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He stopped being Harry Potter the summer he turned fifteen.

The summer started out almost promisingly, if you could ignore the constant pounding ache at his temples and the occasional answering throb of his scar, and the nightmares about Cedric Diggory's body that meant he never slept more than three or four hours at a time. Hermione could have told him that sleep deprivation gives you headaches like that, and she wouldn't even have had to use Google. Harry wasn't supposed to use magic around the Dursleys anyway, so it almost didn't matter that ever since...that night, any spell he tried to cast sort of fizzled out worse than Ron's spellotaped wand in second year. Linking his wand with Voldemort's had drained something out of it, Harry was sure--or maybe whatever it was had been drained out of him.

But it should have been a good summer. He stared right past Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia when they came to pick him up from the Hogwarts Express, feeling pale and distant and wondering if everything he'd been through showed on his face. Something must have, because Aunt Petunia had taken one look at him and barely bothered him since. Ron and Hermione were allowed to owl, although he didn't have much to talk about; nothing he knew how to put into words, at any rate.

And then Dumbledore himself showed up, just a few weeks into the summer, and even through the slump of his depression Harry felt his heart lift, because surely--surely, now that Voldemort was back, they wouldn't leave him here.

And so they hadn't. Dumbledore sat down in the parlor of Number Four Privet Drive, looking so utterly out of place it was impossible to comment on how out of place he looked. He stroked his beard and looked very grave indeed, and though he had insisted that Petunia and Vernon be present when he spoke it was directly to Harry.

"I fear, my boy, that you are in a greater danger than you know," he said. "I've spent the past several weeks researching...oh, many things, not least among them what's become of your magic since you dueled with the Lord Voldemort."

"It's...it's fine, Professor, isn't it?" Harry asked with a sinking feeling. "It'll come back."

"With much time and study into the matter, perhaps," said Dumbledore. "It is true that there has never been a spell found that could give magic to one born without, but in a case such as this...yes, I think we may eventually find a solution."

"Eventually?" Harry asked. "Do you think it might just...come back on its own?"

Dumbledore met his eyes and didn't answer. "The one thing we can be grateful for, Harry, is that Voldemort is almost surely as bereft of magic as you."

"Oh," said Harry. "But that's--that's brilliant, isn't it?"

"No, Harry," Dumbledore said sadly, shaking his head. "You must remember that Voldemort's power lies not only in his magic, but in his ability to control others. You have become, I fear, an even greater target than before, and without magic of your own, I am not sure even Hogwarts would be safe for you."

"Well, that's fine, then!" Uncle Vernon boomed, while Harry rocked back on the couch, reeling from the blow. Hogwarts. Hogwarts was his only hope out of here, his refuge, his...his home. "If the magic's all out of him, then he'll stay here, living a normal life, without all of you...weirdoes coming around to bollocks things up!"

"No, I am afraid that is quite out of the question," Dumbledore continued. "There is some protection on Harry in this house, as a child under his family's care, but that is no longer enough. Though I cannot say what it will require to restore either you or Voldemort to full potency, you can be sure he will believe you are the key to it. What cannot be harmed by a direct attack is still susceptible to so many more mundane things. A fire, perhaps, set by a careless neighbor or a passing tramp. An entirely Muggle burglary gone far too wrong. It is so easy to put those--what are they? Oh, yes. Guns. So easy to find them in the wrong hands these days."

At least Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia now looked as stricken as Harry felt. Harry cleared his throat. "But Professor, then...where am I to go? If I can't stay here, and I can't...can't go back to Hogwarts..."

"Ah!" And the professor brightened up just enough to give him one last piece of false hope. "That, Harry, is what I've come here to completely fail to discuss with you. I can only ask that you trust me, and when I say it is imperative that you disappear completely, you do not ask too many questions about where." He winked. "Even I myself may not know your final destination."

"You want him? Take the thankless little sod off our hands for good? Fine, have him!" Vernon declared.

"Vernon!" Aunt Petunia scolded half-heartedly.

"No, I'll do it," Harry said. "Wherever you send me. I'll go."

Uncle Vernon snorted. "And good riddance."

Dumbledore let him pack his things, gather his schoolbooks up from where they'd been collecting dust around his bed and shovel them all into his trunk, tuck his broomstick away, and grab Hedwig's cage. She was off bringing a letter to Ron and wouldn't be expected back for a few days. Harry turned hopeful eyes on the professor.

"Ah, not to worry, Harry," Dumbledore promised with some cheer. "I can guarantee she will be well taken care of."

Then Professor Dumbledore brought Harry, his trunk, and the empty cage all out to the empty yard behind Number 4 Privet Drive. It barely ran through Harry's mind that this might be the last time he saw the little house at all--his aunt and uncle had trailed along after them, probably to make sure they didn't get up to any mischief where the neighbors could see--Dudley was out with some of his friends, Harry hadn't said goodbye, might never have the chance again and could hardly bring himself to care--and then Dumbledore was wrapping his cloak around Harry and grabbing tightly to his arm, and it felt as though the whole world was turning itself inside out, and they were, quite abruptly, somewhere else.

So given all that, the early rescue, Dumbledore himself coming to whisk Harry away, it ought have been a truly great summer. It really ought.

Dumbledore whisked him to a small cottage on a cliff somewhere near the sea and deposited him in the care of a witch named Emmeline Vance, then Apparated off again before Harry had time to stutter more than a few unanswered questions and graciously-acknowledged thanks. Emmeline was brusque and quiet. Harry spent the next few days writing letters to Ron and Hermione that he didn't have the owl to send.

On the fourth day, Emmeline appeared at the door of his bedroom with an armful of clothing--jeans, a few long-sleeved shirts with logos on them Harry vaguely recognized from some of Dudley's video games, a pair of new sneakers. Muggle clothing. "Put these on, and pack the rest," she instructed. "You're being moved again."

"Where am I--"

"You'll find out when you get there," said Emmeline, and Harry clenched his fists but said nothing. He had learned, even in three days, that that would be the end of that.

She made him leave his trunk, the letters to Ron and Hermione left on top, pinned down by the remains of his useless, charcoal-black wand. She didn't ask him to drink the Polyjuice, just shoved a vial of it at him when he joined her in the kitchen. It turned him into a lanky blond with terrible teeth, only a few years older than himself, generic enough to fit into any Muggle city. They traveled by Portkey to the outskirts of Leeds, and then Emmeline locked his elbow with hers and dragged him to find a cab.

Emmeline handed him off to an elderly witch and wizard named, Harry learned, Sam and Amalthea Harker. Sam was Muggle-born and Amalthea was pureblood, or half-blood at least, but Harry never learned any more than that. They kept him for two days before handing him off to Alastor Moody, who dosed him with sleeping potion and Polyjuice almost as soon as Harry let his guard down, so that when he woke up he was a six foot tall redheaded woman who wouldn't look out of place in a bikini catalog, and also on a beach in Spain.

Harry spent the first few days wondering why women's bathing suits chafed so much and trying not to draw back every time Moody came near, even though he knew the man had nothing more in common with his Defense professor than a few hairs and some bad luck. Three days in, Moody sat him down in the little efficiency apartment they'd been staying in--Harry sleeping on the couch, Moody apparently never sleeping at all--cracked his knuckles, and pulled out his wand.

"All right," he said. "It's about time to start changing you a little more permanently than polyjuice, Harry Potter."

The scar was the first to go. Moody couldn't remove it, but he could paste an illusion over it that not even his wildly-rolling eye could see through, if he layered it on enough times. The accent was next.

"Why do I need an American accent?" Harry protested, rolling the vowels around on his tongue experimentally. Moody snorted. It looked a little odd on him at the moment, since today he was polyjuiced to pass for Harry's prim, dumpy older sister. "And why do we need to hide my scar, anyway, if I'm going to keep taking Polyjuice?"

"Be brewing a lot of Polyjuice without any magic to call your own, will you?" Moody asked. "And you'll stand out in America with a British one."

"I'm going to America?" he asked. Moody rolled his eyes--both of them, in the same direction. It was an indulgence he allowed himself remarkably frequently when he had both eyes to roll.

"Voldemort's power base is in England. That's where he's going to be looking for you," he said. "Three hundred million people in the states, and more than a few of them wizards. Dumbledore's called in a few old favors for you. They can hide one boy passing for a Muggle."

"Oh," said Harry. Moody cocked an eyebrow at his tone.

"What, you think you're too good to play Muggle for a few months? I suppose that good-for-nothing Death Eater bastard who taught you last year never told you how long I laid in wait living like a Muggle in the mountains of Kazakhstan, eating nothing but old goat and rancid yak butter, before I tracked down the dark wizard I was after."

"No," said Harry. It seemed to be what Moody was after.

"Nine and a half months," he said. "Grew a beard so long I looked like one of the goats. And did I complain about sleeping on the ground in the freezing cold without even a warming charm? No, I kept my mouth shut and brought home my man. And so will you, when I'm through with you. Now. What's American for pants?"

Harry spent the rest of the day memorizing strings of Americanisms. Moody woke him up in the middle of the night with a hand over his mouth, made him grab hold of a Portkey looking like a girl's discarded pink thong--no, flip-flop--and suddenly they were in Saint-Tropez.

That marked the pattern for the next few weeks. Every other day Moody would spring out of nowhere, grab him by the arm, and yank him away to some other spot--almost always beaches, vacation spots, places where tourists blended in and it was hard to hide a wand, though somehow Moody always managed it--by Portkey or Side-Along Apparation or invisibility cloak and broomstick, or even by Muggle bus or carriage rail. Once they used the Floo network, ducking into and out of at least a dozen different fireplaces until even Harry got confused about where they'd come to or where they were going. When they settled down, often exhausted from hours of traveling, it was only just long enough for Moody to layer another round of spells over Harry's scar and around his accent and drill him mercilessly on American slang and idioms. Then Harry would collapse into bed for a few hours' sleep before he woke up gasping from nightmares again. He shouldn't have time to be lonely. And yet...

He hadn't gotten to tell Ron and Hermione goodbye. The Weasleys. Hagrid, Sirius, Remus Lupin. The rest of Gryffindor Tower, god, Professor McGonagal, even. Cho Chang. Moody barely left his side long enough for him to go to the loo--no, bathroom--but he wasn't exactly company in the sense that a friend would be. It was starting to sink in that he hadn't said goodbye; he had Moody's gruff assurances that Dumbledore would have him home well before Christmas, but that still left him months alone.

It took the rest of June and half of July before Moody seemed satisfied, either with his spellcrafting or that any trail they might possibly have left was suitably obscured. Harry hardly felt like himself any more. His hair, which had always been so intractable by any kind of magic, was slicked back by heavy application of Muggle gel. He'd shot up two inches over the summer, just by chance, and was still getting used to not bumping into things. His voice didn't even sound like him. It was, he'd discovered quite by accident, humming along with one of the street performers in Ibiza when Moody allowed them to leave the motel room to eat, a much better singing voice than the one he'd left. Oh, that was something, to be sure. He'd left all his friends, his world, his home, his wand, his owl, his broomstick, and any memory of his parents behind, but at least he could sing.

Moody shoved him into one last change of Muggle clothing--baggy cargo shorts and a polo shirt, a little like something Dudley would have worn, but actually in Harry's size--and took a portkey out of their minuscule hotel room in Santorini. It was an old scrap of newspaper, and once they reached their destination, Moody lit it on fire. Looking around at the tree-lined streets full of cars all driving on the wrong side of the road, Harry knew they'd reached, if not his final destination, then Moody's.

"I'm not one for goodbyes, kid," he said gruffly in the office of Jackie Minero, Department of Magical Security, and slapped Harry on the back so hard Harry could feel the bruise forming. "Take care of yourself."

"I'll have someone show you out," said Jackie Minero, in a nasal sort of accent that sounded more like Harry's own, now. He supposed he'd have to develop an ear for different American regions. What did they call their aubergines again?

"No need," said Moody, and slipped out the door far too quietly for a man with one wooden leg. Harry sat silently in the hard-backed wooden chair looking at his hands folded on the desk, hating himself for not arguing with Dumbledore while he had the chance, hating Moody for dragging him here, hating Jackie Minero for just existing. He wondered if Ron and Hermione even missed him yet.

"All right, Mister Potter," said Jackie Minero, in her weird, nasal American voice. "Let's get you a new identity."

He got handed off three more times that summer. First Director Minero passed him to Senior Agent Bram Wardwell, who set him up in a safehouse that was actually a house, in the middle, he was told, of the Detroit suburbs, not that he was to go outside and look, with nothing but a pile of Muggle textbooks and an old abandoned guitar for company. It took Harry about ten minutes to remember that he'd hated Muggle school even before he missed four years of it, so he faffed around with the guitar until Senior Agent Wardwell handed him off to Special Agent Tilda Stone, a young witch with long brown hair and green eyes quite a few shades off from his own. Special Agent Stone brought him, the books, and the guitar to a barren two-bedroom apartment in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she pointed to the smaller bedroom and informed him it would be his for the foreseeable future, "at least on breaks and holidays."

