House hunting, Harry quickly discovered, was significantly more horrifying in the magical world.
The real estate agent was a witch named Jane Moore, a brisk woman in sharp emerald robes whose cheerful professionalism suggested either remarkable competence or complete psychological immunity to danger.
Possibly both.
“Now,” she announced brightly while leading Harry and Crowley through an old wrought-iron gate, “this first property only entered the market three weeks ago and possesses tremendous historical value.”
If the “historical value” part was supposed to inspire awe, well, it failed completely.
The townhouse looming ahead looked less like a home and more like the ancestral residence of people who referred to normal human interaction as “an unfortunate necessity.”
Dark stone walls rose several stories high beneath narrow windows framed by twisting ironwork.
The place radiated old magical wealth so aggressively Harry felt poorer simply standing near it.
The front door opened before anyone touched it.
Harry jumped slightly.
“Responsive enchantments,” Jane explained smoothly.
“Perfectly safe.”
The entrance hall disagreed.
The moment Harry stepped inside, a portrait hanging above the staircase narrowed its eyes at him suspiciously.
“A mudblood,” the painted woman sniffed with visible disgust.
“Wearing Muggle clothing in our noble house?!”
Harry stared at the portrait.
Another portrait farther down the hall leaned forward eagerly.
“Is that a Potter?
That boy looks just like that runt Henry Potter,” an elderly wizard sneered.
“Worse than a mudblood.
Honestly, that family was such a disgrace.
Always married for love instead of proper breeding.” The first fainted woman said with a look of pure disgust.
“Oh, ignore the portraits,” Jane said pleasantly as she guided them deeper into the house.
“They’re part of the residence’s historical charm.
The new owner may remove them if they wish.”
The portraits reacted with immediate and very visible outrage, prompting the witch to casually wave her wand and cover the paintings.
That was not a great start, and what followed did not improve matters.
In the next room, one of the armchairs snapped its jaws at Harry as he walked past.
“…Did the furniture just bite me?”
“Residual defensive charms,” Jane corrected.
“Entirely harmless.”
“That doesn’t look harmless,” Harry informed her, looking at the furniture trying to eat him.
Crowley, meanwhile, looked deeply entertained.
The chandelier overhead dripped something dark onto the floor with a wet splat.
Harry stared upward cautiously.
“…Is that blood?”
Jane tilted her head thoughtfully.
“Probably not.”
“You saying ‘probably’ is not reassuring at all,” Harry informed her.
As the tour continued, the situation deteriorated steadily.
The library contained at least three books screaming at each other in Latin.
A hallway mirror refused to reflect Crowley at all, which Harry found concerning for reasons he could not entirely explain.
The dining room apparently remained under “slight nosferatu influence” from what Jane described as “the unfortunate vampire incident of 1948.”
Harry did not ask follow-up questions because he strongly suspected the answers would ruin his appetite forever.
Through all of this, Jane maintained the calm professional tone of someone describing slightly inconvenient plumbing issues.
“Minor bloodline wards.”
“Excellent atmosphere.”
“Remarkably little corruption considering the age.”
“Only one confirmed possession during the last decade.”
Harry eventually stopped processing words entirely.
Crowley wandered leisurely through the drawing room, examining cursed silverware with visible amusement.
“Well,” the solicitor remarked lightly, “on the bright side, if you were murdered here your ghost probably won’t get bored.”
Harry looked around at the looming shadows, judgmental portraits, and furniture radiating hostility.
He hated it.
Not because it was dangerous, although it definitely was.
Not because it was old but because it did not feel alive.
The place felt preserved rather than lived in, like some elaborate monument dedicated to dead people.
Harry suddenly understood something important: he did not want to live like the Malfoys.
He did not want enormous ancestral halls filled with dark magic and old relics.
He did not want a house that felt like a museum.
Even the decoy property needed to feel comfortable.
Warm.
Like somewhere people actually laughed once in a while.
“I want something smaller,” Harry said as they exited the townhouse.
“Something cozy.
Maybe a flat.”
Jane nodded professionally.
