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Chapter 20: Voodoo Child
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It was two days before they were due to return to Hogwarts, and more books were required. Tosh was positively ecstatic at the prospect of revisiting the magical bookstore, especially now that she had a better idea of what she wanted to look for.
Thus the team made their second ever trip to Diagon Alley. Jack's past-self once again accompanied them, and in spite of what the team had learned of his... bad habits... this summer, he seemed surprisingly cheerful, as well.
"I got the week off work." he informed them brightly, "Starting today, and Carol hasn't even blocked my passport this time."
"Sounds like they had you on a pretty short leash." Owen muttered to their own version of Jack.
Jack glowered at him, but then shrugged in a poor attempt at dismissing his irritation, "Yes." he said with a curt nod, "Yes, they did."
"I'll get our books, guys." Tosh said eagerly, when they reached Flourish and Blott's, "Meet you at the ice-cream shop."
Nods and murmurs of agreement barely reached her ears as she darted quickly into the store in question. "Well that's her sorted for the day." Owen said, with a hint of jealousy... though it was practically impossible to tell if he was jealous that she was enjoying herself, or that she preferred the books to being around him. Even if they all knew he would never admit to the latter. "Like a kid in a candy store."
"So now what do we do?" Gwen asked.
"Well, there is a candy store just down the street." Ianto suggested.
No one else had time to comment on the suggestion, however sardonic and joking it had been, because Jack appeared to have other plans. "I want a broomstick." he announced bluntly, and began leading the way towards the Quidditch shop.
"Were you a spoiled brat when you were twelve, by any chance?" Owen asked, staring up at Jack's past-self.
Past-Jack blinked a couple of times, putting on the familiar mask of everything's-just-fine-and-don't-you-love-me-too-much-to-pry. "No, actually. I really wasn't."
Before Owen could attempt to pry anyway, past-Jack started to follow his other self. The rest of the team was left staring after him in mild confusion, before exchanging significant looks, and jogging to catch up.
They found Jack and his past-self in the Quidditch shop, both intently browsing the merchandise. Jack, himself, was examining a rack of broomsticks, with labels detailing their statistics and strengths. Ianto was mildly disturbed to see that the one he seemed especially interested in cost three hundred galleons.
Fifteen hundred pounds! For an enchanted bit of wood! While it was true that Ianto had taken an interest in Quidditch- as a fan, with no ambition to ever actually play the game- that did not blind him to the fact that this was obviously ridiculously overpriced.
Meanwhile, Jack's past-self was scanning the first few pages of a book titled 'A Guide to Quidditch Strategies, and How to Get Away With Cheating'. That, somehow, entirely failed to surprise him.
"You're not planning on joining the house Quidditch team, are you?" Ianto asked incredulously.
"And why not?" Jack asked, looking up at him with a genuinely blank expression that made it crystal clear he did not see a problem with this.
"You've only ever flown before in those classes we took last year." Ianto said, "You need loads of practice, and I've heard that the Slytherin team especially are very picky."
"Not to mention political." Jack said, grinning in a disturbingly knowing way. It was always so very worrying when Jack came up with a Plan. Even more so because he so rarely deigned to explain it. "I'm sure I'll do just fine."
"I wouldn't bet on it, Harkness." Draco Malfoy's voice rang coldly from the doorway. He shoved past Owen and Gwen, with a brief look of disgust at even being near them, before striding across the shop and standing right in front of Jack, doing his very best to look important. "You're right about the Quidditch team being political. And the thing is... my father bought the team's brooms. So somehow I doubt that anyone I disapprove of has a chance."
Jack's most calculating expression flashed so briefly across his face that it was almost unnoticeable... then he grinned again, "Sure, whatever you say, Malfoy. I think I fancy my chances just fine."
He turned and pointed to the broom he had been eyeing up. The one that cost fifteen hundred pounds. "That one."
"Fine, but you owe me." Jack's past-self said with such totally blunt honesty that it made Ianto wonder what he could possibly believe his own future-self could 'owe' him. None of the possibilities that crossed his mind seemed good.
"Oh yeah, sure. You can fly it when you're old enough." Jack sniped in a sardonic tone that was meant to sound like he was joking. Ianto knew better.
"Didn't you hear me, Harkness?" Draco snapped, stepping in his way as he turned to head up to the counter to buy the broom. "There is absolutely no way you're getting onto the Slytherin Quidditch team as long as I'm at Hogwarts."
