Perhaps being allowed to go off alone was unsurprising when one considered the context in which Harry existed within his family. For the most part, he was treated as an adult. This had already been the case years ago, and now that he was getting older, he was getting more and more freedom.

But, anyway. There he was, packing the things he was going to take to Manchester. His aunt and 'Ted' had had a very nice talk over the phone.

Just like Penny's parents had allowed her to visit Harry and go to France with his family, Harry was now packing his things to go visit Tonks.

He wasn't taking a lot of things, just some ageing potions, books and other necessities. It was frustrating to see that he'd already made a significant dent in the literature that he'd copied and brought with him to Hogwarts, but there wasn't really a solution in sight.

He expected to get a very rude wake-up call when he graduated, wanted to look up a topic, and didn't have a gigantic library to immediately give him, if not an answer, then at least a direction.

Packing away the books he was planning to leave on the train, mostly stuff about enchantment this time, he sighed and stood up. "All done," he muttered, looking at the two trunks he'd prepared. One full of necessities for his trip to Manchester, one full of stuff he'd looted from the room of requirement.

Since he was already going to London to catch his connection, he didn't see a reason to not drop by Knockturn Alley first. And while he could have then with the money he was going to get bought himself a direct floo trip to Tonks, he wanted to save his soon-to-be sizable sum of wizarding currency for actual emergencies.

Also, Harry was 100% sure that while Tonks was 17 and could invite whoever she wanted, her parents had warded the floo-network to log who exactly she was inviting. His magical sensing was useful for not walking into magic he didn't want to walk into, but appearing through the floo kind of meant that by the time he noticed the ward, he would have already tripped it.

The train was preferable. He could read anyway, so it wasn't like he was losing any time.

The only thing Harry was leaving behind was his wand. He'd already suspected in the past that the thing radiated a zone in which any magic use would alert the ministry, but now that he'd basically confirmed that, the tool was staying firmly locked up in the cupboard under the stairs.

It was sad that the ministry had turned what was supposed to be his biggest tool, into an object he had to be suspicious of. This was why he'd started looking more into the books on Wards and Enchantments. The Trace wasn't really a curse, so his curse-breaking reading wasn't of help here, but an enchantment could be broken just as much.

They were all oddly similar, these things. A curse was an enchantment born out of negative emotions, generally with the intent purpose of harming whoever came into contact with the item. An enchantment was the consecration of new magical qualities onto items and warding was the same, just that it essentially affected the concept of a space.

For example, if one warded a house, one didn't have to necessarily walk around it completely, tracing the circle one wanted to create with a wand. One could just cast the spell and have it ward one's concept of what that specific house was.

Naturally wards, enchantments and curses were all incredibly complex magic. Learning to dispel them was easier than creating them because it was always easier to destroy than to create, but even that was beyond Hogwarts' curriculum. If he ever wanted to gain any expertise in the field, he would need to gain it on his own.

If anything Flitwick would have likely been the biggest help in dispelling enchantments and wards, but the man likely wouldn't look too kindly on Harry's ever-broadening plethora of interests.

Maybe it could wait until he won the U17 tournament, be it this year, the next, or the one after. Harry had five attempts overall, as the rules of the tournament allowed entrance also for people who were turning 17 the year it was held. This meant it wasn't really an under-17 tournament, but more of a 17-and-under tournament. Harry had never cared particularly much for sports, so this had been a surprise for him.

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"Can we leave already," the hat grumbled from its perch on Harry's desk chair.

The boy rolled his eyes and put it on. A wave of his hand and some intense concentration shrunk his trunk which had no magical stuff in it. Another wave made it featherlight. It disappeared into his pocket. The other one, he had to take manually. He wasn't good enough to shrink stuff that had magic inside of it. And some of the objects in that trunk were enchanted or cursed.

He paused in his stride as he made to leave.

Maybe he'd keep some of the enchanted stuff to try and dispel the enchantments. You had to start somewhere, right?

He opened the trunk, took out an enchanted quill which let one cycle the input ink through all the colours of the rainbow, and closed it again.

Then he went down the stairs, said goodbye to his aunt, and let his uncle drive him to the train station.

"So you're going to visit a girl?" Vernon asked once they were alone in the small car blue beetle.

"Yeah, her name's Tonks," Harry replied.

"Different from the blonde one we took to France last year," the man muttered but didn't say anything after.

