Chapter 2 – Cat's Town
Bloody hell. Harry shook his head in disbelief as he looked at the complete stranger bowing at his feet - could this get any weirder?
"Get up, get up, there's no need for any of that," Harry said quickly, gesturing for the man to stand up. After a few moments of that he finally complied, though he kept his head bent all the while. Harry shook his head and tried to figure out a way to fix this. Getting people to bow to him was really not what he'd intended, and Harry briefly wondered what on Earth he was going to do about it. He didn't know their language, they didn't know his, and they were hardly going to forget about magic now that they'd seen it. Bloody hell.
Well, at least he could keep from informing even more people. He quickly cancelled the spell, returning the hut to darkness once more. He could fix things with the local Aurors if it was just two people who'd found out, but even his considerable reputation wouldn't save him from getting dragged to court again if he got too many involved. He slipped his wand behind the strip of fabric that served as his belt, making sure to hide it beneath the folds of the robe that he'd been handed. Oddly enough the loose-fitting clothing was actually something he'd seen several people wear, even if these were all Muggles. He'd assumed that it'd gone out of fashion, even out here, but evidently he was ill-informed.
His arm still hurt, and he studied it with some concern, particularly the place where he'd been scratched by that damn cat. The four stripes left behind by the attack had largely closed up, though he would probably be left with a set of scars. He distractedly ran a hand over the scar on his forehead as he thought of that, and frowned. It felt smoother than he remembered, almost like it was healing over at last. He quickly checked his other scars; Umbridge's scar on his hand, the basilisk's fang, the knife wound from Voldemort's resurrection. They too felt... different.
"What...?"
He frowned, realizing that there was something else that was different. He needed glasses. He didn't have any way to ask for them, though. Glasses were beyond his skill at transfiguration, too, since the curvature of the glass was really important for a successfully functioning lens, and that precision was far beyond his ability. He wondered where his original set had vanished to, since he hadn't seen it anywhere in or near the hut, and Ahaneith had collected everything else, even if most of his clothes were utterly ruined.
Harry noticed something odd, trying to figure out how bad it would be to live without glasses. The night was dark, very dark, and the only lights he could see were small fires in the distance, flickering in a chilly breeze that came in from what was probably the Sahara, though shrubs and grassy patches confused him. Although he'd heard of places where even electrical light hadn't gotten in use yet, he was pretty sure Egypt didn't fall in that category. He didn't know why anyone would've moved him out to such a place either, rather than just bring him to a healer or the city.
He had to try and contact home. He didn't know apparition points nearby, and he wasn't sure he should be trying to backtrack when he didn't know precisely where he was in the first place. Perhaps he could try to find his way to a larger or town, where someone might have a phone. Bill, Ron, even Hermione had to be looking for him. Hopefully he'd soon find an owl nipping at his fingers, intent on delivering a Portkey. Harry smiled at the thought.
2 DAYS LATER – 3050 B.C.E.
Harry sat down against the clay wall of one of the few permanent structures in the small village, a small shrine. He stretched his arms and neck, glad to note that the last of the stiffness was finally going away. There were few people around to notice him as he enjoyed the relative coolness of the early evening.
None of the hundred or so people that lived here knew any English whatsoever, and most of them hesitant to even speak at all. (He supposed that his pale skin colour compared to theirs marked him as a foreigner, which certainly didn't help.) The only ones who even attempted to converse were Ahaneith and the man who sometimes accompanied her. It had taken him some time to deduce that his name was Nebit, though the language they spoke was otherwise still a mystery.
Harry had managed to conjure a fairly good mirror when everyone was gone, and to his astonishment the scar on his head was a shadow of its former self, though still slightly visible. Whatever had dumped him here had pretty thoroughly eradicated the remains of Voldemort's dark magic. He'd repeatedly tried to heal it up himself after the war, but it had never worked, and now all the wounds he'd gotten in his encounters with dark wizards were vanishing. He almost felt sad, realizing that perhaps even these permanent reminders of what happened weren't that permanent.
Really, that wasn't what he should be focusing on, Harry thought. His attempts to send a Patronus to Ron or Bill had been unsuccessful; instead of streaking off, Prongs had simply wandered around Harry for a bit, before he'd vanished again into thin air. The intense use of magic hadn't even attracted Aurors or Obliviators from the Egyptian Ministry, though they evidently hadn't picked up on his Light charm either.
