Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

One of a kind.

Maybe some people relished in feeling that way, but not Izuku. Not in the way he’d been cursed with that title.

Quirkless. Useless. Worthless. Broken.

All of them meant the same thing to him.

But Deku encompassed them all quite well.

And who else but the person who knew him best could’ve come up with it? Could’ve anointed him with it after he’d revealed his lack of a quirk, hoping his best friend wouldn’t mind?

Of course Kacchan minded. But Izuku could understand why. When you’re told you can be the best, that you can do anything, of course you wouldn’t hold back on anything either. And besides, Izuku wasn’t worth much anyway. Had nothing special of his own to bring to the table. So who would care if he was treated differently? Who should care?

Except, apparently he did have something special.

Izuku so badly wanted to call it a bluff, another cruel trick. Today had already been so much worse than normal.

Firstly, Kacchan had finally told him to ‘kill himself’. Oh sure, he’d heard it a lot already, but from Kacchan? Apparently his oldest friend had gotten worse than Izuku had hoped for. At least he’d only said it to him, and not someone else. Saying things like that were the opposite of being a hero, and would land him in serious trouble. Hopefully UA would straighten that out for him.

And that would’ve been the end of a bad- but not too much worse than average- day. Except then he was orally assaulted by a villain made of sludge. Sure, All Might had come to save him personally, but if it hadn’t been for that sudden gulp of air from within the sludge, accompanied by the strangest feeling rippling through his very being, he would’ve passed out, and that would’ve been extremely embarrassing: his first and probably only encounter with All Might being him found unconscious in a dirty underpass, covered in sewage sludge.

At the very least he’d have something to positively remember this day by forever, passing it down in his family as an heirloom.

And then the rooftop happened.

How had Izuku been so delusional to think he could ever be a hero? It’d taken someone of the calibre of All Might himself to finally get it through to him.

And the worst part was, even he himself, deep down, had known it was impossible. For someone who’d stubbornly kept proclaiming he’d become a hero, and nothing would stop him, not even Kacchan’s words and hurts, he rather quickly changed his tone after his idol gave him a healthy dose of realism.

The only one in the entire world who had to catch up to that fact had been Izuku’s conscious thoughts.

And it was rather obvious in hindsight, wasn’t it? Why else would he have abstained from training, from eating a healthy diet rather than indulging himself in Katsudon every chance he got? Even though his body would spare him the fate of an unhealthy figure. Why else had he purely stuck to writing about heroes and analysing them, when most of the time none of it would even be of any use to him out on the field?

He’d already resigned himself to marching home, telling his mom he was going to look for different schools to apply to, and to turn in a new high school signup sheet for homeroom the next day, saying someone else had turned it in for him as a prank, when something turned everything around again.

Oh sure, he’d almost accidentally fallen off and acted like a scaredy-cat when the man…teenager appeared out of nowhere behind him, but the wave of that- that inexplicable, wonderful feeling rippling through his being again as he was stopped dead in his fall completely caught his attention.

And that feeling returned a thousandfold, yet somehow even more personal, when he held the wooden stick he was given by the stranger, which had been something completely different from the quirk he’d seen already.

And now he was here.

“So, magic is…real,” Izuku dazedly began his summary of the story he’d just been told, staring at the grinning adolescent.

“Yup.”

“And there was a whole, hidden magical world out there.”

“Mhm. I bet a lot of the magical plants and animals are just being mistaken as quirked nowadays though.”

“And, quirks are here because of magic.”

“Mhm, mhm.”

“But magic’s gone now…because of quirks.”

“That’s right.”

“But you’re still here, because you became immortal…on accident?”

The briefest of cringes flashed over the adolescent’s face, but the constant nodding didn’t stutter once.

“And I’m magic too?”

An ear-to-ear grin split the stranger’s- Harry’s face. “Yer a wizard, Dori.”

“Okay…” Izuku didn’t know, but that clearly was a reference, based on the sudden change in accent. “D-Don’t call me that.”

“Right, sorry, was just messing about a bit, Midoriya.” Ah, and that. Izuku would just have to get used to not using or hearing any honorifics while speaking English. It was probably for the better, when Harry- was that short for something? Harrison? Henry? Harold? A nickname? Nevermind, when Harry had addressed him as Midoriya-tan, Izuku was about ready to sink into the ground, nevermind the fact they were on a roof.

Izuku opened his mouth, but nothing wanted to come out. “I- I- This isn’t a prank, is it?” he whispered.

Something flashed in Harry’s eyes. “That wouldn’t be a good prank at all. Trust me, I know a good prank when I see one,” he said, sounding like an expert in the field.

The adolescent- wait, how old was he actually?- paused, his expression turning soft. “You felt it, didn’t you? When I used magic on you, when you waved that wand? Those ripples that resonated down within your very soul?”

Izuku’s eyes snapped to Harry’s equally green ones. That was a scarily accurate description. One he hadn’t even thought of yet.

“It- It felt like a part of me had come home. L-Like something I should’ve known all my life finally realised what it was,” he described carefully.

“And that’s a bloody shame,” Harry concluded solemnly, before perking up. “Do you want to fix that?”

Izuku opened his mouth, but he halted, wondering if he should…ask that question again.

“Do you…” He paused, trying to think back to that amazing feeling to build up his courage. “Do you think I- that I could be a- a hero?” he asked hesitantly, far more so than a few minutes earlier.

For the briefest of moment Harry’s face darkened, so short-lived that Izuku could’ve mistaken it for a trick of the light. But instead, he was greeted with a soft, grinning expression. “With magic, you could be anything you want, Midoriya.”

The quick answer, as easily given as breathing, rung in Izuku’s mind, and he couldn’t stop his eyes from tearing up as he held his head down.

Harry didn’t attempt to do anything as Izuku tried to hide the drops falling through the air, and a few moments of silence later he swallowed through the burning lump in his throat, lifting his head to meet the wizard’s gaze. “Can you train me?”

The brightening eyes and grin was enough of an answer for him.

“That’s the idea.”

January, 2015

“C’mon, Harry, we don’t have that much time for this.”

“Geez, Hermione, calm your- Calm down,” Harry amended when he saw the glare she was readying. “You said all Unspeakables were out for new year’s for at least another hour.”

Hermione huffed as she led them to the circular room, which thankfully didn’t spin with her present. “Yes, but we have to take into account any complications. And if they find out I brought someone in I’ll lose my job. They’ve gotten very cautious after Rookwood…”

She shook her head, peeking through one of the doors before opening it. “We’re here.”

Harry nodded, waiting for her to throw out all the detection spells she could think of, which had increased at least tenfold since their camping trip, and then pulled up the hood of his Cloak. Why she bothered with all those detection spells when they’d already experimented and realised literally no magic could find or stop him like this, he didn’t know. Maybe it was just routine for her.

With a shudder, Harry closed his eyes and walked through the door, feeling the smooth, onyx stones of the DoM become rough, rocky terrain, and an ice cold breeze carried unintelligible whispers to his ears, far louder than he remembered them being last time.

A few more steps, and he creaked open his eyes, taking in the Death Chamber for the first time in almost two decades. The rows of benches surrounding the pit from every angle towered ominously over him, as if an invisible tribunal was silently judging his every step towards the stone dais. The Cloak, Wand, and Stone weighing heavy on his body.

As his feet moved up the sloped stone, reaching the dais, the black, tattered cloth that looked like a dead Lethifold’s cloak fluttered in nonexistent wind that began to slowly pick up with his every move.

Another step forward, and the black drapes began fluttering faster, the Hallows beginning to cool against his skin.

With the next few steps, the curtain began billowing, and Harry thought he could see glimpses of a wispy, silver, translucent substance behind it, almost like a thin membrane covered by the black curtain, rippling heavily, and the Hallows now felt like they were trying to freeze his skin off.

Despite it all, Harry could feel his heart beating faster and faster. Was this actually going to work? After all the magical methods, the Basilisk venom, the Fiendfyre, the muggle methods, nothing had seemed to work. He couldn’t even discard any of the Hallows with the intention of leaving them behind, as they’d just come right back to his person if he tried. Only if he left them behind or gave them away with the intention of picking them up later could he do so, and at a simple call they’d silently appear right where he always wore them.

With a pulse beating against his ears, Harry took one last step, struggling against the strong, icy wind blowing the protective curtain right open and ripping it near the top, the silvery Veil behind it almost seeming to bulge outwards, struggling against the cracked stone framing it as the black cloth flew past him.

In one fell swoop, Harry took the Cloak off his shoulders, and the necklace from his neck, and threw them all at once. ‘If you’re real, Death, then you can have them back!’ he shouted, almost triumphantly.

For an instance, the three Hallows arched through blisteringly frigid air, and then passed through the Veil without much fanfare.

The clattering of wood and a stone could be heard from the other end.

Harry stared at the Veil, which had calmed back down to a soft rippling surface, except…

On the wispy, aethereal surface, three Hallow shaped rips in the substance could be seen, the stone benches and onyx coloured bricks clearly visible through the holes.

The Veil shuddered, and the material seemed to fray at the ripped edges, rapidly spreading outwards until nothing of it was left, a final wave of cold air rolling over Harry before that too dissipated, the tense, suffocating atmosphere of the Death Chamber lifting for what must’ve been the first time since the Ministry was built around it.

“Harry!” he jolted when his friend came running into the room, any prior carefulness discarded. “What’s going on? I just got an off-the-charts reading of a magical…” She came to a pause. “…shortcut.”

His eyes focused on the ground behind the ruined Veil, the three Deathly Hallows innocently lying there, looking no worse for wear, and the sound of something crumbling echoed throughout the chamber as the top of the fragile archway sagged inwards, nothing magical supporting it any longer.

“H-Harry? What happened?” he heard Hermione ask, her voice muffled by his racing thoughts.

This should’ve been it.

Or, at the very least, if it turned out nothing could do him in, this would’ve been where he would’ve walked through as a last resort.

That last resort, that final shot, was now gone.

And despite not having tested anything on himself, he had a feeling nothing else would work.

And it was gone now.

His only way out.

And he’d destroyed it himself. Had been excited to do so.

Funny, huh?