Jack tilted his head back slightly, so that he managed to give the impression of looking down at Draco, in spite of being noticeably shorter. "Well if you're going to be that way about it. Maybe I'll try out for the Hufflepuff team."
Draco spluttered, somewhere between complete outrage and utter confusion.
Ianto laughed, "Yeah, I'll tell Diggory about that. He'll love it!"
Draco proceeded to storm off in a sulk, swearing a blue streak about Hufflepuffs and Jack's ancestors.
Meanwhile, Jack's past-self had brought both the broomstick and the book he had been reading to the counter, and was cheerfully joking- and flirting- with the sales assistant there. Grumbling about goblin conspiracies and decimalisation, to the young man who wholeheartedly agreed that while he would never want to leave it, the magical world really did need to wake up and smell the twentieth century.
It ended, disturbingly enough with Jack's past-self acquiring the sales assistant's phone number and agreeing to a date that very weekend.
Ianto warily edged over to his Jack, and muttered quietly, "You do realise he-" Ianto indicated the other Jack, "-now has a date this Saturday?"
Jack gave Ianto a faintly calculating smirk, "Jealous?"
"No! Of course not. Why should I be?" he defended immediately, "This is before you ever met me." He really wasn't convinced by his own words, and clearly neither was Jack, who put an arm around Ianto's shoulders in a comforting gesture.
"It won't last." he said gently, "You know me. I'll flirt with anything with an IQ higher than that of a telemarketer. You shouldn't take it seriously. I know I never did."
"Ah, so that's why I caught you snogging a toaster, one time." Owen joked. While the insinuation that a toaster was smarter than a telemarketer was not lost on Ianto, he still resented the fact that Owen just had to make light of his problems. Every chance he got.
"And me...?" Ianto asked Jack warily, careful to lower his voice so that the others would no longer hear him.
Jack grinned, "Do you really think I'd bother to reassure you like that if I wasn't serious?" He lightly kissed Ianto on the forehead. "Just... try and ignore him. It's what I usually do." he added, glancing at his past-self.
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Tosh left Flourish and Blott's with a large bag bulging with books, even though the only new textbook they required this year was one copy of 'The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 2)' each.
She had also picked up 'New Theory of Numerology', 'Practical Portkeys'... and an especially large tome titled, 'Tampering With Time', which went on to advertise on its cover chapters such as 'Time Turners; yesterday here I come', 'Freezing Spells; the only way forward', 'One hundred and one things that could prevent you from having ever existed', and 'How not to become your own grandfather'.
She especially looked forward to reading that last one.
As she headed for Florean Fortescue's ice cream shop, she noticed an oddly worn sign creaking slightly in the breeze. She could have sworn it wasn't there last year.
'Havelock and Slinkhard, Rare and Exotic Books Emporium'.
The sign pointed down a darker side-street. Much like Diagon Alley itself, it turned crookedly, and wound out of sight within a very short distance.
She glanced down at her watch, and decided she still had time. One more stop. She really couldn't resist the possibility of having access to uncommon information.
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Gwen stared into her empty ice-cream glass, frowning at it as if it was the cause of a great and terrible evil upon the world. Well, in a way it was. There was no more ice-cream!
Jack kept checking the watch on his right arm, and looking more irritable by the second. The fourth time he did this, Gwen sighed dramatically, and finally she chose to be the one to ask, "Where is she?"
"It's been over an hour." Jack said, sounding deeply worried.
"She can take care of herself." Owen dismissed. The lucky sod still had ice-cream, and was far too intent on eating it to be concerned with the well-being of his friend and co-worker.
"We should go and make sure." Gwen suggested, frowning, "She could be in trouble."
"What sort of trouble could she possibly get into in a public place like this?" Owen asked.
Jack glanced down at his Vortex Manipulator- which the entire team had discovered on several occasions could also be a communicator, and a source of valuable information beyond simply the time. "Okay, let's go find her. Somewhere... that way." He pointed.
The other three gave him an odd look, but his past-self seemed entirely unsurprised. "How'd you know where she is?" Gwen asked.
"She's got a tracking chip imbedded in her skull." Jack said bluntly, "Courtesy of a brief stay with UNIT, before I recruited her."
