Survivor

Harry woke with a deep breath. He was happy that his muscles were cooperating much better than they were yesterday morning. It was unfortunate, though, that his bedclothes were now completely covered in sweat. He felt even worse when he realized that his perspiration got bad enough to drive Jason out from under the covers and onto the headboard where he currently slept. 

Slowly, he scooted over to the edge of his bed, placed his hand on the wooden handle of his wand, and allowed himself to revel in the massive flow of energy that he assumed came from within himself.

“No threats,” the wand whispered into his hand, and he believed it. 

The very beginnings of sunlight filtered through the window by his bed. That was fortunate because he could do absolutely nothing with this room until he learned what Iris referred to as “the basics of magic”. She said that she would show him all about it this morning when he made good on his promise to show up her breakfast with his own. It was, however, recommended that he read the first chapter or so of the magical theory book he was assigned for his first year of Hogwarts. Apparently, magic was much more complicated than he originally thought it to be. Knowing that it was scarily early in the morning, he felt comfortable with pulling out the aforementioned book and doing a little bit of reading. 

Opening the book to the first page, Harry tilted himself away from the window to let the slivers of sunlight illuminate the words line by line.

‘Rule number one that every student must understand before attempting magic intentionally is that it always comes with a price. Witches and wizards have been given the extraordinary power to defy the laws that govern our universe, but doing so requires a payment from the wizard through the energy within them. Once a spell is cast, it cannot be taken back, and the price will be taken in full… Even if there is nothing left to take.’

Ominous.

The book certainly made sure to warn off aspiring mages from delving too far into something before they were experienced enough to deal with it. Was it truly this deadly though? Harry knew he had already performed purposeful magic before, and he felt the drain that came with it. Never before, however, had he gotten close to going broke. Was that something specific to himself like so much else, or did the book not give everything there was to know about the price of casting magic? 

He continued reading, but Harry had to admit that most of it seemed like a jumble of messy information with little to no value for him to take from it. Was there anyone who could understand the vague rubbish spouting from the book that first years were supposed to be reading? Instead of pushing himself further when he wasn’t making progress, he put the book aside. He would continue once he grasped the things already thrown at him. There was no rush. He had all summer to get this down. 

It was about two hours later that Harry heard a knock on his door, and he wasted no time getting up and unlocking it for the blonde woman waiting to enter. She looked surprised and pleased at the same time that the door was opened for her. Every day before this one, she had to let herself in. He never rejected her presence, but he never invited it either. 

“That eager to lose, Harry?” she teasingly asked.

Harry moved aside and let her enter his room, “We'll see.”

She stepped up to the stove and waited for Harry to come up next to her. “Have you read the first bit of magical theory?” He nodded silently. “What did you learn from it?”

She wanted to make sure he understood the basics before teaching him how to use magic in a common house setting.

“All magic comes with a price… I read the three components that go into spells, but I didn’t understand it. I’ve never done any of that stuff. I always wanted something to happen, and it just worked for me.”

Iris nodded knowingly. “You're in a very odd class of wizards who evolved from using magic accidentally to using it on purpose without understanding the theory behind it or truly exercising control. I’m not surprised it didn’t take well with you.”

She looked around the room as if she were contemplating something before lighting up with a smile. “Come here, maybe something more practical will help.”

She led him over to a candle sitting on the counter by his bedside. He looked between it and Iris with both curiosity and confusion in his eyes. He stayed silent, though, and trusted her to teach. “So what're the three components of a spell that you read about?”

Harry tapped his finger against the wood of his nightstand. “Incantation, intent, and willpower.”

Iris almost cringed at his choice of words. “Is that really what the book called them?”

Harry nodded his head while hiding his bashfulness at her disappointment. He was surprised she managed to pull something like that out of him. He hadn’t felt anything akin to embarrassment since his days in pre-school with the teachers who actually cared about his progress. 

“Okay," she said, trying to find where to go from there. "So what did you read about incantation?”

“They said that every spell needs you to state what you want to happen for it to work, but I've never used words for my magic.”

Iris once again nodded at him with an understanding smile. “That's because the magic we practice is very different from the kind you're used to. Tell me, have you ever gotten really angry and made something happen without really choosing how it happened?”

Harry would've needed short-term memory loss to forget about the countless times that had happened. He gave her an affirmative without giving any specifics. He had enough problems dealing with the stranger’s opinions of his previous home-life to have Iris throwing her own views in as well. 

“Accidental magic is what we call that. Some kids like you have a lot more control over when and where it happens, but we call it accidental because the effect is uncontrollable. It's your magic’s automatic response to an extreme amount of desire or, as you read in your book, willpower. We will get to that in a second, but the gist of it is that with our method of magic, we can control what happens on top of where and when.”

Well, that made a lot more sense to him than the book did. It was true that he didn’t necessarily want to turn his teacher bald that one time. He was just angry and wanted something bad to happen to her. What that turned out to be, now that he thought about it, was something beyond his control. 

“The real first stage to our type of magic is some type of definitive statement of desire. It can come in many forms. Native Americans, for example, use very complicated rituals involving dancing, eating, drinking, possibly even sacrifices from animals, themselves, or others. Deaf and mute wizards generally use things like hand signs. Most of us use incantations, a verbal statement of desire, combined with wand movements if the wizard or witch prefers to use them for power or control related issues.”