“-were the magical signatures related? I’ve never seen anything like this before. Maybe this was the material, the inspiration, or even the prototype of the Hallows! Oh Harry, I think we should-”

“Shut up!” he screamed, swirling around to face her. “Shut the hell up already!”

“Harry?” Hermione only looked at him in concern, slightly shaken. “It’s alright. There’s plenty of things we can think of. We’ve only just started, really. We just-”

“No. No more prodding. I’m sick of it!” Harry yelled, taking a step to her. “Nothing’s going to work. Isn’t it obvious?” he said, pointing at the destroyed relic of ancient times. “How much are you just using me for answers?” he accused.

Her eyes widened, horrified. “No, never! I might get carried away, but never-” She stopped herself, glancing at the entrance to the Chamber. “Harry, I know you’re upset, but you can vent when we’re away from a highly restricted room where a major magical event just took place. You’re not a teenager anymore, Harry! You’re thirty-four! We need to-”

“Who knows?! Maybe I am still a teenager!” Harry snapped, barely even listening to what he was saying.

It wasn’t until Hermione’s eyes widened the way they did when she realised something that his own words registered.

A few spaces away from him, Hermione was mumbling her own thought process. “Of course. I’ve been thinking of him as an adult, but if the Cloak froze-” She looked straight at him, taking a step forwards. “Oh we should’ve realised. Harry, I’m so s-”

A loud crash cut everything off, the flimsy archway finally collapsing and crumbling to the ground, leaving only rubble in its wake.

Harry stared at the pile, the expression of sorrow and pity on Hermione’s face branded in his mind, and before she could address him again, he watched the Hallows fade from their place on the ground with a thought, the silky material of the Cloak draping over his shoulders as he reached to pull up the hood he’d shaped for himself.

“Harry, wai-!”

Unable to stay in this godforsaken, accursed room, staring at his best friend’s pitying looks and outreached hand, Harry twisted away, the wards on the DoM and the Ministry not even registering as he disapparated.

April, 2246

Izuku nervously observed his surroundings as he entered the Tatooin Katsudon store, the place he’d told Harry- Surely that was a nickname or his given name, right? Izuku wasn’t very comfortable with using such a familiar addressal, but he had nothing else to go by.

Anyway, this was where he’d told Harry the day before to come find him after school today, after he realised he’d be coming home far too late for his mom’s nerves if they continued talking, no matter how much he wanted to do so.

Finding his usual spot, a table in the very corner that’d seen better days, Izuku sat down, fidgeting with his hands.

It hadn’t been a dream, right?

Or a cruel joke?

The seconds ticked by, the happy babbling of the shop’s other customers drowning out his growing anxiety.

In a motion he’d gotten very familiar with over the day, Izuku shifted the stick of holly wood hidden in his Gakuran’s sleeve, slipping it out and feeling the wood warm and almost warble under his grip.

Ever since feeling the magic Harry had cast, ever since he’d waved that stick of wood- wand, if Harry was to be believed, it felt like something within him, something that’d been stale, dull, unmoving for his entire life had suddenly started rippling at the realisation there was something like it out there, and alive, and while it had calmed down a lot, he could still feel it ripple and quiver whenever he brushed past the wand, like a stone was skipping over a pond within the deepest depths of his being.

Either Harry, or someone he knew, had made a support item that could completely mimic a quirk, or Izuku did indeed have-

“Hullo.”

Izuku yelped when someone appeared seated on the other side of the table, in the motion of pulling back their hoodie.

“H-Hello, Harry,” Izuku stuttered out, only just remembering to speak English under the pounding of his poor heart.

Feeling a bit awkward, Izuku zoned in on the first thing that caught his attention and blurted out, “Why’s your hair like that?” Probably magic.

Harry halted whatever he was going to say and instead ran his hand through his hair, which had somehow gone from way too short to long enough to be pulled back into a ponytail that rested against the nape of his neck.

“This? It’s from self-transfiguration,” Yeah, magic. “Dangerous to do right, and when you do it correctly it’s supposed to not be permanent.”

“But why?”

Harry grinned ruefully. “Because when my hair has the chance to be free, it’s impossible to tame it straight, and I kept getting judging looks from everyone. Besides, only cool guys wear ponytails.” Clearly he had experience with that too, except-

“But you don’t have straight hair?”

“What?” Harry said, looking off-kilter for the first time Izuku had seen him.

“I-I mean,” Izuku stuttered to explain. “It looked like hair that…uhm, has been abused by a bad haircare routine for all its life?”

Izuku withered under Harry’s bewildered stare. “I can give you recommendations? I-If I’m right?” he asked, voice rising towards the end. His hair was very fluffy after all, if his mom and Kacchan’s mother were to be believed.

It took another second or two, but Harry seemed to shake out of it, blinking his eyes before a playful look crossed his face. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said, before moving on to something much more important. “So you wanna be trained in magic, right?”

Izuku glanced at their surroundings, but none of the other customers seemed to be listening in on their conversation. Maybe that should’ve been expected, given they were conversing in English. “Yes?”

He received an imploring raising of the eyebrow, which seemed like it’d been lifted from someone else’s face.

“Yes.” Izuku echoed, this time more decisively.

Harry grinned, clapping his hands together. “Great. This is gonna be real exciting, just you wait and see. Just give me a few days to find and prepare a place and I’ll tell you where to meet. How about every early morning and afternoon on the weekdays?” He gave him a look. “If we only have five months to get you prepared for high school, then-”

“Five?” Izuku interrupted. “There’s still ten months until the entrance exams. A-And a whole year before the next schoolyear…”

Harry echoed the confusion. “Huh? But the year starts in Sep…” Harry trailed off, before letting his head sink in his hands. “Stupid ruddy culture shock.”

A moment later, he righted himself. “Right, so only the afternoons then? Or do you prefer the morning?”

“C-Can we still do both?”

Harry eyed him. “Maybe later. This’ll make things a lot easier, at least.” He shook his head. “Let’s get things out of the way first, did you have any-”

Sadly he was interrupted by a waiter arriving at their table, and Izuku quickly ordered the classic Katsudon, obviously. And then watched Harry flounder for a moment, before discreetly casting a charm on himself under the table and randomly picking an item with the near-fluent, slightly wonky Japanese Izuku had heard on that rooftop.

As the waiter moved away, Harry returned his focus on Izuku. “So, did you have any questions? Can be anything you want. There’s not much else to talk about for now. Especially because I’m winging it,” he seemed to mumble.

Well, Izuku certainly wasn’t going to pass up on getting questions answered. Maybe get the most important one out of the way first.

“What is magic?”

Harry gave him an unimpressed look. “That should be obvious.”

“N-No,” Izuku denied. “I mean, how does it function? On the most fundamental level.”

Harry gave an exaggerated sigh. “Going right into the big stuff, huh? Blimey.” He seemed to be considering his words. “First of all, nobody every figured everything out, but I’ve been in…a unique situation. So I think I can give a bit more of an answer than ‘it’s just magic, don’t think about it’.”

At the sight of Izuku’s full attention, Harry continued. “I guess I should preface this by saying that souls are real.”

“R-Really?” That’s not where he expected the conversation to go at all!

“Yep,” Harry said, looking unfazed. “They can be tainted, damaged, torn apart, ripped from a body, hide a secret in, sucked out by the world’s worst kiss ever, all that jazz. Oh, and the afterlife exists too. For magical people, anyway,” he added on, almost as an afterthought.

“Oh…” Izuku was pretty sure his worldview had flipped around for the third time in two days, but he wasn’t going to get cheated out of an answer. “Continue?”

“Well, souls are made up of something, some substance or energy or whatever, and- don’t quote me on this to any magical scholars- magic is basically the source. The bits that aren’t used for souls, unpurposed stuff, just passively flowing all over the place. Normally it’s too dispersed to actually do anything of use. Only in magically rich places like Hog- the place I learned magic, was it dense enough to occasionally do something, like rearrange classrooms or create secret passages.”

Harry paused, looking deep in thought, before continuing. “And, depending on factors I have no clue about, some souls…resonate more with that unpurposed energy, are more closely connected to it, to magic. And those souls can manipulate its flow, pull that magic towards them, gather it, condense it enough to make it useful, and then use it to form and cast spells.”

“Whoa,” was all Izuku could really muster. If he’d heard this from anyone else, he’d think they were a scam artist promoting their book on spirituality or something. “And…I can do it too?”

“The wand certainly thinks so,” Harry replied, eyes landing on the stick poking out of Izuku’s sleeve.

“I have…one more question,” Izuku began carefully, unsure of how to bring it up.

“Bring it.”

Okay then.

“How old are you?”

What should’ve been quite an easy answer to give instead made the adolescent pause, deep in thought.

“Well…biologically speaking I’m seventeen and nine months. Chronologically I’m a hundred and fifty-four, and if you look at how much time has passed since my birth, two hundred and sixty-six,” he concluded proudly.

“Whoa…you’re old.” Wait, that was supposed to come out as admiring!

“Oi! Don’t put it so-”

Thankfully, the food arrived at exactly that moment, and Izuku welcomed the chance to distract himself from all the new information whirring in his head.

Here he was, sitting in his favourite Katsudon place, at the same table as an immortal wizard who was gonna show him how to use magic too, to become a hero.

Izuku hungrily eyed the steaming bowl with pork cutlet, rice, and egg with a watery smile, before noticing his current companion’s struggle with his as of yet unbroken set of chopsticks.

A few too many moments of struggling later, and Harry put the two pieces of wood down in defeat, eyeing his own bowl with a mild glare.

Izuku was surprised by himself when, just a few moments later, he burst into barely restrained laughter as Harry discreetly created a fork out of thin air with a swish of his wand.

He was greeted by an aggressive hush and a paranoid scan of the immediate surroundings, causing more laughter to bubble up from his throat.

Izuku had no idea why he was acting this way, so openly, so familiar. This was just a stranger who was offering to help him out. So why was he feeling more comfortable around a veritable stranger than with all his classmates? Even with Kacchan, back before he got his quirk, Izuku had always held back at least a little bit. He certainly wouldn’t joke around him, or laugh anywhere in hearing range. Especially not nowadays, in fear of retaliation for ‘making fun of me, you damn Deku?!’ Was he just desperately trying to cling on to this new hope?

