The sun rises at 6:23 on July 23rd, and Kurt is there to watch it. He sits tucked into the window sill, letting the sun sweep over his features, letting it warm the apples of his cheeks and chase the chill of early morning from his bones. His cat – his familiar, he thinks wryly – lies on his lap, glaring at the sky outside. She’s not glaring because she actively dislikes the outdoors, no, she glares at everything. That’s just how her face looks.

Anyway, he’s sitting there, watching the sunrise, just like he has been everyday since school ended. He’s expertly studied in the way that it moves, the way it peeks out from underneath the trees and over the tops of buildings. It begins to creep over the horizon faster than you might imagine, flooding the sky with rich oranges and deep pinks. It’s beautiful; it’s a fresh day, a new start. It’s the best goddamn thing about this cow-town.

            Kurt’s sitting there when the sun sets too, in the same position with the same grumpy looking cat, purring in a way that manages to sound disgruntled. He strokes her dull grey fur – which remains matted and dishevelled no matter what Kurt does to it – and sighs.

            “Only 39 more days to go, Galliano,” he says softly, glancing down at her fondly as she growls. “Just 39 more days.”

            That’s Kurt way of getting through the summer – watching the sun rise and set. It’s calming, the way he can watch time pass.

            Summer isn’t exactly Kurt’s favourite time of year. He’s stuck, you see, in the muggle world, in Lima, while all his friends live in the wizarding world. It’s difficult, being that disconnected from everything. He’s used to it now, but that first summer he spent back in Ohio after being at Hogwarts was the cruellest form of torture Kurt could have ever imagined. He wandered listlessly around the house, going from room to room in a kind of daze. He was so bored he didn’t know what to do with himself. So he started to cross days of his calendar, watching the sunrise. It’s developed into a habit that now keeps him from going absolutely insane.

            But he can’t sit by the window all day, so he busies himself around the house. He can’t practise magic outside of school but, hey, he can practise potions, and read up on Arithmancy. And sometimes, when the sun has finally set and all of Lima is draped in the thick, woollen cloak of night, he can sneak out and go flying.

            He only does it very rarely – the flying that is. It’s dangerous. He could fall off his broom for starters, and while Madam Vincenza may be able to mend broken bones with a swish of her wand, he highly doubted that anyone at Lima General Hospital could. Besides, there are about a million ways he could get caught, and Kurt thinks that if they suspect him of being a witch the citizens of Lima wouldn’t be above a good old burning at the stake. And as dramatic as that would be, Kurt doesn’t think he’s really ready to become a martyr.

But when he does fly… god. The rush is enough to keep him going for days. It’s so exhilarating, so wonderfully free. He floats around ages after, even when he’s dismounted. Nothing can beat the whistle of wind in your hair as you soar above the ground, over the tree tops and houses, nor the feel of the broom taking you higher and higher as you steer it toward the towering clouds. If Kurt didn’t have his heart set on the stage he thinks he probably would have tried to play Quidditch professionally. As it is he makes do with playing on the house team. He’s been the Gryffindor seeker for three years now.

But even flying can’t really soften the isolation.

            He gets owls sometimes, from Rachel and Mercedes and Tina and Mike and – very rarely – from Puck. But it’s not really enough. No one can come out all the way to Lima to see him – it’s a long way, and their house isn’t hooked up to the floo network. Plus Kurt thinks his dad would probably drop down dead if some kid emerged from their fireplace.

            It’s not that Kurt doesn’t like being home, because he does. He loves his dad, and Carole and Finn, and he likes spending time with them. It’s not even like he’s that far removed from magic, because Carole’s a witch and she uses it around the house all the time. But Lima is just so different to the wizarding world. It’s so narrow-minded and grey. Going back there is like going back to black and white TV – there’s a certain nostalgia about it, but after a while you long for Technicolour.

            His dad knows, of course his dad knows, Burt knows his son better than anyone does. He tries to keep him occupied as best he can, bribing him to work down in the garage, or telling him to go hang out with Finn. But there’s only so much he can do. Finn has friends here; he’s a squib so he goes to the local high school, but Kurt’s still a bit of an outcast.

            Kurt’s always been different, you see, even as a kid. He wasn’t like other boys; he didn’t like the same things. While they rolled around in the mud or played football, Kurt was having tea parties – mostly by himself or sometimes with the cat. He joined in with them when they played make believe games, like King Arthur or Jack and the Beanstalk, but most of the time they didn’t want Kurt to play with them and when they did they almost always made him be the princess.

            The loneliness hurt, but it made things easier when Kurt began to display certain… talents.

            It was his hands, at first. They started heating up whenever he got angry, and then one day, when one of the boys really pissed him off, he accidentally set the kids pants on fire. He hadn’t meant to. He really hadn’t, he just wanted the guy to stop picking on him. The jocks kept pretty far away from him after that. The next week a letter arrived and that was that. Come September he was off at Hogwarts, finally feeling like he belonged somewhere.

            There’s no way that Kurt’s life is suddenly all sunshine and daisies, far from it. But he felt less alone at Hogwarts, like suddenly he wasn’t the odd one out anymore. It became his home in a way that Lima wasn’t, never had been and never would be. He felt… right there. For the first time in his life.

            And then he’d met Tina, and Rachel and Puck and Mike. They quickly became his best friends, along with a couple of Hufflepuffs; Mercedes, Sugar and Sam, and two Ravenclaws; Brittany and Artie. They were like any group of friends; they fought and made up, hated each other and yet couldn’t stand being apart from each other, broke up and got back together in so many different combinations that Kurt found it difficult to keep track of them all. But they were like family.

            Kurt doesn’t forget his dad when he’s at school, not at all. He misses him terribly. For a while they were all each other had in the world, and even though they have Carole and Finn now, they’re still as close as ever. Kurt emails him everyday. He’d write but Burt found it hard to get used to the whole owl thing and kept chasing them off the lawn without taking the letters they carried.

            But for all that Kurt misses his dad when he’s away, he still can’t wait to be back at school.