Trees
In the state of Washington, under a near constant cover of clouds and rain, there’s a small town named Forks.
The Gringotts Goblins recommended it highly to Harry and Hermione because it was relatively close to a large city called Seattle—where Harry can access the magical community should he please, not that he had any intentions to do so—there are no magical creatures in the area, and no wixen, according to their records. It’s a slow moving town with a limited population, making it hard for new people to move in or around unnoticed. This is both a boon and a bane to Harry: he wishes he could live anonymously, but he will appreciate hearing about every new addition to town to ensure he hasn’t been tracked down.
Of course, tracking him down isn’t feasible for most people now. Hermione spent the better part of four years working out the runes needed to charm Harry into a living being under a modified fidelius charm, barring him from being visible to all tracking charms and spells including blood magic. Only those who he wants to be found by can find him.
Harry’s house is bigger than it was last he saw it. Harry had been expecting the small cabin he’d left behind, built by him and Ron on a plot of land Harry bought about a thirty minute walk from the Forks main street, effectively in the middle of the forest as far as the locals were concerned. They’d cleared the trees themselves with a mixture of magic and muggle means, and used the logs to build the cabin. It used to be a studio style cabin. Now, it was literally Grimmauld Place.
Harry lets out a deep sigh and drops his bag on the floor. “Kreacher,” he hisses, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation.
“Master be calling Kreacher but Kreacher no understand why Master mad,” Kreacher says with a huff, cracking into the room.
“What happened to my cabin?”
“Youse cabin was horrid. Much too small for Master. Grimmauld place much better, Kreacher thinks, so Kreacher bring.”
Harry wants to be mad but he can’t be really. Kreacher is a fussy old elf with more cunning than brain cells and, really, what harm is it to Harry? It’s not like he plans to have visitors apart from his best friends and godchildren. Plus, it is comforting, really, to be in a place he actually considers home. Kreacher and Harry spent a long time fixing Grimmauld Place after the war and Harry eventually made it into a place he loved, a place he felt comfortable and safe in. He had been sad to leave it behind.
“At least tell me it still looks like a cabin outside?”
“Master be thinking Kreacher incompetent. Perhaps Master shall take his wand back? He may wave stick around and Kreacher be free from dull duty.”
“Alright, Kreacher. I understand. Thank you.”
Kreacher leaves with a glare, apparating upstairs.
They’d come to an agreement years ago—or, well, Harry had ordered Kreacher to agree—that Kreacher can do whatever he liked to the upstairs areas. Kreacher wouldn’t accept everything above the ground floor as his personal quarters, so he only claimed the smallest room, but he enjoyed the free reign of design for the rest of the area and, truthfully, Harry hadn’t stepped foot up there in years.
It could be some residual trauma from his childhood, but Harry struggles with places too big. He only needs enough space for himself and he has more than that just downstairs: the library, kitchen, living area, floo parlour, a bedroom and ensuite just to start. There are extra bedrooms he’d added for Rose and Teddy years ago, too. Perhaps later he will expand the property with a potions lab and gym. Kreacher will likely throw a fit if he has already designed them upstairs.
Harry feels a bit stupid now with his extendable-charmed bag filled to the brim with all the belongings he thought he couldn’t live without, seeing as he now has every single thing he owns in the house. He stomps to his room and throws the bag to the side, deciding to send Hermione a letter of his grievances against Kreacher’s meddling. Ron might appreciate one too, seeing as he also slaved away building a cabin just for it to be used as a glamour for Grimmauld place.
With two sufficiently outraged letters penned, Harry heads to the kitchen for a snack only to find a note from Kreacher demanding he purchase the following list of ingredients for the household, since Harry had forsaken them too far from any magical stores. He is a little shocked to find that Kreacher is limited on how far he can apparate—Harry had always been under some misguided impression that house elves were unbound by such magical restrictions.
He looks at the list and grimaces, knowing he’s unlikely to find many of these English items in a small town American store. He’ll try his best and maybe set up some sort of long term reoccurring purchase from England. He’ll have to add a post note to his letter asking Hermione.
“I’m off, Kreacher,” Harry says as he heads to the front door.
“Safe please, Master,” Kreacher says as he cracks into existence at the door, his eyes big and bulging.
Harry feels guilt churning in his stomach at everything he’s put Kreacher through the last few years, at the times Kreacher found him dead in his bed or his bath, dropping great tears on his head before Harry gasped himself alive. He’d stopped killing himself at Grimmauld after that, unable to wake up and see the distraught look on Kreacher’s face at having failed his Master again. Now, all Harry can think about is the day Kreacher dies and how alone he’ll truly be.
“I’ll be back shortly, Kreacher. Don’t worry.” He pats the top of Kreacher’s head softly before apparating to the border of their land.
Harry takes the time to check his wards—the fidelius strong and unrelenting; the muggle-repelling wards holding against his stress test. Layers upon layers of charms block his property from those who might stumble upon it and those who search for it, or him. He feels the buzz of their energy against his fingertips, the combined magic of him, Hermione, and Ron, each entwined as they strengthen the wards.
He nods his head and begins the walk to town. He could drive into town using the car Hermione helped him purchase, or even on Sirius’s old motorbike in the garage, but instead Harry decides to walk. He’s got time to spare, after all. The thought is depressing and he pulls a cigarette out to smoke as he walks.
Forks is even smaller than he remembers it from those few times visiting in the dead of night with Ron or Hermione. Harry can't side-along three people all the way to America, and portkeys are expensive when buying them under pseudonyms and glamours. They couldn’t risk anyone noticing them popping off to America semi-regularly, after all. So the trio had often appeared and left Forks under the cover of night.