Deciding to throw the poorly adapting kinda teenager, kinda ancient man a bone, Izuku clapped his hands together, vocalised a happy “itadakimasu!”, and got to devouring his bowl with his chopsticks. Hopefully that example would help Harry-

“…you’re welcome?”

Izuku snorted hard into his bowl.

The Resurrection Stone

January 2015

“Harry Potter?”

Harry jolted from his lying position, hissing as he cut himself on a sharp edge of rock.

He hadn’t known how long he’d been in this cave, which had once been the residence of his godfather, Buckbeak, and eventually Hagrid. Probably not that long. Definitely no longer than a week or two.

But in that time, Harry had done in desperation what he thought he wouldn’t do again ever since that fateful walk through the Forbidden Forest.

He’d used the Resurrection Stone.

At first he wanted to use it the same way he did back then, but hesitation and reluctance eventually turned into outright refusal. How would the Stone function now that it was part of the completed set? The Cloak had become so drastically more powerful, and the Wand had gotten a mind of its own. If you thought phoenix feather wands could get independent, acting out on their own accord to save their owner in dire straits, then the current Elder Wand was that but a thousandfold. He was pretty sure any damage inflicted on him would just be reversed by a powerful healing spell the Wand would cast on him by itself.

Would the Stone bind whoever was called upon to Harry for as long as he lived, forcing them to obey his every whim? The story said those who were recalled experienced a hollow pain and anguish every moment they were there, Cadmus’s wife, at least. What exactly would they go through now? Would the souls that were recalled be stripped of all masks and mortal desires and influences, leaving only their truest core? And what would happen if that wasn’t what Harry had thought of them as? Built up as? Clung to?

Or even worse, what if they were just simulations, and a longer look than the one he’d had would make it all obvious? Would the temptation to stay with them become too great? Cadmus at least had a way out after he’d been enthralled by his own creation.

It was only through quiet acceptance and sheer impulse at the face of impending doom that Harry had used it to call upon those he loved back then at all.

As his first test, Harry had called upon the soul of Peter Pettigrew, someone he certainly wouldn’t care for if any of those awful speculations on the Stone’s functions were true. And not too dangerous if ‘resurrection’ was more correct a descriptor now.

Which it was.

The major difference he noted was that those who were summoned were now fully corporeal, even capable of using magic, resurrection in the truest, if temporary sense. With a pang of anger, Harry quickly found the aspects of this full corporeality was at his discretion, when he’d stymied Wormtail’s fleeing Animagus form and reverted it moments after calling on him, leaving the corporeality active to tackle the rat-like man to the ground and kick him in the ribs.

He'd dismissed the soul as easily as he’d called on it with a sneer on his face. Even in death, Wormtail was a snivelling coward. The fact he’d felt a slight, insignificant pull on something within him made him wary of what using the Stone too often would cost him.

Later, he’d find the corporeality was only towards those who called on the soul, and the magic was sourced and called from the user. So outside of unique knowledge and possible emotional closure, the Stone had no other uses he cared for.

A day or two later, after his anger had cooled off and he’d thought things through, Harry called on the first on a short list he’d deliberated on.

For a moment he’d wondered if time since death, or the lack of any real familiarity, would affect whether he could call on someone, but then it succeeded. Despite that success, the attempt at getting proper answers failed miserably.

Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus Peverell could not understand a lick of modern English, nor could Harry understand them.

All attempts at communication failed, and after a few minutes of the awed, admiring looks of Antioch, the melancholy, longing ones of Cadmus, and the horrified, regretful expression Ignotus gave his last descendant, Harry dismissed the three souls that had condemned him before their reactions could burn too deeply into his mind.

It had taken a few more days before Harry had built up the resolve to make one last attempt.

~“I’m afraid I don’t have the answers you seek, child.”

“Why not?” Harry asked, failing to hide the tinge of desperation.

Nicholas Flamel shook his head mournfully. “Our situations are too far removed for me to give you any helpful advice in how to feel and how to tackle it. I chose to extend my life, together with Perenelle, knowing we could call an end to it when we finally felt ready.”

Harry looked down in understanding, his hand clenching around the cool, engraved stone that was pulling on something within him.

“What…What was it like?” he asked instead.

Flamel kept silent for a while.

“When confronted with the concept of immortality, people…are quick to conclude what a curse it can be- must be, claiming those who seek it as foolish and dim-witted. Watching those around you wither away and pass on, leaving you behind. The loneliness of having nobody who understands, nobody to share the burden of lost memories. The way you may become detached from the world and others as things begin to lose meaning in the grandness and hopelessness of it all,” he summed up calmly.

“But,” he started sharply. “Those people may simply be rationalising why missing out on something they cannot ever have isn’t such a bad thing after all. It causes them to overlook how immortality may become a blessing to those who do not seek it for themselves, but did attain it. Those who, despite their fate, have the fortitude to adapt to their new circumstances, rather than give up or give in to them.”

At Harry’s incredulous, questioning look, the alchemist continued.

“You do not have a time limit anymore, my dear child. Nothing to tragically cut you short from doing, becoming, creating whatever you wish for,” Flamel said with a soft smile.

“That’s exactly what I’m scared about,” Harry replied, frustrated, immediately regretting the moody, immature tone it came with.

“Only those who would go on to do those exact things say they’re not afraid of it,” Flamel returned masterfully. “Do you know what my favourite pastime was?”

Harry stilled, thrown off by the unrelated question.

“Gathering stories, and telling them,” he answered himself. “From the poor beggar at the banks of the Seine, regaling me her life’s dreams and ambitions, to the failed musician up in his family manor, telling me his regrets and playing me his songs. Perenelle loved to say I told others’ stories more than I did my own, and I would’ve had it no other way. I only had one interesting story of my own to tell, after all. And it’s not one I think others should know the details of,” he said, chuckling.

The most successful alchemist of all time levelled a fond, comforting look. The first one Harry didn’t feel the need to shy away from. “Yes, you will see those you love pass on, see the world turn without them, time marching ever onwards, but rather than thinking of carrying all those lost memories, experiences, and legacies as burdens, they can be your greatest blessing to them all: an immortality of their own.”

A silence fell over the cave, and with a final, shared look, Harry watched the old man, a smile that made him look decades younger on his face, fade into silvery mist and leave at his call, the Resurrection Stone dangling from its chain as he let it slip from his hand, leaving him in quiet contemplation and conflicting thoughts.~

“Harry?”

At the sound of footsteps approaching the grotto’s entrance, Harry flicked up the Cloak’s hood, staring in surprise as the always serene Luna Lovegood entered the cave.

Her silver eyes passively observed the rocky interior, crinkling as she smiled. “Hello, Harry.”

Harry stood, stunned, before removing the hood. “H-How did you know I was here?”

Luna simply smiled at him mysteriously, and Harry spotted the half-eaten slice of treacle tart he’d been brought by a Hogwarts house-elf at their insistence moments later, laying on the ground next to him.

She followed his glance, enigmatic smile being replaced by an adorable, child-like pout. “Aw phooey, you got me.”

“What’re you doing here, Luna?” Harry said, feeling the corners of his lips twitch.

“I was wandering about around Hogsmeade, looking for changes in the Wrackspurt populations, and came here,” she explained casually. To be fair, it did sound rather average for her activities.

“You do this often?”

“Almost every day,” she smiled before tapping her head. “It’s the daily changes that say the most about the people, after all.”

“Of course,” Harry nodded along, still not sure, even after all these years, whether Luna actually saw these creatures, interpreted some other sense as them, was just hallucinating, or it was simply her way of distracting people from their worries and raising the mood, and she was pretending. It didn’t really matter much in the end. It didn’t harm anyone, and Harry usually felt lighter whenever he spoke with her, no matter how heavy things weighed on him.

One thing about the near daily expeditions she mentioned got to him though. “Are you sure Rolf is alright with this? He must be itching to get out there again.” he asked, glancing behind her at the reddening sky. He certainly hadn’t seen him accompany her, and she’d been staying in England for a few months now.

“Rolf’s dead.”

Harry’s eyes snapped back to Luna. “What?”

She returned her typical, serene gaze. Harry couldn’t help but grimace under it as he was left reeling.

“We were planning on going back to England to plan a wedding, but I had a feeling something would happen in China, so we wandered over through Tibet.” She stayed silent for a while, before Harry finally realised what was off with Luna’s eyes.

She spoke up again before he could think of anything to say, the silvery mist that perfectly described her eyes almost appearing to swirl in hidden turbulence. “We’re the first to have seen a Yeti up close in recent history and been able to tell the tale. Me, anyway,” she said, a rueful undertone now revealed to Harry’s ears, hidden in her voice.

Harry swallowed softly. “Luna, are you…” The Resurrection Stone felt heavy against his chest.

His hand was already fishing it out from under his shirt when- “Harry, I don’t need it. But thank you.”

He paused, letting the Stone slip from his hand, the chain making a soft dangling sound. “A-Are you sure?”

Luna smiled again, this time far more genuine. “You of all people know he’ll be waiting for me. I just know he won’t want me to come join him on our next Great Adventure too quickly. And our last one is enough to make up for the wait.”

The simple statement, words touted by Dumbledore himself, dislodged something within Harry, something that hadn’t quite hit him just yet, despite the months he had to understand his circumstances.

“Harry?” he heard vaguely as he began to tremble.

“I can’t ever join you. Any of you,” he whispered, mostly to himself, feeling his knees weaken. “You’ll all leave me behind.”

When he’d been in the aethereal, otherworldly version of King’s Cross, talking to Dumbledore. When he’d been told he could make a choice and board the train, for a while he imagined going. Meeting his parents, Sirius and Remus, staying with them, exchanging stories, doing whatever he wanted. The peace, the quiet, the showering of love and safety, far away from the fighting and drama and upset of the world.

He'd decided to turn back, to finish what he started, both for those who’d died, and those who were still alive. He knew he would eventually come back to that place anyway.

Except now…

He couldn’t help himself. His legs gave way, and the only thing that saved him from a nasty bruise on the head were two thin, fragile arms catching him by the chest.

“This will be it for me,” he whispered shakily, feeling himself tremble against another body.