That fact coupled with the apparent complete lack of any modern technology had turned an uncomfortable twinge in the back of his head into a fearful suspicion, though it warred with his common sense. The only reason he didn't dismiss the crazy idea out of hand was that he knew full well what magic was capable of.
"Water?"
Harry blinked as his thoughts were interrupted. He nodded at the rather tiny woman who had addressed him; she wore elaborate necklaces and a long reddish sash across her shoulder that she'd partially tied around her middle. He hadn't caught her name, but from what he could deduce she was a sort of holy woman. She took care of the building behind him, the small shrine that seemed to serve as a miniature church for the entire community. Harry took the small cup she'd offered and savoured how clean it was, compared to the usually bitter beer.
Fresh water, it turned out, was a rarity around here. Beer and milk were the most common beverages of choice. After Harry found the village's water source, he couldn't blame them, really. Polluted and smelling vaguely sweet, Harry hadn't dared even get near the edge, for fear of catching a whole host of new diseases. (Granted, he'd probably deal better with those than any of the Muggles, but he'd rather not take chances.) The water didn't even seem clean enough to bathe in. Thankfully Harry could use cleaning spells, but he wondered idly how the others dealt with it. Would they ignore the poor quality of the water entirely? The fact that he hadn't yet spotted anything even vaguely like a toilet just made things even more puzzling.
The priestess said a few words to him, though he didn't recognize a single word. Unless he found someone who would take the time to teach him, he was never going to get it, since everyone spoke far too swiftly. Beyond a few snippets that could have been words he'd heard before, it might as well have been Gobbledygook. The woman smiled slightly as she gestured towards the shrine, and Harry followed, intrigued.
The shrine itself was fairly small and built out of sandstone covered with something like clay, and decorated with a few carvings above the doorway. There were small holes in the sides to let the light in, though most of the illumination came in through the same way he did; there was no door at all. The shrine was actually larger than he'd guessed from the outside. That said, more than four or five people would definitely be too many to comfortably walk around in here.
There were square indentations all across the wall, containing small sculptures of humans with animal heads on their shoulders. Though the bodies were beautifully sculpted and painted, the heads had little detail beyond the eyes. Each was surrounded by what Harry recognized as writing, reminding him of hieroglyphics like the ones he'd seen in the pyramid he'd visited. These statues were representations of gods, he realized, though he didn't remember their names.
"Heru," the priestess said, gesturing towards one of the figures with an arm that was carrying more bracelets than Harry thought he'd ever seen. Harry turned to her in surprise, since he could have sworn she never said his name before. She shook her head and pointed again. The figure she'd seemed so interested in was one of a tall man with a bird's head on his shoulders, staring ahead with a somber expression. He was wearing an odd headdress, painted white and red, and was holding a long staff in his hand; a bronze necklace circled the god's neck, and two bright green gemstones served as his eyes.
Harry didn't know much about the local religion; perhaps this was some local deity? Was he supposed to know a ritual? He didn't know how he'd even begin to ask about something like that. The elaborate symbols that crisscrossed the figure reminded him a little of the ancient runes that Hermione had been studying in Hogwarts, and he wondered if she'd be able to tell him their meaning, but that was of no help to him now.
Another thought occurred to him, and he glanced back at that bird-like head; a hawk perhaps, or a falcon? Harry paled as he made the connection. This statue was the one Ahaneith doubtlessly prayed to... and it had green eyes. If Harry knew anything about gods, it was that they had all sorts of magical abilities attributed to them. Perhaps the priestess hadn't been addressing him at all, but naming the statue? This had to be Heru, then.
"I'm sorry for nicking your name," Harry muttered, tapping the statue on the beak. He winced as the priestess gasped behind him. He hoped he hadn't made a horrible faux-pas, though the woman didn't say anything, and didn't even seem angry. Harry sighed in relief, his gaze wandering over the other figures.
Towards the middle of the shrine stood a fairly large representation of a goddess with a cat's head, or possibly a lion's. It was one of the largest in the entire shrine, in fact, and it was also the most lavishly decorated. At her feet stood half a dozen cats, and Harry wasn't entirely sure if they were sculptures or actual stuffed cadavers. One of them was uncomfortably familiar, a black Egyptian Mau, and Harry's hand strayed to the scratches on his arm. "Who is this?" He asked, curious.
