Homecoming

Ministry of Magic, London, May 30 th

Harry landed with a thump at the international Portkey arrival area in the Ministry of Magic.

"Name?" A portly witch asked immediately.

"Harry Potter," he replied, still a little shaken from the trip.

The witch gave him a curious look before she checked her clipboard and nodded her head. "You're early. We weren't expecting you until noon."

"Is that a problem?"

"No," the witch said, "but we will have to charge you an extra three sickles for an early processing fee."

"Well my father was supposed to pay, is there a place I can make a floo call?"

"Of course, behind you and to the left," she replied. "When you're done, go through the double doors and pay at the counter."

Nodding his head, Harry quickly followed the woman's directions and found the floo. He briefly wondered why people weren't leaving through the floo instead of paying before he realized that they probably had been specially spelled so that they could just be used to make calls. "Potter household," he said after sticking his head into the nearest empty fireplace. "Hello? Mum? Dad? Is anyone there?"

A few moments passed before Harry saw his mother's head appear in the fireplace. "Harry? Are you back already? We weren't expecting you for another hour."

"I know, I left a little early. Can you or Dad come and pick me up?"

Lily smiled. "Of course, we'll be there in a few minutes. Where are you exactly?"

"International Portkey Arrivals."

"Alright, we'll see you soon. Love you."

"Love you too, Mum."

Harry stood up and brushed some soot of his robes. After a few minutes spent sitting on a nearby bench, Harry saw the double doors open, and his parents entered.

"Harry," Lily said, giving her son an enthusiastic hug, "how was the trip home?"

Harry grimaced. "Bloody horrible, I hate International Portkeys."

"Language, Harry," Lily chided halfheartedly. "Was it really that bad?"

"Yes. I was stuck spinning like a top for over five minutes. It's a good thing I didn't eat beforehand or else I would have lost my lunch somewhere over Central Europe."

"Well, it's good to have you home," James said, looking a little relieved.

Harry smiled wistfully. "I can't wait to actually get home."

"Well lets give the Ministry its stupid tax and hurry back," James put forth.

After a very brief wait in line, James paid the three galleon tax for receiving a Portkey from Durmstrang, and the three Potters quickly floo'd back home. As soon as Harry was out of the floo grate, he pushed his trunk to the side and collapsed on the couch. "It's good to be home," he replied happily.

"Well I see you're already comfortable." Lily laughed. "Tell us all about your first term at Durmstrang."

"It was great!" Harry replied enthusiastically. "My Charms teacher pretty much assured me that I would be getting an M for my end of the year project."

"I still can't get over that scoring system," James said with a shake of his head.

"I like it," Harry said honestly.

"You say that now, but we'll see what you think about it when your grades come," James teased.

"I think I did alright," Harry said hesitantly. "I struggled in spell creation a little, but I know I passed in everything else."

Lily looked at her son in surprise. He'd never mentioned having any academic difficulties before. "What was so hard about spell creation?"

"Well it's just really complicated, and I had a lot of catching up to do," Harry explained. "First you have to figure out what you want your spell to do. Then you have to decide the type of magic that would best generate that effect whether it's a charm, curse, or transfiguration. After that, you need to try to create the wand movement and incantation. I had no idea how important the wand movement was for spells until I took that class. Did you know that a clockwise twirl is better for transfiguration, but a counter-clockwise twirl is used more in advanced charms?"

"No," James admitted, "I never realized that."

"So it was hard for you to catch up?" Lily asked.

"Very," Harry said seriously. "All that information about the effects different wand movements have were learned during the first term. When I got there, everyone already knew the basics."

Lily frowned slightly. "Didn't the instructor help you to catch up?"

"No," Harry said a little bitterly, "Professor Cherny spends all his time helping the upper years, and he said that he didn't have the time to re-teach the basics to a first year."

"Some teacher," Lily said angrily.

Harry nodded his head in agreement before saying, "He is a good teacher during class, but he just doesn't have the time or patience to help struggling younger students."

"Still," Lilly said disapprovingly, "a professor should make time to help a struggling student, especially one who just transferred."

"I agree," James said.

"Well, I think I passed, so it's not that big of a deal," Harry said sheepishly.

"What did you do for your project?" Lily asked curiously.

"It wasn't all that great. You know how the lumos spell sends out a white light?" Harry asked. After his parents' nodded, he added, "Well my spell lets you choose the color of the light."

"Well that certainly sounds interesting, I wish we could see it," Lily said.

Harry raised his wand and muttered, "Lumos Rojas." The room was soon filled with a reasonably bright red light.

"Harry James Potter! Are you trying to get expelled?" Lily demanded.

"I'm not, though," Harry said with a huge smile. "The ministry won't know I cast the spell."

Lily sagged into her chair as James snickered. "Who told you how they track underage magic?" he asked.

"A friend at school," Harry said cheerfully. "It made a lot of sense after I thought about it. I practiced all kinds of wand magic after I got my wand, but I never got a letter from the Ministry."

"When Nathan finds out, he's going to spend the summer pranking the entire house," muttered Lily.

Harry frowned slightly. His brother would do something like that, and the last thing he wanted was to worry about Nathan pranking him while he studied. Maybe he would just not mention it to his brother for the time being. If Nathan saw him doing magic, he could just say that Durmstrang didn't have the same restrictions as Hogwarts. "What did you think of the spell?"

"It was very nice. Can you do any other colors?" Lily asked.

"Blue and violet," Harry replied.

"Well that's certainly impressive," Lily commented.

"How long did that take you to make?" James asked.

