It's a Kind of Magic

A/N: This is a Harry Potter/Highlander crossover. A few facts before I start: Harry is NOT adopted. :) That does mean I'll be using my own pet theory about Immortality. Feel free to debate it, but there it is. This blatantly ignores the DH epilogue, but should be canon-compliant up to that. You don't need to know much about Highlander, but it helps. :)

Chapter 1

Surreal. That was the word he'd been searching for for the last half hour as he watched the crowds rush back and forwards along the busy London streets. This was definitely one of the more surreal situations he'd been in in the last few years. For one, no one was taking his photograph, asking for his autograph or wanting him to kiss their babies. For another, no evil megalomaniacs were trying to kill him. It felt surreal.

Anyone watching Herman's Café and Bar on the small side street wouldn't see anything strange about the lanky teenager sitting on a rickety metal chair at an equally unstable metal table on the pavement. Black hair, which looked like it had fought the daily battle with a comb and won, flopped over thoughtful green eyes that were currently staring into a large cup of coffee. Faded jeans and a loose white shirt over a red t-shirt didn't stand out either, the only slight oddity a thin piece of wood sticking jauntily out of the back pocket of the trousers.

If anyone had being paying really close attention, they may have noticed the spoon in the coffee occasionally stirring itself, or the jumble of coins in the boy's wallet when he paid that weren't from any recognisable country in the world, but apart from that, the young man named Harry Potter had decided that he was going to have a nice, normal, sane and safe afternoon in London. It was just feeling slightly strange to be normal.

Not, he supposed, that being a wizard was particularly normal, but it was quite a few rungs of the ladder down from being The Boy Who Vanquished He Who Must Not Be Named - killed had been deemed too much of a vulgar word - Order of Merlin First Class - yet to be awarded - and face of no less than three chocolate frog cards.

Pulling his wand out of his pocket, and glancing around, he tapped the cup gently, whispering a warming charm before taking a glance at his watch. Surely it didn't take that long to buy shoes? Fair enough they were for Hermione and Ron's engagement party, and Hermione was female and therefore prone to the weakness that seemed to strike women in the presence of clothing, but surely it didn't take long enough to be on his second warming charm?

Taking a sip from the reheated liquid, he continued to watch the crowds. So many people, the sheer numbers made his head spin if he tried to think about how many people had crossed his line of vision in the past hour, and all so unaware of how close they'd come to dying at Voldemort's hands only a few months ago.

Shaking his head to try to dispell the thoughts, he took another sip, the coffee barely warming up his fingers. Even the weather was being its usual abnormal self - he should not be freezing in September. In Hogwarts maybe, it'd been so cold over the last month in the castle that people had taken to finding the cold spots that the ghosts generated as they were warmer than the ambient temperature. But he'd hoped that this far south the weather would have at least remembered it was the tail end of summer and behaved accordingly. Just his luck that the cold had flown south for the winter.

So, here he was, in muggle London, drinking a normal cup of coffee in a normal café, surrounded by people who hadn't the slightest idea who he was, waiting for one his best friends to return with shoes. Surreal. But nice. After the last few months of chaos, peaceful surreality was good.

He'd stayed in the wizarding world for months, helping with the clear up. The funerals had taken place soon after the battle, and the body of Tom Riddle had been disposed of - he didn't ask how. He didn't want to know. But once the dead had been dealt with, the living had demanded his attention with a vengeance, everything from the Daily Prophet wanting interviews to the Wizengamot demanding his opinion on the new Minister of Magic.

At times he forgot he was only seventeen. The rest of the world definitely had.

Thankfully the frenzied rush of things that involved The Boy Who Lived had now faded to only one or two owls a week, excluding the fanmail. He'd set up a redirect for that to one of the Burrow's spare rooms that Molly had kindly expanded to hold the piles of letters. He kept intending to sit down and actually reply to them, but something always came up. Maybe Professor Lockhart had been onto something using it as a detention after all.

So, what did he do now? The Boy Who Lived had survived again, Voldemort was vanquished, and now there was just Harry. No great destiny, no strange prophesies, unless someone had spoken one that he'd managed to miss somehow, and his whole life stretching out before him. He could be an auror, the Ministry had made it very clear that Harry Potter was welcome to join the training program. He could help rebuild Hogwarts, Professor, no, Headmistress McGonagall had also made it clear that he could be a great help in restoring the wizarding world's opinion of the school.

Staring into the dark liquid he dismissed both of those ideas before they fully formed. Both of those jobs were for Harry Potter, not for just Harry, a teenage wizard who hadn't even taken his N.E.W.T.S, although McGonagall had also mentioned something about either being able to go back to school to take them, or the Ministry had hinted that he could be granted an honorary pass. Didn't he deserve to be normal finally? Like the rest of the world?

He was just about to cast a third rewarming charm, still thinking, when the headache struck.

His first panicked thought was that Voldemort had somehow returned, but it wasn't that kind of headache, not the kind that felt as if his entire mind was screaming at the intrusion. It was more a buzz, as if a thousand bees had been let loose in his head and were all clamouring to be released from the fleshy prison. It felt like someone had taken a dentist's drill and was boring into his head, it felt like...

And it stopped, abruptly, leaving him to pick himself up from the table, cursing at the rivulets of coffee spilling over the table.

"Are you OK?"A waitress was leaning over him, already beginning to mop up the remains of his drink in a purely habitual manner, "Do you need me to call an ambulance?"

Blinking away the memory of the pain, he managed a quick smile at the girl, "No. No, I'm fine. Sorry, I don't know what came over me."

"You looked like you were having a fit. Are you sure? You didn't get burnt, did you?"She was regarding him with concern, pausing in her mopping to check his hands where they rested on the table. "Ah, good thing it's cold today - surprised your drink stayed warm this long, you've been out here ages."

With a grimace he turned into a smile, he shook his head, repocketing his wand before she could tidy it up as well. "No, just a headache. I'll get myself checked out by a Heal.. doctor. I promise."Before she could comment on his slip, he stood up. "Maybe I'll come and wait inside, if that's OK?"

"Sure. Want me to make you another drink?"

"Please."Flashing another bright smile, the waitress finally seemed to be reassured, and he followed her into the shadows of the shop.

The woman standing at the entrance to the sidestreet, a still figure against the rushing crowds, frowned for a long moment before blending back into the flow.