“I wasn’t told that bit.”
Harry was… almost unreasonably anxious as he held his mirror in sweaty palms and twisted it side-to-side where his brothers once again had him sandwiched between them.
“Sirius, this is Sam. And this is Dean.”
Please act normal… please act—
“Well they’re a couple of handsome devils!”
“I like him already,” Dean said with a smug smirk while Harry could feel his face burn with mortification.
Why - why - would Sirius say that?!
Sirius was grinning wickedly in the mirror, apparently delighting in Harry’s tongue-tied humiliation.
That wasn’t a thing someone should say to someone else about their brothers. Bloody hell. Sirius really had lost all senses in Azkaban.
Harry had been apprehensive about calling Sirius. Or, more accurately, answering his calls to Harry. There was no good reason for it… in fact, there were only positives to introducing his brothers to his godfather.
Sam and Dean could see there really were more wizards than just Harry in the world. It would be another secret off Harry’s chest, off his conscious, and - if everything went terrible like things seemed to do when Harry was involved - then at least Sirius would know the faces of the blokes who killed Harry.
Not that Harry could puzzle out if he wanted Sirius to avenge him in that hypothetical scenario or not. It would be nice for someone to care enough about Harry to murder his murderers, but also… Harry rather liked his brothers and even if they killed him, he felt a heavy weight in his stomach when he thought about them dying.
Then Harry started to get a headache and he stopped pondering things that Sam swore wouldn’t happen.
Either way, Harry had low expectations for the call and Sirius still slid right beneath them.
“Hilarious,” Harry told Sirius drily. “You’re funny, Padfoot.”
“I am, aren’t I?” Sirius grinned. He seemed better, really, a little less gaunt, more color in his face. Harry was relieved to see it, Sirius didn’t deserve Azkaban and he didn’t deserve to suffer so much.
“So you’re an actual born-wizard?” Sam asked, peering in the mirror with a very Hermione-like expression. For some reason, Harry thought that Sam might never emerge from the library at Hogwarts if he ever went there.
“Are there other types of wizards?” Sirius asked Sam curiously. “We’re all just born how we are.”
“There are other types,” Dean told him. “Some humans leech power from demons and Gods and call themselves witches.”
“That’s where they get magic from?” Harry asked, looking over at Dean then. “I honestly thought they were just finding cursed objects and going mental with them.”
Dean and Sam, as one, turned unimpressed looks at where Bobby was kicked back in his recliner. Bobby’s face was covered with the brim of his hat, but he still raised his hands innocently.
“Don’t go blamin’ me cause I figured it out first,” Bobby grumbled. “If you two didn’t have your heads up your asses, you mighta got it.”
“Who’s that?” Sirius asked, stretching his neck in the mirror as if that would help him see better. Harry turned the mirror so Sirius could see Bobby while his brothers scowled and huffed at Bobby.
“This is Bobby,” Harry said.
“Ah. I can see he’s not related to you lot at all then,” Sirius quipped.
Harry couldn’t be sure, even with Dean’s snicker and Bobby’s raised middle finger, but he thought that was an insult of some sort. It just didn’t make sense to insult Bobby considering he had been quite kind to Harry, not including when he told Sam and Dean that he was a wizard.
“Don’t be a prat,” Harry hissed at Sirius when he aimed the mirror back at himself. Sirius looked smug and annoying- which reminded Harry of his question and his chance to clear his own name. “Oi, didn’t you tell me you could sing to a hellhound and put it to sleep like a Cerberus?”
“Did I?” Sirius looked surprised by that. It was a beer time for Sirius to be crazy because Sam and Dean were laughing above Harry’s head and it was Sirius who gave him the bad advice.
“Yes, you did,” Harry said, scowling. “When I called you before? Remember?”
“Mmm, I don’t,” Sirius said. And Harry couldn’t doubt him, not even his eyes went unfocused for a few seconds before Harry tapped the edge of the mirror with his fingernail, startling him.
“Sorry,” Sirius smiled at Harry cheerfully. “What’d you say?”
Harry felt a familiar pit in his stomach. One that worried that even if Sirius was physically looking better, Harry had no idea if he was better mentally or not. Sure, he wasn’t stark raving nutters anymore, but Harry still didn’t like him being alone in Spain with only Buckbeak to keep him company.