“But why would using wand movements help with power or control?”

Iris cringed slightly. “I don’t want to give you too much too fast. I probably shouldn’t have even brought it up. You're so attentive to everything that I forgot, for a moment, you aren’t familiar with these things.” Upon seeing the deadpan that was Harry’s facial expression, she decided to explain it and see where it went. “Fine, I'll try it. You do know what the second part of a spell is, correct?”

“Intent."

Iris nodded curtly. “Yes, it is. Our incantations for a spell are similar to what a blueprint does for a house. It sets up ground rules for what we want the spell to do and at the same time confines our magic to a very specific path, but blueprints don't include the house's personality, only its structure. Interior design, painting, and the overall tone of the house are decided independently of the blueprints. Much the same, our words don’t describe everything we want our spells to do. For example, when I cooked the toast yesterday, I commanded the bread to levitate, but they were flying all around me, up and down, left and right, in and out of pans.

"This was all controlled by the things I wanted them to do in my mind. This gives you much more versatility with a spell, but it also takes a lot more concentration, control, and power from me than it would if I had confined myself to a stricter route by expressing more of my intentions in a physical manner.” Harry looked absolutely lost, and this was exactly why Iris regretted saying what she did. "Here, the most common incantation to summon something is called ‘Accio ’.”

She said the incantation and watched as the candle flew to her hand before looking to Harry to see if he understood. She smiled proudly when she saw realization strike him like a bat on the back of his head. 

“You could've summoned anything with that spell, though, right?”

Iris nodded her head succinctly, waiting for him to finish the thought to see if he could work it out for himself. It would undoubtedly make more sense to him if he could come up with the answer in his own words. 

“So are you saying that it would cost less for you to cast the spell if you told it to give you the candle instead of saying it and choosing the candle with your mind?”

“Exactly,” she said passionately. “The second rule of magic that you'll learn in chapter two is that magic cannot be taken back. Once you say what you want, direct your intent, and let your power flow, whatever you say is going to happen whether you decide you want it to or not. If I said ‘Accio candle’ instead of 'Accio', the exact same thing would happen, but I would be forced to summon the candle instead of, perhaps, the bedsheets, and it would cost quite a bit less. You're essentially trading adaptability and variability for a more controlled, magically efficient process.”

Magic was so much more complicated than he thought it would be. These were things that he would be forced to think about on a constant basis until it became second nature to balance power and control to cast spells effectively. 

“Okay, I get that, but how does it relate to wand movements?”

“That's a more philosophical question than anything. What do words really mean? They're just sounds, right?”

“I guess, but not really though. They would be useless if they didn’t mean anything to me.”

Iris pointed at him with a triumphant grin, “Ah! See!? What matters is that it means something to you. When you say chair, you mean the wooden things you sit in because that is what 'chair' means to you. It's the same with wand movements. If you can connect a certain “ritual”, “pattern”, or “habit” with a certain spell, it will do the exact same thing as an incantation will. In other words, you will sacrifice the time and versatility you save by casting without the movements for an easier time with casting the spell itself. The more things you have that connect your desires to a definitive statement, the further your magic will go.”

“But wouldn’t that mean two people could do the same spell while doing different things? How does that work?”

“And now you get to the crux of magical theory, Harry. How definitive can something like magic really get? It's extremely personal. Of course, with things like words, many people will be the same in what they mean unless there's some kind of difference in dialect or language. Besides that, many people have their own unique ways of approaching and performing magic. That's why I very much advise against getting too stuck within the standardized ways that school is going to teach you to use your own magical core. As long as you have a definitive statement of desire and the correct intentions, the way you choose to actually express those desires is nothing more or less than what feels comfortable to you.”

Of course, an artist would be the one to hold such opinions. He honestly began to feel very lucky that he had a guide who valued individual freedom so much, especially when it came to magic. He would have surely flopped in school if he was told to perform things the way the book did. It was far too rigid and structured for someone so used to letting his magic flow freely. 

“So what about willpower?”

Iris sniffed at the word, “If you want to call it that, then I won’t stop you, but I call it desire. Remember when I told you that you let out power when you get angry, scared, or excited?”

Harry nodded.

“Well, it's the same thing with our structured system. Just saying a word and thinking about what you want the spell to do isn’t enough to make a change; you need to give the spell power as well. This is why you have to desire or will the change to happen. If you don’t care about the spell working, then you won’t release enough power to charge the spell, and very bad things can happen to magic when it's improperly powered. The more you want a spell to work, naturally, the more power you pump into it. A lot of spells that require a lot of power also require you to really want the spell to work.”

That explained why his magic seemed to ramp up with how angry he was. The more determined he was to do something, the more power he emptied from his core and the more drastic his magic’s solution was to a problem. When he wanted his teacher hurt, she went bald; when he wanted his uncle hurt, he turned into a monster and almost slaughtered his entire family. Both Iris and the book did not understate the dangers of using magic before understanding its consequences. 

“Do you want to try one before I teach you how to use the stove?” Harry was very enthusiastic with the affirmative he gave her. “Here, grab your wand.”

Harry picked it up, and the power flowing through him almost howled at the thought of getting a chance to do something more than giving power to an enchanted book. 

