually willing to let him help before he made any plans.

“Midoriya, congratulations. I have the craziest story I need to tell you,” he began, growing a smile that tugged at his cheeks in a way he hadn’t felt in a long while.

Chapter Text

One of a kind.

Maybe some people relished in feeling that way, but not Izuku. Not in the way he’d been cursed with that title.

Quirkless. Useless. Worthless. Broken.

All of them meant the same thing to him.

But Deku encompassed them all quite well.

And who else but the person who knew him best could’ve come up with it? Could’ve anointed him with it after he’d revealed his lack of a quirk, hoping his best friend wouldn’t mind?

Of course Kacchan minded. But Izuku could understand why. When you’re told you can be the best, that you can do anything, of course you wouldn’t hold back on anything either. And besides, Izuku wasn’t worth much anyway. Had nothing special of his own to bring to the table. So who would care if he was treated differently? Who should care?

Except, apparently he did have something special.

Izuku so badly wanted to call it a bluff, another cruel trick. Today had already been so much worse than normal.

Firstly, Kacchan had finally told him to ‘kill himself’. Oh sure, he’d heard it a lot already, but from Kacchan? Apparently his oldest friend had gotten worse than Izuku had hoped for. At least he’d only said it to him, and not someone else. Saying things like that were the opposite of being a hero, and would land him in serious trouble. Hopefully UA would straighten that out for him.

And that would’ve been the end of a bad- but not too much worse than average- day. Except then he was orally assaulted by a villain made of sludge. Sure, All Might had come to save him personally, but if it hadn’t been for that sudden gulp of air from within the sludge, accompanied by the strangest feeling rippling through his very being, he would’ve passed out, and that would’ve been extremely embarrassing: his first and probably only encounter with All Might being him found unconscious in a dirty underpass, covered in sewage sludge.

At the very least he’d have something to positively remember this day by forever, passing it down in his family as an heirloom.

And then the rooftop happened.

How had Izuku been so delusional to think he could ever be a hero? It’d taken someone of the calibre of All Might himself to finally get it through to him.

And the worst part was, even he himself, deep down, had known it was impossible. For someone who’d stubbornly kept proclaiming he’d become a hero, and nothing would stop him, not even Kacchan’s words and hurts, he rather quickly changed his tone after his idol gave him a healthy dose of realism.

The only one in the entire world who had to catch up to that fact had been Izuku’s conscious thoughts.

And it was rather obvious in hindsight, wasn’t it? Why else would he have abstained from training, from eating a healthy diet rather than indulging himself in Katsudon every chance he got? Even though his body would spare him the fate of an unhealthy figure. Why else had he purely stuck to writing about heroes and analysing them, when most of the time none of it would even be of any use to him out on the field?

He’d already resigned himself to marching home, telling his mom he was going to look for different schools to apply to, and to turn in a new high school signup sheet for homeroom the next day, saying someone else had turned it in for him as a prank, when something turned everything around again.

Oh sure, he’d almost accidentally fallen off and acted like a scaredy-cat when the man…teenager appeared out of nowhere behind him, but the wave of that- that inexplicable, wonderful feeling rippling through his being again as he was stopped dead in his fall completely caught his attention.

And that feeling returned a thousandfold, yet somehow even more personal, when he held the wooden stick he was given by the stranger, which had been something completely different from the quirk he’d seen already.

And now he was here.

“So, magic is…real,” Izuku dazedly began his summary of the story he’d just been told, staring at the grinning adolescent.

“Yup.”

“And there was a whole, hidden magical world out there.”

“Mhm. I bet a lot of the magical plants and animals are just being mistaken as quirked nowadays though.”

“And, quirks are here because of magic.”

“Mhm, mhm.”

“But magic’s gone now…because of quirks.”

“That’s right.”

“But you’re still here, because you became immortal…on accident?”

The briefest of cringes flashed over the adolescent’s face, but the constant nodding didn’t stutter once.

“And I’m magic too?”

An ear-to-ear grin split the stranger’s- Harry’s face. “Yer a wizard, Dori.”

“Okay…” Izuku didn’t know, but that clearly was a reference, based on the sudden change in accent. “D-Don’t call me that.”

“Right, sorry, was just messing about a bit, Midoriya.” Ah, and that. Izuku would just have to get used to not using or hearing any honorifics while speaking English. It was probably for the better, when Harry- was that short for something? Harrison? Henry? Harold? A nickname? Nevermind, when Harry had addressed him as Midoriya-tan, Izuku was about ready to sink into the ground, nevermind the fact they were on a roof.

Izuku opened his mouth, but nothing wanted to come out. “I- I- This isn’t a prank, is it?” he whispered.

Something flashed in Harry’s eyes. “That wouldn’t be a good prank at all. Trust me, I know a good prank when I see one,” he said, sounding like an expert in the field.

The adolescent- wait, how old was he actually?- paused, his expression turning soft. “You felt it, didn’t you? When I used magic on you, when you waved that wand? Those ripples that resonated down within your very soul?”

Izuku’s eyes snapped to Harry’s equally green ones. That was a scarily accurate description. One he hadn’t even thought of yet.

“It- It felt like a part of me had come home. L-Like something I should’ve known all my life finally realised what it was,” he described carefully.

“And that’s a bloody shame,” Harry concluded solemnly, before perking up. “Do you want to fix that?”

Izuku opened his mouth, but he halted, wondering if he should…ask that question again.

“Do you…” He paused, trying to think back to that amazing feeling to build up his courage. “Do you think I- that I could be a- a hero?” he asked hesitantly, far more so than a few minutes earlier.

For the briefest of moment Harry’s face darkened, so short-lived that Izuku could’ve mistaken it for a trick of the light. But instead, he was greeted with a soft, grinning expression. “With magic, you could be anything you want, Midoriya.”

The quick answer, as easily given as breathing, rung in Izuku’s mind, and he couldn’t stop his eyes from tearing up as he held his head down.

Harry didn’t attempt to do anything as Izuku tried to hide the drops falling through the air, and a few moments of silence later he swallowed through the burning lump in his throat, lifting his head to meet the wizard’s gaze. “Can you train me?”

The brightening eyes and grin was enough of an answer for him.

“That’s the idea.”

January, 2015

“C’mon, Harry, we don’t have that much time for this.”

“Geez, Hermione, calm your- Calm down,” Harry amended when he saw the glare she was readying. “You said all Unspeakables were out for new year’s for at least another hour.”

Hermione huffed as she led them to the circular room, which thankfully didn’t spin with her present. “Yes, but we have to take into account any complications. And if they find out I brought someone in I’ll lose my job. They’ve gotten very cautious after Rookwood…”

She shook her head, peeking through one of the doors before opening it. “We’re here.”

Harry nodded, waiting for her to throw out all the detection spells she could think of, which had increased at least tenfold since their camping trip, and then pulled up the hood of his Cloak. Why she bothered with all those detection spells when they’d already experimented and realised literally no magic could find or stop him like this, he didn’t know. Maybe it was just routine for her.

With a shudder, Harry closed his eyes and walked through the door, feeling the smooth, onyx stones of the DoM become rough, rocky terrain, and an ice cold breeze carried unintelligible whispers to his ears, far louder than he remembered them being last time.

A few more steps, and he creaked open his eyes, taking in the Death Chamber for the first time in almost two decades. The rows of benches surrounding the pit from every angle towered ominously over him, as if an invisible tribunal was silently judging his every step towards the stone dais. The Cloak, Wand, and Stone weighing heavy on his body.

As his feet moved up the sloped stone, reaching the dais, the black, tattered cloth that looked like a dead Lethifold’s cloak fluttered in nonexistent wind that began to slowly pick up with his every move.

Another step forward, and the black drapes began fluttering faster, the Hallows beginning to cool against his skin.

With the next few steps, the curtain began billowing, and Harry thought he could see glimpses of a wispy, silver, translucent substance behind it, almost like a thin membrane covered by the black curtain, rippling heavily, and the Hallows now felt like they were trying to freeze his skin off.

Despite it all, Harry could feel his heart beating faster and faster. Was this actually going to work? After all the magical methods, the Basilisk venom, the Fiendfyre, the muggle methods, nothing had seemed to work. He couldn’t even discard any of the Hallows with the intention of leaving them behind, as they’d just come right back to his person if he tried. Only if he left them behind or gave them away with the intention of picking them up later could he do so, and at a simple call they’d silently appear right where he always wore them.

With a pulse beating against his ears, Harry took one last step, struggling against the strong, icy wind blowing the protective curtain right open and ripping it near the top, the silvery Veil behind it almost seeming to bulge outwards, struggling against the cracked stone framing it as the black cloth flew past him.

In one fell swoop, Harry took the Cloak off his shoulders, and the necklace from his neck, and threw them all at once. ‘If you’re real, Death, then you can have them back!’ he shouted, almost triumphantly.

For an instance, the three Hallows arched through blisteringly frigid air, and then passed through the Veil without much fanfare.

The clattering of wood and a stone could be heard from the other end.

Harry stared at the Veil, which had calmed back down to a soft rippling surface, except…

On the wispy, aethereal surface, three Hallow shaped rips in the substance could be seen, the stone benches and onyx coloured bricks clearly visible through the holes.

The Veil shuddered, and the material seemed to fray at the ripped edges, rapidly spreading outwards until nothing of it was left, a final wave of cold air rolling over Harry before that too dissipated, the tense, suffocating atmosphere of the Death Chamber lifting for what must’ve been the first time since the Ministry was built around it.

“Harry!” he jolted when his friend came running into the room, any prior carefulness discarded. “What’s going on? I just got an off-the-charts reading of a magical…” She came to a pause. “…shortcut.”

His eyes focused on the ground behind the ruined Veil, the three Deathly Hallows innocently lying there, looking no worse for wear, and the sound of something crumbling echoed throughout the chamber as the top of the fragile archway sagged inwards, nothing magical supporting it any longer.

“H-Harry? What happened?” he heard Hermione ask, her voice muffled by his racing thoughts.

This should’ve been it.

Or, at the very least, if it turned out nothing could do him in, this would’ve been where he would’ve walked through as a last resort.

That last resort, that final shot, was now gone.

And despite not having tested anything on himself, he had a feeling nothing else would work.

And it was gone now.

His only way out.

And he’d destroyed it himself. Had been excited to do so.

Funny, huh?

“-were the magical signatures related? I’ve never seen anything like this before. Maybe this was the material, the inspiration, or even the prototype of the Hallows! Oh Harry, I think we should-”

“Shut up!” he screamed, swirling around to face her. “Shut the hell up already!”

“Harry?” Hermione only looked at him in concern, slightly shaken. “It’s alright. There’s plenty of things we can think of. We’ve only just started, really. We just-”

“No. No more prodding. I’m sick of it!” Harry yelled, taking a step to her. “Nothing’s going to work. Isn’t it obvious?” he said, pointing at the destroyed relic of ancient times. “How much are you just using me for answers?” he accused.

Her eyes widened, horrified. “No, never! I might get carried away, but never-” She stopped herself, glancing at the entrance to the Chamber. “Harry, I know you’re upset, but you can vent when we’re away from a highly restricted room where a major magical event just took place. You’re not a teenager anymore, Harry! You’re thirty-four! We need to-”

“Who knows?! Maybe I am still a teenager!” Harry snapped, barely even listening to what he was saying.

It wasn’t until Hermione’s eyes widened the way they did when she realised something that his own words registered.

A few spaces away from him, Hermione was mumbling her own thought process. “Of course. I’ve been thinking of him as an adult, but if the Cloak froze-” She looked straight at him, taking a step forwards. “Oh we should’ve realised. Harry, I’m so s-”

A loud crash cut everything off, the flimsy archway finally collapsing and crumbling to the ground, leaving only rubble in its wake.

Harry stared at the pile, the expression of sorrow and pity on Hermione’s face branded in his mind, and before she could address him again, he watched the Hallows fade from their place on the ground with a thought, the silky material of the Cloak draping over his shoulders as he reached to pull up the hood he’d shaped for himself.

“Harry, wai-!”

Unable to stay in this godforsaken, accursed room, staring at his best friend’s pitying looks and outreached hand, Harry twisted away, the wards on the DoM and the Ministry not even registering as he disapparated.

April, 2246

Izuku nervously observed his surroundings as he entered the Tatooin Katsudon store, the place he’d told Harry- Surely that was a nickname or his given name, right? Izuku wasn’t very comfortable with using such a familiar addressal, but he had nothing else to go by.

Anyway, this was where he’d told Harry the day before to come find him after school today, after he realised he’d be coming home far too late for his mom’s nerves if they continued talking, no matter how much he wanted to do so.

Finding his usual spot, a table in the very corner that’d seen better days, Izuku sat down, fidgeting with his hands.

It hadn’t been a dream, right?

Or a cruel joke?

The seconds ticked by, the happy babbling of the shop’s other customers drowning out his growing anxiety.

In a motion he’d gotten very familiar with over the day, Izuku shifted the stick of holly wood hidden in his Gakuran’s sleeve, slipping it out and feeling the wood warm and almost warble under his grip.

Ever since feeling the magic Harry had cast, ever since he’d waved that stick of wood- wand, if Harry was to be believed, it felt like something within him, something that’d been stale, dull, unmoving for his entire life had suddenly started rippling at the realisation there was something like it out there, and alive, and while it had calmed down a lot, he could still feel it ripple and quiver whenever he brushed past the wand, like a stone was skipping over a pond within the deepest depths of his being.

Either Harry, or someone he knew, had made a support item that could completely mimic a quirk, or Izuku did indeed have-

“Hullo.”

Izuku yelped when someone appeared seated on the other side of the table, in the motion of pulling back their hoodie.

“H-Hello, Harry,” Izuku stuttered out, only just remembering to speak English under the pounding of his poor heart.

Feeling a bit awkward, Izuku zoned in on the first thing that caught his attention and blurted out, “Why’s your hair like that?” Probably magic.

Harry halted whatever he was going to say and instead ran his hand through his hair, which had somehow gone from way too short to long enough to be pulled back into a ponytail that rested against the nape of his neck.

“This? It’s from self-transfiguration,” Yeah, magic. “Dangerous to do right, and when you do it correctly it’s supposed to not be permanent.”

“But why?”

Harry grinned ruefully. “Because when my hair has the chance to be free, it’s impossible to tame it straight, and I kept getting judging looks from everyone. Besides, only cool guys wear ponytails.” Clearly he had experience with that too, except-

“But you don’t have straight hair?”

“What?” Harry said, looking off-kilter for the first time Izuku had seen him.

“I-I mean,” Izuku stuttered to explain. “It looked like hair that…uhm, has been abused by a bad haircare routine for all its life?”

Izuku withered under Harry’s bewildered stare. “I can give you recommendations? I-If I’m right?” he asked, voice rising towards the end. His hair was very fluffy after all, if his mom and Kacchan’s mother were to be believed.

It took another second or two, but Harry seemed to shake out of it, blinking his eyes before a playful look crossed his face. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said, before moving on to something much more important. “So you wanna be trained in magic, right?”

Izuku glanced at their surroundings, but none of the other customers seemed to be listening in on their conversation. Maybe that should’ve been expected, given they were conversing in English. “Yes?”

He received an imploring raising of the eyebrow, which seemed like it’d been lifted from someone else’s face.

“Yes.” Izuku echoed, this time more decisively.

Harry grinned, clapping his hands together. “Great. This is gonna be real exciting, just you wait and see. Just give me a few days to find and prepare a place and I’ll tell you where to meet. How about every early morning and afternoon on the weekdays?” He gave him a look. “If we only have five months to get you prepared for high school, then-”

“Five?” Izuku interrupted. “There’s still ten months until the entrance exams. A-And a whole year before the next schoolyear…”

Harry echoed the confusion. “Huh? But the year starts in Sep…” Harry trailed off, before letting his head sink in his hands. “Stupid ruddy culture shock.”

A moment later, he righted himself. “Right, so only the afternoons then? Or do you prefer the morning?”

“C-Can we still do both?”

Harry eyed him. “Maybe later. This’ll make things a lot easier, at least.” He shook his head. “Let’s get things out of the way first, did you have any-”

Sadly he was interrupted by a waiter arriving at their table, and Izuku quickly ordered the classic Katsudon, obviously. And then watched Harry flounder for a moment, before discreetly casting a charm on himself under the table and randomly picking an item with the near-fluent, slightly wonky Japanese Izuku had heard on that rooftop.

As the waiter moved away, Harry returned his focus on Izuku. “So, did you have any questions? Can be anything you want. There’s not much else to talk about for now. Especially because I’m winging it,” he seemed to mumble.

Well, Izuku certainly wasn’t going to pass up on getting questions answered. Maybe get the most important one out of the way first.

“What is magic?”

Harry gave him an unimpressed look. “That should be obvious.”

“N-No,” Izuku denied. “I mean, how does it function? On the most fundamental level.”

Harry gave an exaggerated sigh. “Going right into the big stuff, huh? Blimey.” He seemed to be considering his words. “First of all, nobody every figured everything out, but I’ve been in…a unique situation. So I think I can give a bit more of an answer than ‘it’s just magic, don’t think about it’.”

At the sight of Izuku’s full attention, Harry continued. “I guess I should preface this by saying that souls are real.”

“R-Really?” That’s not where he expected the conversation to go at all!

“Yep,” Harry said, looking unfazed. “They can be tainted, damaged, torn apart, ripped from a body, hide a secret in, sucked out by the world’s worst kiss ever, all that jazz. Oh, and the afterlife exists too. For magical people, anyway,” he added on, almost as an afterthought.

“Oh…” Izuku was pretty sure his worldview had flipped around for the third time in two days, but he wasn’t going to get cheated out of an answer. “Continue?”

“Well, souls are made up of something, some substance or energy or whatever, and- don’t quote me on this to any magical scholars- magic is basically the source. The bits that aren’t used for souls, unpurposed stuff, just passively flowing all over the place. Normally it’s too dispersed to actually do anything of use. Only in magically rich places like Hog- the place I learned magic, was it dense enough to occasionally do something, like rearrange classrooms or create secret passages.”

Harry paused, looking deep in thought, before continuing. “And, depending on factors I have no clue about, some souls…resonate more with that unpurposed energy, are more closely connected to it, to magic. And those souls can manipulate its flow, pull that magic towards them, gather it, condense it enough to make it useful, and then use it to form and cast spells.”

“Whoa,” was all Izuku could really muster. If he’d heard this from anyone else, he’d think they were a scam artist promoting their book on spirituality or something. “And…I can do it too?”

“The wand certainly thinks so,” Harry replied, eyes landing on the stick poking out of Izuku’s sleeve.

“I have…one more question,” Izuku began carefully, unsure of how to bring it up.

“Bring it.”

Okay then.

“How old are you?”

What should’ve been quite an easy answer to give instead made the adolescent pause, deep in thought.

“Well…biologically speaking I’m seventeen and nine months. Chronologically I’m a hundred and fifty-four, and if you look at how much time has passed since my birth, two hundred and sixty-six,” he concluded proudly.

“Whoa…you’re old.” Wait, that was supposed to come out as admiring!

“Oi! Don’t put it so-”

Thankfully, the food arrived at exactly that moment, and Izuku welcomed the chance to distract himself from all the new information whirring in his head.

Here he was, sitting in his favourite Katsudon place, at the same table as an immortal wizard who was gonna show him how to use magic too, to become a hero.

Izuku hungrily eyed the steaming bowl with pork cutlet, rice, and egg with a watery smile, before noticing his current companion’s struggle with his as of yet unbroken set of chopsticks.

A few too many moments of struggling later, and Harry put the two pieces of wood down in defeat, eyeing his own bowl with a mild glare.

Izuku was surprised by himself when, just a few moments later, he burst into barely restrained laughter as Harry discreetly created a fork out of thin air with a swish of his wand.

He was greeted by an aggressive hush and a paranoid scan of the immediate surroundings, causing more laughter to bubble up from his throat.

Izuku had no idea why he was acting this way, so openly, so familiar. This was just a stranger who was offering to help him out. So why was he feeling more comfortable around a veritable stranger than with all his classmates? Even with Kacchan, back before he got his quirk, Izuku had always held back at least a little bit. He certainly wouldn’t joke around him, or laugh anywhere in hearing range. Especially not nowadays, in fear of retaliation for ‘making fun of me, you damn Deku?!’ Was he just desperately trying to cling on to this new hope?

Deciding to throw the poorly adapting kinda teenager, kinda ancient man a bone, Izuku clapped his hands together, vocalised a happy “itadakimasu!”, and got to devouring his bowl with his chopsticks. Hopefully that example would help Harry-

“…you’re welcome?”

Izuku snorted hard into his bowl.

The Resurrection Stone

January 2015

“Harry Potter?”

Harry jolted from his lying position, hissing as he cut himself on a sharp edge of rock.

He hadn’t known how long he’d been in this cave, which had once been the residence of his godfather, Buckbeak, and eventually Hagrid. Probably not that long. Definitely no longer than a week or two.

But in that time, Harry had done in desperation what he thought he wouldn’t do again ever since that fateful walk through the Forbidden Forest.

He’d used the Resurrection Stone.

At first he wanted to use it the same way he did back then, but hesitation and reluctance eventually turned into outright refusal. How would the Stone function now that it was part of the completed set? The Cloak had become so drastically more powerful, and the Wand had gotten a mind of its own. If you thought phoenix feather wands could get independent, acting out on their own accord to save their owner in dire straits, then the current Elder Wand was that but a thousandfold. He was pretty sure any damage inflicted on him would just be reversed by a powerful healing spell the Wand would cast on him by itself.

Would the Stone bind whoever was called upon to Harry for as long as he lived, forcing them to obey his every whim? The story said those who were recalled experienced a hollow pain and anguish every moment they were there, Cadmus’s wife, at least. What exactly would they go through now? Would the souls that were recalled be stripped of all masks and mortal desires and influences, leaving only their truest core? And what would happen if that wasn’t what Harry had thought of them as? Built up as? Clung to?

Or even worse, what if they were just simulations, and a longer look than the one he’d had would make it all obvious? Would the temptation to stay with them become too great? Cadmus at least had a way out after he’d been enthralled by his own creation.

It was only through quiet acceptance and sheer impulse at the face of impending doom that Harry had used it to call upon those he loved back then at all.

As his first test, Harry had called upon the soul of Peter Pettigrew, someone he certainly wouldn’t care for if any of those awful speculations on the Stone’s functions were true. And not too dangerous if ‘resurrection’ was more correct a descriptor now.

Which it was.

The major difference he noted was that those who were summoned were now fully corporeal, even capable of using magic, resurrection in the truest, if temporary sense. With a pang of anger, Harry quickly found the aspects of this full corporeality was at his discretion, when he’d stymied Wormtail’s fleeing Animagus form and reverted it moments after calling on him, leaving the corporeality active to tackle the rat-like man to the ground and kick him in the ribs.

He'd dismissed the soul as easily as he’d called on it with a sneer on his face. Even in death, Wormtail was a snivelling coward. The fact he’d felt a slight, insignificant pull on something within him made him wary of what using the Stone too often would cost him.

Later, he’d find the corporeality was only towards those who called on the soul, and the magic was sourced and called from the user. So outside of unique knowledge and possible emotional closure, the Stone had no other uses he cared for.

A day or two later, after his anger had cooled off and he’d thought things through, Harry called on the first on a short list he’d deliberated on.

For a moment he’d wondered if time since death, or the lack of any real familiarity, would affect whether he could call on someone, but then it succeeded. Despite that success, the attempt at getting proper answers failed miserably.

Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus Peverell could not understand a lick of modern English, nor could Harry understand them.

All attempts at communication failed, and after a few minutes of the awed, admiring looks of Antioch, the melancholy, longing ones of Cadmus, and the horrified, regretful expression Ignotus gave his last descendant, Harry dismissed the three souls that had condemned him before their reactions could burn too deeply into his mind.

