Seers
“What do you mean, shapeshifters?” Hermione asks the second Harry answers the floo call, bending his head into the fire.
“Blimey big wolves, that’s what I mean. I ran into them while hiking.”
“That can’t be! The Goblins assured us there were no magical beings in Forks!” Hermione wails. “Oh no, Harry. Do we need to move the timeline up?”
The timeline is Hermione’s plan—her complete plan for hundreds of years to come. Not simply Harry’s move to Forks, but for his subsequent moves when he can no longer hide his age or for when he tires of using ageing potions and glamours. It is the timeline for his life for as long as they can plan. New houses. New towns. New names. Fake children for Harry Potter to pass his Lordships and wealth onto, so that Harry can continue to hold his Wizengamot seats and interfere in the wizarding world, should he so choose.
“No, no. It’s fine. It was just weird. I couldn’t feel any magic from them. None at all. They almost seemed, well, like Muggles. If it weren’t for their hulking wolf forms,” Harry explains, shuffling around until he can kick a cushion off the high-backed lounge chair nearby, stuffing it under his knees.
“Are you sure? Perhaps it is better to be safe than sorry,” she muses. Harry can hear Ron say something in agreement in the background and he groans.
“No, please. It’s only been three days. Let’s just see what happens.”
“Alright, Harry. But I’ll do some research. See what I can find.”
“Thanks, Hermione.”
A noise cuts through the floo and Ron’s panicked yell drags Hermione’s face from the floo for a second. When she reappears she looks queasy.
“Sorry, Harry. Got to go. Rose caught some sort of stomach bug at daycare and her magic’s going haywire. Ron’s being attacked by her sick bowl.”
“Yikes,” Harry says with a laugh.
“Right, I’ll talk to you later.”
“Talk soon. Be safe.”
She ends the floo call promptly and Harry peels himself from the floor, dumping himself onto the couch and lets the silence reign over him.
He zones out where he is, watching the fire crackle until Kreacher comes along and charms the record player on. Kreacher always knows when to fill the silence. When Harry is so far lost in his mind that he needs the noise to pull him out.
Although Harry has often felt alone in life, he has rarely actually been alone. Even at the Dursley’s there had always been noise around—Dudley playing games or yelling for food, Mr Dursley watching the game, or Mrs Dursley having tea with her friends. Even their feet stomping on the stairs above him brought comfort at times. At Hogwarts, Harry had roommates and friends and generally a school filled with young, boisterous children. The closest he’d been to alone was those months in the tent and, even then, Hermione had never left his side.
“Master, has plans today, no?” Kreacher says, cutting into Harry’s reminiscing. “Master be attending muggle school.”
“Yes, Kreacher, thank you,” Harry mutters, even though a part of him may be grateful for Kreacher’s care, a larger part wishes he could off himself for the day. Not that it would last that long, anyway. The more times he dies the quicker he returns, as though his body has adjusted to the journey. He wishes it were the opposite, but he supposes that would go against the general benefits of not being able to die.
“No time, Master,” Kreacher reminds him with a huff, batting Harry’s leg.
“Alright, alright.” Harry slithers himself off the chair and stomps to his bathroom, shucking his shirt off on the walk.
---
Forks High School is even less impressive than Harry had expected. Hogwarts is in no way a normal high school with its sprawling lands, magical forest, and the building itself being a centuries old castle. So maybe his expectations are skewed. Still, Harry had expected a little something more from this muggle school than a one-story sprawl of a few red-bricked buildings, joined together by tin-roof walkways to block the rain. Home of the Spartans, the sign declares proudly and he has to truly wonder how well-known these Spartans are.
Harry leans against his motorbike with his legs outstretched, crossed at the ankles, as he takes a drag from his cigarette. Smoking is another thing Hermione has been on his back about as being an unhealthy habit, alongside his drinking and dabbling in Muggle drugs, but Harry promptly cut the wind from her argument when he pointed out that he could not, in fact, die from cancer, so the stress-relieving benefits far outweighed any possible reasons she could conjure for him to quit.
He isn’t sure what is causing more people to stare at him: the motorbike, the smoking, or simply him, the new kid.
The teenagers of Forks High School are unabashed with their glances and whispers from across the carpark, clustered together near their cars. Harry sighs and stamps the cigarette out under his boot. Their behaviour isn’t anything he hasn’t dealt with for years but it feels a little odd, seeing as they aren’t whispering about Harry Potter, the Chosen One. Instead, they whisper about the new kid, James, and his motorbike and cigarettes.
Harry can’t help scoffing at the thought as he scoops his bag up from the ground and begins to stalk across the parking lot. He had parked as far from the entrance as possible under some misguided guise that it might help him go unnoticed in the throng of students. However, he had grossly overestimated the number of attending students—and so had the poor sod who designed the carpark.
“You must be James!” A twinkly voice says softly from his right before a petite teen steps in front of him, her short pixie cut spiking almost dangerously at the edges.
Harry pauses, hiking his bag slightly up his shoulder and looking down at the girl.
“Er, yeah. That’s me…James,” the name rolls of his tongue slowly and she perks an eyebrow at him.
“Oh, I was right!” She smiles. “You’re British! How fun!” She giggles and turns to look over her shoulder at a cluster of teenagers standing near a silver car.
