Post Hogwarts AU in which Hermione (for reasons that will become apparent as the story unfolds) did not attend Hogwarts. This is primarily a romance, but there will be darker themes in the later chapters.

As always I am writing this purely for my own (and hopefully your) satisfaction and do not make any profit from it. Please let me know what you think.

Merrick x

The estate agent's details described it as a "character cottage, in need of some renovation." He really should have known better thought Harry, eyeing the holes in the roof, and the peeling wallpaper askance. But the cottage was set in an isolated spot, up on the cliffs above the tiny Cornish harbour, in a generous sized patch of garden, hedged against the prevailing wind. The flagged floored kitchen was surprisingly spacious too, and every room boasted views over either the sea, or across the overgrown garden to the hills beyond. OK so there was no electricity, or drainage, and the water supply came from a pump behind the house, but for the first time since his marriage had exploded after only three years, Harry felt as though he had come home.

It was definitely a heart over head decision, but Harry didn't think twice. He signed the contract that afternoon leaving the Gringott's goblins to handle the intricacies of magical / muggle financial transactions

Magical restoration so close to a muggle village was a definite no-no, and the state of the cottage meant that it still took six months for the basics to be sorted out. Six months in which Harry came down from London at weekends to check on progress, initially camped out like a hobo in the only dry room in the house – the kitchen. But by the time the rotten windows and timbers had been replaced, and extensive repairs carried out on the roof Harry had managed to get a generator and plumbing installed and could start making the place habitable.

The first intimation that all was not as normal as it first appeared was when they dug the trench in the garden for some pipe work. Harry was just about to go into a meeting with his immediate boss, the Head of Magical Law Enforcement when he got a phone call from the local muggle architect that was supervising the works in his absence.

"John, hello – what can I do for you."

"Um, hello Harry - I'm afraid we're going to have to reroute some of the pipe works for the sewerage by about six feet."

Harry sighed. "Oh dear – bedrock again?" Being on the clifftop the bedrock was close to the surface in places, which had caused some problems, particularly with the site of the drainage. However, the silence down the line was a little worrying. Eventually Harry checked his mobile, to make sure he hadn't lost the signal. "John?"

The architect was clearly very uncomfortable. "They've found a witch pit."

"I'm sorry?!"

"A witch pit. It's a ceremonial pit, in which offerings of the bones of small animals and things were made. I'm not sure how old this one is, but they've found ones elsewhere in Cornwall where the offerings were as recent as the seventies."

Harry frowned. Clearly John was talking about a muggle practitioner - no real witch or wizard would need to bury small animals in the garden in order to cast a spell. "Is this going to be a problem John? Are we going to have to call in an archaeologist, or a priest? Can't we just go through it."

John huffed in frustrated laughter at Harry's ignorance. "You won't find anyone around here willing to destroy a witch pit Harry. They'll happily put it back as they found it but that's all they'll do. Belief in witchcraft is still very strong in some areas of the West Country – we've even got our own "New Age" shop in the village."

You don't know the half of it… Harry shook his head, resigned. "Fine, whatever's easiest John. If I'm going to live there the last thing I want to do is alienate the locals before I even unpack my coffee machine. Can you just make sure that the location of the thing is marked. I'm going to be growing vegetables behind the cottage, and the last thing I want is to be eating cabbages fertilised by the remains of some old biddy's secret sacrifices." An unpleasant thought crossed his mind. "Shit, John – there weren't any HUMAN bones in there were there?"

John's laughter was so loud that Harry had to hold the phone away from his ear. "You're quite safe boy. Just birds and the like…."

Seeing his boss's PA glaring at him from the boardroom table, Harry took the hint, ended the call and thought no more about it.

o~o~o

By the middle of October, just as the weather and the nights were drawing in, Harry and all his worldly goods finally arrived. It took a weekend of frantic unpacking, but by the Sunday night he was officially moved in. Feeling the need to celebrate, Harry pulled on his jacket, grabbed a torch and headed off down the narrow footpath to the village.

The Golden Lion was warm and relatively quiet. Harry settled himself on a stool and ordered himself a pint.

"Haven't see you around before sir, you here on holiday?"

Harry paused, taking a deeply appreciative sip of his excellent bitter. "No, I bought the cottage up on the cliffs – I've been down for the odd weekend since - I've been up to my eyes in repairs and DIY. But I'm moved in now, even unpacked the coffee mugs and my laptop. All's right with the world."

The landlord - a tall man, around Harry's age, with cropped brown hair and the heavy build of a ugby player gone slightly to seed - raised his eyebrows. "You bought Dot's Cottage?"

