Timeline: Several months after the final chapter of DH (epilogue excluded) for HP. No set time for MK, really, except for after Hakuba shows up.
Disclaimer: Own neither Harry Potter nor Magic Kaito nor the little minor characters in both series.
Inopportune Karma
Chapter 1: The Wrong Place
At the tender age of nineteen, Harry Potter was rather bored with his life. It was probably a given that after facing much terror and adventure every year since his introduction to the magical world, life as an unemployed and unofficial mascot of the wizarding world seemed a bit mundane. Somewhat dull. Just plain ordinary.
It wasn't that he hadn't received any work offers after vanquishing Voldemort however; even though he had decided against returning to Hogwarts to complete his schooling, he had received more requests than he cared to count. It was just that very few of the offers really appealed to him in any way. The fact that a majority of them revolved mainly around using his image to promote various products was a bit of a turn off as well.
Harry sighed and turned back to his mirror, running a comb through it in one last attempt to get his mop of hair to behave. It hadn't worked thus far, but he figured he had to get lucky at least once in his lifetime. But it seemed like today was not to be that day. His hair popped right back up, appearing as though it had not had a comb run repeatedly through it.
Giving up for the time being, he tossed the comb down and studied his reflection. He looked…passable. His hair was probably his worst feature at the moment, but there was little he could do about that. Even if he was willing to overlook the fact that people like Malfoy seemed to literally bathe their hair in gel, he had no time to go and buy some for himself.
Ah well, he was just going to have to leave for the job interview with a mop masquerading as his hair. Hopefully, his interviewers wouldn't care too much about the untidiness. After all, how much could an organization that wanted assistants willing to camp out in the remote rain forests of the Amazon care about personal hygiene?
Slightly cheered at the thought of the upcoming journey, Harry turned away from the mirror to toss a few of the items that he needed to bring with him to the interview into his bag. Like the bloody passport that had taken him ages to get. In his opinion, the thing was useless since the group would be taking a Portkey to the jungle. But due to international issues and things that only Hermione really understood, he needed one. Though it would definitely be worth the trouble if it got him out of Europe for a while.
Hermione and Ron weren't entirely happy about the fact that the only job that had remotely interested him would require him to leave the country for months at an end, but they hadn't put up too much of a fight when he told them of his decision. They understood that he needed some time to straighten out his mind and that it was near impossible for him to do so here with just about everything reminding him of the war. They understood that he needed to do something that got the adrenaline pumping through his veins and made him feel useful. They understood all of that. They just couldn't understand why he had to do all of this in a remote jungle, for crying out loud.
Truthfully, Harry hadn't expected them to. Try as they might, they just couldn't understand how he was feeling now that everything was peaceful. Yes, he was glad to no longer be going around looking over his shoulder for snake-obsessed homicidal maniacs; that was definitely one of the major positive points of peace. But, despite all the tranquility in his life now, he felt a bit…lost.
The war was over, done with, in the past. Everyone was moving on with their lives, picking up the pieces, and looking ahead. But the thing was, Harry just couldn't do any of that. He couldn't pick up his life where he had left it off, not for lack of trying though. He had spent well over a month trying to rekindle interest in the things that he had had before the war only to end up chucking them all out the window. The war had changed him.
Being an Auror no longer appealed to him, becoming a Quddicth player was out of the question while uncaught Death Eaters still hid in the shadows, and, well, he really couldn't think of anything that he wanted to do. Except figure out what he wanted to do. And that was why he was trying out for this job, he reminded himself as he zipped up the bag. He wasn't running away, he was simply taking a break. To a jungle. Where he would have very little communication with the outside world.
It's for the best, Harry told himself with a quick glance to the clock on the wall. He just needed time to relax and think, and then he could move on, like everyone else had. Digging into the front pocket of his bag as he made his way over to the fireplace, he pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper that contained the location of the place where the interview was taking place.
If given a choice, Harry would much rather simply Appreate to the building, but it was located somewhere in Russia. He'd never attempted international Apperation before, he wasn't even sure if it was possible, but he had no wish to try to find out today. And, since it would take much too long by broomstick and he really did not want to deal with the hassle of getting a Portkey approved, his only choice was to travel by Floo. Well, he could suffer through the Merlin knew how many hours on a plane, but somehow, Floo seemed safer than traveling on a big metal thing. But it didn't change the fact that he didn't care for it. At all.
Committing the name to memory, Harry stuffed the paper into his pocket and grabbed a handful of Floo powder, and tossed it into the fireplace. Emerald flames burst into existence as the powder hit the burnt wood from last night's fire. Harry took a breath and promptly choked. One would think that by know he would remember to breathe before throwing the bloody powder, but unfortunately, wherever Floo was concerned, everything that could go wrong for Harry usually did.