The boy rolled his eyes as he looked out the window, at the passing houses, lawns and cars. It made sense that his family would start getting interested in the women he was spending time with. But, it wasn't really a conversation he ever wanted to pursue ever again. He'd already gotten the, 'we're expecting babies, so be a gentleman,' from his old family, and while he'd loved them, he'd never really agreed on them having any sort of influence on his love life.

He didn't pick the topic up, and neither did Vernon once it became apparent that his nephew wasn't interested in pursuing it.

They stopped at the train station where he clapped his uncle on the shoulder, they grunted at each other, and he was leaving again. He noticed how he was spending less and less time at home with his family. But that was just the natural progress of life. It was just that he was an early bloomer. Hehe, early boomer.

He'd already been home for a few weeks now, but other than doing his own thing and relaxing in the garden with a good book, he hadn't done much. He enjoyed cooking with Petunia, helping Vernon in the garage and helping Dudley with his homework. But on a purely conversational level, besides asking each other how they were doing, there wasn't that much to discuss with his family.

Neither one of his parents had gone to university and they still didn't read a lot, preferring the television. This left most discussions bereft of depth. Additionally, the further that he sunk into magic, the more they lost him to a world that they had no access to.

As he purchased his ticket and sat down on the train, Harry wondered if he was a bad son. After some introspection, he came to the conclusion that he was just a son and that those tended to leave the nest at some point anyway. He closed his eyes and tried to let go of the responsibility he felt towards his family, to hang out with them, to be their perfect child.

At the end of the day, while it would certainly be nice of him to spend more time with the Dursleys, to thank them for his upbringing… It certainly wasn't a moral obligation, and he spent enough time with them anyway.

Perhaps he should ask Tonks once he arrived in Manchester; how much time she spent with her parents; if she ever felt guilty that it wasn't enough. He suspected that the general answer he'd receive from any teenager would be that they didn't think too much of it.

Letting go of the topic he pulled out a light read from his trunk and started lazily going through the pages of his Arithmancy textbook. It looked like maths, really, from the outside. It was just upon closer inspection that the whole thing looked a bit made up.

The train chugged on at the same pace with which he flew through the pages, and before he knew it they'd arrived at the station he had to get off at if he wanted to go to the leaky cauldron. It was too cramped here to slip into a toilet and come out looking a decade older. Too many cameras. So, Harry made his way through the station with its bustling suited adults, trash cans, pigeons and drunk young adults onto the main street. From there it was just a 20-minute walk to the Leaky Cauldron, where Harry quickly slipped inside.

The magic and the smell hit him. Warmth radiated through the entire building on a meta-physical level, the smell of butterbeer and fire whiskey hung damply in the air and the laughter of witches, wizards and hags reverberated through the air.

It was a different world. More dangerous perhaps, but still real. Where people talked to each other and lived for more than just work. In a way, Harry felt torn. While his interactions with people were mostly superficial on both sides of the fence, they were starting to become easier on the magic one. Perhaps he'd have to go to Muggle higher education to find his people there, but at the moment, other than his family and some flings he wasn't planning on calling again, nothing was tying him down there.

Here, he mused as he walked through the pub and right back out on the other side; here he had friends, ambitions and a riveting history. He wasn't just Harry Evans, the child of a rapist and a mudblood anymore. He was Harry Evans, inventor of the word-searching spell, werewolf slayer -even if no one knew it-, wielder of the sword of Gryffindor and future duelling champion.

It was just a different kind of legacy than the one he had in the muggle world, where his only accomplishment was that he'd graduated secondary education relatively quickly, through no real hard work or talent of his own. Just happenstance.

He idly glanced at a newspaper discarded on the floor, something about the faster processing of search warrants in case of dark artefact suspicion pushed through by Dumbledore.

Then he closed his eyes and felt around him, making sure nobody was coming.

A quick chug of one of his ageing potions transformed him into an older version of himself. He'd specifically brought looser clothes just for this occasion. But quite frankly, he was hitting a growth spurt anyway with all the physical training he was doing, and at 1.66m he was probably almost as big as he was ever going to be. He didn't have many aspirations of going beyond 1.83m.

The disillusioned sorting hat joined the rest of his ensemble on his head.

'You're sure about this?' the hat asked once it touched its brim to his forehead. 'We could always just wait, none of that stuff expires.'

"Nah," Harry drawled as he started opening up the passageway to Diagon Alley. "Let's sell some shit," he said. The bricks slid to the side and he walked onto the shopping street, getting lost in the crowd almost instantly. A hood was pulled up over his red hair and he became truly anonymous.

It was time to visit Knockturn Alley.