“To light a candle, there're a few incantations you can use. ‘Scintilla’ is probably the simplest. Its incantation is meant to summon a small spark, but ‘igniculus’ is another method that summons a small flame. All you need to do is say the incantation while intending the small spark or flame to come into existence right on top of the candlewick. It's important that your intent is clearly meant for a small spark or flame. The incantations are for very tiny effects, so if you intend for them to make a big one, then you will either mess up the spell or push way too much power into the spell to make it work with your incompatible intentions.”

Harry was about to cast it when his curiosity interrupted him, “Why can’t I just say ‘flame’ or 'spark' in English? Doesn’t it only matter that the words mean something to me and connect to a certain magical effect?”

Iris nodded very slowly. “You're technically right, but it is a very bad idea to use the languages you actually speak for spellwork.”

“But wouldn’t that be so much easier!?” Harry exclaimed as if the idea of using Latin was preposterous. “I already know English. Wouldn't all of those years of connections make my spells easier to cast?”

“Yes, but that's the problem. Imagine that you learned to do magic in English. You already have a connection to what the word means, so all you have to do is connect words to magical effects. You would probably progress with leaps and bounds if you didn't have to draw those initial connections. Years later, though, you end up getting mad at your friend one day and tell them that you wished they would just die. If you start using magic in your spoken language, you risk using it accidentally when you're emotional."

Now that he thought about it, Vernon would be dead hundreds of times over by now with the number of times he really and truly proclaimed the man’s eventual demise in his cupboard. Instead, he pointed his wand at the candle and thought about the two words Iris told him he could use. He would have asked for wand movements, but he despised the thought of restricting himself any more than necessary. 

“Igniculus.”

He imagined that the small fire spawned right on top of the candle, and he wanted to see how his magic would respond so badly that he had to put a cork on his excitement to stop an ocean of power from pouring out of his arm and into his wand instead of the gentle stream he needed. A miniature flame jumped into existence on top of the candle and began to burn as it caught the wick on fire too. He barked out a small laugh at his success and looked up to see Iris staring at him in shock. 

Harry immediately felt uncomfortable, and Iris almost smacked herself before she could wipe the look off of her face. 

“Don’t worry. It isn’t unusual for some of us to get things on our first try. I was only surprised that you got your first spell on the first try. Conjuring is normally one of the more complicated forms of magic. I should've expected it if you're already proficient at animagery,” Iris didn’t think that Harry looked like he believed her, so she decided to switch the subject. “Come here. I’ll show you how to work the stove.”

They both went up to the stove, and Iris looked at the boy with a kind smile before swishing her wand and making the food appear out of thin air. 

“That spell is a little advanced for someone who hasn’t taken charms yet. If you still want to learn after you have some more experience, I’ll show you how to do it later. Do you remember how I told you about the different ways that mages can express their desires?”

“Yes.”

“Well, one way is through writing or art. We call them runes, and you will learn a lot about them in Hogwarts if you want around your third year. You should definitely learn more about normal magic before delving into runes, but the very basics are all you need to use them as long as they have already been designed," she pointed at the stove coil. “Most appliances in wizarding households are based on runes. The intent and the statement of desire are taken care of when the creator of the rune makes it. The only thing you need to do is pump your own magical power into it because, as you know, magic only works when you give it something. The catalog in Flourish and Blotts has runes on the back cover that summons the book you point to with your wand just like I did with the candle.”

“How do you know what it's going to do if all of its instructions are made beforehand?” 

Iris chuckled, “You're getting seriously deep for your first time using magic, Harry, but what you just described is pretty much the entire field of curse-breaking, warding, and ward-breaking in one second. The only way to tell is if the one who made it told you, or you find and analyze the rune until you're confident that you understand its purpose. The things they use to create the rune will have to be just as connected to the magic’s effect as an incantation.”

The world only got deeper the more questions he asked, and, now, he had even more about wards and curses that he refrained from asking. 

“This particular rune, however,” Iris said, knocking him out of his thoughts. “Will heat up the coil. You will have to experiment a bit to get it down because the heat corresponds to the power you put into it.”

Harry examined the coil, looking for the rune.

“It's underneath the coil,” she supplied for him.

“Is this how you made the shower turn on for me?”

Iris nodded her head, “Yes, it was. Showers here have a rune that conjures water. I just supplied it power for you. It's very common in wizarding households for the adults to power things for the children until they get a wand and learn how to power runes for themselves," she paused to let Harry absorb the tidbit of info she gave on normal wizarding life. “With the aptitude you just showed for the fire-conjuring spell, though, I doubt you will need my help with working any of the appliances here once you figure out where the runes are located.”

Harry nodded gently as he hovered his hand over the burner and closed his eyes. Just like the book, he could feel the power almost begging to flow down his arm and into the burner. Now, however, he knew that it was actually trying to get into a rune that lied beneath it. Scrunching his face in concentration, he let the power leak from his palm and into the rune. It felt very natural; so natural, in fact, that he accidentally turned the iron red-hot in less than a second. Harry immediately realized just how much precision was required to regulate the power he let out by wanting the rune to heat the iron more or less. It took a certain level of constant concentration to keep the stream from getting too big or small. 

Iris told him with complete confidence that it was only because of its unnaturalness that he found it so hard. She guaranteed him that it would be no harder than a simple thought to make it work flawlessly once he got the hang of it. He could only hope she was right. He would end up melting himself in the shower at this rate.