It had taken a few more days before Harry had built up the resolve to make one last attempt.

~“I’m afraid I don’t have the answers you seek, child.”

“Why not?” Harry asked, failing to hide the tinge of desperation.

Nicholas Flamel shook his head mournfully. “Our situations are too far removed for me to give you any helpful advice in how to feel and how to tackle it. I chose to extend my life, together with Perenelle, knowing we could call an end to it when we finally felt ready.”

Harry looked down in understanding, his hand clenching around the cool, engraved stone that was pulling on something within him.

“What…What was it like?” he asked instead.

Flamel kept silent for a while.

“When confronted with the concept of immortality, people…are quick to conclude what a curse it can be- must be, claiming those who seek it as foolish and dim-witted. Watching those around you wither away and pass on, leaving you behind. The loneliness of having nobody who understands, nobody to share the burden of lost memories. The way you may become detached from the world and others as things begin to lose meaning in the grandness and hopelessness of it all,” he summed up calmly.

“But,” he started sharply. “Those people may simply be rationalising why missing out on something they cannot ever have isn’t such a bad thing after all. It causes them to overlook how immortality may become a blessing to those who do not seek it for themselves, but did attain it. Those who, despite their fate, have the fortitude to adapt to their new circumstances, rather than give up or give in to them.”

At Harry’s incredulous, questioning look, the alchemist continued.

“You do not have a time limit anymore, my dear child. Nothing to tragically cut you short from doing, becoming, creating whatever you wish for,” Flamel said with a soft smile.

“That’s exactly what I’m scared about,” Harry replied, frustrated, immediately regretting the moody, immature tone it came with.

“Only those who would go on to do those exact things say they’re not afraid of it,” Flamel returned masterfully. “Do you know what my favourite pastime was?”

Harry stilled, thrown off by the unrelated question.

“Gathering stories, and telling them,” he answered himself. “From the poor beggar at the banks of the Seine, regaling me her life’s dreams and ambitions, to the failed musician up in his family manor, telling me his regrets and playing me his songs. Perenelle loved to say I told others’ stories more than I did my own, and I would’ve had it no other way. I only had one interesting story of my own to tell, after all. And it’s not one I think others should know the details of,” he said, chuckling.

The most successful alchemist of all time levelled a fond, comforting look. The first one Harry didn’t feel the need to shy away from. “Yes, you will see those you love pass on, see the world turn without them, time marching ever onwards, but rather than thinking of carrying all those lost memories, experiences, and legacies as burdens, they can be your greatest blessing to them all: an immortality of their own.”

A silence fell over the cave, and with a final, shared look, Harry watched the old man, a smile that made him look decades younger on his face, fade into silvery mist and leave at his call, the Resurrection Stone dangling from its chain as he let it slip from his hand, leaving him in quiet contemplation and conflicting thoughts.~

“Harry?”

At the sound of footsteps approaching the grotto’s entrance, Harry flicked up the Cloak’s hood, staring in surprise as the always serene Luna Lovegood entered the cave.

Her silver eyes passively observed the rocky interior, crinkling as she smiled. “Hello, Harry.”

Harry stood, stunned, before removing the hood. “H-How did you know I was here?”

Luna simply smiled at him mysteriously, and Harry spotted the half-eaten slice of treacle tart he’d been brought by a Hogwarts house-elf at their insistence moments later, laying on the ground next to him.

She followed his glance, enigmatic smile being replaced by an adorable, child-like pout. “Aw phooey, you got me.”

“What’re you doing here, Luna?” Harry said, feeling the corners of his lips twitch.

“I was wandering about around Hogsmeade, looking for changes in the Wrackspurt populations, and came here,” she explained casually. To be fair, it did sound rather average for her activities.

“You do this often?”

“Almost every day,” she smiled before tapping her head. “It’s the daily changes that say the most about the people, after all.”

“Of course,” Harry nodded along, still not sure, even after all these years, whether Luna actually saw these creatures, interpreted some other sense as them, was just hallucinating, or it was simply her way of distracting people from their worries and raising the mood, and she was pretending. It didn’t really matter much in the end. It didn’t harm anyone, and Harry usually felt lighter whenever he spoke with her, no matter how heavy things weighed on him.

One thing about the near daily expeditions she mentioned got to him though. “Are you sure Rolf is alright with this? He must be itching to get out there again.” he asked, glancing behind her at the reddening sky. He certainly hadn’t seen him accompany her, and she’d been staying in England for a few months now.

“Rolf’s dead.”

Harry’s eyes snapped back to Luna. “What?”

She returned her typical, serene gaze. Harry couldn’t help but grimace under it as he was left reeling.

“We were planning on going back to England to plan a wedding, but I had a feeling something would happen in China, so we wandered over through Tibet.” She stayed silent for a while, before Harry finally realised what was off with Luna’s eyes.

She spoke up again before he could think of anything to say, the silvery mist that perfectly described her eyes almost appearing to swirl in hidden turbulence. “We’re the first to have seen a Yeti up close in recent history and been able to tell the tale. Me, anyway,” she said, a rueful undertone now revealed to Harry’s ears, hidden in her voice.

Harry swallowed softly. “Luna, are you…” The Resurrection Stone felt heavy against his chest.

His hand was already fishing it out from under his shirt when- “Harry, I don’t need it. But thank you.”

He paused, letting the Stone slip from his hand, the chain making a soft dangling sound. “A-Are you sure?”

Luna smiled again, this time far more genuine. “You of all people know he’ll be waiting for me. I just know he won’t want me to come join him on our next Great Adventure too quickly. And our last one is enough to make up for the wait.”

The simple statement, words touted by Dumbledore himself, dislodged something within Harry, something that hadn’t quite hit him just yet, despite the months he had to understand his circumstances.

“Harry?” he heard vaguely as he began to tremble.

“I can’t ever join you. Any of you,” he whispered, mostly to himself, feeling his knees weaken. “You’ll all leave me behind.”

When he’d been in the aethereal, otherworldly version of King’s Cross, talking to Dumbledore. When he’d been told he could make a choice and board the train, for a while he imagined going. Meeting his parents, Sirius and Remus, staying with them, exchanging stories, doing whatever he wanted. The peace, the quiet, the showering of love and safety, far away from the fighting and drama and upset of the world.

He'd decided to turn back, to finish what he started, both for those who’d died, and those who were still alive. He knew he would eventually come back to that place anyway.

Except now…

He couldn’t help himself. His legs gave way, and the only thing that saved him from a nasty bruise on the head were two thin, fragile arms catching him by the chest.

“This will be it for me,” he whispered shakily, feeling himself tremble against another body.

“Of course not, Harry,” he heard Luna say, voice back to its more airy nature, but no less comforting to his ears. “You’ll just have to wait a bit longer than the rest of us.”

Harry choked back a bitter laugh, feeling Luna back off. “‘A bit’? That’s an understatement for eternity.” Right now, Luna’s way of dealing with things was not helping him feel better.

“It’d only be eternity if you gave up,” she replied, the assumption he wouldn’t being clear from her tone. “And you have all the time to figure it out, which will be much shorter than that,” she stated the obvious, which hadn’t actually been obvious on first pass.

She moved away, backing up to the cave entrance until her silhouette framed the flaming sky behind her. “And once that happens, I hope the time until then will have been plenty fun to tell everyone else about.”

Luna gave him a reassuring smile, and then turned away, leaving the darkening sky behind in the cave entrance.

As the sound of quieted footsteps moved away, Harry was left in turmoil.

Everything that’d just been talked about, it was all bouncing around in his mind, and it had no chance to wrap itself around any of it for the time being. It made his head feel fuzzy and dazed.

But her last words were what pierced through it all.

~“You do not have a time limit anymore, my dear child. Nothing to tragically cut you short from doing, becoming, creating whatever you wish for.”~

With the words of the aged alchemist accompanying Luna’s, echoing in his mind, Harry got up, steadied his still shaking legs, and ran out.

“Luna!” he called, spotting her blond hair trudging down the hillside. “Luna, wait!”

Rather than get startled, the fairy-like woman turned to greet him with an awaiting smile. “Hello again, Harry.”

He came to a stop, realising he didn’t know what to say. “I…Where are you going?” he asked.

“Home. Daddy is too frail to go on any more expeditions,” Luna answered. “It’s sad. He loves doing them,” she said, shaking her head mournfully.

Harry wasn’t sure if there was supposed to be a second meaning to Luna’s statement. He was never sure whenever it came to her. But this entire chance meeting had left him with an idea, only just fully formed, the memory of Hermione’s expression as he left her behind in the Death Chamber, the thought of having the time to figure out what he wanted to do from now on with his new circumstances and setting his mind back proper again in his memory.

“What if I join you on one?”

Luna smiled, and Harry only now realised how the last few smiles hadn’t been quite up to par to her usual ones. “That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

In the end, it wasn’t quite clear who had the idea first, and who caught on afterwards, but the result was the same either way.

April, 2246

Izuku made his way through the lower class suburb, which was saying a lot, since he and his mom lived in an apartment complex.

He was just glad that he’d been in his room after coming home, as his mom definitely would’ve passed out at the sight of a translucent, silver animal passing through the wall, and Harry’s voice coming out of it, telling him to come to the address he was currently approaching.

That definitely would’ve ruined Izuku’s plans. After coming home, he’d decided to not tell his mom anything about what had happened just yet. Both because he was still a little wary about the validity of magic, and wanted tangible results to show her, and because he was worried she’d stop him from going out to train with ‘the shady man conning her baby into one of his no doubt horrible get-quirked-quick! schemes.’

He'd have to ask Harry what spell that was at some point, though. It sounded perfect for long-range messaging. Especially to people stuck in a collapsed building. It helped that Izuku felt inexplicably calmer and more serene after the animal faded away, a deep sense of contentedness he hadn’t realised he was missing suddenly there.

An hour or so later, and Izuku had found himself in front of a boarded up warehouse. He hadn’t even known there were any warehouses in Musutafu.

With trepidation, Izuku rolled up the rusty shutter and peeked through. He breathed out in relief when he saw the tall figure of Harry standing inside the warehouse, waving his weirdly knobby wand about in a series of mumbles that would’ve made Kacchan snap at him in no time.

Izuku let the shutter fall back down with a clang behind him, and went on to greet Harry, only to realise-

“Holy whoa! Is this place bigger on the inside?” he wondered aloud.

“It sure is now,” Harry replied, still very much focused on conducting an invisible orchestra. “Magic is brilliant, innit?”

Despite Izuku’s near fluency in English- and he sure was proud of that- there were still quite a few words he didn’t really understand. But maybe that was his fault for learning the English used by all the American documentaries on All Might’s Young Age.

“It is,” Izuku agreed instantly. “What is it you’re doing now?”

“I’m setting up some wards to make sure nobody will bother us for the coming year,” Harry replied, and Izuku only now realised that, if a vocal component was used when casting magic, then Harry certainly didn’t seem to need it much. “Though they’re not actually wards, just area charms and jinxes at the moment,” he corrected.

“To make wards I’d have to anchor these spells from myself to something physical, usually a big stone or crystal if you want to be fancy. But since the structure created by the runes would distort and break down pretty quickly without much active magic going on it’ll be better to have me fuel it,” he went on. “It’s amazing how some symbols carved into a surface can force the ambient magic to flow through the anchor in ways that perfectly mimic how wizards cast the spells. Even better is that, depending on the way you arrange the individual rune sequences, you can create effects we don’t even have charms for. Though I guess you could if you took the time and arithmancy for it, but that’s way too much work if you’re studied up on runes and you can just carve some symbols.”

As Harry’s ramble continued, Izuku made himself comfortable on the warehouse floor, strongly reminded of the times he’d gotten completely caught in his own world, talking about interesting heroes and quirks.

When the flow of words stopped, Izuku couldn’t help the fond smile on his face. “You really like wards, don’t you?”

Harry paused, putting down his wand with one last mutter of what Izuku recognised as Latin, and flashed him a knowing grin that was oddly nostalgic. It seemed they were about to begin.

Relit Passion

March, 2015

“You really like warding, don’t you, Harry?”

Harry blushed at Luna’s observation, having just come out of his stream of consciousness.

After Luna had casually mentioned that she thought wards formed a large dome as he was setting some up for their campsite, Harry had gone into an explanation to correct her grievous assumption.

Wards being like a simple, dome-shaped wall with a bunch of charms, jinxes, hexes, and curses inlayed did such a disservice to the fields of warding and curse breaking.

Wards didn’t just radiate outwards from some centre, forming a big sphere. Yes, some wards were spherical, but they could also be rectangular, conical, spiky, mimicking the natural borders of the area they encompassed, and even amorphous blobs. Some wards only covered the area perimeter, others included their interior, whose strength diminished closer towards the perimeter, whilst others had constant strength throughout- and others again had variable coverage depending on other influences. Some were static, others rotating, and others shifted size periodically.

And it was exactly these varied shapes, coverages, and dynamics that added a whole ‘nother layer to ward schemes. The way different wards overlapped, crossed, touched and intertwined. The distance between two wards on different angles- a spherical shape was used by warders and curse breakers as a reference frame for spherical coordinates, which was probably where the common misconception came from- But more than that, the density of wards at certain angles, whether the ward area had active coverage or was simply within the ward boundary, the speed and direction of the moving wards, the order in which the wards were originally constructed in relation to one another. All these local aspects combined to form a global effect on the ward scheme, causing every set of wards to be completely unique in their own right, even changing the smaller aspects of their function depending on spatial and temporal conditions- if the warder was intelligent and experienced enough to properly set one up, anyway.

“I do,” Harry answered. “It’s…very dear to me, actually.”

Luna remained silent, nodding at him with a smile to prompt him into continuing at his discretion.

“I- You weren’t around for most of it, but after I finished auror training and joined the corps, I realised I wasn’t as driven in catching dark wizards and enforcing the law as I thought I was. Maybe it was purely just because I was very involved with Voldemort,” he reflected. “And when me and Ginny…started drifting apart, I realised I wasn’t obligated to keep a stable job, so I quit.”

He sighed, thinking back to the outrage his quitting had caused in the wizarding Britain. Obviously, he couldn’t care less about what wizarding Britain thought, but the upset he caused in his friend group had made him feel guilty enough. Not enough to consider going back, of course.

“After that I was jumping from job to job,” Harry continued to a highly attentive Luna. “At first I tried staying in the Ministry, but I realised I…didn’t have many qualifications outside of being an auror, given I didn’t even sit my NEWTs. The ministry would’ve opened up almost any job for me anyway, but I tried Quidditch sub-department of the Department of Magical Games and Sports, since I at least had some qualifications in that.” He paused, remembering how short-lived that job had been. “I quickly realised I hated idle paperwork.”

He sighed. “After I left the ministry, I tried being a private defence instructor because of the DA, but that became a bit too personal for me.” He started rubbing his head. “I guess I’m not that good with social stuff. It got awkward, and I didn’t know how to handle certain teenagers, especially their parents, so things got away from me pretty fast.”

“Must be the Blibbering Humdingers. They’re quite attracted to people who have experienced prolonged isolation,” Luna commented. Well, she wasn’t wrong about him having been alone before Hogwarts…

“I then applied as an assistant to the DADA professor at Hogwarts, since the curse disappeared there was no professor vacancy, and I didn’t have a mastery to qualify anyway.” Harry paused, thinking back to that year. “The job-related stuff outside of classes really didn’t work for me, which was a shame, since I liked the actual teaching. Though I did get some offers to apprentice for a few masteries from the DADA professor, as well as professors Flitwick and McGonagall.”

“And then?” Luna prompted.

“After that I was just…going around, not doing much. I worked for a bit at the WWW with Ron, George, and Percy.” Harry admitted. “Until one day when I was at the Burrow, a bit too drunk from a party for Bill and his new curse breaker office he’d finally set up after leaving Gringotts, and I rambled to him.”

He blushed. “I don’t actually remember what I vented about, probably about how I wanted to leave England and do something fun and exciting, and that eventually led to Bill talking about his job as curse breaker.”

He paused in thought. “I don’t know the specifics anymore, but what I vividly remember was how I mentioned the same misconception you did, and how I wouldn’t want to travel so far and so much to do or see anything exciting, and that was when Bill took me outside and apparated me near Hogwarts.”

Cracking up at the sheer confusion he remembered experiencing, he continued. “We walked up to a cliff outside the wards that overlooked the entire haugh, and he told me to hand over my glasses. Then he did something to them that I couldn’t spot, cause- y’know, my glasses.” He shook his head. “And he told me to brace myself before he flicked on the side, and…”

Luna leaned in.

“The moment I saw the Hogwarts wards, up on that cliff. I…I cried,” Harry admitted softly.

He paused, composing himself after recalling the sight of millennium old, constantly expanding and adapting wards, still burnt into his mind. “I guess, in that moment I realised that magic…had become mundane to me,” he said reluctantly.

“I don’t know when it happened, or how, but at some point that child who entered Diagon, gaping at everything around him with starry eyes, had gotten used to it all. And that certainly wasn’t magic’s fault,” he said, shaking his head. “It was mine. Sometime during my first two years I’d stopped learning magic because it was magic, but rather because it was required schoolwork, and because I needed it to survive.”

Harry felt a smile come on. “Seeing those wards, the complexity, the rich history, the crazy, wacky, whimsical, inexplicable. It was all so grand and weird and unknown and beautiful and…magical. It made me realise how much more there was out there, without rules or structure, that I just wasn’t discovering or simply ignoring because I’d settled and lost any passion for it, wasn’t looking out for it any longer. I’d gotten used to using magic to survive magic, but never to live magic.”

He let out a shaky breath, raking his fingers through his hair. “I don’t remember how long I was there, fallen to my knees at some point, but eventually Bill put a hand on my shoulder, gave me a knowing smile, and said, ‘Welcome to my world, Harry’. And that’s how he roped me into my job. I took the relevant NEWTs, did my masteries at Hogwarts while he trained me up and took me along on a few expeditions as an assistant, and here I am,” he concluded, the crackling of the campfire taking over.

“Did you go on leave? You haven’t left England since I came back,” Luna wondered.

Harry shook his head, wondering if she thought her revealing his lack of aging was the reason he didn’t seem to be working. “Curse breaking isn’t just big expeditions to the corners of the globe. That’s the main impression most people have because Gringotts only hires curse breakers to locate potential Goblin artefacts that were taken to the grave by the human ‘lender’ centuries ago. And the occasional ward breaking when they’re pursuing a wizard who’s in their debt and hiding behind some,” he added.

“Bill realised there was a lot more that could be done, so he left Gringotts and started his own business. Guess it runs in the family,” Harry joked. “We still have dig-sites and expeditions, though more for finding lost history and dismantling dangerous places for muggles, but Gringotts doesn’t care so long as any Goblin artefacts we find are given to them after study, and after two months you get rotated out.”

He grinned. “In the downtime between digs and expeditions, we have what we like to call ‘mundane duty’. Just involves interfering when an amateur ward setter royally screws up, or an existing ward becomes dangerous, or just locks the owner out of the scheme for some reason. Sometimes we’re used as second opinions for ward setting services. Occasionally we get called in to help an auror raid on a location that has wards that are too difficult for them to handle,” he explained.

“That sounds like a very varied, satisfying job,” Luna said, nodding happily for him. “I’m glad you had your passion relit.”

“Me too.” And Harry was certainly planning on continuing to see what magic had to offer him. So far, Sweden and its Nordic variant of magic was already proving to him how much more magic there could be, even when you thought you had a good grasp on its scope.

“Can you keep watch tonight?” Luna said, stifling a yawn. “I get the feeling a Crumple-Horned Snorkack is going to approach the camp when we’re sleeping. They’re really skittish.”

Harry grinned, giving her a thumbs up. “Don’t you worry, Luna.” He flicked up the Cloak’s hood. “It’ll be like I’m not even here,” he said, doing the universally known motion of ‘spooky hands’.

Luna’s misty eyes crinkled as she smiled wide in approval. “I can’t hear you like that, Harry.”

A moment later, a sheepish Harry reappears as he pulls back the hood. “…right.”

April, 2246

“Why, when I discover there are even more absurd things in life, is it always through you, Mr. Potter?”

Somehow, even in death, as a semi-tangible summon, McGonagall’s unimpressed gaze was enough to coy Harry after he finished telling his circumstances. It didn’t even make sense. He was literally older than her now! And it wasn’t his fault everyone present that day at the Hog’s Head had collectively decided to not tell anyone else about his chronic- literally- condition!

“Sorry…Can I ask you for something, professor?” he asked, hoping to divert the conversation.

“I certainly hoped after several years of apprenticing under me for your Transfiguration mastery, you’d remember to call me Minerva,” the apparition told him.

“R-Right, so…”

“Yes, you’re allowed to, Harry.”

Harry breathed in, this was already on the verge of what he felt comfortable using the Stone for, but there was no other way to help his new student. “I need your help with teaching someone.”

So far, Harry had managed to stave off any actual magic lessons by going with the ‘grounded theory’ approach of professor Flitwick. That would buy him at least a month or two with Midoriya to prepare the practical lessons. That didn’t mean he wasn’t putting the kid through any other types of practical lessons, though.

“I’m not sure I can help the way you envision I would,” she commented sceptically.

Now, Harry knew what she was speaking of. Most of the reason why he knew how closely magic and souls were interconnected came from his use of the Resurrection Stone. There was indeed a price to pay for using it. Yes, the Stone was the one that did the almost unheard of and called out to a soul from the beyond, channelling it here, but that soul then required a small part of the caller’s soul to anchor and actually reveal themselves, unlike normal channelling in divination, and more akin to a temporary, murder-free, instant-horcrux, which then passed on along with the recalled once dismissed. Thankfully, souls could heal over time, but the longer someone was called, and the more often it happened, the more of your soul broke off and died.

It made Harry wonder if the reason Cadmus’s late wife had felt such pain at being called upon wasn’t because of her dislocation from the afterlife, but because she could see her beloved husband’s soul wither away piece by piece every time she was brought back.

Now, after discovering that unnerving tidbit, Harry had briefly wondered if he could use this to overcome his immortality, but further pondering immediately discarded it. Surely the magic he’d need to use the Stone would fail once his soul became consumed enough, and what kind of life would he be living with such a small, diminished soul? And for how long until enough had grown back? Just the thought of living anything like the way Voldemort had existed made him violently squash any thought on the matter.

Currently he had another problem, however.

“But I don’t have any of the books or material!” Harry objected, swinging his arms wide. “I don’t know how or what or when to teach him anything about Transfiguration, especially not with how different the world is nowadays! And don’t even get me started on the other stuff. You’re the expert!” Sue him for sounding a bit desperate.

McGo- Miner- McGonagall levelled him a disappointed look. “Harry, it’s true that you attained your Transfiguration mastery under me in your thirties with flying colours, yes?”

“Yes?” Harry answered, put out by the sudden change in conversation.

“And that you’ve lived for 154 years now?”

“Mhm?”

“Then, did you stop studying Transfiguration in those hundred and twenty years after gaining your mastery?”

“No?”

McGonagall gave him a tight, satisfied smile. “Then I daresay you’re far more of an expert at Transfiguration than I ever was.”

“I- w-wha?”

Was that true?

…Merlin’s saggy left ball sack! It was!

But she was the professor! She was the one he’d always deferred to! Learned from! How could he know more?! But what else had all those years been for then if not? And what about his Charms, Runes, and Arithmancy masteries?

Harry was so busy trying to put his head back on straight at the absolute paradigm shift that he barely caught the summoned soul replying.

“Mr. Potter, I will use the gift of the magic you’ve given to me to transfigure a pebble into a fly so you may catch it if you don’t close your mouth.”