Ianto nodded slowly, "Yeah, I have one to. It was standard issue for all employees in Torchwood One."
Gwen scowled, but it was Owen who butted in with a horrified outburst of, "You don't have one of those things on me, do you?"
"No, neither of you have them." Jack said, shrugging, "I'm not a tyrannical despot like Yvonne Hartman."
Ianto snickered at this. The others didn't get the reference.
Jack stood up, "Come on, let's go find Tosh."
Owen finished the runny remains of his ice-cream in record time, and had to jog to catch up with the others, just as they reached a side-street. "This way." Jack said, indicating the darker alleyway.
"Uh, Owen..." past-Jack said, looking very much like he was trying not to laugh. Gwen glanced at Owen to see precisely why. Treating melted ice-cream like a drink while in a hurry had messy and hilarious-looking results.
"You've got ice-cream." Gwen giggled, "On your face."
"Don't say it." Jack said to his past-self, before turning to lead the way down the side-street.
"But-" past-Jack began.
Before Jack could repeat his command, Ianto caught his arm, "Jack, wait!" Jack stopped, and everyone was staring at Ianto now.
Owen surreptitiously wiped the remains of the ice-cream he had called lunch from his mouth.
"We can't go down there." Ianto said, with what sounded very much like genuine fear in his voice, "That's Knockturn Alley. It's dangerous."
"Know-it-all." Owen grumbled.
Ianto shot him a vicious glare, before turning back to the others, "Nobody goes down Knockturn Alley unless they're up to no good."
"So it's a shady neighbourhood." past-Jack said dismissively, "I'll bet you any money I've lived in worse."
Jack shrugged, in a vague 'I really wouldn't argue with him' sort of way. "Tosh is down there."
That was the end of that argument, and they all followed Jack.
This Knockturn Alley was a terribly dreary place. Stereotypically dark and creepy. It did put Gwen on edge, but she had seen harmless goth kids clothes that looked scarier... it honestly gave that vibe of trying to be off-putting to outsiders, rather than of having real reason to fear it.
Trying just a little too hard, really. It was a bit dank, very dark, with a torture-chamber-gothic style, rather than the classic fairy-tale feel of the rest of the magical world. Most of the buildings were sealed off, or simply the back entrance to some of the main Diagon Alley shops.
The first shop they passed that wasn't boarded up looked strongly reminiscent of Professor Snape's private store-room, which they had seen briefly during a class on identifying poisons.
There were a few stalls, with very disturbing looking trinkets and amulets for sale. One looked like everything there was made from a combination of human fingers, animal claws, and tufts of hair. Another sold what looked distinctly like Ouija boards and voodoo dolls.
"Y'know." past-Jack said conversationally, "This kinda reminds me of a place I visited once, on Titan. Except there were slightly fewer dismembered body parts for sale... and a lot more alien hookers."
As he said this, their Jack- the younger-looking-but-really-older version of him- was examining the stall with the voodoo dolls just a little too intently for Gwen's liking.
The people here, mostly stall owners and a few skulking vagrants, gave them very odd looks, but didn't dare bother the rather large group that, however young most of them appeared, managed to give off an air of knowing precisely what they were doing and where they were going.
The third actual store they came to was a book store. Jack stopped outside it, and it was clear this was where Tosh was.
"Typical." Owen grumbled, "Just bloody typical."
Upon stepping into the shop, they saw that the creepy-goth theme continued in here. A tall and incredibly austere man in a Victorian-style suit looked up at them as the door closed behind them.
"Ah, more... customers." he said in a level of dark sarcasm that even Ianto had never mastered.
Tosh, it turned out, was here, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, scanning a book carefully. She looked up, grinning, "Hi, guys." she said brightly.
"Tosh, what do you think you're doing here?" Ianto asked, both concerned and a bit angry.
Tosh stared, glancing down at her book, then up at Ianto, seeming rather hurt, "What's the matter?" she asked, confused.
"Knockturn Alley is not a safe place for anyone, let alone a lone twelve-year-old girl." Ianto insisted.
Gwen noticed the faint flicker of dark amusement on the shopkeeper's face, and it seemed to add to her theory that they wanted to give that impression, rather than all being really dangerous.
"I'm fine, Ianto." Tosh insisted, "Sure, it's a bit creepy, but I've seen worse. And these books!" she continued, now practically gleeful, "Jack, you've got to read this one."