“So,” she asked him cockily? “Do you still want to try to show me up, or are you chickening out now that you know what it takes?”

Harry was no longer as confident as he was before. Heat was something he had to have complete control over if he wanted to properly cook. He was struggling with one stream of power, and he was going to need to use five to cook anywhere near the same level as he did at the Dursleys. That, however, would not become a situation that improved without practice. 

“Just give me a second. I need to see how my magic compares to muggle stovetops. Let me cook one of the four eggs first to get a feel for it.”

Iris immediately took an egg from the carton and handed it to him before conjuring a stool and sitting down a few feet away to, as she called it, “watch the master.”

Harry looked around the kitchen counters for the tools he would normally use to make food. He was even less confident when he found out that he had none of them. 

“Can you make a spatula?” he asked Iris. “I can’t cook with levitation like you do.”

Iris looked more confident by the second while she muttered a spell under her breath and handed him a wooden spatula. This was going to be the most improvised breakfast he had ever made. He was just about to crack the egg over the pan when he remembered that these people probably didn’t have nonstick pans. 

“Did you cast a spell to make the food not stick to the pans, or do you have nonstick?”

Iris looked shocked at the question, “Nonstick? I don’t know what that is. We just cast a spell that makes the pan slippery. It is a simple charm, but I’ll do it for you today. Give me all of the pans you’re going to use.”

He handed her four pans, and he heard her mumble a spell before handing each one back. She walked up to the pan sitting on the hot coil next, and she made sure that Harry was watching before she pointed her wand at the pan.

“Teris."

The pan took on a bit of a sheen, and Harry was astounded to find that the egg slid even smoother across the spelled pan than it did on the ones owned by the Dursleys. It was a task and a half to keep the egg from burning, but he managed to find the equivalency between his magical power and the muggle stove dials. The real problem was that he had so much power to give that his magic almost seemed to be fighting to get out in larger amounts than he needed. 

Once the egg was finished and plated, Harry put the other pans onto the burners and played around with pumping different amounts of magic into the five runes on the stovetop. He was surprised that his experience with cooking actually made the task easier than it would’ve been otherwise. He was used to managing lots of things at the same time. It was an essential skill to make a good meal. This gave him experience with keeping a close eye on different strings of action, and it allowed him to limit the different streams of power he had to use with an efficiency that felt very good. He was so enthralled with the ease at which it came to him that he didn’t notice the way Iris marveled at his natural ability. 

Iris imagined that this must be how Leopold felt watching an eight-year-old Mozart compose music that he spent most of his life mastering. It was as if magic came to him as swimming did to an otter. It took her a long time to master the powering of runes, and the boy was plowing through it like this was the coolest game he had ever discovered. She wasn’t lying to him when she said his proficiency would come with experience, but it was supposed to take a lot more than that. 

It took about five more minutes for Harry to feel comfortable enough to start cooking for real, but once he did, it just worked. Everything in the magical world so far settled with him so well that he never really thought to question it. The stranger introduced him to power, his wand introduced him to his real magical core, and now, with Iris introducing him to the basics of magic, it all fell into place in a way that Harry never would have expected it to. 

Every second that he spent in front of the stove took another ounce of uncomfortableness and hesitation from him, and once he realized that spices in the magical world weren’t much different from mundane seasoning, he felt more than at home. His ability to control everything so precisely without the need to fiddle with knobs and electronics allowed him even more time to concentrate on the food. Cutting a hole in three pieces of bread with the rim of a cup he found in a cabinet, he began to make eggs in a basket while he shuffled the bacon and sausage to make sure they didn’t burn. 

Iris watched, dumbfounded, as the quiet; uptight; and even, dare she say, timid boy flew around the kitchen with an amount of grace and precision that she couldn’t believe came from a child. It spoke of years' worth of experience. It only took minutes, but Iris felt as if she could watch for hours. 

She almost choked on her own air when she noticed just how much he was altering the heat under each pan as he cooked the different foods to keep the entire breakfast going as a single unit while each different food cooked at its own pace. One by one, he scooped more things out of the pans and plated them while he waited for the next thing to finish until a breakfast the likes of which she would only ask from a house-elf was dropped on the table. 

Standing and allowing her stool to disappear back into the air, Iris walked over to the table and sat down on the chair while attempting to keep her jaw from hitting the floor. She looked at the boy who looked back at her with a smirk so sharp that it could probably cut right through her if it wanted. Harry watched her with no small amount of mirth as she put one of the pieces of toast with an egg cooked into the middle of it on her plate and took a bite of it. The look on his face only got more insufferable when he saw her reaction. 

Attempting to save whatever minuscule amount of pride she had left, she conceded defeat. She took a few more bites before looking at the boy with confused eyes.

“Are you going to sit down and eat, or are you going to stand around while I eat it all?”

Harry seemed extremely lost for quite a few seconds until she saw Jason slither up to Harry and start climbing up his body. The boy shook his head just a little to clear his mind, and he quickly pulled out a chair and sat down as if going fast would make up for his lapse. 

“Yeah, sorry…” he said as he started filling his own plate. “I forgot I was meant to eat it too.”

He had to suppress a cringe at the way she seemed to be prodding him with her eyes. "Why would you forget that you were supposed to eat?”

Harry looked at his plate and started eating, simultaneously trying to ignore the eyes staring into the top of his head, “It’s nothing, really. I just zoned out for a second.”