"So I'm going back to boarding school, then?" Harry asked. Tilda had a low, throaty laugh that somehow managed to convey amusement without real mockery.

"Kid, do you know how many cases I have on my desk right now?" she asked. "I've got two formal degrees and a drawer full of commendations. There are real crimes going on out in the wizarding world. I'm your handler--that means if you have a problem, you come to me, and I deal with it, and it means I look out for your best interests. It doesn't mean feeding you breakfast every day."

"No, of course not," Harry said quickly, thinking longingly of the lavish breakfasts the Hogwarts house-elves put out every morning. Maybe Muggle boarding school wouldn't be too bad in comparison.

"Look, I do know why you're here," said Tilda. "Wish to god I didn't, but for now, thanks to the collective will of my bosses and whoever's trying to run things in that fucked-up mess the Brits call a wizarding government, I am the only person in the world who knows where Harry Potter is. I'm your Secret Keeper and I swear I'll keep it to my grave. There are wards going up around that school like you wouldn't believe, and yeah, I'm Obliviating the hell out of the guys putting them up there. I'm going to protect you. But what you do with your life while you're here--that's on you, kid."

"Thanks," said Harry quietly. He didn't know what else to say. She was too young to think of as a proper authority figure--young enough to pass for his older sister, when school meetings came around--but too old and imposing for a real friend. He didn't, as of right now, have any real friends.

It was rather like being at the Dursleys, back when he was ten, but...oh, no, so much worse. Tilda wasn't going to starve him or shove him in a cupboard under the stairs, and it looked like he'd have the freedom of downtown Cincinnati whenever he wanted it on school breaks, but that didn't change the fact that he was alone. And he'd had it better now. There was a whole world out there full of people who loved him, who wanted him, who thought he was cool and special for being Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived, but also for just being him. There was a whole world full of magic. The world was still there; he just wasn't allowed in any more.

The only part of Cincinnati he saw that week was the inside of the optometrist's office. Tilda led him in with an iron grip around his upper arm and pushed him towards the chair.

"We were talking about contact lenses, instead of those old glasses," she told the receptionist. "Of course, teenage boys, he thinks colored ones would be so cool. Can you do brown in his prescription?"

Harry went to bed early because with Tilda sleeping in the same apartment, she'd started giving him funny looks for always being up well before she was. He didn't sleep, though. He jammed his face as far down into his pillow as it would go and cried, and hated himself for being such a coward. He'd hoped a few silent tears would be the end of it, but rather than stopping, they just kept building and building until he was biting the inside of his lip to hold back a full-fledged sob--for Cedric, for the wizarding world, for the people he'd never gotten to say goodbye to, for his parents. And for Blaine Anderson, because as of tomorrow he was going to have to be Blaine Anderson, and anyone who started life with the kind of luck Harry was having now probably deserved a few tears.

On July 31, Blaine James Anderson's new birth certificate said, he turned fifteen. He spent it sitting in sullen silence while his sister Mathilda loaded him into her old silver hatchback and drove the hundred and fifty miles west to the R.C. Calhoun Academy for Boys and filled out more enrollment paperwork than he'd ever known could exist in the world, took him for a school uniform fitting, and drove the hundred and fifty miles back. They stopped at a Starbucks just outside of Indiana. Tilda bought him a cookie and a large coffee, regular drip, because Moody had spent their Mediterranean walkabout forcing him into learning to drink coffee over tea but he still hadn't gotten used to all those syrups and things. When they finally got back to the apartment, Tilda ordered a pizza--she was remarkably good at doing things the Muggle way, he didn't know if that was a DMS Special Agent thing or just an American one--while he locked himself in his room.

For lack of anything else better to do, he pulled out the guitar again. It kept him busy until the pizza came.

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The first year of Blaine Anderson's existence, to put it mildly, sucked balls. It's not a phrase Harry would generally use, even in all his acquired Americanism, but Tilda would. When he thinks about that year, he wants to swear, too.

Calhoun was just enough like Hogwarts to hurt. There were sweeping staircases, but they never moved, walls lined with portraits that never talked, looming gothic gargoyles that were never meant to do anything but downspout rain and look ornamental. The instructors were all Mr. and Ms., never Professor. Those were the surface things.

He had a roommate--one roommate, not four, in a tiny room with very plain walls and two small beds with no privacy curtains. It took almost a week to get used to falling asleep with somebody else lying there, no heavy velvet drapes in the way, just six feet apart. It took longer to get used to it not being Neville or Seamus or Dean or Ron.

It took four and a half weeks for Harry and his roommate to get into a screaming argument loud enough for the whole dorm to come by.

It started over socks. Harry's socks, on his side of the room, and maybe he wasn't as neat as Luke but he's not exactly a slob so if one pair of socks happened to stay on the floor instead of making it to the laundry bin, Luke could, in his opinion, shove it.

Except that Luke bent down to pick them up two minutes after getting back to the room from a shower, still clad in nothing but boxers and dripping wet. Hogwarts, Harry thought to himself, was never like this. You changed in the privacy of the bathroom or the privacy of your own massive four-poster bed, behind the curtains that Calhoun, for some reason, didn't have. Here he was just treated to Luke prancing around in his shorts twelve times a week. He gritted his teeth and tried to politely ignore it, but it was just...very difficult, not to stare, when Luke got so flagrant.

Harry had slept about six hours in the past three days. Luke had just gotten off a bad phone call with his mother. Harry had probably just failed his first math quiz. Luke had a massive project due in French. So Harry snapped at him to leave the socks, for fuck's sake, and Luke looked up and told him to keep his fucking faggot eyes to himself.

It went downhill from there.

Lots of things went downhill from there. His math grades, for one. They weren't helped by the Monday afternoon Mr. Cox tried to humiliate him for falling asleep in class--the night before had been especially bad, Hermione and Ron both dead, while Snape led a line of Dementors to kiss the whole staff of Hogwarts and Lupin the werewolf ripped Sirius to shreds, he'd woken Luke up panting--and Harry went off on him for about a dozen different things that left the whole classroom gaping at his audacity. After the argument with Luke, word got around; somebody scratched FAG onto their door.

It wasn't even true, was the worst part. He wanted to shout at them all that no, he wasn't gay, he was just a world-famous boy wizard in a magical witness protection program and he'd seen and done things that would make them piss themselves, and that made him weird enough. He wanted to cast Jelly-Legs and boil hexes and every other stupid student curse he could think of on everyone in sight, but he didn't have a wand and last time he'd held one, he couldn't use it. He wanted to go home, but he hadn't heard a word out of England in months. It meant that Voldemort was still out there, gathering power, but someone else was facing him in Harry's place. He wanted to scream.

So instead he shouted about everything else: about assignments, and unfair grades, and favoritism, about Luke's ridiculous fucking cleaning regime, about nothing at all that mattered. It didn't help, but it made him feel better for whole moments at a time. Then somebody whispered cocksucker at him in the showers and he grew all tight and furious all over again.

They sent him back to Cincinnati for Thanksgiving break where he lasted a day and a half before he shouted at Tilda over everything he hadn't been able to say all fall to anyone. She listened impassively for several minutes, and then, when he showed no signs of stopping any time soon, she slapped him. He nearly swallowed his tongue, more from the shock than the pain.

"One," she said, very calmly. "I didn't actually arrange for any of the plan to take care of you, I'm just the person standing between you and the Avada Kedavra when the Death Eaters come, so I'd suggest a little more respect. Two, you're going on sleeping pills, because it'd be impossible to smuggle a good potion into that place with any regularity. Three, if this is how you're dealing with your frustration at school, they're going to expel you well before the end of the semester. The more time you spend in the wind between safe havens, the more at risk you are, which puts me and the rest of the people who are going to end up protecting you at risk, which I will not put up with. Find a damn outlet."

"You're not my sister," he said. "You don't know anything about me, so why don't you just back off and let me--"

"Ruin your own life?" she finished for him.

"I should be fighting Voldemort, not sitting in some classroom with a bunch of Muggles trying to learn square roots," he said desperately.

"You're a squib," she said. "Or as good as, at this point. You would be dead in seconds. Fine, so it sucks. Life sucks. Your parents are dead and you can't see your friends and all your classmates think you're gay and you're a squib. Learn to deal with it."

She made him take the sleeping pills before he went back to school, just to make sure they worked. He woke up the next morning feeling groggy and a little disoriented, but he slept nine hours with no nightmares. Then she told him to join a club.

Calhoun was full of clubs where weird, angry, gay Blaine Anderson didn't fit. He might have joined the chess team, but the captain, Darrel Henshaw, had hated him since the first time he'd gotten into a public argument about the importance of learning about the War of 1812. There was no Quidditch team, no flying, just loads of sports that involved running around on the ground and only one ball, and he was pretty sure the football team was responsible for the repeated mysterious disappearances of his gym clothes. He tried to join fencing--he'd used that sword of Godric Gryffindor, after all, even if he'd mostly just waved it around and made a fool of himself--but the fencing coach took one look at his disciplinary record and wouldn't let him near the court.

He had the guitar Tilda had packed up and sent off with him, and he had the voice Moody gave him, so he joined the glee club. It didn't help with everyone assuming he was gay, but it kept him out of his room for a few hours every week.

Now that he was sleeping the night through, every night, most of his headaches cleared up. He spent less time awake but had more time to think instead of stew in a blind rage of pain and frustration. The choirmaster was very insistent upon breathing exercises. Those helped too.

After those first few weeks, Luke had stopped wandering around the room mostly naked, which Harry was entirely grateful for. It wasn't that he wanted to look--it was just, he realized, that looking at Luke like that reminded him somehow of watching Cedric Diggory on a broomstick. It didn't make sense, but Harry supposed they looked a bit alike, if you squinted. No wonder it made him uncomfortable low in his belly to look at him, but he couldn't quite take his eyes away.

He liked girls. He must. He thought about them when he was having it off, at least, when he bothered to think about anything but the feeling of his own palm--he was fifteen, he didn't need an expansive fantasy life so much as a stiff breeze. He did his best to use the shower block when it was empty because the other boys were uncomfortable, not because it meant anything.

Then Eli Taylor from glee club cornered him in the bathroom two weeks before Christmas break, both of them clad only in towels. He edged so close just making small talk about Harry's unfortunate illiteracy in the context of 1980's movie-musicals that Harry could practically feel the rise and fall of his chest. Then he smiled.

Harry wasn't sure who kissed who first, but he nearly bit down on his own tongue when Eli pulled back just enough to smile and murmur, "mmm, Blaine," against his cheek. He had to hold himself back a moment just to remember who he was. Blaine Anderson could do this. Blaine Anderson was a Muggle nobody who yelled at teachers and sang in glee club and, apparently, had it off with other boys in the showers when nobody else was around.

He could be that Blaine Anderson. He was already hard under Eli's fingers and everybody already thought it about him anyway.

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The apartment in Cincinnati had two bedrooms each even smaller than his bedroom at Privet Drive, though larger than the cupboard under the stairs. It had one bathroom, complete with funny rust spots in the tub and slightly grungy tile grout, a bright yellow kitchen that had apparently last been updated in the late seventies and not touched, save the appliances, which were probably from the mid-nineties. It had closets all over, though, big ones, not just in the bedrooms but also one in the bathroom, a kitchen pantry, and two off the living room besides the door that hid the water heater. The closets, Harry learned, were why they lived there.

Most of the things they kept in those closets he'd never seen before and couldn't imagine ever needing--a complete sewing kit and original Singer sewing machine? Three spare duvets for his bed, which had quite a serviceable comforter already? A 1935 Commemorative Monopoly game, still in its original shrink wrap from 1985? Tilda caught him eying that one and smiled.

"Makes the place look lived-in. It doesn't matter if we never even cook Easy Mac--someday, somebody is going to come over and glance in our pantry looking for cumin."

"What's Easy Mac?" Harry asked suspiciously, and Tilda's grin turned fierce.

"One of the chief artificial delights of the American Muggle palate," she said. "And it doesn't require a goddamned can opener." Tilda, he had discovered quite early on, could navigate a cellular phone or a car with ease, but her Muggle skills broke down when it came to can openers.

Surely they didn't need six closets just to prove that they lived there. Harry learned the real reason over Thanksgiving break, when he was rifling through the glut of cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink to find more dishwashing liquid. He shoved aside the box of brillo pads and froze.

"Tilda?" he called out to the living room, his voice going high and tight. "Why is there a gun under here?"

