FicWad

Harry made sure to dig his pinky finger deep into his right ear, then the left one. He found nothing that hadn’t been there before, but that only made him resume searching more thoroughly, using his fingernail to scrape the insides almost to the point of bleeding. Every single time he removed the pinky from his ears he got nothing but some dirt and skin. He looked at the offending appendage as if it had failed him.

“I‘m sorry; I think I had some nargles in my ear. Could you repeat that?”

Without batting an eye at Harry’s behavior, Flamel said. “I need you to assist me and my senile wife in our timely deaths”

Long pause.

“So should I just cast a few killing curses, or would you prefer I dropped an anvil on your head?” Harry asked, completely bewildered by Flamel’s request.

“It is much more complicated than that, you insolent child!” Flamel said, swelling up with indignation like a person who was being indignant ”If it was that simple I, the incomparable Nicholas Flamel, would have done it centuries ago”

Harry’s brow furrowed in contemplation “How exactly could it be ‘complicated’?” The light turned on in his head in seconds “Horcrux?” He threw out, no hint of revulsion at the term on his face.

Flamel closed his fist hard, the sound of his fossilized knuckles cracking a bit disturbing. His face was red surprisingly fast “How DARE you insinuate that I‘d even consider utilizing such a brutish method to reach immortality”

His face turned back to it’s usual paleness pretty quickly, which made Harry think that Flamel had somehow magically controlled the speed of the blood flow to his face; this sounded completely retarded but he didn’t think it completely improvable considering who he was dealing with.

“Do you not know my history? My achievements?” He said in a softer, but still sort of menacing, tone.

“What would… the Philosopher‘s Stone?” Harry half-stated, half-asked confusedly.

“The Philosopher‘s Stone?” Flamel began in a mocking tone before going up a few decibels “Of course the Philosopher‘s Stone you fucking nitwit!” Somehow, Harry knew that Flamel had been waiting years to berate someone like he was preparing to berate him.

“But how is it complicated? If you stop taking it you should drop dead by Tuesday, shouldn‘t you?” Instead of being irrationally angry at Harry’s lack of understanding, Flamel seemed to sag in his chair a little; Like magic, Harry saw the dark rings under his eyes, the wrinkled skin. The full weight of six hundred plus years had fallen on Nicholas Flamel in a single moment.

“Do you have any drink on you?” He asked.

“No” Was Harry’s response.

Flamel sighed “Get ready for a long story”

There was a pause where Flamel collected his thoughts; the sudden silence didn’t stop his wife from absentmindedly scraping the dead skin from her feet.

“By the time I was forty-two, I was at the top of the world of academia. I‘d earned my mastery of most serious branches of magical study by then, and I‘d begun to build myself a little alchemy lab. At the time alchemy was all the rage in the magical world; with the hundred year war and the black death, the muggles were doing a pretty good job of killing themselves, so we didn’t really have that activity anymore, and so we turned to alchemy. It was very young when I began to study it, only a few decades old, and it was mostly cavalier gentlemen filling a cauldron with a bunch of random potions and flinging spells at it ”

He got a faraway look in his face, and gave a hearty chuckle. “They said it was a passing fad, the elders did, it‘d die out just like magical swords and flying mops; it did. By my forty-third birthday everybody had burned down their alchemy labs and gone on to the next popular thing” A gleam of pride entered his eyes “But I kept at it. Ignoring the protests of my wife, I kept my alchemy lab and continued my pursuit of fully developing the art” He grinned maniacally “And I did, it took me five years but I made a breakthrough, and then suddenly I started making discoveries left and right, shitting out inventions week after week. I was called the Miracle Man in the early days, finding answers to some of magic‘s most ancient questions.”

“I was now also at the top of the public eye. It took them time to accept me, on account of my short stature and lack of musculature, but I opened my dirty mouth and they instantly fell in love with me. I was famous like you‘d never believe, throughout the whole of Europe and even parts of Asia I was lauded for my greatness, rulers and kings showered me with gifts and invited me to the most exclusive fellowships”

He licked his lips and continued “By my ninety-seventh year, I was an established and respected lord, living in the lazy lap of luxury. I thought that I would be happy for eternity, until my ninety-ninth birthday, when my wife commented on how happy she was that we wouldn’t be celebrating many more of them ” He gave Perenelle a quick glance.

“That put a fire under me like nothing else, my mind still had millions of jewels to bestow upon the world, I couldn‘t deprive it of my glory! I began work on my greatest invention of all” He paused for effect “The Philosopher‘s Stone!” The memory of his success in creating the stone was giving Flamel a throbbing erection, apparently.

