Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Rewritten in: 11/15/2018.
This story is better viewed in the 3/4 format.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Magic.

"Real magic, my boy, has nothing to do with gaining control over the minds and actions of others. It has, however, everything to do with gaining control of yourself. When one knows their own heart enough to find the real magic inside, he will find there's nothing differentiating it from the greatest magic there is. Love."

— Albus Dumbledore to Harry Potter during their first lesson together.

There's magic everywhere to those who can see it.

Sirius' magic behaves a great deal like him—it looks wild and restless around his body, the sigils and runes of its make fluttering on an unseen breeze and blossoming into colors and possibilities. Even if frayed at the edges, his magic fills the little St. Mungo's room and remains unbroken as it howls and screams and burns with defiance. Sirius' voice is nothing but background noise to me as he tells a story about some prank he pulled in the seventies because, at the same time, his magic shows me everything else.

"The moral of the story is, you never use a yak as a flotation device," he says with a smile that falters slightly as no one laughs. "Harry, are you paying attention? Harry? You alright?"

"Sorry, just worried."

These simple words managed to freeze the very essence of his magic.

Startled into silence, Sirius props himself on his elbows and looks me up and down as if he'd never seen me before. One of his feet dangles from under the old, threadbare blanket and, for a second or two, the intensity of his stare gives the impression that he owns the room.

Even as his expression is tight with concern, it's impossible to ignore how much of Sirius' appearance has changed in just two months. Now, after putting on some much-needed weight and with his hair combed and luxurious, his face bears a close resemblance to that smiling man from my parents' wedding photo.

"Well," Sirius finally finds his voice again, "are you, now?"

"Nevermind." My gaze darts around, trying find something to distract him with, and I catch the sight of one of the flowers on his nightstand. It looks like a tumorous begonia, big, yellow, and ugly, a bit too much on the Crabbe side of things. "Remus' gift?"

"Afraid so," Sirius' nose wrinkles with distaste, "bugger told me it reminded him of my mother."

I laugh. "Really? What's the story behind-"

"Harry? Stop bullshitting and tell me what you're worried about."

I blame this turn of luck on the fact that Sirius is smart, not Hermione smart, but like, street smart. There's no alternative on sight other than to get on with it already, clean and easy, like taking off a band-aid. From an oozing pustule.

"Remember earlier, when Professor Dumbledore brought me here?"

"Yeah," he stretches the word like it's a savory treat, "your face was priceless. I thought you'd had a stroke or something."

My very mature reaction is to throw a pillow at him. "Shut it."

"Ouch. What's that about?"

"Reasons." I promptly ignore his noise of protest. "You see, before Professor Dumbledore Apparated me here, he told me I'll be back to Hogwarts tomorrow."

"So why the bloody hell are you worried?" Sirius spreads his arms open and his eyes go wide. "C'mon, it's Hogwarts! I thought you'd feel thrilled about that. I know I would."

"Trust me, I do. I seriously—oh, shut up—do, but-" I pause, allowing the silence to carry on for a second while my mind searches everywhere for the right words. "I haven't been there with them for two years, Sirius."

There's a beat of silence.

"I see," he says with a shrewd glint on his eyes that makes me feel uncomfortable. "You fear they won't accept you back."

"Just hit the nail on the head, wouldn't you?" I say, trying to hide my very real wince. "That, and the times I went back weren't the best, either."

Well done saying the wrong thing here, Potter. Sirius' magic, which looked relaxed and at ease a second earlier, lashes around and turns to the deep red of blood. Its long-forgotten symbols of power now whipping in the air like inflamed wounds.

"Crap, I am sorry-" he cuts my apologies short with a raised hand.

"Not your fault," Sirius sucks in a breath, cold fury flashing in his eyes for a split-second, "so you better can it. We'll have our reckoning with him in time."

The lines of his face look even deeper in the candlelight and he doesn't meet my eyes. To Sirius, Hogwarts had been the last place he saw Pettigrew only a few months ago, as he, once more, managed to escape under the eyes of Professor Dumbledore and the Minister. The rat of a man who had betrayed him. Betrayed my parents.

