Chapter 2

It was a worried aunt Petunia that greeted Harry when he arrived back home via Slughorn's apparition in the evening. The man himself had declined entering the house again, likely afraid for his eardrums. Harry didn't even get the chance to ring the doorbell before he was ushered inside, a hot cocoa pressed into his hands, along with a ham sandwich. Harry bit into it gladly, it had been a long shopping trip and he'd only had ice-cream.

"Everything went alright auntie." Harry assured her as he sat down and sipped at his drink, causing his aunt to breathe out in relief.

"You'll be going to Hogwarts then." She stated.

"What kid doesn't want to attend a magical academy?" Harry joked, before sighing. "Hogwarts makes the most sense, especially since I already finished my non-magical education. Magic is just another skill I can learn to live a better life in the end."

"If you stay alive long enough to use it." Petunia said bitterly. "However, considering how incredibly, ridiculously bright you are, I imagine you'll do fine." She said with a gentle smile and not a small amount of trust. Trust that Harry had carefully built up over the years. Although to be honest, with an adult mind, it wasn't really difficult being an exemplary child genius. Rather, it was too easy. If he didn't have his magic to practise he might have actually gone insane from boredom and grief. Losing everything and everyone, one's whole life. It was incomparable to the gift of magic, but at least he'd gotten a gift. He could just as well have been reborn ordinary, or even sick in some way.

Harry missed his old life, still, but 11 years was a long time to heal wounds. Magic helped, but what he expected to help more would be getting older and having more options in what to do. Being a child under the authority of others wasn't particularly fun when one had previously enjoyed adult autonomy. Maybe he'd even come to a point where he wouldn't trade this life for his previous one in a heartbeat as he aged.

"Thank you for the vote of confidence." Harry said after the long break in the conversation during which they'd just both sipped at their drinks, his aunts being considerably more alcoholic. A gin tonic. What Harry wouldn't do to get one as well. "My mother's fate hangs like a dark veil over the whole ordeal and society I will be participating in. Especially since her fate was just a symptom, not the root cause of the disease."

"Just promise me you'll get out if it starts being bad again. God knows when these freaks will start another war."

Harry shook his head. "No worries here. I'm quite attached to my life. Even if I want to participate in the wizarding world after Hogwarts I probably wouldn't even stay in Britain. Too many problems. There must be other, untroubled countries somewhere out there where I can gain a better impression of the magical community."

"Read up on it and by god, if there's a magical way to learn languages take advantage of it. We'll even go to France if the worst comes to worst. I'm not losing another family member to… that." Petunia said bitterly while looking at Harry as if he would disappear if she let him out of her sight.

"Thanks for worrying about me. You know I'll always appreciate having a family like we have, even if our paths end up diverging." Harry said, making Petunia snort.

"Oh there's no way you're getting out of visiting twice a year, even if you end up in magical China."

"Never wanted to imply anything else." Harry said and finished his hot chocolate. He stood up, "I should be getting to bed now, it's been an exhausting day." He went over to his aunt to give her a hug, before leaving for bed.

"Vernon also told me to give you a message from him." Petunia said as he was just about to exit the room.

Harry paused. "Yeah, what is it?"

"That he'll miss flipping cars with you and to always be the one finishing a fight, but not starting it." She said.

"I'm still here for another month, he could have just told me himself." Harry mused.

"He got emotional, left for the pub and wanted me to speak to you." Petunia replied while rolling her eyes.

"Good night, then."

"Sleep well." Petunia said.

Harry exited the room to the sight of his aunt refilling her gin.

-/-

Harry stared at the tall apple tree that had grown on top of the graves of his past life. The magical phenomenon that had occurred on that wretched day had in the end made something sad into something beautiful. He hadn't been here for a while and the tree had grown even bigger than the last time he'd seen it. Its crown almost seemed to envelop the whole clearing. It's ridiculously red apples gleamed in the sun, out of season, always.

The ground around the apple tree was beautiful too, overgrown with wildflowers and berries. Harry had hesitated eating anything growing here for the longest time. He looked at an apple tantalisingly being offered to him by an overburdened branch.

He thought about his lover, his family and grieved for a second.

The dreams? Not something to mourn too much he'd recently decided, considering he could still fulfil them. He could still go to university afterall, and the economy was in better shape than it would be 30 years in the future. Being a home-owner didn't seem impossible.