It was with the mental reminder to himself that he needed to call Sirius more often that Harry asked him one more question.
“Er… so Hermione’s parents were able to go in Diagon Alley with her… d’you think my brothers could go to one of those—”
“Not ‘one of them’,” Dean interrupted. “Area 51.”
“Dude, Dallas is closer,” Sam said with a roll of his eyes.
Harry didn’t care either way, his brothers had been playfully arguing over the list of wizarding cities in the States since they all woke up that morning. Without Hedwig - Harry was going to be annoyed by that for the rest of his life, he was sure. Who just sent an owl away after she flew so far?! - Harry had no way to reply to Ron’s letter.
Also… Harry wasn’t exactly sure what to do with the letter from Hogwarts he got, the one that included his supply list for fourth year. For the first time, thinking about going to Hogwarts was painful.
Hogwarts had been Harry’s first home, but, and Harry felt rather stupid even thinking it so he’d certainly never repeat it, wasn’t home sort of where your family was?
The Dursleys notwithstanding, of course.
Sirius had been grinning at Sam and Dean arguing over where they would go and he winked when he caught Harry’s eye again.
“Pup, I really don’t think you’ll have any trouble at all taking them to any of those cities,” Sirius assured Harry. “Who’s going to tell Harry Potter’s brothers they can’t be around magic?”
That… yeah.
Harry ended the call with Sirius a few minutes later with a promise to call more often and then shrugged under the weight of his brothers’ curious stares.
“The thing about Sirius…” Harry cleared his throat awkwardly. “Sirius is sort of insane, really. So you can’t take the things he says, well, you can’t take him serious.”
Bobby snorted and Harry swore he heard him mutter ’Boy Who Lived’, but if Sirius could have selective memory loss, Harry could feign hearing loss.
Neither of Harry’s brothers looked wholly convinced by Harry’s defense. They got distracted quickly though by a game of rock, paper, scissors to decide who got to pick the city they would go to.
Sam won and so they packed bags to head to Texas.
The three of them - Bobby insisted he had too much to do to ‘go sightseein’’ - only made it maybe fifty miles before the questions Harry had been waiting for began.
“Alright, kid,” Dean glanced up in the rearview mirror and caught Harry’s suddenly nervous eyes. “It’s a twelve hour drive, think you can tell us about fourteen years of being a freaking wizard in that time?”
“Mm, no,” Harry said. He chewed his lip and tried to decide if he really wanted to tell them everything they were clearly dying to know.
Sam swore that nobody wanted to kill Harry, that Harry wasn’t a thing to be hunted. And nobody had been nasty to Sirius at all. Dean had even hugged Harry, as surprising as that had been.
Bobby told Harry that morning that he only told Sam and Dean that he was a wizard after they read Ron’s incredibly incriminating letter.
So there were a lot of blanks that Harry could fill in. Some he would have to, just in case he caused a commotion in the city they drove to like he did in Diagon Alley. Other things… Harry was torn about.
Harry was a wizard. Nobody could ever change that. And Harry wouldn’t really want anyone to - even when he thought it was magic or family, it had been a tough debate in his head. That meant that other witches and wizards were like Harry’s community, in a way. Harry didn’t owe them anything, just the basic decency to not give away information that could get them hurt.
“You know how Ellen said that hunters share things with each other to help out?” Harry finally asked, catching Dean and Sam’s attention. “I can’t tell you about magic if you’re going to tell other people so they can hunt witches and wizards,” Harry went on when they made hummed sounds of agreement. “They’re not evil and I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Dean looked over at Sam and sighed, “Dude, fix it.”
Sam was barely holding a grin back when he turned in his seat to face Harry.
“We’re not asking for top secret magic information to destabilize your community, we’re asking what your life was like.” Sam quirked an eyebrow as if that was somehow an obvious distinction. “You know, since there’s no more secrets?”
Oh.
“Oh.” Harry blushed at the very well meaning and pointless stance he had taken then shrugged. Harry could talk about himself no problem, that wouldn’t hurt anyone else.
Harry was wrong on both counts.
