Categories > Books > Harry Potter > Unlikely
Chapter four: Deals & Special Glasses
April 9th, 1997
The portraits were following him. Harry was sure of it now.
And so was Padma Patil, but that was almost normal.
“What’s Crocker’s Law again?” she asked, leaning over the railing on a stairway to look at a troop of students passing below.
“Er…” He looked around wildly and made eye contact with a Ravenclaw coming up the stairs. “The complexity of a magic…” And then it was gone. “I… Look, I’m not feeling well.” He looked at Padma, who seemed to be barely paying any attention to him in the first place. “It must be whatever I was sick with a few days ago.”
“Yeah, yeah. Hey, come on, we’ve got classes with Slughorn don’t we?” She grinned and passed Harry on the way up. “Say, how many students were in his old Slug Club last year, do you think?”
Almost. Almost normal.
But he couldn’t read her mind, and that was definitely not normal.
“You talk a lot, Padma,” Harry observed.
“Th-thanks!” she said, her voice skipping as she almost tripped and went backwards down the stairs. She laughed.
Harry followed her. “In fact, if I didn’t know you better, I wouldn’t be disturbed by all of these questions at all. I might not think much of how clumsy you are, either.”
“I guess it’s a good thing that you’re stupid, right?” Padma laughed again.
“Give me some credit,” he whispered as a couple of Third-Years went by. “I didn’t know Padma from Merlin when you took her place. But I think that it’s time that we went somewhere private to talk.”
“Ooh, don’t you think that we’re moving awfully fast, Harry? I mean, we only just met.” Not-Padma’s face lit up. “Now, that Tonks, she’s the duck’s quack, but that would be pretty awkward if you were really Harry Potter.”
“I am Harry—” He frowned.
“You’re pretty clumsy yourself,” she said. “Not used to that body either, are you?” She smiled slyly, and then looked side to side. “C’mon,” she said.
Harry followed her down an empty hall. His hand went to his wand when she drew hers but she only cast a spell on herself. For a moment her clothes were suddenly all too big and wrongly-proportioned for her but then her body began to shift here and there, gaining another two inches, her hair turning pink…
She was definitely too old to be a Hogwarts student.
“Wotcher, Weird Harry,” she said when she was done.
“Nymphadora Tonks, I presume.”
“Tonks. Just Tonks.”
Harry smiled. “But the Headmaster—”
“Is the most powerful wizard in Britain, and anyway I call him Tom so we’re even.”
The hall began to turn and fade and blur while other portraits came in or went out of sight. It was a little less disturbing now that Harry had already experienced it once before.
“So other people…”
“Don’t. Either of us.”
The Headmaster’s door appeared in front of them.
“But he likes some fight in his protégés.” Tonks’ smile reminded him, just barely, of Voldemort’s.
“I wouldn’t have expected that.”
Slowly, it began to open.
“Oh, if we’re broken we’re no good, are we? Trolls can smash if that’s all you want. But ‘Puffs, he can trust us.”
And then Harry was suddenly aware of the cold that he was sure hadn’t been there before, and the two of them were sitting in chairs across from Voldemort.
“Wait,” Harry said, realizing something else she had said. “Protégés?”
“Good afternoon, Nymphadora,” Voldemort said slowly. “Hot chocolate?”
“Please. It’s bloody cold here,” she said, shivering. “Dark chocolate, Tom. And five marshmallows, the kind that’s a little bigger than the small ones but not as big as the big ones, and a little stick of—”
The mug appeared in one of her hands as she was still talking and she paused to examine it. “Six marshmallows, this is. And no cinnamon. You know I was going to ask for cinnamon.”
“You’ll have to speak with the house elves,” Voldemort said, and then he turned to Harry. “How many Senators reign in Ziz?”
“Er…”
“After what debacle was the Order of the Knights of Merlin revived?”
“What?”
“Which of the twelve Prodigal States in the United States refused to return to the Union even after the reforms of 1965?”
Harry couldn’t say anything anymore.
“Hot chocolate?” offered Tonks.
“N-no. No thanks,” Harry said.