"Did that fall down again?" Tilda called back. It wasn't the reassuring answer he'd been hoping for. He heard her footsteps on the linoleum behind him, but Harry couldn't take his eyes off the weapon.

"Yeah, it did. Shit. I need better duct tape. Hey, move over," Tilda instructed, crouching down and shouldering Harry out of the way. She grabbed the gun with easy, confident fingers, then reached up into the cabinet with the other hand. "I had it stuck up underneath the sink where nobody would see it...goddamned condensation unglued the duct tape again. It's fucking duct tape. I'm still not convinced they don't apply a Permanent Sticking Charm in the factory, but it can't stay stuck to a damn sink."

"Why do you have a gun?" Harry asked. She'd put it down on the floor between them. It was little, and silver, and as deadly as a wand that only ever cast one spell.

"I have three guns," Tilda corrected. His eyes widened.

"Where?" he asked. She pulled away from the cabinet and leaned back on her palms, utterly unconcerned.

"Beretta in a holster at the small of my back, shotgun in my bedroom closet," she said. "This one's just insurance in case I run out of bullets in the first and can't get to the other as easily. You don't touch it unless there are Death Eaters literally coming in through the door. If I can find a way to stick it back up there..."

"You don't have to worry about that," Harry said fervently. Tilda raised one eyebrow.

"That goes for the spare wands, too. Not that you can do anything with them, but there's one in the linen closet in the bathroom, taped under the towel shelf near the back, one in the coat closet behind the shoe rack, and one behind the hot water heater. If we ever get attacked here, there's a good chance I'm going to need to go for one of those, and it's better if whoever's coming in doesn't. Understand?"

"You've got spare wands," Harry repeated. Three of them just sitting around this apartment, unused, plus whatever wand she was carrying.

Tilda had designated the apartment a magic-free zone, going so far as to scrub the bathroom tile grout by hand and draft Harry to open any and all cans. She never Apparated in or out, always drove away, and he'd never actually seen her wearing a wand at any other time--but then, he'd never realized she was carrying a gun, either, under the slightly baggy shirts she wore. Harry had always considered the apartment in the same, wholly Muggle category as Calhoun. To find out it contained as many as four wands, just waiting to be tried...

"You think this is paranoid? Kid, this is standard," Tilda laughed, misinterpreting his surprise. "Most of the guys I work with won't step out on the job without wearing at least two wands and a firearm, and you should see some of the arsenals they pack at home. This is America, kid, land of the free militia and weaponry for all. Oh, there's a few knives in your bedroom closet, just in case."

It lurked in the back of his mind all through December into Christmas break. There was still no word from Dumbledore. He took the drive from Bloomington into Cincinnati quietly, let Tilda control the radio, and sat down in front of the night's entertainment--a Pirates of the Caribbean marathon that Tilda insisted was essential to his understanding of modern American culture despite the movies taking place neither in the present day, nor in America--without much comment. Surely he would be out of here soon. Moody had as good as promised.

The days passed quietly, just the two of them alone in the apartment. Aside from a few errands, on which he was always dragged along, Tilda showed no sign of leaving. "This is work," were her words when he asked. She seemed to have the cable listings memorized. They watched a near-endless string of holiday movies, some of them familiar, some incomprehensible. And still no word from Dumbledore.

It would be just right, Harry thought, for it to come on Christmas morning, just in time, perhaps accompanied by another hand-knit Weasley sweater. He could be back in Hogwarts for winter term. He could go without a backwards glance. There was nothing here he'd miss--the guitar, perhaps, but he could bring that with easily enough, and Eli Taylor's right hand wasn't all that much better than his own. Anyway there were other people at Hogwarts, too, girls, and then nobody could call him queer about it.

Christmas Eve came cold and snow-dusted. Harry made french toast and bacon for breakfast, and, since he was in the kitchen anyway, a can of fruit salad. The only sprig of festivity about the place was a single evergreen wreath they'd gotten on clearance at the supermarket at the urging of a singularly pushy saleswoman. For dinner, Tilda cooked a pair of steaks in the oven next to a couple of foil-wrapped baked potatoes, and broke out some heavily spiked mulled cider. They ate on their laps in the living room while White Christmas played. Harry hummed along to all the songs, though he only knew most of the words to the last one.

It was a good Christmas Eve, he thought, a little blearily, as he tucked himself into bed. A good note to end Blaine Anderson's brief existence on. Now he just had to wait for Dumbledore to deliver the best Christmas present ever, and he was going home.

He woke the next morning to a single brightly-wrapped package, not left at the foot of his bed, but on the table in the middle of the living room. Tilda was already awake, sipping at her coffee, when he and his headache stumbled out of his bedroom. She grinned at him as he shut himself into the bathroom. Heavily spiked mulled cider. Bad idea. Right.

"What's this?" he asked when he'd finally gotten himself in order. It was heavy and rectangular, covered in dancing Santas. To Harry From Tilda, read the preprinted label. There was a stash of wrapping paper in the back of one of those closets, too, he remembered. "Um. I didn't...I'm sorry, I didn't think." Was it proper procedure to get Christmas gifts for your handler? Harry didn't know.

Tilda just smirked over the lip of her coffee cup. "I know. I figured. Open it anyway, you needed one." So Harry forwent the rest of his objections and ripped the paper off, revealing his very own brand new laptop.

"Wow," he said, staring at it. The last time he'd been allowed to breathe near a computer before coming to America had been Dudley's old desktop, and that had been ancient four years ago. He'd gotten through the past semester at Calhoun entirely in the computer lab, which was a learning curve in its own right--who knew typing took so long to pick up?--but a real laptop, like nearly every other boy in school had, would have made things so much easier.

"I'm--" never going to get a chance to use this, Harry thought. He was going to get out of Ohio and back to Hogwarts within days. But she'd obviously spent money on it--how much did DMS agents make, he wondered?--and he couldn't be ungrateful, not now. "Thank you, Tilda. It's great."

It wasn't a broomstick, or an invisibility cloak, or even a hand-knitted Weasley sweater, but it was nice. He could stand to be grateful.

The day ticked by slowly. What was the time change between Ohio and England? Maybe Dumbledore was trying to make sure he didn't come too early. Tilda pulled down 1935 Commemorative Monopoly and actually split open the shrink wrap. The close walls of the apartment were starting to wear, even though it had only been a few days. It hadn't seemed so claustrophobic the last few days of summer. Harry won one game of Monopoly and lost one. They ordered Chinese for dinner, since Tilda said it was an American Christmas tradition. Where was Dumbledore?

Then came Boxing Day. And the day after that. And the day after that.

"All right, I've had it," said Tilda, arching her back as she levered herself off the couch. "Two trips to the grocery store is not enough time out of this apartment this week. I can't believe I'm saying this, but we're going to the mall. I don't want to see these walls for another six hours."

"You go," said Harry, who was tuning his guitar for the fifth time this week. A Muggle mall? Filled with squalling, screaming, shouting, crying Muggles, all fighting over stupid, nonmagical clothes and toys and appliances and things? When he should be in Diagon Alley even now, picking up books for the second half of fifth year. No. "I'd rather stay here."

Tilda raised her eyebrows at him. "You can't tell me you haven't been here enough this week."

"No, I have, I just...it's a small apartment, and I need some time alone, is all," he said. "It'll be okay. I'll call you instantly if anything goes wrong."

She frowned at him a minute longer, then nodded. "Okay. Want me to pick you up anything? Soft pretzel?"

"No, thanks," said Harry. The door shut behind her. He tightened the D string.

He could pluck out the tunes of a few Muggle pop hits that had been all over the airwaves lately, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry. He ran through the melody of that song Luke's radio got stuck in his head the other week, all I won't hesitate no more, no more, this cannot wait, I'm yours. There were meant to be more complicated chords with it, he knew that, but he'd never had a lesson so he was just playing until something sounded right. Now that he had a laptop, he could probably Google finger positions, if he were going to be here long enough to set it up. Which he wasn't. He couldn't. He just couldn't.

It had been seven months without his magic. Five here in America, more than four since he started at Calhoun. It had been almost seven months since the last time he'd seen anyone who meant anything to him, and Moody had sworn he'd be home by now.

They couldn't bring him home without his magic, but what if it was back by now? Dumbledore hadn't said it couldn't come back on its own, after all. And maybe if Voldemort's had but he was hiding it...well, they wouldn't know to come get him, would they? They'd just keep looking for more complicated spells. He could have been recovered for months and since he hadn't tried, nobody had known.

There was a wand in the coat closet behind the shoe rack, in the linen closet underneath the towel shelf, and in the hot water heater closet in the back. Tilda had made him promise to never touch them, but. Just once. If it didn't work, she never had to know. If it worked...well, he'd be out of here, and it wouldn't matter what she thought about it.

The wand in the back of the coat closet, when his fingers closed around it, was cold and smooth in his grip. It was a pale wood of some kind, about eight or nine inches long, and very light. He pulled it out and stood in the middle of the living room, feeling all at once very nervous, and almost as foolish as the very first time he'd held a wand, in Olivander's, before he'd had the first inkling of what he could do.

The handle was warming in his hand. That was a good sign, wasn't it? The magic was responding to him. Or else it was just absorbing his body heat.

There were so many things he could try. Quite a few of them required an opponent, though, or would probably damage the apartment in some way...and he was a while out of practice...

Harry raised the wand. He could...he could--

The door to the apartment opened behind him. It closed with a heavy ka-thunk.

"You can't follow one fucking rule, can you?" Tilda asked, but she sounded more resigned than angry. "You don't even listen when I tell you this spot is supposed to be a total magic null zone. It doesn't even occur to you that I have so many wards on this place I could tell as soon as you laid a finger on one of those wands."

Harry glanced over his shoulder. She was leaning against the wall next to the front door, arms crossed, like she was waiting for something. "I deserve to try. You've got no right to keep me away from my magic like this."

Tilda raised her eyebrows. "Oh, is that what I'm doing? Fine, go ahead. Cast something."

Harry glared and turned back to the wand in his hand. "Lumos," he hissed.

Nothing happened.

"Lumos," he repeated urgently, but the wand stayed stubbornly unlit. He pointed it at the lamp on the side table. "Wingardium Leviosa!" Nothing. "Accio guitar! Diffindo! Engorgo! Periculum! Scourgi--"

"All right, that's enough," Tilda said, stepping forward. She laid one hand on Harry's wand arm, and plucked the wand out of his right hand even as he was whirling to glare at her for it. "Now you're just embarrassing yourself. Sit down."

Harry remained stubbornly standing. It had to come back. It had to.

Tilda slid the wand down the side of one of her tall, buckle-covered motorcycle boots. "Sit down, Harry," she said. It was the first time in he couldn't remember how long that somebody had used his real name. Harry sat.

"They're coming for me," he said. "I'm supposed to be home by now. They're finding a way to get my magic back, and I'm supposed to be home by now."

"Who the fuck told you that?" Tilda asked in open astonishment. She grabbed a chair from their tiny dining set and pulled it into the living room, then straddled it backwards so she could meet his eyes. "No, actually, don't tell me, I don't want to know shit about your resistance cell that I don't have to. I want to know what the hell you thought you were doing trying to steal another witch's wand while her back was turned."

"I needed to see," said Harry. "They wouldn't know if it had just come back on its own, so I had to check, so I could go back." Tilda's raised eyebrows were approaching her hairline by now.

"What exactly did you think this was, kid?" she asked. "A six-month vacation?"

"Oh, it's brilliant for a holiday, this is," Harry muttered.

"That's because it's not a vacation, this is your life," said Tilda. "I don't know what the hell they told you when they sent you over here, but on our end? They told us to set you up for the next five to ten years."

"What? No!" That couldn't be right. "I'm supposed to stay safe while they figure out how to get my magic back, and then they need me to fight Voldemort," Harry said. "I'm supposed to be over there, I'm supposed to be helping--"

"By getting your ass kicked?" Tilda asked. "You're supposed to be over here so Voldemort doesn't get his hands on you and use whatever mystical enemy bond you have going on to make himself even stronger. There's nothing about that mystical enemy bond that says you have to have anything to do with taking him down, especially without your magic."

"But I'm supposed to get it back," Harry said desperately.

"Says who?" Tilda said. "Not me. Not Albus Dumbledore."

"No, he said--"

"I'm sure he said a lot of things," said Tilda. "He's a politician and a man in charge of making things run. I am sure he promised you he'd do the best he could, and given the things I've heard about him, I bet he even has. But he told my bosses to come up with a plan to set you up that would last you until long after anything with that bastard is dead and done. So I don't know why you think your magic was going to just come back all on its own in a handful of months, but Albus Dumbledore very clearly doesn't."

It couldn't be. "No," said Harry, shaking his head. "No, he wouldn't do that. He wouldn't just...shove me out of the way, he wouldn't do that."