The shopkeeper cleared his throat rather pointedly.
"Oh, yes. I want to buy all three of these." Tosh said eagerly, handing one book to Jack and closing the other two, "Thank you for letting me look at them."
"I'll handle this." past-Jack said, quickly stepping up to the counter. Gwen did hear him talking quietly to the man... and within seconds he was laughing. The shopkeeper maintained a straight face, but seemed to get the joke nonetheless.
Gwen really did wonder what was so funny... but Jack's past-self didn't deign to explain it to any of them.
As they left the shop, past-Jack informed them brightly, "This may well be my favourite shady neighbourhood so far. Never did like the alien hookers on Titan, anyway."
x x x
On the Hogwarts Express, the Torchwood team found a compartment to themselves and settled in for the journey, with many books to pass the time, just like last time. Although Tosh, instead, had taken out her wand, the golden pen-shaped magical inference detector that Jack had given her for Christmas last year, and a notebook... and had even managed to wheedled Jack out of his wrist strap for the time being.
While she cast minor charms in the air and made meticulous notes on the energy signatures they produced, Jack busied himself at the doorway of the compartment.
"What, exactly, are you up to?" Owen asked incredulously, peering over the potions book he had been reading.
"I believe the technical term... is voodoo." Jack said idly, not looking up from what looked far more like a booby-trap on the door than any form of actual magic.
"Oh, this can't be good." Gwen muttered, staring over her copy of the Quibbler, eyes wide with fascination none-the-less.
"Yeah, how is that voodoo?" Owen demanded, "And why are you using dark magic, right now, anyway?"
"It's not 'dark magic'... just a DNA trigger." Jack said, waving a dismissive hand at them both, "The rest of it is of entirely non-magical origins."
"So you've set that thing to go off when a particular person enters the compartment?" Gwen asked, getting the more technobabble term of 'DNA trigger' far more easily than most normal people would, especially in the magical world.
"Which they undoubtedly will." Jack said, nodding.
"And the trap itself?" Owen pried, now intensely curious with the sort of malicious anticipation that this could be a lot of fun to watch.
Jack shrugged, finishing with the device and taking his seat next to Ianto, who was pretending not to have noticed what Jack had been up to, let alone the conversation about it.
"Tar and feathers. A classic."
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"Hey, did you guys hear about the Quidditch World Cup?" Gred asked as he and his twin appeared in the doorway of the Torchwood team's compartment on the train, both wearing identical grins. The voodoo trap did not go off.
Owen's face fell in disappointment, but he recovered quickly and asked, "Yeah, Quidditch hooligans, right?"
He happily ignored both the snickering from Gwen and Jack, and the confused looks that said snickering inspired on the twins' faces.
Gred gave Jack an odd look, while Forge retorted, "Actually, we were talking about Krum catching the Snitch." He and his twin happily sat themselves down in the window seats, without an invitation, as they spoke.
"But Ireland won the match." Gred explained as if this made sense. It went right over Owen's head, in spite of Oliver Wood's best efforts, on that first day they had been to Diagon Alley.
"One hundred and sixty to one." Ianto answered bluntly. Everyone stared at him for a moment. "What? Those are the odds."
"Oh ho!" Gred crowed.
"Bagman ripped us off!" Forge explained.
"He gave us twenty to one!" Gred elaborated. It was kind of maddening listening to them like this.
"Still not a bad payout." Forge noted.
"If he ever does pay up." Gred observed, his tone turning dark.
"Been dodging us since the match." Forge agreed, also beginning to sound a bit threatening. It was now perfectly clear that they were both plotting ways to get their money back, and this Bagman person would regret it.
Just at that moment, the door slid open again, "Hey, Harkness-" the familiar, snobbish voice of Draco Malfoy began, in what must have been his best attempt at a threatening tone. Owen didn't buy it for a moment.
And that was all he succeeded in saying before the tar and feathers hit him in the face.
"Aww, classic!" Forge crowed gleefully.
"Brilliant!" his twin agreed.
Malfoy spluttered indignantly, trying to wipe the mess off his face. "Watch your step there, Malfoy." Jack said with cheerful false-innocence, "That could easily have been something much more dangerous."
"You smug bastard, Harkness! I will get you for this!" Malfoy snarled, before turning and fleeing further down the train, to the echoing sound of raucous laughter from everyone who saw him pass.
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