It was actually rather hard to just talk about himself. It was easier when his brothers began shooting questions at him when they must have realized that Harry had no idea what to say.
“Why did Voldemort try and kill you when you were a baby?” Sam asked.
“No idea.”
“He dead?” Dean asked shortly.
“Er… probably not, no.”
That was an easy opening for Harry to explain about Quirrell —
“Unicorns are real?!” Sam punched a fist out in the air in front of him. “Yes!”
And then the diary —
“A fucking basilisk?!” Dean’s knuckles looked white where he was clenching the steering wheel. “Those are myths, dude. Legends.”
Harry pushed up the sleeve of his shirt, showing the scar the basilisk fang left.
“It was very real,” Harry promised. He grinned at Sam pointedly. “And much bloody larger than an anaconda.”
“That place sounds jacked,” Dean muttered after Harry finished telling him about the end of his second year at school. “What kind of man lets kids fight monsters? Aht,” Dean raised a hand when Sam opened his mouth. “Shut up, Samantha.”
“Hogwarts is brilliant,” Harry assured them, bemused as two more people seemed to dislike his school. Was Harry not describing it right? “I mean, there’s gits like Snape and Malfoy, but there’s also quidditch.”
It was nearly one by that point and Dean decided to pause the conversation only until after they stopped at a diner for lunch. Harry was much more comfortable by then, so far neither of his brothers had reacted terribly to anything Harry had told them.
After they took a red-vinyl covered booth and ordered food, Dean waved a lazy hand at Harry.
“Alright, kid, what’s a Snape?”
“The worst kind of monster, really,” Harry said seriously. “He teaches potions and he’s foul…”
Their food arrived while Harry filled them in on his ongoing feud with his potions professor. Dean seemed amused by it all, Sam didn’t.
“They let this guy teach?” Sam asked, affronted. “He should be fired!”
“I keep hoping that one of the creatures in the forest will eat him, but I reckon even acromantula have better taste,” Harry said sadly.
“Acromantula?” Dean had already finished his burger and was dunking chips in ketchup. He paused with one chip halfway to his mouth to blink at Harry. “Like giant spiders?”
That was an understated way to describe the murderous spiders that Hagrid sent Harry and Ron to talk to in their second year. Harry told them about the interaction though, even including the bit about the car that saved their lives.
“Baby would do the same for me, I’m sure,” Dean said. They were back on the road by then and Harry laughed when he saw the loving way that Dean caressed his car’s steering wheel.
“Yeah, dude, that makes sense,” Sam said with heavy sarcasm. He shook his head and leaned his seat all the way back, leaving his upper body in the backseat beside Harry. Sam turned and looked at Harry, his eyes showing he was thinking about something rather hard.
Harry waited while acting perfectly normal. Sam… Harry really liked Sam.
When Harry told him about the place crash, Sam didn’t tell Harry anything stupid, he just said that he figured Harry had crashed it and he seemed to accept that Harry swore it was an accident. Harry was grateful that he promised to not tell Dean about it, doubting that Dean would be as understanding as Sam.
It was also something of a relief to tell someone. The weight of it was still there, dragging Harry down when he thought of the horrible thing he had caused, but it was lighter.
Harry even slept the night before without any odd dreams. Well, Harry had a weird dream about Voldemort and Pettigrew killing a muggle man together, but that had been it. The dream had bothered Harry when he woke up with a pain in his scar, he meant to ask Sirius if he thought it was strange or not, but he had forgotten in the face of everything else that was going on.
With Sam’s soft and curious eyes boring in Harry’s, Harry silently pleaded with his brother to not bring up anything about the airplane.
Sam didn’t. His question caught Harry off-guard actually.
“What’s quidditch?” Sam asked.
Harry relaxed in his seat and grinned. That was an easy question with only one real answer.
“Quidditch is the greatest sport to ever exist,” Harry said. “It’s a bit confusing at first though, let me try and explain…”
It took an hour and several diagrams drew on a receipt for Harry to explain the sport. When Harry moved on from quidditch to broomsticks, Sam laughed loudly.
“Jesus, freaking Mini Dean back here,” Sam said, smacking at Dean playfully. Sam had been in a great mood all day really. Harry wondered if he was relieved to know that he was… a little bit magic?