"Not even to keep you safe?" Tilda asked. "He seems pretty bent on keeping you safe. If he thinks your magic is never coming back--"

"But he didn't, he wouldn't lie to me, he said he thought there would be a way!" Harry argued. "There has to be a way."

"Maybe, eventually," Tilda agreed. "But not right now. Right now you're a squib under so much deep cover you shouldn't even know what magic is, and you'd better start thinking about the rest of your life, because I can guarantee you're going to be living the next few years of it in Ohio."

Harry gaped at her. "No," he said. "No, I'll find a way back, I have to--"

"You have to do no such fucking thing, because if you try, not only will I be on you with all the force of the Midwestern arm of the Department of Magical Securities, local law enforcement, and the FBI, if you do by some hundred fucking million to one freak chance succeed in getting back to your friends, the only thing you're going to succeed in doing is making your Voldemort more powerful than he's ever been. I don't give a shit whether you care about that or you just want to go play hero again. I care that it's not going to happen. Ever. You're here and you're staying, until I hear otherwise."

To Harry's undying horror, he realized that the hot prickle at the corners of his eyes wasn't the growing burn of rage, it was the swelling of imminent tears. Dumbledore had abandoned him. He'd lost his magic, probably forever, and Dumbledore had abandoned him to the Muggles. He'd rather be in Azkaban. He'd rather be dead. He'd rather be back on Privet Drive, so long as he still had the promise of Hogwarts to keep him sane.

"I'm going to my room," he said, careful to keep the rising sob out of his voice. He grabbed his guitar roughly by the neck and carried it with him; Tilda let him go.

Harry spent the rest of Christmas break shut up in his room with the door locked, stealing the neighbors' wifi on his new laptop so he could watch youtube videos of chord progressions and try to follow along on his guitar. He spoke to Tilda as little as possible. It was easier that way. He didn't know what he wanted to say to her, especially since she was, after all, only doing her job, but he couldn't speak to any of the people he really wanted to yell at. He was sure whatever came out of his mouth wouldn't have been nice.

***********************************************************************************

Blaine Anderson loved music. Harry Potter had never given it much thought, but a year ago Harry Potter had been frantically researching the properties of gillyweed and trying to pass Defense Against the Dark Arts. He had Ron and Hermione to keep him company, Ginny and Neville and Seamus and Dean, Fred and George and Cho Chang. Blaine Anderson didn't get to have any of that, but he got to sing. He could remember having almost exactly that same thought six months ago, in Portugal or maybe Morocco or whatever tacky tourist town Moody had dragged him to that day. Now he really had lost everything for good, and some days it seemed like the only thing that kept him from killing one of the other boys or himself with a dining hall steak knife was the sound of a clear chord, practiced over and over until his fingers bled. It wasn't anything like compensation, but it was all he had.

Calhoun's show choir never made it past Sectionals, and he'd joined too late for that, but they put on a concert for the school every few months. Mr. Nielsen wanted him to audition for a solo for the spring show, "in light of your newfound dedication!" The solo was 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', which Mr. Nielsen threw in between selections from Les Miserables and the medley of Gershwin just to prove he was cool and modern. The 'newfound dedication' was mostly Harry avoiding the rest of the world by sitting in a corner of the choir room for hours on end, picking through the guitar tabs for all the other Simon and Garfunkel songs in the book. They had a good sound to them, melancholy enough to match his mood, even the cheerful ones. They made him think about America. It was hard to imagine music like this ever coming into the pressed British staidness of Number Four Privet Drive, too calm for Dudley and too foreign for Aunt Petunia and just too sad for Uncle Vernon. It was just as hard to imagine it at Hogwarts, which could field a full classical choir that put the Calhoun glee club's traditional rendition of Ave Maria to shame but never really got a handle on Muggle pop music.

He was an American now. He ate french fries and watched cable TV and was never, ever supposed to do anything else. He was never going to fly a broomstick again. He might as well know their music.

It gave him something to distract him from the rest of the world. Even suspected murderer Harry Potter had always had at least Ron or Hermione at his side, no matter what the rest of the school said. The only person who ever willingly spoke three words to crazy angry gay little freshman Blaine Anderson was the DMS handler he called on his cell phone to check in with once a fortnight. Eli Taylor was an acquaintance with occasional benefits, but also a senior, and not given to exchanging more than a few words with him out of rehearsal or shower stalls. Nobody else bothered even that much.

Draco Malfoy had always been counted on to stir up some kind of rumor or trouble, but there was, minions aside, only ever one of him. Harry could make a list of people who considered it their most entertaining hobby to drive crazy angry gay little freshman Blaine Anderson out of Calhoun, and they weren't kept out of his belongings by an ever-vigilant fat lady. Locking the dorm room door every time he went out could only do so much good if Luke forgot to do so every other day. He knew better than to think Luke wouldn't be happier with a different roommate anyway. True, none of the teachers in Calhoun wanted to kill him, as far as he knew, but at least in Hogwarts he'd only had to worry about Snape, and sometimes the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. He hadn't made any allies for himself. Even Mr. Nielsen only really put up with him for his voice.

They didn't know the first thing about him. They couldn't, they never would--and he was expected to stay here for years? After four years of ridiculous Hogwarts rumors, he was used to people avoiding him, being afraid of him. He wasn't used to running into half a dozen elbows in the hallway as people conveniently just missed missing him, usually with a muttered "Freak" or "Fag" or "Weirdo" under their breath. He was used to sitting alone at lunch, not to being deliberately walked into so he would drop his tray of unidentifiable school mystery meat.

Singing and extra sleep stopped him from snapping at his teachers because his head hurt too much to think better of it. So when he turned around in the middle of the cafeteria to demand Simon Reznikov apologize, then put a fist right through his front teeth, Harry meant every second of it.

They hauled him up before the headmaster for that. The headmaster was unimpressed with his side of the story. Then they called Tilda.

Harry wasn't sure where she was at the time--could be anywhere from Lima to Lima, Peru--and he barely got a chance to speak to her over the headmaster's phone before it was pulled away for the headmaster's own private conference, but he could hear her clipped, angry tones through the receiver even from the other side of the desk. She was one to talk. She got to go off with her four spare wands and fight dark wizards every minute she wasn't watching him, while he got sent back here. He didn't care, anyway. What could they do to him they hadn't already done?

Headmaster Stevenson assigned him several weeks of detention and Harry sneered in his face. Two hours a day sitting in a room writing lines, after serving detentions in the Forbidden Forest, or sorting potions ingredients under Professor Snape's murderous glare, barely meant anything any more. It nearly lost him his solo in the spring concert, since he had to miss practice. That stung.

He stopped taking his sleeping pills. He wouldn't survive like this, he thought, with clear, terrible certainty, staring at his darkened ceiling and panting rapidly from the latest nightmare. A horde of masked and hooded Death Eaters swarmed Hogwarts and dragged all of Gryffindor Tower out to be crucified on the lawn, literally lashed to crosses like all those early Christian martyrs they had talked about in history class that day. They walked up and down the line, throwing Crucio and other, more insidious curses. Harry stood below, robed Death Eaters on every side, completely unharmed. Every time one of the hooded figures glanced at him, they laughed.

He was Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived. He'd faced Voldemort in one form or another three times since his eleventh birthday, and he was not going to stand helplessly by. Not while there was still life in him.

If he couldn't get back home through magic, well, there was always the Muggle way. He had his own plastic debit card, connected to Blain Anderson's own personal bank account, fed a weekly allowance through some endlessly complicated series of transactions that probably ended right back in Harry Potter's vault in Gringotts. He had Google Maps. He wasn't staying here another week.

She found him at eleven o'clock on Friday night, sitting on a retaining wall just outside a closed rest stop forty minutes north of Bloomington. She leaned over the center console to pop the passenger door open. Harry slid into the car and slammed the door shut without a word. He was afraid the first thing out of his mouth would either be an incoherent scream or 'thank you'. He'd had nearly two hours alone in the rapidly darkening parking lot to reconsider the wisdom of a plan that left him hitchhiking halfway across Indiana without a wand at his disposal.

Tilda pulled away silently. Harry itched to turn the radio on, just to break the pregnant silence, but he didn't dare move. Just as the oppressive, prickling quiet of the car was about to drive him to uncross his arms and reach for it anyway, Tilda spoke.

"You're cleared at school for the weekend," she said. "I told them I forgot to sign you out at the office when I picked you up."

Harry stared stonily out the front window at the highway. "Did they call you?" he asked. He'd expected to have at least a few hours' head start on Tilda, even if he'd spent most of them stranded and wondering how hitchhiking was supposed to work, anyway.

"You charged a plane ticket," she said scathingly. "And yes, I do have you tagged magically for when you need to be found. It helps me combat this suicide wish you've got going on."

"I don't have a--"

"Really?" she bit off. "So this is about hating all your old friends? Hmm? You resent them for moving on and having your old life while you're stuck out here so badly you want them all dead?"

"What? No!" Harry protested. "How dare you even--"

"You're the one trying to run away and get yourself and all your friends killed," Tilda said. "I realize this is hard for you--"

"You don't know anything about it! How could you," Harry fumed. Tilda snorted.

"I know that right now a fucking flobberworm has more of a chance of doing any good against You-Know-Who than you do," she said. "And don't say his name here, there's probably a Taboo on it and this far from home I can only do so much. You can't Summon a pencil, you don't know the first fucking thing about fighting as a Muggle, and you've got all the patience and foresight of an angry bear with all the actual competence of a drunken Mooncalf."

"I ought to be there," Harry said. "I could help."

"No," said Tilda. "What you could do is distract the people who're actually capable of doing something about the situation until they end up killed." Harry was silent, staring at the taillights along the highway. "Maybe it's all been too sugar-coated for you up 'til now, kid, but here's the absolute truth. They sent you here because you were in the way. They wanted you safe, and they knew you couldn't even defend yourself, let alone help them. Right now, the way you are? You are useless. Your only responsibility is to take care of yourself, because that's the only thing you could possibly be expected to manage without causing more problems than you solve. Do you understand?"

Harry's jaw was clenched so hard it hurt. His fingers had been tightening little by little against his arms as Tilda talked, and now his knuckles were white. "That's not fair," he gritted out.

"No," Tilda said, surprising him. "It's not. It fucking sucks. Not a damn thing that's happened to you in your entire life, Harry Potter, has been fair, and it's not about to start now. So how many times has complaining about it brought your parents back to life?"

"Don't talk about my parents," said Harry.

"You can't make life fair by shouting at it, kid," said Tilda. "But you can sure as hell try not to take out your problems on people who have enough unfairness of their own to deal with." She fell silent for a bit, nothing but the sound of the tires on the road and the flash of the passing lights of the cars in the other lane. When she spoke again it was a little quieter, more understanding, but not really quite sympathetic. Harry appreciated it. If she'd suddenly pulled out sympathy, he might have actually had to stop himself from hitting her.

"It's been your job for the past couple of years, whether you've been taking it on yourself or someone else has been giving it to you," she said. "Maybe you were too young or maybe it shouldn't have been on you in the first place, but it doesn't matter, because you got the job done and you dealt with it. Now it's not your job any more. It's not your turn. Maybe someday it will be again, but that's not now, and that's not tomorrow, and I may not be a Seer but I can give you pretty good odds it's not the day after tomorrow, either."

"So what am I supposed to do in the mean time, then?" Harry asked the windshield. Tilda snorted.

"Hell if I know. Learn algebra. Practice your singing thing. Call it a vacation." Harry let out a little huff of a laugh in spite of himself.

Harry hadn't eaten dinner, so they stopped at an all-night Perkins in Shelbyville a little after midnight for pancakes and coffee. They finally pulled into the apartment complex in Cincinnati around three. They didn't talk much more that night, but Tilda turned the radio on when they pulled out of Shelbyville and let Harry keep control of the dial the rest of the way home.

The next day she sat him down on the sofa and straddled one of the flimsy kitchen chairs, folding her arms over the back of it to face him with a calm, even gaze. Harry tried to sink back into the couch cushions. The couch, being entirely Muggle in nature, did not oblige by eating him.

"All right, kid," she said. "Let's talk about this school of yours."

It wasn't the question Harry had been expecting. "What about it?" he asked. "It's a school. It's fine."

"You're miserable there," said Tilda bluntly. "I need to know if it's because you're insanely homesick and you'd be miserable anywhere, or because it's really just a miserable kind of place."

"I can handle it," Harry muttered. She raised her eyebrows.

"Getting into fistfights in the cafeteria is 'handling it' now? Because in my day, we called that 'instant detention' and possibly 'crying out for attention'."

"It's not my fault," Harry burst out. She raised a single eyebrow, a trick he had yet to master. "I'm not going to just sit there and take it, not when they're shoving me in the hallways and calling me all those things. The teachers aren't any help, they let it all go just because they don't like me."