“It took the better part of three decades, but I‘d finished it; my greatest invention! The object brought wonderment to the world, and it vaulted my from into a whole new stratosphere of fame. They dedicated chapters and later whole books to my accomplishments, something rarely seen before” Reminiscing about old times, another thing Nicholas Flamel seemed to have waited years to do.

“It was the greatest feeling ever, the first sip, I was rejuvenated, brought back to full working order. I discovered that not only did the stone secure our immortality, but it rejuvenated us. At a hundred and thirty I looked like a man of forty. There seemed to be no end to the stones magical properties, it even rejuvenated the long lost romance between my wife and I” Flamel shot Perenelle a look of slight longing before returning to his tale.

“In my infinite knowledge, I should have known that it was all too good to last, I should have researched more on the stones effects” His fingertips met his palm yet again as he steamed in self-hatred, something which Harry had thought impossible.

“It started out slowly, the warning signs were there but we just ignored them. We became more sluggish, like zombies, drinks from the elixir changed from once a week to twice a day” He sighed “One moment, you‘re making love to your wife thinking up some new invention to tickle your fancy, the next you realize you‘ve been soaking in the bathtub for eight hours with drool coming out of your mouth”

Harry’s moment of realization cut into the monologue “So the stone…”

“…Works like enough opium to make a mandrake stew itself? Yes” Flamel finished for him.

“Wow” Was all Harry could articulate

Flamel took another side look at Perenelle and his little hands twitched in his lap “ She has taken it worse than I. I’m conscious enough to leave this house once every few decades to remind everyone I‘m still alive and collect a few royalties and tributes here and there. She hasn‘t left this room in over two hundred years”

All of a sudden the room’s appearance made a whole lot more sense.

“But, why has it taken you this long to ask for help? Surely there were some people in the past who could have assisted you”

Flamel gave a snort “ My social schedule has been clear for centuries. The only people interested in me were purebloods who needed to earn some prestige for their family name and looked at me as an easy way to get it”

“But what about apprentices?” Harry was very curious about the answer to this question, as it would give him some good insight on a certain someone.

Flamel gave a snort that made his first one look like a sigh “The only apprentice I ever had was Albus, and I only took young Percival in because he was the nerd-of-the-month, and I needed to shut up the detractors who said I‘d never done anything for the younger generation” Flamels small body turned red as a turnip at the thought of his detractors.

“Fucking idiots, the lot of them. Made me take a fucking nancy-boy into my home! Mind you, Wulfric was a brilliant study, but he was like some sort of faggot with his talk of respect and equality and the greater good, whatever that is” He looked at Harry and mistook his enraptured expression with one of shock.

“Yes, yes, I know. That vision of young Brian might be a little shocking, but it‘s true. I can appreciate how he plays the rubes of today‘s wizarding world for suckers, but he‘s too up his own ass with this ‘subtleness’ and ‘manipulation’ business. In my day, if a man wanted something done he‘d burn down twelve villages and have it done by noon!” He grinned brashly at the memories of adventures he’d never had.

“So, back to what I can do to help you…” Harry said, realizing that that well had been dried.

“Oh, yes” Flamel straitened up, finally getting to the point. “In all these years under the power of my own substance, I‘ve realized that there is only one exit” He puffed out his chest “The extraordinary Nicholas Flamel will NOT die by the tip of any wand, or the hand of any being, but by his own doing! Suicide is the least noble way possible for the noblest human being on the planet, and his wife, to make their exit”

“So…” Harry pushed him on, wanting to get to the fucking point.

“I will die in the most respectful way possible. An overdose”

The wheels in Harry’s mind clicked immediately “I think I have you, you want to trade in your current addiction for another, equally crippling but less life-preserving; and you want me to provide it for you?”

Flamel smiled “There might be some hope in you yet, Harvey”

“Ok, so if I help you with this, you will apprentice me, correct?”

“Correct”

“But, what if you die during the apprenticeship, I doubt you‘d want to become a ghost, and I don‘t want to be fucked over in this”

Flamel just grinned, the biggest, most genuine smile Harry’d seen from him “It takes more than a little huff to take Nicholas Flamel down, I‘ll be alive, but hopefully terminally ill, by the time the apprenticeship is over” ________________________________________________________________________
Harry wanted to bang his head on the ugly concrete next to him. He was currently near the exit of Knockturn alley, the smell of rotting sneazel carcasses being sold a few feet away
making his retreat even more brisk than it had previously been.

