Chapter 2Chapter TextHarry woke up with a start to the sound of the wireless, blaring too close to his head. He lay there for a moment, eyes screwed tight shut, and wished he was dead. His head hurt. His body hurt. Hell, even his hair seemed to be throbbing, in time to the perky pop music assaulting his eardrums. There was something familiar about the singer's voice that he couldn't place. He tried to think, but it hurt too much, so instead he reached out with his hand and attempted to beat the wireless to death. He didn't even remember having an alarm clock that played the radio. Merlin, how much had he drunk the night before? He hit out at the clock harder, each thump sending a jolt of pain through his brain, and just as his hand connected – mercifully – with the off button, the song was cut off by the thud of pounding dance music and a female singer crooning, "Ninety-five point eight, Capital FM!"
Harry opened his eyes, to see . . . the faraway blur of his bedroom ceiling and the nearer blur of the intricately carved footboard at the end of the bed. An immense sense of relief washed over him. For a moment there, he'd wondered if he'd got so drunk that he hadn't managed to find his way back home. And however much he sometimes didn't like Grimmauld Place, it was home.
Harry fumbled for his wand, but the smooth, warm wood didn't roll into his hand as it did most mornings. He supposed he'd left it in his robe pocket, or something. He sat up slowly, worried that if he moved too quickly his head might fall off, and groped about a bit for his glasses, shoving them on carelessly and scanning the room. "Accio wand," he said, holding out his hand. Harry's wandless magic was less than reliable, which in some ways he found comforting. He didn't want to be the greatest wizard of the age, or whatever the papers often said. He would never be as good a wizard as Dumbledore . . . or even as Snape, who'd kept the Dark Lord out of his mind for years and had been powerful enough to fly without a broom. No, Harry was more than happy to be good enough at magic. Good enough to be an Auror, and to one day head up the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
Right now, though, with the thought of getting up a slightly sick-making one, he decided he wouldn't mind his wandless magic being a tiny bit better. Ugh. "Accio water," he tried, without expectation, and to his mild surprise a glass of water zoomed through the air, tipping over as he grabbed at it and soaking into his duvet and the front of his pyjama shirt. "Fuck!" Harry said, holding the sodden fabric away from him and simultaneously wondering when, exactly, he'd gone out and bought a pair of old-man pin-striped pyjamas. Sometimes things did turn up out of nowhere in this house, but they tended to be more obviously Sirius's, and however hard Harry tried he just couldn't picture Sirius in sensible striped cotton.
Harry turned and looked at the wireless. He didn't recognise that either. It looked Muggle to his eyes, even though it had been a long time since he'd lived as one. It was rectangular, and silver, and when he peered closer he could read the tiny branding on it: Sony Dream Machine. Harry, feeling something uneasy stir in the pit of his stomach, jabbed at the buttons until he found one that turned it on again. An unfamiliar voice announced, "This is Chris Tarrant, live on Capital Breakfast! Stay tuned for the latest news and weather, after the commercial break. But before that, here's Craig David, down two positions in the charts this week to come in at number three with the super smooooth Fill me in."
Harry didn't want to be filled in. He jabbed at the off button, and once again sweet silence filled the room. Now that he was more awake, the room was different, wasn't it? Sirius' tatty old posters of motorbikes and bored women in bikinis were gone, and there was a chunky TV on the chest of drawers across the room. Harry shucked his wet pyjama top over his head and creaked his way out of bed, pausing to stretch widely in the hope it might help him feel more alive. Something was making him feel more alive though, and it was the increasing realisation that there was something incredibly off about this room, about this morning.
Harry nearly tripped over his discarded pile of clothes, but they didn't seem to be his clothes. He hadn't pulled, last night, had he? It seemed incredibly unlikely, and besides, surely he'd have remembered! But there was no extra body in his bed, or under it, or even, when Harry gingerly pulled his bedroom door open, in the hallway. "Hello?" he called, and hoped that Kreacher would bound out to castigate him for something in his usual way, before trying to force-feed him an enormous cooked breakfast, but there was only silence.
Harry turned back and bent down to pick up the clothes. They seemed to be roughly his size, but they felt unfamiliar, and either way, they definitely weren't the robes he'd been wearing the night before. Where the fuck was his wand, then? Harry's sense of unease grew louder and more insistent. He pulled open his wardrobe door, to find a neat row of really terrible polo shirts, trousers that rustled, and a couple of identical ugly fleece jackets. Pinned to one of the jackets was a badge that read: "Hello, my name is HARRY. Happy to help!"