"Bast," the priestess said nevertheless, smiling as she nodded to the statue. She said a few more words, too, but Harry was busily trying to remember where he'd heard that word before. He was pretty sure Bill had mentioned a Cat Goddess like this, when they were setting out. She was the reason for the name of the nearby town, Bubastis, he was pretty sure. This had to be the same one, then. Perhaps if he went there, he could contact home.
"Bubastis – the city of Bast," Harry tried, turning to the woman. He had no idea what the word for city was, though, in her language. "Could you point me to that city?" He pointed around himself, and her eyes lit up. She nodded sagely after a moment, seemingly understanding him.
"Finally, I'm getting somewhere…"
1 WEEK LATER – 3050 B.C.E.
This didn't make any sense.
The streets of the town were busy, bustling even, with dozens of people dragging primitive carts around, or tending to their homes. Despite this, though, there was not a single person anywhere that had even a pair of trousers, or any electronics whatsoever. The entire town, people and all, seemed like it had been plucked from the distant past into modern times. He recognized the general land-marks from the last time he'd briefly visited, not a bustling town.
The hypothesis that the entire town had been transported into the future had occurred to him, as had the possibility that he was being pranked. With magic, you never knew. He had to admit that there was a more parsimonious explanation though, that didn't include the world changing massively or involve an incredibly conspiracy. A much more worrying explanation. He'd gone stark-raving mad.
Alternatively, and this was perhaps an even more insane possibility, he was the one that was stranded out of time rather than everyone else. That he'd ended up in what he could only conclude was Ancient Egypt, a culture that had been gone for thousands of years. A culture that he knew next to nothing about and which was about as different from his own than any could be. He knew time-travel was possible, but thousands of years? Bloody hell.
Harry sighed, hoping he could keep the panic away until he was somewhere that didn't have dozens of curious people staring at him. What the hell was he going to do? How did he get here? Khnurn's face came to mind, one of the last things he'd seen before he'd woken up at Ahaneith's. That cat, that damned cat.
"Heru, come, please," Ahaneith said, and Harry blinked, realizing he'd been standing in place for a while now, just staring at the village. He'd only just found out that this small village, only two or three times bigger than the one he'd left, indeed bore the name of Bast. Two villages named after the same goddess, located on identical land? This was the very village he'd seen in ruins, a few days ago. Harry wasn't sure if that would be a very useful count to keep, given that said day was now apparently in the distant future. Harry forced himself to walk on, despite the fact that he felt like he could collapse any moment.
Per-Bastet, as the village was called, was no more sophisticated than the poor village he'd first been in, much to Harry's chagrin. He'd managed to get himself into an era where the most advanced technology seemed to be a chimney. Fantastic.
Ahaneith led him through the town as he looked around for her brother. Nebit, it turned out, wasn't her husband. Nebit seemed mildly amused by the confusion and had volunteered to travel along, carrying several bags of supplies along, which he was probably going to trade away.
It was remarkably how long a relatively short journey could take if you were forced to go on foot, especially for a wizard used to apparating between places. Thankfully the long trip did allow Harry to pick up some basics of the Egyptian language from Ahaneith, even if she had an infuriating tendency to get bored with it and start speaking at such a pace that Harry had no way of keeping the words apart. Still, at least Harry knew some common words now, and he was recognizing some of them in people's speech, which was a good sign. He couldn't do anything if nobody could understand a word he was saying, after all.
The building that Ahaneith led him to was large, and decorated similarly to the shrine he'd already visited. There was a large statue besides the entrance which vaguely resembled a human shape with a cat's head, probably the goddess Bast. The entire statue was painted ink black, its two yellow cat's eyes staring down on him. Harry felt a chill down his back as he passed it.
"Go," Ahaneith said, nodding to the entrance. "Go, … I will wait. Go." Thankfully he understood enough of the woman's mutterings to give a quick bow and leave her there, while he stepped carefully through the doorway.
The temple was rather larger than the shrine he'd visited, with a large square central area and a rounded section on the far end, the entire wall covered in carvings. Beams of light shone down from high above against glittering murals, covered in something metallic, perhaps bronze. Four pillars kept the roof up. Two men were seated in the central area, and one of them shot up as he noticed Harry's approach, shouting something in a rather angry tone.
