Chapter 7: (M)ap

"Excuse me, sir," Hermione asked the stranger that had been passing by them at the outdoor restaurant where Harry and the Grangers were having their Saturday dinner. "Are you Mr. Talbot. From Sainsbury's?"

The man was nonplussed, but answered, "Er. Yes. Why?"

"I thought you looked familiar, but my mum thought it was from somewhere else," she lied. "Thanks! Enjoy your evening."

"Oh. Okay. Right. See you at the store," the man mentally tripped over the interruption then walked on his way.

As soon as he was out of earshot Hermione said, "Well that's five for five so far. I think we can be sure you're getting real information, and not just hallucinating data for people you don't know."

"Fascinating," Jean Granger, Hermone's father (same class and level as his wife) said. "And you're saying you just see peoples' names and professions floating above their heads?"

Harry nodded, "And I think I basically get a rough idea of how old they are, based on their level."

"You could clean up as a carnival act," Helen grinned.

Jean put the kibosh on his wife's enthusiasm, "From what we understand about that school, I'd assume there are a lot of things they could do that would be good carnival acts, though, except they can't do them in front of non-magicals. Their government might not have a rule about this yet, but they would make one if Harry was doing it all the time."

Harry's eyes widened. "Do you think I should keep this a secret?"

"You already don't like being as famous as you are," Hermione counseled.

"Right. Right," Harry nodded. "Maybe I won't tell too many more people about this. Especially until we know what all it can do."

"I've been thinking about that," Hermione said, "and I was wondering. What's the precise name of the option that you could use to increase your Intelligence?"

Harry popped open the level up menu again and found the stat increase options. "It's under Genius."

"Right," she nodded and took a breath then raced out, "Level Up: Genius. Level Up: Genius." Harry's eyes widened as two little puffs of golden light and a musical chord sounded from Hermione. "I don't think it worked? Level Up: Genius!" That time, nothing happened.

"No, I think it worked," Harry corrected. "I saw two little lightshows the first two time you said it. Didn't you see them?"

"No?" Hermione said, and her parents shook their heads as well. "Well in that case, give me two big numbers."

"Twelve and seventeen?" Harry offered.

"Two-hundred and four, but I could do that before," she scoffed. "Big numbers, Harry."

"Um, two-hundred and four," he quoted and she rolled her eyes, so he added, "And five-hundred and seventeen."

"Finally," she said and then thought for a second. "That's basically… hmm, split it up, and… oh, right, easy enough. One-hundred and five thousand, four-hundred sixty-eight."

Her father had doodled the numbers on a paper napkin and took another several seconds to work out the multiplication the long way. "I think you're right."

Hermione beamed. "Marvelous! Assuming I was about as smart as Harry was fast before, which is to say at a fourteen, that should make me about forty percent smarter. Well, just under forty-three percent, in fact. Assuming the ability point upgrades are linear."

Harry slowly followed the math and said, "You mean you're at a twenty? Huh. The skills stop at twenty, so I wonder if your abilities can go higher than that."

"I guess we'll find out next level-up. If that makes me tied for smartest person on the planet…" her eyes got big thinking of the possibilities.

"Ron's going to lose his mind if you're literally the smartest person on the planet," Harry agreed.

"I'm getting an IQ test for you, aren't I?" Jean groaned.

"Ideally several from different vendors," Hermione agreed, "so we can test it empirically." She paused and then suggested, "You really should spend your level-up points, Harry."

"What if I choose wrong?" he shrugged, paralyzed by all the choices.

He still had the window open, and was noticing several that he hadn't even seen as he'd skimmed through previously. Like one that said, "Marauder: You have better control of your map, and can see names and secrets." He wondered if that one had something to do with the mystery faction that loved him.

"Wait, do I have a map?" Harry asked, aloud. Immediately, the upper middle of his vision was filled with a translucent, semi-3D map of the immediate area in a circle, with a dot at the center that seemed to be him. As he turned his head, the map rotated, and he could work out that the featureless blue boxes on the map represented the nearby buildings. While it was clearly a circle, it was functionally more of an ellipse, since it was tilted slightly away from him to make it clear which way was forward and to make the 3D effect obvious. "Well that's cool."

"What now?" Hermione asked, and Harry summed it up for her. She looked slightly cross and grumpily admitted, "That also sounds very useful."

Hermione's father mused, "A bit like one of those satellite-connected electronic mappers that I've read articles about. They're putting them in some high-end cars, I think, for navigation. See if you can navigate back to our house?"

"Navigate to the Granger house?" Harry tried.

[WAYPOINT ADDED]

A yellow arrow appeared on the edge of his map in the direction he thought was their house, and when he looked that way he could see a golden spotlight descending from the heavens. In his real vision, a very translucent dotted line of golden light ran along the road that headed most directly toward it. "Yep," Harry agreed, simply, pointing down the road toward their house.

"Fascinating," Helen added.

"Try a place you haven't been to," Hermione suggested.

"Navigate to Ron's house?" Harry checked.

[LOCATION UNKNOWN]

"Nope," Harry said.

"Hogwarts?" she checked.

Harry obliged and got.

[PATH TO HOGWARTS UNKNOWN]

"It says I don't know the path… but I do. I think I could get to King's Cross, and then it's just straight up the track," Harry realized.

"It's Unplottable," Hermione nodded, glad, at least, that Harry's power wasn't greater than the school's magical resistance to being mapped. "We should try more places to see if you need to remember how to get there."

"I doubt it," Harry realized. "I had mostly forgotten your phone number the first time I tried to call you and didn't have the book I'd written it in. But it still called you."

