Harry blinked.
It didn't look like he was at the Weasley's. Or at Privet Drive... and he was pretty sure that the Malfoys would have signed over their fortune before decorating their living room in the fiercely clashing reds, oranges and browns that surrounded him. It was like a shrine to the Chudley Cannons. A really dyspeptic shrine. In fact, he was pretty sure that even Mrs. Weasley would never allow that sort of thing in the Burrow.
There was also a very large grey cat who sat on the nearby couch watching him suspiciously. That was a little reassuring. Somehow he didn't think that Voldemort was a cat person. Or a dog person. He seemed pretty much exclusively into snakes and things that liked to take large chunks out of people.
There was a solid, certain pair of knocks on the door and a woman said: "Harry? Did your phone blow up again? I thought you got a new one. I mean an old one. A new old one, that wouldn't do that."
Harry was pretty sure he didn't have a phone? Also, no American friends, and that was definitely an American accent. And no wand. No clothes either. But standing in the middle of a stranger's living room completely starkers didn't really have as much impact on him as he would have thought. Huh.
"Harry." the woman was starting to sound really annoyed. There was a half-open hatch in the middle of the floor -which seemed to be normally hidden under one of the slime-mold colored rugs - which was starting to look very tempting. Think Harry, think. This was the point where Hermione explained everything and Ron came up with a daring plan. Except...
Except.
"Dammit Harry." the woman sighed and then came a series of round, booming knocks that resounded throughout the room "Do I have to break down the door?"
Pants. He needed pants. It was unlikely that he'd find a wand lying around somewhere, but he could at least find pants.
Pants would probably be in a bedroom. Where was the bedroom though? He headed away from the front door, towards what appeared to be the bedroom. The place was quite small really. At least he wouldn't get lost...
"Harry! I don't have time for this shit. You can't just leave me cryptic messages about fairies and the undead and then not answer my calls." the woman's voice lowered to a growl.
Then Harry heard the unmistakable sound of a lock being picked. He felt his heart thud against the inside of his chest a single time, like a boot dropping to the floor. He was an idiot. Because of course things could always get worse. He jumped down the hatch, hoping that it didn't simply go one forever. That could happen right? No, what was wrong with him, that was from a book, had he hit his head...?
...and then promptly crumpled on the basement floor, rolling until he crashed into something. Something like a bookcase which held a large number of very heavy books. Which hurt. They also, he noticed, made a lot of noise.
A pair of odd, glowing lights appeared in the middle of the darkness, only throwing light forward, though Harry couldn't quite make out what was behind them. There was a delicate cough from the general direction of the lights. "And who, might I ask, are you?"
Harry was pretty sure his heart had simply stopped.
"Harry. Wake. Up." I heard this loud thudding noise. Like Mister was picking his hulking frame up and flopping it down on the floor. Repeatedly. It made my head rattle.
"Harry." I could almost hear whoever it was propping their hands on their hips. "Harry, come on!"
I was still exhausted from the day before, and I'm never a morning person. Well. I'm not really an afternoon or evening person either, but that's not the point. I rolled over, and began to snore loudly.
"Harry." Then I noticed it was a girl's voice. Not girl, as in female. Girl as in woman-child.
"That's not funny. Come on you two." her voice went even higher in pitch (if that were even possible).
Two? My sleep-high brain paused at that.
"Ron!" Another girl's voice joined hers: "Ronald, Harry. Mrs. Weasley said that breakfast is ready and to come get it before the twins put something in it."
That was when I began to panic. Because I, Harry Dresden, have only ever known (of) one Ronald. And he's very dead. Not mostly dead. Completely, totally, irrevocably, very Dead.
Or... perhaps not. If Ronald Reuel, former Knight of Summer, was involved... maybe I hadn't been so far off with the necromancer hypothesis yesterday? A few missing bodies weren't as unusual as I'd like, but corpse roads popping up in the middle of Chicago… well that doesn't happen every day. It's never a good sign either. (Not that you'd know it from how charming the name is, right?) And -despite my cozy relationship with my fairy godmother, and the fact that I jaunt off to the Nevernever so often that you'd think it's my summer home in Florida- corpse roads are a bit obscure, even for me. I'd had to haul out the Big Books and ask Bob, my handy-dandy spirit of intellect, about them.