"Don't make such a fuss, please," Harry said in English, aware that his paltry skill at the local language was far too tenuous to hold a conversation. He'd rather they saw him as a foreigner rather than an imbecile. "I mean no harm," he added, raising his hands slightly. The angered man quickly walked up to him, though the fact that Harry had stopped at the entrance seemed to have calmed the man down a little.
He probably some kind of priest, if the staff he was holding was any indication, seeing as its tip was in the shape of a cat's head. The man had a rather long grey beard and beady eyes, and was wearing a robe that only came to his knees. Whatever he said next Harry didn't understand.
"I don't know your language," he explained tiredly; that was one of the few phrases he'd actually learned by now, and he found himself using it far too often for comfort. He wondered what he was trying to accomplish, here. He'd headed for this town since he knew that the ruins were a place he'd visited before, but he'd never figured that it would be inhabited. He was in the right place, but not the right time. "I was hoping… I hoped that I could find help here, but…" He sighed.
If he was right, then he had no home to return to. As far as he was aware, the Ministry of Magic was only a few hundreds of years old, and he wasn't sure if the United Kingdom even existed for much longer; certainly not when the Egyptians were around. Judging from all the bronze, he wasn't sure if there was anything around that he'd recognize.
"Follow," The priest said, seemingly intrigued by his use of English. The man quickly walked into a small hallway to the side of the temple, and Harry followed uncertainly. The path lead to a room containing the very first wooden chair and table he'd seen, though both were mostly a solid block rather than the more expertly crafted ones he was used to. On one of the walls in the same room someone had carved a majestic scene of this very temple, the sun appearing just over the horizon, and the priest walked right to it. At the pinnacle of the representation of the temple was something Harry immediately recognized. A Phoenix.
Harry smiled in appreciation, and the priest tapped the bottom of what was essentially a really elaborate painting. The man pointed to an array of animals – a scorpion, a snake, a long-beaked bird, a falcon, a cat, and more – and Harry realized they were representative of all the different gods.
"What do you want me to do?"
The man gestured again, and Harry sighed. Great, he was getting himself involved in vague religious rituals without even knowing what they were about. Did he have to choose one, or something? Finally, as he was getting about ready to just pick one at random and be done with it, the man chuckled softly, and nodded to himself. He turned away from the mural and smiled. Harry didn't know what to make of that. Had it been a test of some sort? Had he passed?
"Anedjib, of Bast," the man said. "You?"
Apparently, yes, he had passed. He pointed at himself. "Harry Potter."
Anedjib nodded regally, and Harry wondered whether or not the man even had the concept of a last name; had that been in use in this time? He really didn't know much about history, did he? "Stay, Heru Pota? Stay in Per-Bastet?"
Well, he'd actually understood some of that. "I suppose, for now, until I figure some things out," he said, and nodded for emphasis. Harry didn't know exactly what he'd agreed to, but he was pretty sure these people meant him no harm. He could spend a little time here, while he tried to figure out not so much where he was – but when.
3 WEEKS LATER – 3050 B.C.E.
"Come, Heru," High-Priest Anedjib said, smiling brightly. "There is work!"
Harry groaned, wiping the hair from his face. It had been less than a week after he'd decided to stick around Per-Bastet for a while that he'd found himself dragging supplies around. Compared to many of the people here he was quite a respectable height, and that helped tremendously in moving some of the more unwieldy items that needed delivering.
Keeping busy physically was a great way to keep his mind off the whole issue of how the hell he was getting home. Harry spent his evenings trying to figure out if he had any way to find other wizards or witches that didn't involve informing every Muggle that magic existed.
Harry had to admit it, the past few weeks had convinced him that his original worry was correct; he wasn't in some obscure part of Egypt where crazy people lived. He'd managed to get back here, somehow. He'd been stranded back in ancient times, courtesy of a nasty black cat and an odd man. It sounded crazy even to himself, and he hadn't shared that particular nugget with anyone.
Anedjib was actually quite a gracious host. After an initial few days in which Harry was seen as an interloper by absolutely everyone, especially the High-Priest's assistant, he'd gone to being generally ignored, since at least he was making himself useful. Ahaneith and Nebit remained in the village and seemed quite excited about that fact. They'd been given temporary housing by the temple, and it was, though crude, infinitely better than the ratty tents they were used to.
Today a new statue of Bast was being delivered, and Harry was there to help out at the High-Priest's request. At least a dozen men were dragging the huge new addition to the temple's courtyard along to its final resting place on a sort of sled with ropes attached.