Why was it always the surname she went to when she was disappointed? What happened to ‘call me Minerva, Harry’?

Harry closed his gaping mouth, realising he’d gone cross-eyed.

“S-So you won’t help out?” he asked, trying to get back to the original topic.

“It’s not feasible for you, and I see no need,” McGonagall answered, pausing. “I will, however, use the time you’ve given me to write up the lesson plans I thought worked best. And perhaps give recommendations for who else to call on if you experience troubles.” Harry sagged in relief at the compromise.

“But do not put too much stock into it, Harry,” she continued. “Every student has different needs and ways of learning. And I daresay yours sounds like one of a kind.”

Harry returned a rueful smile, knowing exactly what that title actually meant to him and his mentee. “He is.”

“Now, leave me to get to it. I’m sure you’ll be calling a few more of your old mentors in the near future, and I do not want to cost you too much,” McGonagall said sternly.

Harry gave a thankful nod to the much younger looking witch, thanks to the way souls appeared at their most comfortable in the afterlife, and made to leave.

June 2015

The past five months had been miles better for Harry than the three preceding that. In those three months since the revelation of his immortality, he’d gotten more sad looks from his friends than ever before. Hermione had been with him almost every day, trying to figure out what his condition would entail, and to see how to undo it, and most of the remaining time had been filled with thoughts of what his future would hold.

He'd even been told by Bill that he shouldn’t be undertaking any mundane duty until he felt better again, and that his talent would be wasted on anything besides the big expeditions anyway.

Ever since that Halloween, daily life had felt absolutely suffocating, a turbulent balance between trying to ignore the new situation and drowning in it. And that final failure in the Death Chamber had finally set Harry off enough for him to snap back and flee, trying to deal with his situation outside of the environment he’d felt stuck in.

But now, out here in the wilderness with Luna, or in the inn or B&B of an occasional town, Harry felt liberated.

Thoughts on the uncertain, doom-like future still lingered, but with the continuous moving around and Luna’s constant presence and commentary it was difficult for them to gain any foothold.

And Harry was truly enjoying himself again, just like during curse breaking, which he was honestly starting to miss a bit, even the mundane parts. And while he might not belief in most of the magical animals Luna was trying to spot, the least he could do was to keep an open mind. He’d encountered such interesting new magics already, up in the north, then in Afghanistan, and now in Panama. When he was out on an expedition, he didn’t really have the time to focus on anything beyond the tomb or ruins he was concerned with, and those old places usually weren’t the most representative of the current culture around and usage of magic.

Luna’s and Flamel’s words in the cave had continued to resonate with him in every thing he did. The thought of being guaranteed to find something, even if it took millennia, and not getting stuck wasting all of it on just reaching the end motivating him.

As for Luna, Harry wasn’t sure whether it was simply because he’d gotten more used to her than he already thought had been possible for him, or because there was more going on under her usual behaviour, but she acted more carefree and joyful too, her spacey look seeming a bit more down-to-earth and sharp. Not that that changed the sometimes dotty, other times awkwardly blunt truths she blurted out.

He should’ve known that the outside world was still very much trudging on without him.

The moment a ball of fire had burst into existence above the campfire, Harry had snapped to high alert, only to sigh in relief when a familiar, orange and red bird landed on the ground next to him, feathers still smoking slightly from the Flaming it’d done.

He only spotted the equally smoking, equally red letter in Fawkes’s beak fast enough to set up a silencing charm around the area, not wanting to alarm Luna into coming back from her usual exploratory wanders.

Harry was already cringing as the red envelope rose, unfolding to deliver its letter, and Fawkes Flamed away, no doubt sensing what was about to-

“HARRY JAMES POTTER, YOU ABSOLUTE PILLOCK!”

His body seized up at the sound of a yelling Ron.

“FIRST YOU SNAP AT HERMIONE AND LEAVE HER BEHIND IN THE MIDDLE OF A MAGICAL INCIDENT, AND THEN YOU GO AND BUGGER OFF WITHOUT A TRACE OR WAY TO CONTACT YOU FOR MONTHS! WE HAD TO RESORT TO BRIBING FAWKES TO FIND YOU!”

Harry winced. He hadn’t left any letters because he knew they could be traced, and he really didn’t want Luna’s expedition to be cut short so soon. Especially not when she felt like she was ‘so close’ to finding a Snorkack. He already knew they would’ve pulled him away to make sure he’d be alright, putting restrictions on what he could do like an angry Madam Pomfrey. And restrictions was the absolute last he needed right now.

It also hadn’t helped that he hadn’t been in the right frame of mind for almost an entire month after he’d left with Luna, and by the time he realised he should mail his friends…

“HERMIONE WAS DISMISSED FROM THE UNSPEAKABLES AFTER THEY FOUND OUT SHE BROUGHT AN UNAUTHORISED GUEST AND INDIRECTLY RUINED AN ANCIENT ARTEFACT, AND THE ONLY REASON SHE’S STILL EMPLOYED AT THE MINISTRY IS BECAUSE THEY NEED AN INTELLIGENT, HEADSTRONG MUGGLEBORN LIKE HER IN MUGGLE RELATIONS WITH ALL THIS MAGIC SQUIB STUFF GOING ON IN THE MUGGLE WORLD! SHE WAS INCONSOLABLE FOR WEEKS!”

The words were like a blunt hammer to the crotch, causing him to balk in pain. He hadn’t know that…

He hadn’t thought Hermione would’ve been fired from that. That she even could be fired from it, not when there wouldn’t have been any evidence of his presence. At least, he didn’t think there was anything like that.

“AND BILL’S YOUNGEST JUST TURNED OUT TO BE A MAGIC SQUIB, THROWING BLOODY WARMING CHARMS AT THE AIR, AND NOW HAS NOBODY TO FILL IN HIS JOBS, SO YOU BETTER GET YOUR SORRY ARSE OVER HERE THIS INSTANT AND-”

Harry cut the howler off with an overpowered incendio, sobbing at the action. He couldn’t. He couldn’t listen any longer.

Every angry, bellowed word from his best mate cut so deep he wasn’t sure they’d heal.

He’d acted like an insecure, emotionally unstable idiot.

He cost Hermione her job. Her dream.

And now in her new position she’d be subject to the typical blood-based prejudice, something the Department of Mysteries lacked, and she no doubt had a much lower salary or prospect at promotion.

Ron would have to find a better way to provide now, with Rose and Hugo closing in on Hogwarts age.

He’d ruined it because he was too angry to listen to perfectly serviceable words from Hermione, who’d been handling his outburst expertly.

Like a parent to a child.

Maybe there really was more to the paused aging than he’d thought. Or maybe he was just thinking of an excuse for whatever was actually wrong with himself.

The sound of shrubbery rustling cut Harry out of his downward spiral, quickly vanishing the ash before Luna could see any of it.

He couldn’t let her know, not when she thought she was so close. He…He could wait for a bit longer, right? To compose himself and set his mind straight again?

“Hey Luna,” Harry tried to say casually, trying to make it sound natural through the aborted sob. “How was- How was the stroll?”

Luna’s misty eyes observed him, before she shook her head solemnly. “I think the Snorkacks migrated south not too long ago. It is nearing the summer solstice after all. We should’ve taken that into account when we took that detour.”

Harry stared at her, confused at the sudden change in her ‘gut feeling’, as something unique and interesting had always been the result of following hers, and only afterwards had it changed to something new.

He completely missed how Luna sat down next to him until she wrapped him gently in a sideways hug.

“Let’s take a break and go home, Harry.”

A mixture of sob and laughter escaped him as he realised what happened.

How did she always know?

Remedial Training

June 2246

“Please have mercy!” Izuku yelled desperately at his tormentor.

“In a few minutes!” his tormentor replied, green eyes twinkling as he grinned sadistically.

To be fair, this was the payback for Izuku claiming to want to be a hero without so much as a single attempt at physical training.

When Izuku had finally begun his ‘apprenticeship’ under Harry two months back, he’d been really excited, only to find there was quite some theoretical groundwork to cover.

It certainly didn’t help that Izuku suspected some of it wasn’t actually groundwork, and more on the advanced side, purely because Harry was far too passionate about wards and exotic magics to not slip things in, either accidentally or on purpose.

And the rest of the time he was subjected to ‘remedial training’, which included plenty of working out, a rather restricted diet accompanied by somewhat foul tasting drinks dubbed potions- which Harry had apologised for profusely every time he had to take a swig- and dodging, a lot of dodging. Big, metal balls, in fact, which Harry was more than happy to Banish at him.

Which wasn’t much of a far cry from when they’d started doing it, actually.

~“Think fast!”

Izuku yelped as one of those cannon balls Harry had conjured abruptly sped towards him with a flick of the wand.

For the briefest of seconds, Izuku saw a sparking fist heading for him, and froze up, but that was enough for him to be unable to fully dodge the thing.

He cried out as the thing hit him on the arm, and he fell to the ground.

“Oh bloody buggering bollocks!” he heard Harry shout, and a moment later the man was at his side, crouching down and waving his wand over his arm. “Why’d I assume you had reflexes like mine? You bloody idiot,” he continued to mumble between the Latin.

Izuku groaned and sat up, taking in the weird sensations brushing over his arm. “W-What’re you doing?”

Harry paused, looking him in the eyes. “I’m healing your broken arm, that’s what,” he said, frustrated.

“But it’s not broken?” Izuku replied, confused.

“What?”

Izuku withered under the questioning gaze. “I-I mean, it’s only going to bruise. It’s no big deal.”

“Only going to bruise?” Harry echoed incredulously, feeling out Izuku’s injured arm and finding no signs of broken bones underneath. “But I hit your arm head-on with a bloody bludger!” He yelled in confusion.

Izuku’s gaze snapped away from the ground. “Bloody?” He looked behind him, at the cannon ball lying on the floor, and then back at his arm. “But I’m not bleeding?”

Harry blinked, shaking his head. “No, no, it’s a British thing.”

“Wha- Bleeding?!” Izuku yelled, confused, looking more closely at his Sensei. He wasn’t like All Might, was he?

Harry pinched his nose. “Oh bloody- It’s- It’s a British swear, Midoriya. Like bugger and bollocks and pillock.”

“Oh…” Izuku realised, before the image of a Kacchan using British swears rose up in his mind, and he choked up with laughter.

Harry raised his eyebrow in amusement and gave the giggling Izuku a once-over, before humming. “I guess you’re a lot more durable than wizards of my time, Midoriya. And that’s saying a lot, because magic loves making us more durable and easier to heal.”

Izuku’s head shot up, the funny image forgotten. “Really?” he asked, before wondering what that meant. “I guess, if vestigial mutations are a thing, then all the resistances and enhancement aspects of quirks must be passed down to me in some way as well.”

Harry’s amused expression was quickly ignored as Izuku delved into a mumble on how much more evolved his body must actually be compared to people from before quirks, despite not having one himself in the present.~

“You wouldn’t be so happy if the roles were reversed,” Izuku grumbled as he dodged another, very heavy looking ball. At least he didn’t have to worry about any serious damage, but that also meant Harry could happily chuck them at him, a protection covering his face for safety.

“Oh, why’s that?” Harry asked, quirking an eyebrow. “I have plenty of muscle. You don’t, but you’re getting closer, especially with the stuff I’ve been feeding you,” he said consolingly.

Izuku grunted as he dodged another cannon ball by rolling to the side. “But that’s just an illusion!” he called out. Currently, Harry was in the form he was in most often when training him, that of a tall, decently muscular man with short, messy- though better-looking, more fluffy and actually a little curled after Izuku had recommended some good conditioner Kacchan’s mother had forced on him years ago- hair, looking to be in his mid-thirties. The only form he used more often was what Izuku assumed was his unillusioned, teenaged form, whenever he was out in public and just moving about. “You look lanky and thin without it!”

Harry paused, freezing the next ball mid-air. “Wait, you think- Midoriya, I’m wearing an illusion when I look seventeen too.” He cocked his head, grinning. “The point of illusions is that I don’t want to attract attention. What do you think a seventeen year old with way too much muscle will do?”

As if to demonstrate, Harry waved his wand over his chest, and he lost a bit of height as he shrunk to his undisguised form.

Though, compared to what Izuku was used to, this teenage, near adolescent Harry was…impressively buff. Nothing too exaggerated, very much on the lean side compared to the bulk All Might showed when he was ‘puffing up’ in a flex- which, Izuku still had no idea how that worked, nor did he want to, not with how All Might had become a sour subject for him after he’d gotten the time to reflect in Harry-sensei’s company, but seeing the amount of muscles from someone who’d worked out regularly and maintained them for perhaps a century, imposed on a not yet fully developed body certainly was jarring enough to raise heads.

It was comparable to the more brawn-oriented third year students shown on the yearly UA Sports Festival, who most certainly were very recognisable, even outside of costume.

Harry flexed his arm. “These guns are real, even when you can’t see ‘em.”

“That’s why you hit so hard!” Izuku realised, thinking back on several, surprisingly painful spars. He honestly felt a bit cheated, thinking the muscles he showed in his older disguise were just there to make him look more attractive and intimidating.

“Of course. Now, since my…condition doesn’t really limit me in how much I can grow, Lu-” he cut himself off. “Someone close to me concocted a potion that would cause new muscle to grow back more condensed. So there’s actually a bit more than what you can actually see,” Harry said, before flicking up his hoodie and winking out.

Izuku whirled around, trying to scan the room in a panic, before he was suddenly lifted up, Harry’s figure appearing again as pulled back his hood with one hand, which meant…

“See? I can handle myself, even with all those buff boys out there,” he said, proving it by lifting Izuku up above his head with one hand.

“W-Whoa, hey, hold-” Izuku stammered, before finally losing his balance and slipping off Harry’s hand…right on his shoulders.

Oh wow, this was embarrassing…but also hilarious, and fun.

“Oi, geroff me! I’m not a booster seat!” was the hilariously indignant response.

Izuku choked out an incredulous laugh at the accidental piggybacking, making sure to hold on more tightly. “Not until you let me start doing magic!”

What followed was a brief struggle to shake him off, until suddenly, Harry jerked his body backwards with a chuckle, letting Izuku fall off with a yelp and onto the magically cushioned floor.

“C’mon, Dori-” Oh, how Izuku hated that nickname, though not actually very strongly. “Don’t make me stray from the plan too much. It’s really important to-”

“Build up my baseline. I know, Harry-sensei,” Izuku replied in Japanese. “If I start with magic I could start relying on it too much and then I’ll be toast when someone more athletic than me gets close in a fight.”

That was something Harry had drilled into him in the first two weeks, when Izuku was still complaining audibly from the lack of practical magic lessons.

Apparently, wizards of his time had relied so much on their magic to do everything for them, that magic battles weren’t very…dynamic. The combatants may have moved for cover, or dodged to the side, or dashed into a good casting position, but usually they just stood still, waiting for a spell to take their opponent out of the fight, or disapparating to escape when things were turning against them.

That their only real sport had been flying on broomsticks meant that physical fitness was far and few in the wizarding world. It also certainly didn’t help that wands were very much like guns, as in they were much less effective at short range, where melee combat was assured.

Most ‘pureblood wankers’, as Harry had lovingly called them, who Izuku figured were on top of the societal structure back then, were described as thin and fragile, and had little to no stamina.

The current world most certainly didn’t rely on magic for their fights, but still had magical powers in their own right, if Harry was to be believed about the origin of quirks, so fighting like the wizards of old would be a huge liability for him.

That said, the current lack of any actual magic casting…

“Midoriya-kun, what’s bad?” Harry spoke up in halting, unaided, and rather wonky Japanese- which he’d started learning properly, citing that he didn’t trust the charms if he was staying here for a while- bursting through his thought process.

“Wrong.” Izuku corrected automatically, before frowning. “I…What if it was just a fluke? What if we start and- and I can’t do anything?” He brought up his knees to his chest. “I-I don’t want- I don’t want to be a useless-” He cut himself off before he could say the nickname he’d been branded with. “I- Not again.”

“Midoriya…” Harry had gone back to English, but Izuku was too busy trying to hide eyes that were starting to sting behind his knees.

“Izuku.”

Izuku’s head rose at the first time Harry had addressed him like that.

Harry, on his part, looked, from what Izuku knew about him, uncharacteristically unsure and conflicted.

“I…Look, I don’t know how to handle-” He cut himself off, growling, before sighing deeply. “I’m sorry.”

Huh?

Harry continued to look uncomfortable. “You see, I- So far, I’ve been stalling with practical magic lessons.”

Izuku winced. “S-So you think I-”

“No,” Harry said, squashing the thought from forming. “The truth is…I’m scared of teaching you magic.”

“What do you mean?” Izuku asked quietly.

“There’s…so much magic out there. And I’m the only one who actually knows any of it. There still are books and tomes out there, but I’d have to travel for a while to get them. And besides, no matter how much I know, no matter how much I look, there’ll always be things I’ve never read about, or forgotten about, or overlooked, or gotten wrong. And with how different the world is nowadays, I’m afraid I’ll fail you.”

Harry raked his fingers through his hair, letting the curls slide past them. “I’m afraid that I’ll teach you the wrong spells, give you the wrong habits. That I’ll give you an arsenal that won’t quite fit you, and that you’ll get into a situation you could’ve survived if you’d known other spells. You’ll-”

“I don’t care.”

Izuku winced at his own words as Harry’s gaze snapped to him.

“I-I mean, you’re already going so far out of your way to teach me, when I- I’m just happy that you’re doing all this for me.” He frowned. “I wouldn’t…fault you for anything.”

At Harry’s troubled look, Izuku elaborated further. “You didn’t need to save me from that sludge villain, or follow after me when I- uhm, latched onto All Might, or approach me to make sure I was okay, or test out whether I had magic, or…tell me anything, let alone offer to train me and put up with me.”

“Of course I would’ve done those things,” Harry answered, sounding confused. “Why wouldn’t I have?”

A silence descended on the spatially expanded warehouse.

“Thank you,” Izuku said softly.

Harry remained quiet for a while, bringing the silence back.

“I know you keep that holly wand on you all the time, but make sure to bring it tomorrow, alright, kid?”

Izuku snapped out of his pensive state, jumping back onto his feet. “Yessir!”

Harry paused for a moment. “Also, I’m giving you a bit of homework, if we’re moving on from standard training and magical theory.”

Izuku blinked. “What is it?”

An excited grin made its way on Harry’s face. “I want you to start thinking of a weapon you might like to train with.”

“Wha- W-Why?” Izuku asked incredulously.

His mentor tapped his head with his wand. “Don’t forget. Magic might be great, but people nowadays are pretty resistant to it. Back in my day, you could easily stun or curse someone out of a duel, or petrify them, or just locate them magically. You’ll need something you’re comfortable with to use as your second weapon.”

Izuku blinked, head already filling with ideas. “But I’ve never seen you with one. What’s your second weapon then?”

Harry’s eyes twinkled in excitement as he tossed his wand from his right hand to his left. “I’m glad you asked, my dear assistant.”

With his wand, he pulsed a ball of golden phoenix flame, and grabbed into it with his right hand. Within the flame, something seemed to solidify, and Harry’s hand gripped it, before moving back the flaming ball and pulling out an entire sword.

Izuku could do nothing other than gape in awe as Harry freed the sword with one swing, an arc of golden embers trailing behind the blade as the flame flickered out.

He didn’t want to focalise it, not with the way a smug grin was splitting his sensei’s face in half, but that was so fricking cool.

“Why have I never seen you with that before? And why does it have a sheath?” Izuku finally asked, snapping out of his reverie.

“Because I haven’t needed it here yet,” Harry said smugly. “Swords can get pretty deadly, and I’ve only ever used this against dangerous creatures.” He tapped the simple sheath hiding the blade. “And this sheath isn’t going off, it’s there for everyone’s protection. Because this blade is incredibly powerful, imbued with the deadliest substance known to man. It can kill from a simple scratch.”

Izuku stared at it in confusion. “Incredibly pow-” Suddenly, he started snickering, much to Harry’s confusion.

“Oi, what’s so funny?” Harry said belligerently. “This sword is bloody awesome!”

“I-I’m sorry,” Izuku managed to choke out between barely held back laughter. “B-But it- You sound like- like a chuunibyō!”

He was answered with indignantly squeaked confusion. “Like a what-now?”

At the mental image of a fifteen year old, female disguised Harry joining him at Aldera, wearing an eyepatch over ‘her’ twinkling eyes and yelling about awesome, dangerous sealed powers in class while threatening the other students with a fight, Izuku finally broke down laughing, bending over while clutching his shaking belly.

2029

“Merlin’s saggy left ball sack! What the hell did I just witness, Harry?!” Bill demanded, unusually shaken as he sat down on the side of a felled tree, staring at the cooling corpse in the perfectly circular crater, surrounded by spell and lightning marks, blood dripping from the tiniest of slice marks on its thick, spiked hide, the only visible injury on the beast.

If it hadn’t been for his possession of the sword of Gryffindor he certainly could believe that it normally took a hundred wizards to take the beast down.

He remembered how, the morning after that one night in 2015 in Panama, he’d woken up with the sword on his lap. To this day, he wondered if it’d been Fawkes’s make-up gift for being bribed into delivering the Howler. It certainly wasn’t because he was in dire need of one, not with the Hallows under his control, after all. But in all this time, especially now, it’d helped him save a lot of lives the Hallows couldn’t save, not when they only really helped him for the most part.

Harry huffed, sheathing Gryffindor’s Sword into the sheath, securing it on his back. “Oh wow, thank you Harry for saving the entire expedition’s arses because nobody expected there to be a preserved guardian animal near the tomb. No problem, William. It wasn’t an issue, I’ll be happy to provide my beast slaying skills more in the future,” he answered himself.

He was honestly just happy to still be able to talk normally with Bill, even after all this time. It felt nice to have some Weasleys in his rather small friend circle.

“Okay, okay, I’m very thankful, first of all,” Bill replied. “But can you explain to me how and where the hell you learned all that when I wasn’t looking?”

Harry looked around, but all the other expedition members and tagalongs were too busy looking awestruck at the ancient, magically preserved Nundu corpse. “Well, first of all,” he wagged the Elder Wand discreetly, and tugged on the Cloak, which was currently disguised as a dragon leather vest, and naturally far more effective than an actual one, on top of being far lighter and less cumbersome to wear, easily making it the best alternative.

“Second of all, without those area charms you all cast so quickly, I would’ve been too preoccupied with keeping everyone safe and preventing that oversized cat from escaping.”

Harry started grinning. “And third of all, start thanking Luna.”

Bill’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “W-Well, what am I supposed to put in my very grateful letter to her?” he stammered out.

“Start with thanking her for pulling me all over the world for over a decade, even when I was feeling down and unable to get out of bed, and allowing me to discover all types of magic you probably haven’t even heard of,” Harry began, pointing at the completely dislodged trees and scorch marks dotting the crater.

“And secondly, for knowing exactly who could help me with sword fighting.” Harry chuckled for a moment. “Xenophilius Lovegood has a surprising amount of worthwhile connections all over the world.”

Including one to a reclusive tribe of Tibetan monks who lived to fight with swords. Yes, sounds very cliché, but it worked out really well in the end.

“Is that where you were off to for several months?” Bill asked, intrigued.

“Yeah, sorry, mate.” Harry was not sorry at all for being uncontactable during that time. It’s not like he expected to be completely preoccupied with only swords. There must’ve been some kind of ward that helped that along, even if everyone except the head monk didn’t even know about magic. “Hey, I got you a consolation price for having me missing for most of this dig though!”

Bill was barely able to catch the sheer slab of raw meat that was tossed his way from an expandable bag.

Based on the way his nose sniffed, Harry was sure this unknown meat was landing well with the partly lycanthropic man.

“What kind of meat is this?” the eldest Weasley son finally caved in.

