When Harry first moved in, he had stood in the entrance hall of the cottage for a few minutes simply taking in the atmosphere around him while sunlight filtered through old leaded windows and painted soft golden patterns across the stone floor.
Home
The thought felt strange, but this place truly was home now.
A few weeks ago this place had been little more than an abandoned shell sitting at the edge of a haunted estate and now it was home.
The cottage looked like something lifted straight from an old countryside fairytale, the sort of place hidden at the edge of a mist-covered English village where ivy climbed ancient stone walls and warm light glowed through windows during rainy evenings.
The original structure dated back more than five centuries, though much of the interior had been renovated during the seventies by the Oxford professor who briefly lived there before the curse claimed him.
Thankfully, the professor possessed excellent taste and instead of tearing apart the building’s original character, he preserved it.
The result was a strange but beautiful blend of old English architecture and subtle modern comfort.
The house had been built almost entirely from pale stone and dark aged timber beneath steep tiled roofs lined with tall chimneys.
Nothing about it felt sterile or overly luxurious and despite the size and the obvious expense involved in restoring it, the cottage carried warmth in every detail.
The front façade remained charmingly asymmetrical, giving the impression the house had slowly grown over generations rather than being designed all at once.
Curved gables framed leaded-glass windows while ivy climbed across portions of the outer walls.
At the center rose a rounded tower-like section capped beneath a conical roof, adding just enough old-world elegance to make the place feel faintly magical even without actual enchantments.
The first floor formed the heart of the home.
The kitchen, dining room, and living area flowed openly together in a way that made the cottage feel larger without sacrificing intimacy.
The dining area occupied the circular tower room, transformed into a beautiful breakfast nook surrounded almost entirely by windows overlooking the estate grounds and distant lake beyond.
Harry already knew that room would become his favorite place during rainy mornings.
The living area centered around a massive stone fireplace large enough to comfortably fit several people beside it during winter nights.
Soft couches and thick rugs filled the space while books and photographs already occupied shelves and tables with the gradual clutter unique to places genuinely inhabited.
The kitchen itself perfectly captured the strange balance Harry wanted for the cottage: old and modern simultaneously.
Dark wooden cabinets and hanging copper cookware mixed naturally with newer appliances and subtle magitech additions imported from Japan.
A large kitchen island stood at the center with several stools around it, already becoming the unofficial gathering place of the house.
Nearby sat the pantry, already stocked by Dobby with all sorts of ingredients.
Recently, the elf had begun experimenting with foreign cuisine and was currently deep into an Italian phase, enthusiastically learning how to make every kind of pasta imaginable from scratch.
Harry was most definitely enjoying his butler’s latest fixation.
The library might have been Harry’s second favorite room.
Floor-to-ceiling dark wooden bookshelves lined the walls beneath warm amber lighting while deep green armchairs surrounded another fireplace near the far end of the room.
Large windows overlooked the woods beyond the cottage, and the entire space carried the comforting scent of parchment, polished wood, tea, and old books.
It felt like the sort of room where people lost entire rainy afternoons without regret.
A full bathroom connected discreetly to the laundry room near the rear of the house, while the master bedroom occupied the quieter left side of the first floor.
That room contained its own fireplace, private bathroom, and walk-in wardrobe.
Harry still felt odd every time he remembered he now owned enough clothing to require such a thing.
Attached beside the cottage stood what centuries ago had served as a place to store the carriage.
The professor converted it into a garage during the seventies, though Harry currently used most of the space for magical supplies, tools, extra furniture, and several crates Dobby kept labeling as “future necessities.”
Harry remained more than just a bit concerned about what qualified as future necessities in Dobby’s mind.
The conservatory attached to the right side of the house might have been the most beautiful part of the property altogether.
Framed in black iron and glass, the Victorian-style structure filled with sunlight throughout the day and overlooked a private stone courtyard sheltered from the surrounding winds.
Dobby already had plans to fill it with plants.
Harry had peeked at the list several times, and the list kept growing longer every single time.
There were far too many plants in that list, and Harry genuinely had no idea how his butler intended to fit all of them inside the conservatory.
Upstairs, the cottage became even more personal.
Two bedrooms connected through a shared family sitting room beneath sloped ceilings and exposed wooden beams.
Unlike the more traditional downstairs aesthetic, that upper living room leaned noticeably modern thanks to the Japanese entertainment system Harry imported alongside several magical gaming consoles and magitech devices.
Wizarding Britain truly had no idea what it was missing.
Currently, Harry sat downstairs at the kitchen island, staring blankly at a piece of parchment while chewing absentmindedly on the end of a pen.