Harry actually didn’t know what Sam was, but Sam had seemed positively cheerful since he and Harry talked about magic the day before.
“A broom is not faster than my car,” Dean said with a frown. Dean didn’t seem to be in any different of a mood, but Sam’s cheer must have been mildly contagious because Harry decided to pick at him.
“My Firebolt can hit one fifty in less than ten seconds,” Harry bragged, smirking when Dean shot him a look in the mirror.
“My car has air conditioning,” Dean pointed out.
“No need for air conditioning when you’re flying through the sky.”
“Heat, Harry. My car has heat.”
“Heating charms, Dean.”
“‘Heating charms’,” Dean mimicked Harry childishly. Harry and Sam both laughed when Dean raised his middle finger before turning the volume up all the way on the radio. “YOUR BROOMSTICK DOESN’T HAVE OZZY,” he yelled.
No, It didn’t, but Harry wasn’t sure that was a negative.
The rest of the drive was sort of boring. Harry fell asleep a few times, his head lolling against the window. Sam went to sleep with his chair reclined back, snoring loudly.
Dean stopped once they got to Texas for fuel and Harry sheepishly followed him inside, desperate for a bathroom.
“How do you drive for so long?” Harry asked when he finished. Dean was standing in front of a drink cooler, chewing on a stick for a sucker Harry hoped he was going to buy, contemplating the drinks.
“It’s a labor of love, little bro,” Dean said absently. He reached in the cooler and started grabbing red cans of cola. He passed one to Harry and carried the other two himself.
“You don’t get bored?” Harry asked, accepting random bags of crisps and sticks of jerky when they were handed to him.
“Nope.” Dean led his way back to the register, Harry following a few steps behind. “Driving’s relaxing, kid. You know?”
Harry thought of how he felt when he was flying. Not when he was chasing the thrill of catching the snitch, not when the stands were filled with his friends who cheered for him, but when it was just Harry in the sky… drifting.
Maybe Harry and Dean did have something in common after all.
Dean woke Sam up after they left the fuel station so he could navigate the directions they printed off from Bobby’s. Harry was incredibly skeptical about Sirius’s information, but surely he had to be right every once in a while.
The garden they drove to was lit up even in the dusk with fairy lights and candles lined down pathways. Harry thought it was pretty, but Dean scoffed and called it girlie. They had parked the car in a nearby lot and Harry raised both eyebrows when he saw Dean move his gun from the car to his waistband.
“Are you planning on shooting someone?” Harry asked, half anxious and half annoyed. Why did Dean have to carry that on him everywhere?
“Sammy’s packing too,” Dean said nonchalantly as he locked the car and tucked his keys in his pocket. When Harry whipped his head over to look at Sam, Sam was huffing at Dean.
“Real nice, Dean,” Sam said, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slouched.
“Anything to even the playing field,” Dean quipped back cheerily. “C’mon, let’s go find this super secret magic statue.”
Harry had his backpack over his shoulders, preferring to have his wand and cloak on him just in case, and followed Sam and Dean in the gardens. Even with the sun down, it was still hot and Harry was sweating in just jeans and a t-shirt, he had no idea how Sam wore a long-sleeved over-shirt.
The gardens were pretty enough for Harry to ignore the heat for though. There were a lot of fountains they passed, little staged areas for ceremonies, and loads of picnic tables. Despite how ‘girlie’ Dean thought it was, even Sam seemed interested in the gardens they passed and he would make comments on occasion about different types of plants
“I think you’d like one of my dormmates,” Harry grinned after Sam told him all about the history of Morning Glories. Apparently they were used in divination and summoning rituals, which made Sam think they were getting closer to the statue Sirius told them about.
“Is he a nerd too?” Dean asked, shoving Sam’s shoulder and nearly making him trip. Sam shoved him right back, actually knocking Dean off the path and causing him to stumble.
“Er… he just likes plants,” Harry said, staying out of shoving range.
Harry had enough of getting knocked on his arse when they’d all been sparring, thanks.
In the true shock of Harry’s life so far, Sirius’s information seemed to hold up. It wasn’t far from where Sam first saw the Morning Glories that they found the statue Sirius swore held the entrance to the magical city.