Harry grinned. “Yeti meat,” he said, pure satisfaction rolling off of him. “I have plenty of material for coats, mittens, and scarves too.”

The entire trip to Tibet had been completely worth it, just based on how Luna, choking on wet laughter, had tightly embraced him once he presented her with a winter coat made of a certain Yeti’s fur.

June 2246

“Are you sure you’re pronouncing it right?”

“I-I’m just having trouble with the L’s! Why is it all in Latin anyway?” Izuku complained, though he was very worried at how he hadn’t been able to successfully cast any spell with the holly wand, not at any point. And after years of practice he didn’t have the stereotypical rolled L, so he knew his excuse didn’t hold much water.

Any excitement he had when he came into the warehouse that morning for his first day of using actual magic had quickly dwindled, being replaced by frustration and annoyance.

And worry.

“Do…Do you think I can’t-”

“You absolutely can,” Harry cut him off immediately. “I can feel the ripples coming from the wand when you try that. It’s just not…coming out right? Being interfered with?”

“What am I doing wrong then?” Izuku despaired. It wasn’t that, after over two months of waiting, it turned out he was absolutely useless at magic, was it?!

Harry sighed, raking his fingers through his hair. “Okay, okay, can you run by me again what you know about casting magic?”

Izuku huffed in frustration, before finding a spot on the ground to sit on.

“You- The wand is to properly focus the magic I’m channelling, then the wand motion and the incantation are to make the correct spell happen,” he said slowly, not knowing what he was misunderstanding from what he’d been told plenty of times during the theory lessons.

“Mhm, mhm,” Harry nodded along. “Great, now tell me in your own words.”

“Huh?” Izuku looked away from the ground, wincing when he realised his eyes stinging with wetness borne from frustration were now visible.

Harry gave him an understanding smile. “That’s the stuff Hogwarts told everyone who came there. Didn’t you wonder why I left out all the stuff I told you about souls ‘n so on during all the theory stuff?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s because I didn’t want to just have you take all my ideas verbatim regarding magic. I’ve seen you talk on and on about people’s quirks. You’re certainly more creative and insightful than me,” Harry explained, aimlessly waving his wand around, before pointing the wand at Izuku. “So tell me again, but this time: what are your ideas?”

Izuku stared at the innocent point of the stick, gulping slightly. He wasn’t the one who had experience with magic. How could any of his ideas match up to someone who’d practiced it for over a century?!

“Well, I think…” he began slowly, cautiously. “I think that…the wand helps store the magical energy you channel and concentrate, since you mentioned we can’t…do that. And that’s why the core is highly magical, because magical objects can easily handle it. But you can’t just…handle it with your bare hands, I assume, so a conductive casing is necessary.”

Izuku only barely noticed the self-satisfied smirk on Harry’s face as the last bits of resistance and reluctance fell to his need to get out his thoughts. “But everyone’s soul is different, otherwise we wouldn’t be different people, so everyone will channel magic slightly differently. So the core and wood and shape have to be varied to try and match the way the user channels magic. Otherwise it’s like trying to force a train to switch from the tracks it was built for to one it can’t work on mid-travel.”

He paused, looking up at Harry, who in turn waved his wand in a ‘go on’ motion.

“Th-Then, the wand motion is to force the magic to flow in a certain way. Like you said the runes you’d use for wards do. And the incantation is just to tell the magic to actually use its energy and do the thing you want it to do,” Izuku concluded.

Harry hummed thoughtfully, stroking his chin, before snapping his fingers. “Aha!”

“Aha what?”

“Midoriya, I think you think too much about what the actual magic is doing when you’re trying to cast.”

“What?” Izuku squeaked, wondering if he completely screwed himself over. “I-Is that bad? But you said…”

“I did say that,” Harry agreed. “I do believe what I told you back then on how magic actually works, but I only really came up with that after I’d already been taught how to cast magic at Hogwarts.”

He shook his head. “I think it’s because what I told you was the very first you heard about using magic, that you’re having trouble now. I certainly believe that’s how magic works, but I don’t think that way when I cast. I simply use the motion and the incantation, and then let the strong associations I’ve made do the magic for me. You started out with that understanding, and you seem like a very visual person, so trying to distance yourself from that with the incantations is preventing you from doing it properly.”

“So…asking you back then has screwed me over?” Izuku concluded worriedly.

“No,” Harry immediately shot that down. “It just means we have to approach this differently.”

For several seconds, the warehouse was blanketed in silence, and Izuku started to fidget under-

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Harry spoke up. “Let’s forget all about the words and the movement, and I’ll try and guide you through your way of casting magic.”

Izuku yelped when the holly stick was plucked out of his hand.

Harry chuckled as he was eyed warily, and moved to grab something from Izuku’s yellow backpack. “Don’t want you accidentally casting magic while we do that.”

He found a large pencil and handed it over. “Let’s use that as a dummy wand.”

“O-Okay,” Izuku stammered, not feeling very confident after his failures today.

Harry coaxed him into standing up again, and then moved behind him. “You see the pebble?” he asked, putting his hand on Izuku’s shoulder.

Izuku nodded, noticing the small rock, sitting on the floor a few metres away, like it’d been doing for the entire day already.

“Great. Now, try to imagine the magic around us. A bunch of dispersed energy, slowly flowing in and out of this building, surrounding us everywhere, going through us, going through the ground, going through the pebble.”

Izuku complied, closing his eyes, leaving the space in pure darkness.

“Now, imagine sucking that energy towards you, pulling it inwards, and letting it flow into the wand through your hand,” came Harry’s voice.

For a moment he struggled, but Harry’s grip on his shoulder tightened reassuringly, and a moment later he felt something within him rippling and moving as it gained strength.

“Great. Now you’ll just have to try and envision how that magic is going to lift the pebble before you do anything else.”

Izuku nodded, opening his eyes and focusing on the rock.

He barely noticed as Harry’s hand left his shoulder, already too focused on visualising the condensed, channelled magic in his hand being sent over to the rock and wrapping around it, ready to move up and lift the pebble along with it.

Keeping that image in his mind, and waiting for Harry to speak up again, Izuku channelled his frustration of the entire day, wondering if this was just going to be another failed attempt, that stupid pebble remaining stuck on the ground, just wishing it could just float up and prove to him that he wasn’t a failure here as well, and-

“Merlin’s beard!”

Izuku snapped out of his focused state, looking over at Harry, who’d readied his own wand to do something but had frozen in place, and then followed the man’s gaze back over the pebble.

Which was floating.

“How did you do that?!” // “Why did you do that?!” Mentor and protégé asked simultaneously.

Harry was the first to try and clear up the confusion. “What do you mean ‘why’d I do that’?”

Izuku gestured at the wand with his pencil. “You cast the spell, didn’t you? Were you trying to make me think I was doing it?”

“Wha- No!” Harry replied, showing him the holly wand. “I was going to use a switching spell to switch the pencil with your wand while you were preoccupied, so you’d cast the spell yourself when I told you to because you’d be too focused to notice in the moment.”

Izuku’s thoughts came screeching to a halt. “Wait…” He stared at the levitating rock, and then at the pencil. “Then did I-”

He yelped when Harry yanked the pencil from him and snapped it in half, trying to find anything odd within the graphite. “Honestly, how the hell did you…What?”

“But you can do wandless magic with the basic spells. Why are you so surprised?” Izuku asked, too preoccupied to register he’d actually done magic.

“Yes, but that requires a lot of focus, lots of power, and only a short burst of channelling,” Harry replied. “You took way too long for that to work properly. It’s almost like you were gathering and condensing the magic yourself, but our bodies aren’t built to do that!” he said, throwing up his hands in frustration. “That’s why we need the magical cores in our wands in the first place!”

Izuku watched as Harry sat down, looking absolutely bewildered as he stared at the pebble, which had dropped back to the floor.

And suddenly, a flash of inspiration hit him, and an observation from over a month back gave him a much needed realisation.

“Correction,” Izuku began, a grin forming as Harry looked at him. “Your body isn’t built to do that.”

Harry stared at him in confusion, then stiffened when realisation hit, and shot up, beginning to pace around the room.

“Of course. If he got the structures needed for quirks to harness magic passed down to him, but he doesn’t have a quirk that makes use of it, then…”

Harry paused, beginning to grin madly as he met Izuku’s eyes.

“I guess you won’t need this then,” he said, the holly wand he was holding bursting into golden phoenix flames and disappearing. “And I’ll have to have a good think on how to proceed with all this,” he continued, brows furrowing into a frown.

Izuku winced, lowering his head. “I’m sorry for inconveniencing you,” he mumbled, staring down at his red shoes.

“Hey, nonna that!” Harry objected, flicking him on the head. “This is just gonna make everything much more interesting and exciting, honestly.”

He looked up from his shoes to see Harry smiling at him, eyes shining in excitement.

“Don’t apologise for being one of a kind, Izuku,” his Sensei said softly, patting his head and ruffling his hair.

Izuku froze up under the hand.

One of a kind.

A title he’d had forced on him, though always indirectly, by his mom, by his teachers, by his classmates, by Kacchan. Through ‘quirkless’, ‘worthless’, ‘useless’, ‘fragile’, and Deku.

Something that’d been used to torment him, to put him down, to isolate him and hurt him.

But he relaxed mere moments later, before Harry could even feel it under his hand, and the hand retracted, revealing his happy smile.

When it was said like this, Izuku thought, wondered, realised, hoped, that maybe…

Maybe one of a kind wouldn’t be so bad for him after all.

Chapter Text

2093

“Merlin, people really are leaving, huh?”

“Yeah, pretty bad for business, I’d say,” George quipped, though his jovial tone was dampened by the empty storefronts that’d started popping up not too long ago.

“And they’re all trying to settle into muggle society?” Harry asked further.

It was a bit surprising, given how isolationist everyone had become once the sheer anarchy, discrimination, and proverbial witch hunts were seen in the muggle world. Harry had barely even noticed though, when he was out in the woods with Luna, or on expeditions in the jungle with Bill. But now some European countries, like the UK, were starting to settle in an uneasy balance, with the amount magical squibs- or meta-humans, as was the more recent muggle term- finally starting to be a big enough minority to be impossible to hem in, so the muggle government had to switch its strategy to appeasement and compromise.

Harry wondered if the heightened spread within the UK was because of the lowered birth rate Hermione had speculated had been the cause all those decades ago, even if he thought it was a bit of a narrowminded, faulty one.

“Yep,” George affirmed, before pausing. “Well, the half-bloods and muggleborn, anyway. Only the purebloods that had muggle business connections and the experience really have a shot of doing well. The rest all holed up in their manors when they saw all the muggle infighting and are barely seen since. Not doing that great for our economy though. They are the biggest source of new money.”

Harry winced, thinking of how someone like Arthur Weasley would’ve tried to move his family to the muggle world, and what havoc that would’ve caused.

Sadly, the man had missed out on what the ministry was starting to call the Muggle Exodus by less than a decade, passing away at the respectable age of a hundred and thirty four.

“And- uh, how’s Ron?” Harry asked carefully.

Things hadn’t been the same between him and Ron and Hermione. Oh yes, he’d gotten back to England and practically prostrated himself in front of Hermione, begging to use his vault to make up for any money they were now missing, and after things had been properly straightened out nothing was hostile or antagonistic…

But things hadn’t really gone back to what they used to be.

There’d been an underlying tension ever since he came back. Their homelife had never fully recovered after Hermione’s dismissal and transfer. Harry knew Hermione wasn’t trying to blame him, she’d been equally complicit after all, especially when it’d been her idea to try using the Veil. But nevertheless, there was still an undercurrent of frustration for ‘lost promise’ she carried around. And Ron never vocalised it, but he was at least partly blaming Harry for what happened. And he was right to, of course.

And ever since Hermione had shared her suspicions that his mind was stuck in the state of a seventeen- nearly eighteen-year-old, the others had started looking at him as less of an equal, and more as someone that was trying and failing to keep up with everyone else, pretending to be an adult, like he had been for those sixteen years after the Battle of Hogwarts.

That gap only grew as time went by, even if Harry’s illusion kept updating to reflect what his chronological age would be, and after a decade he decided it wasn’t going to get better.

“Ron is caring for mum nowadays,” George replied. “I doubt he’ll have to keep it up for much longer though.” The mourning tone was already getting clear in his voice.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around much,” Harry apologised softly.

He received a barked laugh and a slap on the back in return. “You have your fun with Luna and occasionally Bill wherever you want. We hear plenty from your adventures indirectly through the Quibbler or when we prompt Bill into a drunken babble.”

The redhead grinned as he gave a thumbs up. “Never apologise for being one of a kind, Harry.”

Harry smiled and looked out over Diagon, the smile tightening at that title.

One of a kind.

That was exactly the goddamn problem.

Even the most good-natured people like George and Bill would still fall into the more accidentally condescending mannerisms, enough for Harry to be soured by the interactions, but nowhere near as emotionally tiring as being around Neville, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny.

His updating illusion- which was completely accurate to his biological make-up, thank the Elder Wand for that- had him sporting significantly greyed hair, and the wrinkles around his eyes from every time Luna told or did something that lightened his spirits were an equally aged feature.

“Tell Percy I said hi,” Harry said eventually, waving George goodbye as he left the still thriving Weasley Wizarding Wheezes and apparated away.

One of a kind.

What a curse.

July, 2246

The past two months had gone by extremely well. Once they’d made a breakthrough with Midoriya’s magic things had sped up enormously.

Obviously things had to be changed around a bit, given that Midoriya didn’t actually have to use specific wand motions or incantations, not even a wand, to be honest. All he required was a good visual on what the magic behind a spell was doing.

That also meant that the more physical and simple an effect, the easier Midoriya could get a grasp on it.

So things like Summoning and Banishing, as well as the fire and wind charms had come easily. Harry was planning on starting Midoriya on Conjuring and Vanishing very soon, given that those would be a bit more difficult to visualise, or to explain how magic was ‘doing’ the dismissing or creating of magic out of what appeared to be nothing. Inanimate to animate transfiguration would be very useful as well in a fight, but that’d have to wait for a while longer. In those cases, using the incantations and motions as a crutch helped avoid requiring to think about the details of the actual transformation into the magical mimic of a living animal, which Midoriya wouldn’t have.

A lot of charms Harry knew wouldn’t be of any use though. Stunning, Petrification, Healing spells, the Slowing charm, Confundus, none of them could affect quirked people. That wasn’t even speaking of more magic-specific spells, which were completely useless to Midoriya against anyone but Harry himself, like the Shield spell, or Langlock.

That said, the Disarming charm would be very useful when it came to getting rid of an opponent’s weapons.

Apparition was absolutely not going on the class itinerary anytime soon though, not when Harry had no idea how to properly heal a serious Splinching.

As the summer approached, Harry realised he’d have to go and visit the Hogwarts library to properly set up new plans after this, and brush up on knowledge of existing spells that he’d forgotten about or never bothered to learn.

He did mean it when he said he wasn’t sure what spell repertoire would work best in a quirked society. And he especially needed to locate whatever book described the specifics of the Portkey charm, because he’d tried Portus too many times, to no avail. Maybe there was an aspect to it that required active magic usage within the general area?

Now that would seriously screw him over. On his trips with Luna he’d gotten very dependent on Portkeys to travel any large, international distances.

Thinking about his upcoming halfway around the world trip to Hogwarts, another thought came to him. Maybe Midoriya could be brought along for a ‘summer training camp’? He’d have to think about that a bit more, and Midoriya’s mother- the father wasn’t present anymore, Midoriya had told him- would have to consent.

Wait, had Midoriya ever told his mother about-

The sound of the magically expanded warehouse door unlocking brought Harry back to the present.

“Ah, Midoriya-kun, there you are!” he greeted in Japanese. Harry had found that he was picking up the language surprisingly quickly. At this point, the translation charm was more supplying his speaking rather than guiding him around like a blind man, which helped wonders with supplying nuance and actually sounding not robotic.

Maybe there was at least a bit of an upside to having your physical brain stuck with its heightened neural plasticity in its seventeen- nearly eighteen-year-old state?

“You’re a bit later than normal,” he commented as Midoriya let his backpack slump on the ground.

“I-It’s fine,” Midoriya replied with a surprising stutter. “I was just caught up with…Kacchan.”

Harry frowned at the mention of the boy, never having actually met him but already having plenty of suspicions.

Either way, he knew saying anything and trying to push when he wasn’t being reached out to would drive the kid away. It’s what he would’ve done back at this age, anyway. So he did the only thing he could, and began the lesson.

“Alright. So, last time we tried out the Wind charm, Ventus.” Harry eyed Midoriya as a wide grin appeared on his face, silently being matched by Harry.

“So now we’re moving on to another charm that will help control the battlefield at range: the Exploding charm, Bombarda.”

For the briefest of moments, Harry noticed Midoriya stiffen.

Okay, now something was starting to feel fishy.

“I’ll demonstrate first so you can try and replicate it your way,” Harry continued.

He aimed the Elder Wand at a conjured mirror and articulated a clear Bombarda, the reflective surface violently shattering into a million pieces and clattering on the ground.

In the corner of his eye, Midoriya flinched from the sudden sound and light.

Now things were really getting concerning.

He turned towards his student. “You want to try your way now?”

Midoriya nodded haltingly, before closing his eyes and trying to calm himself down.

The slight tremors that made themselves known as the minutes passed made Harry a lot more concerned.

Harry noticed the moment things went wrong only a fraction of a second before it happened.

The projectile spell that Midoriya had been building and forming in his hands had gained enough energy to spark visibly. Apparently that was how the Exploding charm would manifest with him. And at the sound and feel of the sparks, Midoriya froze up, and that moment of lost focus caused the charm to blow up in the air, right on his hands.

“Bloody- Midoriya-kun!” Harry yelled, running over to the figure that collapsed to the ground. “Midoriya, can you hear me?” He didn’t seem able to, his eyes looking dazed and clouded.

He crouched down and immediately waved his wand over Midoriya’s blistered hands, removing the red skin with a thought. “Izuku?” he asked, finally catching his attention.

“H-Harry-sensei?”

“Midoriya-kun, can you tell me how you feel? Is anything in pain?”

“I-” Midoriya winced when Harry went to feel his back.

Harry frowned, putting his attention back on Midoriya’s eyes. “Midoriya-kun, do you have other injuries?”

Midoriya’s eyes sharpened at an alarming pace. “I-I-I-”

“Nevermind that,” Harry immediately dismissed upon seeing how he clammed up. “Can I heal all of it for you?”

Midoriya nodded, and Harry felt out the injuries, frowning. “That’s a lot of bruising,” he commented worriedly as he waved them away. “Did you get them today?”

Another, more hesitant nod.

“Do you think you can tell me how you got them?”

Midoriya paled, and despite the way his mouth opened, nothing was coming through.

Harry observed the way his body tremored, and waved his wand at the floor, conjuring a large cushion. “Forget I asked. Can you try and sit down?” he asked. He wasn’t going to push any further than he’d already done. He didn’t know how Midoriya thought, but if it was any similar to himself, then he’d ruin the trust he’d been building with him for the past three months. It was better to just make him comfortable and give him time to calm down.

The moment the kid was seated, Harry waved his wand and conjured a blanket over Midoriya’s shoulders, then conjured up a big, fluffy cushion for himself, and conjured a mug, using his favourite charm to fill it to the brim, before sitting down.

“Here,” he said, reaching out to hand the steaming mug over. “Some hot chocolate.”

Midoriya eyed the conjured mug, and accepted it with shaking hands. “H-How did you-?”

“It’s one of the charms my…friend invented, it’s based on Aguamenti. Her mother was a spell crafter, you know? Guess she got the talent from her.” He grinned. “It’s my favourite.”

Harry sat back as Midoriya shakily sipped on the mug.

“W-What- What now?” came the meek question, after several more sips.

“Now?” Harry raised his eyebrow. “Now you can ask if you want another mug when you’re done with that one.”

“R-Really?”

“Yep. I suppose I’ll also ask you if you want some lighter training today, or if you just want to go home,” he continued. “Both is fine with me.”

“Is- That’s all?”

“Mhm, that’s all,” Harry affirmed, allowing silence to blanket the space. He had a pretty good idea now of how delicate and careful everyone must’ve been around him, and how awful it must’ve been to try and not get pushed away by him. Because he was now experiencing it right back.

He also hadn’t gone out to investigate, knowing how badly he’d have taken it to hear someone went behind his back, so he didn’t know much beyond the vague impression he’d gotten originally.

And now the injuries.

But maintaining what he’d built with Midoriya so far was far more important to him than pushing him away for the chance of forcing things through.

As long as Midoriya didn’t want things to change, somewhere, no matter how deep within him, then the best he could do was manage the symptoms.

“K-Kacchan.”

Harry snapped out of contemplation, only hearing the tail-end of the whispered sentence. “Hm?” he responded, hoping his mutedly surprised gaze wouldn’t scare him off.

But Midoriya wasn’t looking at him, rather, he was looking in his mug.

“He…His parents d-denied him from attending the- the UA preparatory summer camp, b-because of the incident with- with the Sludge Villain. And he-” Midoriya let out a shuddering breath. “He was really angry,” he breathed in a barely audible tone.

Harry remained quiet, not wanting to disturb whatever willpower Midoriya had actually worked up.

“I- He was p-pretty mellow after the attack. I thought he- that landing in a hospital with lung damage had…shaken him? He hadn’t- He hadn’t really- uh, acted up ever since. But-” Midoriya hunched over, the trembling increasing. “I guess he- It wasn’t- It was just-” He cut himself off.

“Midoriya-kun, how long has he been acting up?” Harry asked slowly, with as gentle a tone he could muster.

“I- He’s been- He’s always-” Nothing but aborted sentences came from his student’s mouth, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

Harry moved forward, and gently placed a hand on Midoriya’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to tell me if you can’t,” he reassured.

Midoriya lowered his head further in frustration, and Harry felt the trembling in his shoulders.

After a moment of deliberation, Harry spoke up again. “Do you think you can show me instead?”

His head shot up, and two pairs of green eyes met. “W-What?”

“It’s…a special type of magic,” Harry began carefully, keeping his gaze slightly off from Midoriya’s. “Which allows you to…see in someone’s mind. See their memories.”

Perhaps the abysmal sessions with Snape should have alerted him, but only later in life had he found out that he had a real knack for Legilimency. If he could easily reverse through the connection in a blind panic at fifteen, then he certainly could be a natural with some training. Perhaps that was also why Occlumency was impossible for him to learn, not when he was so far on one end of the spectrum. At least Dumbledore and Snape were more seated towards the middle.

It was just a shame it didn’t work on or could be used by a quirked person, now that he’d finally found out that his best defence against Legilimency was by going on the offense. That was probably what those stupid scar visions had been anyway, Voldemort lowering his Occlumency barriers, either on accident from heightened emotions or on purpose, and Harry unknowingly performing a Legilimency attack in his sleep.

Green eyes widened as they processed the information on the new magic. “I’d never use it on anyone without their permission,” Harry assured calmly. “And I’m certain you can form a magical shield around your mind with that stockpiled magic you have, if you’re worried.” It certainly sounded much easier to employ than Occlumency, which he’d never properly mastered in the way it was known.

Midoriya’s eyes lowered again, and Harry gently squeezed his shoulder. “If you want, I can go into your mind, just barely, and you can show me everything you want to show me, or you can throw me out with only a thought.”

There was a moment of silence, and Harry crouched down further to get on Midoriya’s eye level. “Midoriya-kun, do you trust me with this?” he asked, Midoriya’s eyes hidden under his fluffy, curly fringe. “It’s alright if you don’t.”

He heard Midoriya breathe in, and then the fringe moved up. “What…What do you need me to do?”