“Of course. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
I have several wonderful properties in mind.”
The next property was worse.
The wizarding apartment sat above a narrow Diagon Alley apothecary inside a crooked building that appeared to be losing an argument against gravity.
“Cozy urban living space,” Jane announced proudly while unlocking the door.
Harry stepped inside and stopped one step in.
The flat was tiny.
Not modest.
Not compact.
Tiny.
The windows faced directly into a brick wall approximately two feet away, creating the charming illusion of living inside a chimney.
Somewhere behind the walls, pipes emitted long mournful wails that sounded disturbingly human.
Harry looked around cautiously.
“…Why are the pipes screaming?”
“Oh, there are ghosts in them,” Jane replied immediately.
“Mostly harmless.”
Mostly harmless, of course.
Wonderful.
A loud explosion echoed from the neighboring flat, and Harry flinched.
Jane smiled reassuringly.
“The neighbor breeds puffskeins.”
Another explosion followed immediately afterward.
“…Are puffskeins supposed to explode?”
“No.” And she apparently saw absolutely nothing wrong with that answer.
The kitchen attempted to stab Crowley with a spoon, but the solicitor caught it midair without even looking up from the countertop.
“Charming,” he drawled.
Jane cleared her throat delicately.
“There was a minor curse incident in 1972,” she admitted.
“The kitchen retains traces of… the incident.”
Right on cue, the oven hissed at them.
“You’re telling me the kitchen is haunted.” Harry stared blankly.
“Enchanted,” Jane corrected.
“Of course,” Crowley looked proud at his sarcasm.
Harry slowly turned in place, taking in the microscopic bedroom, the screaming pipes, the homicidal cookware, and the complete absence of anything remotely resembling livable space.
The realtor smiled brightly.
“As you can see, very cozy.”
Harry looked at her.
Then at the apartment.
Then back at her.
“…This feels smaller than the cupboard where I slept for 10 years.”
Silence fell instantly.
Jane froze, and Crowley lowered the spoon very slowly; even the pipes seemed to stop screaming for a moment.
Harry realized what he had said approximately three seconds too late and suddenly became deeply interested in the floorboards.
The rest of the house hunting process only confirmed Harry’s growing belief that magical real estate agents existed in a completely different reality from everyone else.
Over the following four days, he and Crowley visited property after property across magical and Muggle Britain, each one somehow introducing a fresh category of concern Harry had never previously considered.
One cottage in Yorkshire possessed “mood weather enchantments,” which turned out to mean the house occasionally created thunderstorms indoors.
Another property looked perfectly reasonable until Harry opened a wardrobe and discovered a staircase descending into what Jane Moore described as “a historical reenactment of a 15th-century witch hunter’s dungeon.”
Crowley closed that door immediately.
“No,” he said flatly.
“Absolutely not.
The last thing the child needs is more trauma.”
A narrow wizarding townhouse in Bristol seemed promising until the walls began loudly arguing with each other halfway through the tour.
Apparently, previous owners had enchanted the house to “encourage lively intellectual discourse.” The building had interpreted this instruction as arguing about everything, very loudly.
One property actually was normal.
Too normal.
A detached two-story house located in an affluent Muggle neighborhood outside London, complete with pristine white fences, carefully trimmed hedges, polished windows, and the sort of perfect lawns that suggested residents voluntarily discussed fertilizer over tea.
Objectively, it was lovely.
The estate agent smiled warmly while showing them through the kitchen.
“Wonderful family neighborhood,” she said brightly.
“Very peaceful.
Very safe.”
Harry’s stomach tightened immediately.
Every house along the street looked almost identical, lined beside one another with eerie precision beneath silent roads and carefully maintained gardens.
It reminded him too much of Privet Drive.
The same suffocating atmosphere hid beneath the prettier paint.
The same feeling that everyone watched each other through curtains while pretending they did not.
Thankfully, Crowley noticed immediately.
The solicitor glanced once at Harry’s expression before smoothly interrupting the estate agent mid-sentence.
