Chapter 6: invite

It took another phone call with Hermione on Sunday for her to help him work out what had happened (and explain what an "instance" might mean, since it wasn't really a primary school English word for all that he'd heard it in conversation). With that idea and after a couple of false starts, Harry was now the proud owner of the Basic Instance 1 skill. Strangely, it was a General skill, rather than a wizard-specific one. Outside of the fight that had pulled in the whole playground, at rank 1 he didn't seem to be able to create an instance containing more space than his bedroom. But that was more than enough to practice his spells in the evenings.

"I'm so jealous," Hermione told him. "It's pretty much wizarding space on demand. Maybe you could come to Crawley and show me?"

[PARTY TIME

Form a party.]

"My quest log seems to think that's a good idea," Harry agreed, as the entry popped up as soon as Hermione suggested visiting. "I think I'm like 70 kilometers from you, though. Does the bus even go from Surrey to Crawley?"

"It almost has to. But I don't think I'd want to spend that long on a bus, either. I'll ask my parents about it. Weekend's coming up. Should they call your aunt and uncle?"

"Better not. I think it's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, you know?"

"I swear, Harry, you spend so much time begging forgiveness," he could hear her rolling her eyes as she said it. "But since your aunt told me I had a wrong number rather than let me talk to you on the phone…"

Harry had said a few things over their first year at Hogwarts that made her think he didn't have the best home life, but from what he'd said over the past few days, she was really starting to think it might be a problem.

The rest of the week was mostly repetition. Harry didn't discover any amazing new features of the "game system" he was living in now. He was getting a little bored inspecting everything since it didn't usually provide much new information. He still hadn't spent his level-up abilities. He tried to do his aunt's chore quests as infrequently as possible, in favor of slipping off to town and looking for exclamation points and proximity events, then doing his homework and practicing his spells in the evenings. He hadn't gotten another skill-up, for all the practice, but that about made sense with how few skills he had after 11 years of growing up and then a year in Hogwarts: clearly this wasn't a system where it was easy to grind up new abilities.

What he was getting was a growing array of quest rewards.

Maybe the system was simply showing him the people that would be the most likely to compensate him for his help. But the way that the bullies had just happened to drop their pocket money each time he'd fought them, he was thinking that something about his powers made sure that he was getting rewarded, and appropriately. In addition to a pretty sizable collection of pounds for a twelve-year-old, and enough food that he was starting to have to manage his inventory space carefully to keep it fresh, the rewards were oddly specific. To wit, he now had a full wardrobe of reasonably nice clothes that actually fit him, each of which had been offered by someone as a one-off for helping.

Sure, anyone could look at him and realize his shirt and pants didn't fit, but what were the chances that they'd just have clothes that would fit him on hand?

He obviously didn't show the Dursleys he was no longer dressing like a homeless child (which was really increasing the number of people willing to offer him quests), changing back into Dudley's castoffs when he returned to Privet Drive. It was even easy, using the inventory system: he could just drag clothes from the inventory screen onto his paper doll and they'd instantly swap in a subtle flash of magic, without even having to take them on and off using his hands. He was worried it was going to make him really lazy about getting dressed.

Finally, it was the next Saturday and everything was all worked out. Harry rushed through his morning chores and managed to have a quick shower just in time for the doorbell to ring. "That'll be my ride," Harry said to his aunt and uncle as he beat them to the front door.

"I didn't give you permission to leave!" Aunt Petunia said from the sofa. "Especially not with one of those freak–"

Harry already had the door open, revealing Hermione and her mother.

[HELEN GRANGER

Doctor (Dentist), Level 11

[GRANGER DENTAL]

HERMIONE GRANGER

Mage, Level 2

[GRYFFINDOR]]

Harry hadn't actually seen Hermione's parents yet, having left before her from King's Cross at the end of the school year. The thirty-something woman was slender, tall, and had an olive complexion and dark hair that made her look Greek. She was wearing a colorful blouse, skirt, and flats that were appropriate for the warm weather but also seemed very expensive, as did the subtle amount of jewelry she was wearing as if it was an everyday thing.

"Harry!" Hermione said, surprising him with a hug. She was only slightly less expensively dressed than her mother, in nice jeans and a button-down shirt.

Petunia stood up to either greet or confront the interlopers in her doorway (she wasn't totally sure which), and spotted the nearly-new Mercedes in her driveway. "You're not…" she tried to navigate the way to have this conversation.

"A witch? No. We didn't find out about any of it until Hermione got her letter," the woman explained, then put out a hand. "Doctor Helen Granger."

