Disclaimer: Not mine.

Notes: Takes place summer before Harry's third year, when Harry is staying at the Leaky Cauldron. The Diagon Alley Small Business Association is eagerly looking forward to some quality Potter-watching, but they aren't too impressed with what they see....

Warnings: None. Except I may take a few liberties with HP canon; it's been a while since I read PoA.

Categories: General/ humor

Rating: T for possible language later on

Harry Potter and the Diagon Alley Small Business Association

Prologue

In some places of the world, it is said that pubs are sacred places: ideological differences are left outside, and bartenders are discreet confidants, who listen with a sympathetic ear and a closed mouth. People feel secure in trusting their neighborhood pub owner, who knows to maintain an impartial silence, keeping his patrons' secrets to himself and never interfering in their lives outside his sacred realm.

In some places of the world, that may be true. Fortunately for our hero, the Wizarding World is not such a place.

oOo

Inside a small pub on the corner of Charing Cross Road in London, a young teenager sat talking with a balding, toothless man. Harry Potter had perched rather nervously on the edge of his rickety chair at first, worried about offending Tom, the proprietor of the Leaky Cauldron (truthfully, he was also a bit concerned about whether his chair might maliciously decide to demonstrate its rickety-ness by dumping him on his bum). But Tom's confiding and kindly manner had quickly put Harry at ease (about the man; Harry was still a bit wary of the potentially evil chair).

"Butterbeer, Harry?" Tom asked jovially.

"Huh?" Harry expressed his confusion eloquently. Seeing the beginnings of a frown on the older man's face, Harry hastened to explain. "What's a-- what did you call it? A butterbeer? Sorry, I've never heard of that. I don't think Muggles drink that. But, ah, I'm sure it's great. If it's not a problem."

Idiot. Harry winced internally. Could you sound any more retarded? Tom probably thinks you're mentally deficient or something. As Tom got up from their table to fetch them both refreshments (at least Harry assumed butterbeer was some type of drink. For all he knew, he'd just volunteered to strip naked and bathe in some weird potion), Harry let out a frustrated breath. It was nerve-wracking, trying to pretend he belonged in the Wizarding World, when truthfully he didn't understand every third sentence out of Tom's mouth. Harry looked up as the bartender sat back down, bringing with him two bottles of unknown liquid. Gathering up his courage, Harry braced himself and took a sip.

Then another sip. Then a gulp.

"Wow, that's really good," he said in some shock. Maybe it was the thought about potions, but Harry realized he hadn't actually expected to like it. I mean, butter and beer? That sounds like an odd combo, he thought. Belatedly, he thanked Tom for the drink.

"Any time, Harry. My pleasure," the pub owner replied, before effortlessly directing their conversation back to the previous topic. Harry shifted nervously. Although Tom's voice was casual, his eyes were sharp and he was watching Harry closely. What does he expect to see?

Harry Potter had checked into a room at the Leaky Cauldron two days ago, after a disaster in which he (accidentally, I swear!) blew up his Uncle Vernon's odious sister, Marge. Having been summarily kicked out of the Dursleys' household for the summer, Harry was forced to find temporary lodgings in the magical world, as the Dursleys were decent, upstanding folk who didn't hold with such freakishness; were they the only ones who could see that the only response in the face of such unnatural chaos was strict discipline? It should be mentioned that discipline to the Dursleys was a somewhat barbaric concept involving starvation, imprisonment, humiliation, and the occasional beating for variety.

So Harry was actually quite pleased with his current surroundings. He had a bed to sleep in, with actual blankets, enough food to eat, and, best of all, people who didn't view him as a freak. All in all, Harry thought this was shaping up to be the best summer of his life—assuming he didn't screw it up with his usual luck. Harry was quite determined to avoid offending Tom, who he had sussed out as the adult "in charge" of him for the time being. Unfortunately, he had already tried all his Dursley-approved "civilized and absolutely, completely normal" techniques of good behavior, such as offering to scrub the floors with his toothbrush or to cook Tom a four-course meal of his choice, but Tom had just given him an odd look. Panicking, Harry decided that he needed more information in order to determine the best course of action, so he started asking Tom about the pub and how it operated.

"Oh, the Cauldron's not a family business, son," Tom said, laughing a bit. "I bought it fair and square from the previous owner, some fifty years ago now. Made my old man pretty peeved with me, you know. He was a musician—played the pipe, actually—and had been planning a father and son music act touring the pubs of the Wizarding World."

Harry sat in silence for a moment, trying to process the mental image of Tom the barkeeper dancing a jig and playing a pipe of some kind. Then his brain caught up with what he had heard. "Wait, the pubs of the Wizarding World? As in, more than one?"

"Well, of course! You didn't think the Cauldron was the only pub in all of wizarding England, did you?"

"Actually, I sort of did," said Harry. Actually, I hadn't really thought about it at all, he thought but wasn't stupid enough to say. "So are there many pubs in England? Wizarding England, I mean?"

"Of—well, no, not really. Not in England, that is. Not now. Used to be one in Brighton, but it got taken out during Grindelwald's time. And then there was one up north—but Death Eaters hit it some twenty years back. But there's still The Three Broomsticks and The Hog's Head up in Hogsmeade, and The Stag over in Godric's Hollow—"

"Godric's Hollow? Where's that?" Harry asked curiously. He'd heard of Hogsmeade before, of course, but he'd thought it was the only Wizarding Village in Great Britain. Was there another wizarding town that he hadn't heard of?