Voldemort leaned back in his chair. “You should be pleased to know that I don’t think that you’re a threat anymore. You’re probably responsible for Harry’s disappearance, but I don’t think that it was on purpose. You don’t appear stupid enough to have intentionally taken her place without having done even basic research.”
There was silence for what seemed to Harry to drag on forever.
“Excuse me?” He finally said.
“A few days ago,” Voldemort said, “a most curious change came upon one of my students. She developed a scatter-brained sense of modern history, one that always failed her whenever the only people around to make eye contact with all knew occlumency. Case in point, you couldn’t answer three elementary questions that any Fourth-Year could have gotten right. And your understanding of blue science your first day here was on the level of a six-year-old. No,” he corrected himself. “A six-year-old wouldn’t have said ‘Huh?’ as if she’d never heard those two words put together to make a single phrase.”
Harry looked at Tonks, then back at Voldemort. “So I’m an idiot imposter, is what you’re saying?”
“I would be very confused,” Voldemort confessed, “except that you’ve been studying very interesting books. Books that have to with very peculiar theories.”
“We know that you’re from another universe,” Tonks said. There was another mug of chocolate sitting in her lap. “Whoever figured out how to get you over here must have been pretty smart.”
“That was me, actually,” he said, forgetting who else was in the room for a second.
She grinned and lifted the mug to her lips. “Sexy.” She sighed a little as she drank. “So how old are you, really?”
“Sixteen.”
“Sixt… You are Harry Potter, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
“But all of those things that you don’t know, that you should know, they’re generations old! Th-the point of divergence should be so far back, there shouldn’t be a Harry Potter at all in your universe.”
“It’s very unlikely, isn’t it?” Voldemort said. He frowned. “But it’s still possible.”
“I was looking for a world within a certain set of parameters. Which included Harry Potter.”
“Ms. Potter—” Voldemort began.
“Mister, actually,” Harry corrected, and then he gasped a little. He hadn’t meant to interrupt the darkest wizard in a century. It had just been kind of automatic.
“What?”
“Mister. Mister Potter.”
Voldemort blinked. Tonks drank from her mug again.
“Mister Potter, I would be willing to help you, if you would be willing to help us in turn.”
“With… what?” he asked. It couldn’t be good. It really just couldn’t be. But maybe it wouldn’t be too bad, and he could justify it to himself. Just maybe.
“Since you came into my office just now, every book tangentially related to your problem has been confiscated from the Library.”
Harry scowled at that.
“I also have a list of books that were never in the Library to begin with, that have been either ordered or at least located since this morning, which will be useful to you. It also occurs to me that you could use an immense amount of resources, such as those which the Headmaster of Hogwarts might be able to bring to bear for you. For experiments, to give an example. This is what I am offering you. And more, if you need it.”
“In exchange for what?” Harry asked, averting his gaze.
This was it. This was the moment where it turned out to be too much.
“After Grindelwald died and his territory fragmented, the tools of his power, some of the greatest magical artifacts known to history, were similarly divided. One of them, his ring, fell into the hands of the Eternal Kaiser. Another, a cloak of his, belongs to the Emperor-at-Milan. But the third, a terrible weapon, fell into the mists again. But I think that I have picked up its trail.”
Harry frowned. “And you want this weapon, I suppose.”
“Not for myself. It belongs to Grindelwald’s heir by right. But for the time being, the best thing to do would be to keep it locked away until his heir can come for it.”
Harry looked at Tonks, looking around and humming cheerily to herself. He looked at his feet. At Tonks again. At her hot chocolate.
She had to be barking mad. She was so calm here. She was even being playful with Voldemort.
Had she been dropped on her head as a child? Repeatedly, maybe?
“Sure,” Harry finally said. “But the moment that I find out that you haven’t been giving me full disclosure about what’s going on, we’re through.”
“Agreeable.”
“And we block your legilimency,” he continued, “so that I can finally look at you properly. I can teach you how to make the right devices.”
“Don’t need to, Harry. We anticipated that you’d feel that way,” Tonks said, and she leaned over and retrieved a tiny box. She handed it over to Harry, who opened it. There was a small set of spectacles inside. Solid yellow spectacles, from the frame to the glass.
“Are these…?”