Who had betrayed me.

The coppery taste of blood fills my mouth as I bite the inside of my cheek. I avert my eyes from Sirius, focusing instead on the faint glowing stains on the sheets of his bed; remains of shed magical lifeblood that no spell could ever wash clean.

As the silence gets more and more unbearable, I risk a look back at him. The carefree smile has bleed from his face and Sirius is stiff as a cadaver, with one muscle spasming on his jaw and his eyes narrowed into slits.

"I see where you're coming from," he says through gritted teeth, "that bastard of a rat didn't exactly endear the place to me, either."

My laugh sounds hollow and too high-pitched in the somber mood of the room. "Hermione would've given you a piece of her mind about tact, she would."

But saying Hermione's name doesn't help. To me, she still looks like she did on the Hospital Wing, pale and clammy as made of marble. It brings back images of petrified bodies and yellow eyes and damp caves deep inside the earth.

The Basilisk uncoiled, enormous, its acid green scales glittering under the dim lights of the Chamber of Secrets. Next to it, Ginny Weasley—no, not Ginny, this could only be Tom Riddle—laughed in a cold, cruel voice that had no business coming from a little girl's mouth.

The serpent's magic was terrible to behold as it unfolded, made for ruin and for death. It was ingrained deep into flesh and sinew. A sharp, bitter cold, a thousand voices chorusing for me to just lie down. To let it taste warm blood again.

"Behind me, Harry!"

Professor Dumbledore shoved me back. He was standing tall between the beast and me, his wand at ready. Magic erupted around him like a newborn sun as the old sorcerer rose to meet this new challenger.

"Kill them," Tom Riddle hissed.

"—Harry? Harry?"

Goosebumps run up my spine and my arm aches with phantom pain. That had been close—too close. Sirius' frantic voice is tinged with worry as he shakes my shoulder.

"I'm fine." Has my voice always been this raspy? "Peachy, even."

I press the palms of my hands on my eyes hard enough for bright spots to crop up on my vision. Sometimes, that gift is more like a curse, because seeing magic is seeing intent and the Basilisk reeked of murder.

Sirius is frowning as I look up to him. "Bad memories?"

"You could say that," Merlin, my smile even sounds weak. "Say, what were you talking about?"

His jaw sets up into a grimace, but he doesn't pry. "I said I understand your situation."

"Come on now?"

"When Remus came to visit, I felt almost the same way," he says and the skin around his eyes tighten. "Twelve years, Harry, he'd spent twelve years hating me for something I didn't do. I resented him as you can't believe.

"I had all these ideas. How I wanted to scream at him, even throw a hex or two in the mix," Sirius then shakes his head and his lips twist into a wry grin. "I couldn't. Even after all this time, he's still Moony, my brother in all that matters. I couldn't."

The clear fondness he put in his words almost made me smile.

"Cute."

"Watch it," Sirius words lack any real heat though, "so, getting to the point. I reckon your friends will do the same, if they feel that about you, no matter how much time has passed. If they don't, well."

He trails off, his stare now fixed on a point of the ceiling. Sirius goes into these moods a lot less now, but it's still clear that twelve years of Azkaban had exacted its toll from him. Especially when talking of the past and his friends.

"If they don't?" Alarm bells go off in my head when he doesn't answer. "Sirius? Come off it already! Padfoot!"

"What?" he jerks back as he'd just been burned. "Oh. Righto. Then they can bugger off, I say."

A sigh of relief escapes from my lips as I get up and busy myself by picking a glass of water for him.

"Cheers, Padfoot, you have such a way with words."

"You bet I do." Sirius accepts the glass with a thankful nod. "Boy, you should've seen how I rolled in Hogwarts. The ladies couldn't help but love this animal magnetism."

"Until you piss on her shoes, yeah?" My chair clatters on the ground as I jump out from his reach. "Temper, temper, old man."

"I'll show you temper," he grumbles, "and don't joke about that. If your new year there is anything like the others, I will end up grey soon enough, and it'll be your own damn fault."