"Ha, fucking ha," Harry muttered and closed the wardrobe door on this hanging rail of horrors. He wasn't much when it came to fashion, but even he knew a terrible outfit when he saw one. Was this Ron's idea of a joke, maybe? Or had Kreacher finally snapped and decided to punish Harry by stealing all his clothes and selling them on the black market?
Harry took a deep breath, told himself there must be a logical explanation for all this, and left his bedroom, toes curling in thick carpet that hadn't been there the night before. The hallway and stairs, which had been wallpapered roughly two or three years before the dawn of time, were now painted a fresh, boring white, and when Harry hit the final flight of stairs leading to the ground floor the wall was dotted with photos. Muggle photos, in cheap black frames. There Harry was, smiling faintly with people he'd never seen before. And there . . . there his parents were, holding a baby and looking proud, his mother in dungarees with her red hair styled in a profusion of curls and his father in corduroy trousers and a paisley patterned shirt, sporting an unexpected bushy beard.
Deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. Harry stepped out into the entrance hall and looked for the curtained portrait of Walburga. It was gone, as if it had never been there. As if Harry hadn't called in more than one expert to remove it, who'd all – to a wizard – concluded that the only way they'd be able to get it off the wall was by burning down the house. Harry had never envisioned a time when he'd be worried to find it gone, and the incongruity of it almost made him laugh. What the hell was going on? Was this a dream, or something? And if it was, how could he wake himself up?
Harry scrubbed a hand through his hair – even in his dream, his hair was sticking up in every direction, he could just tell – and strode into the dining room, the flagstones cold under his bare feet. There was the wall of long dressers he remembered, packed with china, but on the side of the closest one was a row of electrical sockets, sprouting a tangle of wires and gadgets. Harry, his hangover gone as if he'd drunk a potion, walked over and let his fingers hover over them. There was a chunky mobile phone, a CD Walkman, a wide, chunky box that could possibly be a computer, although it was the smallest one Harry had ever seen, and – was that a Gameboy? It occurred to Harry that this was the first time living with Dudley had ever proved to be any practical use to him. On balance, though, he thought he'd take a useless Dudley over whatever this was. He looked around the room again, this second glance taking in small piles of crap that Kreacher would never have tolerated leaving overnight – an empty crisp packet on the table next to a bunch of keys and a screwed up receipt, a lone sock under the table, a folded newspaper sliding off a black pile on the floor in the distance that could be a bag or, equally, a horrible coat of some kind.
Harry took a deep breath, pinched himself hard on the arm – he'd heard this was a thing people did sometimes, but the only effect it had was a short moment of mild pain – and walked over to the paper, bending to pick it up and unfold it. The print rubbed off on his fingers, rough and unpleasant, as he took in the masthead – Metro – and the date: the third of May. He flicked past articles on the upcoming election for London Mayor, rising house prices and changes to pension payments without managing to take much in. He squeezed his eyes tight shut and then opened them again; no change. The paper in his hands was definitely Muggle. He was in a room littered with the detritus of a Muggle life that wasn't his, and his house had definitely become more . . . Muggle than it had been when he'd gone to bed the night before. The date was right, but that was about the only thing that was. Harry sat down heavily in front of the dining table and set the paper down, pushing it away, before rubbing his fingers on the fabric of the pyjama bottoms that didn't belong to him, leaving faint ink-stains. The headache was back now with a vengeance. Harry rested his elbows on the table and sank forward, supporting his head in his hands. He was very tempted to just go back to bed and put the covers over his head. Maybe if he did that, this bizarre hallucination would end? Or, he thought grimly, between throbs of pain, maybe this . . . whatever it was . . . would congeal in some way. What he needed was a pain potion, his wand and then – in all probability – Hermione.
The thought of Hermione was strangely motivating. Harry took a deep breath and sat up straight. What would Hermione think of him just sitting about like this? She'd be deeply unimpressed by his lack of intellectual curiosity. And— It suddenly occurred to Harry that maybe he was in danger, in some way. What if he was currently floating in a vat of some dark potion somewhere, his brain trapped in an illusion, and the only way he could free himself was to . . . to . . .? He was buggered if he knew. How did a wizard extract themselves from a hallucinogenic vat, anyway? It wasn't a very comforting thought. Either way though, Harry concluded wryly, getting to his feet, he wasn't going to get anything done sitting on his arse. He straightened up and, once he'd established that his head wasn't literally going to fall off, strode out of the dining room. The whole vat thing had yet to be established, and if he was going to have to battle some kind of evil – chances seemed high – on balance, he thought he'd rather be wearing underpants for the fight.
