A young boy fiddled with a pencil that had been chewed on so hard that the graphite on the inside showed. He spun it, threw it up and attempted to catch it only for the utensil to bump against his forehead and land on the ground causing it to break in two. Karma from the chewing.

The pages seemed endless, finally summer had come yet on the first day his mom sat him down to do homework. She only told him to work for an hour, since “If you finish your work faster, you’ll get to do nothing but play for weeks!” but to a kid an hour is a long time, especially when they’ve made all kinds of plans.

He dug through his case and picked another pencil out, marking it immediately with a gentle chew before he continued writing an essay on how to combat “glabal worming” or whatever it was, honestly he still didn’t really understand it but he tends to like warmer weather. Harry didn’t worry about his grade too hard, aside from the brainiacs the other kids probably didn’t get it either.

Still, he at the very least tried to do a good job, be on his best behavior until the day he’s been waiting for all year to arrive. His ninth birthday. 

It took a lot of convincing, but Harry believes he managed to convince his parents to give him the one thing he had wished for since forever, spending some time in the wizard world on his own. He’d been asking for so long, they keep saying how he’s too young but…He’s not a little baby anymore!

“How’s it goin so far, kiddo?” James asked as he invited himself inside the boy’s room.

“It’s going fine…I’m almost done with this essay” Harry said in-between a yawn. “Hey, dad? Did you ever have to do this boring stuff before getting to do magic too?...”

James shrugged. “Hate to tell ya’, but you’ll still have to learn the boring stuff even in Hogwarts.”

“What?!” Harry shot up. “Like, I still have to do math even then?”

Harry’s father ruffled the boy’s head for a bit. “Not as much, but you’ll have to do that and so much more. Transfiguration, divination…heck, broom ride training is sorta like PE.”

The boy grumbled. “Man…that stinks…but riding brooms is probably more exciting than throwing rubber balls around.”

James took a look at the rest of Harry’s homework stack, cringing as he remembered his own childhood days before attending the school for wizardry. “Wanna go shopping with your old man later?” James asked, to which Harry gave a slight nod. Helping with groceries doesn’t sound like the greatest thing after doing paperwork but he was salivating at the thought of choosing an ice cream, a sweet, delightful reward.

His father hung around a while longer, not really able to help with the paper as he also had zero clue what “clayball wornyn” was, but having to work in complete silence didn’t work out for Harry more often than not. There always needs to be some background noise for him to truly focus on something.

As soon as he was done the two headed out the door, walking side by side for a quick stop to the nearby grocers. While out, James had spotted one of Harry’s classmates and had forced the two boys to interact, it wasn’t meant to be malicious but…Harry had never been able to get along well with the people in his school. 

First he thought it was because they were muggles, but his mom explained that whether you’re a magic user or not doesn't change the fact that we are all human and thereby could be friends. So maybe it was just that he didn’t “fit in” with everyone else. Often he found himself staying away from people his age, especially the ones who were most outspoken. It’s not like he’s shy, he doesn’t hate them or anything either, he just found it difficult to be interested.

Harry searched his head, trying to find a topic that’ll steer things in a friendly direction. “Did you, uh, watch the latest football game?”

“Which one?” The boy asked.

“...Like, the one with the blonde guy…” Harry did not actually watch football, but he knows most of the other boys his age do. Some of them even played the sport and dreamt of becoming successful players in their own future. In comparison to Quidditch, Harry just wasn’t all that excited by land based sports.

With every new grade, the kids in his class seemed to notice that he was acting luke warm towards everyone and he’s been deemed to be kind of a jerk by the vast majority. It wasn’t a lie, but calling it the truth didn’t seem right. Harry still wanted to be friends with them…he just didn’t wanna do anything with them, preferring to watch from the side-lines.

He ended up managing to come up with an excuse and drag his dad to the register, hoping to get home as fast as possible to save himself from any potential, self-inflicted embarrassment.

“Welcome home~!” Lily said to the two as they returned. She gave a quick smooch to her husband’s cheek, Harry pretended to puke while watching the act.

Once everything was packed into the fridge and cupboards, the family made way to watch some TV together. When Harry was younger his parents didn’t want him staring at the screen all the time, but they’ve found themselves quite invested in dramatic cooking challenge shows. Considering James’ eyes, it was not that much of a surprise when Harry needed to get his own prescription one day. Still, Lily sometimes wonders whether it was really genetics or too much screen time…

Oh well, he looked adorable with those rounded lenses, so all’s well that ends well.