That's a bit rich coming from him, that sure is.

"Hey, I don't go searching for trouble-"

"Trouble finds you, I know," Sirius doesn't look too convinced though. "Care to tell me how you keep getting into trouble in the school while being out of the damned school, then?"

"Well, you see." My lips split into a grin that wouldn't look out of place on Sirius' face. "I did solemnly swear that I'm up to no good."

My timing is just right. Water comes spraying from Sirius' mouth as he howls with laughter.

There are few things that can rival the beauty of Hogsmeade at night.

When Professor Dumbledore brought me to London, I remember being dazzled by the sheer amount of different, unique people in just one place. Hogsmeade has the same feeling in a different flavor; instead of faces, I see magic in a thousand ways there.

The Dervixes and Banges' showcase glows like a Christmas tree even as the owner closes the shop's doors, the enchantments of all these objects put together mixing into a single kaleidoscope of colors. Near that, I catch a trace of a Self-Stirring enchantment on the window of the Three Broomsticks. The spell remains unique for barely a second before a wave of different symbols and runes and people engulfs it back into the whole.

On a street that still has faded echoes of unidentifiable old spells, a wizard gives his dog a biscuit. Even this unassuming gesture evokes an answer from magic, as the primitive shapes that express the animal's raw existence glimmer and extend to caress the man's hand; every bit as real as the licks the dog is giving him.

I will repeat. Magic is everywhere to those who can see it.

And from my vantage point on the second floor of the Hog's Head, I see it all.

Adjusting my position on my old, well-used chair, I cross my arms behind my head and try to burn the sigh of the village in my mind for posterity.

Hey, is that the Gladrags' witch with a—

The sound of something crashing downstairs makes me jump.

Cursing under my breath, it takes only three steps for me to cross the entire breadth of my room and wrench the door open, wand in hand as I yell. "You okay here, Aberforth?!"

"Mind your own business!" he shouts back.

Well, good enough for me. He's clearly alright if he's still capable of these dulcet tones, must've been some reluctant patron keeping on his hair.

The door clicks as I close it and cast a look around for a distraction. A golden glint catches my eye, halfway hidden behind a stack of notes on my nightstand. There, behind all these papers, is a little, winged ball of gold.

The first Snitch I'd ever caught.

Arithmanthic circles of red and gold move like clockworks around the Snitch, its magic fading with age. I grab it and my own magic courses through my wand as I charge two of the arrays—flying and hidden—and the Snitch begins to swerve on the air once more.

The crowd roared as I held the Snitch up in my clenched fist and yelled in both triumph and happiness at my catch. My eyes turn to the sight of Ron and Hermione running down the stands, the two of them with enormous smiles.

I snatch the Snitch from the air as my gut twists with guilt. Except for some stolen moments in the two past years, Ron and Hermione hadn't been a constant in my life at all, especially not smiling.

Especially after the Chamber of Secrets.

It's funny when you think about it. The day when we went through the trapdoor had been both the culmination and the end of our friendship, like a music going into a final crescendo. We were ready to die for each other right there and to be together until the end.

But then Voldemort exercised his own special way of turning gold into shit.

Quirrell screamed as my hands burned his skin. A voice—Voldemort, the git—was ordering him to do me in. He obliged, picking up his wand and pointing it to my face.

Call it instinct or anything, but I charged and grabbed his face, the Philosopher's Stone falling from my pocket in the process. I had to turn my nose at the sickly sweet smell of burned meat as his skin fizzled under my hands.

His curse missed me by inches—but it didn't miss the Stone.

It exploded.

Pain. Pain different, but not lesser, than the agony in my scar that was almost splitting my head open. Pain more visceral than anything my body had experienced before, pain right in my eyes.

My world was made or pure black and it hurt to blink. Something hot was dripping from my face and all it remained for me to do is to keep holding Quirrell. Even as everything went down, and down, and down.

Someone called my name just as unconsciousness took hold of me.

Merlin, my everything hurt like hell for days after that. Even now, my throat feels a bit parched at the mere thought. A cup of water downstairs sounds perfect, maybe a word or two with Aberforth.