Tonks nodded. “Yep.”
April 9th, 1997
The portraits were following him. Harry was sure of it now.
And so was Padma Patil, but that was almost normal.
“What’s Crocker’s Law again?” she asked, leaning over the railing on a stairway to look at a troop of students passing below.
“Er…” He looked around wildly and made eye contact with a Ravenclaw coming up the stairs. “The complexity of a magic…” And then it was gone. “I… Look, I’m not feeling well.” He looked at Padma, who seemed to be barely paying any attention to him in the first place. “It must be whatever I was sick with a few days ago.”
“Yeah, yeah. Hey, come on, we’ve got classes with Slughorn don’t we?” She grinned and passed Harry on the way up. “Say, how many students were in his old Slug Club last year, do you think?”
Almost. Almost normal.
But he couldn’t read her mind, and that was definitely not normal.
“You talk a lot, Padma,” Harry observed.
“Th-thanks!” she said, her voice skipping as she almost tripped and went backwards down the stairs. She laughed.
Harry followed her. “In fact, if I didn’t know you better, I wouldn’t be disturbed by all of these questions at all. I might not think much of how clumsy you are, either.”
“I guess it’s a good thing that you’re stupid, right?” Padma laughed again.
“Give me some credit,” he whispered as a couple of Third-Years went by. “I didn’t know Padma from Merlin when you took her place. But I think that it’s time that we went somewhere private to talk.”
“Ooh, don’t you think that we’re moving awfully fast, Harry? I mean, we only just met.” Not-Padma’s face lit up. “Now, that Tonks, she’s the duck’s quack, but that would be pretty awkward if you were really Harry Potter.”
“I am Harry—” He frowned.
“You’re pretty clumsy yourself,” she said. “Not used to that body either, are you?” She smiled slyly, and then looked side to side. “C’mon,” she said.
Harry followed her down an empty hall. His hand went to his wand when she drew hers but she only cast a spell on herself. For a moment her clothes were suddenly all too big and wrongly-proportioned for her but then her body began to shift here and there, gaining another two inches, her hair turning pink…
She was definitely too old to be a Hogwarts student.
“Wotcher, Weird Harry,” she said when she was done.
“Nymphadora Tonks, I presume.”
“Tonks. Just Tonks.”
Harry smiled. “But the Headmaster—”
“Is the most powerful wizard in Britain, and anyway I call him Tom so we’re even.”
The hall began to turn and fade and blur while other portraits came in or went out of sight. It was a little less disturbing now that Harry had already experienced it once before.
“So other people…”
“Don’t. Either of us.”
The Headmaster’s door appeared in front of them.
“But he likes some fight in his protégés.” Tonks’ smile reminded him, just barely, of Voldemort’s.
“I wouldn’t have expected that.”
Slowly, it began to open.
“Oh, if we’re broken we’re no good, are we? Trolls can smash if that’s all you want. But ‘Puffs, he can trust us.”
And then Harry was suddenly aware of the cold that he was sure hadn’t been there before, and the two of them were sitting in chairs across from Voldemort.
“Wait,” Harry said, realizing something else she had said. “Protégés?”
“Good afternoon, Nymphadora,” Voldemort said slowly. “Hot chocolate?”
“Please. It’s bloody cold here,” she said, shivering. “Dark chocolate, Tom. And five marshmallows, the kind that’s a little bigger than the small ones but not as big as the big ones, and a little stick of—”
The mug appeared in one of her hands as she was still talking and she paused to examine it. “Six marshmallows, this is. And no cinnamon. You know I was going to ask for cinnamon.”
“You’ll have to speak with the house elves,” Voldemort said, and then he turned to Harry. “How many Senators reign in Ziz?”
“Er…”
“After what debacle was the Order of the Knights of Merlin revived?”
“What?”
“Which of the twelve Prodigal States in the United States refused to return to the Union even after the reforms of 1965?”
Harry couldn’t say anything anymore.
“Hot chocolate?” offered Tonks.
“N-no. No thanks,” Harry said.