At first he’d thought that finding drugs would have been as easy as going to the apothecary and asking for some special potions. He quickly found out that it would be a bit more difficult than that.

Upon questioning, Flamel proved to know nothing of narcotics of any kind, wizard or muggle, outside of his outdated 16th century experiences with the muggle opium trade. Harry himself knew absolutely nothing about drugs, his childhood under a cupboard keeping him ignorant of most muggle vices. For the first time he’d looked back and found it shocking that in all his travels he’d never once encountered a magical plant or potion that could have psychoactive effects.

Combing Diagon alley, he’d discovered that not a single wizard knew what he was talking about when he mentioned drugs. Defeated, he’d decided that he’d have to make a last-ditch effort before venturing into muggle London, so he went to the end of Diagon, the entrance of Knockturn.

Even before he’d entered he’d know this place would give him a killer migraine. In his world-round-trip Harry had stayed in places that left much to be desired, places that could be considered hellholes, even places where a few dementors would actually brighten them up, but none elicited the negative feeling he got from this hellish strip.

Harry accredited it to the fact that it was such a black hole for the magical arts, full of half-assed torture devices and low-grade potions ingredients. Knockturn alley was more a slum where you could get a smelly three-legged niffler to cook for dinner than a bastion of the dark arts. Only Borgin & Burkes held any sort of respectability, and old Borgin made more of a living stashing the pureblood’s suspect artifacts than anything else.

Of course, there was also the fact that three stupid teenagers had visited this place many years ago looking for things to help them on their quest, only to leave it grievously injured and one teenager short. Harry didn’t consider this a reason for his current discomfort, It hadn’t crossed his mind at all for the past few decades.

Passing in front of a notorious werewolf pub his body suddenly stiffened, every nerve ending in his body immediately turning to wood before beating with the power of a thousand drums. His eyes struggled with his control and succeeded in turning into semi-slits, his breathing became more and more frantic and his chest rose and fell at an accelerated rate. His ribcage was pounding, and his vision was blurring, but none of this compared to the adrenaline rave going on inside his head. It was like nothing he’d ever felt, and for a moment he was sure he‘d rush into the pub and sate his newfound bloodlust.

He held firm, blinked twice, and the urge subsided slightly, enough for Harry to get a complete hold of himself, and continue his egress.

He was beginning to question what the hell had just happened when he saw something near the entrance that made him freeze in his tracks a second time.

Near entering the alley was a greasy head of hair.

Snape.

Severus Snape had single-handedly won the war against Voldemort. That wasn’t really true, Dumbledore had won it, Snape had just followed his instructions to a T and finished off the chess game Dumbledore had figured out years ago. Snape had, with Dumbledore’s coaching, been able to infiltrate the highest level of the death-eaters, crumbling the organization from the inside out, and giving Harry every single element he needed to kill Voldemort.

And Harry despised him.

Snape had in fact been the only reason Voldemort hadn’t been displaying Harry’s head on a pike after a few week’s of effort on his part, but Snape was also an emotionally-stunted, greasy-haired and bitter man-child.

He’d been devoted to making sure Harry defeated Voldemort, Dumbledore had extracted an unbreakable bow out of him to make sure of it, but it wasn’t because he cared for Harry’s well-being, it wasn’t because he secretly wanted to give little Harry a hug. In his twisted mind, Snape thought that saving Harry would somehow bring Lily Potter back to life, and that she would be more than prepared to love the only man in her life forever and ever till death do them part. He was so sure that this would happen he’d even dug up Lily’s corpse a few months after her death and kept it under stasis in a secret room in his chambers.

Snape was an insurmountable jackass. He’d go out of his way to kill order members in the most gruesome of way’s, during the second war he was considered to be nastier than even Bellatrix when it came to torture.

When Harry had finally raided Voldemorts fortress, he’d encountered Snape. Snape went on to explain in excruciating detail everything he’d done to assist Harry, including the keeping Lily’s corpse part and a few other tidbits that haunted Harry‘s dreams for years to come. Snape had expected for Harry to kneel and proclaim him a hero, he hadn’t expected a killing curse.

For all Harry knew, this Snape was a family man who regularly donated money to preserve the Snidget population, but he wouldn’t take his chances.

Keeping his wand under his robes, he decided on slow strangulation. Casting the necessary curse, he was disconcerted when instead of his neck being constricted with the force of a few dozen pythons, Snape grew a three foot moustache of greasy hair to match the one on his head.

Snape’s brow furrowed in confusion, he looked around for a second, and quickly escaped the way he had gone in.

Harry was too shocked to follow, and he looked down at his wand. Turning around to face a particularly crotchety old man, he repeated the same curse.

