Settling In
Days flew by, and Harry settled into his new life as Henry “Harry” Hammond hesitantly, uneasily, with lots of stumbling and awkward moments, but he settled in.
Andria and Kayla, ten and six years old respectively, were all active girls who liked to run round playing in the yards, and they often roped him into doing the same. They were a breath of fresh air when he happened to hit an awkward patch with the adults, and the self-centredness they often exhibited – in the way that they had their own worlds and concerns and didn’t have any desire to pry into others, though, not that they didn’t have the slightest care about other people – was really nice, too. “Cousin Jenny” and “Grandpa George” Hammond were nice, he supposed, not smothering or condescending or uncaring or constantly ordering him to do this or that, but…. Well, he just wasn’t used to this kind of adults, and it’s not nice, that way.
He had no specific chores in this household, and it just made him more awkward and lost, oftentimes. The cleaning and washing and general upkeep of the yards were done by a trio of daily helpers. The children of the family – that included him, here, somehow, unbelievably, although he knew logically that he was indeed supposed to be a Hammond now – were only required to keep their rooms clean and tidy and help in little things, like bringing the rubbish bags to the big rubbish bin outside on the corner of the front yard, preparing some steps of a random meal they wanted to help in, and washing their own eating utensils after each meal just like the adults did. It was… too tame, for his usual summertime.
He supposed this was rather similar to what he had experienced at the Burrow; but there, he’d got friends to spend the time with and summer homework to complete, unlike here. He didn’t even have Hedwig here, and neither did he know what he was going to do once school started, or what he was to prepare if he was going to Muggle school here in the United States.
He read lots, when the girls were occupied and he was left too long with the adults. Fortunately, the house had a small library nook he could sequester himself in, and it was home to an eclectic array of books from magazines and cookbooks to textbooks and dictionaries. Slowly but surely, he went back to his old habbit of hiding among books, like when Dudley’s gang had gone Harry Hunting on him in primary school, and absorbing as much knowledge as he could while at it. Just, now, he was well fed and much better dressed, and under scrutiny from well-meaning instead of disapproving adults.
And then, one day, just as his new life began to settle into a rhythm, the family wacked it out of the rail again.
By giving him presents.
To celebrate a month of his presence there.
Andria gave him a wobbly candid picture she’d taken of him cosily reading an encyclopedia about the outer space at the library nook. And meanwhile, Kayla gave him a photo frame to go with it, made up of ice-cream sticks arranged side by side and glued together, painstakingly painted with silver swirls over blue background, with a sheet of plastic cut by Andria to mimic the glass front of a usual frame to complete it.
Cousin Jenny gifted him with a patchwork blanket she’d handsewn herself. To decorate his room with, she said. After all, he’d refused her offer on the first day to personalise the bedroom he was in as his, she pointed out further, adding that the offer still stood as long as the house was still theirs. And she promised to make a matching pillowcase and sheet, if he wanted them.
Grandpa George had baked him an apple pie, with “1 MONTH” written with cheese pasta on the crust, and he’d forbidden anybody – even himself from tasting it, unless Harry allowed it, which Harry could always not do since it was his gift, the kindly man said quite firmly. The US Air Force general, the chef of the family, also made the cream soup that Harry had grown to like so much for their breakfast together. And after breakfast, Grandpa George promised that he and Harry were going to tour the Air Force Academy the general had graduated from, which Harry had grown to be interested in from the snippets the general had brought home from the man’s workplace there.
Everything felt surreal, unreal, even ludicrous.
His heart burnt. His eyes burnt. It was so hard to breathe, as well.
He clutched the patchwork blanket and the photo frame flush against his chest, and stared mutely at the “1 MONTH” thick, blocky lettering on the crust of the still-steaming pie laid before him on the edge of the breakfast table.
He was aware that his cheeks were wet only when, letting out a small, strangled sob, Cousin Jenny wrapped him in a bear hug then made the whole family participate in what Andria later termed as a “group hug”. Even Grandpa George participated, and it was the first time ever that Harry felt how it was to be hugged by a male authority figure.
He cherished it, even more than the other gifts he was given that day, even more than the promised tour that Grandpa George brought him afterwards.
But he was hard-pressed to say which was better, when Grandpa George introduced him – casually but with not a sliver of doubt in the man’s voice or expression – at the academy that Harry was his new grandson.
And the man was positively sunshiny when Harry found an alternative hobby as well as an extension of his talent in the flight simulation.
He couldn’t say he liked the attention, just like before, but this was more familiar – the admiration on his flight capability – and it didn’t have the boy-who-lived baggage with it, at that.
Just “the general’s grandson” one, but in a way it was better, since he understood why it’s that way, and it meant he had good living family to call his own, and this particular ticket netted him a promise of being able to use the delightful machine whenever the cadets weren’t using it.
The bedroom he stayed in – his bedroom – gained a new look, in the days after, as well as some new trinkets. The things were all supplied by Grandpa George and Cousin Jenny, but arranged by Harry himself in the room to his liking. Walking into the room now felt like walking onto a patch of fat white cloud amidst a blue, blue sky, with a few scale models of aeroplanes hanging from the ceiling to complete the ambience. It’s made perfect when Kayla squealed upon coming into the room for the first time and immediately rolled about on the cloud-like carpeting on the floor, declaring that she was a fairy princess riding on her personal cloud and Harry was her bodyguard.
Everything’s so new, and uncomfortable more often than not because of it, but it’s good, and it’s his. He didn’t forget Hogwarts and his friends and his Wizarding heritage, and he longed for them sometimes, but at the same time he didn’t want the summer to end and for the Wizarding folk back there to notice his absence, too. Because he was living a very good dream and didn’t want to wake up again.