"Three months," Harry said with a shake of his head. "Like I said, it's very hard to make sure everything works. If you mess up, there could be really bad results."

"Was your Charms teacher impressed with the Space-Enhancement Charm?" Lily asked.

"I honestly can't believe you were able to cast that as a first year," James said, sounding very proud.

Harry blushed slightly. "Well, he said if my project was just the Space-Enhancement Charm, I would have been in the running for the top mark. I sort of did something else as well though."

"Oh?" Lily asked. "What else did you do?"

"I ended up making a semi-permanent enchantment receptacle," Harry said sheepishly.

"What!" Lily exclaimed. "How?"

Harry winced slightly and rubbed the back of his head where he accidentally burnt a chunk of his hair off while working on one of his receptacles. "A lot of practice,"

"Harry, explain," Lily demanded. "You are far too young to be playing around with that kind of magic. You could have seriously hurt yourself!"

"Well," Harry said nervously, "I was able to get the Space-Enhancement Charm fairly easily, but I needed a way to stop a simple finite from shrinking the room back to normal. I tried enchanting," Lily gasped, paled, and had to sit down on the couch, "but that failed rather spectacularly. So I had to tie the Space-Enhancement Charm to a semi-permanent enchantment receptacle. I bought some receptacles in case I couldn't make one, but I wanted to see if I could do it. It took me forever, but the day before my project was due, I was able to make a very basic one."

Lily grabbed her son's hands and forced him to look her in the eyes. "Harry, please tell me your professor was overseeing this project of yours."

"Of course he was," Harry lied.

"Thank Merlin," Lily said, relaxing a little. "Still, I can't believe you were able to make one. You're not even twelve!"

"Harry, I... that's incredible," James said in amazement. "You definitely inherited your mother's ability with charms."

"He's well beyond my ability, James. I couldn't have done that at his age," Lily replied. "I didn't learn how to make those until I was near the end of my fourth year, and that was with Professor Flitwick's help.

"Professor Kosarev was really impressed as well. He spent several hours showing me how to improve upon the receptacle I made. I think I might be able to make one last for a month or two now. I'm going to try to make one and expand my room," Harry said excitedly.

Lily looked sternly at her son. "Harry, please show me any receptacle you make before you decide to alter your room." Seeing that her son was about to protest, Lily added, "I don't doubt your ability to make them, Harry, but I don't want your room to suddenly decompress around you while you're sleeping."

"Alright," Harry agreed, seeing his mother's point.

"So, Harry, tell us about your friends," James said.

The bright smile that appeared on Harry's face made Lily and James realize that sending Harry to Durmstrang was probably the best thing they could have done for their son. "Well, Viktor was my first friend. He's a few years older than me, but he's really nice, and he's absolutely amazing at Quidditch. I wanted to invite him over for a little bit this summer, but he made it onto his country's Junior National team."

"Wow," said James, "he must be good. What country is he representing?"

"Bulgaria. He wants to play professionally, and I think he could do it. He practices every day, Dad, literally. There was a blizzard going on outside, and he was running around the Quidditch pitch with a warming charm on him."

Lily shook her head and wondered why anyone would push themselves that hard at Quidditch. "Please don't tell your brother about that."

"Did I mention he dropped two classes after his first year so he could practice more?" Harry asked cheekily.

"Harry James Potter, I forbid you to tell your brother that piece of information," Lily said seriously. "Nathan already has it in his head that he's going to play for England someday. He doesn't need to know the lengths your friend is taking to practice Quidditch."

"I won't tell Nathan, Mum," Harry said. His mother was right; Nathan would try to drop a class to play Quidditch more, and from the look on his father's face, his dad had probably considered it when he was at Hogwarts.

"So who are your other friends besides Viktor?" Lily asked, clearly trying to move the discussion away from Harry's Quidditch-obsessed friend.

"Well, there's Calypso. She's the one who helped me with my Dark Arts project," Harry said as he tried to figure out just what was safe to mention about his friend.

"Is she older as well?" Lily asked, slightly concerned that Harry's friends might not be near his age. She didn't want her son growing up faster than he had to, and having older friends would expose him to things he might not be ready for.

"No, she's a first year like me," Harry said, " but she's really smart and an amazing dueler. I haven't been able to beat her yet."

"Really?" Lily asked, surprised. "Even with all that you know from Charms and Transfiguration? I would have thought you would have been the top dueler in your class."

Harry was about to reply that he was the best dueler in his class, until he realized that he really didn't want his parents to ask what Dark Arts class Calypso was in. "She's smart," he said instead. "She took the test to skip her second year of Charms and Transfiguration at the end of the year."

"Oh yes," said Lily, "I remember you wrote once telling me about that."

"Well she certainly sounds like a nice young lady," James said. "Who else do you hang out with?"

"Well, besides Viktor and Calypso, I guess Kira, but she's not really a friend." Harry resisted the urge to snort at that understatement. "She's Viktor's girlfriend and sometimes she comes around. She's alright, but I don't really like her that much. Viktor tells me she's really good at spell creation. When I was having problems in that class, he told me to talk to her, but I didn't. I wanted to see if I could do it on my own," Harry lied, not wanting to say that Kira had told him she had better things to do –"Like going to visit the Isle of Drear and sticking my head inside a Quadapod's mouth"–than help him after he asked her a question during breakfast.

"Well, I'm glad you've got some good friends, Harry," Lily said happily.

"Me too. I do have one question though," James said seriously.

Harry hoped he wasn't going to ask anything else about Calypso, but to his relief his father just asked, "Where is Durmstrang?"

Laughing, Harry said, "Siberia, Dad. Nathan figured that out ages ago."