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Half an hour later, Harry was wearing underwear. The kind of white Y-fronts – although 'white' was a kind way of describing the sad, greying fabric – he'd stopped wearing some time during his first year at Hogwarts. This seemed significant in some way Harry couldn't work out, but he was trying not to think about it too hard. It was creepy enough that he was wearing pants he couldn't remember buying, but the alternative – not wearing pants underneath badly fitting trousers he couldn't remember buying either – had seemed worse, somehow. That was about the only success he'd managed. The box of Paracetamol he'd unearthed in the bathroom cabinet – along with a razor he'd never needed, given that he was a wizard – was unhelpfully empty, so he'd put it back. And as for his wand, there was no sign of it. Harry had tried to Accio it half a dozen times, and had resorted to pulling out all his bedroom furniture and crawling round the house on his hands and knees in search of it, but nothing. It was gone, almost as if it had never existed at all.
Harry was finding it increasingly hard not to panic. But . . . he still had his magic, didn't he? All he had to do was go to work, borrow a spare and . . . de-vat himself, his brain added unhelpfully as he shoved his feet into ugly black shoes that felt like plastic. Acting almost on autopilot, he took the stairs two at a time, striding across the first-floor landing and into the drawing room, where he paused in front of the enormous fireplace, suddenly unsure what to do next. The pot that held his Floo powder was gone from the mantelpiece, and the fireplace was cold and unused. It was OK, he told himself firmly. He'd just have to do things the old-fashioned way.
He dashed back down the stairs and went to pick up the wallet and keys he'd seen scattered in the dining room. He eyed the mobile phone suspiciously, wishing he could turn it into an owl by strength of will alone, and decided he'd let it rest where it lay. Just because he knew what it was didn't mean he knew how to turn it on, let alone use it. And who would he call, anyway? He didn't have any friends who weren't wizards. So, instead, he grabbed the jacket lying on the floor – it was a horrible rain jacket of some sort, which rustled as he put it on – and made his way to his front door and out.
To Harry's relief, the street outside was just as he remembered it. Rows of tall, imposing townhouses, the road between them stuffed with vehicles. Harry slowly descended the steps outside his house and stepped out on to the pavement, only to be nearly mown down by a cyclist, who shouted, "Watch out, dickhead!" as he zoomed past, weaving in and out of pedestrians and frantically tinging his bell.
Harry leapt back to the safety of the steps, attracting curious glances and sniggers from passing pedestrians. It took Harry a moment to process this. People could see him. They could see him. The magic that hid his house from Muggle view had clearly failed. Harry considered this for a moment, and then raced back up the steps, fumbling in his pocket for the keys he'd carelessly shoved in them. The silver curled snake doorknocker was still in place, but the door now featured two prominent keyholes. To Harry's great relief, the first key worked, so he shut the door again, heart thumping, and fiddled with the bottom lock until he was sure that one was bolted too.
That done, Harry stepped back out into the street, more cautiously this time, heading towards the tube station. He felt very glad, all of a sudden, for Mr Weasley's continuing cheerful obsession with Muggle technology, which Harry had frequently indulged over the past, depressing, couple of years. Just a few months back, he and Mr Weasley had worked out a route that would take them from Harry's house to the Ministry, so they'd suffered the tube at rush hour, Mr Weasley's eyes as wide as saucers as they'd descended underground and packed into the tin cans that were the tube trains, getting closer to their fellow man than Harry had to another person in a very long time. Even so, it was a struggle to remember what to do, Harry first fishing in the unfamiliar wallet for the unfamiliar coins he needed to buy his ticket, and then spending an embarrassing amount of time in front of the map of coloured lines on the wall, his finger tracing the route from Highbury and Islington to Westminster until he had it by heart.