Hermione's lips pursed, like she was planning all the ways he was going to be her guinea pig since she couldn't access the system directly, but just then, sirens sounded nearby, and several police cars sped up the main road past the restaurant. "I wonder what's going on?" Helen asked.

[CRIME TIME

Timed Area Quest (0:10:00)

Help foil the bank robbery!

WARNING: Level 12 Quest]

"Woah. I bet we'd get a lot of XP for a level 12 quest!" Harry said, starting to get up. Hermione, curious, was joining him.

"A quest to do what?" Jean asked.

"Stop a bank robbery," Harry shrugged.

"No!" both of Hermione's parents shouted at the same time.

Both kids sat down again, with some disappointment.

Her father pinched the bridge of his nose and said, "I want you both to promise us that you'll only do quests of your own level, okay?" He'd basically figured that asking them to not do anything dangerous would be a losing proposition. "And inform an adult if you see one that's too high level for you."

"Yes, sir," Harry sighed, simultaneously to Hermione nodded, "Okay, dad."

"You know what will be fun?" Helen suggested, to distract them. "We have quite a few books at the house. Didn't you say something about learning new skills?"

Both kids nodded, that could be fun. The Grangers paid for dinner, politely declining (and surprised) when Harry tried to give them cash to cover his share. The bank robbery quest had expired by the time they got back the the house. The residence was right under the golden beam from the sky, which winked out as they pulled into the driveway. The arrow on the edge of his map had also moved onto the right building as it came into the radius.

"Oh, huh," Harry noticed that the dot at the center of the map where he appeared to be was actually two dots stacked together. "I want to try something. Hermione, stay there for a second." He walked far enough away from the car that he could see the dots start to separate, one following him and one staying by the car, then walked back. "I think because we're in a party, I can see you on my map, too."

Hermione nodded, "That would only make sense. You said you already had an arrow pointed to me. Let's read books!"

The entire family was duly impressed when they found a new skill book, as it rifled through its own pages in front of them with Harry barely touching it. With everyone working together to find, deliver, and then re-shelve the books, Harry was now the proud owner of rank 1 general skills in Basic Automotive Repair, Carpentry, First Aid, Guitar, Home Repair, and Money Management as well as Conversational Greek. Sadly, the books that weren't some kind of practical skill still refused to easily enter his brain.

"Πώς είσαι, Χάρι;" Helen asked him, in Greek.

"Πρόστιμο. Ευχαριστώ," Harry replied.

"What was that?" Hermione checked.

"I asked him how he was, and he said he was fine, thanks," Helen translated. "I just wanted to check if he'd really learned Greek that easily. I spent years picking it up so I could talk to my grandparents. What about… Ο Πυθαγόρας επινόησε τα μαθηματικά και τη μουσική θεωρία. Τον θυμόμαστε σήμερα για το θεώρημά του."

"I caught Pythagoras and something about remembering and music, maybe?" Harry said, baffled.

"It was something in one of my textbooks about Pythagoras inventing math and music theory, and being remembered for his theorem," she explained. "I guess rank 1 is pretty much just beginner vocabulary. You may have to practice to improve."

"Or find a better skill book," Hermione reasoned.

"Here, look what I found," Jean announced, bringing over a huge medical textbook. "This was basically our text for first year pre-med."

Harry nodded and touched it, getting a new prompt:

[SWITCH CLASS TO DOCTOR?

WARNING: You are not high enough level to multiclass,

so your Mage class will become inactive.]

"No!" Harry said, rather forcefully, letting go of the book. Everyone widened their eyes in surprise, so he lamely explained, "It was asking if I wanted to be a doctor instead of a mage. I'm not high enough level to multiclass."

Once again, Helen just breathed, "Fascinating."

"Multiclass?" Hermione reasoned. "So if you were higher level, you could be a Mage/Doctor? Oh! I bet that's what Madam Pomfrey is! I wonder if all the professors are Mage/Teachers."

"Guess we'll find out when I see them," Harry shrugged.

Helen decided, "Well, I think that's enough stuffing Harry's head full of information tonight. Why don't we head to bed? Jean, can you set him up in the guest room?" She gave him a significant look and he nodded.

As he was showing Harry the bathroom and the linens, Harry said, "Thank you so much for letting me sleep over, Dr. Granger."

"Jean, please," he corrected. "It's so confusing if either of us is Dr. Granger." He paused and mentioned, "Helen mentioned your aunt was surprised you came over. Should we call ahead next time?"

"No, it's fine," Harry suggested. "They might even tell you it was a wrong number, like they told Hermione."

"I think she mentioned that," he nodded, probing, "They don't like you having friends?"

"Not really," Harry confirmed, begrudgingly. "But they really don't like…" he stopped himself before saying, "freaks like me." He corrected it to, "You know, magic stuff."

"It's a lot to take in, and you know we worry about Hermione. And you, now. But it's also pretty amazing. We could try to talk to them about how we came to terms with it?" Harry just shook his head, so Jean stopped trying to come at him sideways and just asked, "Are you… happy there?"

Harry shrugged and unconsciously pulled in on himself, saying, "It's fine. It's been a pretty good summer." Jean just waited, and Harry finally admitted, "I only have to be there two months a year, now. Less, if I can visit people during the hols."

"Well you're always welcome to visit here," Jean nodded, trying to keep it light, but in his head he was planning. Their dental practice tended children, so both Grangers were mandated reporters, and he'd taken the classes and seen the signs a few times in his own patients.

And he didn't feel very good about sending Harry Potter back to Little Whinging.