Such was the daily life of the Potter household, and several equally mundane days like this passed…until finally the big event had arrived.

After Harry blew the candles everyone clapped so loud it echoed through the home. Sirius picked up the boy by the waist and held him high while spinning. “Nine years! My godson is almost a whole decade old!” James ducked before Harry’s legs could accidentally hit him in the face.

Aside from the two couples there weren’t many other guests attending the party. Aside from the Potters, Sirius and Remus…there was no one else. Well, there was one more person, a young boy by the name of Neville Longbottom. Just like with the Potter household, his wizard parents had moved to London, although more recently. He had a similar trait to Harry, finding it difficult to find new friends among the muggle school.

Lily had asked her son if he made sure to give everyone in his class an invitation and Harry swore that he did, this was the first year that absolutely none of them had arrived. He gave the invitations out shortly before summer vacation began, so maybe they forgot about the card…or maybe his school reputation had finally hit an all-time low.

Neville was nice but this was the first time Harry and him had met, neither of them were very great at talking or playing so they would just awkwardly stand around and give each other weird smiles in an attempt to communicate. 

It would still be a good while until the Longbottoms came to pick Neville up so Harry tried his best to leave a positive mark.

At first he showed the boy around. He brought out the wonky clay animals his mother had made. The vintage illustrated animal encyclopedia he got from Snape. Finally, despite not exactly loving to share them, he let Neville play around with his amateur collection of miniature skateboards.

He used to bring the boards with him to school in an attempt to make friends, but after one of them was broken by a classmate he decided against taking them there again. Neville was pretty careful with the boards, he explained how he wasn’t allowed many hard material toys due to him being prone to accidents.

“Prone to accidents?” Harry asked. “What does that mean?”

“Uhm…For example…Oh! Just recently while at the dentist I played around with a rubik's cube in the waiting area and ended up breaking my thumb.” Neville explained. “Other than that…Once I got this magic jumping frog toy from my grandma and I accidentally put too much energy into it. It jumped re~ally high and then fell down directly on my head…They said I ended up in a coma for three days because of it.”

“...Dang, that’s pretty metal.”

The boys managed to have a pretty decent day all things considered and soon evening had arrived. 

The Longbottom boy was picked up first, Sirius and Remus gave Harry one last strong squeeze and headed out shortly after. Now that it was only the three left, Harry stared up at his parents with excited eyes. Lily and James had told Harry earlier that they would reveal their gift only after the guests had left, in other words, now.

“What’s the present? What’s the present?” Harry excitedly asked while jumping so fast his glasses nearly slipped off. Lily gave a tap to his head and instead of jumping he was now shaking with excitement.

“We’ve thought things over for a while…and we decided that you…may be ready to head to the magic world without us.” Harry’s face beamed- “But,” then fell as he heard the extra. “You still need some sort of adult guardian to take care of you while there.” Lily finished explaining.

“Guardian? Just for a day…?”

Lily shook her head, “Nope, not just for a day, you’ll get to go for two weeks!”

The boy’s eyes went wide in excitement and he jumped into his mothers’ arms. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” Two whole weeks? He couldn’t believe it, at most he thought an afternoon was possible.

“It won’t be long until you’ll have to go to Hogwarts,” James began, “So it’s best you get to spend some time away from us now and get used to the taste of homesickness. You’ll spend some time in Godric’s hollow, it’s a small town here in England. If anything happens or you’ll start to miss us we can come by to get you at any time.”

Ohh, so it was kind of like a test. They want to see if he can stay away from them for long…

“We used to live there a long time ago, back when you were first born…” Lily said with closed eyes. She looked like she wanted to continue speaking, but for some reason she seemed to freeze and just stared at her son for a long time. It wasn’t until James shook her that she seemed to snap from her trance. “Err- Uhh- Maybe you’ll remember the town a bit!” That was…weird. His mother must be worried about him leaving and she was trying to put on a brave face. He brushed it off and returned his focus to the fact that he was gonna be able to explore a town of magic all on his own, without his parents going overly careful mode like in Diagon Alley.

One last worry was on his mind however. “Say, who’s gonna be my guardian while I’m there?” His first thought was maybe Sirius and Remus. Remus may be more of a worrying and protective kinda guy like his parents, but he could probably get his godfather to at least explore any nearby forests. Aside from that, there wasn’t anyone who could…

“As luck has it, Sev and his business partner are currently in Godric’s Hollow to finalize their latest novel. So you’ll get to stay with them.”

…What.

“I’m gonna be with Snape…for two weeks?”