It was mid morning by now, and the trains were half empty, to Harry's relief. He managed to make the journey without incident, and soon he was making his way out of the station, the Houses of Parliament looming ahead of him. Harry knew this area of London well, but he still found himself looking about as if he'd never seen it before, taking in the tourists massing around him, straining his eyes for a glimpse of a robe or the glitter of a spell-trail. Nothing. All he could see were Muggles. Groups of them blocking the pavement. Individuals stopping dead in front of him and making him trip over his feet to avoid walking into their backs. Policemen, at a distance. Cars everywhere. Tuk-tuks clogging up the corners, their bored-looking drivers tinging their bells and still being treated as if they were invisible.
Harry tried not to grind his teeth as he made his slow way towards the public loos that were just down the road from the station, finding himself breaking out into a run as he approached the spiked black railings and the sign reading GENTLEMEN. He descended into the grimy depths, striding past the urinals and banging into one of the Ministry's cubicles, locking the door behind him.
Something didn't seem right, somehow. The toilets were busy, he'd noticed, but with tourists in practical rain jackets and sensible shoes, rather than smart Muggle-fooling suits or robes. And it occurred to him as he stared at the toilet that he hadn't needed a Ministry token to enter the cubicle. Either Muggles by the dozen were accidentally flushing their way into the Ministry, or this was no longer an entry. Harry tried to think. It had been one yesterday, he was sure of it, even though he hadn't used it for months; these days, most employees simply used the Floos or Apparated straight in. Even so, Harry was certain this entrance was still in operation, along with the telephone box down the road for guests. But . . . was he certain enough to stand in the loo and flush?
Harry looked at the toilet, which was definitely a public toilet in both look and smell, and felt the least Gryffindor he'd ever felt in his life. It wouldn't hurt to try a small experiment first, would it? The box on the wall that should have held the bog roll was empty, but he shoved his hand in the pocket of his horrible, rustling rain jacket and came out with an elderly, fuzzy tissue. He dropped it in the loo and yanked the chain. The cistern groaned, and a dribble of water gurgled out to soak the tissue but fail to whisk it down the U-bend.
Harry didn't find much encouragement in this display. Still, it was possible the tissue was still floating around because it was fairly important that stray Muggle turds didn't shoot out of the employee entrance to land, revoltingly, on the Ministry floor, wasn't it? Harry sighed, not for the first time that morning, and stood in the toilet before he could talk himself out of it. Even as he pulled the chain, the water filled his horrible black fake-leather shoes with a depressing predictability. And, of course – of course – the toilets were still filled with tourists as he squelched out, to tug his shoes and socks off and decant them into the nearest sink, before covering them with chemical-scented hand-wash and resisting the urge to scrub off his own skin.
It took a good fifteen minutes under the hand-dryer before his shoes were dry enough to put back on, and his socks had taken on a curious and pervasive damp scent, like wet Crup. Better, Harry thought with a small shudder, than the alternative, but only just. Harry left the public toilets rather more slowly than he'd gone in, back up into the sunlight and into a world that seemed much more alarming than it had before. There was still the telephone box, though, Harry told himself, trying to boost his spirits, and at least there was no danger there of getting wet feet. When he got to the box, though, it had an air of disuse. The glass was cracked, and the inside was plastered in small, grim cards with pictures of half-naked women and accompanying phone numbers. Harry picked up the receiver, and although there was a dialling tone, when he punched in 62442 – magic – the automated voice told him to insert 20p and try again. That said it all, as far as Harry was concerned. Never in the history of the wizarding world had a wizard needed to insert 20p to turn on the magic, and while there was a first time for everything, he was fairly sure this moment wasn't going to be the 20p's time to shine.
Harry hung around for a bit in indecision, getting in the way of streams of tourists but not particularly caring. How the fuck was he meant to get into the Ministry if both the entrances were shut, he didn't have any Floo powder and he couldn't find his wand? He'd never tried Apparating without his wand before, and now didn't seem like an ideal time to try it out. What if he Splinched off his head? And in any case, what if – what if the Ministry had moved location, his brain supplied wildly, and he ended up Apparating into the earth? He wouldn't feel very well, that was what. No, it was best not attempted.
Harry was aware he wasn't proving a shining example of an Auror right now, and he tried to think logically. If he couldn't get into the Ministry by himself, then he'd need another wizard to side him along. He hadn't spotted another wizard so far, that was true, but there was almost certainly a good reason for that. Ministry employees would all be in the Ministry right now, he improvised, rather than loitering on the street. What he needed was – Ron and Hermione! He'd been to their cottage before. He could even remember where it was. Cramond – a quaint, tiny hamlet lined with white-washed cottages, where the Muggle and wizarding community lived side by side, even if the Muggles weren't aware of the real reason why their neighbours were so odd. There was a sandy beach, and thick, ancient woods, and peace and quiet, Hermione had said with a contented sigh that expressed more than mere words, and besides, what was a daily commute from Edinburgh to London for a witch and a wizard?