Forks has an odd charm to it that he likes. It’s quaint and homely. Each storefront is obviously family owned and run, surnames plastering their signs. There is a wooden signboard covered in local posters for garage sales, community events, and notices from the Sheriff. Most cars on the road are old and worn down with scratches and dents. People leave the keys in and engines idling as they swerve into one of the many empty roadside parking spots. Dogs loll from windows and truck beds with sloppy tongues and friendly barks at people they must know.
Harry feels something settle in that cavern of his—like a whisper of happiness deep inside, a comfort from the simple muggle-ness around him. There are no flying brooms or moving pictures or pumpkin juice sales or paparazzi. It’s just him, mostly unglamoured, only his lightning scar masked, walking a quiet street, thick jacket wrapped around his shoulders and short-hand note from Kreacher folded in his pocket. Harry might fly away in the slight breeze if he feels any more relaxed.
He shops quickly, filling his basket with the vegetables and meats requested and product-adjacent items he could find for the more British items Kreacher had wanted. Hopefully he won’t be too distressed at the lack of Digestives and Marmite. Harry would have to get Hermione to post some ASAP lest Kreacher decide to start cooking only beans again. Not that Harry doesn’t like beans per say, but for every meal they can get to be a bit much. If he eats them too often, they begin to remind him of those cold nights in the tent with Hermione, sharing a spoon and a can of whatever they could find.
Harry avoids the eyes of the elderly checkout lady, dumping a much-too-large note on the bench and scooping his grocery bags up with a “thank you” and a “keep the change” as he speeds outside and down the street, waiting until he is a good few minutes walk from the town before apparating himself home.
Kreacher is decidedly unimpressed with Harry’s grocery selection and mutters to himself as he puts the items away. Harry makes himself scarce and decides to head out again, this time into the woodlands outside. Ron had told him there were a few hiking trails on the mountains nearby that might be of interest—hiking is something Harry’s Hermione-appointed mind healer recommended him.
He had dutifully partaken in the hobby enough for his rage at seeing trees surrounding him to diffuse into a sort of calm, brought on by the peace they provided, the safety he felt in them now as opposed to the times he was sprinting through them for his life. Or walking through them to his death. Actually, trees are one of the main reasons he settled on Forks. He feels safe in them now. Surrounded by them.
He climbs his way up the mountain on a path that feels less intentional and more accidental, perhaps carved away by stray hikers like him or large animals making their way up. At some points it doesn’t even feel like a path to follow. He simply weaves between the trees and across moss-covered roots and rocks. Harry enjoys the way his breath puffs out of him in exertion and how his leg muscles begin to ache the higher he climbs. The mere action of exhausting himself reminds him that he’s alive, for now, and he focuses on the benefits of being so, like Hermione told him to.
“Don’t focus on the comfort of death, Harry,” she’d said, not knowing that death is more than oblivion for him; that Death is a being, a someone he can latch onto and rely on, a comfort not in simply nothingness, but in the something that Death is, in the something where Death exists.
“Focus on the pain of living,” she’d finished, gripping his hand. “That’s what it is, Harry. The comfort of death is an illusion to draw you in. Think about the pain of being human, of being alive.”
Harry still isn’t sure if Hermione is correct in her opinion—he has, after all, relapsed into Death’s comfort multiple times since that speech—but he can feel the intent in her words and the changes in his mindset since. Sure, sometimes he craves that comfort, that belonging that comes with embracing death and being embraced by Death.
But now he can feel the aches in his body from overexertion and understand that to feel pain is to be human. To be Harry. Who is he without pain, after all? His life has never been comfortable. It’s why Death fashions the after life as such, he’s sure. As something he craves. Something he has desired since childhood. The comfort of a warm place to sleep, someone to cocoon him, of an oblivion to render him peaceful.
Now, the trees will have to do.
The gentle sway of their leaves and branches in a slight wind that chills through his jacket is peaceful, calming. He breathes deep the earthy scents, damp and mossy, filling the empty corners of his lungs. With it comes the tingle of danger. A spark of something in the air that has his magic tingling beneath his skin, goosebumps rising on his arms. Harry turns his head and glances at the wolf watching him from the shrubbery nearby.
Its black eyes watch him carefully, silently. Harry takes his time inspecting it, turning to face it completely. He can’t tell if the wolf is trying to hunt him or is simply keeping watch—perhaps he has trespassed into its pack’s territory. When Harry doesn’t move, the wolf begins to slowly edge out from the shrubs, baring its teeth as it stalks closer slowly.
Harry narrows his eyes at it but doesn’t move back. Its coat is a deep black, shaggy and smudged with mud. It reminds him of Padfoot. Its belly and legs are dripping wet as though it has recently paddled over water and it stands almost as tall as Harry even as it crouches slightly. It growls lightly, digging its front claws into the dirt.
“Apologies,” Harry says softly, turning his head left and right at the two new sets of eyes in the darkness of the trees. “I didn’t realise I was trespassing on your land.”
The large wolf huffs at him, snapping his jaw lightly and Harry smiles slightly, cocking his head to the side as his magic unfurls around him and tightens along his skin.
“Understood. I’ll be off.”
Harry turns and begins walking back down the mountain without a glance back at the wolves. He can feel them stalking him for a good ten minutes, following him at a distance, only the soft huffs from their noses and the slight crackling of damp leaves beneath their paws alerting Harry to them.
How odd, he can’t help but think, for there to be shapeshifters in a town where Gringotts was adamant not one magical creature existed. Although maybe it isn’t that odd, he concedes, considering he cannot feel an ounce of magic in them.
He mentally adds it to the list of things to ask Hermione.