Written to the tune of Apple's Fleetwood Mac Essential Playlist. Thought you might like to know.

Please, shove your ideas at me. I need them!

Love and thanks :)


With all the confidence of a man who has nothing left to offer to the world, Harry ordered a mocha. In the absence of money, any morals Harry had left were high-tailing it out of the door in favour of the side of his brain that preferred caffeine to Doing The Right Thing. He confounded the thirty-something behind the counter. Besides, he only ordered a small, and the barista looked like he was two espressos away from trying to jump into a toilet of death himself. (Harry decided to call it that to try and trivialise the colossal fucking up he was in the midst of.)

The mocha was not the best coffee in New York. He hadn't been to New York before now, but he felt confident in his assessment. The shitty mocha (americano with granules) was about the only thing he owned right now — and he didn't even buy it himself.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Malfoy would be pleased.

Harry tried to think about his next move, but found he had about as much luck with trying to order his next plan of action as he ever did; meaning, with the finesse of Hermione on a broomstick. No matter where he went in life, however far he might progress as an Auror, planning and pragmatism were not where his strengths lay. He was certain the only reason he passed his training was because of his name.

He found comfort in the fact that it was probably also down to his taking down of the most recent Dark Lord as well. That thought alone kept him from sliding blissfully into a pit of impostor syndrome.

Morosely, Harry stirred countless dubious sachets into his equally dubious drink, staring at the table and at the grey street outside with equal dubiousness. He didn't need to go out there to understand he wasn't in his home world. Even without Hermione's year of alternate universe research (February to October, 2001), the lack of aggressive American wizards and witches storming into the cafe ranting about Muggle exposure (or whatever they called Muggles) was enough to prove to him he was essentially an alien here.

Thankfully, every universe Harry had been to had the comfort of shitty cups of coffee. He daren't try the tea here, but he thought tepid tea might taste just the same here as in his version of the world.

The door opened just as Harry dragged his eyes over to the menu board, content to sit here and sulk until they kicked him out. Intrigue blossomed in the space behind his ears — nobody had come in or left since he had been sitting here. It made it strange that nobody commented on his appearance, but he supposed that maybe they were used to clumsy idiots and the odd maniac materialising in the bathroom.

The man who had so courteously kicked Harry out of the bathroom was still lurking in there.

The man who walked in was so tall he had to duck through the doorway. Harry immediately disliked him because of this. His head was scarred, which somewhat redeemed him again because of Harry's history with matters such as those. Both he and the stranger flinched at the sudden baleful ring of the electric door. Once upon a time, that sound might have made the barista turn and greet the new customer with a smile. Now, the man in the apron simply paused before his sneeze and proceeded to continue rearranging the same three pots of mouldy coffee beans.

Mysterious Stranger looked around the cafe with a cheer that was obscenely out of place. He looked directly at Harry.

'Mr Witch!' He shouted, making the old woman who had glared at Harry slop her coffee into the saucer. She shot Mysterious Stranger a filthy look, and began muttering under her breath.

'Pardon?' Harry replied, as the man took a seat across the table from him. He lay his umbrella on the floor, not seeming to care that it made a loud clanging noise.

'I was told that was the term for your people?' Stranger looked confused. Harry felt sympathetic, and, with no Statute of Secrecy here that resembled what was in his own world that he could see, he decided to bare all.

'Uh, it's wizard for me. You know. Men and women, wizards and witches.'

'Ah!' The Mysterious Stranger immediately brightened. 'My mistake makes sense. We Aesir have not seen practitioners of Seidr for many years. Seidmadr for many more! It is a pleasure, truly.'

Frankly, Harry didn't know where to begin unpacking everything in this conversation. He longed for the uncomplicated life of two minutes ago, where his only issue was poorly blended coffee mixes and curtains that sent him to alternate worlds.

'Mate,' he began, faced with the smile of a self-satisfied mountain of a man, 'I think you've got the wrong person. I don't know what a — what you think I am. I don't know what that is.'

Mysterious Stranger frowned. 'You are not Harry Potter? You were not the one Heimdall spoke to?'

'Heimdall?'

'He sees all. He is the great gatekeeper —'

'I haven't spoken to anyone by that name recently. Sorry. Someone in your communications department hasn't done their job properly. But, well — I am Harry Potter.' Harry crossed his arms, jumper feeling stuffy. The man across from him appeared even more confused, and yet he became even more earnest.

'If you are the seidmadr by the name of Harry Potter, you have spoken to Heimdall.' Harry felt offended by his certainty, not least because it enforced his own descent into lunacy. 'Did you not just arrive in this realm?'

'Christ,' Harry said, in sudden realisation. 'That voice had a name?'

'So you have spoken to Heimdall!'

'I wouldn't call it the best of conversations, to be honest.'

'Heimdall advised me that you would be confused. It is why my presence is required here — you are indeed one of the more special travellers, Harry Potter.'

Suffering, Harry pulled some hair out of his scalp in search of relief. He found none. Who was this man, purveyor of random voices that haunted the space of nothingness between one 'realm' and the next? How did they know he was here? And, most importantly, why the fuck was he considered special even here?

Harry settled on the question he was most likely to get a prompt answer to. 'Sorry, but who are you?'

Mysterious Stranger smiled. 'I am Thor, Prince of Asgard. It is an honour to meet you, Harry Potter.'

Harry wandered if the granules that stuck to the sides of his coffee cup were actually hallucinogens. Maybe that was why the mocha tasted so off.