Harry reluctantly shelved his bright idea of visiting Ron and Hermione for the time being. The Hogwarts Express took hours to get to Scotland, and it seemed unlikely a Muggle train would be faster. And besides, he was in London. The centre of Britain's wizarding community! The idea that he couldn't find someone to help him was ludicrous. If he had to, he'd stand outside the Leaky Cauldron until someone recognised him. He was, for better or worse, the most famous person in the wizarding world right now. There was no way he'd be waiting long.
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It only took Harry twenty minutes to walk to Drury Lane, but he had to walk up and down it for a good long while before he was certain he was standing in the right place. The big bookshop he remembered being on the pub's left was still there, and so was the record shop on its right, but there was no sign whatsoever of the Leaky Cauldron itself. It was curiously disorientating not being able to see the Leaky, and the fact that he couldn'tgave him the creeps more than anything else that had happened so far that day. He was a wizard. He was definitely still a wizard. He'd proved it earlier when he'd Accioed water all down his front, like a tosser. But . . . if he was a wizard, why the bloody hell couldn't he see the Leaky any more? The obvious explanation – that he couldn't see it because it wasn't there – raised so many more questions than it answered that he decided not to examine it too closely, in case thinking about it made it actually real. Two stressful hours later though, it had started to drizzle, and Harry's mind had helpfully posed the suggestion that if the Leaky wasn't there, and no wizards had turned up because there was no Leaky, maybe there were no other wizards. Maybe, in fact, he was just a Muggle who'd sustained a terrible brain injury and had dreamed he was a wizard, before accidentally pouring water on himself. Maybe he should check himself into the Muggle equivalent of the Janus Thickey Ward immediately.
It seemed wrong to section yourself on an empty stomach though, and the gurgling of Harry's insides was now loud enough to cut through his monologue of despair. He knew this area well enough, long days at the office often bleeding into longer nights, and wizard or no, it was essential to know where a knackered Auror could buy a hot drink and a hot foodstuff that was at least fifty percent grease. There was a chippy up by the junction between Tottenham Court Road and Charing Cross Road that sold grease that dreams were made of, and if Harry had ever deserved grease more, he thought firmly as a raindrop dripped into his eye, it was now. Harry stood tall in his horrible raincoat, which rustled with every twitch he made, and pulled the horrible hood over his head, tightening the toggles to fix it in place. That dread deed done, he set off at a quick pace, weaving his way through the now umbrella-toting crowd with determination and only just managing not to get his eye poked out by a passing spoke.
Soon – thank Merlin, Harry thought, feeling oddly emotional about the whole business – he was inside the take-away and in the queue, the scent of deep-frying food coiling through the air, cut through by the harsh tang of vinegar. The line moved quickly, and soon he had a fragrant cone of paper in his hand, the rising steam off the chips fogging up his already rain-speckled glasses. He paused by the exit to liberally sprinkle his chips with salt and vinegar, and then precariously managed to lift the bottom of his raincoat and scrub his glasses dry on the edge of his T-shirt without dropping the food. The rain had slowed down, and Harry almost felt better for a moment. Whatever had gone wrong with today, he thought, spearing a chip with a tiny wooden fork, he'd be able to sort it out. After all, he'd been stuck in many other shit situations in his life so far, and none of them had involved chips, so how bad could this one be?
Harry popped the chip in his mouth, stepping through the doorway of the chip shop and back out into the street. Only to drop the bag on his feet as he swallowed in shock, the too-hot potato burning the back of his throat as he tried not to choke on it. How he hadn't noticed it before, he had no idea. But there it was, right in front of him. The enormous Muggle music shop on the corner – the Virgin Megastore – had a different window display than the last time he'd gone by, on Auror business. He didn't usually notice the subject of the window display, to be fair. But he could say, with complete certainty, that whatever had been in the window before, it hadn't been an enormous poster of Draco Malfoy's face. But there he was, repeated half a dozen times down the length of the road, his expression contorted into a disturbingly attractive pout and the words 'DRACO MALFOY: I LOVE YOU – NEW ALBUM OUT NOW!' in equally enormous letters above his head