ii. home is nowhere

                                    

                                          
In the southern parts of Oxfordshire, in between here and there, at a crossroads that didn't lead anywhere in particular, sat a bespectacled witch on an antique trunk and a large serpent lazing in a bed of bluebells.
                          
Harriet Potter turned the crumpled map in her hands and squinted at the lettering, the paper made too bright by the cheery sunshine and the writing refusing to cooperate. She had little experience with mundane maps let alone magical ones, and this map did everything it could to confound the frustrated girl. She turned it again and huffed.
                          
"Set?"
                          
At her feet, the shadows peeled away from the thick patches splayed between the grass and bluebells to form a vague question mark shape.
                          
"Could you—?"
                          
The shadow lifted itself from the dirt like rain in reverse, coming together to form a nebulous umbrella of watery darkness hanging above the girl's bent head.
                          
"Excellent, cheers," Harriet said as she went back to the map.
                          
When term came to an end and Harriet arrived in London a month prior, she made no attempt to return to her relatives in Little Whinging. No, she had no desire to see Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon, or her cousin Dudley ever again, and she guessed they were be pleased to be shut of her anyway. Rather, Harriet disembarked from the Hogwarts Express and—at Set's prompting—returned to Diagon Alley.
                          
At first, Harriet rather enjoyed her stay in the Alley. She ate lunch at Florean Fortescue's or Pofferton's Puddings on Toad Road, explored the many nooks and crannies of the varied shops, and fell asleep in her bed at the Leaky Cauldron. Diagon Alley and its adjoining streets comprised the biggest magical district in England—but the Wizarding community was really rather small, and it had a very long memory. While everyone didn't actually know everyone else, they at least knew of each other, or their families, or had a mate who knew someone who knew them. Anonymity was not really a thing for wizards and witches.
                          
Tom, the landlord for the Leaky Cauldron, remembered Harriet from last summer—as did housekeeping, Florean Fortescue and quite a few of the shop owners about the district. She ran into Professor Sinistra once in the pub and had to dive behind a cart to avoid being seen by Professor Snape as he came out of the Apothecary. The manager at Flourish and Blotts always frowned when Harriet passed by his shop. They started to ask...questions, questions about why a scruffy kid was always out and about on her own without her guardians, and she soon began to worry they might write to the magical equivalent of child services. Harriet never wanted to be trapped with people like the Dursleys again.
                          
So, she stayed two nights at the Leaky Cauldron, a third at the Niffler's Nest in Horizont Alley, a fourth at the Hopping Pot down Carkitt Market, and afterward Harriet visited Globus Mundi Travel Agents to buy a map of Britain's Wizarding settlements and scrounged up an old, Charmed tent in The Junk Shop. Diagon Alley may have been the largest magical district in England—but it was not the only one.
                          
From there, Harriet set out on an arduous journey of Floo hopping from Diagon Alley to the smaller district of The Cobbled Lane in Blackburn, then on to the Tarland Tavern in Edinburgh, where Harriet exhausted herself and had to spend the night. She'd thought traveling through the Floo Network would be a simple thing, but apparently a body as small as hers was subject to magical exhaustion, as the distance flickering between Floo to Floo to Floo took its toll. Harriet could barely keep her eyes open as she promised the witch behind the bar that her parents would be along later that evening, and she snuck out before dawn.
                          
Afterward, Harriet spent one week on the Isle of Skye, camping in the fens and rolling hills and rocky tors, not far from the village of Giant's Rest near The Storr. The area was populated by some of the barmiest wizards Harriet had ever met, including a batty potioneer named Ernestine Elderberry, who claimed to be three hundred and fourteen years old and brewed with spit from the fairies she'd met near the Bruach na Frithe. The woman shoved a glass cauldron full of curious, light blue crystals into Harriet's arms one day—said it was a gift—then went off chasing a flying sheep toward the mountains. The crystals glowed softly whenever Harriet spoke in Parseltongue, and she had no clue what to make of that.