Voldemort leaned back in his chair. “You should be pleased to know that I don’t think that you’re a threat anymore. You’re probably responsible for Harry’s disappearance, but I don’t think that it was on purpose. You don’t appear stupid enough to have intentionally taken her place without having done even basic research.”
There was silence for what seemed to Harry to drag on forever.
“Excuse me?” He finally said.
“A few days ago,” Voldemort said, “a most curious change came upon one of my students. She developed a scatter-brained sense of modern history, one that always failed her whenever the only people around to make eye contact with all knew occlumency. Case in point, you couldn’t answer three elementary questions that any Fourth-Year could have gotten right. And your understanding of blue science your first day here was on the level of a six-year-old. No,” he corrected himself. “A six-year-old wouldn’t have said ‘Huh?’ as if she’d never heard those two words put together to make a single phrase.”
Harry looked at Tonks, then back at Voldemort. “So I’m an idiot imposter, is what you’re saying?”
“I would be very confused,” Voldemort confessed, “except that you’ve been studying very interesting books. Books that have to with very peculiar theories.”
“We know that you’re from another universe,” Tonks said. There was another mug of chocolate sitting in her lap. “Whoever figured out how to get you over here must have been pretty smart.”
“That was me, actually,” he said, forgetting who else was in the room for a second.
She grinned and lifted the mug to her lips. “Sexy.” She sighed a little as she drank. “So how old are you, really?”
“Sixteen.”
“Sixt… You are Harry Potter, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
“But all of those things that you don’t know, that you should know, they’re generations old! Th-the point of divergence should be so far back, there shouldn’t be a Harry Potter at all in your universe.”
“It’s very unlikely, isn’t it?” Voldemort said. He frowned. “But it’s still possible.”
“I was looking for a world within a certain set of parameters. Which included Harry Potter.”
“Ms. Potter—” Voldemort began.
“Mister, actually,” Harry corrected, and then he gasped a little. He hadn’t meant to interrupt the darkest wizard in a century. It had just been kind of automatic.
“What?”
“Mister. Mister Potter.”
Voldemort blinked. Tonks drank from her mug again.
“Mister Potter, I would be willing to help you, if you would be willing to help us in turn.”
“With… what?” he asked. It couldn’t be good. It really just couldn’t be. But maybe it wouldn’t be too bad, and he could justify it to himself. Just maybe.
“Since you came into my office just now, every book tangentially related to your problem has been confiscated from the Library.”
Harry scowled at that.
“I also have a list of books that were never in the Library to begin with, that have been either ordered or at least located since this morning, which will be useful to you. It also occurs to me that you could use an immense amount of resources, such as those which the Headmaster of Hogwarts might be able to bring to bear for you. For experiments, to give an example. This is what I am offering you. And more, if you need it.”
“In exchange for what?” Harry asked, averting his gaze.
This was it. This was the moment where it turned out to be too much.
“After Grindelwald died and his territory fragmented, the tools of his power, some of the greatest magical artifacts known to history, were similarly divided. One of them, his ring, fell into the hands of the Eternal Kaiser. Another, a cloak of his, belongs to the Emperor-at-Milan. But the third, a terrible weapon, fell into the mists again. But I think that I have picked up its trail.”
Harry frowned. “And you want this weapon, I suppose.”
“Not for myself. It belongs to Grindelwald’s heir by right. But for the time being, the best thing to do would be to keep it locked away until his heir can come for it.”
Harry looked at Tonks, looking around and humming cheerily to herself. He looked at his feet. At Tonks again. At her hot chocolate.
She had to be barking mad. She was so calm here. She was even being playful with Voldemort.
Had she been dropped on her head as a child? Repeatedly, maybe?
“Sure,” Harry finally said. “But the moment that I find out that you haven’t been giving me full disclosure about what’s going on, we’re through.”
“Agreeable.”
“And we block your legilimency,” he continued, “so that I can finally look at you properly. I can teach you how to make the right devices.”
“Don’t need to, Harry. We anticipated that you’d feel that way,” Tonks said, and she leaned over and retrieved a tiny box. She handed it over to Harry, who opened it. There was a small set of spectacles inside. Solid yellow spectacles, from the frame to the glass.
“Are these…?”
Tonks nodded. “Yep.”
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