"Heru!"
Harry turned with a sigh. Even after weeks of trying to correct people, nobody would stop calling him that; either they were just incapable of saying 'Harry', which he thought unlikely, or they'd decided that clearly Heru was a far better name than silly old Harry. (An uncomfortable third option had occurred to him. That 'Harry' meant something so incredibly offensive here that nobody had dared tell him about it.)
Ahaneith looking around, frowning. "Where is Nebit?"
"I don't know," Harry replied haltingly, squinting against the sun. "With the statue, perhaps?"
As he said that, the sled came into view. Harry had opined that they really should have used a carriage with wheels, the last time he'd seen people dragging things along, but from the confused stares he'd gotten even after trying to illustrate it by drawing it in the sand, it seemed it was unknown to them. They didn't know about the bloody wheel. He'd considered conjuring a small cart and demonstrating, but he wasn't sure if he should. He had a feeling that introducing technologies that didn't exist yet would make a right mess of things.
The statue was shoved in place with speed born from experience. Half dozen men dragged it slowly upright, stepping forward. The ropes could really only do so much, though, and Harry found himself trying to find surer footing in the sand just as the statue reached its tipping point. The moment it seemed to stabilize there was an odd noise, almost like stone rubbing against stone, a cracking noise.
Harry only had a few moments to react, the fact that dozens of people were right there crossing his mind for a split second. Before he could fully think it through, Harry had whipped out his wand and aimed it at the new statue. The entire head tumbled off the figure's shoulders and people barely had time to scream before Harry's voice cut through the chatter.
"Arresto Momentum!"
The head stopped in mid-air, remaining suspended a mere foot-and-a-half above the men who had just shoved the statue into place. The cat's face stared down on them with its painted eyes, a little dust descending from the neck. It had been neatly severed from the rest of the body, apparently broken during transport, and it had taken the motion of the righting to shake it loose. Slowly the men turned away from the cat's head, their gazes finding the one who's saved them. Nebit was among them, and his eyes lit up when they spotted what had happened.
Harry stared at his wand, at the floating head, and groaned softly. He hadn't even thought ahead. Yes, he'd just saved a bunch of people and he wouldn't take that back, but he'd also effectively ruined any chance of a low profile. Forget Ahaneith and Nebit, he'd just done magic in front of an entire town. Bloody hell.
"God-send!" High-Priest Anedjib crowed, and Harry realized that everyone was staring at him, several falling to their knees. Harry looked again at the floating head and finally let it descend to the ground, to more amazed gasps from the Muggles.
"Bloody hell, if that doesn't send a message to every wizard in a hundred miles, I don't know what would," Harry muttered after a while. "I hope they don't begin a cult..."
2 WEEKS LATER – 3050 B.C.E.
Walking into the temple of Bast, Harry ignored the handful of people that bowed as he passed on his way to the back of the temple. He'd tried greeting them all back in the beginning, but that had just made them uncomfortable - apparently that wasn't what you were supposed to do - and his declarations that he didn't deserve praise were met with incredulous looks. Harry supposed he should be glad that there weren't any reporters to buzz around. He stopped before the little shrine to Bast and wondered why everything always went crazy on him.
Although the common people had gotten quite excited about having a miracle-worker in their midst and Harry had found himself the subject of much speculation, he could bear it. Thankfully they hadn't started a religion or cult, so far, though some were rather more obsessed with knowing what he got up to than seemed strictly healthy.
Anedjib was perhaps the most affected by this whole affair. Finding out that Harry could actually do magic had turned him from an ally into a bit of a fanatic, regularly conversing with him on a number of topics, and jotting down many notes on a crude sort of paper, even if the broken Egyptian that Harry used was rather inelegant.
Harry had found over the last few weeks that being a wizard in a Muggle town could be quite interesting. He'd made sure that all the water sources were clean, for one, which would help tremendously in keeping people healthy. He'd apparated back to the little village he'd arrived at and cleaned up their well, though he left it to them to discover that; one town was quite enough, right now. There was also a sudden surplus in food; use of the Engorgement charm and Geminio had been key for that. Though Anedjib knew about his activities, Harry had chosen to largely avoid showing off for the rest of the village, to avoid getting even more attention. He didn't hide his magic, seeing as everyone already knew, but he knew full well that Muggles demanding that Wizards solve their problems was one of the reasons the Statue of Secrecy had even been invented.