It worked to perfection, and Harry repeated the process on a few of the people scattered around the alley, making sure to use the exact same technique, wand movement and even the same tone of voice in his head as he silently threw around a half-dozen strangulation curses.

Frustrated, he guessed Snape had some sort of protection on him. It was the best theory he could come up with, but he’d never even heard of an object or protection spell that had that effect, and he very much doubted than Snape wanted to get a greasy moustache every time someone threw a threatening curse at him.

These things mulling in his head, he noted that they’d neutralized the alley’s negative effect on him for only a moment, and he was already feeling the depression closing in. He made his exit.
________________________________________________________________________

Muggle London wasn’t really his thing, all cramped and crowded, but it was infinitely better than the nauseating feeling of Knockturn. He was now searching for muggle drugs, armed with the knowledge he’d salvaged from his blurry memories of the one and a half gangster films he’d seen.

He’d already walked into a few pubs and found them to be too full and well-lit to be considered a hideout for an organized crime racket. Taking a detour into a dark alley, he’d conjured a gun, or something that looked like a gun, and stashed it on his waistband.

The pub he had just entered seemed to have the perfect mix of vague lighting and near-emptiness. Scanning the small enclosure, Harry realized he’d have to wing it from this moment on. Of the fourteen tables, five had people on them. Of those five, one had a single person sitting and drinking some yellow alcohol of sorts.

Harry walked confidently towards the circular table and sat opposite the man, who was staring at the bottom of his glass. Harry waited a few seconds but the man didn’t seem to acknowledge his presence.

“What you drinking?” Harry asked conversationally.

The man, who was wearing a rather plain black suit and looked to be in his mid-thirties, fixed Harry with a hard stare.

”Apple juice” He finally replied.
“Oh… that’s nice” The man was taking a sip of his juice and Harry decided to just jump straight in “So where can I score some drugs?”

The stranger snorted into the glass. Setting it down with a hard thud and ignoring the trickle of juice that was running down his cheek, he exclaimed in a loud whisper:

“Are you daft or something?!” He wiped his face with his sleeve without taking his eyes off Harry.

Harry knew he had messed up badly, so he quickly went to plan B. A knife of legilimency cut in through the mans eyes, out back through the corneas, and straight to…

YOU HAVE BEEN CAUGHT ATTEMPTING TO USE A LEGILIMENS SPELL WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF DIAGON ALLEY!

Harry jumped in his chair, he quickly cooled himself down as the disembodied voice’s assault continued.

LOCATION OF ATTEMPT: OUTSKIRTS OF WARDED AREA, MUGGLE LONDON.

THIS SPELL HAS BEEN ATTEMPTED ON A MUGGLE, WHICH CARRIES A MINOR INFRACTION OF SEVENTEEN SICKLES. THE FINE MUST BE PAYED WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AT THE FRONT OFFICE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MAGICAL LAW ENFORCEMENT.

Harry held his head in his had as both his brain and heart seemed to want to abandon ship and his ears rang loudly. As he felt a slight burning in his palm, he looked only to find a message branded into the skin, like the after effects of Dolores Umbridge’s blood quill, which read 17 sickles. 23 h, 59 m, 55 s with the last number counting down every one thousandth millisecond.

“WHAT? Now you’re being a spastic?” The man’s voice brought Harry back to reality. Looking up at the man, who had stood up off his chair, Harry collected himself as best as he could.

“Listen, I need to purchase some drugs” Harry decided that the cherry on the Sunday would be him flashing his rough approximation of a firearm.

That was the worst idea he could have ever had, and in a flash there were nine knives pointed at his face and neck. All of the bars previously innocuous patrons now stared threateningly at him. One of them took the gun from his wasitband and threw it under a table to the far right.

“How in the fuck did you sneak a gun into British soil?” Asked the man he had shared a table with. All around him the patrons of the bar were steadily holding their knives in a circle around him. At least I know they’re gangsters. With imperceptible movement, Harry already had his wand ready to pull out before any of them even thought about securing his hands. Before calling it a failure, Harry would see if negotiation could still work.

“’What’s the problem? Can’t a guy make an honest drug deal now a days?”

The men found no humor in that, and the apple juice guy spoke in a quietly enraged voice:

“You’re apparently ingenious enough to sneak a firearm into Britain, yet you barge in here asking for drugs like you’re a kid at a candy store. What are you playing at?”

Any answer Harry could have had was cut short by a weirdly familiar voice:

“What’s all the ruckus about?” It came from behind, the pub’s entrance. Harry swiveled around, without his skin meeting the tip of any blades, to see who this newcomer was.