Harry smiled serenely, but inside his heart was jumping in his chest. He’d never been on the receiving end of this with his friends or the teachers! None of them had gotten anywhere close to this point! He didn’t have any experience for this!

“All you have to do is think of what you want me to see, and look directly into my eyes. Breaking eye contact will cut me off immediately, okay?” he asked. “It’ll only be for a few seconds,” he tried to reassure.

The moment he’d mentioned eye contact, Midoriya averted his eyes, but after several seconds of silence, he made eye contact again, giving a meek nod.

Harry nodded in return, and very slowly raised the Elder Wand, wanting to be as choreographed as possible.

“Legilimens Concordia,” he intoned clearly, feeling himself zoom in on and slip through Midoriya’s green eyes.

The hot chocolate charm wasn’t the only thing Luna, together with his assistance, had created once she’d gotten too old for any exciting trips. This one in particular had been inspired by Harry’s own experiences with his scar visions.

Legilimens, from leger and mens, ‘to read’ and ‘mind’ respectively. And Concordia, which Harry understood could mean Harmony, Union, Consent. To be honest, it was more the interpretation someone had and the amount of syllables that shaped the connection to the magic that was used, even if it wasn’t perfect.

This particular variation allowed a Legilimens to properly experience any memory they saw as if they were the person it belonged to, including all sensations, thoughts, and emotions at the time, at the cost of being unable to explore the mind themselves, requiring the freely given, conscious permission of the spell’s recipient to access any memory. And, of course, feeling and thinking every emotion and thought and sensation the person had experienced back then to the point of believing you were them while you were viewing, even risking the chance of being traumatised, and with the danger of getting too entrenched and losing oneself by the time you could emerge…there was a reason he and Luna kept that one a complete secret, even when she started publishing the other spells in the Quibbler.

From Midoriya’s perspective, it’d only be five or so seconds of Harry’s intense gaze, his pupils contracting and dilating rapidly, but from Harry’s perspective it took quite a bit longer.

Harry broke the spell after he felt that the last offered memory had been experienced, and took the time to fall back on his cushion to adjust and centre himself, trying to organise the foreign- though not as foreign- thoughts and feelings.

“Harry-sensei, are you okay?”

Was it in any way surprising that that was the loudest and clearest Izuku had been so far?

But there was something far more important occupying his mind.

It was bad. As bad as he’d hoped it wasn’t.

And Harry wasn’t sure whether he should be proud at Izuku for trusting him and opening up about this, something Harry never would’ve done in this situation, or if he should be fearing that Izuku didn’t fully trust him, and only showed the memories he thought weren’t as bad, and what the ones he really didn’t want to show were like.

Leaving behind that horrifying thought, Harry gave Izuku a grateful smile. “Thank you for trusting me, Izuku.”

Izuku’s mouth quirked up for a moment, but Harry was left with a question. “Why…” Harry trailed off, unsure of how to even phrase his question. ‘Why now?’ sounded so demanding, and he had no idea how to word it in an understanding, undemanding way.

“I don’t want to be like this,” Izuku began answering the question in a whisper anyway. “I-I don’t- What if I freeze up out there. I-I mean, I’m not powerless anymore. I- I have magic now. B-But if I can still-” He breathed shakily. “I need to know what’s- what’s wrong with me.”

“Nothing,” Harry answered on reflex. “You’re just injured…” he elaborated. “Do you think someone having a wound is wrong?”

Izuku’s head shot up. “N-No. That doesn’t even-” He gaped, words coming to a halt, and he backed down when he realised where Harry had been going.

“It’s alright, Izuku,” Harry comforted. “It just means you need to find a way to heal.”

Sometimes, when he was alone, Harry liked to imagine a scenario where he encountered a child version of himself, back in that cupboard. He sometimes wondered what he’d do if he found himself in that situation. How he could help himself. What he could say. But it always stayed as a thought experiment, something he only thought of on lonely nights.

Now, he thanked his past self for helping his future self out. At least, he hoped that would be the outcome here.

“H-How?” Izuku breathed. “Do I…Do I do that?”

Harry’s heart clenched, and he moved back forward again. “We’ll find out. But can I try something today?”

He brought his hands out, palms upwards, and waited for Izuku to put his hands on top so he could hold them.

“Just try and repeat what I’ll say after me, and we’ll see how far we can go,” Harry instructed, waiting for the uncertain nod.

“Alright,” he readied himself. He was just winging this too by this point.

“I’m not okay,” he intoned slowly.

He felt Izuku’s eyes shoot up to meet his, but kept his own on the hands.

“I…I-I’m not- I’m not okay.” It came out as a whisper, but given that Izuku had admitted it earlier already, he expected this one to go through.

“I was hurt.”

This one came faster, but equally halting.

“I was bullied.”

“I-I was…” Izuku gulped. “B-Bullied.”

This one was obvious to everyone too, so no big struggle there, beyond the confusion Izuku was no doubt feeling.

Harry steadied himself. He already had an idea of what to say next, but he really didn’t want to. It’d be so much easier to skip it, and move on with the rest. But if he truly wanted to help Izuku, he’d have to say this out loud, and hope he could convince him it was right.

“I was abused.”

Immediately, the hands touching his palms jerked harshly as Izuku flinched back, like he’d been struck physically.

“I- B-But I’m not- It’s just bullying,” he clearly tried to speak up, but it only came out as soft words.

Harry lifted his eyes from the hands and focused on Izuku’s face. “Yes, it’s bullying,” he agreed, before getting into the hard stuff. “But when it happens for so long, when you start thinking of it as normal, when you stop thinking of ways to stop it, escape it, stand up against it, when you start thinking that you might actually deserve it. Then it becomes…abuse.” He said slowly, anticipating the wince he received.

“B-But it’s- There’s- You don’t- It’s just- It’s not-”

“Izuku, it’s fine,” he interrupted. “Can I…show you something instead?”

The boy halted his stuttering in confusion. “You- Do you mean…”

“Yes, but not exactly,” he answered. “You don’t have to do anything except look at me and follow what I say. And you can abstain whenever you want.”

“O-Okay.” Izuku met his eyes, and Harry calmly called on the spell that made the connection again. Except this time no memories or experiences were sent. Not yet.

“Can you try and stockpile some magic around your head?” he asked. The moment he felt Izuku comply, the connection dimming in strength as the physically stockpiled magic began to scramble part of it, he continued to coach him. “Good, just go up bit by bit until I tell you to stop.”

The connection weakened and kept weakening until Harry felt it was at the right strength.

Now came the second, far more rife for abuse application of Legilimens Concordia, which they’d only discovered after they’d finished crafting it.

The connection went both ways, like typical Legilimency, so the caster could easily give permission to send their own most horrible, traumatising experiences to an unwilling victim.

Harry, however, only sent a single memory to test out the partial blockade.

For a moment, he worriedly watched Izuku’s eyes display the signs of being immersed in a memory, and immediately addressed him when the dilating of the pupils stopped. “Can you tell me what you saw?”

Izuku stared at him, unsurely, and still a bit dazed. “I…I saw you, a younger you, running away from…bullies, and then you- you teleported onto the roof of the school?”

Harry nodded. “Yes, and did you experience anything else?”

“Uhm, like…I thought I could hear younger you’s thoughts? A-And I knew you were panicking, and resigned? And the teleporting felt…like squeezing through a small tube? But I wasn’t actually being teleported.”

“Good, and you weren’t convinced any of those sensations were your own? Or the thoughts and emotions? You weren’t convinced that you were me?”

“N-No?” Izuku’s confusion suddenly gave way for a horrified expression. “W-Wait, when you- without the block- You mean you-”

Harry held up his hand, making sure to keep eye contact. “It’s alright, Izuku. That’s what I knew was going to happen. Can I show you what I wanted to show you now?”

He got a nod, though Izuku seemed reluctant to let the issue go. Nevertheless, now that he was sure Izuku wouldn’t experience his memories like that, he offered everything he thought was important. How a young boy had been assaulted by words that stayed with him for decades; how he was beaten and hurt when he tried to act up and defend himself; how he’d tried to follow the rules, hoping they would eventually accept him, but they always bent them to hurt him more; how the boy’s cousin was propped up and pampered and showered in love and attention, a constant symbol of what he’d never be to them, what he’d never get; how the boy was socially isolated everywhere he went, by the rumours of the adults, as well as by the hands of the boy’s cousin; how he’d been addressed as Boy so often that it’d been like a public name to him, one he thought had been his name until the very first rollcall at school.

Harry stopped and finally cut the connection, watching Izuku blink away the daze and disorientation, despite the much milder version of the transfer.

It was both a relief and a frustration, when this was the first time Izuku’s eyes watered up, and his hair frizzled up with rising magic.

“You- Th-They- Why did they- Why would they- Why did they do any of that? W-Why did they-”

“Abuse me,” Harry completed softly, watching the backpack stop its slow rise into the air in the background, and the frizz of Izuku’s hair settled down again. He was surprised by how much harder it was to vocalise it, even when he’d accepted it in his mind a long time ago.

Wet, green eyes stared at dry ones. “H-How did you- How are you-”

“Okay?” he prompted, getting a nod in return. “Getting out, being with people who love you, working on accepting what happened with a professional, and time, probably not enough time to ever fully be away from it all.”

“But I’m not- I- It’s different. It’s not- I’m-”

“Izuku,” he cut the trembling boy off. “I want to tell you something. Something that I should’ve heard a long time ago. Something I think you should hear.”

“W-What…What is it?”

Harry breathed in, trying to steady himself. He hadn’t known talking about things like this would be so exhausting for him, and he wasn’t even on the receiving end.

“I’ll admit that…our situations are different, like every situation is, but not in the ways that matter. And-” he gulped. “If you think like I used to, then…” He shook his head, getting back on track. “I used to think, to cling onto the idea that there must be something different about me. Something that explained why people treated me the way they did, something that justified how they acted against me. Something that made it all reasonable. Because…”

Harry looked to the side. “Because if that wasn’t the case, if there wasn’t something different about me…then all that hurt, all that suffering, all of it would’ve meant nothing. Would’ve been for nothing. All of it would’ve simply happened because of- because of bad luck and because the world was unfair. And that’s just far more cruel to believe than simply being inherently at fault, the exception to the norm.”

He dared to look at Izuku again, and was met with a look of realisation, of understanding.

He could do this.

“But, I need you to understand that…there is nothing about you, that justified what they did. Because there’s nothing that can ever justify people doing things like that, ever, no matter what you or they might come up with. And…I hope that you’ll be able to see that there was no excuse for what happened to you, that there’s nothing about you that made it okay for them to hurt you. That you didn’t deserve any of it happening to you, that nobody deserves that.”

He met Izuku’s eyes again, more steadfast than before. “And that you’re not the only one. That there are people who’ve been hurt like this, who’ve thought like this, who’ve gotten out, gotten better, who want to see you get out and heal too, because there’s nothing wrong or shameful about being hurt, about feeling any of the things you’re feeling.”

He squeezed Izuku’s hands. “And that you’re allowed to let out all the hurt that’s inside, because there are people who want to catch you when you do. You just-”

Harry froze, realising what he was about to say. Realising how those words had been said to him before, just in a different context.

From Izuku’s perspective, that was only a fraction of a second.

“You need to stop pretending, Izuku. Pretending that you don’t deserve the help and comfort and release you need to keep moving on. Pretending that you deserved this. That there was a valid reason for all this. That you’re different from everyone else. You’re not. You deserve this just as little as anyone else would, just as little as you think anyone else would. And don’t let anyone but you decide that.”

Harry let his voice rest, feeling hoarse, and his chest feeling fragile and cold and empty. And for a few moments, nothing happened.

He locked eyes with Izuku, who was trembling, his Adam’s apple bobbing in aborted sobs, stuck in his chest, wreaking havoc.

Harry let Izuku’s hands go, and moved himself closer to him as he straightened his back. “I promise, nobody but me can hear you here.”

Izuku’s wet eyes flicked up at him, silently pleading at him.

Harry wrapped his arms around Izuku’s shaking figure, and pulled him into a gentle embrace.

A sob echoed through the warehouse.

And from one crack, the dam broke.

Harry wasn’t ready for what came pouring out of the small boy pressed against him as the sobs came rushing out, and he calmly began stroking the boy’s hair.

It wasn’t long after when a heart wrenching wail that bordered on a scream broke through the sobs, followed by another, and another, and another.

With the way each one tore at his heart, Harry hugged the shaking boy tightly, ignoring how his shirt was being gripped so strongly that it could rip at any moment.

Harry had hoped to never hear the screams of someone under the Cruciatus ever again. Yet this was somehow worse.

Eventually- thankfully, for the only time Harry had heard similar screams were back in the Death Chamber, when Sirius had fallen through the Veil- the tortured screams died down, the last a hoarse one that choked up halfway through and broke back down into sobs.

As he held Izuku, stroking his head, feeling the way he clung onto him like his life depended on it, smearing his shirt with tears and snot, Harry realised something.

For so long, ever since finding out about his immortality, he’d always felt younger than everyone else, which only grew worse as the rest grew older. As the others became tempered, calm, content with life, Harry remained restless, prone to spikes of emotions and strong impulses, unbalanced and unsure of what his place in the grand scheme was, never fully certain of himself and wanting to do more, always with the potential to fall back and regress into anger and making stupid mistakes, despite how much experience he’d gotten at reigning himself in.

But now, and perhaps at several points in the past few months when he hadn’t even taken notice, with this shaking, not even fifteen-year-old boy sobbing out his every pain and hurt collected for over a decade into his chest all at once, Harry felt every bit like the age his current illusion portrayed.

And then he made a horrifying realisation.

At this exact age, he had to fight through a maze filled with class 5 monsters, get kidnapped and tortured by Voldemort, watch someone get killed in front of him, and then fight off a dark lord surrounded by his lackeys. Followed by a year of organising a private army and rebelling against an incompetent government, the entirety of the British wizarding world flipping against him and prosecuting him.

And two years before that, he had to enter the deepest depths of Hogwarts, fighting against a thousand-year-old Basilisk all on his own with nothing but a sword.

Whilst two years after that, he spent an entire year running around a country ruled by a madman, trying to destroy all his horcruxes, and ending it all by walking himself off to his death anyway to sacrifice himself for the Greater Good.

Why had he had to do any of that?

He was only a goddamned teenager!

Not even older than the boy in his arms for over half of all that!

He never should’ve been forced into a position to do that at all!

WHY?!

There was no time or place for any of that though. The boy in his arms had stopped sobbing in his arms, only the heaving of his chest and the wet smearing against Harry’s shirt remaining from the airing of a decade of grief.

Izuku stirred, and slowly loosened his death grip on Harry’s shirt, weakly pulling back and showing his face, ridden by tear tracks, red, puffy eyes, and snot running down his nose.

Harry moved his hand from the tangles of hair, and gently waved it in front of Izuku’s face, vanishing the excess fluids.

“Can I learn that next?” Was what eventually broke the silence.

Harry couldn’t help but choke at the softly worded request. “I’ll put it on the itinerary,” he responded casually.

A breathy laugh escaped Izuku, but his eyes remained sad.

Harry took in the emotionally tired and wrecked boy and exhaled. He hadn’t expected to go through all that and not royally screw up at all!

For a moment, he allowed Izuku to take in the slow rise and fall of his chest, the boy pressed against him.

After a few breaths, Harry pulled back. “Okay. I think it’s best if I get you home. Can you walk?”

Not getting a response, Harry went to get up and-

“W-Wait.” His hand was grabbed by Izuku.

“Yeah?” Harry asked, staring down at Izuku, watching as he stretched out his arms and held his hands palms down, hovering over nothing.

“I…I want to- to try again,” Izuku continued to whisper, his voice no doubt hoarse and raspy.

Harry complied, sitting back down and bringing out his hands, palms up, and grabbing Izuku’s.

“If you get stuck, we’ll stop, alright? There are plenty of days to train your magic and try this again,” Harry added sternly.

He got a silent nod.

“I’m not okay.”

“I’m not okay.”

“I was hurt.”

“I was hurt.”

“I was bullied.”

“I was…b-bullied.”

“I was abused.”

“I was- I- I was-”

Harry looked on sadly as Izuku held his head down, struggling to continue.

He sighed mentally, allowing his hands to slip out of his student’s. “Izuku, it’s alright. You’re not forced to do anything, especially not anytime soon. Let’s just-”

“a-abused.”

Harry halted.

“I was- I was abused.” Izuku completed with a sob.

Harry let his hands slide back into Izuku’s, and gave him a reassuring squeeze.

He took a moment to look at Izuku’s messy, fluffy hair, and continued, a small smile forming on his face as he discovered just how brave and strong this boy was.

Now came the good stuff.

“I deserve better.”

Izuku’s head shot up, wide eyes locking with his.

Harry simply returned a questioning look.

“I- I deserve better.”

Izuku eyed Harry again, but Harry gave an imploring look, tilting his head forward a tad while keeping his eyes locked on Izuku’s.

“…I deserve better,” came the clearer reply, and Harry smiled again.

“I will get better.”

“I-I will…get better.”

Another imploring look, prompting a slight upturn of the lips.

“I will get better.”

“I won’t let them stop me.”

“I- I wo-” Izuku’s attempt was interrupted by a breathy laugh at Harry’s intense pre-emptively imploring look. His head tilted far enough forward now that, if he were wearing half-moon spectacles, his eyes would be peering over them, almost obscured by his eyebrows.

“I won’t let them stop me,” he managed after the breathy laugh settled.

Harry nodded again, this time smiling fully.

“I won’t let me stop me.”

This time, there was no hesitation.

“I won’t let me stop me.”

This time, Harry did something different.

“Why?” he asked calmly.

Izuku paused, staring at Harry, before dismissing any reluctance. “B-Because I’m going to be a hero.”

Harry began grinning, standing up from his knees, and pulling Izuku up by his hands. “Are you? They don’t think so? Why?”

Izuku steadied himself on his feet, his eyes looking livelier than Harry had seen, except for when he’d first touched the holly wand. “Because I’m done listening to them.”

“Why? They don’t want you to,” Harry said, enjoying what he was seeing very much. He just wished something like this had happened to him all those centuries ago.

“Because I…” Suddenly, something hardened. “Because I refuse to be their Deku any longer.” Resolve, and righteous indignation.

Harry let go, stepping back. “Why?” he yelled this time.

“Because I have magic!” Izuku yelled.

“WHY?” Harry couldn’t help but let a Sonorus slip in as he grinned madly.

Izuku, on his part, began grinning too, a feral one if he’d ever seen one, and he lifted his arm up, pointing at the sky. “BECAUSE I’M A GODDAMN WIZARD!” he shouted, a Sonorus having slipped in too.

“BECAUSE YOU’RE A GODDAMN WIZARD, DORI!” Harry shouted, equally excited at the-

BANG

Both of the wizards snapped their focuses up to the ceiling, only now realising Izuku had accidentally set off a Bombarda.

They both looked back down from the ceiling and at each other, simultaneously, right as a small bit of warehouse roof fell down between them with a soft crash.

“Well…” Harry said, blinking at his fellow wizard as the excitement slowly left them. “I’d say today’s lesson went well.”

A bit of British understatement was always good to practice.

Izuku was the first to slip from shock into a smile, before reaching a breathy laughter, followed shortly by Harry, and the warehouse quickly found itself filled by belly-deep guffaws.

Probably a bit of an overreaction, but what were you going to do when emotions had run so high?

Today had turned out well indeed. Tiring, exhausting, but well.

Veela Heritage

2105

Funerals, Harry found, were awful.

Even moreso when they brought one of his oldest, closest companions to grief-stricken tears.

All Harry could do, standing there next to him in front of the open casket of his youngest son, was pull Bill into a hug.

They should’ve all realised that, despite their magical power, magic squibs were still just that: squibs.

With the muggle lifespan to match.

“Merde ‘arry, you’re breaking his ribs,” Fleur warned him, French accent very much diminished over the decades, but still willing to slip in the occasional French.

Harry loosened his hold with a jolt, awkwardly stepping back. “Sorry, Bill,” he said apologetically.

“It’s alright, Harry,” Bill responded. “I know it’s easy to forget.”

Oh, how Harry wished it was easy to forget that his physique wasn’t gonna degrade like that.

On the other hand, it was too easy to forget everyone else was getting less spry with age. Or, more accurately, it was too easy to pretend it wasn’t happening. That everyone else was wearing an updating, aging illusion too.

He’d been absolutely blindsided when Bill came in one day, a few years back, to announce he was retiring from fieldwork, relegating himself to the administrative side of things.

And now, some of the newer folks in the company were starting to ask Harry when he was going to step out.

His current options were a) a fake identity, but then his talent and experience would be difficult to explain or hide, or b) going off on his own to do whatever he wanted, but he’d always done that with Luna, and she was only a decade behind Bill.

“Will you be alright, Bill?” he asked carefully.

Bill sighed. “I still have Fleur, and my two daughters, and my brothers and Ginny, but…” he trailed off, staring off in the distance. “The house is gonna be a lot more quiet.”

Harry followed his gaze, spotting a group of red-haired men and an elderly woman. “Are they…?”

“Louis’s wife and children,” Bill answered. “They all take after him, squib magic wise. I heard one of my great grandchildren just manifested the ability to even manifest fire.” He sighed. “Louis married a Japanese woman.” Harry focused on the elderly lady. “And they raised their children bilingual, so she’s taking them all back to Japan once this is over.”

Harry gave an understanding look. “Great grandchildren, huh?”

“Yeah. Life’s going fast,” Bill remarked.

Too fast.

Harry truly wanted to keep pretending, that everyone else was staying the same, but the end was nearing.

He’d tried meeting new, younger people, under a false identity, but he never felt like he could truly be friends with any of them. Maybe it was that he wasn’t being himself, or maybe because he knew they’d go too, but none of it really became anything long-term. Or maybe it was because he always felt younger and older than most adults at the same time.

Harry was deathly afraid of what he’d do once the last of the people he cared about passed on. And the worst part was that he had some ideas brewing in the depths of his mind too, whenever he was alone.

Too alone.

July, 2246

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“There’s really not much of a choice, Harry-sensei,” Izuku replied, looking equally tense as he felt. “I’m sorry for…”

“No, you had the right to,” Harry conceded. “To be honest, I didn’t even realise you hadn’t told your mother yet.”

Apparently, Izuku had wanted something decent to show his mother before telling her anything about the afterschool training, Harry, or magic in general, and that just devolved into postponing it like a true procrastinator. For now Izuku had only come clean about the afterschool training and Harry’s involvement, so there would be plenty to go over and reveal.

It seemed his mother was a naturally protective and worried one, as she’d immediately demanded- though Izuku called it nicely asked- to meet with this mysterious Harry-sensei before he was allowed to continue with anything.

To be honest, if Harry had heard that a son of his had been training with a stranger who promised him he could be a hero, while still being completely quirkless in today’s society, he’d be very suspicious too.

He didn’t actually know where that sympathy came from, given that he didn’t have any children in the first place.

“So, do I look highly professional and trustworthy?” Harry asked, adjusting his dark-green tie.

He’d gone for a slightly older than his usual mid-thirties look for his illusion, sitting in his early forties. A cleanly shaven face, his hair short and as curly and soft as he’d wished it’d been back in Hogwarts- damn his unwillingness to approach Lavender or any of the other girls for advice- and a black three-piece suit covering his broad shoulders, his musculature poking through a bit with the tight fit he’d achieved through transfiguring some clothes.

Izuku looked him over, pensively, before nodding. “I think mom will buy it,” he concluded, receiving a soft but recriminatory slap on the back of his head.

“Did you just try to pull cheek on me, Izuku?” Harry said in fake shock.

“Actually, I think I succeeded, sir,” Izuku quipped. It was a testament to how much last week had changed things for the both of them.