Thankfully, most of the Muggles seemed to consider his magic a sign of the gods, after the High-Priest had declared as much, and were hesitant in provoking him. They only requested help on rare occasions, almost always related to repairing broken sculptures that represented the various gods, after he'd connected the fallen head of the Bast statue to its body again.
There was one disturbing thing about that event, that he was still wondering about, weeks later. The head- it had been severed neatly... too neatly. It was certainly not an accidental incident, which had him suspecting that one of the few who knew about his abilities had forced him out into the open, but the reactions had been rather genuine. Furthermore, the head couldn't have been quite so loose when it was first being righted, or it'd have lost its head far sooner. That left one possibility that Harry saw as plausible... there had been another wizard present, or a witch. Could they have anything to do with him getting to this time? Was it a coincidence?
He'd visited the spot that Ahaneith claimed he'd appeared in, and beyond a few streaks of blood from his wounds, there was nothing there.. Not the slightest thing was present to suggest anything even mildly magical happening. Harry couldn't make any sense out of the strange cat or Khnurn's role in all of this either. Had they done this, gotten him thrown back in time, somehow? Were they back here, too? Beyond the fact that the local deity of choice was also into cats, he'd really found nothing.
"You are thinking?"
Harry smiled slightly, turning away from Bast's statue to Nebit. "Always."
Nebit shrugged, staring at the small statue of Bast for a moment. "Ahaneith seeks you."
"I know, I know." Harry shook his head. Ahaneith had been a bit odd, lately, and Harry wasn't sure what to do about it. With his dodgy control of the Egyptian language, he had a hard enough time figuring out what was wrong, let alone help.
"You shouldn't leave her alone," Nebit answered shortly, looking a little anxious. "You must understand. She is a bit … distressed."
Harry frowned. He'd been a bit busy trying to juggle his duties to help the temple, to learn a new language, and to find a way home to really spend a lot of time with her, even if he knew what he could say to her. "What is wrong?"
"She is twenty years old," Nebit said, frowning. "She's not married. That's not good. She doesn't like that you avoid her either."
Great. He knew that marriage had been odd, back in the days, with polygamy and the like, but Harry hadn't really remembered it hadn't really been about love for most of history. Harry thought of Ginny, and wondered if they'd get married, someday. Maybe in a few years. If he got back, Harry added. No, when. When he got back. "I'll speak to her," Harry assured Nebit.
"Thank you," he responded, glancing at the statue behind Harry and bowing deeply.
Harry nodded, frowning. Ahaneith had been in here before, but she'd never stayed long, preferring to busy herself in town; a few weeks after she arrived she'd set up a small barter shop, selling trinkets and home-made jewellery. Harry had pitched in by giving her a sizable collection of neatly cut gemstones. Creating them was easy enough with a few carefully chosen spells and the right kind of materials, and thus far nobody had asked where he'd gotten them from, probably attributing it to his miracles. They'd actually be right, too.
Staying in Per-Bastet had been a grudging decision early on, but he had to admit he liked the town. Though it was as disease-ridden and unsanitary as he could have expected, the people were remarkably friendly and open, and tolerant of his poor grasp of their language. Harry had briefly wondered if he was tying time in a knot by mixing up cause and effect like this, but thus far everything seemed fine. If he remembered how the time-turner worked right, whatever he did couldn't noticeably change the world as he remembered it.
He wasn't sure if that was a depressing thought or not.
He found Ahaneith not far from the temple, staring into the sky as she distractedly sipped at a cup of something that Harry figured could probably be used to clean ovens.
"Heru," she greeted as he approached, a fake smile on her face. "Good to see you."
Harry shrugged. "I heard you were in trouble," he said, glad that he knew enough of the basics to at least hold a simple conversation. He'd never considered how difficult learning a language was, even with a tutor. Of course, it didn't help when the topics were as complex as this.
She frowned. "Trouble? No..." She paused, groaning. "Nebit. What did he say?"
"Marriage problems?" Harry tried, frowning. "You are... young? Is that the word?"
Ahaneith's laughed suddenly, shaking her head in mirth. "That... it was not right. Oh, Heru..." She smiled, tapping on the stone bench beside her. "Sit."
Harry collapsed next to her, glancing at her curiously.
"My marriage problems, as you say... I will survive," she said, tapping him on the shoulder. "Living in Per-Bastet is much better. Water, food, a house. I have my shop - I will survive."