“Cool, so you just bippity boppity boo it?” Dean asked, squinting at the normal looking statue. It was just a woman, a founding figure of the States the plaque said.
“No, we just run in.”
Harry backed up a few steps and took a deep breath. Sirius said the entrance was the same as the one for Platform Nine and Three Quarters, which just meant —
“URGH!!”
Harry had taken a running start at the statue and crashed into it, smashing his face in the concrete and bouncing backwards with a warm and wet pain blossoming on his face. Sam was closest to him and caught Harry before he fell.
It wasn’t a wholly appreciated gesture as Sam and Dean were both filling the night air with their loud laughter, entirely at Harry’s expense.
“It’s not funny,” Harry hissed. His nose was bleeding and he started to scrunch his shirt up to staunch it when Dean offered him a black bandana to use instead. Harry bit back a groan when he pressed it to his nose - it actually hurt like hell to have a broken nose, no matter how many times it happened.
“You ran face first in a statue,” Dean said, as if Harry or the blood that wouldn’t stop dripping down his face needed reminding. “It’s pretty funny.”
No, It wasn’t. It was the final straw for Harry when it came to Sirius’s advice. Never again would Harry so much as ask for input on his homework. If Harry forgot how to tie his laces? Sirius would be the last person Harry would ask. If Harry ever forgot his own name—
The point was, Harry was pissed at Sirius and his rubbish advice. And Harry’s nose hurt and at some point he was going to end up with a crooked nose because even magic couldn’t fix stupidity.
“Here, let’s just sit.” Sam stopped his laughing long enough to lead Harry to a nearby bench. “Don’t tip you head, tilt. Tilt your head forward and pinch the bridge.”
Harry did as Sam directed him and only kept his head lifted enough to see Dean facing him with a grin and that bloody statue behind him.
“Why did you run at the statue?” Sam asked, his voice rather choked. Harry only answered him because Sam had a hand on his shoulder and even if he was laughing, he was also trying to be nice.
“The platform for the Hogwarts train is just a wall you run at,” Harry said, nearly indecipherable. Between the muffling from the bandana Harry held that covered part of his mouth and the way he was trying to avoid tasting his own blood, he wasn’t sure if Sam understood him or not.
But it didn’t matter.
Because while Harry was glowering at the statue in annoyance, two people suddenly appeared just behind it.
Harry absently kept the bandana on his face and jumped to his feet. The two people who just walked out of the very solid statue were walking away in the opposite direction and Harry shoved past Dean to get to them.
It was two witches, certainly. They were older than Harry, maybe Sam’s age. They both had paper shopping bags on their arms and Harry felt a jolt of excitement when he saw the word ‘potions’.
Which was the first time Harry had ever been excited to see that word since before he started Hogwarts.
“Excuse me!” Harry made an honest go at scrubbing his face before calling to the witches. It must not have worked much because they both turned and the one with blue streaks in her hair made a genuinely disgusted twist of her face.
The other one looked from Harry to where his brothers had kept up just behind him and her eyes suddenly sparkled and she elbowed her companion. The one with the blue stopped grimacing and suddenly giggled…
Girls honestly were the worst.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I don’t know how to get in there?” Harry said, gesturing toward the statue behind him with a flap of his hand.
“In where?” The young woman with the curly black hair and dark skin smiled innocently at Harry. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Harry said, gearing himself up to do something truly distasteful. When Harry wiped at the blood on his nose again, he also casually used his forearm to brush his fringe off his forehead.
The witch with the black curls didn’t notice anything, but her friend did.
“Oh!” She dropped her bags and gawked at Harry for a moment - worse than giggling, that was. “You’re Harry Potter!”
“Harry here’s my brother,” Dean said smoothly, stepping closer and putting a hand on his shoulder. Harry could just sense that if he looked up, Dean would be giving the witch a smile, he could just tell.
So he didn’t look up.
Also Dean was idiot.
“Harry Potter has brothers?” The witch with the black curls looked appraisingly from Harry to Dean to Sam and Harry didn’t like the spark of interest in her eyes at all.
“You guys know Harry?” Sam asked hesitantly, his gaze going from the witches to where Harry was burning with embarrassment.