“Fun, right,” Harry mutters, glancing at the teens.
“I’m Alice, by the way! I’m on the welcome committee for the new students.” Harry hums and nods, looking around slightly for a possible escape. A welcome committee. How horrid. “Come on, I’ll show you to the office.”
The girl—Alice—doesn’t wait for him to reply, turning on her heel sharply and skipping along the pavement. Harry closes his eyes tightly and takes a deep breath, holding the memories of Luna skipping down the halls of Hogwarts close in his mind, remembering her consistent presence in his life, how she guided him in times he wasn’t even aware he was looking for guidance.
When he opens his eyes, Harry looks straight into the dark eyes of one of the teens near the silver car, possibly one of Alice’s friends. The teen is tall, almost as tall as Ron, with a lithe build Harry can tell hides muscle and a frown set deep on his face. Another teenager with buzzed hair elbows him in the side and they look away, the dark-eyed one glaring at the ground. Harry stomps after Alice.
---
Harry is beginning to regret attending Muggle school. He’s quite sure that a nice hermit life in an isolated woodlands would have been a better choice than being surrounded by such happy people—teenagers who smile and giggle and whisper in the hallways, reminiscent of Hogwarts before the war. Hogwarts before fifth year when everything went to shit. Maybe even earlier, really, like when Cedric died. Things had been dark then.
Muggles here are all so young and naive, eyes wide with curiosity that curls a bitter seed in Harry’s gut, the memory of himself, malnourished and scrawny, looking at Hogwarts for the first time. He doesn’t want to taint these Muggles with their sweet, safe lives.
He’d only agreed to attend Muggle high school because Hermione argued it was the only way he could maintain living sans glamours or potions for at least a few years without anyone asking questions. She also made some solid arguments about the benefits of muggle education and being able to stay up-to-date with common muggle knowledge, but Harry is less worried about that. He has always been living life one step behind everyone, last to understand news or gossip, never understanding the wizarding world references until someone explains them. Plus, he isn’t completely inept in the muggle world. He has lived many years here, after all.
Harry has spent all morning darting in his classes seconds before they start and out of them seconds after they end. He doesn’t want to interact with the overly excited looking teenagers and their overly excited faces. After years of practice, be can spot those wanting to approach him with his eyes closed, and promptly evades any and all people who want to interact.
Classes have been mostly boring. He is melancholic, the hole in his chest aching at the memories of Hogwarts and all those good years, those formative years where he made friends, learnt about his family, ate and slept well. Being here reminds him of those first few years of Hogwarts where he hadn’t truly recognised the war that was coming and his role to play.
Now, he just wants to leave. It was a bad decision to come here. Harry can feel the walls shrinking in on him, the smiles growing to nauseating sizes around him. His heart beats too fast and his hands grow clammy. He wants to curl up in Death’s—
“Please, don’t do that, James.”
Harry’s steps stumble and he looks at Alice to his left, who he almost forgot was there. She had turned up outside of his class just before lunch and asked him to eat with her. Harry had hummed and shrugged, not really having a reason to say no.
“Er—what? Sorry, I zoned out.”
“You’ll like it here, James.” She smiles brightly and pushes the cafeteria doors open. “I’ve seen it.”
Harry frowns at her. Alice reminded him a lot of Luna when she first introduced herself, but the way she rambled on about nothing in particular as she toured him around this morning had slowly changed his mind. Luna isn’t someone to mindlessly fill silence after all. She lives as though her words are numbered, only talking when addressed or to drop a life altering comment. When he’d asked why she was so quiet, she told him that the world has many more interesting things to steal her attention so she has to focus on them. She did wrap the conversation up by saying he has too many wrackspurts and should wear her cleansing cork more often.
Alice isn’t on the same plane as Luna, but she is close. Harry hates the way those words crawl down his spine and light along his fingertips in warning, a siren blaring of seers and their prophecies.
“What do you mean?” He asks her hesitantly, stopping just in the doorway.
Alice freezes for a second too long. A second in which Harry can feel her mind racing, spots the table of teenagers she was walking towards, each of them listening intently although pretending not to. Which is odd, considering they’re an entire cafeteria distance away.
“Nothing.” Alice turns and her smile falters slightly as her eyes dim. Harry frowns at her more. “I just think you’ll love Forks. We didn’t really like it when we first moved.” She gestures to the table teenagers he’d saw her glance at this morning. They’re talking to each other, moving as though having lunch and enjoying their conversation. But Harry’s magic crackles in his palms at the scene—too posed, too fake . “But now we love it here. I think you will too,” she finishes, oblivious to Harry’s stress.
Alice’s explanation is rushed and hasty. Her smile is too-wide, eyes blinking too fast. Harry nods at her and shuffles back a step.
“Sorry, Alice. I’m not that hungry. I think I’m going to go for a walk outside.” He turns and heads back the way they came, throwing a quick look over his shoulder as the guilt churns in him for being rude. “I’ll see you later.”
“Alright, James,” Alice replies, sounding downtrodden.
Harry disappears into the carpark, fumbling a cigarette out of the packet and lighting it with his finger quickly, deciding it is a small enough action for someone to believe they were hallucinating if they saw him. With a deep drag of his cigarette, Harry realises half a school day is enough and loops his leg over his bike, kicking it off the stand and driving away with the helmet still locked on the handlebar.