Although, magic did change everything. Technically he could just put muggle repelling wards on some abandoned strip of the Mediterranean and magic himself a house. "Moving a bit fast aren't you Evans. Wards, houses, you came here to practise house-hold charms." He chuckled

Harry shook his head and with one last indecipherable gaze towards the tree he picked up his bicycle to go towards his actual destination. A cave which was to be found a few hundred metres away from the clearing in which he'd buried everything he'd ever had or wanted. Once there he threw a branch into the small rocky crack in the hill, ready to bolt, just in case something had found residency there. Once nothing happened he simply left his bike in front of the cave and entered the shadowed space. He pulled out a lantern from his backpack, turned it on and put it on the ground where he sat down on a flat rock.

Glancing to the right, where one could already see the end of the cave, barely five metres away from its entrance, he began unpacking his green backpack covered in little frogs. Out came the books he'd bought on house-hold charms, two water battles, one-thermos, a box with his lunch in it and last but not least, some miscellaneous items he'd taken from around the house.

"But first the wandless magic." Harry said to himself and lifted a hand, snapping his fingers. A flame alighted on top of his middle finger, adding +5 fire damage to any wordless insults. Harry made the flame glow larger, as big as the finger itself, smaller, as small as a pea. These were the easy exercises. Beginning to really concentrate Harry made to change the fire's colour to blue, however, after a minute he only managed to tinge it a bit into yellow instead of its previous orange. Green worked a bit better and normally Harry would have pursued the avenue more, but he had other things to do today. Flicking his hands towards the end of the cave a small fist-sized fire-ball evolved from the miniscule flame and fizzled out before it reached anything.

Seeing as he was dealing with the elements, the next thing Harry did was swirl his finger in a circle, collecting the moisture from his surroundings. He was barely able to gather a thimble after several minutes of trying, but freezing it was more successful than ever before. Achieving the feat with a wand must have helped getting the feeling right.

Harry muttered appreciatively at the success and added the created ice ball into his thermos full of lemonade.

"Last but not least." Harry said as he picked up a metal ball usually used to play petanque and threw it towards the far end of the cave. Before it could smash against the wall he extended his hand into a gripping motion and held the ball in place in the air. With a beckoning motion he returned it to himself, at which point he made it orbit around his sitting torso. After a few turns around him it fell on the ground, behind his back.

Picking it up again he held the ball in the palm of his right hand and pointed it at the end of the cave. He enveloped the ball slowly with his magic and mind, before pushing as hard he was able. It flew off, as fast as an arrow and crashed against the end of the cave, chipping off parts of the rock and creating an unbearable noise. "Still not able to stop it after a shot like that." Harry muttered before summoning the ball back with a lazy gesture of his arm.

Done with wandless magic he sat down in a lotus position and began to meditate, clearing his mind. Something that had been more difficult recently, since his Hogwarts letter and the accompanying professor had arrived. Who was his father? What was the difference between this world and the one he'd read about? Why had he been reborn? These were all questions that he shunted out of his mind with great proficiency, clearing it as well as he could.

There was void, for an indecipherable amount of time and then there was something again.

Harry opened his eyes, picked up a chipped plate he'd brought with him and smashed it on the ground. The shards flew in all directions, leaving behind only a memory. With the dull-eyed gaze of someone who had just meditated he extended his arm, his wand and while thinking of nothing, flicked it at the plate, "reparo."

The shards vibrated in place, moving a bit closer together, if one squinted.

The next step was closing his eyes, imagining the shards coming together and fusing back into what they once were. Harry willed it to happen like he did his sorcery, then he opened his eyes, setting a focused gaze on the former plate. A flick, "reparo."

The parts of the plate flew together slowly, spiralling in a circle on the floor as more and more pieces mended with each other. Harry didn't have to do anything, just watch the aftermath of something he'd already cast. That was until the charm stopped working halfway through, leaving the object only partially fixed.

Harry furrowed his brows and ran his thumb along his slightly rough to the touch wand, wondering what the problem could have been. The book had said that one needed to focus on the effect one wanted to achieve using one's imagination, then one needed to back up the imagination with will-power and focus.