“Of course not, Harry,” he heard Luna say, voice back to its more airy nature, but no less comforting to his ears. “You’ll just have to wait a bit longer than the rest of us.”

Harry choked back a bitter laugh, feeling Luna back off. “‘A bit’? That’s an understatement for eternity.” Right now, Luna’s way of dealing with things was not helping him feel better.

“It’d only be eternity if you gave up,” she replied, the assumption he wouldn’t being clear from her tone. “And you have all the time to figure it out, which will be much shorter than that,” she stated the obvious, which hadn’t actually been obvious on first pass.

She moved away, backing up to the cave entrance until her silhouette framed the flaming sky behind her. “And once that happens, I hope the time until then will have been plenty fun to tell everyone else about.”

Luna gave him a reassuring smile, and then turned away, leaving the darkening sky behind in the cave entrance.

As the sound of quieted footsteps moved away, Harry was left in turmoil.

Everything that’d just been talked about, it was all bouncing around in his mind, and it had no chance to wrap itself around any of it for the time being. It made his head feel fuzzy and dazed.

But her last words were what pierced through it all.

~“You do not have a time limit anymore, my dear child. Nothing to tragically cut you short from doing, becoming, creating whatever you wish for.”~

With the words of the aged alchemist accompanying Luna’s, echoing in his mind, Harry got up, steadied his still shaking legs, and ran out.

“Luna!” he called, spotting her blond hair trudging down the hillside. “Luna, wait!”

Rather than get startled, the fairy-like woman turned to greet him with an awaiting smile. “Hello again, Harry.”

He came to a stop, realising he didn’t know what to say. “I…Where are you going?” he asked.

“Home. Daddy is too frail to go on any more expeditions,” Luna answered. “It’s sad. He loves doing them,” she said, shaking her head mournfully.

Harry wasn’t sure if there was supposed to be a second meaning to Luna’s statement. He was never sure whenever it came to her. But this entire chance meeting had left him with an idea, only just fully formed, the memory of Hermione’s expression as he left her behind in the Death Chamber, the thought of having the time to figure out what he wanted to do from now on with his new circumstances and setting his mind back proper again in his memory.

“What if I join you on one?”

Luna smiled, and Harry only now realised how the last few smiles hadn’t been quite up to par to her usual ones. “That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

In the end, it wasn’t quite clear who had the idea first, and who caught on afterwards, but the result was the same either way.

April, 2246

Izuku made his way through the lower class suburb, which was saying a lot, since he and his mom lived in an apartment complex.

He was just glad that he’d been in his room after coming home, as his mom definitely would’ve passed out at the sight of a translucent, silver animal passing through the wall, and Harry’s voice coming out of it, telling him to come to the address he was currently approaching.

That definitely would’ve ruined Izuku’s plans. After coming home, he’d decided to not tell his mom anything about what had happened just yet. Both because he was still a little wary about the validity of magic, and wanted tangible results to show her, and because he was worried she’d stop him from going out to train with ‘the shady man conning her baby into one of his no doubt horrible get-quirked-quick! schemes.’

He'd have to ask Harry what spell that was at some point, though. It sounded perfect for long-range messaging. Especially to people stuck in a collapsed building. It helped that Izuku felt inexplicably calmer and more serene after the animal faded away, a deep sense of contentedness he hadn’t realised he was missing suddenly there.

An hour or so later, and Izuku had found himself in front of a boarded up warehouse. He hadn’t even known there were any warehouses in Musutafu.

With trepidation, Izuku rolled up the rusty shutter and peeked through. He breathed out in relief when he saw the tall figure of Harry standing inside the warehouse, waving his weirdly knobby wand about in a series of mumbles that would’ve made Kacchan snap at him in no time.

Izuku let the shutter fall back down with a clang behind him, and went on to greet Harry, only to realise-

“Holy whoa! Is this place bigger on the inside?” he wondered aloud.

“It sure is now,” Harry replied, still very much focused on conducting an invisible orchestra. “Magic is brilliant, innit?”

Despite Izuku’s near fluency in English- and he sure was proud of that- there were still quite a few words he didn’t really understand. But maybe that was his fault for learning the English used by all the American documentaries on All Might’s Young Age.

“It is,” Izuku agreed instantly. “What is it you’re doing now?”

“I’m setting up some wards to make sure nobody will bother us for the coming year,” Harry replied, and Izuku only now realised that, if a vocal component was used when casting magic, then Harry certainly didn’t seem to need it much. “Though they’re not actually wards, just area charms and jinxes at the moment,” he corrected.

“To make wards I’d have to anchor these spells from myself to something physical, usually a big stone or crystal if you want to be fancy. But since the structure created by the runes would distort and break down pretty quickly without much active magic going on it’ll be better to have me fuel it,” he went on. “It’s amazing how some symbols carved into a surface can force the ambient magic to flow through the anchor in ways that perfectly mimic how wizards cast the spells. Even better is that, depending on the way you arrange the individual rune sequences, you can create effects we don’t even have charms for. Though I guess you could if you took the time and arithmancy for it, but that’s way too much work if you’re studied up on runes and you can just carve some symbols.”

As Harry’s ramble continued, Izuku made himself comfortable on the warehouse floor, strongly reminded of the times he’d gotten completely caught in his own world, talking about interesting heroes and quirks.

When the flow of words stopped, Izuku couldn’t help the fond smile on his face. “You really like wards, don’t you?”

Harry paused, putting down his wand with one last mutter of what Izuku recognised as Latin, and flashed him a knowing grin that was oddly nostalgic. It seemed they were about to begin.

Relit Passion

March, 2015

“You really like warding, don’t you, Harry?”

Harry blushed at Luna’s observation, having just come out of his stream of consciousness.

After Luna had casually mentioned that she thought wards formed a large dome as he was setting some up for their campsite, Harry had gone into an explanation to correct her grievous assumption.

Wards being like a simple, dome-shaped wall with a bunch of charms, jinxes, hexes, and curses inlayed did such a disservice to the fields of warding and curse breaking.

Wards didn’t just radiate outwards from some centre, forming a big sphere. Yes, some wards were spherical, but they could also be rectangular, conical, spiky, mimicking the natural borders of the area they encompassed, and even amorphous blobs. Some wards only covered the area perimeter, others included their interior, whose strength diminished closer towards the perimeter, whilst others had constant strength throughout- and others again had variable coverage depending on other influences. Some were static, others rotating, and others shifted size periodically.

And it was exactly these varied shapes, coverages, and dynamics that added a whole ‘nother layer to ward schemes. The way different wards overlapped, crossed, touched and intertwined. The distance between two wards on different angles- a spherical shape was used by warders and curse breakers as a reference frame for spherical coordinates, which was probably where the common misconception came from- But more than that, the density of wards at certain angles, whether the ward area had active coverage or was simply within the ward boundary, the speed and direction of the moving wards, the order in which the wards were originally constructed in relation to one another. All these local aspects combined to form a global effect on the ward scheme, causing every set of wards to be completely unique in their own right, even changing the smaller aspects of their function depending on spatial and temporal conditions- if the warder was intelligent and experienced enough to properly set one up, anyway.

“I do,” Harry answered. “It’s…very dear to me, actually.”

Luna remained silent, nodding at him with a smile to prompt him into continuing at his discretion.

“I- You weren’t around for most of it, but after I finished auror training and joined the corps, I realised I wasn’t as driven in catching dark wizards and enforcing the law as I thought I was. Maybe it was purely just because I was very involved with Voldemort,” he reflected. “And when me and Ginny…started drifting apart, I realised I wasn’t obligated to keep a stable job, so I quit.”

He sighed, thinking back to the outrage his quitting had caused in the wizarding Britain. Obviously, he couldn’t care less about what wizarding Britain thought, but the upset he caused in his friend group had made him feel guilty enough. Not enough to consider going back, of course.

“After that I was jumping from job to job,” Harry continued to a highly attentive Luna. “At first I tried staying in the Ministry, but I realised I…didn’t have many qualifications outside of being an auror, given I didn’t even sit my NEWTs. The ministry would’ve opened up almost any job for me anyway, but I tried Quidditch sub-department of the Department of Magical Games and Sports, since I at least had some qualifications in that.” He paused, remembering how short-lived that job had been. “I quickly realised I hated idle paperwork.”

He sighed. “After I left the ministry, I tried being a private defence instructor because of the DA, but that became a bit too personal for me.” He started rubbing his head. “I guess I’m not that good with social stuff. It got awkward, and I didn’t know how to handle certain teenagers, especially their parents, so things got away from me pretty fast.”

“Must be the Blibbering Humdingers. They’re quite attracted to people who have experienced prolonged isolation,” Luna commented. Well, she wasn’t wrong about him having been alone before Hogwarts…

“I then applied as an assistant to the DADA professor at Hogwarts, since the curse disappeared there was no professor vacancy, and I didn’t have a mastery to qualify anyway.” Harry paused, thinking back to that year. “The job-related stuff outside of classes really didn’t work for me, which was a shame, since I liked the actual teaching. Though I did get some offers to apprentice for a few masteries from the DADA professor, as well as professors Flitwick and McGonagall.”

“And then?” Luna prompted.

“After that I was just…going around, not doing much. I worked for a bit at the WWW with Ron, George, and Percy.” Harry admitted. “Until one day when I was at the Burrow, a bit too drunk from a party for Bill and his new curse breaker office he’d finally set up after leaving Gringotts, and I rambled to him.”

He blushed. “I don’t actually remember what I vented about, probably about how I wanted to leave England and do something fun and exciting, and that eventually led to Bill talking about his job as curse breaker.”

He paused in thought. “I don’t know the specifics anymore, but what I vividly remember was how I mentioned the same misconception you did, and how I wouldn’t want to travel so far and so much to do or see anything exciting, and that was when Bill took me outside and apparated me near Hogwarts.”

Cracking up at the sheer confusion he remembered experiencing, he continued. “We walked up to a cliff outside the wards that overlooked the entire haugh, and he told me to hand over my glasses. Then he did something to them that I couldn’t spot, cause- y’know, my glasses.” He shook his head. “And he told me to brace myself before he flicked on the side, and…”

Luna leaned in.

“The moment I saw the Hogwarts wards, up on that cliff. I…I cried,” Harry admitted softly.