"All what things?" Tilda asked, tone unreadably bland.

"Freak. Queer. Loser. Fag. I don't know, everything--insults I had to go and google later because Moody's crash course in American slang didn't bother to include seventeen different synonyms for 'cocksucker'." Tilda nodded, the slightest trace of sympathy around her eyes. "It's not--it's just because they all think I'm gay," Harry hastened. Somehow a sympathetic Tilda was even harder to deal with than a disappointed one.

"Are you?" she asked bluntly. Harry blinked.

"I don't--I mean, that's not the point," he stammered. Tilda just nodded.

"Because if you are, even a little, you're only going to help yourself by saying you are," she said. "That's not the only reason they're calling you a freak or they never would have started, am I right?"

"I don't belong there," Harry said in frustration. "They all know it. I've got a handle on the American words now, but I kept letting them slip at the beginning of the year, so everybody thought I was a pretentious asshole, and I kept forgetting about things like light switches and House Elves and how to type. It's not my fault. I don't belong here."

"No," Tilda said, surprising him again. "You don't. But you are here, so it's still on you to work with what you've got. At least if you can pass yourself off as the gay kid, nobody will bother to look any closer at all the other reasons why not. In the mean time, I need to know what else they're doing to you, kid."

"Nothing," Harry lied. Tilda raised her eyebrows. "Look, I'm handling it," he said.

"They take your stuff?" Tilda asked.

"How did you..." Harry began, startled.

"Just assume I know everything, kid, it'll always go easier for you," Tilda advised. "Tell me more," she said, so he did.

He hadn't expected to tell her half the things that had happened over the past few months, but once he started he found they just kept spilling out of him, one after the other, like lancing a boil he'd been pretending wasn't bothering him for much too long. Tilda didn't move from her chair, didn't react, just sat there and nodded and listened as he ran himself out, until he found himself at the end of a sentence and realized, with a start, that he was done.

"You didn't mention most of this in your check-ins," she said. Harry shrugged.

"Like you said, life sucks. I was dealing with it."

"No, you were getting harassed six ways from Wednesday," she said. "That's not acceptable. You're supposed to be kept safe here, not hidden from dark lords and Death Eaters until you get your skull cracked open in some gaybashing hazing ritual gone wrong."

"I can manage it," Harry protested.

"Without a wand?" Tilda asked. Harry looked down at his shoes.

"Sure," he said. Maybe he would just spend more time in the choir room. For the next three years.

"By stomping around in the kind of mood I've seen you in lately, picking fights every time you turn around just to get yourself noticed?" she asked. "Because if that's what you wanted, kid, I'll tell you, I've noticed, but so have they, and that's not okay. Your half of this deal has to keep a low profile, or all the Muggle disguises in the world are going to keep your friends safe from Voldemort finding you."

"Fine," said Harry, "fine, I don't care, it's not like I want any of them paying attention to me anyway, not the kind of attention they have."

"Fine," said Tilda. "Make it work until the end of the semester, and if you can keep your head down and prove to me you can make it through the next few months without making any waves that aren't started by somebody else--"

"It's always started by somebody else," Harry protested.

"--and I mean defending yourself against a fist to the face, not punching somebody because they called you a name you didn't like in the hallway, kid. If you can prove to me that you won't just stick out like a sore thumb and cause trouble wherever you go, I can see about getting you transferred somewhere a little less tolerant of that kind of bullying," Tilda promised. "But Harry--that's it. Last chance. If you can't reel yourself in and fit in just like any other slightly troubled prep school teenager, I can't keep pulling you and moving you to deal with it."

"So you'd have to send me back?" Harry asked without much hope. Tilda shook her head.

"No, I'd have to Obliviate half your life away and turn you over to Muggle witness protection," she said. "So you'd have someone living with you to monitor your condition every single night. No more fights, no more running away, or I can and will wipe you so clean you'll never find your way back to Hogwarts again. Get this right, kid, or you're out of second chances."

Harry gaped at her. Tilda never looked or sounded unsympathetic when she told him to suck it up and deal with his life, just a little sad and a lot matter-of-fact. She wouldn't, he realized, like turning him over to Muggle authorities, but she didn't like staying in this little apartment where the washing machine was down four flights of stairs and her wand remained firmly hidden down the side of one of her knee-high boots at all times. She did it anyway. She expected him to do the same.

***********************************************************************************

For the next three months, every time somebody shoved an elbow into him in the hallway Harry bit down so hard on his tongue it almost bled and forced himself to think about Privet Drive. An American Privet Drive, where he might not only have lost his whole world, he wouldn't even remember what he once had. He spent all the time he could between classes in the choir room. He was getting a pretty good handle on Taylor Swift, although the Black-Eyed Peas didn't seem to translate well to the acoustic. Mr. Nielsen gave him half a duet on an a capella 'Under Pressure' for the end-of-term concert. Chip Escobar, who sang the other part, didn't even give him too hard a time in rehearsals.

He scraped by with a handful of passing marks, not half as well as he'd ever done in Hogwarts, even during the terms he spent looking over his shoulder at every turn for invisible monsters or dark lords and Hermione was too angry at him to help with his homework. It would have gone better, he suspected, if he'd ever studied American history beyond the revolution, math beyond basic algebra, or English literature beyond Watership Down. What the hell was sentence diagramming about, anyway?

He didn't get into any fights, he didn't yell at any teachers, and he didn't get caught sucking Eli Taylor off in the showers. He choked a little the first time, and there was a minor incident with teeth, but he worked out the trick of it by the second or third time.

"I'm transferring," Harry said abruptly some time mid-May, sitting back on his heels while Eli sagged against the wet tile wall. "Next year."

"Congratulations," said Eli. "I'm graduating. May you find happy domestic bliss at whatever shithole you wind up in next." Then Harry stood up and Eli put a hand on his cock, and that was all the conversation they engaged in for a while.

Tilda showed up on June 1 in the same silver hatchback that still fit all of his belongings with room to spare. This time, they stopped at the same Starbucks on the way home, and he was the one to buy her a cookie.

"Thank you," he said, looking down into his coffee. "For not...for giving me the chance." It burned a little to say, but less than the Obliviation would have.

"Believe it or not, I kind of like you, kid," she said. "Come on, finish up, there's a John Cusak marathon on tonight and you're never going to fit in as some scrawny American gay boy if you haven't at least seen Say Anything."

That summer he only left his room when Tilda dragged him. The laptop's use was split pretty evenly between schoolwork, his increasingly huge, mostly pirated music collection, and porn. He always felt slightly guilty looking at it, and at school he always had to make sure Luke was going to be gone for a while before he even thought about pulling it up, but he just wasn't used to it. Muggle porn was so inventive. He'd never in a million years have guessed some of the things people apparently did to get off. It was sort of nice that he could admit he found naked men attractive now. The music ran through every genre he could find. He didn't understand electronica, and he wasn't sure how he felt about rap. Punk felt...too close to home. Blaine Anderson couldn't listen to punk, not if he wanted to keep Harry Potter buried without getting into fistfights at his new school. Pop was safe.

Whenever the four walls of his own bedroom got too close, he raided the DVD collection that Tilda was slowly but surely moving into their living room. He liked the old black-and-white movies. There was no forgetting it was just fiction, easy stories that always ended well. Action movies made him angry, especially the modern ones full of special effects. He didn't watch more than a couple of those.

Tilda insisted upon teaching him to drive two weeks into break.

"You're not worried I'll steal the car and try to run off to the airport again?" Harry asked snidely.

"I have so many tracking spells on you I could Apparate into the passenger seat of any vehicle you're driving even if you made it to Canada," said Tilda. "Okay, now try reverse."

They brought the little silver hatchback to a cemetery just outside of town, and he learned the feel of the gas pedal and the wheel on winding roads cutting between trees and headstones. They practiced three-point-turns and parallel parking in the little parking lot next to the main mausoleum.

"This seems like a strange place for driving lessons," he remarked, leaning back over the seat to make sure he didn't reverse into any graves.

"Nah, my dad taught me in a cemetery when I was sixteen. Lots of space, curvy roads, low speed limits, and not a lot of people." She rolled her eyes at his surprised look. "Yes, I'm Muggleborn. What, did you think all American witches knew how to work a dishwasher and a speed dial?" Harry, who'd never actually thought to ask, blushed and kept his eyes back on the road. It was trickier than riding a broomstick.

She also dragged him clothes shopping, since, as she said, "The more you play into the stereotype on the surface the more 'little quirks' you can get away with once people get to know you." This time, Harry was the one to raise his eyebrows--he was thin, and it was increasingly obvious that he was never going to be tall, but he couldn't see himself ever flaming like some of the gay men in the endless pile of movies Tilda kept forcing on him as "cultural awareness research". "I'm not saying you have to be Adam Lambert, I'm saying it doesn't hurt your cover if you look like you care about looking nice. You want boys to look at you, right?" That conversation ended with Harry clearing his throat awkwardly and then wandering off to hide in the sale racks at the Gap. It was nice to have clothes that were actually bought for him, for once, that weren't school uniforms. He liked the Gap. The sales clerks all tended to wear very tight jeans. He was, Harry decided, definitely a fan of tight jeans.

On his sixteenth birthday, Blaine Anderson went with his sister to the King's Island amusement park, rode every roller coaster twice, and tried not to think about how much the sudden dips and turns reminded him of flying. They spent way too long watching a flock of girls in gold-spangled skirts twirl around men in disturbingly sparkly pants while they belted out a selection of greatest hits of the eighties. He held out a whole song and a half before he started critiquing the performance--one of their baritones was slightly off key, and there wasn't enough power in their backup sopranos not to get overwhelmed by the altos. Tilda held out for a whole two and a half songs of that before she laughed and swatted him on the back of the head.

"Next summer you'll just have to work here yourself, won't you?" she said. "Come on, for sitting through that, you owe me a funnel cake, even if it is your birthday."

***********************************************************************************

Dalton was like a breath of fresh air. He hadn't thought about it when he'd started at Calhoun--everything was too fresh, too raw, too full of resentment--but leaving everything behind worked both ways. He got a fresh start. He had to be Blaine now, not Harry, and Blaine could be whoever he decided to be. The worst thing Blaine had ever run away from was a school full of homophobic bullies, and the worst thing Blaine had ever done was punch one of them in the cafeteria. The only nightmares Blaine Anderson ever had were about forgetting to finish his homework.

Harry Potter wasn't gay--he squeezed his eyes shut, envisioning the Daily Prophet headlines if Rita Skeeter had ever gotten ahold of a rumor like that. He'd cause a wizarding-world-wide scandal. He'd let people down. Blaine didn't have anyone to let down besides Tilda, and she'd spend a whole week forcing him to sit through romantic comedies until he could discuss at length which leading actor he thought was hottest. He could walk up to his new roommate on the first day, offer his hand, and, post-introductions, say, "Just so you know, I'm gay. I transferred here because it was a problem at my last school, and they said it wouldn't be here, but if you want to switch roommates I'll go with you to the dormsmaster."

Ian shrugged and flopped down on his back on the bed he was apparently claiming, sneakers still on, and grabbed a racing magazine off a stack on the floor. "Whatever, dude," he said. "My aunt's a total lesbian. Just text me if you're using the room, 'cuz, like, they totally notice and whip out surprise inspections if you sock the door knob."

He blinked a little at his new roommate, then settled in at his desk with his math textbook. Hermione had been doing more complicated things than this for years, he was sure, in Arithmancy, but here at Dalton Harry-Blaine was still behind and he was going to have to work things out himself if he wanted to catch up.

Just like that, he had an identity. He was polite, quiet sophomore transfer Blaine Anderson who studied too much. Gay Blaine Anderson--which got him nods and introductions from Jake Cruise, the senior running the GSA, and Thad Dixon, and Malcom Pace, and half a dozen other out, gay students who actually took their boyfriends on dates instead of scheduling secret assignations with freshmen in the showers. It didn't make him friends with any of them, exactly, but they knew who he was and nobody minded.

He'd looked up the Dalton Warblers that summer as soon as Tilda told him where he was going. They were amazing. They were everything the Calhoun glee club hadn't been and more. They sang a capella covers of Rhianna songs in eight-part harmony and didn't bother to change the pronouns. He wanted in as badly as he'd wanted anything since he'd first laid eyes on his Firebolt.