An ugly crooked-toothed smile, egg-shaped head and big round glasses announced the entrance of the guy from the plane, something Bridges.

A young fat man spoke up “ This guy‘s been acting like a right mong, and he brought a gun!”

Something Bridges paled at the mention of a weapon and looked straight at Harry with a contemplating look. Harry didn’t know if it could be compared to the look he got as a Jaguar when he tried to discern everything he could about a possible prey, he didn’t know because the look didn’t last long enough.

It took Bridges only seconds to recognize Harry, and he showed his crocodile’s maw with a gigantic grin.

“Mr. Sexton, I’ve been expecting you” He pulled out a chair in a tabled to his left and said like unto an old friend “Please, have a seat”

His cronies had become very confused “But boss…” pleaded the fat guy

“Leave us alone, me and my dear friend here need to discuss business” Harry didn’t know how these guys could follow orders from such a goofy looking man.

They still stood in a circle around Harry, though they now held the knives limply at their sides.

“But boss, he had a fucking gun!” Yelled one with blue eyes.

“Oh really, where is it now?” asked Bridges
“Over there” Said another, pointing to the table that the gun had been thrown under

“What are you waiting for, go pick it up!” The crony rushed to the table and came back with the gun as quickly as he could. He handed it over to Bridges, who held it up in the light for all to see. Ten people’s face reddened in embarrassment. The thugs because they had been duped so easily, and Harry because of his shitty transfiguration work (was it his fault that he’d seen a gun maybe twice in his life?).

“And you talk about fucking spastics! Cant even recognize a bleeding gun!” Bridges was barking at his subordinates. “Don’t you have a small business owner to extort?” Almost at once, all nine men left in a single file, going out through the front door without a word leaving their mouths.

“Get me some scotch, will you lad?” Bridges said to the barkeep, who nodded his head and went to cleaning a shot glass as Harry and Bridges sat down. Harry had released his grip from the wand in his pocket.

“I must say Mr. Sexton, I’d hoped you’d lie low a little longer before venturing into my neck of the woods, but I should have expected no less from a man of your caliber; that trick with the fake gun was just top-notch stuff” The barkeep put two shot glasses and a single bottle of scotch on the table. “Thanks Norman, why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

Recognizing the dismissal, the barkeeper gathered his things from behind the counter and left.

Harry watched the barkeeper collect his things while Bridges was filling his shot glass. “Please, have some scotch” Bridges said, filling Harry’s glass.

“No, it’s all right. I need to be completely alert today” The truth was the headache from the botched legilimens spell still stung in his head, and Harry doubted drinking it away would help in the long run. He was already feeling a second pounding just by smelling the drink with his enhanced senses, dulled as they were.

“Yes, I guess a man should be completely aware with the law hounding him” Bridges took a sip of his scotch “ Shouldn‘t he, Ace?” Bridges smiled like he had triumphed over Chris Antley.

Harry didn’t know how to react, so he didn’t.

“Always with a poker face, eh Eustace? Of course it doesn‘t surprise you that I found out as much as I could about your life” He filled his shot glass and took a swig “Like how you were found in the bushes of a Vietnamese battlefield, raised by the American military under the parentage of an old Jujitsu master. Officially joined the military at age fifteen, by eighteen had already gone on over a dozen successful covert missions and staged three coups. By twenty-one you were only dispatched on critical situations and the most difficult of missions. You were dishonorably discharged and faced with three life sentences after being discovered to have helped fund a notorious American crime family. You were detained at Alcatraz island until your trial, but you escaped on the first night of your detainment; you proved why they called you the “man of a thousand faces” as you were able to assume the life of one William Melvin Sexton, a middle-class accountant whom you have been perfectly masquerading as for the past ten years.”

“Yep, I did pretty much everything you just said I did” was Harry’s only reply, he wasn’t very good at lying.

“Now, I assume you came to collect the debt I owe you, so what can I do you for?”

“I need drugs” Harry said bluntly

“Drugs?” Bridges asked, looking disappointed.

“Yeah, loads of them.” Harry trot on

“But… don’t you need weapons to arm a revolution? Money to build a laser beam?” He asked hopefully

“No…Just drugs” Bridges sighed disappointedly

“Well, I‘m a man of my word. What type of drugs?” Harry really wished he could use legilimency right now.

“The best you have” Bridges scrunched his face up and contemplated Harry.

“So it’ll be heroin?”

“Yeah”

“How much?” Harry was drawing a blank on exactly how much heroin would be considered a lot, so he decided to play it safe.