He paused, composing himself after recalling the sight of millennium old, constantly expanding and adapting wards, still burnt into his mind. “I guess, in that moment I realised that magic…had become mundane to me,” he said reluctantly.

“I don’t know when it happened, or how, but at some point that child who entered Diagon, gaping at everything around him with starry eyes, had gotten used to it all. And that certainly wasn’t magic’s fault,” he said, shaking his head. “It was mine. Sometime during my first two years I’d stopped learning magic because it was magic, but rather because it was required schoolwork, and because I needed it to survive.”

Harry felt a smile come on. “Seeing those wards, the complexity, the rich history, the crazy, wacky, whimsical, inexplicable. It was all so grand and weird and unknown and beautiful and…magical. It made me realise how much more there was out there, without rules or structure, that I just wasn’t discovering or simply ignoring because I’d settled and lost any passion for it, wasn’t looking out for it any longer. I’d gotten used to using magic to survive magic, but never to live magic.”

He let out a shaky breath, raking his fingers through his hair. “I don’t remember how long I was there, fallen to my knees at some point, but eventually Bill put a hand on my shoulder, gave me a knowing smile, and said, ‘Welcome to my world, Harry’. And that’s how he roped me into my job. I took the relevant NEWTs, did my masteries at Hogwarts while he trained me up and took me along on a few expeditions as an assistant, and here I am,” he concluded, the crackling of the campfire taking over.

“Did you go on leave? You haven’t left England since I came back,” Luna wondered.

Harry shook his head, wondering if she thought her revealing his lack of aging was the reason he didn’t seem to be working. “Curse breaking isn’t just big expeditions to the corners of the globe. That’s the main impression most people have because Gringotts only hires curse breakers to locate potential Goblin artefacts that were taken to the grave by the human ‘lender’ centuries ago. And the occasional ward breaking when they’re pursuing a wizard who’s in their debt and hiding behind some,” he added.

“Bill realised there was a lot more that could be done, so he left Gringotts and started his own business. Guess it runs in the family,” Harry joked. “We still have dig-sites and expeditions, though more for finding lost history and dismantling dangerous places for muggles, but Gringotts doesn’t care so long as any Goblin artefacts we find are given to them after study, and after two months you get rotated out.”

He grinned. “In the downtime between digs and expeditions, we have what we like to call ‘mundane duty’. Just involves interfering when an amateur ward setter royally screws up, or an existing ward becomes dangerous, or just locks the owner out of the scheme for some reason. Sometimes we’re used as second opinions for ward setting services. Occasionally we get called in to help an auror raid on a location that has wards that are too difficult for them to handle,” he explained.

“That sounds like a very varied, satisfying job,” Luna said, nodding happily for him. “I’m glad you had your passion relit.”

“Me too.” And Harry was certainly planning on continuing to see what magic had to offer him. So far, Sweden and its Nordic variant of magic was already proving to him how much more magic there could be, even when you thought you had a good grasp on its scope.

“Can you keep watch tonight?” Luna said, stifling a yawn. “I get the feeling a Crumple-Horned Snorkack is going to approach the camp when we’re sleeping. They’re really skittish.”

Harry grinned, giving her a thumbs up. “Don’t you worry, Luna.” He flicked up the Cloak’s hood. “It’ll be like I’m not even here,” he said, doing the universally known motion of ‘spooky hands’.

Luna’s misty eyes crinkled as she smiled wide in approval. “I can’t hear you like that, Harry.”

A moment later, a sheepish Harry reappears as he pulls back the hood. “…right.”

April, 2246

“Why, when I discover there are even more absurd things in life, is it always through you, Mr. Potter?”

Somehow, even in death, as a semi-tangible summon, McGonagall’s unimpressed gaze was enough to coy Harry after he finished telling his circumstances. It didn’t even make sense. He was literally older than her now! And it wasn’t his fault everyone present that day at the Hog’s Head had collectively decided to not tell anyone else about his chronic- literally- condition!

“Sorry…Can I ask you for something, professor?” he asked, hoping to divert the conversation.

“I certainly hoped after several years of apprenticing under me for your Transfiguration mastery, you’d remember to call me Minerva,” the apparition told him.

“R-Right, so…”

“Yes, you’re allowed to, Harry.”

Harry breathed in, this was already on the verge of what he felt comfortable using the Stone for, but there was no other way to help his new student. “I need your help with teaching someone.”

So far, Harry had managed to stave off any actual magic lessons by going with the ‘grounded theory’ approach of professor Flitwick. That would buy him at least a month or two with Midoriya to prepare the practical lessons. That didn’t mean he wasn’t putting the kid through any other types of practical lessons, though.

“I’m not sure I can help the way you envision I would,” she commented sceptically.

Now, Harry knew what she was speaking of. Most of the reason why he knew how closely magic and souls were interconnected came from his use of the Resurrection Stone. There was indeed a price to pay for using it. Yes, the Stone was the one that did the almost unheard of and called out to a soul from the beyond, channelling it here, but that soul then required a small part of the caller’s soul to anchor and actually reveal themselves, unlike normal channelling in divination, and more akin to a temporary, murder-free, instant-horcrux, which then passed on along with the recalled once dismissed. Thankfully, souls could heal over time, but the longer someone was called, and the more often it happened, the more of your soul broke off and died.

It made Harry wonder if the reason Cadmus’s late wife had felt such pain at being called upon wasn’t because of her dislocation from the afterlife, but because she could see her beloved husband’s soul wither away piece by piece every time she was brought back.

Now, after discovering that unnerving tidbit, Harry had briefly wondered if he could use this to overcome his immortality, but further pondering immediately discarded it. Surely the magic he’d need to use the Stone would fail once his soul became consumed enough, and what kind of life would he be living with such a small, diminished soul? And for how long until enough had grown back? Just the thought of living anything like the way Voldemort had existed made him violently squash any thought on the matter.

Currently he had another problem, however.

“But I don’t have any of the books or material!” Harry objected, swinging his arms wide. “I don’t know how or what or when to teach him anything about Transfiguration, especially not with how different the world is nowadays! And don’t even get me started on the other stuff. You’re the expert!” Sue him for sounding a bit desperate.

McGo- Miner- McGonagall levelled him a disappointed look. “Harry, it’s true that you attained your Transfiguration mastery under me in your thirties with flying colours, yes?”

“Yes?” Harry answered, put out by the sudden change in conversation.

“And that you’ve lived for 154 years now?”

“Mhm?”

“Then, did you stop studying Transfiguration in those hundred and twenty years after gaining your mastery?”

“No?”

McGonagall gave him a tight, satisfied smile. “Then I daresay you’re far more of an expert at Transfiguration than I ever was.”

“I- w-wha?”

Was that true?

…Merlin’s saggy left ball sack! It was!

But she was the professor! She was the one he’d always deferred to! Learned from! How could he know more?! But what else had all those years been for then if not? And what about his Charms, Runes, and Arithmancy masteries?

Harry was so busy trying to put his head back on straight at the absolute paradigm shift that he barely caught the summoned soul replying.

“Mr. Potter, I will use the gift of the magic you’ve given to me to transfigure a pebble into a fly so you may catch it if you don’t close your mouth.”

Why was it always the surname she went to when she was disappointed? What happened to ‘call me Minerva, Harry’?

Harry closed his gaping mouth, realising he’d gone cross-eyed.

“S-So you won’t help out?” he asked, trying to get back to the original topic.

“It’s not feasible for you, and I see no need,” McGonagall answered, pausing. “I will, however, use the time you’ve given me to write up the lesson plans I thought worked best. And perhaps give recommendations for who else to call on if you experience troubles.” Harry sagged in relief at the compromise.

“But do not put too much stock into it, Harry,” she continued. “Every student has different needs and ways of learning. And I daresay yours sounds like one of a kind.”

Harry returned a rueful smile, knowing exactly what that title actually meant to him and his mentee. “He is.”

“Now, leave me to get to it. I’m sure you’ll be calling a few more of your old mentors in the near future, and I do not want to cost you too much,” McGonagall said sternly.

Harry gave a thankful nod to the much younger looking witch, thanks to the way souls appeared at their most comfortable in the afterlife, and made to leave.

June 2015

The past five months had been miles better for Harry than the three preceding that. In those three months since the revelation of his immortality, he’d gotten more sad looks from his friends than ever before. Hermione had been with him almost every day, trying to figure out what his condition would entail, and to see how to undo it, and most of the remaining time had been filled with thoughts of what his future would hold.

He'd even been told by Bill that he shouldn’t be undertaking any mundane duty until he felt better again, and that his talent would be wasted on anything besides the big expeditions anyway.

Ever since that Halloween, daily life had felt absolutely suffocating, a turbulent balance between trying to ignore the new situation and drowning in it. And that final failure in the Death Chamber had finally set Harry off enough for him to snap back and flee, trying to deal with his situation outside of the environment he’d felt stuck in.

But now, out here in the wilderness with Luna, or in the inn or B&B of an occasional town, Harry felt liberated.

Thoughts on the uncertain, doom-like future still lingered, but with the continuous moving around and Luna’s constant presence and commentary it was difficult for them to gain any foothold.

And Harry was truly enjoying himself again, just like during curse breaking, which he was honestly starting to miss a bit, even the mundane parts. And while he might not belief in most of the magical animals Luna was trying to spot, the least he could do was to keep an open mind. He’d encountered such interesting new magics already, up in the north, then in Afghanistan, and now in Panama. When he was out on an expedition, he didn’t really have the time to focus on anything beyond the tomb or ruins he was concerned with, and those old places usually weren’t the most representative of the current culture around and usage of magic.

Luna’s and Flamel’s words in the cave had continued to resonate with him in every thing he did. The thought of being guaranteed to find something, even if it took millennia, and not getting stuck wasting all of it on just reaching the end motivating him.

As for Luna, Harry wasn’t sure whether it was simply because he’d gotten more used to her than he already thought had been possible for him, or because there was more going on under her usual behaviour, but she acted more carefree and joyful too, her spacey look seeming a bit more down-to-earth and sharp. Not that that changed the sometimes dotty, other times awkwardly blunt truths she blurted out.