Auditions were by invitation only. Weird angry freshman fag Blaine Anderson had never gotten invited to a thing; Harry Potter would have, once, but only by trading on a famous name. Dalton Blaine needed a plan. There were ways, he knew, to make people like you--to pass through the world so smooth and slick and charming they couldn't help but open their doors to let you in. He pictured Hugh Grant, Frank Sinatra, Gildroy Lockheart. Draco Malfoy, he realized suddenly in retrospect, had more than a touch of it. He expected things to come to him, and they came. Most of the other boys at Dalton were like that--never to the point of lording it over each other, of course, because that would be beyond the bounds of manners, but they walked with the sleek assurance that they had a place in the world and it would open itself for them if they asked it. It wasn't anything they said. It wasn't anything so obvious as Draco's nose-in-the-air superiority--and he wondered, now, if an older Draco Malfoy might mellow down to the kind of charm he saw on Charles Holwell or Kent Iverson, either of whose fathers could probably buy Dalton and the whole city of Westerville if they wanted it. It was just knowing.

Maybe Blaine was nothing but a figment of the imagination living in a two-bedroom apartment in Cincinnati, but Harry could remember all those times Hogwarts had chosen to treat him like a rock star. He could borrow that feeling. He was, he told his mirror, already awesome. He could outfly a dragon on a broomstick, and he could outsing any boy in Dalton. If this was all he was allowed to have--well, it would be his, and nobody else's.

The plan was to 'accidentally' get himself assigned lab partner to Scott Corkrin in physics and into a group project with Anthony Radmacher in English, and charm both of them until they were willing to ask the Warblers council to give him an audition. It felt sneaky, and a bit dishonest. It also felt like the only way to go. Besides, it wasn't as though he minded spending time with Anthony or Scott. They could be funny, in their own, buttoned-up sort of ways. More than that, they looked at him like he was funny, like he might actually be succeeding a little at this charm thing. He put on his best ingratiating Draco Malfoy, and three weeks later, he put on his best rendition of 'You Belong With Me', which he'd practiced with and without his guitar so many times Ian had thrown a shoe at him and declared an abiding hatred for all things Taylor Swift. They gave him the slot.

That was it, then. There it was. He was quiet, charming gay Warbler Blaine Anderson who studied too much. He had never ridden a broomstick. He had never cast a spell. He had never even, as far as he told his classmates, gotten into a fight, and if his records from Calhoun said otherwise the Dalton faculty wasn't mentioning it. He liked the Beatles--well, who didn't like the Beatles--and ridiculous girl-fronted pop songs, old classic movie musicals, and Shakespeare. He laughingly let Ian subject him to a whole season of college football in retaliation for all the hours he spent practicing his parts for Sectionals in the dorm room, and found that, Quidditch or not, he actually enjoyed it. Blaine Anderson, who liked music and football. Blaine Anderson, who had grown up in New England, far away from anywhere his Midwestern classmates had ever lived, but now lived with his sister in Cincinnati.

And Harry Potter didn't clench his fists and grit his teeth and yell. He didn't stare at little Pavarotti on his perch and think about throwing the cage door open, throwing the fifth-floor dorm window open, leaping out and praying for whatever latent magic he must still have somewhere to catch him. He didn't leave the common room on Lord of the Rings night, even when Gandalf dueled Sarumon, and he didn't pick fights with Ian about dirty socks or the way he left the TV on all the time even when he was out. He didn't. He might want to, but he didn't, because Harry Potter was the key to the Dark Lord regaining all his power, so Harry Potter couldn't be allowed to exist.

He still raged, sometimes, when the Warblers Council passed him over for solos in favor of an upperclassman with a much weaker voice than his own, when his teachers took too much vicious glee out of springing pop quizzes just to fail them all, when he caught sight of the date and imagined, before he could stop himself, Hogwarts at Halloweentime, the Great Hall lit with pumpkins and every chair at the tables full. He just kept it inside his head. And if Blaine's perfect smile occasionally looked a little strained or tight around the edges--well, everyone got stressed around finals week.

For Christmas he got Tilda a scarf and a Netflix subscription and she got him a used record player and half the Beatles' discography on vinyl. She was much, much better at gift-giving than him, even if she did spend the rest of Christmas break enthusing over Netflix Instant while he listened to every hiss and pop on the White Album over and over again. The Warblers lost at Sectionals to Aural Intensity--who named these groups?--but they put on a spring invitational anyway. Tilda came, shockingly, for one night not in Akron or Argentina or wherever else she went when she wasn't babysitting him. He sang solo on 'Blackbird'. Later, in the apartment over break, he sang it for her without the tremendous force of eight-part harmony behind him, just one voice and an acoustic guitar, like McCartney had intended.

***********************************************************************************

The hardest part about making friends at Dalton was just reminding himself not to get too close. Making people like him was easy, once he caught the trick of swallowing down how much he resented them for their happy ignorance. It was about eye contact, and smiling at whoever he was talking to like whatever inane thing they were saying was the most interesting thing on earth. Sometimes it really was. Sometimes the angry little voice in the back of his head that still wanted to hitchhike up to the airport, hop a flight to England, and storm the Ministry of Magic before Tilda could stop him urged him to shut the other person up with one swift remark. The more practice the part of him he thought of as Blaine Anderson had in ignoring that voice, the easier it got to keep smiling like he meant it.

It never occurred to him that he was being anything more than friendly until he found himself on the common room couch one night for Lost DVD's, sandwiched comfortably between Mal Pace and Liam Gebhardt, leaning over Liam to steal popcorn out of the bowl on Nate O'Conner's lap with an exaggerated wink. Ian was sprawled across the floor, wrestling with the DVD player. Pete Henderson, from the second floor, who'd come up to study chemistry with Liam and found himself dragged into staying, raised his eyebrows.

"Okay, I'm confused," he admitted. "Are you guys a thing? Because Blaine, I sort of thought you had something going with Dixon."

"What?" Blaine asked. "Thad and I are just friends. We're all just friends, actually," he added, shooting quick glances left and right to make sure Mal, Liam and Nate were all on the same page here.

"Blaine's a flirt," said Ian, not looking up from the vast complexities of the remote. "He does that with everyone."

"I'm a what?" Blaine asked. Nate rolled his eyes.

"You pretty much are," agreed Mal, patting his knee consolingly.

"He totally is. It's no big," Liam assured Pete. "It's kinda fun."

"It's why everyone likes him," said Nate.

"He makes a boy feel pretty," Ian agreed. "And witty."

"And gay?" Mal asked.

"Nah, or we'd never get any homework done in our room--ha! Ancient DVD player, bow before your motherfucking lord and master." Ian's victory dance looked more than a little ridiculous when he was still face-down on the carpet, but he had the intro screen for the next disc up and running, which was more than Blaine had ever gotten out of that machine.

"DVD players can't bow, Ian," Nate said, and threw a piece of popcorn at him.

Mal caught him on his way back to his room afterwards, in an empty piece of hall near the custodian's closet. "You know, Blaine, you really have no idea what kind of effect you have on people, do you?"

"I'm just trying to be nice," he said, a little awkwardly. Mal was a year ahead of him, tall and skinny with reddish hair just brown enough that it didn't always make him think of Ron. Mal was standing--not closer than Ron usually had, because they'd hung all over each other, hadn't they? It was a different kind of closeness, though. This kind came with intent.

"Believe me," Mal said. "You're nice. But somebody should probably teach you..."

"Teach me what?" Blaine asked, very quietly now. They were near enough that his voice didn't need to carry very far.

"What nice boys get," said Mal, and kissed him.

It was a terrible line. It was a terrible choice of venue, not to mention time, since curfew was in about twenty minutes. They made out in the corridor for the first five, until the slam of a not-distant-enough door pulled them apart with identical sheepish smiles.

"Who the hell are you, Blaine Anderson?" Mal asked, and Tilda had made him sit through enough spy thrillers to understand the requisite dramatic irony of the question. That didn't stop him from freezing up in instinctive shock.

"I'm nobody," he said. "Just me. Your friend, right?"

Mal laughed and took a step back, just enough distance for him to run a hand through his disheveled hair. "Yep," he said. "Friends with occasional making out and flirting benefits?"

"I'm sixteen," Blaine said. "Like I'm going to turn that down."

Mal was different than Eli, slower-moving, better at kissing. It helped that Blaine liked him better. They didn't start hanging out any more than the once or twice a week group stuff they already did, but occasionally, beforehand while Ian was out practicing with the lacrosse team, or after if Lost night ended early enough, they engaged tongues.

It wasn't anything more than that. Blaine wasn't looking for anything more than that, definitely not with Malcom, who reminded him a little too much of a misplaced cousin Weasley and was way too fond of women's figure skating for any guy who wasn't getting off on watching the scantily-clad participants. He'd seen all the romcoms and the movie musicals, and yeah, he could understand wanting that, all the glitz and the wooing and the eventual, inevitable happily-ever-after. He'd have it. Someday. Just not with Malcom.

And if the angry little voice in the back of his head sneered and wondered how he planned to have any kind of real romance when every part of him was fake, and Tilda made him sit through Brokeback Mountain, too--well. First of all, he wasn't a cowboy, and just because one gay romance ended tragically for the silver screen didn't mean all gay romances would end the same way or even have the same fatal flaw if they did. Second of all, that angry little voice could go fuck itself.

***********************************************************************************

He spent his second full summer in Cincinnati more or less alone, since Tilda had decided she could trust him not to hurl himself full-force into Voldemort's arms now, and had what she called "real policing" to do. That meant, he discovered, that he fended for himself two or three nights in five, and when she was home it was usually with a huge briefcase full of paperwork that she filled out at the kitchen table with a lurid green fountain pen. Besides the wards, which were by their very nature invisible, and Tilda's wands, there was no magic anywhere in the apartment. Tilda usually walked or took a bus a few miles across the city to a Portkey she took to a secondary site she used to Apparate to a Floo terminal.

"So don't complain about your commute," she told him. "Especially since it's my car."

It took him about forty minutes to drive into King's Island every day. His jacket had sequins. His pants had stripes. The whole experience was utterly mortifying, and he was going to kill Tilda for shoving him into it just as soon as she stopped laughing.

"It'll be good for you," she promised him between chuckles. "Loosen you up. Jesus, kid, don't you ever laugh at yourself? Do you ever laugh?"

Not much, he privately admitted, these past couple of years. But it was hard not to see the humor in the situation, and his dancing had never looked so good just sitting around at Dalton.

"You can't live off your trust fund forever, kid. High school's only another two years. Sooner or later you're going to have to make some actual decisions, so you might as well start practicing now."

He hadn't thought about it He'd tried not to. He had to believe--he had to--that however many years Dumbledore had intended to hide him away for, he'd never intended Harry Potter to disappear forever. One day, Dumbledore and whatever secret army of resistance fighters he must have were going to track Voldemort down and finish him, and then it was goodbye Blaine Anderson. Moody would take off the spells hiding his scar and changing his voice, and then that would be it, back to being Harry Potter again. No more lying. No more singing when he could fly. No more GSA every Thursday afternoon. He wasn't building anything at Dalton, not really, not in the same way the other guys were. This wasn't going to be his life.

But if Dumbledore and his army hadn't managed it yet, didn't manage it in the next two years, what then? Would he have to move into this apartment and try to find work during the theme park off-season? Go to college? Would Tilda even let him go off to college? Maybe he'd have to stay in Cincinnati, not that he could think of any colleges in Cincinnati worth going to, just to kill another four years getting a degree he'd never use.

And then what? Even once Voldemort was defeated, was he supposed to go back to England and live as a squib? Hope Dumbledore had found a way to get his power back after all, when years of research apparently wasn't enough? Even then, he only had a fourth-year's magical education; all right, as a fourth year, Harry Potter won the Triwizard Tournament for the first time in centuries, but that was only with the help of one very determined Death Eater and even now he'd forgotten half of what he'd known then.

Maybe he should just try to be Blaine Anderson forever. Tilda would probably leave him alone eventually, check in by phone and surprise visit every couple of weeks while he went through college, into a career, into building a Muggle life for himself. It was so clear what Blaine was destined for: a husband, in some American state that was willing to legalize it, maybe children, a nice house nowhere near Ohio, a good job or at least a career full of music, and never facing anything more dangerous than the New York subway at rush hour. It felt so tiny, compared to all the possibilities and promises of magic, the epic heroism of the Boy Who Lived, but...bigger, somehow, on the inside. He could understand how someone could be happy in a life like that. He could understand how he could maybe...

Harry Potter had never really expected to survive past seventh year anyway. Deep down, he'd always known that.

On July 31, by British wizarding law, Harry Potter came of age. Blaine had an American passport, an American birth certificate, and all the Muggle laws in the world to declare he had one more year under the guardianship of a certain Mathilda Anderson, at which point he could theoretically do as he pleased. Tilda came home that night, with a six-pack of beer and a bag of takeaway ribs, the Matrix trilogy tucked under one arm.

"Oh my god, this is totally where you got my name from, isn't it," he realized about halfway through the first movie. Ian had been giving him crap about never seeing them for at least six months; now he knew why. "I can't believe you."