“A busload” Bridges chocked on his scotch and his glasses fell off his face

“A BUSLOAD!? Now see here, I owe you my life and everything but a truckload is six months worth of product” He loosened his collar to give his reddening face breathing room “I‘d be hanged if I gave all that up”

A frown set in Harry’s features. He wouldn’t dare attempt an imperious curse after what happened to the legilimency probe. He was set to just burn up the bar in frustration and call it a day, but he restrained himself, Bridges hadn’t done anything to deserve a childish tantrum. He kept a hard grip on his wand, though, and sparks were flying off the tip.

“Unless…you provide me with an acceptable payment…” Bridges trailed off, looking at Harry.

________________________________________________________________________

Harry hadn’t been in this new England a week and he’d already run into money problems.

After leaving Bridge’s pub, Harry had apparated to the Flamel’s home, looking for some explanations and money. Nicholas had explained that he hadn’t known anything about the measures the ministry had taken, and that he was probably exempt from them anyways. His answer to Harry’s plea for money to pay up the ministry debt had been a big N-O (if you substitute “a big” with “fuck you, you broke little miscreant, fuck”).

Seventeen sickles was the least of his worries; Bridges had required an amount of fifty thousand pounds, which was a fraction of the true cost but still very much. He’d been further frustrated when, in a second visit to the ministry, he’d looked up laws erected within the past two decades. Besides the legilimency block in most areas with high concentrations of magic, there had also been a taboo on all three unforgivables, which covered all the British Isles, Dementors hadn’t been used in Azkaban for years and suspected dark wizards where regularly subjected to intrusive probes on their personal life, to Harry it was a minor miracle that Knockturn was still standing.

Of course, this regimen shared the same apathy for dark creatures that his worlds had had, for the most part Harry felt this was an injustice, but for some reason he couldn’t muster up the same feelings of sympathy for werewolves that he used to have. He didn’t understand the reason, but subconsciously he’d become irritated, even hostile, when thinking about or discussing werewolves with the many peoples he had encountered. Ten years ago, he’d met an old werewolf who led a secluded Romanian sect that studied the moons magical properties, and he hadn’t felt any irrational hate towards him. In the years following that he’d irregularly encountered werewolves to varying results; Harry knew that there was a specific moment in the past ten years when he had suddenly developed an apathy for Lycanthropes, but he couldn’t remember when.

Harry pulled himself out of his thoughts as the queue ended. The office he was currently in was a sterile blue color, with nothing but decrees and regulations staring at him from either wall. Behind him, a good couple dozen wizards waited irritably for him to finish his business.

“Hand” said the bored lady. She looked rather young , probably just starting her career, and fairly attractive. She vaguely resembled someone, but Harry drew a blank at trying to identify her. She had long honey brown hair and brown eyes, and had a slight bookworm-ish look about her, he thought that it was most probable she‘d been in Ravenclaw at school, least probably Gryffindor. He sometimes played this mental “what house where they most probably in?” game and he’d never been wrong.

While he’d been inside his head, she’d read his palm, which had the timer at 2 h, 34 m, 44s. “That’ll be seventeen sickles” She said. Harry reached into his pocket, these had been easy to obtain. The ministry might have been slightly more competent than Harry’s own, but they still couldn’t stop some good old fashioned disisllusioment and confundus charm assisted pick pocketing. The real challenge would be getting fifty thousand pounds by thursday. A quick review of the laws showed what he already suspected, the ministry had put the same anti-counterfeit charms on muggle currency that they had on wizard money. Not because they cared one bit about the muggle economy, they just didn’t want wizards to leave the wizarding community for the easy life that could be had in the muggle world.

He gave her the coins and she put them in a jar. She wrote something in a large book and the writing in Harry’s palm blew into an invisible wind. The girl didn’t even look up from her book and Harry guessed he was dismissed, but a thought permeated his mind.

He was stuck in this new world, he didn’t know anything but the most basic outline of it’s history. He didn’t know if his parents were alive, if his friends were alive, if he was alive. This girl obviously had some link to his time pre-Voldemort’s death, however thin it probably was. He’d need to slowly get introduced into this world, and this seemed like the perfect place to start.

“Thank you miss…” Harry trailed off

She looked up at him irritably and pointed at the plaque on her desk, as the people in the back of the line started getting grumpy. It read:

Penelope Clearwater
Secretary/Bookkeeper

The name brought some more faint familiarity. It bobbled around in his head for a while until the answer exploded into his brain: Penelope Clearwater, Percy Weasley’s old girlfriend!