Izuku then went back to nervously fidgeting, showing that it wasn’t as big a change as might’ve been thought. “But probably don’t call me in such a familiar way around her.”

“Oh, right, okay, Midoriya-kun,” Harry conceded.

“Actually, that’s a bit too…I mean, when all three of us are in a conversation, you should probably use Izuku-kun.”

Outwardly, Harry agreed. Inwardly, he moaned at how tiring it was to never be able to address someone the same depending on who you were with and you were talking to. He was fine with only having to switch between ‘first name’ or ‘last name’ depending on context, thank you very much.

And with that, Harry grabbed Izuku’s hand and twisted the both of them from the warehouse to a nice spot in the nearby forest. It was surprisingly the same spot he’d released the magical snakes from.

He’d gotten his report back just a week after he’d originally set them loose, and the immortal bloke he’d come to Japan for wasn’t in the city or nearby areas, but by that point Harry had already gotten preoccupied.

To be honest, he’d completely forgotten about all that stuff until just now.

After a few minutes of following Izuku to his apartment, feeling very much out of place, Izuku opened the door and checked if his mother was there. When it turned out she wasn’t, Izuku simply opened the door fully and let him in, making sure to remind Harry that he had to take his shoes off in the hallway.

Harry glimpsed through a partway opened door as they moved through the hallway, the only thing he could see being a wall with blank spots that looked like they’d been populated with way more posters than the, in Harry’s opinion, undoubtedly more interesting ones involving magical fantasy that were currently decorating it.

He wondered what used to hang there.

By the time they reached the main living area however, Harry was feeling like an intruder again.

“Are you sure it’ll be fine for me to be here when your mother’s out?” he asked.

“She’d…She’d probably faint before she’d try to do anything to you,” Izuku admitted with a grimace.

Harry held up a hand to his heart. “I promise I won’t try to embarrass you in front of your mother.”

He received an unimpressed quirk of the eyebrow, and couldn’t help but grin.

“Okay…maybe a little,” Harry admitted. “Does she like dad jokes?” He didn’t actually know many dad jokes, given that the only one he’d come close to being a father figure to was Teddy, and when the boy had first called his godfather ‘dad’ during one of his visits, Harry felt forced to make sure the kid would know that Remus Lupin was his father. He felt plenty more comfortable being the fun-loving, uncle-like godfather, in memory of Sirius.

Izuku’s expression turned horrified in an instant. “N-No!”

Harry leaned back on the couch with a grin. “You mean no, as in ‘no, she doesn’t’, or ‘no, please don’t do that. It’ll be very effective and I’ll die from embarrassment’? That’s very important for me to know.”

Izuku spluttered, and Harry began turning his head, scanning the room as he stood up. “Hmm, where do you think your mother keeps the photo album with all your childhood-”

A green blur tackled him back onto the couch. All Harry could do was chuckle as he tried to wrestle his hands from his mortified protégé’s half-hearted grapple.

After several more moments of struggle, Harry managed to free his hand, and he immediately went for the ultimate attack: a head ruffle.

“Give up, my dear apprentice! Or I’ll ask her for the album when she arrives.”

Izuku squeaked, his offense halting, but there was nothing he could do against the hair ruffling.

“-ku, I’m home!” Harry only barely heard the new voice over the sound of Izuku’s struggling grunts as he continued to wrestle him into submission.

Both mentor and mentee halted, turning their heads to see the arrival standing behind the couch, both frozen mid head ruffle.

“H-Hi mom,” Izuku stammered out, his face going red.

Ah, Harry’s premature comparison to Molly Weasley had done Izuku’s mother more justice than he’d originally thought.

The woman was frozen in place, eyes wide with shock as her grocery bag slipped from her hold. “You’re- But- H-Hi-”

And then she fainted.

“Bloody hell!” Harry shouted, shooting up from the couch as Izuku called out for his mother in worry.

“So…magic,” were the first words Izuku’s mother- though it was faster to just think of her as Inko, even if he couldn’t call her that out loud- said since Harry had started explaining.

“Magic,” Harry repeated, giving a serious nod, before gesturing at Izuku, who was sitting next to him on the couch in silence, almost as if awaiting judgment.

Izuku snapped out of his reverie, giving him a confused look.

Harry applied his gesture more firmly, and Izuku finally realised what he was being asked to do.

It was without warning when Harry felt the signature ripples and distortions coming from Izuku wrap around him and his arse left the couch seat.

“Oi, not on me!”

Harry tried to turn towards his current tormentor, but his current lack of any support made his attempts more akin to his limbs flailing in the air. “Put me down this instant, young man!” he said firmly, trying to pull from all 154 years of his being alive.

Instead, he got hit by another wave of magic, and his suit was suddenly bathed in the colours of that blow-up doll of a number one hero. “My suit!” he said indignantly.

“You transfigured it from your hoodie and sweatpants!” Izuku replied, obviously having forgotten about his mother’s presence if he was relaying such confidential information.

“Izuku Midoriya, put this kind you- this kind man down please.”

Hah, even she didn’t know how to handle his age.

“Y-Yes mom!”

Harry was slowly moved back over the couch, and was clumsily brought down onto the cushions, dropping the last few inches as he was let go.

Harry sent Izuku a ‘your lessons are absolutely gonna get worse for a while’ look before dusting himself off and wandlessly reverting the colours with ease.

“Izuku…I- I can see you’re both speaking the truth now.” Inko spoke up, carefully. “And I’m overjoyed to see you so happy with all this. But I need some time to…to process everything.”

Harry tried to keep himself from frowning. This was about what he should be expecting, but it also sounded like there would be some pulling back on her side. And Harry really didn’t want that to happen, not with how Izuku still seemed to be trying to regain his proper footing after last week.

But neither did he have any idea on how to convey that to the worried mother. It’d be like trying to convince Molly that ‘actually, Charlie’s dragon handling is good for his mental health!’ Yeah, no, she would just get into an actual defensive stance and hunker down when she hadn’t before.

And obviously trying to force his way into a favourable situation would do the exact opposite of what he really wanted, and destroy any trust she might’ve given him so far.

While Harry was debating himself on how to proceed, Izuku looked conflicted as well, understanding what his mother was heading towards.

“Mom?” he spoke up, bringing her attention to him in a heartbeat, like any mother would at such an apprehensive, meek tone. “I…I wanted to tell you something else.”

Harry stilled as he realised what Izuku was going to talk about. This didn’t sound like the right time to add that to the mix at all!

But he wasn’t going to butt in, not when Izuku seemed to have built the resolve to do something.

“I…Next term, I won’t be going back to Aldera Junior High,” Izuku said resolutely.

Harry winced. That delivery really didn’t sound like it’d help things along.

On the other side of the table, Izuku’s mother was left gaping.

“Izuku, watch your tone,” she said, though it sounded more like a stalling tactic to grip her bearings. The moment that happened was clear to see on her face. “B-But why would you- Izuku, I just don’t understand…” she trailed off, before her expression turned to dread. “Is…Is it really that bad?” She almost seemed afraid to ask.

Izuku winced, hugging himself as his mother became more dismayed, averting his eyes. “I’m sorry for not telling you,” he whispered. “I just- I didn’t want you to- to worry.”

From Harry’s perspective, it looked like Inko was only just about holding back from getting up and running past the table to hold him.

“Oh, baby, I’ll always worry. But-” To Harry’s surprise, the rather upset woman turned pensive pretty quickly after her near outburst. “There aren’t any nearby schools that will take transfers. And online schools aren’t as-”

“N-No, mom,” Izuku interrupted, wincing immediately as he realised that he did. “I mean, I want to test out of middle school after summer break.”

Inko’s eyes widened considerably, and Harry’s did as well. What did Izuku mean ‘test out’? As far as Harry knew, Izuku was doing pretty well, ahead of his class, but he wasn’t two whole terms ahead.

“I feel I’ll- I’d be able to do more if I can focus on being under Harry-sensei’s tutelage,” Izuku continued. “I just- The past three and a half months have been the best that- that I can remember, and not even because of the magic. So I- I really want to continue learning under him.”

“Izuku…” she began, eyes watery. “After all this time, you still want to become a hero, don’t you?” she asked quietly.

“Yes,” he admitted, equally quietly. “A-And I’m sorry for worrying you. But I’ve always wanted to help people. And I think I can actually do it now! Please mom, I promise I’ll keep myself safe.”

Harry quietly scooted to the side, sinking into the back of the couch. He wasn’t quite sure what laundry Izuku had begun airing, but he felt a little like he was intruding.

“Oh baby, I never doubted that.” Inko replied. And, whoa, she definitely sounded less apprehensive than before.

Not knowing if the two Midoriya’s had forgotten about his presence and were about to get into an even more personal situation, Harry let out an awkward cough, catching both the green-haired’s attentions.

Izuku looked particularly mortified as he remembered, and Inko was the one to speak up.

“Izuku, I would like to talk to Harry-san for a moment.”

Harry wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but it sure sounded intimidating, so he gulped softly.

Izuku sent Harry a sorry look, before nodding and hesitantly leaving for his bedroom.

Before long, he was left alone in the room with his protégé’s mother.

Deciding to break what would no doubt become a tense silence, Harry spoke up, going into a bow Izuku had taught him would be appropriate for the situation. “I wish to apologise for entering your home and causing you undue stress, Midoriya-san.”

The pleasantly plump woman stared at him as he went out of his bow, before softly laughing it off. “Oh, no, if Izuku lets you in then you’re welcome in our home. And me fainting wasn’t your fault. I just thought I saw…someone else,” she said, averting her eyes. It was probably wise to not pry further into that.

“I’d also like to say sorry for not informing you of anything sooner. I assumed Izuku-kun would do so, but I think it’s clear to both of us now that he isn’t in the habit of doing that, so I should’ve come to you,” Harry continued.

“How…Did you know about my baby’s troubles?” Inko asked hesitantly.

Harry smiled sadly. “I was able to experience some of them last week.”

Inko looked at him questioningly, and Harry cast a wandless Lumos, seeing the silent realisation hit her.

“If there are any rules or restriction you’d like to place on this, or put things on hold while you think things through, please let me know,” Harry finished.

Having finished everything he wanted to, he knew things were now in the mother’s ballpark, so he got ready to leave, standing up from the couch and making his way to the hall.

“I never knew what to do to help my Izuku,” Inko began abruptly, stopping Harry in his tracks. “Over the years, I slowly saw him lose his light, getting more hollowed out over time. And- And I didn’t know what to do. He never let me in, not after he was…diagnosed,” she said the word with an undercurrent of derision. “I didn’t know what to do then either, a-and I think that’s when he stopped trusting me.”

She stood up from the couch, an uncertain wobble in her step. “I was so afraid that- that one day, he would- would come home shattered, a-and that there was nothing I could do to stop it, a-and of what would be left of him. But then, then he came back one day with a spark in that- inside of him again, and ever since last week, it’s like he can see a future again. I…”

Inko came to a stop, standing next to the table, and went on the ground, head touching down. “Thank you for saving my son.”

Oh bloody buggering hell, what was he supposed to do here?!

He vaguely knew what a dogeza was, but he never expected to be on the receiving end of one when Izuku had informed him of the types of bowing.

He hadn’t done much to save Izuku. He’d only been in the right place at the right time, and Izuku, that brave boy, had done the rest for himself. But he couldn’t just go out and dismiss or downplay this either!

Harry moved down onto his knees, looking straight at the prostrate woman. “Midoriya-san, despite any faults you might have found in your parenting, you’ve raised a fine son.”

Inko slowly moved out of the dogeza reaching Harry’s eye level, but she kept her head hung. “Sometimes, I wonder if Izuku would’ve had a better life if Hisashi…” She shook her head, aborting the thought. “I’ve never liked the idea of Izuku being a hero, even if he’d manifested the strongest quirk out there. I may have never said it out loud, but I don’t want to passively deny him his dreams any longer either.”

She raised her head, green eyes meeting his. “Please teach and protect and raise my Izuku where I can’t follow him. That’s all the provisions I ask for.”

Harry looked, but could only see honest intentions. Oh bloody hell, what did he get himself-

“Of course, Inko-san.”

Inko nodded, looking relieved, before slowly standing up. “Izuku, can you come in?” she called as Harry stood up as well, righting himself as Izuku appeared in the hallway.

His green eyes flicked anxiously between his mother and Harry, so Harry sent an encouraging grin.

“Izuku, I think we should talk more about your school arrangements for after summer,” Inko began next to him.

Realising his part in all this was done, Harry made to exit, giving Izuku a reassuring pat on the shoulder as he moved past him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Izuku,” he murmured in a way only he would hear it, and at the surprised look, Harry grinned further before leaving the apartment behind.

It was only after he got back to his spatially expanded warehouse that he let out a frustrated grunt, only now realising he hadn’t brought up the possibility of bringing Izuku with him for the summer to the remains of Hogwarts, where he would finally be able to use the dusty library to fill in some of the gaps in his knowledge.

He’d have to visit again and make the proposal.

2114

A hundred years.

An entire century since he’d found out about his immortality.

At a hundred and thirty-four years old, Harry had officially reached the average life expectancy of a wizard, and so had most of his friends.

He couldn’t perform his job as a curse breaker, not even Dumbledore would’ve been able to do those things if he’d lived long enough to reach this age.

He’d never realised that Dumbledore was actually on the younger side when he died, and couldn’t imagine that he was now older than the man. Chronologically, anyway.

His current appearance showed it though. His skin was wrinkly, with the occasional spot, and his hair was white with some grey remaining, yet still as untameable as ever.

He never really did attempt to grow a beard after that horrendous article from Skeeter though.

Thank Merlin she died a while back.

At points he’d started making use of an alternate identity simply to continue and spend the time without getting more questions. So far, thirty-year-old ‘Evan Harrison’ hadn’t made too big of a splash in the curse breaking field, simply going on his way and doing a decent job, which was surprising, given the Potter Luck.

He didn’t do it too often though. Being at the office was just a reminder of Bill’s passing a few years back.

That’d been the first blow to his fragile confidence that he could go on after everyone had left him behind. Most people hadn’t seen him for almost a year after that, and even Luna hadn’t seen him for a month.

Worse, however, was once Luna had gotten old enough that she wasn’t able to go out on any trips any longer, mostly staying in Ottery St. Catchpole or travelling to Hogsmeade or Diagon, though the latter was nowhere near as lively as it used to be, with the exodus continuing throughout the decades.

Instead, most of the time was spent attempting to get into the field of spell crafting.

~“You want to try out spell crafting?”

Luna simply nodded. “It was my mother’s profession. I’d like to see what it’s like. Who knows, maybe a Snorkack revealing spell is feasible.”

Harry laughed. It’d been a sad occurrence when Luna had finally admitted to him, quietly, that perhaps the Crumple-Horned Snorkack was just from her father’s imagination, but she’d taken it in stride and made it an inside joke.

He paused. “But, didn’t your mother…”

“The dangers of the job,” Luna simply smiled, not seeming to care too much. “I’d like to see what we can make together. Maybe there’ll be something useful for others in the end. That’d be nice to leave behind. And perhaps there’ll be something of use to you in there too.”~

And that’s what they’d done. For the first year or two, Luna had practically blazed ahead, showing she’d inherited all the talent from her mother. Harry, on the other hand, was left to slowly, methodically catch up. For the most part, he’d simply observed Luna do the work, and took on part of the necessary research, or helped with brainstorming ideas. But eventually he was able to partake in the practical parts.

By this point, the Quibbler had come out with several additions involving a column on a new spell, though they weren’t in every edition.

Now though, he finally felt confident enough to attempt making a spell on his own. Not that he could find himself in any real danger to begin with.

It…Making all those spells together had been really interesting and fulfilling, but it also quickly became a way for Harry to try and find something to end the Hallows’ hold on him. And because of that, he couldn’t just rely on Luna to help him along. Not if…if he didn’t find anything before she-

Harry shook his head, calming himself and getting into a sitting position.

For his very first, Harry-only spell, he’d decided on something harmless but useful: an Animagus form revealing spell.

Part of the reason most people didn’t attempt the process was because you had no idea what your form would be until the moment you drank the finished potion and successfully transformed. There were some rumours that you could find your form through heavy meditation followed by intense study and extremely advanced self-transfiguration, and that the potion simply skipped you ahead in that process, but no documented cases had been recorded of anyone using that method.

Harry personally had never seen the need to try for an Animagus form, given that everything worked fine without one, but he too was a bit curious about what his would be. A bird? A wolf? A snake?

So that’s what he decided on as his first attempt at a self-crafted spell.

The original idea for how the spell could work was from a recalled tidbit on how a person’s Patronus and Animagus forms usually weren’t the same, barring the happiest, most satisfied people. In that way, Harry felt better about the kind of life his father had lived, despite how short it had been.

With further explanation the discrepancy made sense though. The Patronus was the portion of your soul associated with positive emotions, manifested into a physical protector, while the Animagus form was a representation of the soul as a whole, not just one part of it. If there was a significant enough portion to you that wasn’t related to happiness and joy, your full representation would be different.

It made Harry wonder, one of the animal forms of the soul could be summoned with a spell, while the other was hidden from you until you completed the Animagus process…so why not figure out a way to summon or show the Animagus form with the Patronus spell as a base?

He hadn’t told Luna about his new idea yet, or the work he’d put in it, but hopefully he could show her as a surprise soon.

That said, step number one was to cast his Patronus.

He…he felt conflicted about said action.

He hadn’t needed to use his Patronus much, not with telephones finally being introduced into the wizarding world thanks to the Exodus, but the last few times he’d cast it…It had changed. And he had no idea what to do about it, not when it was too late to do anything with it. And even then, he’d have been foolish to try to act on it if he’d found out early enough.

Harry shook his head. He needed positive emotions for this.

“Expecto Patronum!” He yelled, mostly out of habit, and averted his eyes as the much smaller animal than Prongs happily made its way through the room, tearing at his heart.

Not wishing to look at the reminder for much longer, Harry readied himself for the spell he’d made up. The wand motion was especially needed the first few times you were casting it.

“Totum Patronum Revelio.” He intoned carefully, moving the wand from his heart to his mind and then aiming it at his Patronus. Normally there was a whole process to narrowing down the incantation, but that was only of real use to spells that needed to be cast more regularly, or fast enough. For specialist usage spells like this that didn’t matter.

For a moment he held his breath as the Patronus stilled, and then it began to shine more brightly as it morphed and grew, losing translucence and gaining colour as it changed into what basically amounted to his spirit animal.

The joy of having successfully created and cast a spell disappeared harshly when Harry realised what his Patronus had turned into.

The tightening grip of anger would’ve snapped any wand other than the Elder Wand.

Because of fucking course he couldn’t even run from reminders of his fate, even with this.

In front of him, a skeletal, dark-grey, winged horse stared back at him, pale white eyes indifferent to his growing rage and despair.

Walking on Air

July, 2246

Harry groaned as he sat back in his chair, trying to crack an annoying crick out of his neck. Sitting in the dusty- especially dusty now- Hogwarts library was not doing good to his current health.

When he and Izuku had finally arrived- and wow, he was surprised Inko had given permission, given that it took a full week of apparition and resting, with the occasional gander, to reach Scotland- Hogwarts looked about as sad and decrepit as Harry had glimpsed before he left it behind three years ago.

Naturally, he’d immediately whipped the Elder Wand out and got to cleaning stuff up, which went far faster than the reconstruction of Hogwarts after his seventh year. Then again, the castle wasn’t halfway destroyed this time around.

Once he got to the library he was careful to cast at least all the preservation charms he knew, along with a healthy dose of Reparo. Just the way the books looked felt like they’d literally fall apart into dust if he perturbed them in any way.

And then the days fell into a comfortable routine. In the mornings he and Izuku worked out a bit, running around the Black Lake, then he’d do some cleaning and repairing the castle, hoping to at least give Izuku an impression of what the castle had been like, even if recreating the wards would be impossible. After that he’d instruct Izuku on some new magic, and then he’d let Izuku learn the magic as well as his middle school curriculum on his own while he tried to fill in his knowledge gaps at the library.

He thankfully finally knew how the creation of Portkeys worked. Apparently it required an item that’d been in the destination’s area for a while. In a way it made sense, objects would no doubt get imprinted into the local flow of magic if it was around for long enough, and a spell that could repair the spatial and magical displacement, pulling anyone holding the object along with it, sounded feasible.

It made him wonder how Barty Crouch Jr. had accomplished his feat with the Triwizard Cup though. Maybe he’d taken a chunk off a tombstone and placed it inside the cup, switching the existing Portkey charm and anchoring it onto that instead, disrupting the original magic until it’d been triggered?

Either way, things made a lot more sense now. For example, Harry now realised he could probably turn the sword of Gryffindor into a Portkey to Hogwarts, and Izuku’s backpack would work well for one back to Musutafu.

He hadn’t been able to resist slamming his head against the desk when he realised his way of getting to Hogwarts quickly had been in his reach the entire time he’d been attempting and failing to cast Portus.

Deciding it was late enough to attempt cooking some dinner, Harry stood up and looked out the nearby window, overseeing the decrepit Quidditch pitch, which had been one of the very first things he’d tasked himself with repairing, even if he didn’t have any brooms anymore. Maybe he could look into how brooms were enchanted next.

A soft smile appeared at the prospect, but a moment’s scan of the pitch made his heart jump out his chest.

What the bloody buggering hell was Izuku floating up in the air for?!

In a panic- it was a miracle it didn’t cause him to splinch himself, that’d be annoying to fix- Harry apparated down onto the grass, trying to find Izuku in the air again.

The moment he spotted him, he started gaping again.

How was he doing that?!

The only person he knew of who was capable of true, unassisted flight was Voldemort, and that wasn’t a comparison he liked to make.

On closer inspection, however, it seemed like Izuku wasn’t actually floating around, more like…stepping around? Walking on thin air?

Walking way too high up in the air!

“IZUKU MIDORIYA, COME DOWN THIS INSTANT!” Harry yelled up, using a Sonorus.

The boy, though it was difficult to spot from this distance, paused and looked down, looking like he only now realised how high up he was, and whatever concentration had been disrupted made him begin to fall.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!

Harry dashed over, Banishing himself against the ground behind him and landed right beneath the falling figure. He aimed up and cast an overpowered Ventus, realising it wasn’t quite enough, and cast Arresto Momentum, feeling a sense of déjà vu as Izuku’s body slowed down enough to properly be caught in Harry’s hands.

For a moment he stood there, hearing the both of them breathe panicked breaths, before slowly crouching down and laying Izuku down on the grass.

“Are you alright?” he asked. “No jostling from that wind charm?”

“Th-That was just a charm?” Izuku asked incredulously, still feeling the jitter of anxiety.

Harry chuckled at the reaction. Oh, if only he knew…

Then he turned serious.

“Izuku Midoriya, don’t ever attempt something like that without me nearby again.”

Izuku froze up.

“Do you understand that?”

“Y-Yes, Sensei. I was- I was trying something out, and when it worked I- uhm, got too excited to notice how high up I got?” he answered sheepishly.

Harry nodded seriously. “Good, so-” His flipped back to being giddy. “How’d you do that? I only knew of one guy who could fly in the air without assistance, and he probably killed a baby to do it.”

Izuku did a double-take at the joke, before realising it was a joke. It wasn’t. Harry genuinely believed that. “I just thought- Well, you said magic can’t directly affect quirked people, because of their stockpiled magic. A-And you said it was similar to a Shield spell.”

So far so understandable.

“So I thought…What if I stockpile and condense magic in my feet, and then I can make horizontal shields in the air to walk on?”

What?

Holy fucking shit.

This kid!

No, Harry definitely didn’t feel extremely proud about his protégé’s ingenuity. Wait, could he use Protego against quirked people then?

After a moment of gaping, Harry made a very upsetting realisation.