"You got force-fed the blue pill, it seemed appropriate," said Tilda. "You should be glad about it, too, because the next two movies are a total mindfuck. Pass me another, Mr. Anderson?" she asked, and traded her empty bottle for the full one he pulled out of the carton at his feet.

***********************************************************************************

All of which brings him here. Blaine whose poise and control are the envy of all he meets. Blaine, who's more or less guaranteed at least one solo in every Warblers performance without even trying. Blaine Anderson, who chats football with the guys (never Quidditch), can talk himself out of almost any argument (without magic), and jokingly tells people he's got his sights set on four debauched years at some distant Ivy League before settling into a career as either an investment banker or a trophy husband (never an Auror).

Sometimes, when he has too much homework and figures he can afford the insomnia, he skips his sleeping pills and works well past curfew with a laptop under his covers for bed check like he's twelve years old again. He always ends those nights staring sleeplessly up at the ceiling, wondering what Ron and Hermione would say if they could see him now. If they're happy, if they're even still alive. They'd be in their seventh year at Hogwarts, preparing for career training or further study or who knows what, maybe even already on the front lines of a war. He wonders how three years has changed them.

He wonders what they'd think about him. If Hermione would be proud of him for memorizing Shakespeare, or just shake her head and sigh that he wasn't putting his time to memorizing spells. He imagines Ron's reaction to finding out his childhood best friend jerks off thinking about naked men, compares it to Wes and David, who don't give a fuck so long as he can hit the right notes at Sectionals. He can't imagine Wes and David braving a Black Friday sale at Macy's for him, let alone the Forbidden Forest or the Chamber of Secrets. But Ron's not here to call him a queer and a fag and then slug it out until they make up over breakfast under Hermione's stern and watchful eye. Ron is as safe as Harry can make him, which isn't safe at all but better by the count of one liability and piece of Dark Lord bait than him being there. Wes and David are safe because they've never met Harry Potter, and they don't know shit about Blaine Anderson.

Mostly he doesn't think about those things. Mostly he just buries Harry Potter, angry, scared child that he was, as far under months and years of flirting and studying and endlessly training his voice as he possibly can. He likes Blaine. He likes being Blaine. Harry Potter, he thinks, was never quite comfortable in his own skin even under layers of Hogwarts school robes, but after two and a half years of fighting it, Blaine is. He knows just what he's capable of.

It's why he doesn't stop himself from flirting with the adorable not-actually-a-transfer-student in the halls. It's all easy games, better than they'd ever have given a surprise Slytherin in the Gryffindor common room; an extra smile, a little tweak to his collar, some eye contact like he's the most interesting person in the room. Pretty soon spy kid is staring with rapt adoration that definitely has nothing to do with any vocal tricks or set list tips he was hoping to get an in on. Blaine would love to count it as a victory by distraction, but easy as it was, the kid has to have another reason for being here.

It takes two minutes to conference with the Warblers Council as the senior commons empties out. Blaine, as the Warbler who's actually spoken to the kid, gets to lead the interrogation; "And," Wes says, "you are after all the most personable among us." There's something going on with this guy that reminds him of someone. He just can't think who.

Kurt is quick and graceful and impeccably well-dressed, even if nobody but an idiot would mistake that suit for a Dalton uniform. He pinged Blaine's gaydar the instant they saw each other, and even in the face of an expected beating he's articulate. It's all misleading enough to leave Blaine wracking his memory right up until the second Wes clarifies the zero-tolerance harassment policy and Kurt folds up like a crumpled piece of paper. Jesus Christ, he's like a fierce American Neville Longbottom.

He hasn't thought about Neville in a long, long time, but thanks to Dalton he hasn't come face-to-face with somebody who spends every day dodging through the halls to avoid bullies in a long time, either. The outward shells couldn't be more different, but it's there. Something about the eyes.

He sends Wes and David away. They are, to the best of his knowledge, exactly as they appear to be, which makes them the voices of sympathy in this without any kind of experience. Kurt reminds him of the look on Neville's face every time he walked down the steps to the Potions dungeon even though he knew what would be waiting for him there, but he doesn't even need to dig into Harry Potter to empathize with this. Blaine Anderson's got this one all on his own.

"I know how you feel," he says with all sincerity, thinking of Calhoun. It's easy, now, to spin that year of hell through the fine gloss of Dalton Warbler Blaine Anderson. It's easy to boil away all the months of hating the world almost as much as he hated himself and slip it into the shiny narrative of a life lived like a cover story. The biggest problem in Kurt's life right now is dealing with being gay, and the part of Blaine that's still mostly Harry wants to tell him to try blind-fighting a basilisk with only a useless phoenix and a sword he doesn't know how to use, but the shell of him is just glad to keep living like a little violent homophobia's the biggest problem he's ever had, either.

Neville, he thinks, watching Kurt's face as he lays out the barest bones of his own tragic past, was a Gryffindor too. Sometimes even the people who've been shoved into walls and trodden underfoot bite back.

"I ran," admits Blaine, shadows of more fights than this kid could ever know in his voice. "I let bullies chase me away, and it is something that I really, really regret."

He and Kurt exchange numbers before the kid leaves. That night, Blaine absolutely takes his sleeping pill and goes to bed at a responsible hour, because otherwise he's going to lie there in the dark thinking about all the different ways bravery can appear in a person. Neville Longbottom never once faked sick to get out of lessons, was willing even at age eleven to stand up to some of the only people in the world he thought were his friends. Dalton is the safest haven the world could ever have, and part of Blaine wants nothing more than to take Kurt under his arm and keep him here right up through graduation. But then, Neville Longbottom is as far as he knows still going to classes at Hogwarts, and Harry Potter is singing lead on Katy Perry songs in a show choir in Ohio.

The next day he texts Kurt with the only legacy of Gryffindor he has left.

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Of course after that it all falls apart. Blaine Anderson, apparently, is even worse at dealing with dangerous situations than the kid who thought an invisibility cloak was enough protection to go sneaking out after Sirius Black, but nobody ever called him a hero for the sake of his good judgment. A month after they confront Karofsky, Kurt's there, tucked safe behind the wards and zero-tolerance policies where nothing can get to him. That should be the end of it.

Everything he knows about the life he's living right now, he learned from cable and Tilda's Blockbuster card. That shouldn't be enough to turn Blaine into a real person, but at Dalton, where the friendly smalltalk never progresses beyond next week's math quiz or what European vacation somebody's parents are taking them on next summer, it doesn't matter. There are all sorts of ways to process emotion to make it acceptable. Between treating Blaine Anderson's life like a Broadway show and shoving the tight little aching ball of guilt and fury he calls Harry Potter down so far in the back of his brain that he never has to look at what he's left behind, he practically never has to feel at all. Whoever he is.

The problem is that Kurt doesn't follow the rules. If Dalton is supposed to be a Gene Kelly movie, Kurt's Moulin Rouge. He makes terrible jokes about all the wrong things. He emotes everywhere. He's so damn real it hurts to look at. Blaine wants to know everything about him, and wants to run and hide because of how easy he suspects it would be to find out. Nobody is supposed to be their real self that close to the surface, not in Blaine's careful little world. It makes him feel naked.

First impressions matter, and it's hard not to keep thinking of Kurt as a fabulously gay, sarcastic Neville, from the way he never quite fits in to the way he looks at Blaine like some kind of hero even though they've spent enough time together for him to know better. It gets worse when Blaine meets the other New Directions after Sectionals. They're so loud in all the ways Dalton's quiet. Kurt drags him for a visit to the New Directions green room, still high on the thrill of the tie, and he finds himself frozen in the doorway for a minute just watching the laughter and the insults and the high-fives. It could be the Gryffindor common room.

Two minutes talking to Rachel and he wants to cry, because he thinks, if she'd been passionate about Broadway instead of about grades, if she hadn't found two best friends at the age of eleven to smooth down the rough edges of her abrasive loneliness, this could have been Hermione. Finn's so Gryffindor it sticks out all over him. The dark-haired cheerleader is obviously a Slytherin, but she's cackling with joy and holding hands with the tall blonde who'd either be a Hufflepuff or a Ravenclaw, depending on whether that misty, dreamy look in her eyes is a sign of innocent naivety or demented perceptiveness. These people, he realizes, watching Kurt throw his arms around the girl he introduces as Mercedes, are all insane. It feels like home deep somewhere he hasn't let himself feel anything in a long time.

All of it means he should stay away from Kurt, far, far, away, but what he doesn't admit to can't hurt him. He can enjoy standing next to them without infecting himself with their brutal honesty. Kurt doesn't really want him to stop playing Blaine like lines out of a movie script, and he knows how to keep the contents of his own head private.

Tilda missed Sectionals, so he hasn't introduced her to Kurt yet, but she takes a few days off even from paperwork over Christmas and catches a ride up to King's Island to see Blaine perform. He dances his number with a girl named Maggie who graduated last year from Lebanon Township High, who plays a much timider Mouse than Kurt ever could. It's a good show. They get a lot of applause, anyway, and it's a better excuse for turning down his classmates' polite offers of skiing in Aspen or yachting off the coast of Mexico than the now-traditional steak dinner for two eaten on the living room floor in front of White Christmas and Holiday Inn.

This year he goes with clothes again, a sleek dark green leather jacket he unabashedly begged for Kurt's help picking out on the basis of two faked family photos and some size measurements he stole from Tilda's closet. She gets him another stack of classic vinyl, from the last missing pieces of his Beatles collection (Please Please Me and Yellow Submarine) to what looks like an original release of Bridge Over Troubled Water.

"Repeating gift ideas this year?" he asks when he hits the last record in the stack. He didn't even know she remembered his first solo. His tastes now mostly run a little more pop and less folk-y, and he knows Tilda knows that, so it has to be deliberate. He raises his eyes to where she's laying across the entire couch, nose-deep in her giant coffee mug, and she shrugs.

"You've already got everything else you need," she tells him.

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Romance, as a concept, is surprisingly easy. It's a step up from flirting with a dash of sex and the added spark of theatricality that's made Blaine such a good performer. He's good at all of those things individually, or so sources say; what little he didn't learn about life from Fred Astaire and Hugh Grant he got from Dan Savage, so yes, what he did last year with Mal does count as sex, and no, it doesn't mean anything.

The joy of flirting and sex and theatricality is that they make it easy to keep his secrets without actually having to be alone. He's spent most of his life alone. He'd rather avoid it, given the chance.

Valentine's Day is like a giant, worldwide tribute to dramatic gestures and cinematic closeness. It's the kind of day Harry always used to eye with trepidation, but Blaine can get fully behind. It's the kind of day he should get behind, with public abandon, because as Tilda always reminds him if he's going to act the skinny gay kid with a penchant for musical declarations of emotion, he'd better play into the stereotype.

It's easy to find a suitable romantic lead, given enough time spent striking up conversations with attractive strangers when he goes out for coffee. Nobody at Dalton would do--they all see as much of him as it's safe for anybody to see already--but when he runs into the cute clerk from the GAP ordering a skinny caramel latte three times in a row, it seems like fate.

Maybe he oversteps. If he does, he blames it on Kurt, for existing so loudly he finds himself wanting things he absolutely can't be allowed to want. Kurt tells him about the painful and humiliating crush he had on his now-stepbrother, staring into his French textbook for most of it. For a moment there's nothing in the world Blaine wants more than to be Harry here for five minutes. To talk about Cho Chang and Cedric Diggory and how it feels to watch a crush die before your eyes before you were old enough to realize you even liked them. Kurt is a kind of danger he can't stay away from, the promise of a real friend like he hasn't had since before he stopped calling himself Harry even in the privacy of his own mind. All right, yes, it makes him overreach, spectacularly overreach, clinging to Blaine Anderson's essential props of flirting, sex, and theatricality.

It's the biggest disaster since the last Kurt-related disaster, although at least this time nobody gets death threats or sexually assaulted. Or killed by rogue aircraft. He's never been so humiliated--he sang about sex toys in the GAP where he still has to shop for khakis. It's the depressing kind of end of the world where noone is actually going to die. He'd prefer the other kind. Oh what, now the great Blaine Anderson is allowed to share emotions, he thinks darkly while Kurt pats him sympathetically on the shoulder.

Because there has never been a bad moment in Harry Potter's life that couldn't be made worse, that's when Kurt starts a question with, "We've always been completely honest with each other."

There's never been another person he's lied to as much as Kurt in his life. Forget the Dursleys, screw Snape's prying and McGonagal's well-intentioned interfering, forget every one of the lies that make Blaine Anderson daily life. Fuck Kurt for being the first person in three years who's cared enough to dig.

"I thought the guy that you wanted to ask out on Valentine's Day," says Kurt, perfectly poised and articulate even in his timidity, "was me."

It takes him a minute just to make sure he's heard all the words in the right order. This was never in the plan.