He should’ve known that the outside world was still very much trudging on without him.

The moment a ball of fire had burst into existence above the campfire, Harry had snapped to high alert, only to sigh in relief when a familiar, orange and red bird landed on the ground next to him, feathers still smoking slightly from the Flaming it’d done.

He only spotted the equally smoking, equally red letter in Fawkes’s beak fast enough to set up a silencing charm around the area, not wanting to alarm Luna into coming back from her usual exploratory wanders.

Harry was already cringing as the red envelope rose, unfolding to deliver its letter, and Fawkes Flamed away, no doubt sensing what was about to-

“HARRY JAMES POTTER, YOU ABSOLUTE PILLOCK!”

His body seized up at the sound of a yelling Ron.

“FIRST YOU SNAP AT HERMIONE AND LEAVE HER BEHIND IN THE MIDDLE OF A MAGICAL INCIDENT, AND THEN YOU GO AND BUGGER OFF WITHOUT A TRACE OR WAY TO CONTACT YOU FOR MONTHS! WE HAD TO RESORT TO BRIBING FAWKES TO FIND YOU!”

Harry winced. He hadn’t left any letters because he knew they could be traced, and he really didn’t want Luna’s expedition to be cut short so soon. Especially not when she felt like she was ‘so close’ to finding a Snorkack. He already knew they would’ve pulled him away to make sure he’d be alright, putting restrictions on what he could do like an angry Madam Pomfrey. And restrictions was the absolute last he needed right now.

It also hadn’t helped that he hadn’t been in the right frame of mind for almost an entire month after he’d left with Luna, and by the time he realised he should mail his friends…

“HERMIONE WAS DISMISSED FROM THE UNSPEAKABLES AFTER THEY FOUND OUT SHE BROUGHT AN UNAUTHORISED GUEST AND INDIRECTLY RUINED AN ANCIENT ARTEFACT, AND THE ONLY REASON SHE’S STILL EMPLOYED AT THE MINISTRY IS BECAUSE THEY NEED AN INTELLIGENT, HEADSTRONG MUGGLEBORN LIKE HER IN MUGGLE RELATIONS WITH ALL THIS MAGIC SQUIB STUFF GOING ON IN THE MUGGLE WORLD! SHE WAS INCONSOLABLE FOR WEEKS!”

The words were like a blunt hammer to the crotch, causing him to balk in pain. He hadn’t know that…

He hadn’t thought Hermione would’ve been fired from that. That she even could be fired from it, not when there wouldn’t have been any evidence of his presence. At least, he didn’t think there was anything like that.

“AND BILL’S YOUNGEST JUST TURNED OUT TO BE A MAGIC SQUIB, THROWING BLOODY WARMING CHARMS AT THE AIR, AND NOW HAS NOBODY TO FILL IN HIS JOBS, SO YOU BETTER GET YOUR SORRY ARSE OVER HERE THIS INSTANT AND-”

Harry cut the howler off with an overpowered incendio, sobbing at the action. He couldn’t. He couldn’t listen any longer.

Every angry, bellowed word from his best mate cut so deep he wasn’t sure they’d heal.

He’d acted like an insecure, emotionally unstable idiot.

He cost Hermione her job. Her dream.

And now in her new position she’d be subject to the typical blood-based prejudice, something the Department of Mysteries lacked, and she no doubt had a much lower salary or prospect at promotion.

Ron would have to find a better way to provide now, with Rose and Hugo closing in on Hogwarts age.

He’d ruined it because he was too angry to listen to perfectly serviceable words from Hermione, who’d been handling his outburst expertly.

Like a parent to a child.

Maybe there really was more to the paused aging than he’d thought. Or maybe he was just thinking of an excuse for whatever was actually wrong with himself.

The sound of shrubbery rustling cut Harry out of his downward spiral, quickly vanishing the ash before Luna could see any of it.

He couldn’t let her know, not when she thought she was so close. He…He could wait for a bit longer, right? To compose himself and set his mind straight again?

“Hey Luna,” Harry tried to say casually, trying to make it sound natural through the aborted sob. “How was- How was the stroll?”

Luna’s misty eyes observed him, before she shook her head solemnly. “I think the Snorkacks migrated south not too long ago. It is nearing the summer solstice after all. We should’ve taken that into account when we took that detour.”

Harry stared at her, confused at the sudden change in her ‘gut feeling’, as something unique and interesting had always been the result of following hers, and only afterwards had it changed to something new.

He completely missed how Luna sat down next to him until she wrapped him gently in a sideways hug.

“Let’s take a break and go home, Harry.”

A mixture of sob and laughter escaped him as he realised what happened.

How did she always know?

Remedial Training

June 2246

“Please have mercy!” Izuku yelled desperately at his tormentor.

“In a few minutes!” his tormentor replied, green eyes twinkling as he grinned sadistically.

To be fair, this was the payback for Izuku claiming to want to be a hero without so much as a single attempt at physical training.

When Izuku had finally begun his ‘apprenticeship’ under Harry two months back, he’d been really excited, only to find there was quite some theoretical groundwork to cover.

It certainly didn’t help that Izuku suspected some of it wasn’t actually groundwork, and more on the advanced side, purely because Harry was far too passionate about wards and exotic magics to not slip things in, either accidentally or on purpose.

And the rest of the time he was subjected to ‘remedial training’, which included plenty of working out, a rather restricted diet accompanied by somewhat foul tasting drinks dubbed potions- which Harry had apologised for profusely every time he had to take a swig- and dodging, a lot of dodging. Big, metal balls, in fact, which Harry was more than happy to Banish at him.

Which wasn’t much of a far cry from when they’d started doing it, actually.

~“Think fast!”

Izuku yelped as one of those cannon balls Harry had conjured abruptly sped towards him with a flick of the wand.

For the briefest of seconds, Izuku saw a sparking fist heading for him, and froze up, but that was enough for him to be unable to fully dodge the thing.

He cried out as the thing hit him on the arm, and he fell to the ground.

“Oh bloody buggering bollocks!” he heard Harry shout, and a moment later the man was at his side, crouching down and waving his wand over his arm. “Why’d I assume you had reflexes like mine? You bloody idiot,” he continued to mumble between the Latin.

Izuku groaned and sat up, taking in the weird sensations brushing over his arm. “W-What’re you doing?”

Harry paused, looking him in the eyes. “I’m healing your broken arm, that’s what,” he said, frustrated.

“But it’s not broken?” Izuku replied, confused.

“What?”

Izuku withered under the questioning gaze. “I-I mean, it’s only going to bruise. It’s no big deal.”

“Only going to bruise?” Harry echoed incredulously, feeling out Izuku’s injured arm and finding no signs of broken bones underneath. “But I hit your arm head-on with a bloody bludger!” He yelled in confusion.

Izuku’s gaze snapped away from the ground. “Bloody?” He looked behind him, at the cannon ball lying on the floor, and then back at his arm. “But I’m not bleeding?”

Harry blinked, shaking his head. “No, no, it’s a British thing.”

“Wha- Bleeding?!” Izuku yelled, confused, looking more closely at his Sensei. He wasn’t like All Might, was he?

Harry pinched his nose. “Oh bloody- It’s- It’s a British swear, Midoriya. Like bugger and bollocks and pillock.”

“Oh…” Izuku realised, before the image of a Kacchan using British swears rose up in his mind, and he choked up with laughter.

Harry raised his eyebrow in amusement and gave the giggling Izuku a once-over, before humming. “I guess you’re a lot more durable than wizards of my time, Midoriya. And that’s saying a lot, because magic loves making us more durable and easier to heal.”

Izuku’s head shot up, the funny image forgotten. “Really?” he asked, before wondering what that meant. “I guess, if vestigial mutations are a thing, then all the resistances and enhancement aspects of quirks must be passed down to me in some way as well.”

Harry’s amused expression was quickly ignored as Izuku delved into a mumble on how much more evolved his body must actually be compared to people from before quirks, despite not having one himself in the present.~

“You wouldn’t be so happy if the roles were reversed,” Izuku grumbled as he dodged another, very heavy looking ball. At least he didn’t have to worry about any serious damage, but that also meant Harry could happily chuck them at him, a protection covering his face for safety.

“Oh, why’s that?” Harry asked, quirking an eyebrow. “I have plenty of muscle. You don’t, but you’re getting closer, especially with the stuff I’ve been feeding you,” he said consolingly.

Izuku grunted as he dodged another cannon ball by rolling to the side. “But that’s just an illusion!” he called out. Currently, Harry was in the form he was in most often when training him, that of a tall, decently muscular man with short, messy- though better-looking, more fluffy and actually a little curled after Izuku had recommended some good conditioner Kacchan’s mother had forced on him years ago- hair, looking to be in his mid-thirties. The only form he used more often was what Izuku assumed was his unillusioned, teenaged form, whenever he was out in public and just moving about. “You look lanky and thin without it!”

Harry paused, freezing the next ball mid-air. “Wait, you think- Midoriya, I’m wearing an illusion when I look seventeen too.” He cocked his head, grinning. “The point of illusions is that I don’t want to attract attention. What do you think a seventeen year old with way too much muscle will do?”

As if to demonstrate, Harry waved his wand over his chest, and he lost a bit of height as he shrunk to his undisguised form.

Though, compared to what Izuku was used to, this teenage, near adolescent Harry was…impressively buff. Nothing too exaggerated, very much on the lean side compared to the bulk All Might showed when he was ‘puffing up’ in a flex- which, Izuku still had no idea how that worked, nor did he want to, not with how All Might had become a sour subject for him after he’d gotten the time to reflect in Harry-sensei’s company, but seeing the amount of muscles from someone who’d worked out regularly and maintained them for perhaps a century, imposed on a not yet fully developed body certainly was jarring enough to raise heads.

It was comparable to the more brawn-oriented third year students shown on the yearly UA Sports Festival, who most certainly were very recognisable, even outside of costume.

Harry flexed his arm. “These guns are real, even when you can’t see ‘em.”

“That’s why you hit so hard!” Izuku realised, thinking back on several, surprisingly painful spars. He honestly felt a bit cheated, thinking the muscles he showed in his older disguise were just there to make him look more attractive and intimidating.