Penelope cleared her throat and Harry smiled down at her.

“Well Miss Clearwater, you seem kinda bored, mind if I take you out for a drink?” Harry asked.

“Sir, aren‘t you a little bit too old to be hitting on me so blatantly?” Harry hurriedly did the math in his head. She should be around twenty two, thirty-seven divided by two plus seven was 25.5, close enough.

“I‘m just trying to be sociable Miss” Harry hoped he didn’t come across as creepy as he felt. The people behind him were getting murderous, but he’d hold his own, there wouldn’t be a chance of a repeat of the Flamel deal. “You seem to be pretty miserable here and I‘m thinking we could have some good clean fun” if not for his good looks, she’d have already slapped him for being a creepy old guy.

The people in the line where ready to get rowdy but they were easily subdued by a powerful calming charm discretely sent out from Harry’s wand.

“Listen mister, if you don‘t move this line along I‘ll be forced to call the aurors, they‘re on this floor you know”

“Hey, hey, no need to get the aurors on this; its just, I know Percy and…”

“You knew Percy?!” She asked, suddenly exited.

“Yeah, was there moments before he died” He was going to ride this out till the end. If he had to capitalize of stupid cunt Percy Weasley’s death to get a connection this world, then so be it.

“You know how he died? Why didn‘t you come to the department after the report of his disappearance?” She was getting a fiery look on her face, at that moment Harry was sure even the dullest of women got that look at least once. He realized he shouldn’t have jumped in so blindly.

“He got an unbreakable bow out of me, nothing I could do” She deflated immediately, proof that she wasn’t built to be a firecracker (which was ok with him). Tears were rolling down her face, unnoticed by the sedated file behind Harry.

“I-I, I thought we were gonna get married, once” She wiped her tears away with her shirt sleeve.

“But then he started getting distant, not talking to me or his family for weeks on end and locking himself in his room. But before I could confront him about it, h-he disappeared” She needed a shoulder to cry on, Harry wasn’t sensible enough to realize that shoulder should have been his.

“Well, I could talk to you about Percy, maybe, next Friday?”

“Where?” She said, blowing her nose

“Florean Frostecutes, noon” It sounded like an innocent enough time and place.

“Ok” She gave a weak smile.

Harry went to leave, when he remembered something and turned around. “By the way, the names John Snowden”.
________________________________________________________________________


It was Wednesday and Harry needed to get some muggle money. Currently he was in Cardiff, Wales; far from any wizarding hotspot. It hadn’t been hard getting here once he’d been able to leave London and get a basic map of this general area from the minds of random people (he hit pay dirt when he found a Welsh guy).

He’d never been to a muggle bank before, but he had enough indirect knowledge of them to get a good idea of what the best course of action was. It helped that it was the dead of night and the bank was completely empty, he wouldn’t need to worry about people or mixing magic with electronics.

Harry was disillusioned just in case, and he apparated into the bank. The inside was very still, and Harry was sure there wasn’t a single cockroach in the building. Everything permeated a scent of fresh, and it felt like the air conditioner was on. Harry apparated trough the glass that separated the tellers from the lobby. To the far left of the line of teller posts was a plain wooden door. Opening it set off an alarm. Harry was quick to silencio the alarm, though that didn’t stop the police and fire department from receiving a notice.

He walked through the door. There was a well carpeted, long and narrow hallway with a big door to the right side at the half-point mark of the hallway. At the end of the hallway was a circular vault door that looked eerily like what he remembered of the ones at Gringott. He walked up to the vault and incanted a simple alohomora, which, to Harry’s surprise, didn’t work. Short of temper, Harry concentrated heavily and incanted the most powerful unlocking spell he knew; the door flew open and smashed against the wall, cracking it and creating some rubble. Harry stepped over the vault door to find many smaller safes, set up like drawers. He guessed that there were probably thousands. He went to touch the handle of one but thought better of it, sensing magic at play.

Whipping out his wand, Harry did some much missed ward searching, and in a few seconds he’d already finished. It was a very simple trigger, it’d give him a shock and send a warning to somebody else. It was extremely simple to circumvent, but Harry found curiosity getting the best of him. If the ministry had wanted to protect muggle banks, they’d have surely done something better than this. Making a quick decision Harry touched the handle and ignored the shock that failed in its attempt to run through his spine.

It took some time, but pops of apparition came. In the middle of the room, in their lime green boxers and t-shirts, looking confused, stood Fred and George Weasley.