How did he misread this? Blaine flirts with everybody, none of his friends take it seriously. There's never anything behind it. Kurt's supposed to stay at a safe, hero-worshiping distance, and Blaine's not supposed to lead him on, definitely not with anything resembling actual emotion. Kurt's supposed to be sassy gay Neville Longbottom. His job is to be reliable and always around but never too close.

But that's not fair, is it, because Kurt's grandmothers are both dead and his father is amazing, and he once willingly came to school for a week dressed as Lady Gaga, and he once tried to turn a boy to the gay side entirely through the use of serenade and interior decorating. Kurt's his own person, a complete, complex person, with his own crushes and lusts and expectations out of life. It makes Blaine wonder for a second how much of Neville he and everybody else just missed completely, before he gets distracted with the realization that right now Kurt's crushes and lusts and expectations are all being directed at him.

"Look, Kurt," he says, and he means to lie, he really does, but what spills out of his mouth is, "I don't know what I'm doing." To his horror, his voice cracks on it.

"I pretend like I do," he says, and thinks, Blaine Anderson, Harry. This boy is in love with Blaine Anderson. Not you. "And I know how to act it out in song, but, the truth is..." And how would Blaine Anderson turn him down?

"I've never really been anyone's boyfriend," he says, and he's not lying, at least. The real Blaine Anderson would find that an unforgivable flaw in himself, wouldn't he? After all, he's supposed to be perfect.

"Me either," says Kurt, with a dip of his head and a shy smile he'd never really noticed before. Kurt would never be someone who could be bought off with flirting and theatricality. Kurt, Merlin save him, actually matters.

The movies are no help here. Harry is a bootleg copy of The Matrix hidden cleverly inside a DVD case for An American In Paris, and Kurt is homegrown Moulin Rouge. There's just no way to make those things mash up. But he can't, he can't just let Kurt go.

Right now he really wants to shout at somebody until Kurt agrees to just stay his friend forever, like Harry would have done, once upon a time. But Kurt's here to be with Blaine, and Blaine Anderson is an artist with his words.

"Let me be really clear about something," says Blaine. "I really, really care about you. But as you and about twenty mortified shoppers saw, I'm not very good at romance." He's vaguely aware that, for normal people, big romantic gestures have something to do with inner emotions. Kurt deserves someone who can actually put the feeling behind the theater without worrying it'll give them away. "I don't want to screw this up," says Blaine, too honest by half.

Kurt smiles and gives him his out. "So it's just like When Harry Met Sally," he says. "But I get to be Meg Ryan."

"Deal," Blaine agrees instantly, back on firmer ground. He can be Keanu Reeves dressed up as Gene Kelly playing the role of Billy Crystal, for a while, anyway. It's all going to fall apart before the big climactic ending somehow, but maybe that's what Kurt should expect for being a Baz Luhrman film.

Now that Kurt's brought his own not-actually-very-subtle affections to light, it's sort of impossible not to notice them. Hardest to bear are his eyes, which somehow manage to track Blaine's movements every time they're in a room together. He doesn't stare, exactly, he just gives Blaine the prickly, not-quite-unpleasant feeling of being seen.

He decides within the first week that there's no way he can date Kurt, now or ever. Being friends is hard enough. Kurt makes him want to pull the other boy down in one of the common rooms when everyone else is gone and tell him everything--magic, Voldemort, the war, all of it. He doesn't do it, of course, because at best Kurt won't believe him and it will lose him a friend. Worse, he'll end up committed. He can't give in to the hope that Kurt might actually take him at his word. He hasn't held a wand in almost three years and he has no proof but his own sincerity, which, when you're outing yourself as a liar, isn't exactly worth much.

Since the McKinley championship football game, Kurt's talked him into coming up to Lima half a dozen times for everything from shopping trips to a showing of Ziegfeld Follies at the old revival theater. Usually things wrap up early enough for him to drive back to Westerville before curfew, but when it looks like they'll run late, he checks himself out of the dorms for the weekend and drives the I-75 through Dayton to Cincinnati in the dark. Tilda doesn't stay in the apartment when he's not home on break; he doesn't know where she goes, but she never forgets anything perishable in the refrigerator and the pipes haven't frozen yet. He knows he'd be welcome to one of the many couches in the Hummel-Hudson house, but he can't bring himself to do it. The house smells like baking bread and cinnamon, and every time he's been there it's been full of noise, Kurt's stepmother rattling pots and pans in the kitchen while Kurt and Finn argue like brothers and his father grumbles about kids today in a tone that suggests he means none of it. It's the smell, mostly, that does it. Mrs. Weasley always baked her own bread.

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The New Directions party sounds like a terrible idea the first he hears about it, and keeps sounding like a terrible idea right up through arriving there. The first wine cooler makes it seem a little better, so he drinks another. By that time whatever Noah Puckerman's passing around in the plastic cups and calling punch doesn't taste so bad and the party doesn't seem like such a terrible idea, after all.

He is sleek and awesome and everybody wants him for it. He is a rockstar. He is Blaine motherfucking Anderson, and he is going to have another cup of punch.

It's the first time in weeks he's been able to forget himself and just have fun. He used to live like this all the time, before Kurt showed up and made everything complicated. He was just Blaine. Everything was loose and easy and right.

He doesn't bother thinking when Rachel leans over and presses her lips against his. Thinking has never been his strong suit. Her mouth is warm and moist and soft and tastes like peach-raspberry wine coolers, and she reminds him of his childhood best friend, and she sings.

It all goes a little fuzzy after that.

He wakes up surrounded by a warm cloud of fluffy things with a head that feels like his scar's decided to start hurting again, and it's brought three years' worth of vengeance. His mouth tastes a little like a family of kneazles have been nesting in it, but when he licks his lips, he catches a hint of raspberry. Kurt gives him half-sympathetic, half-mocking glances right through breakfast, and his dad avoids looking at them entirely, but hangover or not, Blaine's riding high. He pulls Ke$ha up on his iPod and cranks it up the whole way back to Westerville.

The trick is to not give a fuck. Blaine Anderson is just a normal teenage guy without a real care in the motherfucking world. He can swear, and he can sing along to Ke$ha songs, and apparently he can get drunk and make out with girls and have it be awesome. There are no rules to this life, because he's not real. Blaine Anderson doesn't exist. That means he can do whatever the fuck he wants.

That thought holds him right up into his confrontation with Kurt. Kurt brings his high crashing down so fast there ought to be a medwitch racing out onto the field to try and resuscitate it. Blaine should have remembered things can't ever just be easy with him. Kurt just has to keep pushing. He has no idea what goes on in Blaine's head, and now he thinks he gets to define his sexuality? Harry invented Blaine. Harry is Blaine. Blaine can be whatever Harry Potter wants.

Blaine is a figment of his own imagination. He realizes, watching Kurt glare back at him, that he doesn't know what he'd call himself right now if someone asked.

"I am honestly just trying to figure out who I am," he says, sounding pathetic to his own ears. "And for you, of all people--" Kurt is the reason it's been so hard to just be happy with himself in the first place. Kurt, with his constant insistence on honesty and self-expression. Kurt, who is apparently a total hypocrite. "I didn't think that's who you were."

Harry Potter has never actually had a defined sexuality. Blaine is gay because a bunch of guys at his first school decided he was and when one of them put a hand on his dick it felt nice. There was no hard thinking, no soul-searching, just Eli's hand and Tilda's advice and the very pressing desire to not think about it. He hasn't spent time with a girl his own age since Hogwarts. Harry Potter never got a chance to figure any of this out. Maybe it matters. Kurt would--Kurt ought to think it does. It's not fair for Kurt to keep breaking down Blaine's facade if he doesn't want to deal with what's underneath.

Rachel is easy by comparison. Not that he should be comparing them, because he's sort of dating Rachel, and Kurt can't move out of the friends box ever. She doesn't want to look beneath the surface, and he doesn't have to fight off any driving urge to show her. Rachel could be a pretty cool girlfriend, and a safe one. She was built on theatricality. If only, it turns out, he was actually the least bit attracted to her while not drunk entirely off his ass.

He thinks--he's pretty sure--that this is honestly his own reaction, not just one more instinctive aversion because he's so used to whatever Blaine is supposed to like or dislike that he can't tell the difference any more. Not one sober bit of him is turned on by Rachel Berry. He locks himself in the bathroom to fish out his cell phone, and his fingers press speed dial three without him even looking at the keypad. One is voicemail, two is the Warbler's head council shared line. Three is the only person in the world he can begin to talk to about this.

"What's up, kid?" Tilda asks. "I've got five minutes unless it's an emergency, so talk quick."

"So I'm gay," he says, sinking down against the locked bathroom door and vaguely hoping the coffeehouse keeps their floors scrubbed as clean as they look.

"That's not talking quick, that's the lead-in to a major emotional monologue. Just spit it out," Tilda encourages.

"No, that's it," he says. "I'm gay. Utterly and completely."

"And this is news because...?" she prompts. He laughs. Life's not funny, except for when it is.

"I never actually checked before," he says. "I just...I kissed Rachel. And I hated it. All of me, not just...I'd never even tried," he explains. There's a hissed little sound through the receiver, just a quiet intake of breath, when she gets it.

"You are a piece of work, kid," Tilda says. "And too damn good at compartmentalizing by half. But I'm glad your green-eyed, curly-haired self got it together over something I could've told you at least a year ago."

"Yeah," Blaine sighs. "Apparently so could Kurt. I just needed to think it over for myself, I guess..." Silence on the other side of the line. "Tilda? You still there?"

"He's perceptive. Bring him down for dinner next weekend," Tilda orders. Blaine winces.

"We're not really talking right--"

"Do it, kid," she orders in the tone he knows better than to argue with. "I'm hanging up, I've got real work to do. Call me later." Then the phone goes dead in his hand. Tilda doesn't always like to waste time with goodbyes.

Kurt is just stepping out of line when he gets back, two cups of coffee in hand, and Blaine knows, with no magic at all, that one holds a nonfat mocha and the other a regular drip. Kurt widens his eyes in invitation. Blaine follows him to a table. He can't think of anything else to do.

"Well," says Kurt. "Never let it be said that greater men haven't fallen prey to the twin charms of a pair of anonymous lips and far too much alcohol. I--"

"Don't, Kurt," Blaine interrupts. "If you're only here to say 'I told you so', then just do us both a favor and skip it."

Kurt stares down into his mocha. Blaine should get up for napkins and sugar, but when he glances at the table, he sees Kurt's already grabbed some. He busies himself with sweetening his coffee until Kurt says, quietly, "I was right, though."

"That's not the point," Blaine says.

"I'm just saying that I don't understand why you were so insistent on going through this week of rampant confusion and holding Rachel Berry's hand in public when if you'd just listened to me I could have told you--"

"Maybe I don't want to just be the guy everybody tells me I am," Blaine interrupts. "I'd rather find out for myself. Thanks." He doesn't even know whether he's being sarcastic or not. Kurt doesn't help; he just nods, and doesn't offer an apology.

"Kurt, if--along the way, if I find out I'm someone you don't like," Blaine says, and this is ridiculous, because Kurt is never going to get to meet Harry Potter, but he can't quash down the prickle of fear that Kurt wouldn't like him anyway. "I'm afraid you're going to get mad at me again for being knocked down from some pedestal you have me on. I told you I don't know what I'm doing, and if you keep expecting me to be perfect, then I don't know if we can do this." He can come up with some excuse for Tilda.

He hears a little gasp of indrawn breath, and when Blaine looks up, Kurt's lips are pressed tight, trying to disguise how upset he is. Crap. "All I expect," says Kurt, "is for you not to try and make yourself into somebody you're not."

Blaine should probably argue everything further, but after that he feels too guilty to object, so he nods. "I'm sorry," he says, and extends a hand across the table.

"I'm sorry, too," says Kurt, and takes it. They squeeze fingers for a moment, then draw back.

"So, now that we're friends again, my sister wanted me to ask you something..." Blaine says. He doesn't trip over the word 'sister', or any of the other lies to follow.

Maybe someday Dumbledore will come and find him. Maybe Dumbledore is dead already. All he knows is, he's devoted almost three years of his life to being Blaine Anderson, and he wants what comes next. He wants to win Regionals at least as much as he ever cared about the House Cup. He wants Tilda to be proud of him, even just for the space of a hair-ruffle and a "Good job, kid."

He wants the answers he gives to all Kurt's questions to be the truth, not some mix of lies concocted on the spot and lies he's been telling so long he can't remember how much of them really happened. He misses Hermione and Ron--they were his first and truest friends, and if they were here now, he would jump at any chance just to hug them or fight by their sides or just talk. But they're not here. They might never be here again. He wants a friend.

Harry Potter has waited three years to hear anything at all out of the world he left behind, good or bad, without a single word. Blaine Anderson takes a sip of his coffee. Maybe he's tired of waiting.