Iris could tell that he was lying, but she said nothing more about it. They ate in silence for most of the rest of breakfast until Iris decided to ask another question.

"Were you planning on being a chef once you grew up? I don’t even want to think about how much better you’ll be in a few years when you’re already this good.”

Harry played around with a piece of bacon on his plate while once again making sure to avoid the woman’s gaze. “I never really thought about it. Cooking wasn’t ever about passion; it was just something I had to do.”

That didn’t make her want to stop prodding at all.

“You had to cook? You’re eleven,” she said as if that explained everything when it obviously didn’t. 

Harry looked up from his plate and met her eyes very seriously, “you’re really not going to let this go are you?”

“Not unless you make me."

He huffed out a large breath. “Fair enough. You’ve given me a lot this week, and it isn’t like it really matters anymore." 

Iris leaned forward in her chair to make sure Harry knew that he had her complete attention. 

“My aunt and uncle didn’t want to cook; my cousin didn’t want to cook, so I cooked,” he said, just like her, as if that explained everything. Harry saw how little she understood what he just told her. It was so simple to him, but it was apparently not nearly so intuitive to others. “That’s how it was in my old house. If there was something they didn’t want to do, it fell to me. That was just how it went. Cooking was exactly the same as everything else. That I ended up enjoying it wasn’t important.”

Well, she definitely understood now, and he almost wished she didn’t. There wasn’t a discernible emotion on her face, really, just the general blankness that came with a person finally putting together the last pieces of a complicated puzzle. Once she finally had her epiphany, Harry was surprised to find that she didn’t immediately react with words. This was the first magical person to learn anything of his home life, and he was afraid, for a moment, that she would react with disbelief and anger directed at him just like all of those stupid fucking muggles he trusted with the truth. Her face, thankfully, didn’t look like one of anger, but the fact that he couldn’t read it didn’t help him either.

...

“Do you want to move in with me until you leave for Hogwarts?”

...

Harry’s mind went blank. Jason, noticing the boy’s distress, immediately blamed the woman he couldn't understand and hissed threateningly to remind her of how badly it would be for her if she messed up like she did earlier in the week. It was Jason’s hiss that managed to get a panicked response from the boy.

“It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

Iris was looking at the two of them with nothing more or less than the purest of curiosity, and it was this more than anything that kept him from saying no right off the bat. She had come extremely far from her near panic attack in the alley, and that went a long way toward proving how serious she was about not treating him like a freak for the things he could do. 

“Well, what did she do then?” the snake asked irritably. 

Jason never cared that he couldn’t understand other humans, but ever since Harry had people to actually talk to, Jason began to very much dislike the fact that he couldn’t understand a single word they said. Harry didn’t take his eyes off of the woman’s completely calm expression as he answered his companion.

“She… Offered to let me move in with her until school starts.”

For the first time in Harry’s entire life, Jason had no words of advice to say to him. That was very unfortunate for him because this might've been the most important decision of his entire life sans leaving the Dursleys for good.

“Well!?” Harry almost desperately asked. “What do you think?”

Jason took a very, very long time before he slowly and carefully gave Harry his brutally honest opinion. “I don’t think this is a decision I should make for you.” He ignored the look of betrayal crossing the boy’s face. “This is something only you can decide. I was kept in confinement for a very long time, and I chose to live with you after you rescued me. This is the same choice that you are being faced with now. I don't sense anything untrustworthy about her, but this is your life. You must choose where you spend it.”

Harry understood what that meant, even if he disagreed with it to an extreme: Jason was not going to help him with this. He had nowhere to turn but himself and Iris, and he wasn’t sure if this was something he could do himself. 

“Why?” He asked, hoping beyond hope that she would say something that would lead him to an easy answer. 

She smiled at his question even as an unreadable sense of sadness filled her eyes. “If you saw what I have for the last week, you wouldn’t be asking me that question.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“Harry, you are a very talented and kind individual. We've practically been living together this entire week, I've found nothing but joy in your company, and I have more than enough to take care of the two of us. You shouldn’t have to live alone, and my house has an extra room. I think the better question here might be why not.”

Harry put his fingers against his temple. It couldn’t be that easy. There was no way something like this could come down to something so simple as why not.

“You barely know me though! How do you even know you want this?” he tried to tell her.

... How was she sure she wanted him?

“Lots of important decisions are made quickly, Harry. How long did it take to decide that Jason would come with you?”

Harry huffed out a breathless laugh. “A few minutes.”

“See? Compared to that, I've had a long time to decide on this. Besides, it's only for a few months, and it isn’t as if you have to stay if you want to leave.”

“Yeah, but Jason is still a snake. He pretty much takes care of himself, and he doesn’t make any problems. You haven’t been living with me, not really.”

“Harry,” she reprimanded gently. “You’re still making this about me. I’ve already made my decision. This isn’t about what I can or can’t handle; this is about whether or not you want to try living in a proper home until the train comes to take you to school.”

He was shocked by how similar her response was to Jason's. He would've suspected her of listening in on their conversation if he didn’t know that such a thing was impossible. That was it; that was the last bit of resistance he could really give to the suggestion. It now came down to the very crux of every problem he had ever possessed with other people.

“... Can I trust you?”

