Academic Excitement

He had the names of all his relatives along with their dates of death (and causes). He was the last Potter, but he probably had many distant relatives, wanted or otherwise. He had the names of his grandfather's friends in the political arena, especially the ones who eulogized him after his death. He had the dates of when the Potters had twice added more land to the estate or when they'd torn down the old cottages they'd rented out and built new ones for their tenants.

Harry was, it seemed, a landlord of a considerable number of houses. Perhaps those houses and those rents had collapsed, but it gave him one idea about the possible direction of his life.

Harry had also confirmed through a dozen articles over several decades the address of the Potter lands in Godric's Hollow in Wales.

The hardest bit, accomplished two days before Christmas, was finding a decent map so that he could find the town and the street. He didn't have a muggle train schedule with him, but he could work out how to get there via train. If not, the Knight Bus was an option, disorienting and nauseating as it was.

He settled in to dig deeper. He started leafing page by page, scanning the headlines for Godric's Hollow or Potter or the names of his grandfather's friends. His mind was only half on the paper. He was thinking about this land – and why he felt so drawn to go there. It was a little silly, after all, and that was why he didn't, and wouldn't, tell anyone about his long-considered plans.

What was he going to do there? All this effort for a spot of land.

Harry tried to put words to the why, to the longing.

There. He wanted to find something of his family. A ward stone. A ruin of a home. A broken China plate. Something.

All he had know were pictures in a paper. He wanted to see where some of them had been taken. He wanted to stand on this land.

Harry was happy enough with that, for now. He wanted to hold something of his family, to know that they had been real.

Harry's mind wandered as he unfolded another paper and began to scan it. Christmas, his mind returned to Christmas. Was that a magical holiday, too? Did wizards and witches share that with the non-magical or did they have their own religion? Were they Church of England or Church of Scotland or Church of Merlin? Yule break and Christmas feast and Easter break. A Halloween feast. What were the wizard holidays, if any?

Who did he even ask about that?

He shuffled through another paper. He paused when he saw the ads for wizard toys on the third page. Harry smiled. He wondered if he'd ever had any of these?

He had been happy with the gifts he sent and received. Harry had sent Ron and the twins chocolate frogs as the chocolate wasn't horrible to eat, Ron collected the cards, and the twins couldn't make trouble with chocolate, hopefully. Very pragmatic of him.

Neville and Hermione got different books; Neville's was a muggle book of word puzzles (recommended by a Ravenclaw named Lisa Turpin who was surprisingly chatty) and Hermione's was a book on how to maintain a magical library. There was a very useful spell in there to find a book on some desired topic. Harry used that spell when Madam Pince wasn't looking. If only it also worked on back numbers of the Daily Prophet...

Harry hoped that the book he gave to Neville might help him forget whatever he disliked about returning home. Harry could see, but he didn't think he was close enough a friend to actually ask. So he settled for helping in some way. Harry knew about unpleasant homes.

Hermione gave Harry a book on enchantments, his newest enthusiasm thanks to Madam Spurl. Neville had sent a book with animated pictures of famous adventurers along with short biographies. The young man really saw more than anyone credited him with. Harry hadn't spoken of these ambitions with anyone.

The Weasleys, including Ron, sent another sweater and more sweets. Harry planned to send a polite note of thanks with Hedwig. He'd need to sit down and write it tonight.

There were no mystery gifts this year for which Harry was a little thankful. He wondered what other possessions of his father might be floating around. Wands? Books he might have loaned out? Harry just didn't know what the traditions were.

Harry began another newspaper, paying about half a mind to the material. His mind wandered again. Harry was looking forward to classes resuming. He was excited by many of them. Transfiguration was about to start more animal-to-animal transfigurations, which seemed a little cruel but was interesting. Could it be used by an adventurer?

Charms was racing through spells and still touching on only half of the ones mentioned in the class text. Harry was trying to challenge himself to use the spells in unexpected ways. He liked to see what the true limits were. This year had a lot of domestic spells in it, cleaning spells of different types, whitening spells for the teeth. Harry had played with that whitening spells to clean worn Hogwarts flagstones. It did okay, but he'd felt exhausted afterwards.

.....

Tried of waiting for new chapters. Then Join my p@treon now and read ahead by more than 60 chapters.

2 Free advanced chapters for all free members as well.

Link:

p*atreon.com/CoolNainan [Remove the *]