“Duh,” the blue haired one said. They both had heavy American accents that were honestly making Harry’s head ache worse. The one with the curls must have noticed Harry’s twinge of annoyance and thought it was pain though because she shuffled their group closer to the statue and looked around carefully before pulling a wand from…
If Hermione knew that some witches kept their wands inside their shirts she would die.
“I’m Harley,” the witch with the black curls and wand in hand said. She smiled brightly at Harry and aimed her wand at him. “Would you like me to fix that?”
“Yes, please,” Harry sighed. He closed his eyes and felt warm magic wash over him, taking away the sting and pain in the center of his face. While he gingerly checked that his nose was still in the right position, the witch with blue hair introduced herself as Aline.
“Is there a different way to enter the town?” Sam asked, thankfully staying on topic while Dean seemed content to sort of silently flirt with Harley.
“You said alohamora when you ran at it?” Aline asked Harry.
“No, no he didn’t,” Dean laughed, his hand still on Harry’s shoulder flexing with his laughter.
“I wasn’t told that bit,” Harry admitted.
“Here, I’ll show you.” Harley shifted all her bags to one arm and offered the open one to Dean with a small smile on her lips. “If you’re up for it.”
“Oh, I’m always up for it,” Dean said, dropping Harry’s shoulder and taking her arm immediately. He winked at Harry and Sam when they moved to give him room to jump back through the statue.
Harry kept a close watch, not wanting to smash his face again, and let out a puff of relief when Dean and Harley disappeared before she could even finish saying alohamora.
“Shit.” Sam chuckled and looked thoroughly excited when their brother just disappeared inside the statue. “Uh, Harry? You want to try again?”
“Have fuuuun,” Aline told them, backing away with one more wink for either Harry or Sam… probably Sam. “Tell Harley she’s such a hoe for me, will you?”
Harry wasn’t going to, but he still politely thanked her for her help before he grabbed Sam’s wrist. There was no reason to think that Sam would be blocked… Hermione’s parents were able to get to Diagon Alley and Platform Nine and Three Quarters, it was just an abundance of caution.
Huh.
Harry had never really used that before.
Harry and Sam didn’t face any problems at all. One moment they were running toward a solid cement statue, the next they were jogging out from beneath an archway.
“This is amazing,” Sam whispered, looking around them in awe.
It was amazing, actually. The weather had been sticky and hot just seconds ago, but it was a pleasant heat in the wizarding town they entered.
The sun was still up there as well, looking just as real as it always did. When Harry turned to look at the archway they came in through, he saw an American flag, another flag he didn’t recognize, and between them was a bold sign:
Texiagon Trail
Even just from where Harry stood, he could see it was more of a city than the quaint shopping district that Diagon Alley was or the sleepy village of Hogsmeade. There were digital looking advertisements floating through the skies, offering deals of books, clothes, and alchemy supplies. The buildings that started across the street from them were normal looking muggle buildings with people walking up and down the sidewalks in front of them.
There were blokes on broomsticks in the air, the sound of owls hooting from somewhere, and Harry felt the overwhelming sense of home.
When Harry turned to smile at Sam, introduce him to the magical city, he saw Sam was giving an exasperated look at…
Dean.
Dean with Harley, standing just outside the archway, their heads tilted together and giggles pouring from Harley’s lips at whatever Dean was whispering.
“Dean!” Sam whistled sharply at Dean and Dean didn’t even look at him. “Dude, come on!”
“I’ll catch up,” Dean called to them. He had a lazy smile on his face when he finally gave them their attention after Sam whistled again. “Harley offered to give me a tour, get me a real feel for the place.”
“Don’t.” Sam grabbed Harry’s elbow and shook his head when Harry took a bemused step toward Dean. Sam didn’t look confused at all, just resigned. “The good news is that Dean is proving what I told you, we don’t care if you’re a wizard.”
“And the bad news?” Harry asked, still watching Dean flirt with the witch.
“It’s going to be a nightmare trying to find him later,” Sam said solemnly. “Come on, let’s go find you an owl.”
Harry shrugged off Dean’s behavior, figuring that Sam was right. Dean didn’t look at Harley like he wanted to kill her, so maybe they really didn’t care about magic. If they did, they were hiding it quite well.
That wasn’t true, actually.