Perhaps the theory was incomplete? Possible. Harry would find higher level material at Hogwarts. "Quite likely though. It is simply a matter of practice. Considering this is my first spell it's going very well actually." Harry muttered, glanced at the half-broken plate and flicked his wand at it, "reparo," he willed the broken parts together and they did, leaving behind a pristine plate. The success caused Harry to smile. There was a reason he wanted to learn the mending charm first and that reason was simple. It was because Harry was a collector, not even out of necessity, but out of enjoyment.

Although, being transported to the past and being able to buy the first edition of any collectible, and then also have a spell to repair it to perfect condition. Suffice to say, if the whole magic or career thing didn't work out, Harry could probably just live out the rest of his life buying old shit from flea markets, casting reparo at it and reselling it for ten times the price.

Case in point, a broken first edition vinyl of ABBA's Waterloo, "reparo."

Correction, a pristine version of ABBA's Waterloo.

"If anything it's the mending charm that I should learn to cast wandlessly." Harry muttered, before turning his attention away from the mending charm to the spell that would save him the most time during his life, unless he acquired a house-elf somehow. The scouring charm, a charm that cleaned up dirty shit and funnily enough, if it was cast at a person, would make soap rinse their mouth. Something that didn't really make sense considering a charm that vanished dirt, shouldn't be also capable of conjuring soap, but such was magic, apparently.

-/-

It was a dissatisfied Harry Evans that was found biking home after a few hours spent in a cave practising magic. He'd managed to further refine his mending charm, but the scouring charm had been a complete failure, requiring several casts to remove even a small patch of dust. He thought he knew what the issue was, but that didn't make him feel any better, seeing as he didn't have the tools necessary to alleviate it. See, Harry's thesis was that the scouring charm benefited from the user having some familiarity with the subset of transfiguration skills called vanishing. If one knew how to vanish an item, one's magic would be more used to the same act when applied to the highly formulaic scouring charm.

Only problem being that vanishing was obviously not first-year material. At least he hadn't found it in his first year transfiguration book. One silver lining was the fact that if his theory was correct, and that knowing how to vanish would help one's scouring charm, then knowing the scouring charm would be helpful when learning how to vanish. This way attempting to make the scouring charm work would aid him in transfiguration in the future. Although the payoff would probably be higher the other way around?

Without being aware of it Harry started whistling as he drove home, magical theories, his own postulations and plans for future magic learning whirring around in his head.

"That's a nice enough goal. Learning the scouring charm." Harry mused just about when he came home and saw how fucking dirty his mountain bike was. Driving often through a forest, be it rain or sunshine, would do that.

Harry quickly deposited the items that he'd repaired in his cave away from home in his room, full of vinyls, old cameras, coins, trading cards and books.

"Did we get any mail, screaming mail by any chance?" Harry asked his aunt whom he found in the kitchen preparing a meat pie.

"Not that I noticed. How was your bike ride?" Petunia asked without turning away from the forming of the pie.

"Enjoyable and enlightening, very draining." Harry said, mostly referring to the fact that his connection to magic felt sore, as much as a metaphysical state of connection could feel sore. He hadn't gotten physically tired for a while now. Another advantage of magic perhaps? Did it boost one's innate human capabilities? Something to look into after he got his hands on some medical knowledge. Messing with the body was dangerous business.

"Just don't overexert yourself with whatever you're doing." Petunia said before trailing off.

Harry stepped forward and gave his aunt a hug from the side. "What's wrong?" He asked.

A tear fell into the meat pie, Petunia wasn't working anymore but just propping herself up the kitchen counter on her hands. "Just promise me you'll do everything to stay safe." She managed to force out.

Harry continued hugging, an awkward angle due to his size. "I'll prioritise my health over everything." He promised.

Petunia turned towards him to hug him back and to stroke his hair. "You're a brilliant boy Harry. Whatever magic might promise, I assure you, you can be just as successful in this world."

"I love non-magical music way too much," Harry promised, "and by the time I finish Hogwarts I'll be just in time to go to university."

"Good luck explaining where you were for seven years, you dolt." Petunia said as she released him from his hug. She looked him up and down before scrunching her nose. "And go take a shower, you stink." She said with a slight tone of disgust, before looking down on herself and seeing that some of his sweat now stained her apron.

"Universities aren't workplaces. They won't care where I was as long as I have the right grades, worst case, I can just say I first wanted to become independently wealthy flipping cars." Harry said, before noticing that he was overstaying his welcome by the tapping of his aunt's feet on the wooden flooring.

He went to take a shower.