The chair groans in protest as I get up and out of my bedroom.

True to the norm, Aberforth's down there pushing the doors closed.

If you want to find how Aberforth looks, go and pick Professor Dumbledore. Then you throw him on the Forbidden Forest for a decade or so, mix and stir, then you'll have your own Aberforth Dumbledore.

He's tall and thin, his beard and hair are as long as his brother's but look far wilder and untamed. If you squint and turn sideways, you can even see some familiar resemblance, but that's it.

The picture is finished by the trustworthy rag he has over his shoulder, dirty and frayed, looking every bit like Godric Gryffindor's own used loincloth. How he manages to clean anything with that, no one can ever understand.

Thinking about it, nor do I really want to.

"You should wash this thing, y'know," I say, sitting on a stool that sports the crimson traces of a Scorching Hex. "It's dirty, Abe."

"I reckon you should mind your own business," Aberforth says as he bends down to pick something from under the counter. "Merlin's breeches, boy, what're you doing up and about at this ungodly hour?"

He throws one Butterbeer to me and I catch it almost by reflex, flicking the cap off with the ease of experience. "Thinking."

"Dangerous thing, you doing that is."

"Funny." I roll my eyes and take a swig from the bottle."If you want to know, I was thinking about tomorrow. Sirius helped a bit, but—well, he's Sirius. He thinks it'll be a swell old prank."

Aberforth gives me a look that's eerily reminiscent of his brother.

"Understandable, the man spent twelve years inside that hellhole. You go and try to buddy up with Dementors for that long and tell me how it goes."

My nose wrinkles in disgust at his mention of these things. I have no intention of coming anywhere a mile close to a Dementor again. Their magic was like a vacuum, a hole in the reality; full of hungry tendrils of nothingness and always twisting into shapes that hurt to look at.

"Hey." Now, to change the subject. "D'you remember when I moved here?"

"Worst day of my life," he promptly answers. "Here I am, tending to my clients, and from the horizon comes Albus bloody Dumbledore with his new apprentice. Not on a white horse, oh no, but with a bandaged midget who happens to be blind as a Cannons' fan."

"I'm sorry if the bits of Philosopher's Stone in my eyes inconvenienced you, so very sorry," my breath comes out in a long-suffering sigh. "At least it saved me from the hassle of glasses though."

"Don't you take this tone with me, lad," Aberforth grumbles as he begins to clean some glasses with the rag. The rag, you know, the one which is many, many times dirtier than anything on this side of a dump.

We stand there in a companionable silence until he turns to me again.

"If you ask me, this teenage woe-be-me you're fancying? It's a load of Hippogriff dung," he says, making me almost spit the Butterbeer in shock. Aberforth talking about feelings?

"What?" My voice comes strangled between coughs. "Why?"

"I see it all over your face." Aberforth points to me. "Oh yes, right there. You've lived here for two years and I got your measure alright. Stiff as dragon scales while facing mortal peril, a complete wreck when given stern talking-to."

My lips twitch at that, but he doesn't stop.

"You want advice? Here's some. Go and deal with it as it comes. Merlin knows that, as much as my brother tries to do just that, no one can predict the future or change the past. What happened, happened, and it does no good to anyone to dwell on these things."

Even if the "as much as I want it to be different" he says under his breath isn't my imagination, there's no point to ask him about that. Everybody deserves his own secrets and I would be a bloody hypocrite to go bugging him about his.

Catching up on the finality of the mood, I bid him goodbye and went back up to my room. On the way, I pause to catch the sight of my reflection in an old, smudged mirror.

To be honest, it would be a lie to say that my eyes, still green but now twinkling with hidden stars—Katie's definition, not mine—don't look pleasant to me. The rest of my face, though, tired and too much on the pale side is a completely different matter. Then I look a little upwards and see it.

There's a foulness in my forehead, right on the scar, a stench of the blackest magic that I suppose to be the remains of the Killing Curse. It's shackled by strands of gold and white which echoes with an ancient magic that I can't hope to understand, but I like to think of as being the protection evoked by my mother's sacrifice; a mark of her love that only I can see.