"You always have Nebit and me," Harry pointed out. Ahaneith smiled radiantly at that, nodding.
"God-send," she said, winking slyly. Harry shook his head in embarrassment as she swallowed what remained of her beverage. "In time, I will marry. Perhaps to you?"
Harry didn't respond to that, staring off into the distance. He'd been thinking of getting married only weeks ago, but not to her. Ginny. He was supposed to get married after a last men-only vacation filled with ancient ruins and strong brews, that Bill insisted he should have before getting forever chained to a woman. (Those were his exact words.) Was that ever going to happen, now? If he went back, would he just go on where he left off?
He hoped so.
1 YEAR LATER – 3049 B.C.E.
He really shouldn't kid himself, Harry realized. He was stuck here.
He gazed at the sky sadly, trying to ignore the painful feeling of loss that he felt whenever he thought of home. For months he'd kept going by telling himself that he was going to find a way back, or that he was going to unmask the world as some overly elaborate trick or illusion. Unfortunately, things remained as they were, and the people around him were very much real. More and more he'd found himself on the temple's roof, out of sight from almost everyone, staring into the distance and wondering what to do.
He'd been here for more than a year now, and he hadn't been a lot further than the immediate surroundings of Per-Bastet in that time. The town had certainly become a lot more impressive during that period. More than thirty new homes had been added, a frankly staggering number compared to the usual increases if Anedjib was to be believed, and for once it was actual immigrants, rather than just locals . Really the town's growth was mostly because Harry had been supplying it with materials that he either transfigured or duplicated, though he was careful to do so out of the public eye, before everyone wanted their stuff multiplied. The reason that so many new houses were needed was simple. Word had gotten out.
The wells of Per-Bastet were the cleanest within fifty miles and had become almost legendary because of that. The 'miracle' was quickly attributed to the blessing of the goddess Bast herself by travellers and priests alike, much to Harry's relief, though he was pretty sure some suspected his involvement. That the village had plenty of food also got around to neighbouring villages, not to mention the rather spontaneous decrease in sickness among the populace (which, honestly, was mostly due to the clean water.) Blessed, people called Per-Bastet. Honestly Harry couldn't really object; having a magic-user in your midst with twenty-first century knowledge and a penchant for helping people probably did count as a miracle to anyone here.
Harry hadn't just made the situation better here, though. He'd spent six months tracking down wizards or witches in the surrounding areas, up to nearby cities and even in a few of them, and he'd utterly failed. He'd made sure to help out any village he came across, at least a little, so at the end of the day he felt like he'd accomplished something.
There was one thing he'd found in his search that had lifted his heart, though. Quite a distance west from town he'd come across a genuine wild Phoenix, its song of joy echoing between the hills. He'd stood there, enraptured, for what had to be half an hour, just listening. Finally, as the creature landed near him, he'd approached. It looked identical to Fawkes, though Harry had no idea if that was just a trait of the species; he'd only ever seen one of them before.
Then, a remarkable thought had occurred to him. Fawkes had to have come from somewhere. How old did Phoenixes get? Were they immortal as their legend suggested? Was this one, perhaps...? He shook his head, and smiled.
The bird had almost seemed to chuckle before vanishing. Harry had thought about that moment for a while. Perhaps it had been Fawkes. Perhaps he'd seen the future companion of Albus Dumbledore, flying freely over his ancestral grounds, millennia before the Headmaster would even be born. It was a nice thought.
That led him to think about of Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, Luna, and all the others he'd left behind to carry on without him. He missed them, he missed his life. For a moment he utterly hated Khnurn and his vile cat. He had been robbed. His entire life had been taken away and replaced with this. Dragging big stones around and duplicating food for a society that didn't even know that washing your hands was a good thing.
What was he going to do?
Author's Note: Last of the 'Cats' chapters next time, with Cat's Nine Lives. Though the story remains in Egypt, it moves beyond the immediate vicinity of Per-Bastet, towards Heliopolis and eventually the Pharaoh. If you've already figured out what's going on, feel free to drop me a line. :)
Next chapter includes '3 Years later' and '7 Years Later' and so forth, so we are getting some progress in this beyond the first few weeks, which is why I included the 1 Year Later bit. (Otherwise it looks like this will take for-freaking-ever.)
I will be including the absolute year count as well from the coming chapter onwards.
