4 weeks after the start of summer vacation -/- England - Surrey

"So you're taking this hat for a walk, is what you're saying?" Petunia asked sceptically, sitting primly in the chair in the flowery living room and taking her afternoon tea. She was casting a doubtful gaze on top of Harry's head, where the sorting hat, or rather, Chanithachuah, was resting.

"Yeah, that's basically what I'm doing," Harry answered, but amended once the sorting hat coughed theatrically in his head. "He's helping me learn some really useful skills, wicked smart and all it wants in return is to see how the muggle world has changed in the last few centuries."

"Centuries!" Vernon suddenly interrupted and turned to them from where he'd been watching his favourite show, Top Gear, on the couch.

"I was originally made around the year 1000," the hat said, causing Vernon's eyes to nearly pop out of his skull.

"Bloody hell!" the man cursed. "You're older than the Norman conquest."

"Exactly," Harry interjected, "and he's mostly been sorting students into houses once a year and sitting around the headmaster's office the whole time, it's about bloody time someone took it on vacation."

"Makes perfect sense to me, pet, poor bastard's been stuck sorting eleven-year-olds for almost a thousand years, if anyone deserves a summer vacation, it's him."

Petunia sniffed disdainfully. "My sister, your mother, always had some weird things to show off during the summer. Frogs, potions and screaming letters, but a sentient hat…" she trailed off, adjusted herself on the couch and pierced Chanithachuah with her stern motherly gaze. "What exactly are you teaching Harry?"

The hat shifted awkwardly on the aforementioned boy's head, probably unused to being so thoroughly interrogated.

'Don't you dare tell her you're teaching me Occlumency, make something up!?' Harry hissed mentally at the sentient object while smiling placidly at his aunt and his uncle, who'd gone back to watching Top Gear but was still leaning enough in their direction to showcase that he was paying attention. The redhead took a sip of his tea.

"Teaching him some mental tricks, sharpening focus, compartmentalisation," the hat tried to say casually.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Petunia asked sceptically, glanced towards the left and walked over to close a tiny gap in the windowsill.

"Well, Magic is as complicated a subject as anything you can study in muggle universities at the higher levels. Developing photographic memory and being able to multitask effectively, are all things that can be taught and that I'm an expert in, I am a mental construct after all."

"Are you really going to walk around London wearing that though? Isn't it going to go against your, statue of secrecy or whatever?" Petunia asked, shifting her focus back on Harry when she noticed she wasn't going to get anything out of Chanithachuah.

Harry shrugged. "He can stay still and talk telepathically to anyone it's sitting on the head of. I think most people will just think I'm queer. 12 years old here, I don't think anyone's going to tell me off for wearing a hat."

"Running around like that," Petunia tutted as she reproachfully shook her head.

"Ah let him be, Petunia, our boy's basically a man, he can make his own decisions. Sure thing he's more mature than either one of us at that age. And with his wand and that, hardly anyone could make him issues anyway," Vernon rumbled from the couch.

Harry's aunt stiffened at the reminder of her childhood and muttered something probably uncomplimentary about the Wizarding World. In the end, she just gave a sigh and rolled her eyes. "Off you go then, it's not like you can't handle yourself, mister class skip," she said, causing Harry to blush and his aunt to chuckle.

"Thanks, auntie, uncle," Harry said as he stood up and went over to hug them both goodbye. He wasn't going to be gone overly long, just until the afternoon, but it was important to keep up good familial relations when one was 12 years old and one's guardians could still technically ground them. Harry was mature and his family knew that, which is why he was allowed many, many, many more privileges than anyone his age that he knew. He didn't want to overplay his hand in this regard and was planning on coming home on time. He grabbed his backpack and left straight out the front door of the house to grab his bicycle to get out of dodge.

'Your aunt's a tough cookie, kid,' the hat commented in his head as it idly probed his Occlumency shields. An attempt that Harry easily diverted before answering.

'She worries, like mothers are wont to do. But no matter how much she nit-picks, I've always been allowed my freedom,' he replied as he started biking through Surrey towards the local train station, from where he could take a train to London and be at Vauxhall pleasure gardens in about an hour or two.

'Good that you are, I didn't sign up for just a few days out only to be left behind as you frolicked away to France. You better deliver, or I'll cancel our deal,' the hat threatened good-naturedly, causing Harry to laugh as he swerved around the empty suburban streets and toyed with driving without hands. Everyone was away for summer vacation because it was July. It meant that it was the best time to actually go anywhere since it would be the emptiest. London was still a busy city, but it wasn't as touristic now in 1990 as it was going to get after the turn of the millennia.