Writing to Ron and Hermione should not have been this difficult, and yet Harry had spent nearly twenty minutes accomplishing absolutely nothing except creating four failed drafts and one doodle of Hedwig wearing sunglasses and smoking a joint, recreating a meme from the lunatic’s memories.
The problem was simple: How exactly was he supposed to summarize this summer?
Hello Ron.
Sorry I disappeared.
By the way I’m suing my guardians, may or may not be part angel, own a formerly cursed estate now, can summon the dead, and my lawyer is probably a supernatural entity.
Hope your summer’s going well.
Yes, that sounded perfectly reasonable.
Harry groaned and dropped his forehead against the kitchen counter.
“This is impossible.”
Nearby, Hedwig hooted judgmentally from atop one of the chairs.
“Very helpful, thank you.”
After several more minutes of failed attempts, Harry finally gave up on explaining everything through letters.
Some things needed to be said face-to-face, so he started over with something much simpler, asking Ron if they could meet soon because Harry had a lot to talk about.
Hermione was currently in France with her parents, so they would not be able to meet in person for a while.
Even in the wizarding world, international travel still required identity documentation, and Harry had absolutely no intention of attempting to sneak into France through magical means and risk getting caught by the French magical authorities.
A stunt like that would probably reduce his chances of emancipation to nearly zero.
His house actually had working telephones now.
The Japanese really were absurdly ahead of magical Britain.
The magitech systems installed throughout the cottage allowed electricity and magical environments to coexist without immediately causing catastrophic malfunctions, though implementing the setup nearly destroyed Harry’s sanity several times over.
Still worth it.
Harry quickly added another note asking Hermione whether the place they were staying had a phone line and requesting the number so he could call her directly.
The thought still felt oddly novel: Harry Potter casually making international phone calls from his magically warded cottage hidden behind a Fidelius Charm in the middle of a formerly cursed estate.
His life had become even stranger.
***
By the end of the day, Harry completed another quest.
The notification appeared at three in the morning while he flew above the lake beneath a sky full of stars.
Cold night air rushed past him as the Firebolt cut smoothly through the darkness, silver moonlight reflecting across the water below in long shimmering ribbons.
The estate had lost the oppressive wrongness that once lingered across the land, leaving behind only the natural wild beauty of the old English countryside.
Harry banked gently over the lake just as translucent blue windows appeared before his eyes.
[Quest Completed: A Place to Call Home]
Description:
Some homes are inherited.
Some are bought.
And some are built slowly, piece by piece, by people who spent their entire lives believing they would never have one.
Objectives Completed:
Repair the cottage’s structure ✔
Clean and restore the interior ✔
Personalize the cottage into a livable home ✔
Spend one peaceful evening inside your completed home ✔
Rewards:
+200 EXP
A true home
Harry smiled brightly despite the exhaustion settling into his bones.
Home, sweet home.
Below him, the dark lake shifted and a massive shape erupted briefly through the surface before disappearing beneath the water once more with barely a splash despite its size.
Harry sighed fondly.
Right, the local dragon.
Buying cursed estates and unlocking celestial bloodlines was not enough insanity for one summer.
No.
Harry Potter also acquired a dragon roommate, more specifically, a sea dragon.
The magical community remained very confused regarding sea dragons as a species.
Some scholars claimed they were extinct.
Others insisted they merely retreated into the remote depths of the oceans centuries ago.
The few historical records describing them constantly contradicted each other.
In 1891, a gigantic skeleton discovered near Clagmar Coast sparked decades of academic arguments after Professor Eleazar Fig identified it as some unknown marine creature, while the Wizard’s Field Guide confidently classified it as draconic.
That is how modern wizards discovered the existence of sea dragons, and to this day, the information about the species is contradictory and scarce.
Typical magical scholars, Harry thought, nobody knew anything.
Harry himself only learned about them after receiving a quest while renovating the cottage with Dobby:
[Discover the Creatures of the Lake]
What began as curiosity quickly escalated into Harry discovering the lake contained enough magical wildlife to qualify as a small ecosystem: kelpies, water sprites, several deeply territorial grindylows, one extremely rude giant eel, and finally, Neptune, the self-proclaimed King of the Lake.
Harry remembered very clearly the moment the enormous scaled head first emerged from the water beneath the moonlight.
He had nearly suffered a heart attack on the spot.
A midnight snack break while painting the library was definitely not supposed to end with a giant magical creature staring at him across the water.
Harry activated Angel Mode right away, and to Harry’s lasting shock, his angelic form allowed him to understand the creature perfectly.
Angel Mode granted universal communication with any living or dead creatures.