“Aw bollocks, I can’t do what you did then.”

Izuku ruefully grinned at him. “S-Sorry, guess I’m just built better. Whoa.”

Harry huffed as his recriminatory light slap was dodged, curse his own projectile dodging training.

“Are there really no other ways for you to fly, Sensei?”

“Well, there are brooms, but I have no idea how to put one together yet, especially not one that’s safe or fast enough to use, which is gonna take a while to figure out,” Harry admitted. “And enchanting any other object to fly will take even longer.” And he wasn’t going to mention his ‘Invisibility Cloak plus Banishing’ combo, since that resulted more in bounding over long distances than actual flight.

Izuku still seemed very confused, however. “But you have magic! There really isn’t another way?”

He very much understood the confusion, but it was a sad fact of life. “That’s just a quirk of magic. But…there is a skill where a witch or wizard can voluntarily turn into their spirit animal, an Animagus, and if you’re lucky…”

The teen across from him began vibrating. “Holy whoa! That’s a thing? Could I do that too? What would I be? Can you know?”

Harry grinned at the avalanche of questions. “Yes you could. Though you wouldn’t know your form until you already completed the process,” he paused, before allowing a smug grin to cross his face. “Well, until I invented the spell that can reveal it for you, anyway.”

“You can invent spells?!”

This time, Harry couldn’t contain his laugh. “Well, what was it you just did then?” he asked poignantly.

“…oh, right.” Izuku realised, staring up at the sky.

Harry shook his head. “I’d have to teach you how to cast a Patronus first though, which could take a while. Though it might be useful for communication if you don’t have a phone on you. And the actual Animagus process is extremely laborious, and at some points dependent on pure luck to continue rather than discard and start all over. It sounds like a real pain in the arse, honestly.”

Izuku perked up. “You haven’t done it? But you said you invented a spell to reveal your form,” he pointed out, too, rather poignantly.

Harry froze. “Uh, yes. But when I saw it I decided to not continue with it.”

“…was it a bad one?”

“Well, no, actually, it’s the fastest flying creature out there.” He only realised what he’d just said a bit too late.

“Eh? Then why don’t you do it so you can fly?” Izuku asked incredulously.

Harry sighed. “It’s just…bad connotations. It’ll feel like I’m playing into…something that happened to me if I go ahead.”

The Quidditch pitch fell silent.

“Sensei, can I be a bit rude for a moment?”

“Okay?”

“That sounds bloody stupid as all heck, sir,” Izuku said, and- Wait, did he just use a British swear? Was he spreading it?

“Oi, what about that sounds stupid?”

Izuku looked down, fidgeting with his fingers. “It’s just…If I got into a situation because I abstained from using something, and something bad happened, then- then I’d feel far worse than if I actually gave in and used it.”

He paused. “It’s like- Like people calling me Deku. I don’t want to be their Deku anymore, but that doesn’t mean I can’t- uhm, be my own kind of Deku. I- I’m not sure if I’m saying that right,” he said with a frown, before putting on a wobbly grin. “But I think I’d like to rub that name in their faces.” He went back to looking unsure. “I dunno. Maybe you could do something like that?”

Harry thought for a moment, before sighing, ruffling Izuku’s hair with a grin as the teen squeaked. “Sure, let’s see what happens.”

Not like anything could go wrong if he attempted the Animagus process. And besides, he was really starting to miss proper flying. Using wings to do it sounded even freer than on a broom, so who knew what the experience would be like?

And naturally it’d be a good way to scout it out, in case Izuku had a form he’d like to use. Then again, from the way Izuku had been itching to jump around at the mention of such an ability, Harry was pretty sure Izuku would try it no matter the form.

He paused, looking up contemplatively at the sky. “So…do you wanna try using that new technique of yours again?”

“Yes, Sensei!”

2129

“Well, this is a very interesting place you’ve brought me to, Harry,” Luna’s serene, but now croaky voice echoed through the abandoned temple halls.

“Just hold on, it’s gonna get a whole lot more interesting really soon,” he replied, adjusting himself so he could support Luna’s frail body. You couldn’t exactly get walking sticks or wheelchairs into a temple half-buried under a mountain.

After all these years, ‘Evan Harrison’ was finally experienced enough to respectably ‘go solo’ and join whatever expedition was happening. By this point, the Exodus had dried up the wizarding world enough that the economy wasn’t doing too great, so it wasn’t like the worldwide curse breaking business was really that big anyway.

To be honest, Harry didn’t care much about how the wizarding world was in danger of being dissolved entirely. Magical people and their pockets of community, as well as magical schools like Hogwarts would always live on thanks to necessity, they’d all just be in direct contact with muggles and ‘meta-humans’ now. It was, all-in-all, a much needed improvement in Harry’s eyes.

Anti-muggle sentiment was practically zero by now, with the newer generations of wizardkind having as many muggles as magicals as friends or acquaintances. And the anti-muggle purebloods hadn’t been seen in ages.

Harry secretly wondered if they’d all died out, hidden deep within their fancy manor houses, or if they had covertly changed identity and mingled with muggles anyway. Hmm, that sounded like the title for a Lockhart book: Mingling with Muggles. Wait, why was he thinking about that long dead guy?

Back to the present, this specific Norse temple had been an especially interesting dig. He’d gone out like he usually did the night before a dig started: with his Cloak up and simply strolling through all the defences, cataloguing everything he could to make sure the dig would go safely and there were no nasty surprises out there.

In this case however, he found a small tunnel, presumably an escape passage, that led to quite the interesting place, with an even more amazing discovery inside. Before returning aboveground and going to his tent, Harry had magically disguised and blocked the entrance for later.

So, now that the dig had been completed, Harry had asked Luna if she would come with him to the undiscovered tunnel.

“This is quite interesting already, Harry. I’ve never been in a place like this before,” she commented casually as he guided her past an altar room that’d probably been used for blood sacrifices.

It wasn’t like she could see as much as she used to anyway. Over the last few years, her misty silver eyes had become more and more clouded by white.

They came to a stop as they reached the passage Harry had found, and he went on to slowly dismantle the few curses that lingered in the tunnel, before moving on again.

The stuffy, warm air of the temple itself was replaced by a cool breeze as the large stone bricks turned to rocky stone.

“Hmm, I’m not sure how interesting this all is. We’ve been in quite a lot of caves already.”

Harry chuckled. “I know, but just wait until you see this.”

He carefully guided Luna to a small alcove, neatly hidden from the rest of the space, and got out of the way for her to see, grinning ear to ear as he took it in himself.

In front of them was a small, manmade pillar that Harry had seen plenty of its successors of: a way to preserve an animal as a guardian. Though this one seemed to have partially failed. The body was preserved, but Harry could tell it couldn’t be taken out of stasis without immediately dying.

The reason he’d brought Luna for was the actual creature, however.

The moment she took in the purple skin, horns, and pig-like snout was clear.

For a moment, silence reigned the cavernous space.

“Oh, of course. It was extinct…” he heard her whisper in an unnaturally quiet voice.

From the corner of his eye he saw one of her legs begin to wobble, and he quickly reacted to catch her before she could injure herself.

Rather than right herself, pulling herself up with his body as support, she wrapped her shaking arms around him and pressed her head against his chest.

“D-Daddy was right after all,” she mumbled happily, voice shaky. “I can’t wait to tell him soon.”

Harry nodded sadly, stroking her wispy, white hair, looking at the magically preserved Crumple-Horned Snorkack.

‘Soon’ was the perfect descriptor.

Luna was 148 years old by this point, and outside of the Flamels, only Bathilda Bagshot and Griselda Marchbanks had been older than that, by about a year or two, and Neville was around the same age.

He was lucky he’d been able to stumble on this for her before time was up.

_{“ Thank you, Harry. ”}

Time was almost up…

The only thing heard in the cavernous space were the echoes of droplets dripping on the rocks below.

August, 2246

Harry sighed, sitting precariously on the windowsill, the view of the haugh in a sunset was particularly beautiful from up in Gryffindor tower. He’d tried his best to clean and repair everything, but there was always a degree of detail that could never be recreated.

Below, a flock of birds flew out of the forest in a symphony of calls.

This was a nice way to finish up the last day of summer.

All in all, the past month had been very productive. Especially when it came to Izuku and his magic.

~“Harry-sensei, I want to show you something!”

Harry jolted as Izuku came running into the library. “Izuku, this is a library,” he admonished.

Izuku glanced around the deserted space, lifting a brow, not looking very convinced. “Can I show you? I promise it’s really cool!”

Well, how could he say no to such a display of childish enthusiasm?

“Well then,” he said as he stood up. “Cast whatever spell you want to show me.”

Izuku nodded, and slowly held out his hand, something he only required minimally when he was shooting a spell or directing an object.

And then, with a face of pure concentration, his hand slowly, with surprisingly much effort, closed into a fist.

Nothing seemed to be happening though…except for the grin that appeared on Izuku’s face right as he flicked his wrist and-

“Ow!”

Harry swirled around to try and find the source of the abrupt sting, unable to find anything except the scorch mark on his arse.

“Alright, what did ya do, you little brat?”

Izuku only grinned further, almost transitioning into an uncharacteristic smirk as he clenched his hand into a fist again, eyes scrunching up in concentration.

Slowly, a ball of white seemed to gather together from nothing, floating in the air.

Izuku’s eyes opened again to see Harry gaping, and as the fist flicked at the wrist again, the small ball of an underpowered stinging hex shot out and hit a nearby wall.

“Did you just…do remote magic?”

Izuku blinked before pouting. “I’ve seen you do it before. You’re really that surprised I could do it?”

Ooh, Harry detected some disappointment there, not good.

“No. Izuku, I can do that because I own a wand that’s literally designed to overcome the limits of magic. Some spells can work at long range and travel pretty quickly, and with my wand that goes even faster, but every spell has to be cast from the caster’s body. After all, we can only pull magic towards ourselves, not to a specific point.” He paused. “Well, I have to do that.” He gave Izuku a look. “We’ve already established you’re not exactly like the wizards I knew.”

Izuku averted his eyes, cheeks reddening. “Do you…” Suddenly, he seemed to perk up. “Do you think- My mom can attract small objects with her quirk using her hands. What if it was passed onto me, but…”

Harry had to pause as well, bringing his hand up to his chin. “Well, I have heard of the magic used by a quirked person’s parent influencing the quirk.” Mainly Bill’s and Fleur’s youngest son and his children with their fire-related abilities, coming from Fleur’s Veela ancestry. “So I can see a parent’s quirk influencing how you can use your magic.”

“Whoa…” Harry couldn’t help it, but every time he saw that starry-eyed look in his protégé’s green eyes, he felt excited for the next few days of training.~

The soft squeak of a high-top sneaker on the floorboard alerted Harry.

“Watch out when you climb out here, Izuku.”

He didn’t hear an affirmation, but a moment later his student’s figure settled next to him.

“…was this where you used to sleep?”

Harry turned his head, grinning. “On a windowsill? I certainly hope not. That would top even the cupboard.” That got him a groan, and his grin got even broader. “Okay, okay, yeah, I slept here for six whole years,” he finally relented mirthfully, dropping his grin.

“Do you…miss them?”

“Hm?”

“Your friends-” Izuku started fidgeting. “I just- You always seem so happy and content, but you- none of them are here anymore. How are you…”

Harry closed his eyes, letting the red of the setting sun colour his sight orange. “I’m not.”

He could feel Izuku’s magic still next to him. It was surprising to see how his still magic became more in tune with his emotions, compared to the still lake it’d started off as.

“B-But-”

“Well, that’s not completely true. I’m happier more often now, but I’m always thinking about them all,” he amended. “But you deserve better than being around an eternally angsty guy all the time.”

“Sensei…”

“Honestly, most of them I don’t think I could even really call friends in the end,” Harry admitted, pulling up his legs. “The first time I saw some of them in years was…at their funeral. I pushed most of them away, and after too long I was afraid of how they’d react if I tried to come back, so I just didn’t. Not much of a friend in the end, huh?”

He righted himself. “But you shouldn’t have to think about that. You’re-”

“I pushed my father away,” came the quiet admission next to him.

Harry blinked and turned to look at Izuku, who had his head hung, curls blocking his eyes.

“He was always away, over in America. I never really even knew him.” Izuku paused. “I always thought that…that he left because I was diagnosed as quirkless. That there was a business opportunity that’d be more beneficial than staying around a useless son. Apparently he called mom once in a while, but it was always too late for me because of timezones. But when I got old enough, I just…avoided them all, because I didn’t want to know that he- I didn’t want to hear him say how useless I was.”

Izuku brought up an arm to wipe away a sniffle. “Five years ago, mom told me he was coming back to visit, for a business trip to Japan. I was- I didn’t know how he’d react. I had no idea who he was, really. And that was all my fault. And I was so afraid of what he would think of me that I…I ran and hid that day.”

Harry moved his hand, squeezing Izuku’s on the windowsill as he breathed in shakily.

“I only came back when I knew he was gone, and…” Izuku let out a muffled sob. “He died on the way back to the airport. Caught in a terrorist attack.”

In the distance, the flock of birds settled in the trees again.

“Later on, mom told me he’d been in America since I was three years old, two years before I was diagnosed. What if I’d braved any of those calls? What if I stayed to see him? Could I have stopped him from going away again? Could we have reconnected? W-What if he stayed away- died, thinking I hated him and wanted nothing to do with him? I- I just wish I could-”

Any further speech was stopped by soft sniffles.

Harry moved his arm up to Izuku’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. After a moment, Izuku’s body turned, and Harry brought him into a hug.

Unbeknownst to Izuku, his story had hit Harry far harder than he’d expected. And for a few moments, he let the cool summer wind distract him from the as of yet unrevealed Stone weighing on his chest.

But no, he’d already used it too often to get a proper curriculum together. He didn’t want to risk diminishing his soul any further before it healed, and he was never letting Izuku use it, if anyone else could even use it with him as its Master.

“Hey…I’ve never really talked about my years here at Hogwarts, have I?” He began, pushing the heavy feeling away.

Izuku looked up, revealing his blurred eyes. “Are you going to show me?”

Harry hummed. “I could. Not through that method though.” He grinned, happy to give Izuku a good distraction. “If I recall correctly, there’s a great artefact up in the Headmaster’s office that we can use once I’ve charged it up a bit.”

2131

“Thanks for assisting me, Fawkes. Keep both of them safe.”

The phoenix crowed mournfully as Harry cleaned up the small ritual that helped with casting the Fidelius.

“Now-” Harry’s eyes scanned the Headmaster’s office, locking onto the patchy brown hat. “There you are.”

He wandlessly summoned it and undid the shoulder strap keeping Gryffindor’s Sword attached to him.

Holding the sword’s end to the hat’s insides, he began to see the problem with his idea.

“How’d this thing even get in here?” he wondered aloud, trying to figure out if the storage enchantment got activated if it went in far enough. “Oh c’mon, you ruddy thing. Cooperate. Do you only work one way?”

“Mr. Potter, you’ll kill me if that thing pokes me!”

Oh goody, he was awake.

Harry put the hat down and showed it the sword. “Sorting Hat, please help me with this.”

The Hat harrumphed. “I’m perfectly fine without that magic-killer inside of me, thank you very much.”

Harry huffed as he began shaking the blasted thing. “I swear to- Put that thing back where it came from, or so help me!”

The Hat stubbornly kept its rip closed, and Harry was of the mind to rip the whole-

An awkward cough caught both of their attention.

A slow turn-around revealed the aged figure of the current headmaster, holding onto his walking stick in his advanced age, giving an amused peer over his glasses.

This wasn’t part of the plan.

“Oh…hi Neville, you’re still headmaster?” Harry greeted awkwardly, casually tossing the Hat over his shoulder.

“Hello, Harry,” Neville said, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “What exactly are you doing here? You’re allowed to pop in any time if you ask.”

Harry awkwardly fidgeted with the grip of the Sword. “Just putting something away for safekeeping? And also, I thought you would’ve, y’know…retired by now?”

Neville looked on sorrowfully. “No, I’m going down with the ship.” His white, bushy eyebrow quirked up when he was only met with confusion. “You really don’t keep up with the news?” He shook his head. “You’ll find out soon, I suppose. It’s hard to miss.”

Harry nodded along, trying to figure out how to get out of this. “Mhm, so can you just keep this Sword safe for a little while for me? Or…maybe a long while, actually?” he asked, putting the Sword on the desk with a clunk.

“Harry…whatever it is you’re preparing for, don’t.”

Harry froze. “I don’t know what you’re-”

“I can tell there’s a Fidelius somewhere within the Hogwarts wards, Harry,” Neville cut off. “I don’t know where, or when it was placed, but I know it’s there now.”

Neville levelled a mournful look. “I know what you’re going through is unimaginably hard, but this isn’t going to be the way to handle it. Not if it’s what I think you’re thinking of doing.”

“Well, what do you want me to do then?” Harry couldn’t stop himself from snapping in annoyance. “I’ve tried, for so long, to figure out any way to-” He stopped himself before he could let any details slip. “And nothing works. Nothing. Every time I try to hope, it just hits me down harder. And so many of you are already gone, and I didn’t even- It’s only you and Luna left. And-” He stabilised himself against the desk, feeling his legs tremble. “It’s- It’s going too fast. I thought I had more time! I thought I had all the time in the world.”

“Harry…”

“Don’t,” he said in a harsh whisper. “Don’t you take pity on me. I hate- I’ve always hated it, when you all did it: treating me like a teenager. Like I was suddenly the odd one out, even though I’d already had all the Hallows for over a decade by then, and we just didn’t realise.”

“Then what do you want me to do?” Neville said in an infuriatingly calm voice, one he’d associated with a man like Dumbledore more than his friends. “You’re saying you didn’t want us to treat you like an adolescent, but then you…” He gestured at him, letting the insinuation hurt Harry far more than saying it out loud could.

“Well, I can’t exactly help it, can I?” Harry bit back, beginning to pace.

“There,” Neville sighed. “Being an adult but nobody treating you like one, and not being an adult but struggling to keep up with everyone else. I can sympathise with either situation.” He levelled a disappointed stare. “But saying you’re not an adolescent one moment because you’re frustrated, and then going back to using that to make excuses for how you use your frustration the next. You can’t have it both ways, Harry.”

Harry came to a stop, clenching his fist. Any retort he tried to get out died on his lips at the disappointment being stared at him. And once the wind had left his sail, he slumped against the wall.

You’d think over a hundred years of experience would trump some stupid brain’s unfinished prefrontal cortex. And in some ways it had, making it so much easier to squash stupid impulses after a second of thought, even to the point where he could easily fit in with the people around him, with the occasional recklessness during the curse breaking expeditions being mistaken as simply his excitement.

But when emotions started running high…Especially now, it was just so much easier to give in to his immediate impulse and let it out. No matter how much he rationally knew that it could easily backfire on him, no matter how much experience he had on it. It never worked when it truly came down to it in the heat of the moment.

Sometimes, Harry wondered if this was what the portraits and Hogwarts ghosts felt like. Able to observe, learn, and think for yourself, but always stuck in the ways that really mattered.

There really was no point in debating it or arguing at this point though.

“You’re right. But it won’t matter soon anyway,” Harry said softly as he looked away. On the wall, the portrait of Albus Dumbledore remained sound asleep.

Harry wondered if the man just didn’t want to see the fate he’d handed down to him first hand, or if he was disappointed in what he’d become.

“You’re really just giving up?” Neville asked, somehow sounding even sadder than before. “What about everyone who will be waiting for you to join up there?”

Harry kept his gaze away from the aged headmaster, not wanting to see the pitying look that would be accompanying it. “This is my solution. It’s the only thing I know will work for me,” he said decisively as he reached for the Cloak’s hood. It’s not like it mattered much to them. Most of them he was sure wouldn’t even call him a friend after he’d pushed them away so long ago. And they’d be together with all the people they actually grew old with anyway. What was one missing maybe-friend in a place like that?

“But will it really be the same, Harry?”

Harry paused, thinking about centuries growing into millennia of continued hoping and failing to succeed, of trying and failing to make connections only to see them grow old and wither away, trying and failing to spread the lost stories of people he knew only to see them fade again and become twisted in the public consciousness, trying and failing to keep passions alight as he discovers everything there is, trying and failing as conflict upon conflict rose up, only to die out or be resolved with or without him, just with the extra weight and burdens left behind on his shoulders, trying and failing to keep up with an everchanging society until nothing was left to be recognised.

And then, he thought of the eternal darkness, the time away from everything forever. No conflict, no guilt, no burdens, just silence and peace.

Harry gripped the hood tightly. “It will be close enough from my perspective.” He chanced one last glance. “Goodbye, Headmaster Longbottom.”

There was no reply as he flicked up the hood and twisted away, only a resigned look in blurred eyes.

Not Your Deku

September, 2246

Izuku ignored the whispers of students in the halls as he walked to the exit. Of course the principal would be petty enough to schedule the final exam for his testing out to finish right during lunchtime.

And of course everyone would realise he hadn’t attended any classes this first week back after summer, instead doing the required exams after mom had forced the principal into allowing him to take them through the local board of education.

Based on how he’d done with all his tests, he was sure he’d be able to test out. The teachers weren’t the ones grading these tests, for once, and the ones who did didn’t know about his quirkless status. Sure, his grades would be a point or two lower than if he’d had more time than just the summer to study and catch up, but it wouldn’t affect his chances of getting into a high school like UA. Especially not if he could do revisions for the theory part of the entrance exam.

And now he was almost out. Just one final trip through the cafeteria, and then the final hallway to the main entrance, and lastly the small courtyard.

It was just a little longer, just a little more of making himself small, hiding himself in the crowd, shying away. Ending all this, not with a bang, but with an anticlimactic fizzle most people wouldn’t even notice. Aldera wasn’t worth anything more than that.

He was already halfway through the cafeteria, seeing the large double doors on the other side, a stream of people making it even easier to blend in.

All he had to do was continue-

“Deku! There you fucking are!”

Of course.

Izuku continued his way out, pushing through the stream of people and away from the harsh barks behind him.

“Don’t you fucking ignore me! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

He finally pushed his way through the double doors, knowing Kacchan would have an equally difficult time, and continued his pace to the main entrance, squashing the urge to run.

“Come back here, dammit!”

And then he was actually on the grass outside, the gates he would go through to leave Aldera behind and hide in the nearest alley just a few metres away. The doors muffled anything Kacchan might be yelling at him. He would actually be able to get away. Run and never look back. Actually have it over with.

But, would it really be?

Kacchan would no doubt make it into UA. And if Izuku made it in, there’d only be two heroics classes, so he’d still have to see him and be around him.

Would Kacchan really stop and not assault him again at UA if he found out the useless Deku had made it into the Hero Course without notice? And with new powers to boot?

Izuku thought UA was the best, but after ten years of teachers who looked away, dismissed him, or silently encouraged it all, he had little trust that it’d be handled by anyone except him.

And yes, he’d be able to use magic now, though how exactly he and Harry-sensei were gonna handle using magic in public was still undecided, but that’d no doubt make Kacchan worse, even if it’d make others more likely to side with him than when he’d been quirkless.

He heard the doors on the other side of the courtyard burst open, and made his decision.

Izuku put his foot down, and stopped his steady march to freedom, feeling the angry glare focus on his back.

“Where the fuck have you been, huh? You too much of a coward after I put you in your place to come back and face me? And what the hell were you doing in the principal’s office?”

Izuku breathed in, imagining that Harry-sensei was just a little bit away, hidden under his invisibility and observing with an encouraging smile, and peeked over his shoulder, Kacchan’s murderous glare coming into view.

“I was testing out, Kacchan. You’re right. I’m not coming back to Aldera,” he said, trying to keep his voice as steady and level as possible as he turned around.