'You're much too useful to disappoint, Chanithachuah,' Harry replied honestly, 'I want your continued assistance for as long as I can get it,' he said and received an amused, but powerful probe of Legilimency to his brain. He almost lost control of the bike and had to adjust himself a bit telekinetically to not fall down.

"Don't do that you wanker," he hissed, causing Chanithachuah to chuckle into his mind and let him be until they reached the train station, which was the point where Harry disappeared into the abandoned bathroom, and an adult version of him stepped out to go buy a daily ticket for the line. He'd bought some clothes that actually fit him during his bender in France and had discovered so when he'd come back to unpack. He now wore a simple pair of pale blue jeans with a green T-shirt and some leather boots. He looked good, he thought at least, and the leathery wizard's hat sitting on his head only elevated the image.

He ignored the odd looks he got upon getting on the train and chuckled at how the odd looks transformed very slowly into appreciative ones as the train neared London and its stops became more urban than suburban.

'This is crazy,' the hat said into his mind when they got off at the central station and started a brisk walk towards their destination. Harry looked around himself, taking in the flashing billboards, the ridiculously thick throngs of people and the high-rise buildings dominating the skylines. He tried to imagine how the scene would look to someone who hadn't glimpsed civilization since before the Norman conquest of England, where London had had a population of probably around 50.000.

'Wait, have you ever left Hogwarts?' Harry asked as he steered them towards the musical gardens, making sure to avoid any concentrations of people that could lead to him losing the hat.

Chanithachuah remained silent as they walked along squares and shops and thousands of humans. 'Once, before I took on the role of the sorting hat, I strafed the lands with Godric.'

'And you've never left the castle since?'

'No," the hat answered, throwing Harry down a road of introspection. Obviously, any human would have gone crazy if they hadn't left Hogwarts for a thousand years, but any human would go crazy if they lived a thousand years. He wondered if the hat had never cared about going outside, or if it had simply never bothered asking. The whole scenario brought up questions of consciousness. The hat communicated at a human level but was obviously an object with thinking distinct from itself.

This was the thing that he'd been letting attack his mind for months now. Was it more, or less advisable than letting another human practitioner do so? These questions flitted through Harry's mind as he entered the gardens, which had grass cropped according to the English preference and a beautiful array of flowers and trees interspersing the streams of people listening to the London orchestra playing out in the summer breeze in the middle of the field.

Harry unceremoniously sat down once he'd gotten close enough to the odd scene of an orchestra decked out in full regalia playing on a haphazard wooden platform in the middle of the park, sweating in the mild English summer sun. He took out today's brochure from his backpack and brought it up to read.

The Musical Summer of 1990

-Orchestra 13-15h

-Classical guitar…

They still had an hour or so of listening to the Orchestra, although Harry sincerely hoped they'd ditch Mozart soon and play something actually tangible.

Appreciation of composers aside, he immersed himself in the music by closing his eyes and noted with some humour how the hat started mentally humming along to the melody, having forgotten to close their mental connection.

The music ended, eventually and a break set during which the bands could change.

'Do muggles always play music outside?' the hat asked during the break. Harry couldn't help but chuckle, drawing some curious looks from a group of students sitting close by who had spread out a picnic blanket and were having some wine with their crisps.

'Only in the summer, to celebrate, it's a special occasion. I would have had to pay to get us into a performance if it was winter. They probably wouldn't have let us in either way, dress code doesn't include mediaeval hats, I think.'

The hat harrumphed into Harry's head, which was definitely an interesting feat of mind magic.

'They wouldn't know high fashion if it kicked them in the face,' it said.

As if to agree with the hat's statement a woman suddenly approached Harry, she was one of the students who'd been sitting beside him and giving him curious looks.

"Excuse me," The 20-something brunette started, "where did you get the hat?" she asked, "It looks really Nova."

Harry turned to the girl who was leaning down to speak to him on a more even level, revealing a certain amount of cleavage in her moderately low-cut yellow sundress. It had a few odd cuts, that thing, a bit too many spikes. He cast his gaze past the girl and looked at her friends, seeing that at least a few of the other girls also wore slightly altered clothes. He noticed then that he'd been ignoring the girl, so he turned back to her.