It was painfully blunt, and he felt extremely exposed now that all of the cards were out on the table. This was possibly the least clever way of asking that question, but he didn't have the energy or will to ask it any differently, not for a question like this, not for him, and certainly not with a person like Iris. Nevertheless, he stared into her eyes with an intensity that promised he would know if she even considered giving him a lie. 

“Do you trust me?” she asked back instead of giving him a direct answer.

“... I don’t know.”

Iris held his eyes without even an ounce of hesitation. “I could give you an unbreakable vow if you want, but if you really need one, then I think you already know what the answer should be.”

Damn her for piquing his curiosity like that. She knew too much about his love for knowledge. "An unbreakable vow?”

“Yes. It's a type of magical contract that would back whatever I promised you with the threat of death.”

Harry's stare pierced through her like a spear. “You would go that far?”

“Oh, please,” she huffed as if he were being silly. “Why would it matter to me if I promised to refrain from something that I won't ever want to do?”

She did have a point... Maybe...

“No,” he ended up saying. “I don’t need you to do that. I’ll go.”

“Good!” she exclaimed in a girlishly excited tone, and her smile turned so brilliantly bright that he thought he might go blind. “We don’t have much more shopping to do. After we're done with it all, I’ll take you back to my home until you leave for the train.”

Jason seemed to know what the outcome of their conversation was even though he couldn’t understand the words they spoke. Harry thought the smug little bastard seemed rather pleased with his decision. If that was the case, Harry was a little bit pissed that his partner couldn't just make things easier and share his opinion.

“Where do you live?”

“My house is in the outskirts of a Northamptonshire village, sort of close to London. It's a quiet place, lots of trees."

He could make do with that. He didn’t really like cities. He came to find that they made him feel claustrophobic and paranoid. His aunt and uncle’s house made him feel the same way.

All of their neighbors were always spying on each other and criticizing whatever they found. It made him feel like he never had anything to himself. Even when he finally got a break from the Dursleys, he was always being held to some level of unfair scrutiny. If he had to choose somewhere to live, he would prefer some place far away from everything else.

“How much more do we have to get?”

“Not much,” she answered after a pause. “Anything else we get would only be for your own luxury. We could buy some magical knick-knacks from a small joke shop or look for some miscellaneous magical items that might suit your interests. We could just as easily leave now. You have more than most students will when they go to Hogwarts.”

And wasn’t that a damn odd feeling? For once, he was going to have absolutely everything he could ever need in school. Gone were the days of being teased for his god-awful clothes or his worn down, embarrassingly low-quality school supplies. That already made him feel better about going to Hogwarts than he ever had going to school with his cousin. 

Iris and Harry lounged around the kitchen, talking about absolutely nothing of importance until Hedwig flew through his open window and landed in front of him on the slightly cluttered table. Harry made sure to give his owl a bite of breakfast leftovers just like Iris told him he should before he decided to untie the letter on her foot and read it. It was hard for him to suppress the sarcastic comment rising through his chest when he caught Iris staring at him over his letter in his peripheral vision.

“Come on, out with it!”

Harry allowed the right side of his lips to quirk into a tiny smile. “I think she just gave me permission to send her more letters.”

“With how well you paid attention to what she wanted and how clever you were with your delivery, I would be more shocked if you didn’t make a friend. Not many people would care to put in as much effort as you did.”

From someone as obviously extroverted and socially experienced as Iris, Harry took that as a compliment to be highly valued. “I don’t need anything else. If you want to go home, I'll be fine with what I have.”

“Okay, if you need anything else, we can always come back. You can pack everything together in the trunk we got, and we could leave at noon. Will you be okay with that?”

Harry hissed at Jason briefly before telling her that it would be fine. The plates covering the table began marching in line toward the sink at the flick of her wand, and Harry immediately wanted to know more.

“Can you show me more spells?”

She laughed at his enthusiasm. “Of course, I will. Charms come best to me. If you get your book, I can go over some of them with you and see if you have any luck.”

Harry immediately went to the pile of books stacked next to his bed with Jason perched around his neck. He sorted through them until he found a few of the books he got on charms and hurried back to the table so Iris could choose which one would be the best for a novice to cover. They spent most of the rest of the day practicing different types of charms from his book and until she told him to pack up, and they both walked to the lobby and informed Tom that they would not be staying any longer. The man, having already been paid for an entire week, had no problem with them leaving a few days earlier. 

Pressure, a sickening amount of pressure, crushed him on all sides. He was being constricted by forces beyond his comprehension. It was as if God himself grasped the boy in one hand and proceeded to jam him into the smallest sphere he could find. Harry had never been good with small spaces; lord knew how claustrophobic he was, but he was always able to tolerate it. He learned very quickly that allowing himself to panic only made for a very nasty experience until someone finally let him out of that cupboard. This, however, was on a level that toed the line of his tolerance so closely that it might as well have sprinted through it. Just when he thought he wouldn’t be able to take it anymore, it came to a stop, and the world came back to him in a dizzying swirl of color. 

Harry fell onto his hands and knees immediately upon landing and hurled his lunch all over the lawn. Even the grass swirled beneath him, tempting his stomach to expel whatever else was left in his stomach as well. A gentle hand found its place on his shoulder, and his close call with a claustrophobic breakdown made him flinch away like he had been burned. The hand immediately pulled away, and his brain finally decided to tell him where he was and who he was with. 