"Where's—I'm sorry, did you just ask where Godric's Hollow is? You, Harry Potter, asked me where it is?" Tom made a strangled noise and his face turned a bit red. Harry began to worry, as this was usually the facial distortion his Uncle Vernon took on after hearing about flying motorcycles and blue wigs. He cautiously took a step or two away, to edge around one of the dirty tables. Clearly, this was some other wizarding thing that nobody had bothered to tell him. Like, don't say You-Know-Who's name, Harry; that makes people stare at you in fear. Don't talk to snakes, Harry; that's Dark. Don't ask about Godric's Hollow, Harry; that makes one of the only wizards who's actually been nice to you nearly have a heart attack and stare at you like you're a freak.

Quickly, Harry began trying to do damage control, visions of being thrown out of the Leaky Cauldron onto the streets of London dancing absurdly through his mind. "Er, never mind. I mean, uh, I need to go… finish my history essay. Yeah, right now. Immediately. History's really important, you know."

Harry darted toward the Diagon Alley entrance from the Cauldron but paused as he was about to leave. "Tom? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you mad—honest. I just—well, there's just a lot of things I don't know about the Wizarding World, and I'm always saying stuff I shouldn't and asking stuff everyone knows not to ask, but I swear I didn't mean to make you upset…"

Harry trailed off and looked earnestly at Tom, whose face had fortunately lost some of its splotchiness. Harry really would have preferred to just leave quickly—in his experience, conversations like this with adults never went well—but he needed to make sure Tom wasn't going to hold a grudge over whatever taboo it was that Harry had broken. A small, stubborn corner of Harry's mind insisted that he hadn't done anything wrong and that if he hadn't run from Uncle Vernon's irrational wrath toward all things freakish, he certainly wasn't going to run from Tom. (Of course, his mind helpfully reminded him, you did run from the Dursleys. That's why you're here in the first place.)

Harry watched warily as Tom closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The older man's face settled into unnaturally stiff lines, but when he spoke, his voice was gentle. "No, Harry, you've nothing to apologize for. I'm not angry at you."

Tom's expression hardened and he repeated with quiet emphasis, "I'm not angry at you."

oOo

After Harry's rather precipitous departure to Diagon Alley, Tom grabbed a dirty rag and began polishing the clean dishes (to properly "season" them, he always explained to dubious patrons). It was a mindless task that allowed him to both think and work off some steam.

Harry Potter—THE Harry Potter—doesn't know where Godric's Hollow is? How can that be? Tom had spoken with the boy a decent bit over the last couple of days, and while the savior of the Wizarding World was certainly a bit eccentric, he didn't strike Tom as mentally deficient. And Tom was pretty sure that even a mentally deficient lad would remember the name of the town where his parents had brutally murdered by the Darkest Dark Lord to exist since the last Dark Lord died and where the lad himself had become the Boy-Who-Lived.

Clearly, someone had made a major screw-up at some point. Tom had a lot of experience with screw-ups. There was the time he had told his new house elf to purchase the ingredients for 100 servings of shepherd's pie, only for her to bring him 100 shepherds, each carrying a pie. Then there was the time the Ministry had tried to cut corners while updating their apparition wards, only to wind up accidentally nullifying magic in the entire area for three hours. He'd heard all about it from one of his regulars. In the end, the Ministry had actually had to hire curse breakers and a goblin team of warders from Gringotts to fix the problem—and boy, hadn't that been an embarrassment.

But still, in each case, the screw up was temporary. It lasted a couple hours or a couple days. But this! How could the Boy-Who-Lived not know even the most basic information about his own life and about wizarding history? Tom felt a surge of fury run through him again at the thought that this boy, who had saved them all from those terrible years of Voldemort's rise, should be left to grow up deliberately ignorant—among Muggles, if he recalled correctly—as though he'd served his purpose and could just be shunted off to the side like a dirty cauldron at the end of a Potions class.

Tom put his rag down and stared at the many stains and scuffs on the table like a Diviner looking at tea leaves. He knew he wasn't the most quick-witted of wizards, but slowly his brain began piecing together snippets of conversations and gossip overheard during the last ten years and connecting that information with what he'd observed of the boy first-hand.

Tom didn't like the image he was getting.

The question was, what should he do? He had no proof of anything, and even if he did, he wasn't some highbrow Malfoy to go challenging the tall-hats and the long-beards of the upper echelons of government. But something had to be done—Tom simply couldn't live in a world where the Boy-Who-Lived didn't even know what a butterbeer was.

So something had to be done—but what?

oOo

Author's Notes: This is a combination of two plot bunnies that have been circling each other in my brain for a while now. The plot will focus on Harry learning to interact with the Wizarding World, although there will probably be some action later in the story. Chapter 1 will introduce the Diagon Alley Small Business Association members as they hatch a grand plan to save their savior.

I'm aware that I made up some wizarding idioms to try to give Tom's point of view a more distinctive voice. Please let me know if anything doesn't make sense.

Reviews and Suggestions welcome.