“Of course. Now, since my…condition doesn’t really limit me in how much I can grow, Lu-” he cut himself off. “Someone close to me concocted a potion that would cause new muscle to grow back more condensed. So there’s actually a bit more than what you can actually see,” Harry said, before flicking up his hoodie and winking out.

Izuku whirled around, trying to scan the room in a panic, before he was suddenly lifted up, Harry’s figure appearing again as pulled back his hood with one hand, which meant…

“See? I can handle myself, even with all those buff boys out there,” he said, proving it by lifting Izuku up above his head with one hand.

“W-Whoa, hey, hold-” Izuku stammered, before finally losing his balance and slipping off Harry’s hand…right on his shoulders.

Oh wow, this was embarrassing…but also hilarious, and fun.

“Oi, geroff me! I’m not a booster seat!” was the hilariously indignant response.

Izuku choked out an incredulous laugh at the accidental piggybacking, making sure to hold on more tightly. “Not until you let me start doing magic!”

What followed was a brief struggle to shake him off, until suddenly, Harry jerked his body backwards with a chuckle, letting Izuku fall off with a yelp and onto the magically cushioned floor.

“C’mon, Dori-” Oh, how Izuku hated that nickname, though not actually very strongly. “Don’t make me stray from the plan too much. It’s really important to-”

“Build up my baseline. I know, Harry-sensei,” Izuku replied in Japanese. “If I start with magic I could start relying on it too much and then I’ll be toast when someone more athletic than me gets close in a fight.”

That was something Harry had drilled into him in the first two weeks, when Izuku was still complaining audibly from the lack of practical magic lessons.

Apparently, wizards of his time had relied so much on their magic to do everything for them, that magic battles weren’t very…dynamic. The combatants may have moved for cover, or dodged to the side, or dashed into a good casting position, but usually they just stood still, waiting for a spell to take their opponent out of the fight, or disapparating to escape when things were turning against them.

That their only real sport had been flying on broomsticks meant that physical fitness was far and few in the wizarding world. It also certainly didn’t help that wands were very much like guns, as in they were much less effective at short range, where melee combat was assured.

Most ‘pureblood wankers’, as Harry had lovingly called them, who Izuku figured were on top of the societal structure back then, were described as thin and fragile, and had little to no stamina.

The current world most certainly didn’t rely on magic for their fights, but still had magical powers in their own right, if Harry was to be believed about the origin of quirks, so fighting like the wizards of old would be a huge liability for him.

That said, the current lack of any actual magic casting…

“Midoriya-kun, what’s bad?” Harry spoke up in halting, unaided, and rather wonky Japanese- which he’d started learning properly, citing that he didn’t trust the charms if he was staying here for a while- bursting through his thought process.

“Wrong.” Izuku corrected automatically, before frowning. “I…What if it was just a fluke? What if we start and- and I can’t do anything?” He brought up his knees to his chest. “I-I don’t want- I don’t want to be a useless-” He cut himself off before he could say the nickname he’d been branded with. “I- Not again.”

“Midoriya…” Harry had gone back to English, but Izuku was too busy trying to hide eyes that were starting to sting behind his knees.

“Izuku.”

Izuku’s head rose at the first time Harry had addressed him like that.

Harry, on his part, looked, from what Izuku knew about him, uncharacteristically unsure and conflicted.

“I…Look, I don’t know how to handle-” He cut himself off, growling, before sighing deeply. “I’m sorry.”

Huh?

Harry continued to look uncomfortable. “You see, I- So far, I’ve been stalling with practical magic lessons.”

Izuku winced. “S-So you think I-”

“No,” Harry said, squashing the thought from forming. “The truth is…I’m scared of teaching you magic.”

“What do you mean?” Izuku asked quietly.

“There’s…so much magic out there. And I’m the only one who actually knows any of it. There still are books and tomes out there, but I’d have to travel for a while to get them. And besides, no matter how much I know, no matter how much I look, there’ll always be things I’ve never read about, or forgotten about, or overlooked, or gotten wrong. And with how different the world is nowadays, I’m afraid I’ll fail you.”

Harry raked his fingers through his hair, letting the curls slide past them. “I’m afraid that I’ll teach you the wrong spells, give you the wrong habits. That I’ll give you an arsenal that won’t quite fit you, and that you’ll get into a situation you could’ve survived if you’d known other spells. You’ll-”

“I don’t care.”

Izuku winced at his own words as Harry’s gaze snapped to him.

“I-I mean, you’re already going so far out of your way to teach me, when I- I’m just happy that you’re doing all this for me.” He frowned. “I wouldn’t…fault you for anything.”

At Harry’s troubled look, Izuku elaborated further. “You didn’t need to save me from that sludge villain, or follow after me when I- uhm, latched onto All Might, or approach me to make sure I was okay, or test out whether I had magic, or…tell me anything, let alone offer to train me and put up with me.”

“Of course I would’ve done those things,” Harry answered, sounding confused. “Why wouldn’t I have?”

A silence descended on the spatially expanded warehouse.

“Thank you,” Izuku said softly.

Harry remained quiet for a while, bringing the silence back.

“I know you keep that holly wand on you all the time, but make sure to bring it tomorrow, alright, kid?”

Izuku snapped out of his pensive state, jumping back onto his feet. “Yessir!”

Harry paused for a moment. “Also, I’m giving you a bit of homework, if we’re moving on from standard training and magical theory.”

Izuku blinked. “What is it?”

An excited grin made its way on Harry’s face. “I want you to start thinking of a weapon you might like to train with.”

“Wha- W-Why?” Izuku asked incredulously.

His mentor tapped his head with his wand. “Don’t forget. Magic might be great, but people nowadays are pretty resistant to it. Back in my day, you could easily stun or curse someone out of a duel, or petrify them, or just locate them magically. You’ll need something you’re comfortable with to use as your second weapon.”

Izuku blinked, head already filling with ideas. “But I’ve never seen you with one. What’s your second weapon then?”

Harry’s eyes twinkled in excitement as he tossed his wand from his right hand to his left. “I’m glad you asked, my dear assistant.”

With his wand, he pulsed a ball of golden phoenix flame, and grabbed into it with his right hand. Within the flame, something seemed to solidify, and Harry’s hand gripped it, before moving back the flaming ball and pulling out an entire sword.

Izuku could do nothing other than gape in awe as Harry freed the sword with one swing, an arc of golden embers trailing behind the blade as the flame flickered out.

He didn’t want to focalise it, not with the way a smug grin was splitting his sensei’s face in half, but that was so fricking cool.

“Why have I never seen you with that before? And why does it have a sheath?” Izuku finally asked, snapping out of his reverie.

“Because I haven’t needed it here yet,” Harry said smugly. “Swords can get pretty deadly, and I’ve only ever used this against dangerous creatures.” He tapped the simple sheath hiding the blade. “And this sheath isn’t going off, it’s there for everyone’s protection. Because this blade is incredibly powerful, imbued with the deadliest substance known to man. It can kill from a simple scratch.”

Izuku stared at it in confusion. “Incredibly pow-” Suddenly, he started snickering, much to Harry’s confusion.

“Oi, what’s so funny?” Harry said belligerently. “This sword is bloody awesome!”

“I-I’m sorry,” Izuku managed to choke out between barely held back laughter. “B-But it- You sound like- like a chuunibyō!”

He was answered with indignantly squeaked confusion. “Like a what-now?”

At the mental image of a fifteen year old, female disguised Harry joining him at Aldera, wearing an eyepatch over ‘her’ twinkling eyes and yelling about awesome, dangerous sealed powers in class while threatening the other students with a fight, Izuku finally broke down laughing, bending over while clutching his shaking belly.

2029

“Merlin’s saggy left ball sack! What the hell did I just witness, Harry?!” Bill demanded, unusually shaken as he sat down on the side of a felled tree, staring at the cooling corpse in the perfectly circular crater, surrounded by spell and lightning marks, blood dripping from the tiniest of slice marks on its thick, spiked hide, the only visible injury on the beast.

If it hadn’t been for his possession of the sword of Gryffindor he certainly could believe that it normally took a hundred wizards to take the beast down.

He remembered how, the morning after that one night in 2015 in Panama, he’d woken up with the sword on his lap. To this day, he wondered if it’d been Fawkes’s make-up gift for being bribed into delivering the Howler. It certainly wasn’t because he was in dire need of one, not with the Hallows under his control, after all. But in all this time, especially now, it’d helped him save a lot of lives the Hallows couldn’t save, not when they only really helped him for the most part.

Harry huffed, sheathing Gryffindor’s Sword into the sheath, securing it on his back. “Oh wow, thank you Harry for saving the entire expedition’s arses because nobody expected there to be a preserved guardian animal near the tomb. No problem, William. It wasn’t an issue, I’ll be happy to provide my beast slaying skills more in the future,” he answered himself.

He was honestly just happy to still be able to talk normally with Bill, even after all this time. It felt nice to have some Weasleys in his rather small friend circle.

“Okay, okay, I’m very thankful, first of all,” Bill replied. “But can you explain to me how and where the hell you learned all that when I wasn’t looking?”

Harry looked around, but all the other expedition members and tagalongs were too busy looking awestruck at the ancient, magically preserved Nundu corpse. “Well, first of all,” he wagged the Elder Wand discreetly, and tugged on the Cloak, which was currently disguised as a dragon leather vest, and naturally far more effective than an actual one, on top of being far lighter and less cumbersome to wear, easily making it the best alternative.

“Second of all, without those area charms you all cast so quickly, I would’ve been too preoccupied with keeping everyone safe and preventing that oversized cat from escaping.”

Harry started grinning. “And third of all, start thanking Luna.”

Bill’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “W-Well, what am I supposed to put in my very grateful letter to her?” he stammered out.

“Start with thanking her for pulling me all over the world for over a decade, even when I was feeling down and unable to get out of bed, and allowing me to discover all types of magic you probably haven’t even heard of,” Harry began, pointing at the completely dislodged trees and scorch marks dotting the crater.

“And secondly, for knowing exactly who could help me with sword fighting.” Harry chuckled for a moment. “Xenophilius Lovegood has a surprising amount of worthwhile connections all over the world.”