"Sorry, just don't get approached on the street very often, very non-English behaviour from what I've seen in my time here," he apologised. "You guys are design students?"

The brunette blinked at him, surprised. "How'd you know?"

"Well, the cuts of your clothing don't fit into any style I've seen popularised in England recently, but you have the accent, so you're probably from here. The clothes could be designer, but the quality of the material isn't high enough. Also, your friends over there are drinking an Austrian white wine, of which the best quality is its affordability. It leaves me to conclude that you're into design, but are obviously not buying it, ergo, leaving student as the only category you fit into. Or just enthusiast I guess, but you're young," he explained, before blushing slightly and looking away. "Sorry, that came out a bit judgy."

"Are you like Sherlock Holmes or something?" the brunette asked as she sat down next to him, apparently taking his deduction rant as an invitation. Harry heard her friends behind her giggling before demonstratively looking away. She smelled like bergamot and her eyes were green. The wind played with her hair in a way that invited wandering hands to play with it.

Harry suddenly realised that he was in an adult body and that he was about to get flirted with. He wasn't necessarily against the idea, he just thought it a bit awkward. A sentient hat was sitting on his head after all. There were three people involved in this situation, and one of them didn't know.

Music started playing in the background as the human pair locked eyes, Harry felt the hat's attention demonstratively divert itself from the conversation he was about to have and decided that this was a pretty rare opportunity. He might as well grasp it. Who knew when he'd have the chance to flirt age-appropriately the next time.

"Are you calling me smart?" he decided to tease with a small smile. "That could be construed as a compliment, you know and then I'd be forced to return it."

The brunette laughed. "Well, you sure know how to play on my ego, don't you, smart man. I'm Esther, by the way," she said suggestively as she adjusted her dress to sit more ladylike and to lean slightly towards Harry in the green grass, apparently uncaring about any stains.

Harry could have naturally complimented Esther's beauty. She was a svelte girl with creamy pale skin that contrasted wonderfully with the colour of her hair. Her bare shoulders were elegant and her smile playful. However, he'd always found that complimenting someone on their looks was shallow. Most girls heard it too often anyway. He decided to pursue another avenue thusly and decided to be honest, but flattering. "If I had to think of a compliment at the top of my head, I'd have to say that you sure know how to dress, a definitive gift. Making it strapless was the perfect choice to make a statement in a world currently dominated by shoulder padding and the slight focus on a more spiky aesthetic compliments your form very well. People call me Harry, by the way," he said with what he hoped was a charming smile.

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Esther blushed.

"Well, you certainly know something about fashion, even if you don't know the terminology. But since you know what I do, shouldn't you tell me what you do?"

"How about you guess?" Harry suggested and laughed when Esther demonstratively buried her face in her hand. He adjusted his posture so that he was lying down and facing the girl while propped up on his elbow.

"Don't make me guess, I'm bad at it," she whined, before uncovering her face and looking at him critically, apparently still willing to attempt it. She got hung up looking at his sweater and brought up a hand to her chin in a thinking pose. "That's not a British pattern, so you travel," she said, before groaning, "but it just means you've travelled, it doesn't tell me anything about what you do. Gimme a hint," she demanded imperiously.

"Well, the hat should be a dead giveaway," Harry said, pointing at the pointy fashion statement engrossed in the concert.

"Leather-worker? You're not a designer, that's for sure," Esther ended up guessing.

Harry chuckled. "No, how about I give you a hint. If I was a girl I'd be flying on a broom."

Esther gasped, "Don't tell me, you're a magician!"

"As I leave in and breathe."

"That's so cool, can you show me and my friends any tricks?" Esther asked, apparently wanting to introduce him to her group.

Harry thought about what trick he could do, considering that only wandless magic was available, he hadn't dared risk wand magic in his practice sessions in his cave, but sorcery had drawn no attention from the ministry.

"Magicians don't work for free, you know, what do I get out of it?" he faux-sniffed.

"Oh that's so sad…" Esther crooned and patted him on the shoulder. "You need to earn your daily bread? How about this, if your tricks are any good we'll take you with us to our dormitory where we're having a party, free food guaranteed and I'm sure we could gather up some spare change."

"You must think I'm cheap, spare change. I'll have you know I'm very much sought after. You're very lucky it's my day off and I don't have prior arrangements. Usually, I demand the kiss of a fair maiden for my services," he said but softened the playful reproach by standing up and holding out a hand. Esther grabbed it and he helped pull her up as they started walking towards her friends.