Harry looked up from the grass to see an extremely distorted Iris looking very guiltily at him. “I’m sorry. I told you that apparating was bad, but I didn’t think it would be that hard on you.”

Harry spit the remaining stomach acid from his mouth and put his feet beneath him while wiping the ick off of his face with his thumb.

“It’s okay…” Harry said as he flicked his dirtied hand by his side in an attempt to dispel the spittle clinging to it like drying glue. “I just don’t like small spaces.”

“It’s normally the spinning and the distorting that gets to people, so I didn’t think to warn you about the squeezing. It's uncomfortable, but most deal with it well. I should’ve thought to make sure.”

Harry waved it off as he shook his head to hopefully make his eyes work properly. “How the bloody hell do you tolerate that?”

Iris looked amused by his language. She noticed over the last week that he had a very colorful vocabulary when surprised, irked, or scared. It was very fortunate that she didn’t much care for censoring foul mouths. That would have made it very difficult for them to get along.

“It gets better the more you do it. The squeezing is the only thing that stays, really, but, if you don’t like it, then we can travel by floo from now on.”

Harry nodded gratefully. He would rather walk the whole way back to London than do that again. “Floo?”

Iris looked at him exasperatedly. Honestly, the boy was so filled with questions that she was worried he would run out of ones to ask well before the summer ended. Curiosity was one thing, but Harry took it to a level that almost seemed to toe the line of obsession.

“It's kind of like phoenix flames. You travel by pouring a certain black powder into a fireplace. It turns the flames green, and you walk through while saying the code for another fireplace. The flames connect the two, and you end up wherever you told it to go.”

Harry couldn't look more skeptical. “You guys travel between fireplaces with phoenix flames?”

“No," she said with a chuckle. "phoenix flames are something that we can't magically produce yet. It’s more of a magical creation inspired by them.”

“I think I’ll stick to going the normal way.”

Iris smirked at his comment. “And how, exactly, are you going to get to King’s Cross the ‘normal way’?”

Harry shared with her many things about himself already: his ability to speak with snakes, his unfortunate personality breakdown given to him by Olivander’s selection of his wand, his admission of animagery. He, however, didn’t even know a single thing about the beast. She might know that he could intentionally change into an animal, but he felt far too uncomfortable with giving her the specifics of a creature he didn't understand himself… So…

“I could always take a taxi.”

Iris tilted her head sideways teasingly. “You'd rather sit in a taxi with a stranger for hours instead of getting squeezed for a few seconds?”

“You underestimate how much I hate what you just did to me.”

Iris rolled her eyes before turning and walking toward a medium-sized, wooden house that he hadn’t paid a lick of attention to before now. It looked to be one story, and it was painted a light blueish color that contrasted with the various yellows and reds of flower bushes planted around the edge of the house. Bumblebees flew around the bushes to collect honey, and Harry marveled at the way the hills seemed to flow like water for as far as the eye could see with trees dispersed healthily throughout them. The house’s front door was slightly off of the ground with a four-step staircase leading to the patio and a pretty, white door that gave access to the inside of the house. Next to the door sat a similarly designed swinging bench that rocked ever so slightly in the breeze. 

“Do you like it?” She asked a little nervously once he caught up to her.

Harry nodded his head subtly but enthusiastically as the two climbed the steps. The woman tapped her wand against the door, and it opened without a second of hesitation. Harry was still very excited about seeing the house, but he couldn’t help his curiosity.

“What did you just do to the door?”

Iris considered it for a second while she stepped to the side to let Harry enter. "I tapped it with my wand so that my wards can recognize me and let us in. I'll send you a book or two about runes if you want to after a few months in school. You might be talented with some basic magic, but you still need experience before you start messing with runes."

Harry was disappointed, but he nodded anyway. Iris had already taught him so much. He might as well respect her decision about when he should learn more. His thoughts were swept away the moment he stepped inside the house. It was absolutely brilliant.

The first thing he loved about it was how open it was. The kitchen, the dining room, and the living room were all connected without walls, and the roof was very tall for a one-story house. Harry may have liked to sleep in enclosed spaces due to his extreme paranoia, but he despised feeling trapped. This house was a direct antithesis to the one he used to live in, and he couldn’t be happier.

The house's interior was covered with artwork and paintings of all kinds. Some were shockingly realistic while others were abstract, creative, trippy, or weird. The walls were painted the same light blue as the outside, and the furniture was strewn around the room in an aesthetically pleasing yet somewhat chaotic fashion. Compared to the Dursley’s home of dull grays and whites, obsessive organization, and a negative amount of creativity, this house looked like an explosion of life. His eyes were immediately drawn to a wooden loft at the end of the house which oversaw the entire room. On the wall above the loft was a gigantic window that reached almost all the way to the roof and to both ends of the room. In front of that window was a single humongous easel that held an even larger canvas.

Harry was so enamored with the building that he almost forgot to look at Iris once he saw everything there was to see. She was looking at him with a smile. Apparently, it wasn’t hard to tell how he felt about his temporary home. The look threatened to make him blush, but he was honestly too lost in the scenery to get embarrassed. 

“What's on the easel?” Harry asked.

“Do you want to see?”