Coughing, he brought up a hand to block his mouth and nose from inhaling anymore smoke, and in the process of doing so, knocked his bag into the bricks above the fireplace which absorbed the blow and promptly threw off the container of powder, right into the flames. Green fire roared upwards, higher than Harry was sure was safe. He tried to step back, but his glasses were black from soot from the sudden flames and, he realized a second too late that he had somehow gotten turned around and was actually taking a step forward. Into the fireplace.
Harry's thoughts on that little matter, which really could not be repeated in polite company, were garbled out as he shouted and threw out his arms to stop himself from entering the Floo gateway. The sensation of being spun around and around told him quite clearly that he had failed. He barely had time to clutch his bag closer to him before he was thrown violently out onto a cold, hard wooden floor.
Coughing out curses and soot, Harry angrily shoved himself upright, ignoring the nausea the movement aroused. Damn it, where in Merlin's name had he ended up now? Memories of his first ever trip by Floo fresh in his mind, Harry ignored the soot and cracks on his glasses and tried to taken in as much of his surroundings as he could.
It was dark but he could see enough to tell that, wherever he had ended up, was devoid of human life. That was a relief. The last thing he needed at the moment was to have to deal with the Ministry for shocking a family of Muggles by dropping out of their fireplace. Actually, he squinted his eyes in an attempt to look past the soot, the place looked as though it had been deserted for a while now.
The boxes piled in one corner were definitely encased by dust and the only window seemed to be boarded up. There was also a significant lack of any furniture or anything that would mark the place as lived in. In fact, if he wasn't way off mark, then this was probably a warehouse. An abandoned warehouse.
Quickly fixing his glasses and brushing off as much of the soot stuck to him as he could, Harry tried to figure out what to do. Merlin, this just had to happen on the day of his interview didn't it, he thought as he ran a hand through his messier-than-before hair. He groaned. He was going to miss his meeting and lose the job.
"Damn Floo," He grumbled, kicking dust into the empty fireplace, holding a faint hope that the dust would ignite the flames required for him to get out of here and to his interview. No such luck. The only thing the act accomplished was to rile up the dust and start him coughing again.
By the time Harry managed to regain his breathing, he was wishing that he had taken his chances on a plane instead. Death by air sounded much better on a gravestone then death by dust bunnies.
Morose thoughts aside however, he really needed to get out of here…wherever here was. It suddenly occurred to Harry that he couldn't Apperate home, not without knowing where he currently was. Floo was also out of the question, a quick glance to the empty fireplace affirmed. And he didn't even have a pager, or those fancy new communicating cells that Hermione had forced him to get. He'd left them at home, thinking them useless in a remote forest. In short, Harry was more or less stranded.
This really wasn't his day.
Picking up his bag which was thankfully still intact, he began searching for a way out, all the while wishing that he had learned a spell that would help him out right now. Or, better yet, that Hermione was here. She'd know what to do. Then again, if she was here, Harry wouldn't be in this predicament in the first place. The best he could do right now, he decided, was head in one direction and keep going until he ended up at the front door. He'd have to hit it sooner or later.
Ignoring the voice reprimanding him in the back of his mind about the lack of stability in his plan, he made his way out of the room, to a dark hallway, that was just as the dark as the room he had arrived in. Fortunately, his eyes had adjusted to the dimness by this point, so he managed to make his way through the hall and down a staircase with very little trouble. If he hurried, then maybe he'd be able to get to the interview before the office closed.
Halfway across the second hallway, Harry glanced at the ceiling and frowned. He was sure that he had just heard something, the faintest of thuds, as though someone were walking. He halted and listened for the noise again, every sense on alert. Only now had it occurred to him that while the building looked abandoned, but it didn't necessarily mean that it was. It would be just his luck to have landed in the middle of a drug joint.
A minute passed, and then another, but Harry didn't hear the thuds again. Maybe he was just hearing things. This place looked pretty old, it was probably just wood settling or such. He really was getting paranoid, Harry admitted to himself as he made his way down the hallway to the only that had light peeping out from underneath it. Mad Eye would be proud.
He opened the door with a sigh and was nearly blinded by the light.
"Freeze Kid!"
If the light hadn't already halted him, then the foreign shout certainly would have. Frozen in the bright spotlight, Harry could only blink several times in an attempt to clear away the spots dancing in his vision. Even after they faded, he still had to squint to see what was going on. The bloody light was really hurting his eyes, by the way. Why couldn't they move it already?
When he finally did make out what was in front of him, he had to blink several more times just to make sure he wasn't seeing things. Because, surely, there was not what looked to be an entire squad of policemen camped in front of the building that he had just exited, each with their guns trained on him.
He summed up the entire situation with one very well chosen word.
"Huh?"
CURTAIN CHAPTER ONE