It's complicated too, because fairies and necromancers have always fought over the same turf. (Pun intended.) Corpse roads, or 'lych-ways' (as some pedantic hedge witches like to call them), are basically roads from the Nevernever, faerie roads that have crossed over into our world, usually because they've had some contact with death energy. Not portals, no, because that would be too easy. Portals, you see, can be closed. Lych-ways though... once they're there, they're just There. Almost like ley lines. Except any poor soul with the least little bit of magic can wander onto one of them. And then, bam!, lions and tigers and fairies. Anyhow. Usually the source of that energy is either a fresh corpse (which almost never happens in modern times, because, you know, embalming, yech...), or improperly designed burial grounds...
But I digress, because those were the first things I checked, and… no dice. Well, I checked what I could; there were no new, badly planned cemeteries at least. And for half a dozen corpse roads… that's an awful lot of fresh dead bodies. Just one usually isn't enough. Though, thinking about it, I wouldn't put it past Johnny Marcone. The king of the Chicago criminal underworld could probably get ahold of some fresh dead bodies by literally snapping his fingers. In fact, Marcone or one of the supernatural bigwigs getting behind them would be pretty much the only way that your average necromancer could survive in Chicago. Most practitioners will run screaming for a Warden if they get even the vaguest whiff of necromancy.
If fairies were involved though… the oldest queens of Summer and Winter had some serious power to throw around. I'd seen that much in the battle over Chicago last year. But Ronald Reuel wouldn't have been my first choice if I had the ability to resurrect the dead. Then again, I'm neither an insane fairy nor a megalomaniacal necromancer so perhaps I'm just not good at getting into the mindset.
Anyway, suffice it to say that I was thoroughly confused.
I don't like being confused. Bad things happen when I'm confused. Things tend to get set on fire.
"Harry." the door creaked open at the exact same moment that I opened my eyes.
There were, as I had realized before, two girls. Only one of them screamed.
"Mum!" and her red hair went flying behind her as she ran down the stairs.
The other one, a tiny scraggly-looking brunette, immediately whipped out a very thin, very pointy-looking stick. "Don't. Move." she said, in a dangerously level voice that reminded me of a littler English Murphy, except it was even more frightening coming from someone so small and so young.
From the way she was pointing the stick at me, it seemed that it was a focus of some sort. Or at least it was dangerous. I decided to be discreet and call it valor.
"Wouldn't dream of it." I said, in as jaunty a tone as I could manage. Which is difficult when you wake up on a different continent with no idea of what went wrong. But that's how I roll. All Childe Roland and shit.
Despite my winsome manner, she apparently didn't believe me. Because she said "Incarcerous" and I found myself suddenly tied up and trussed as neatly as a rotisserie chicken.
Well, that was interesting, I thought. And said so.
She looked very pale, but did not reply. She kept her arm out and her eyes on me, blinking rapidly. The weird thing was that she didn't look like an American high school student. Maybe it was just because she was English. I've met English wizards, and they always seemed more self-possessed. She also had this brownish Einstein hair. I guess that gave her a kind of presence too.
"Well, this is awkward. I guess I wasn't the Harry you were expecting." I said at last. It fell a little flat.
She was avoiding my gaze, which wasn't surprising, as I didn't particularly care for a soulgaze either. But considering that I had woken up in a complete stranger's house... I couldn't think of many other ways to both convince them that I wasn't insane, and also make sure that they weren't going to kill me. Well. I wasn't sure about the first one, but I figured I could go for one out of two.
I heard a loud snore to my right and looked over automatically, before I remembered that she had the probably-a-weapon trained on me. The kid was a redhead, dressed in violently orange pajamas. I looked back at her. A short, dumpy woman with orange hair like a wind-beaten haystack came charging up the stairs. "What…" she trailed off when she saw me.
She sighed. "Fred! George! They put you up to this didn't they Harry? I thought I'd dumped all their Polyjuice."
"Ah. Ma'am..." I found that I couldn't think of what to say. I knew that asking what "Polly-juice" was was probably a bad idea though. "I am just as confused as you are, believe me. So handcuff me or whatever will make you feel more comfortable, and…."
"Harry…?" she put a hand to her chest, and looked at the brown-haired girl, who shook her head slowly.
"Oh… oh my, but how did you... then how you did you get past the wards?" the older woman wrung her hands, clearly not speaking to me anymore.
...but that was actually a very good question. How had I gotten past the wards? Unless someone had carried me in...
Suddenly a hairy red arm hit me in the face. I heard a shriek, saw a flash of red light, and then nothing.