Sam was so excited about everything they saw that it sort of made Harry more excited, like he was seeing magic for the first time through Sam’s eyes.
There were handy maps of the city at a stand just across the street from the archway. They weren’t unlike Harry’s map of Hogwarts, with dots that indicated where they were and directions that lit up after telling the map what you wanted.
“I should see if Professor Lupin can add these to my map,” Harry murmured thoughtfully when an orange path lit up to show the directions to Lone Star Aviary.
They started walking and Harry was torn between watching the map, looking around at all the people and shops, and keeping Sam from wandering away by accident.
“What map?” Sam asked, clearly distracted by all the sights, sounds, and smells around them.
“I’ve got one of Hogwarts,” Harry said. He folded up the map and stuck it in his back pocket, not the same one with the bloody bandana in it, and figured the path was simple enough and Harry wanted to see the American shops.
Harry chatted about his map, telling Sam how he came to have it and who originally made it, while they walked together. Sam got distracted a few times - once by a bookstore that Harry just knew they’d be returning to after finding an owl - but it wasn’t until someone actually stopped them that Sam must have remembered the witches comment from earlier.
“Pardon me.” The man that stopped them was older, with tan and wrinkled skin, a white goatee, and wide blue eyes. He had on a funny tan-colored cowboy hat and he actually blocked the sidewalk that Harry and Sam were walking down.
“Are you Harry Potter?”
Harry shifted uncomfortably and instinctively reached up to smooth his hair down, unsure how he was so easily recognized.
“I heard ya talkin’ about Hogwarts and realized you look a hell of a lot like Harry Potter,” the man explained, probably guessing at how Harry wondered how he was recognized. “Would you mind?”
The man whipped his hat off his head and had a marker appear in thin air just beside it when he brandished it out to Harry with a grin that showed one missing front tooth.
“Er… sorry, I’m not… him,” Harry hedged, scooting around the man to pass him. The man exclaimed an insult when Harry picked up his pace and began speed-walking away, taking a left at random, Sam just beside him.
“Dude, why do people know you?” Sam asked quietly when they took another turn and ended up on a very crowded street that had loads of temporary stands set up down both sides of the street. Some of the stands were selling normal magical items - robes, spell books, potion ingredients. Other stands were selling food and treats, mostly muggle foods but also Harry saw a stand for ‘Best Bloody Meals for the Starving Vampire!’
Harry assumed they meant bloody literally instead of an exclamation.
“Er… remember when I told you about the wizard that killed my parents?” Harry started, keeping his head ducked and his voice low. When Sam said he did, Harry explained a bit more. “So… the wizard was basically leading a war and he actually tried to kill me. There’s a spell, I don’t know it, but it kills people instantly. Except- except I didn’t die.”
Just Harry’s mum, whose screams echoed in Harry’s nightmares, recently accompanied by the screams of 107 muggles dying a fiery death. Harry’s dad too, the man that gave Harry his name and tried to fight off Voldemort for him.
“So you basically survived magic Hitler as a baby?” Sam asked. He huffed a laugh and stuck his hands in his pockets, once more having his head swivel side-to-side to take everything in. “Awesome.”
It wasn’t ‘awesome’, it was annoying and it was the worst sort of way that a person could be famous.
Harry spotted some quidditch advertisements floating around and thought that would be a brilliant way to be recognized.
There was one with the two teams that must have made it to the World Cup - Ireland and Bulgaria - that had their seekers scowling at each other.
‘Aidan Lynch vs Viktor Krum’, it said, ‘see the showdown on August 22nd! Tickets on sale at Gametime Ticket Office!’
“Man, you really like quidditch, don’t you?” Sam asked, seeing Harry eyeing those advertisements with starry eyes.
“It’s just brilliant, Sam,” Harry said. “If you saw it, you’d… you would…” Harry trailed off and looked over at Sam… Harry’s brother… Harry’s not-quite-a-muggle brother who had never seen a quidditch match…
But who could…
“Sam… do you want to see a quidditch match?” Harry asked slowly, liking the idea more and more.
Harry was too young to buy an international portkey. Sam wasn’t.
And Harry desperately wanted to see the Quidditch World Cup. The only thing that would make it better was taking his brothers to see it.