At the boy’s nod, Iris led him through the living room and the kitchen until they stood at the foot of a wooden staircase placed against the back wall. She gestured to Harry, letting him know that he could go first, and she followed him up the stairs. Once she got to the top of the staircase, she walked over to the boy as he stood in awe of the painting she'd been putting the finishing touches on for a while.

It was stuff like this that made her love her work. All of those old critics and collectors meant nothing before the childlike wonder it could induce in the creative and the passionate. The expression on Harry's face right then made all of her work worth it.

“It's... Is it alive?”

Iris chuckled at his statement with a little nod. It really was alive in some ways. The canvas displayed a huge, flowing waterfall splashing into a pool of water so crystal clear that he could see the individual rocks sitting at the bottom of it. A vibrant forest lined the edge of the pool, and the trees swayed in the wind as if the forest itself was breathing along with the breeze. Mist billowed around the contact point between the fall and the pool, and the stony cliff behind the waterfall dripped with the shining water which inevitably collected on its surface. It was disconcerting for him to see something that looked to be nothing less than a window into another world without hearing the sounds he expected to come with it. That was the only thing convincing him that this wasn’t actually some kind of magical portal. 

“You really made this?”

“Yes, I did. I’ve been working on it for a month or so.”

She was very proud of her work, and it was moments like this that made her love being an artist. Harry proved himself to be a very difficult boy to read during their time together. It was, in fact, only due to her experience with faces and the way their many minute details worked that she managed to catch the few tells he had. Right now, though, he didn’t look a day over 11. It warmed her heart to know that her talent was what brought out the kid inside of him.

“This only took you a month!?”

“It sounds crazy, doesn't it? It used to take me a lot longer, but I told you that I'm good at what I do.”

Iris's smile got even brighter when she heard an almost imperceptible, “No kidding,” come from the boy’s mouth. “Do you specialize in landscapes?"

Iris shook her head that time. “No, I do whatever my client orders. This one just happened to be from a memory he showed me. He wanted me to recreate the place where he proposed to his wife for their anniversary.”

Harry was even more amazed than he had been before. He shouldn’t've been though. Of course, someone would trust a person with this much talent to handle something as important as an anniversary present. “So this is a real place?”

“Yes, I’m not sure where though.”

“Are all wizard paintings like this?”

“Not in the slightest,” Iris told him with a smirk. “Many of my fellow artists can make things of similar quality, but this is all me.”

Harry shook his head in disbelief as he once again lost himself in the painting. It felt like he was just shown something of unlimited importance, and it pushed him to say what was on his mind when he otherwise probably wouldn’t have. “I can’t believe you took a break from this to help me.”

Iris no longer looked so happy. Instead, she looked almost sad. “It's just a painting, Harry. Helping you in Diagon Alley was more than worth it. I’ll show you how I make it when I start my next one if you’d like.”

When she first offered to let him see her technique, he couldn't quite believe it. Now that he could see her work in person, though, it seemed impossible. She must've spent a lifetime to come up with a way to make that, and she was willing to trust him with it? He couldn't even begin to explain the way that show of faith affected him.

Beckoning to the child, she led the way down the stairs and to a room on the side of the wall. Opening the door, she let him in before stepping through the opening herself. The room was nice and cozy. It didn’t have the high ceiling possessed by the main room, and the bed was placed strategically in the corner opposite of the window. The room was rather plain compared to the rest of the house, but it had all of the furniture expected of a bedroom. 

“I didn’t do anything with the room because it’s for guests. If it’ll make you more comfortable, though, I could teach you a basic method of painting with magic, and we could decorate the room together.”

She could tell that Harry’s eyes brightened with the idea, but his body language suggested that he was hesitant. "Are you sure I should do that? This is only temporary. Won’t it mess up your room once I’m gone?”

The way her left eyebrow was raised made him doubt the intelligence of his question. “I’m an artist, Harry. I wouldn’t be a good one if I had a problem with a little bit of creativity. It's your room while you’re here, and that means it can look how you want it.”

The way she smiled at him was extremely comforting, but he had never been more confused at a relationship dynamic in his life. He was already out of his depth in the alley, and she was basically acting as a chaperone mashed together with a tutor back then. Now that he was in her house and receiving all of this charity and care, he was utterly lost.

How was one supposed to respond to something like this? Should he be suspicious? Was he supposed to say something?

Her smile didn't waver even as she saw the telltale hints of Harry’s uncomfortableness flash across his remarkably neutral face. She was determined to make him feel completely free of pressure in her house. It was because of this that she decided to give him some space to acclimate on his own.

“I'm going to go make dinner while you get settled. I'll be out in the kitchen if you need me. Do you remember how to unshrink things?”

Harry nodded with a sniff that told of his slight offense to the insinuation that he might’ve forgotten. She chuckled as she turned to leave the room. Trust the obvious Slytherin shoo-in to remain sarcastic and cheeky even when he wasn’t feeling secure. 

Iris left him to his own devices for the moment. She had more important things to worry about while he was getting comfortable. Her main one was trying to find out what kind of food her kitchen had that might be even somewhat acceptable after the breakfast Harry cooked that morning. She was a single artist who lived alone and focused mostly on her work. If that wasn't indicative of the diet she usually stuck to, then she didn't know what was.

Well, it seemed like a lot of things were going to change for a little bit because she refused to feed that frail, emaciated boy ramen noodles with flavor packets every night until the train picked him up. She'd just have to make it work.