Harry’s mouth was agape. He’d encountered people from his universe, sure, but none that’d he’d actually known that well, none that he’d shared great times with, none that he’d seen die. There were a host of emotions trying to escape him, but Harry ruthlessly crushed them down into himself. He didn’t know why he sought to socialize with Penelope yet wanted these two to disappear, and he didn’t care at the moment.

“Hey, mate, what‘cha doin here?” asked either George or Fred

“Yeah the contest isn‘t till tomorrow” said either Fred or George.

“Unless, but you couldn‘t possibly…”Said one, melodramatically putting his hand to his mouth.

“What is it dear brother?! SPEAK!” Said the other in a mock tone

”Why…I believe our dear fellow here might be trying to CHEAT!!” The other gave a loud gasp.

“Listen, I don’t know what you’re on about, but I‘m just trying to make a living here” The words came out slightly raspy, and Harry cursed himself for being such a Gaylord.

Fred and George looked at him with confused expressions.

“You know… you sort of resemble…” Began one, but the other cut in to more pressing matters.

“So wait, you‘re ACTUALLY going to steal from this muggle bank?”

“Yes” Harry replied.

“But, you‘re a wizard aren‘t you? Why would you want this Muggle crap?” Asked one.

“Aren’t you two wizards? You seem to care enough about this shit to put security wards over it ” Harry had figured out which one was Fred and which one was George, on account of the waistband of their boxers saying their names. The one that had the Fred boxers was George.

“Yes my good man but we don‘t use this for monetary gain…” Fred began , his good natured melodramatics returning.

“…We do it for the love of the sport!” George finished.

“Sport?” Harry asked confused. He wanted to think that Fred and George’s antics were annoying, but their mischievous grins brought a wave of nostalgia over him.

“Why don‘t we give the man an explanation, George?” Fred said with a huge grin.

“You see sir, my brother and I have always been what most would call ‘visionaries’. We’ve been on the cutting edge of new wizarding technology since our third year at Hogwarts, when we invented the portrait cannon to fuel the war between The Fat Lady and Sir Cardogan…”

“….Up to a few months ago when we made the ever impressive wand magnifier” Fred whipped out a miniature horn from a somewhere (Harry didn‘t want to put much thought to it). He attached it to the tip of his wand and cast a stunning spell at the door through which Harry had come in. A beam of red light the size of a beach ball erupted from Fred’s wand and blew the door to pieces.

“ Yes, thanks for that completely unnecessary demonstration Frederick.” George said. Harry was amazed at the twins work .

“Anyways” George continued “We are very much luminaries and distinguished gentlemen, but sometimes great wizards of times past set the stage for our great accomplishments”

“The great Merlin, kidnapped a muggle princess and forced her to marry him at wandpoint” Fred began.

“Godric Gryffindor, stole Gryffindor’s sword from the goblins who made it.” They were ticking off an imaginary list.

“Barnacles The Barmy, used his vast troll army to destroy poor muggle villages so that he could take their tasty gruel”

“Nicholas Flamel, stole some painting from a museum in Paris and planted a fake on some poor Italian bloke”

“I think I get the point” Harry said. He got an obscene amount of comfort from these hi jinks that brought back memories of times past. He was so caught up that he ignored the distant sounds of a siren.

“So, we realized that we needed to continue on the distinguished wizard tradition of stealing from others, mainly muggles, just because we can; and that’s how the noble sport of smuggling began” Fred said with a glint of pride in his eyes.

“You see, each month we choose a different muggle bank, fortress or museum…”

“…The purpose is to rob that place blind whilst using the most simple magic in the least amount possible…”

“…The person who manages to steal whatever is being guarded in the least amount of steps, without being found out by the muggles and with as much style as possible wins”

“So” They said in unison “First match of the season is tomorrow morning right here, you can still sign up. Winner gets this custom made chocolate frog card” Fred held up a crude drawing of both twins, which was struggling to make it’s sluggish movements.

The not so distant sound of multiple footsteps brought Harry out of his trance. He swept his wand over the shelves, which shrunk and merged into one tiny steel drawer.

“The muggle lawmen are coming, I suggest you leave” Harry said

“Hey wait a minute there mate, if you don‘t take it during the match then you‘re just plain stealing from muggles” Fred and George’s weird moral code manifested itself and they drew their wands, Harry stunned them both in the blink of an eye.

He went to apparate but stopped abruptly. He walked up to Fred and reached into his boxers, wanting to retch in disgust. He found the little cone shaped enhancer in a secret pocket and took it.

He should have helped Fred and George, apparated them away with him, but he left them there unconscious to be found by a bunch of police men, in their boxers.