For a moment, it seemed like he’d shocked the blonde into silence, but the throb of a vein heralded- “The fuck?! You think you’re fucking smarter than me? You’re fucking nothing, you got that?!”

“I don’t. I-I know you’re smart, Kacchan.” He silently berated himself for letting through a stutter.

Kacchan immediately took the small sign of fear to pounce, a dangerous smirk crossing his face. “Oh, so you’re being delusional again, thinking you can pass these tests like you can the hero exam?” He barked out a laugh, and the small crowd that was gathering behind him chuckled along with him. Kacchan held up his sparking fists. “Don’t worry, I’ll be here once you come back, and I’ll teach you what real failure feels like!”

More laughter came from the direction of the school, and Izuku couldn’t help but lower his head.

All that talk in his head, and he was still letting himself get run over.

Izuku clenched his fist.

“You’re right.”

The laughter stopped, dying out as his words were carried by the wind.

“I was being delusional,” he continued. “I never worked out at all. I only stayed in the back and wrote useless notes on other pros, cowering in front of every threat to me. Even I knew I wouldn’t make it. I only applied so I could tell myself I attempted it once I failed, and I was too much of a coward to actually admit to myself I’d never have a shot. And me claiming I actually had one, when other people have worked for years for the exam, is an insult to their hard work and dedication. An insult to heroism.”

“Hah?” Kacchan seemed the first to snap out of the surprise. “So you finally fucking-”

“But I know that now,” Izuku continued, cutting him off for the first time ever, feeling something stir in his chest as he looked back up. “And I finally have someone who believes in me, who showed me what I can do, who’s training and encouraging me to be stronger.”

He barely even realised what he was doing, but the anxious sweat beginning to coat his body in the summer heat made him take off his gakuran, letting it drop on the ground behind him. “So now I’m testing out, because I need to catch up to everyone who’s been ahead of me since the beginning. Because I refuse to be behind any longer! Because I want to make my Sensei proud! I need to catch up so I can try my best!”

The white collar shirt of his uniform went off too, leaving only his undershirt, Izuku too tunnel visioned onto Kacchan and what he was saying to notice. He only barely registered the gasps as his forming musculature came out from under the form hiding uniform.

For a second, it almost seemed like Kacchan was failing to come up with a retort.

“What the fuck? You think some lovey-dovey bullshit and some magic muscles will make a fucking difference against me?! I’ll put you back in your fucking place, you damn Deku!”

The heat stirring in his chest began to swell, and Izuku felt a confidence he wasn’t sure he had slot into place.

“R-Really? If I don’t stand a chance, then why do you need to put me back in my place?” Izuku remarked, never having thought much deeper on everything Kacchan liked to say to him. “Either I’m a pebble in your way who isn’t worth the attention, or I’m someone who needs to be put down because I’m a threat to you. So which is it, Kacchan? You can’t have both.”

Kacchan’s palms sparked madly, his red pupils flicking in a silent rage. “I’ll fucking kill you, Deku!” he yelled, stomping a foot down, threatening to run forward.

For a single moment, the building heat wavered in his chest, and Izuku couldn’t help but think of all the times he’d felt the burns and bruises on his skin, the smell of charred belongings, the yells and bangs and ringing assaulting his ears.

But then the past five months took over. The feeling of magic rippling and waking up inside him on a rooftop, the smell of sweat in an impossibly expanded warehouse, the taste of Katsudon eaten under laughter at his favourite shop, the feeling of strong arms hiding him from the outside as screaming sobs eased his ever-aching chest and ravaged his throat, the scent of pines bordering the ancient castle as he ran on magic high above the abandoned Quidditch pitch, in the cool summer breeze of Scotland.

And the heat in his chest bloomed outward, rippling through his magic and enveloping his entire body, stilling the tremble in his limbs, muffling the uncertainties in his brain, and removing the superfluous details of everything in his eyes barring the growling teen at the front of the crowd.

Izuku shifted his feet and pulled himself into a fighting stance, his fists held in front, and a wobbly but steady grin on his face.

“Go ahead and try me, Katsuki.”

The blond teen exploded, charging at him with explosions fuelling his speed.

There was a brief moment of panic leadening his limbs, wondering how he could do this without magic, as they hadn’t even thought of what to present his magic to the world as, but that too was quickly squashed as he realised what he could do instead.

In those few seconds of contemplation, Kacchan had reached him, swinging a sparking fist in the usual right hook.

After five months of constant dodging practice, Izuku fluently dodged to his left, using his left arm to further push aside his opponent’s arm, and his right fist went low for a strike.

Mid swing, Izuku condensed stockpiled magic right on his knuckles, and his fist hit Kacchan right in the stomach.

Kacchan reeled back, stumbling backwards, and Izuku was left to suppress the gaping he’d otherwise show. Was using condensed magic against quirked people that strong and effective?

He probably should’ve realised that his visibly increased muscle mass contributed a decent portion as well.

In that moment of surprise, however, Kacchan had been able to recover, giving him a suspicious, infuriated glare.

Izuku mentally berated himself for not taking the opportunity to continue his momentum, and readied himself as Kacchan dashed again.

Now, his training completely took over, and Izuku dodged hit after hit, trying to move to a better spot than the open path.

With each swing, Kacchan got angrier and angrier. “Goddammit, Deku, stop dodging, you weakling!”

In turn, completely immersed in the fight, Izuku grinned and turned around, running right for the trees next to the path.

“Get back here!”

At full speed, Izuku located a low hanging branch, and right as he felt the heat of Kacchan’s quirk brushing over his back, he reached it, grabbing hold of the branch right as he cast his own version of a featherlight charm on himself, the momentum carrying him into a circular motion.

Halfway through the circle, Kacchan passing under him, and he cancelled the charm to speed back up, carried by gravity.

All this in less than a second. Kacchan didn’t even have time to properly turn before Izuku kicked him in the back with both feet, not even requiring magic to make him stumble.

Kacchan swirled around and charged again, explosive sweat glistening on his skin in the sun, and this time Izuku allowed him to get close, dodging back onto the path.

The blond teen swung his hand forward, no doubt going for an explosive impact against his chest, but at the last moment, as Kacchan put his whole back into the motion and overreached but before he ignited his sweat, Izuku Vanished the droplets.

Not receiving any recoil from the dud explosion, Kacchan’s momentum kept him going in his confusion, right into Izuku’s rising knee.

He bent over with a grunt, spit flying out his mouth from the harsh impact, but before that was even finished, Izuku’s magic coated fist hit him straight on the nose, a surprisingly satisfying crunch reaching Izuku’s ear before Kacchan stumbled backwards hard, somehow not losing his balance yet.

Izuku discreetly Summoned Kacchan’s shoe lightly mid-stumble as he ran over, and the blonde finally fell over, immediately attempting to roll onto his arms and feet despite blood coming from his nose.

Sensing the opportunity, Izuku slammed his foot down on Kacchan’s back, forcing him flush to the ground, and he finished the fight with a position Harry-sensei had taught him.

Not even a minute after the challenge had been issued, the students and staff of Aldera were gaping from the sidelines, staring at a pinned down Bakugō. One of Izuku’s legs immobilised the legs, another an arm, and the two hands held down the remaining arm and head.

From Izuku’s perspective however, he was too deep in his head to take notice of the bystanders.

He’d just…beaten him?

B-But he’d barely even used his magic!

Yet here he was, completely pinning down a dazed Kacchan.

Obviously, Kacchan had still been underestimating him, and he would no doubt get so much stronger once he got access to UA’s training facilities and its faculty, but Izuku hadn’t used most of his magical ability, and as long as he kept putting in his all to improve and get stronger, just as much as the other teen, then…

Izuku’s heart stuttered.

Then Kacchan couldn’t hurt him.

He couldn’t hurt him.

Trying to ignore the beating in his chest, Izuku got closer to Katsuki’s head, keeping his breathing even.

“I-I beat you. I win,” Izuku whispered, almost not believing it himself, and he had to force his chest to stop from hitching up. “I want you to know…w-when we get to UA, that I didn’t fight you, because you wanted to fight me. I fought you-” He swallowed, strengthening his grip on the limbs under him. “Because I wanted to. B-Because I refuse to be your punching bag any longer. I refuse to be your pebble. I refuse to be your extra. I refuse to be your doormat.”

The only answer he got was a choked grunt of anger, but the body under him wasn’t tense enough to suddenly jump up. And playing dead wasn’t his style anyway.

Izuku raised his head, taking in the small crowd of gobsmacked students and teachers, and he absentmindedly realised this wasn’t the fizzled end he’d originally expected.

He slowly rose up, leaving Katsuki on the ground as he stepped back and stood straight, gaze locked on the onlookers. Most of them equally responsible for the past two-and-a-half years.

“Do you hear me? I refuse to be run over anymore. I refuse to be your Deku any longer!” His voice became raised, and he noticed Katsuki crawl into his vision, holding his face as spots of blood appeared on the pavement below.

He held his arm forward and clenched his fist. “From now on, I’m going to be the Deku who does it anyway!”

In front of the crowd, Katsuki sat up, red, hateful eyes raging at him from under his hand.

“I don’t care what you say! I don’t care what you try! I’m going to the UA entrance exams! And I’m going to pass! And I’m getting into the Hero Course! I’m going to be a hero, no matter how much any of you try to stop me!”

His own voice echoed in his ears as he felt his chest heave, and before he could get second thoughts, he turned around and walked to the gates, passing the pile that was his gakuran and white collar shirt. It wasn’t like he’d need the uniform any longer, especially not with the hot weather.

As he crossed the gates, Izuku did something he never would’ve if he was in a different frame of mind, without adrenaline coursing through his veins and the feeling of long-awaited, raw catharsis filling his mind, or if he didn’t have the reassurance that everyone here would mistake it as a cheesy peace sign people liked to throw in informal photos, rather than its more vulgar meaning.

Izuku left Aldera Junior High, its staff, and its student body a good ol’ British two-fingered salute as he walked out of sight.

It wasn’t until a minute later, when he walked into a small alley and out of view, that the adrenaline left his body, his legs beginning to shake as the past few minutes replayed in his mind.

He tried to support himself against the wall, but he couldn’t find grip fast enough before his legs gave way and-

And he was caught before he could hit the ground.

Izuku blinked at the empty space and non-feeling halt, before Harry-sensei appeared in front of him, hood flipping back with his free hand.

He couldn’t help but let out a breathy laugh. Of course he’d been around.

“I-I’m sorry, I got carried away,” he confessed. “I-I think I broke his nose.”

Izuku nervously glanced up…at the grinning visage of his Sensei.

“Oh, and here I was about to say how proud I was of that walloping you gave the little brat,” Harry-sensei commented airily. “Haven’t seen one that satisfying since Hermione clobbered Malfoy in the face.”

Izuku chuckled as he pressed himself against the man. That was one of the memories he’d been shown in the pensieve.

It took another minute before Izuku’s heart finally calmed back down and he was able to back out of the embrace, fiddling with his fingers. “Uhm, please don’t tell mom?” he asked, wondering what she would think of her son acting like a delinquent.

“Oh, nah. I won’t tell her,” he waved away his concern. “I brought the pensieve. She deserves no less than first row seats to this beauty!” he grinned, tapping his head.

Izuku paled. “W-Wait, don’t!” He reached out, but Harry-sensei disapparated with a laugh, leaving behind a panicking teen, sprinting out of the alley to rush back home.

2131

“Hey Luna, I…I brought your favourite pudding,” Harry slowly opened the bedroom door, wincing at the smell that came with incontinence.

He put the plate down and moved to her bed, waving away the smell and its source.

The sensation woke the elderly woman from her slumber, her clouded eyes creaking open and a smile came over her. “Hello Harry. I do like pudding. What flavour?”

Harry chuckled as he grabbed the plate again. “I didn’t think it’d matter, since all pudding is your favourite?”

“That’s true,” Luna nodded, before gently reaching out and making grabby hands.

“Alright, here ya go. Watch your bites,” Harry scolded lightly.

“You can never have too big a bite with the food you love, Harry,” Luna got through her first mouthful.

Harry sat back, content to listen in silence as the pudding disappeared from the plate. Out of everyone, Luna had been the only one he remained comfortable with as time went on. She was the only one who’d remained mostly the same, like a rock of familiarity to him. For everyone else, growing up meant finding your place in the world, accepting yourself, and getting comfortable to show all of yourself to the world.

Luna never had much growing up to do in that sense. Yes, she’d grown more knowledgeable, more experienced, but she never really changed in the ways Harry could recognise. Not in any way like the others had grown up as time went on.

Maybe that’s why he’d gravitated to her.

“Harry, can you come over here?”

He blinked out of his pondering, slowly standing up and walking up to her bedside at her call. “Is something wrong?” he asked worriedly, watching as a frail, trembling hand reached out to touch his cheek.

Luna’s clouded eyes stared at him, before frowning.

“You need to stop pretending, Harry.”

He stilled at the familiar phrase. What did she- Oh.

His shoulder’s untensed as he went for the Wand. “H-Hang on, I’ll just-”

“No, not that.”

Harry stopped at the interruption. “What do you mean?”

He only got silence from Luna.

“What else can you mean?” he repeated.

Luna laid back, eyes seeming a bit less there than usual, before she went back to a serene smile.

“You’re one of a kind, Harry.”

Eyes widened at that horrible statement.

No. No! Don’t you dare snap at her! Don’t you even raise your bloody voice at her!

The small bedroom remained silent for a moment as Harry fought his immediate instinct to snap back at that awful title.

What came out of his internal struggle was a soft plea.

“Don’t- Don’t call me that. Please.”

Luna gave him a confused look as he stepped back.

“You know what ‘one of a kind’ has done to me. What it means to me,” he said, moving his fringe to show the thin remains of a lightning bolt. “This.” Next came a round scar on his right arms. “And this.” A sharp line on his left arm. “And this. And-” He waved the Wand, his illusion dissipating, showing himself as no older than seventeen and nine months, albeit a lot more muscular. “A-And this,” he only barely choked out.

He chanced a look at Luna, hoping he hadn’t said anything hurtful, but she merely shook her head.

“Harry, I would never think you were one of a kind solely for the things that have happened to you, or the things you’ve done.”

Her calm smile came back. “You’re one of a kind because, out of all the people I could imagine, you’re the only one I’d trust with any of this.”

Oh

Of course she didn’t mean it in the way that’d taunted him.

She never did.

He could feel his eyes begin to burn, and barely noticed when Luna faintly grabbed him by the hem of his shirt and pulled him close to her.

“But I don’t trust me,” he admitted under his breath. “I- Neville has…his funeral was last month and…You’re the only one left. I don’t-” He gripped the blanket covering Luna. “I’ve already set something up and- And I don’t think I will ever be joining you.”

If there was one person he knew would miss him up there once he put his plan into motion, it’d be her.

A hand pressed down on his head. “That’s alright. I can wait that long. It’s much shorter than eternity, after all.”

Harry bit back any of the burning leaking out of his eyes. “No, Luna, that’s not-”

“Shh.” Her hand slowly stroked his hair. “You know, the things you wish for the most can become true in the most unexpected ways. It’s not exactly how my mother used to say it, but I think she’ll like the modification.”

With any other person, Harry would’ve been attempting to get out of the embarrassing hold he’d found himself in. But he didn’t have the energy to try with Luna.

“I-I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be- I’m a hundred and fifty-one. I used to behave better when I was actually seventeen,” he said, frustration tinging his voice. “And now I’m just being a mopey cry-baby. I-I need to-” To avoid crying on the damn sheets and compose himself.

“Be yourself,” Luna completed calmly. “I think that’s the best anyone could do. Don’t you think so?”

The problem wasn’t that she’d be judging him for it. He knew she wouldn’t. No, he’d be judging himself for how little he’d been able to change in any ways that mattered. How he could’ve grown up with everyone else if he just hadn’t- if he just could-

“Nobody but me can hear you here, Harry Potter.”

Silent tears broke from his eyes, and he pressed himself into the side of Luna’s chest to try and smother them.

Over the course of too many minutes, Harry silently cried for everything that’d happened to him, the only reaction he got from Luna the slow stroking of his head.

Eventually, there were no more tears left to give, and Harry focused on the soft, rhythmic rising of Luna’s chest against him.

She may have been a rather curious person, someone who elicited more questions than she ever answered. And Harry knew, after being around her for so long, that most of those questions didn’t need to be answered. But there was…one question nagging at him, and he’d never had the willpower to ask.

“Luna…” he started hesitantly. “Do you-” he cut himself off. “Did you-” He stopped again. “Have you ever…” he trailed off, realising the hand stroking his head had gone still a little while back.

Taking in the slow, rhythmic rising of her chest, Harry pulled back, Luna’s hand softly falling off his head and onto the bedsheet.

He shook his head, turning away from the bed to gather the plate, and slowly made for the door, taking one last peek at his lifelong companion, and closed the door.

When the door opened again, early the next morning, the rhythmic rising of Luna’s chest had stopped.

The only thing Harry would ever remember of those minutes after, was the dazed way he called the nearby muggle services on the phone, before apparating around. The last clear thing he’d remember was the disgusting sensation of the draught of the Living Death slipping down his throat down in the small, Fideliused section of the Chamber, and of him wandlessly Vanishing the empty bottle as he lied down, feeling the potion grip onto his soul and slow, slow…slow……

March, 2247

“Protego Mobilis.”

It didn’t matter how many times he’d done it ever since he’d invented it, but seeing the magical shield move in accordance to his Wand was still the most fun he’d ever gotten out of one of his self-made spells.

Harry dismissed the mobile shield with a fond sigh. He’d come to Japan almost exactly a year ago now, and in only a few weeks’ time…

Maybe past him would’ve berated him for immediately forming a tie with someone, knowing what the future would hold in store for him in that regard. But all the afternoons- and since the summer had ended over half a year ago, all the days he’d spent in the warehouse with Izuku, or out exploring Japan, Scotland, and whatever other magical remnants they could go to fieldtrips on, all the evenings he spent sitting at the table in the living space of the apartment, eating dinner with mother and son, followed by transfiguring the couch into a bed for him to stay the night at the woman’s insistence.

Deep in reminiscence, the silvery animal hopping into existence was nearly missed.

Honestly, after Inko had shown him Izuku’s very first costume designs from years back, and with the way the ‘All Might antennas’ looked, a bunny was the perfect teasing material for his Patronus.

Harry wasn’t sure how miffed he was supposed to be at how quickly Izuku got to casting a corporeal one though.

As payback, the very first time Izuku sent him a Patronus for long-range communication, Harry had secretly cast his Animagus form revealing spell on the thing, devolving into cooing at how adorable the sheep covered in a thick, fluffy, green wool looked. Well, the horns indicated he was a ram.

It was already enough to encourage Izuku into attempting the Animagus process, simply at the prospect of seeing the kid get completely swamped by cooing girls attempting to cuddle him in his Animagus form.

“I- uh, I got the UA exam results. I just- I just wanted to let you know I’ll be opening it. I guess I’ll…tell you in a bit,” came the unusually nervous voice of Izuku from the bunny.

Nowadays it was quite uncommon to hear Izuku stammer or stutter, but for something like this Harry would let it slide as something to be expected.

For a moment he stared at the silver bunny, before shaking his head and casting his own Patronus.

The bunny was joined by his hare, unchanged for so long he barely remembered what year he’d first witnessed the new form, and they hopped together for a moment before Harry called it to him.

“You better come tell me in person, Izuku,” Harry spoke to his Patronus. “Whichever outcome, we’ll have to discuss how to go forward.” He paused for a moment, his Patronus waiting for him. “I’m proud of you either way.”

The hare jumped off, shortly followed by the bunny, and Harry was left in the empty warehouse.

It was only shortly before the entrance exam that they’d finally spoken of how to handle Izuku’s public showing of magic.

~“The exam is really close, Harry-sensei. I…don’t know what I should use out there,” Izuku brought up, staring unsurely at him.

Harry brought up his hand, thinking for a moment, before deciding “Honestly, just go wild.”

Izuku’s eyes shot up. “Eh? Is that really the best option?”

Harry shrugged. “You told me UA’s principal is a quirked animal, right?”

“Yes?”

He grinned. “Well, I think I mentioned once that every quirked plant and animal is just a magical variant being mistaken as quirked ever since the wizards and witches who kept them under wraps all died out. And ‘squib magic’ is unique to humans, so…”

Izuku blinked at him. “You’re saying Nezu is a magical creature pretending he has an intelligence quirk?”

“And, unless he’s surprisingly uninformed, he’ll know about magic,” Harry nodded in satisfaction.

“What about…you?”

“Just…I guess you can tell him you got your magic from your…” Harry trailed off, wondering if this is what he wanted to say.

Eh, screw it. “From your father’s side of the family. If they ask you for more information, just tell me and I’ll come to hash out any details that need to be added. But if Nezu knows about magic, then he’ll just assume you’re part of one of the last, if not the last surviving magical line of wizards, and he’ll do most of the covering up for us.”

Izuku took a moment to think about it, but he quickly gave a resolute nod.

Harry grinned. “Great! Now, what are you thinking of using next week?”~

A loud bang harshly brought Harry out of his reminiscence, the sound of traffic entering the expanded space as Izuku appeared in the doorway, looking shaken.

With a worried glance, Harry apparated to the other side of the warehouse, taking in the laborious breathing and sweat trickling down Izuku’s freckled cheeks.

He passed, right? This wasn’t him barely on the verge of tears, telling him the past year hadn’t been enough, right?

But he quickly noticed the ghost of a smile on the kid’s exhausted face, and the gleam in his green eyes.

“I…I did it,” Izuku said softly, almost as if he didn’t believe himself. “I-I got in. Into UA.” He slowly seemed to test out the words, as if this was the first time he’d said them aloud. Though, based on the exhaustion, it probably was.

“I got into the Hero Course,” he said, louder and more firmly, eyes flicking up at Harry’s as his lips twitched up.

He laughed, a mixture of disbelief, relief, and joy that bubbled up from his throat, and Harry suddenly had a teenager pressing into him like his whole world was shifting into place, arms tightly wrapped around him.

“I’m gonna be a hero, dad.”

He didn’t even register it at first, simply hugging Izuku back, but when he did, he stiffened for a moment, thoughts racing in that instant.

Was it because he’d suggested that they were related on his father’s side? Was it because of how he’d used Sirius as his template for how to interact with Izuku back when he realised how much the kid had gone through? Was it because he…looked quite similar to Izuku’s biological father? Inko had shown him a picture once, and the lanky frame, curly black hair, and smile were surprisingly similar. It was really in the freckles and the orange eyes that they differed noticeably.

Harry knew Izuku wouldn’t say something like that if he didn’t mean it though, even if it only slipped out. But was this similar to calling your teacher dad? Or…

In his arms, he felt the boy stiffen. Clearly he’d only just registered the slip of the tongue as well, and was no doubt ready to pull out and stutter an apology.

In the end, did the specifics really matter?

He might have to think a lot about this, about how comfortable or uncomfortable he was with the prospect, and probably be quite embarrassed for a while at how he hadn’t seen this coming either way. But in this moment, when Izuku was about to pull back?

Harry hugged Izuku tighter. “I’m proud of you, son.”

The teen untensed in his embrace, hugging him even tighter than before. And Harry was sure he felt a small wet spot on his shirt.

It was now, with an overjoyed teenager hugging his currently adult form, that Harry realised something.

If he hadn’t become the only immortal person on accident, if he hadn’t been here now as the last remnant of wizardkind…

Izuku would have walked down that rooftop, magic as stale and lifeless as it’d always been, and would always be, living a life where he couldn’t truly live the way he wanted to, would never discover what he was truly capable of.

In that regard, when looking back on it…

One of a kind.
Last of a kind.

Maybe those titles weren’t as much of a curse as he’d thought they were.

Not for this.

Never for this.