"Well, a kiss could be arranged, but only if your performance is worth it," Esther sniffed. "I'll have you know my kisses are very sought after as well."

Harry smiled but admitted to himself that the interaction had mostly succeeded because Esther herself had very clearly been interested in him. It was fun, being an adult again, no matter how short of an intermezzo it was and would be in comparison to his current childish existence.

Esther had already provided a conversation more fun than many he'd had at Hogwarts, simply because of the tension that existed between two attractive people.

"Hello ladies," Harry began as they finished stepping up to the university girls drinking white and eating sandwiches. "I'll be your magician this evening, please strap in your seatbelts and get ready for take-off."

His joke was met with a chuckle from Esther but dead silence from the rest of the group, who were mostly confused.

He huffed. "Well, I see that one fell flat, but I've never pretended to be a comedian. Care to explain, Esther?" he said, throwing the mic to his companion, who explained to her friends what was about to happen.

She finished just in time for Harry to think of an easy magic trick that he could do and knew was possible from magic shows he'd seen in his last life.

"Anyone have a spoon, a fork, or a piece of metal they're not attached to? Didn't bring anything with me today, thinking it was going to be a relaxed concert in the park, but duty calls and I've answered," he said, getting some perfunctory chuckles this time. Esther handed him a fork from the picnic basket and Harry inspected the silver utensil.

Magic was all about presentation, while he could just set the forking thing on fire with his mind -wasn't that incredible?- he needed to build up some tension. He wasn't a professional, but these girls were drunk, so it really shouldn't be that hard. "Now, be warned, that what I will show you today is not for the faint of heart," he waved the fork menacingly at the attendant. "A fork is no laughing matter when one involves magic in the business and soon you'll see why. But before I do anything, I want to ask you girls, how likely do you think that I've manipulated this fork somehow, before coming here?"

One of the girls, a dumpy redhead frowned. "Well, Esther's a bit of a cad, so this could be her having a laugh at our expense."

"No, she's never mentioned knowing a magician, you'd think it would come up," another girl retorted.

"The fork is as untampered with as any fork in London, I'm the one who brought it," the last girl added.

"I see that you're mostly in agreement, but how about you check for yourselves," Harry said as he passed the fork around and watched in amusement as the girl tried to bend it with their hands, rubbed it and even stabbed it into the grass, only to hand it back to him, not being able to find anything wrong with it. "You've seen now that it's as fork as a fork can be. Reliable, unyielding, resolute," he said as he wiggled around with the utensil, which was the focus of all the gazes of the girls. Once he'd gathered all their attention and strung them along for a bit he decided to get on with the show.

He threw the fork in the air, brought his hands up to surround it and caught it with his telekinesis when it was at level with his hands. The girls gasped, one of them nearly shrieked. "What's this?" Harry asked loudly, "Why does it levitate, what have you done with it, Esther?"

The aforementioned girl had brought up her hands in shock before laughing. "I wasn't me, I swear, you're the magician, you explain it."

Harry let the fork fall to the ground, before picking it back up. "Well, it seems to have been a relatively short phenomenon, perhaps we can chart that one up to spastic magnetic fields, eh," he suggested, "but we should verify if there's anything else wrong with the lil bugger," he said and held it up it in one hand.

"Does it purr when you stroke it?" he asked and theatrically listened, but no sound came. "Does it bend when you stare at it hard enough?" he asked and gave it his most withering glare. Nothing happened and he pretended to have an Eureka moment.

"Aha, how about… Does it bend?" he asked and started running his thumb and fore-finger along the spine. Nothing happened for a few moments before the tips of the fork slowly started twisting in different directions, to the amazement of the group. Slowly but surely Harry twirled the prongs around their own axis until they became nothing but small metal balls. When he was done he stared at the fork and glanced at the girls who were whispering to each other, trying to guess how he'd done it. "Well," he began, throwing the fork on the floor in front of the girls, "in my professional opinion, the things possessed, I'd suggest fire, or a priest, maybe both."

"That was pretty preem, have to say," Esther said from beside him. "If you can bust that out at the party I don't think we'll have any issues getting you your payment," she said with a wink before joining her friends and prodding the fork, making sure it was well and truly fucked beyond repair.

"Who said I was done?" Harry asked, making Esther turn back to him with some excitement. "I still have one dove up my sleeve, all I need is an assistant, an empty bottle and a newspaper."

