Harry tucked away his wand and stretched the fingers on his dominant hand. They'd been going numb from how he'd been holding his wand. It hadn't been like this with his holly and phoenix feather wand, which was now so much ash.
He'd had a magic-intensive morning shearing away worn runes on large stones. His job had been to render the stones harmless after someone else drained them of any magic. If Harry did his (underpaid, thankless, and tedious) work right, these stones wouldn't be trouble if they came in contact again with magic.
The job, so far, made Professor Binns seem like a moveable riot of fun.
Oh, well, he was learning a bit and he was surrounded by a kind of work (magical home deconstruction) that was similar to, if also opposite to, what he'd need to do on the Potter lands someday. He might be a dogsbody at the Black Mansion near Cherbourg in Normandy, but he was taking notes. Literally, in between all of the sweating and swearing. Oddly enough, he was frequently out of breath, but he was about as happy as he could ever remember being.
Being busy and being bored was actually okay for him right now...
He was two weeks into his summer break here. The other workers had gotten over their gawking at him, his missing scar, his missing finger. Sirius was close by, but not hovering. There were new workers in all the time and some of them took a day or two before someone used Harry's last time in their presence. Harry liked being just a dogsbody for a while, not Harry Potter, godson of the property's owner, the infamous Sirius Black.
Harry blended in, picking up some magical work, running around the huge estate finding people who were late, chatting with different folks at lunch. He usually stuck to dinners with his godfather.
He was so busy he didn't think as much as might expect about having only nine fingers – or about the warnings he'd received concerning the coming year and the prospect of dire trouble from Voldemort and his ideological brethren. He did not think about the new Minister across the English Channel, one of Voldemort's, a man called Nott.
The trouble was over there, across the Channel, for now. Harry was planning a bit, in the evenings, with Sirius. During the light hours, he worked with his shirt off. His tan this summer was better than it had ever been. He felt like he was strong, dangerous, even up to a challenge. All this dampness and anger, he'd left it behind in Scotland. It was waiting for him, of course, but it was off his shoulders for now.
"Potter, over here, work to be done." It was shouted at him in English.
Everyone else got shouted at in French or Italian for the stone masons from Genoa. At least everyone got shouted at by Guillaume Castar, the least happy person Harry had ever known (and that included his potions master at Hogwarts).
Harry jogged over to collect a fresh scowl from Guillaume, then got to work on what he thought he needed to be doing. Maybe.
Guillaume's accent speaking English left Harry guessing at one word in every four.
New cursebreakers had arrived the night before and were supervising the more tricky bits of dismantling the home's defenses. Harry had heard more than one person remark that they were still formidable for a structure that had been abandoned for close to fifty years. If it had been lived within recently, the whole project would have been tougher, much tougher.
It made Harry file a few mental notes about Godric's Hall and what had happened there. Had just two people, Harry's grandparents, been enough to keep the wards alive and happy there? How did a magical house work best? Every time Harry thought he'd learned a little bit, it just opened new questions for him to examine.
With all the new people around, you'd think things would be easier for Harry. Wrong. It was like he had Guillaume and ten new bosses expecting him to run their errands. It was straight-up hazing, but not mean, so Harry didn't push the godfather card or the Harry-Potter-card. All these people who were used to rough sites in various deserts or swamps were still acting like fools and bullies...for now.
By the time dinner was served in the commissary tent, Harry could eat his weight in stew, he was sure of it.
How he hadn't sweated away to nothing, he wasn't sure.
Was he complaining? No, he loved it here, he realized. He loved being busy, even if that meant doing the most horrible, boring things. One might think that those two attributes didn't often go together, but they really did. Horrible and boring...
Harry knew he'd looked shocked when he was given some orders, but he had never complained. He just kept a careful watch on everything.
Sirius finally appeared for his evening meal and sat with Harry. "Good day, Harry?"
Harry quirked his head. "How were the cursebreakers?"
Harry assumed they'd be demanding, to him at least. It was likely they'd been far kinder to Sirius, their ultimate boss on the project.
"Nervous."
Harry shook his head, not understanding. Did Sirius the Azkaban prisoner still make even these sorts uncomfortable?
"Not about me, about this house. A primary residence for the House of Black. I've alluded to a few of the stories, Harry, but I also left out most of the worst bits. They're smart to be nervous."
"Oh," Harry said.
"Especially because I couldn't tell them much other than family legends. I was the heir, but the knowledge never got passed to me when I was a kid."