Humans, magical beasts, ordinary animals, even forgotten languages no longer spoken by mankind—it did not matter.
Neptune turned out surprisingly articulate for a dragon.
Arrogant beyond belief, certainly, but articulate.
The sea dragon explained he hatched sometime during the nineteenth century under the care of a wizard who believed raising dragons sounded like a wonderful idea, that sounded a lot like something Hagrid would say, Harry had thought, remembering Norberta.
It did not end well for the wizard, as it hadn’t for Hagrid, but while the half-giant had only lost “custody” of the hatching, the wizard…
According to Neptune, the wizard gradually became overconfident regarding his “bond” with the dragon and eventually forgot one very important detail: dragons remained apex predators regardless of emotional attachment.
The wizard ended up eaten.
Neptune described this with the casual tone of someone recalling what they had for breakfast the other day, much to Harry’s horror.
Currently, the sea dragon is roughly the size of a large truck, making him surprisingly small by the standards of his species.
Historical records suggested fully grown sea dragons rivaled whales in size, sometimes even larger.
Magical creatures adapted strangely to their environments sometimes, and despite the lake’s impressive depth, it simply could not sustain something truly enormous comfortably.
Harry offered several times to help relocate Neptune to the ocean, but the dragon refused every single attempt, saying that this was his territory, his home, and he won’t leave, looking at Harry with angry golden eyes daring him to try to force it.
Apparently, dragons possess opinions and are every bit as stubborn as humans.
Unfortunately, the arrangement presented another problem: Neptune primarily fed on ambient magical energy.
For centuries, the curse saturating Ashford Estate generated enough dark mana to sustain him alongside whatever fish and magical creatures he hunted, but now the curse was gone, meaning Neptune’s primary food source vanished alongside it.
Harry solved the problem himself by agreeing to personally feed the dragon mana several times each week.
That sounded a bit crazy even to his own ears, so it probably was insane, but the arrangement benefited both of them.
Neptune remained fed and, therefore, considerably less likely to eat future visitors.
And Harry gets stronger.
This is something he discovered during the summer: repeated magical exhaustion accelerated mana growth significantly.
Magical cores behaved somewhat like muscles; pushing them repeatedly toward depletion encouraged adaptation and expansion over time.
The process remained unpleasant.
After the feeding session, Harry felt like someone had hollowed out his entire body with a spoon.
Still worth it.
His mana is steadily increasing.
[Status]
Name: Harry James Potter
Level: 7
EXP: 560 / 3725
HP: 130 / 130
MP: 30 / 260
AGI — Rank E (16)
END — Rank E (13)
STR — Rank E (12)
MNA — Rank D (26)
[Unassigned Stat Points: 0]
Skills:
[Wizarding World Magic] — Epic Skill
[Mana Perception] — Rare Skill
[Self-Regeneration] — Common Skill
Harry stared thoughtfully at the floating screen while hovering above the lake.
In less than a full month, his mana alone had doubled.
Below him, Neptune surfaced once more.
The massive dragon’s scaled head emerged from the dark water while glowing eyes regarded Harry with greed.
“More,” the dragon rumbled hopefully.
Harry laughed tiredly.
“You do realize you nearly emptied all my mana reserves, right?”
“You will recover.”
“That is not the point.”
Neptune blinked slowly.
“Small sky-human complains greatly.”
“I’m going back inside before I collapse.”
The dragon submerged again with clear disappointment.
Harry shook his head fondly before turning the Firebolt toward the warmly lit cottage waiting beyond the trees.
Home, sweet home.
Tomorrow Dobby would bring Ron to the flat at around eleven in the morning.
His best friend had answered Harry’s letter right away, insisting they meet the very next day.
Harry was more than a little nervous about it.
He still had not decided how much he should tell Ron.
But if he could not be completely honest with his best friend—his first real friend, the boy who had once been willing to sacrifice himself for Harry without hesitation or fear—then who could he be honest with?
And what did it say about him that he was even hesitating?
A month ago, he would not have doubted to—
No.
He needed to be honest with himself at the very least.
Even before all this, there had always been parts of himself he never truly shared with anyone.
With a tired sigh, Harry stepped inside the cottage.
***
Author’s Note: Next chapter will finally reunite the Golden Trio… well, sort of.
It will also be the last chapters before the trial arc officially begins.
We’ve already spent quite a while laying the groundwork for everything that’s about to happen.
Honestly, I could probably keep going for several more chapters since I naturally gravitate toward slower-paced storytelling, but I’ve been trying to improve my pacing a bit and avoid dragging the setup for too long.
Not very successful in that, but I am trying.