After some bustle and hustle and tussle, it turned out that all of these things were present, well, after one last round of wine. Esther was pushed towards him holding the empty bottle and a newspaper.

"Now, Esther, can you confirm that the bottle is empty?" he asked, at which the brunette rolled her eyes and looked leadingly to her friends sipping white wine and watching intently. After a sigh she upended the bottle on the grass, a single drop of wine falling out.

"It's empty," she said confidently, but her smile wavered when she saw Harry's frown and observed as the magician slowly shook his head in disappointment.

"Check again," he said, at which the girl upended the bottle again, causing another drop to fall out.

"It's full of air you muppet," one of her friends cajoled, causing the other two to break out into giggles.

"Can you wrap the bottle in the newspaper, Esther, so that the top is reachable by hand," Harry asked before his assistant could throw her glass weapon at her friends. She sighed as if she suffered through such japes on a daily basis and was above it all and did what she was asked to do, before handing the bottle to Harry, who himself, upended it. He looked towards the audience and locked eyes with each girl and some people not a part of their group, who were watching the show.

"Now, you've all seen that the bottle is empty, you've drunk the contents," he paused dramatically, as he popped a finger into the bottle opening and started up a small, weak, pathetic, wandless, aguamenti, which he could only do because of his other relevant experience with sorcerous hydrokinesis.

"How likely would you be to believe me, if I told you that the bottle was in fact full, this whole time?" he asked. One of the girls looked down at the wine that she was drinking and looked at him with a suspicious gaze.

"Full of what?" she asked, at which Harry theatrically tapped his chin.

"Liquid?"

"You're full of shite, no ferking way," the girl accused, the others joining in on her statement.

Harry turned to Esther. "Do you agree with them?" he asked, at which the girl hesitated, glancing at the desecrated fork, before shaking her head.

"I can imagine you did something with it, but I can't believe it has liquid in it, next thing you'll tell me it's wine in there," she ended up saying.

"Are you willing to eat your words, or in this case, drink them?" Harry suggested with a smirk as he stepped closer to the girl and held up the newspaper-covered bottle over her head.

"Drench the wench!" one of the girls shouted.

"Will show her what it means fancying a magic man," another added as Esther stared into Harry's eyes defiantly.

"Do it, you don't have the balls," she threatened and squared up.

Harry upended the bottle over her head, closing the opening with his thumb, trapping the water inside. Esther looked up, laughed, "Ha, knew you were just playin-" she began to say when Harry suddenly released the thumb and drenched the girl with what he'd managed to magic up in the one-minute conversation he'd had with the audience. Water poured and kept pouring for a solid ten seconds, on the girl who was apparently too shocked to move away from the stream. When the downpour finally stopped all that was left was one drenched-looking girl who was looking at Harry angrily.

"You absolute ass!" she shouted as she stomped over to him and lightly pushed him before turning to her friends, who were all laughing at her. "Did you see what this bastard did to me," she said and pointed demonstratively at herself.

"He went full magic on you, as you deserved, considering you went up to the dude dressed like a hot Gandalf," one of them said.

"Hey, I'll have you know it's called being a wizard, alright," Harry interjected, joining the conversation.

"You don't have a magical way of drying someone off, do you?" the redhead asked, at which Harry shrugged.

"Hey, I make the messes, it's other people's job to fix them. Probably best to just get a towel and a change of clothes," he said, turning to Esther.

"You've made me so fucking wet, I can't believe it," she moaned as she crouched down to squat on the floor and start shivering.

"Sorry about that, sometimes I forget what kind of effect I have on women," Harry said apologetically, it had actually gotten a bit out of hand, he'd been having fun. He took off his T-shirt and offered it to the girl. "Here, wear this," he said and Esther gracefully took the piece of clothing and put it on while the other girls jeered at his sudden upper body nakedness.

"I have such shitty taste in men," Esther complained as she righted herself up and shook her head like a dog, brown hair flying everywhere. "Come on then, I don't live far and I need a change. You might as well see the venue where you'll be performing tonight and get your T-shirt back, although you might as well forget about being paid. Your performance can go towards the emotional damage fund."

"Should I come with," the red-headed friend offered, but Esther just shook her head.

"Stay and enjoy the concert," she said glibly and took Harry's hand to start pulling him towards a seemingly random direction.

"Don't I get a say in this," Harry whined but followed obediently.