Rubbing my scar absently-minded, I stop on the doorstep of my room, pick my wand and cast Tempus.

To anyone else, the spell Tempus only shows the time it has been cast. Yet, there's more to it—much, much more. I look deeper into the inner workings of the spell, appreciating how my own magic comes out of my wand in a nimbus of particles and catches the ambient energy, charging it through two Numerologic Matrixes, which, then, put the result through Kaunaz—the rune of understanding—to make the numbers visible.

A simple piece of magic, so full of secrets to those who could see. These things unraveled before me in what seemed like an eternity but, in reality, couldn't be more than a split second.

With a nonchalant wave of my wand inside the spell, I change the color of the numbers to purple.

Two after midnight—I should catch some sleep.

My fingers run along the walls of my bedroom and the carpet muffles my steps inside. Not an enormous room in any way, mind you, but it looks cozy and well lived. There's a Quidditch poster on the wall, this one being a gift from the twins, and a stand for my broom, a desk, and a comfortable bed. There were even some pictures, the biggest of them being of my penultimate birthday here, with the team and even Abe lurking on a corner.

The best thing about living above the Hog's Head, though, is absent. The hubbub of people downstairs, shouting and arguing and laughing, all of them unique and interesting.

The sound of life.

The wards glimmer as Aberforth stomps up the stairs to his bedroom and the soothing light of the enchantments circle around me like a cage made of stardust.

I never managed to grow up from my Muggleish fascination with magic and, as my finger touch a blue mote in the shape of the rune Algiz, it seems impossible for me to ever do. The rune dissolves in sparkles on the air, going back to the whole.

"Potter!" Aberforth shouts from his bedroom. "Stop messing with magic here! My cabinet just caught on fire, damn you!"

"Sorry Abe!" my answer is drowned out by his string of curses.

He curses even more as he hears my laughter. Living with Aberforth is fun, he's a good bloke—a bit rough around the edges, but nothing I can't deal with. He's earned my loyalty easily as he helped me during the time that, for all intents and purposes, my eyes were useless.

There are downsides, obviously, as living in the Hog's Head makes it hard for me to interact with people from around my age. I had almost no contact with other students, except for the Hogsmeade weekends when my Quidditch mates came to visit—and to risk a guess, Fred and George probably shanghaied them into adopting me or something after the Chamber.

My eyes fall back to the portraits on my nightstand.

These were the days. Just flying with them without a care in the world.

The memories came, unbidden, scenes of me and the twins just talking about everything and nothing. Wood breaking down in hysterical tears as I said I wouldn't be coming back but was still game to help them train. Katie blushing when she said that about my eyes for the first time, while Angelina and Alicia giggled—

My alarm clock went off.

Merlin, it's already three past midnight.

Muffling a yawn with the back of my hand, I lean on the windowsill and take a last look at the village. Even as the need for sleep wrestled my mind to the ground, the sight of the castle on the horizon makes my breath hitch in my throat.

Hogwarts.

I still remember the sound of the castle doors closing behind me; the pain from seeing the enormous amount of magic from the castle and the students almost searing my eyes just two years before. Now, though? After Professor Dumbledore took me under his wing and taught me control?

It is a damn nice sight to behold.

Few things are beautiful as Hogsmeade at night, but Hogwarts gives it a good run for its money. The castle looks magnificent, its towers cutting through the sky, majestic and alluring as ever. The magic surrounding the school, visible even from distance, feels warm and welcoming. Like the best things in the world—full of life and enthusiasm. It's almost like an old friend greeting me back, knowing I couldn't be gone for long.

It feels like home.

My eyelids flutter closed, apparently deciding by their own that enough was enough. Still too caught up in thinking about Hogwarts, though, my mind drifts back to that night before the Mirror of Erised. The night I finally met Albus Dumbledore one-on-one and he gave me the tools to fight and win against Voldemort.

He'd asked, his eyes twinkling with amusement—back again, Harry?

Yes, Professor, my smile is full of promises, at long last, I am back.