“Yes, lovely,” Crowley drawled lazily.
“Unfortunately, I think the child may perish from boredom within forty-eight hours.
Shall we continue?”
The witch blinked in confusion.
Harry silently appreciated Crowley more than he intended to admit.
Eventually, after four exhausting days of tours, arguments, negotiations, cursed plumbing, hostile furniture, and one deeply traumatic encounter involving sentient wallpaper, Harry finally found something he genuinely liked.
Ironically, it was not even magical.
The flat sat above a small secondhand bookstore in Birmingham, roughly a bus ride away from one of the local magical districts.
The building itself was old, nearly two centuries old, according to the owner, with dark brick walls and large windows overlooking a narrow street lined with cafés and tiny shops.
It had personality and not the terrifying magical kind involving blood curses and screaming furniture.
The living room and kitchen connected through an open layout that made the flat feel larger than it actually was, while two modest bedrooms sat farther inside alongside a compact bathroom.
But the thing Harry loved most was the window nook.
A deep cushioned alcove built directly into the large front window overlooking the street below.
Harry could already imagine reading there while it rained outside.
That alone nearly decided the purchase.
“It feels lived in,” Harry said quietly during the second viewing.
Crowley, lounging against the kitchen counter with lazy elegance, glanced around thoughtfully.
“Yes,” he agreed.
“That’s generally the goal with homes.”
Harry ignored him.
The initial asking price sat around seventy thousand pounds.
Crowley somehow bullied, manipulated, charmed, confused, and terrorized the seller into lowering it to sixty-two thousand within a single afternoon.
Harry still was not entirely sure how.
At one point the solicitor casually mentioned “roof integrity concerns,” despite the roof appearing perfectly fine.
Ten minutes later the owner reduced the price by four thousand pounds.
Harry strongly suspected Crowley weaponized confidence the same way Dark Lords weaponized fear.
Buying the flat itself only took a day after that.
Apparently money solved a surprising amount of bureaucracy.
Crowley also handled something Harry had not even realized was necessary: Registering the property as an official magical residence.
“That,” the solicitor explained while signing several forms with dramatic annoyance, “prevents magic performed inside the home by minors from automatically triggering the Trace.”
Harry frowned immediately.
“…Wait.
That’s possible?”
“Of course it is.”
“That’s completely unfair.”
Crowley snorted softly.
“My dear boy, wizarding law was written primarily by wealthy purebloods protecting their own conveniences.
Fairness was never involved.”
That explained quite a lot.
Children raised in magical households could practice magic at home during holidays because the Ministry detection system could not distinguish between adult and underage spellcasting within magical residences.
It only detected magic happening near the monitored minor, and if that magic happens in a muggle zone, then the child is automatically blamed.
Meanwhile Muggleborns—or magical children living in non-magical homes—effectively remained under constant surveillance because any detected magic nearby automatically got blamed on the minor.
The entire system sounded absurd once Harry actually thought about it.
Harry already knew how broken it was: last summer, the Ministry sent him an official warning because Dobby used magic in Privet Drive during the cake incident.
The Ministry had not detected who used the magic, only that magic occurred in the residence of an underage wizard.
Which meant the Ministry’s supposedly sophisticated magical monitoring network basically functioned through assumptions.
That was concerning and horrifying.
“Actually,” Crowley added casually, “the Ministry already logged several magical disturbances around Privet Drive the night you ran away.”
Harry stiffened slightly.
Right.
That night.
Harry remembers the lights exploding and the entire street going dark.
Accidental magic surged everywhere while Harry fought off the possession.
“…Is that going to be a problem?”
Crowley waved a dismissive hand.
“Please.
The Trace is held together through legal traditions, outdated enchantments, and bureaucratic incompetence.
We can dispute it easily enough later.”
That somehow failed to reassure Harry.
Still…
As he stood inside the empty Birmingham flat a few days later, sunlight spilling through large windows while distant city sounds drifted upward from below, Harry felt something strange settle quietly in his chest.
For the first time in his life he had a place that was his.
***
I need a few more so the story can be ranked