Harry perused the bar food menu and wondered whether he was hungry. "Dot's Cottage? If you mean the cottage up on the clifftop that was about to fall down a few months ago..." He looked up. "Dot's cottage?"

The landlord leaned on the bar companionably. It was a quiet night and clearly he was disposed to chat. "Dot was a local witch. Her full name was Dorothea – Gerrans I think, she died a couple of hundred years ago or thereabouts."

Harry winced. "Burned at the stake?"

His new friend smiled and shook his head. "Ah, now that's the great myth my friend. They burned witches in Europe, and north of the border in Scotland. In England we burned heretics and traitors and hanged witches. I don't know much about Dot's history, but the locals have always held that there's some bad mojo around the place. I'm surprised you managed to find any builders to work on it if I'm honest. Bet they weren't local..."

Harry smiled wryly. "Bodmin. John Trevithick my architect tracked them down. I never asked why he didn't use guys from the village... I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself. I'm Harry Potter."

The landlord shook his hand "Jack Bartholomew."

Harry studied him for a moment. The Cornish accent was subtle, but definitely there. "Are you local Jack?"

Jack shrugged. "Yes and no. I was born here. My family have run the Golden Lion for centuries. But village life didn't appeal. I moved to Bristol then to London. Worked in some of the best hotels in the country. Even when my mum and dad died I didn't come back. I put a manager in and kept working."

"What happened?"

"One day I woke up on my thirteenth day without a day off, and realised that I was sick of being perpetually on call. Sick of working 60 – 80 hours a week and never having time to spend the none too spectacular wage they were paying me. Sick of living to work I suppose. So I gave the manager notice and moved back. Now I wake up every morning, and look out at that" he gestured to the view over the little harbour, and the towering Cornish cliffs – and think I'm the luckiest man alive."

Harry nodded in agreement. "Me too. I've been flogging my guts out for the ministry since I left school. I woke up one morning, thirty years old, with an ex-wife and a ulcer - realised I didn't want to do it anymore. I have - a little family money, so I sold the family home in the centre of London and found this place." In fact, the wealth of the Potter / Black families, combined with the sale of Grimauld Place, meant that he could probably buy half of the village, but that kind of information was best kept to himself

"So what are you going to do with yourself?"

Harry shrugged. "For now? Build a garden. Read the books I never had time to read. Maybe even write one... Long term, I'm not sure. Maybe find a small business around here. The one thing I'm sure of is that I want to live in the village. Not just be a weekend visitor."

Jack laughed. "OK - you'll do... Now, were you planning on ordering food because the cook will be heading for home in ten minutes – it's Sunday night and this isn't London you know...?"

o~o~o

That night Harry locked the cottage up – he knew the country habit of leaving doors unlocked, but London habits were hard to change, and he couldn't imagine himself ever sleeping without a locked door between him and the rest of the world. The wind off the sea was brisk but his new home felt warm and solid, and the new mattress on the big antique iron bed was blissfully comfortable. In a matter of moments he was sound asleep.

He awoke suddenly, just after 4am, his heart slamming against his ribs.

If anyone had been around to ask, he would have sworn that he had been awoken by someone whispering in his ear. Growing up at Hogwarts, Harry was no stranger to supernatural happenings, but being woken up in the middle of the night was always irritating...

"Hello! Is there someone there?" There was no response, only the wind in the trees outside the window. "Hello. If you want to talk to me – I won't hurt you..."

The only response was a subtle chill creeping over him. For a few seconds Harry's breath fogged in the cold before the temperature returned to normal.

Harry pulled the covers up around his ears and tried to go back to sleep, but his heart was still pounding and it was impossible to drop off again. "Terrific" he muttered, giving up and heading downstairs for a cup of tea. "Bought my dream home, now it seems something is determined to stop me sleeping in it."

He had left the range stove in the kitchen well stacked before he went to bed so it was the work of a few minutes to get it going again and get the kettle on. Digging the remains of a packet of custard creams out of a cupboard he settled in the rocking chair and fired up his laptop. Getting the internet out to the cottage had taken a fair degree of wrangling, and the connection wasn't the most reliable, but Harry was a 21st century wizard, and there were some things he was not prepared to do without – especially with the advent of shielded hardware that wasn't upset by a user's magical field. Harry browsed the local history sites in search of Dorothea Gerrans, but beyond a few references to her being a local witch, there didn't seem to be much there. Eventually he made a mental note to see what he could find in the village itself, before returning to bed, where he slept until late morning without any further disturbance.