His aunt was nonplussed, and didn't refuse the handshake, but noticed that the woman's hands were well-manicured (though the nails were kept short, as befit someone who spent her working days poking around in mouths). "Petunia Dursley. That's my husband, Vernon. The boy didn't tell us that someone was coming…"

"We're just keeping him for an overnight. So thrilled to get to meet one of Hermione's school friends," Helen gushed, having been briefed by her daughter and realizing she hadn't been exaggerating. If nothing else, she could see into a room where there were no pictures of Harry, unless he had recently lost a lot of weight. "Do you have an overnight bag, Harry?"

"No, I'm all set. Thanks," he told her.

"If you think I'm taking care of that owl–" Vernon began.

"She's sorted," Harry told him, having already stashed Hedwig safely in his personal menagerie.

"Well, perfect then. It was lovely to meet you both," Helen Granger said, whisking away as Hermione grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the car before the Dursleys could think of another objection.

Both of them stood in the doorway, completely out of sorts, as the Merc pulled out of the driveway and Dr. Granger waved at them from the window. Finally Vernon bit out, "That boy already has a girlfriend?"

In the back seat of the car, Harry was saying, "Thank you so much, Dr. Granger."

"Helen, please," she assured him as she checked her bearings to make sure she could get out of this very-samey neighborhood without getting turned around. "If nothing else, it gets confusing with Hermione's father in the house."

"Right, you're both dentists," Harry remembered. "Well, thanks for coming to get me. I know it's a ways."

"I certainly wouldn't want to do the commute every morning," she agreed, "but it's no trouble. We ran some errands on the way. Much less of a journey than out to you and Hermione's other friend. Ronald? Isn't he out in Devon."

"Near Exeter," Hermione confirmed. "No wonder they're always last to get to the train."

"And you're sure you didn't need a bag, Harry?" Helen confirmed.

"I figured out some new magic tricks," Harry told her, unsure how much Hermione had shared.

"Ah, yes, Hermione mentioned that you wanted to show her some new spells you'd learned, and knew a way to practice that wouldn't get you in trouble."

"It's really so unfair that they expect us to spend two months without magic," Hermione pontificated, "when I'm certain that some of the purely wizarding families are able to get away with it if their parents allow them, from what Ron and Neville were telling me. So I'm very excited that Harry might have found a way to practice, because there are some second-year charms that I'd really like to get a head start on before we're in classes." She finally took a breath and said, "Oh, Harry, I'm sorry you have to wear your cousin's hand-me-downs like that."

"Oh, these, right," Harry remembered what he was wearing and explained, "I just don't want them to know I've got some new stuff." He brought up the inventory and quickly switched for some of his new clothes.

Hermione gasped. "I believed you, but seeing it is something else."

Her mother checked the rearview mirror and blinked. "Did you just change your clothes with magic?"

"Something like that," Harry shrugged. "This may be something different? But then, maybe not, it's not like we know everything about magic yet."

Helen mostly stayed out of the conversation on the way back to Crawley, except to prompt the two for stories about their school year. While ideally Hermione would have gotten along better with her female roommates, she and her husband were simply thrilled that their daughter had any friends after her fraught time in primary school. And it was clear that she and Harry were very good friends indeed, though both were clearly missing their third friend, Ron.

She didn't realize they'd both implicitly agreed to not talk about the scarier events of the previous year. Mentions of murderous trolls, possessed teachers, and unicorn-killing wraiths were left out. They did talk about Fluffy and Norbert, since a giant three-headed dog that went right to sleep if you played him a song was acceptable material to share with the parents.

"And this giant dog had something to do with you both getting all those points for your house?" she asked, perhaps too insightfully.

Harry, hoping his Basic Deception skill wouldn't fail him explained, "Pretty much. He was the first in a whole series of challenges, like a broom flying test that I did, a potions logic puzzle Hermione got, and a wizarding chess game Ron beat. The headmaster was so pleased we were the first ones to solve it, he gave us the points."

Well, explained that way it didn't sound too dangerous, if perhaps a bit whimsical of an enrichment activity. Both children sighed when Helen nodded, accepting the story. But then she asked, "And these points made up for losing quite a few and getting detention?"

Harry shot Hermione a look asking why she told her mother, and she just shrugged. Harry told her, "Yeah. I guess we should have just told the teachers about Norbert. Instead, we helped Hagrid sneak him off with Ron's older brother to the dragon preserve. He actually probably wouldn't have gotten in much trouble."