Including one to a reclusive tribe of Tibetan monks who lived to fight with swords. Yes, sounds very cliché, but it worked out really well in the end.

“Is that where you were off to for several months?” Bill asked, intrigued.

“Yeah, sorry, mate.” Harry was not sorry at all for being uncontactable during that time. It’s not like he expected to be completely preoccupied with only swords. There must’ve been some kind of ward that helped that along, even if everyone except the head monk didn’t even know about magic. “Hey, I got you a consolation price for having me missing for most of this dig though!”

Bill was barely able to catch the sheer slab of raw meat that was tossed his way from an expandable bag.

Based on the way his nose sniffed, Harry was sure this unknown meat was landing well with the partly lycanthropic man.

“What kind of meat is this?” the eldest Weasley son finally caved in.

Harry grinned. “Yeti meat,” he said, pure satisfaction rolling off of him. “I have plenty of material for coats, mittens, and scarves too.”

The entire trip to Tibet had been completely worth it, just based on how Luna, choking on wet laughter, had tightly embraced him once he presented her with a winter coat made of a certain Yeti’s fur.

June 2246

“Are you sure you’re pronouncing it right?”

“I-I’m just having trouble with the L’s! Why is it all in Latin anyway?” Izuku complained, though he was very worried at how he hadn’t been able to successfully cast any spell with the holly wand, not at any point. And after years of practice he didn’t have the stereotypical rolled L, so he knew his excuse didn’t hold much water.

Any excitement he had when he came into the warehouse that morning for his first day of using actual magic had quickly dwindled, being replaced by frustration and annoyance.

And worry.

“Do…Do you think I can’t-”

“You absolutely can,” Harry cut him off immediately. “I can feel the ripples coming from the wand when you try that. It’s just not…coming out right? Being interfered with?”

“What am I doing wrong then?” Izuku despaired. It wasn’t that, after over two months of waiting, it turned out he was absolutely useless at magic, was it?!

Harry sighed, raking his fingers through his hair. “Okay, okay, can you run by me again what you know about casting magic?”

Izuku huffed in frustration, before finding a spot on the ground to sit on.

“You- The wand is to properly focus the magic I’m channelling, then the wand motion and the incantation are to make the correct spell happen,” he said slowly, not knowing what he was misunderstanding from what he’d been told plenty of times during the theory lessons.

“Mhm, mhm,” Harry nodded along. “Great, now tell me in your own words.”

“Huh?” Izuku looked away from the ground, wincing when he realised his eyes stinging with wetness borne from frustration were now visible.

Harry gave him an understanding smile. “That’s the stuff Hogwarts told everyone who came there. Didn’t you wonder why I left out all the stuff I told you about souls ‘n so on during all the theory stuff?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s because I didn’t want to just have you take all my ideas verbatim regarding magic. I’ve seen you talk on and on about people’s quirks. You’re certainly more creative and insightful than me,” Harry explained, aimlessly waving his wand around, before pointing the wand at Izuku. “So tell me again, but this time: what are your ideas?”

Izuku stared at the innocent point of the stick, gulping slightly. He wasn’t the one who had experience with magic. How could any of his ideas match up to someone who’d practiced it for over a century?!

“Well, I think…” he began slowly, cautiously. “I think that…the wand helps store the magical energy you channel and concentrate, since you mentioned we can’t…do that. And that’s why the core is highly magical, because magical objects can easily handle it. But you can’t just…handle it with your bare hands, I assume, so a conductive casing is necessary.”

Izuku only barely noticed the self-satisfied smirk on Harry’s face as the last bits of resistance and reluctance fell to his need to get out his thoughts. “But everyone’s soul is different, otherwise we wouldn’t be different people, so everyone will channel magic slightly differently. So the core and wood and shape have to be varied to try and match the way the user channels magic. Otherwise it’s like trying to force a train to switch from the tracks it was built for to one it can’t work on mid-travel.”

He paused, looking up at Harry, who in turn waved his wand in a ‘go on’ motion.

“Th-Then, the wand motion is to force the magic to flow in a certain way. Like you said the runes you’d use for wards do. And the incantation is just to tell the magic to actually use its energy and do the thing you want it to do,” Izuku concluded.

Harry hummed thoughtfully, stroking his chin, before snapping his fingers. “Aha!”

“Aha what?”

“Midoriya, I think you think too much about what the actual magic is doing when you’re trying to cast.”

“What?” Izuku squeaked, wondering if he completely screwed himself over. “I-Is that bad? But you said…”

“I did say that,” Harry agreed. “I do believe what I told you back then on how magic actually works, but I only really came up with that after I’d already been taught how to cast magic at Hogwarts.”

He shook his head. “I think it’s because what I told you was the very first you heard about using magic, that you’re having trouble now. I certainly believe that’s how magic works, but I don’t think that way when I cast. I simply use the motion and the incantation, and then let the strong associations I’ve made do the magic for me. You started out with that understanding, and you seem like a very visual person, so trying to distance yourself from that with the incantations is preventing you from doing it properly.”

“So…asking you back then has screwed me over?” Izuku concluded worriedly.

“No,” Harry immediately shot that down. “It just means we have to approach this differently.”

For several seconds, the warehouse was blanketed in silence, and Izuku started to fidget under-

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Harry spoke up. “Let’s forget all about the words and the movement, and I’ll try and guide you through your way of casting magic.”

Izuku yelped when the holly stick was plucked out of his hand.

Harry chuckled as he was eyed warily, and moved to grab something from Izuku’s yellow backpack. “Don’t want you accidentally casting magic while we do that.”

He found a large pencil and handed it over. “Let’s use that as a dummy wand.”

“O-Okay,” Izuku stammered, not feeling very confident after his failures today.

Harry coaxed him into standing up again, and then moved behind him. “You see the pebble?” he asked, putting his hand on Izuku’s shoulder.

Izuku nodded, noticing the small rock, sitting on the floor a few metres away, like it’d been doing for the entire day already.

“Great. Now, try to imagine the magic around us. A bunch of dispersed energy, slowly flowing in and out of this building, surrounding us everywhere, going through us, going through the ground, going through the pebble.”

Izuku complied, closing his eyes, leaving the space in pure darkness.

“Now, imagine sucking that energy towards you, pulling it inwards, and letting it flow into the wand through your hand,” came Harry’s voice.

For a moment he struggled, but Harry’s grip on his shoulder tightened reassuringly, and a moment later he felt something within him rippling and moving as it gained strength.

“Great. Now you’ll just have to try and envision how that magic is going to lift the pebble before you do anything else.”

Izuku nodded, opening his eyes and focusing on the rock.

He barely noticed as Harry’s hand left his shoulder, already too focused on visualising the condensed, channelled magic in his hand being sent over to the rock and wrapping around it, ready to move up and lift the pebble along with it.

Keeping that image in his mind, and waiting for Harry to speak up again, Izuku channelled his frustration of the entire day, wondering if this was just going to be another failed attempt, that stupid pebble remaining stuck on the ground, just wishing it could just float up and prove to him that he wasn’t a failure here as well, and-

“Merlin’s beard!”

Izuku snapped out of his focused state, looking over at Harry, who’d readied his own wand to do something but had frozen in place, and then followed the man’s gaze back over the pebble.

Which was floating.

“How did you do that?!” // “Why did you do that?!” Mentor and protégé asked simultaneously.

Harry was the first to try and clear up the confusion. “What do you mean ‘why’d I do that’?”

Izuku gestured at the wand with his pencil. “You cast the spell, didn’t you? Were you trying to make me think I was doing it?”

“Wha- No!” Harry replied, showing him the holly wand. “I was going to use a switching spell to switch the pencil with your wand while you were preoccupied, so you’d cast the spell yourself when I told you to because you’d be too focused to notice in the moment.”

Izuku’s thoughts came screeching to a halt. “Wait…” He stared at the levitating rock, and then at the pencil. “Then did I-”

He yelped when Harry yanked the pencil from him and snapped it in half, trying to find anything odd within the graphite. “Honestly, how the hell did you…What?”

“But you can do wandless magic with the basic spells. Why are you so surprised?” Izuku asked, too preoccupied to register he’d actually done magic.

“Yes, but that requires a lot of focus, lots of power, and only a short burst of channelling,” Harry replied. “You took way too long for that to work properly. It’s almost like you were gathering and condensing the magic yourself, but our bodies aren’t built to do that!” he said, throwing up his hands in frustration. “That’s why we need the magical cores in our wands in the first place!”

Izuku watched as Harry sat down, looking absolutely bewildered as he stared at the pebble, which had dropped back to the floor.

And suddenly, a flash of inspiration hit him, and an observation from over a month back gave him a much needed realisation.

“Correction,” Izuku began, a grin forming as Harry looked at him. “Your body isn’t built to do that.”

Harry stared at him in confusion, then stiffened when realisation hit, and shot up, beginning to pace around the room.

“Of course. If he got the structures needed for quirks to harness magic passed down to him, but he doesn’t have a quirk that makes use of it, then…”

Harry paused, beginning to grin madly as he met Izuku’s eyes.

“I guess you won’t need this then,” he said, the holly wand he was holding bursting into golden phoenix flames and disappearing. “And I’ll have to have a good think on how to proceed with all this,” he continued, brows furrowing into a frown.

Izuku winced, lowering his head. “I’m sorry for inconveniencing you,” he mumbled, staring down at his red shoes.

“Hey, nonna that!” Harry objected, flicking him on the head. “This is just gonna make everything much more interesting and exciting, honestly.”

He looked up from his shoes to see Harry smiling at him, eyes shining in excitement.

“Don’t apologise for being one of a kind, Izuku,” his Sensei said softly, patting his head and ruffling his hair.

Izuku froze up under the hand.

One of a kind.

A title he’d had forced on him, though always indirectly, by his mom, by his teachers, by his classmates, by Kacchan. Through ‘quirkless’, ‘worthless’, ‘useless’, ‘fragile’, and Deku.

Something that’d been used to torment him, to put him down, to isolate him and hurt him.

But he relaxed mere moments later, before Harry could even feel it under his hand, and the hand retracted, revealing his happy smile.

When it was said like this, Izuku thought, wondered, realised, hoped, that maybe…

Maybe one of a kind wouldn’t be so bad for him after all.