"It sounds fun to have these adventures," Helen agreed, "but you really should be telling an adult about all of these things. They're there to protect you."

"It doesn't help that our potions teacher hates us, and our head of house is too busy, too strict, and too quick to think we're lying," Harry grumbled.

Helen glanced over at Hermione to confirm, and the girl nodded. "We thought Professor Snape was trying to kill Harry for part of the year, he was so mean. But it turned out he wasn't trying to kill Harry, he's just mean."

She filed "kill Harry" away as hyperbole for the moment, but that reference might eventually find its way back into Helen Granger's consciousness. "Your head of house. Professor McGonagall who we met?"

"She really took an awful lot of points away for just being out after curfew," Hermione agreed. "And ignored us about something important. I don't know if she's working too hard or what, because she's otherwise nice, if stern, and is a very good teacher."

Helen realized her daughter would gleefully walk off a bridge if someone she considered a "good teacher" said that it was expected of her, so wasn't sure how to take that. "This school doesn't do parent-teacher conferences at all, does it?"

"I'm not even sure you could see the school, Mum," Hermione sighed. "They'd have to come to you."

She might insist they do just that, if she heard something she didn't like over the next year.

After about forty-five minutes in the car, they pulled up to the Grangers' row house. In principle, it wasn't that much different than Number Four Privet Drive, though the neighborhood was much less cookie-cutter and the building was a brownstone. Inside, it couldn't have been more different, however: other than a small front parlor for guests, the rest of the house looked very lived-in. In particular, the Dursleys would never have installed bookshelves in every room of the house, each groaning under the weight of all the literature crammed in.

They showed Harry around the house, including the guest room where he'd be staying, and then Hermione dragged him up to her room to experiment with his new powers. "Keep your door open," Helen reminded her daughter.

"If this goes right, we'll be invisible anyway," Hermione agreed with an impish smile.

Harry wasn't at all surprised to see Hermione's room. It was very subtly girly, but much more nerdy. If the rest of the house was mostly bookshelves, her room was entirely bookshelves. She'd barely made room on the walls for the essential furniture and the window. "Okay, instance!"

"Don't you want to try to form a party first?" Harry asked.

"Let's see what it looks like if I'm not in your party," she told him.

"Okay," he nodded, and formed the instance. Hermione faded away and the hallways outside blurred, so he was just in the room alone. And then, a few moments later, she blurred back into existing, and he could see the hallway again. "That was weird. I didn't end it on purpose."

"I think I did," Hermione admitted. "You didn't actually go away. I just didn't really notice you, until I started to look for you, and then you popped back. I don't think you can use this to hide if there's someone after you, specifically. It just makes people that aren't involved not notice you're doing magic or fighting."

"Hmm, maybe when I get a higher rank?" Harry figured. "Good to know, at least. I wonder what would happen if I did it while wearing the cloak?"

"Try it out?" she told him.

He did, and she eventually knocked him out of the instance by virtue of colliding with him. "Might make it easier to hide from Mrs. Norris, at least?" she guessed. "Not much better than just hiding under the cloak, where people might bump into you. Worse, even, since you can't see who's about to run into you."

"Right. Okay. Ready to join the party?" he asked.

[PARTY INVITE SENT]

"Sure?" Hermione said.

[HERMIONE GRANGER JOINS THE PARTY

QUEST COMPLETE

20 XP Earned]

On the left of his vision, he saw Hermione's name appear, her health, endurance, and magic bars underneath (though he couldn't see her numbers, just that they were currently full), and a floating arrow that seemed to point in her direction. "Well that's helpful. Did you see anything?"

"No?" she said. "Did you do something?"

"Yeah, you're in the party. I can see your health and stuff, and an arrow showing where you are."

"I don't have any of that," she said, sadly, looking around as if game prompts would come to her and let her see her own character sheet and inventory.

"We can at least try the instance again?" Harry asked, and formed a new one when she nodded. This time, she came along with him.

"Oh, interesting. I can see the hallway outside is blurry. We're really in something like a wizard space. Only I've heard about things like magic tents, and space-expanded bags, and it's pretty obvious there are parts of Hogwarts that are bigger than they really should be."

"Want to cast some spells?" he asked. She bit her lip, worried about the Trace, until Harry cast, "Lumos," with his own wand. They waited a few minutes and nothing bad happened.

"Okay, yeah, I really, really do. Have you tried the dancing feet spell, yet? It's on the syllabus for the first month of charms this year. The incantation is Tarantallegra, and the wand motions are…"