November 1069

My first stop was John's chapel, muttering a Name the entire way. That, unfortunately, was empty. I hemmed and hawed a bit, still muttering, and decided the next most likely place was the library, and set out in that direction. The air getting progressively colder along the way should've been a clue in and of itself, but I was rather focused at the time. Which is why, when I entered the room, I stopped in surprise at seeing John, Elfleda, and Eva inside.

I think I also blinked.

Elfleda shot first. "You're back," she said, looking up from the table and book she and Eva were sat around.

"Yeah. Don't know for how long though," I said, before turning to John. "Is there spare parchment and something to write with here?"

"There is," he said slowly. "Why?"

"I need to write a letter," I explained.

John looked at the closed window and the lack of light peering through the edges. "Now?" he asked.

I nodded.

He sighed, and moved to a new table in the room, which had one of those small chests sized to fit on a table. There was a simple latch-lock which he put up before opening the chest and briefly yet carefully rummaging around inside. Then he took out a piece of parchment, a quill, and an inkwell.

"Thank you," I said, grabbing all three and moving over to the table by the window, having to crouch down in the process because the table was so far down. I then penned out a quick letter to Salazar explaining the situation to him, asking him to look into it, asking for an urgent reply, and also asking him if he lived in Cornwall. It was a bit of a pointless question, I was going to claim that anyway, but I guess I was curious.

Once that was done, I gave quill and inkwell back to John, grabbed the parchment, and then sat down in an unoccupied chair with a sigh. "I see I missed a lot over the last ten days. Everyone came back, plus some more." I glanced over at Eva, who didn't seem to be melancholy, sad, or grieving. "Your father and brother are alright?"

She nodded. "They are, thank you for asking."

"Good," I said, groaning and stretching. "That's good."

"That's twice now you've departed for a good stretch of time," Elfleda said. "Where did you go?"

"To meet with some colleagues," I said. "We meet, well, every month or two to catch up."

"Rather frequent," she noted. "Considering how long you're gone."

I shrugged. "It is how it is. I see the king's in town."

"Yes, he joined with his brother's host as Robert marched back from Lindsey," John said. "They returned three days ago."

"That must have been hectic," I said.

"It was certainly unexpected," he replied.

Elfleda, meanwhile, was eyeing me curiously. "You met him, didn't you?" she asked.

I looked back at her. "Why do you ask?"

She arched an eyebrow, the one John couldn't see, then winked. "Somehow, I doubt that you are any good with heraldry."

"That's not inaccurate," I hedged.

"How did it go?" she pressed.

I took a deep breath. "Well, I'm still alive and the castle isn't on fire, so… fairly well."

"Such low standards," she said.

"My experience with… important people has been predominantly negative," I said.

Before Elfleda could respond there was a tap-tap-tap against the window, like someone was hitting it with a pointed object. Like a beak.

"Ah, here we go," I said, getting up from my chair and heading to open the window. "That was fast."

"Harry, what are you…" John trailed off as a giant, gray-feathered owl hopped in the moment I opened the window.

I should ask Helga sometime how she got her owl, then I wouldn't have to keep borrowing hers.

"Hello, Hogwig," I said, furling up the parchment and holding it up to him. "I have a letter for Salazar."

The owl gave me a right-angled look before straightening his head and slowly looking around the room.

"Look, I don't have any food for you right now–"

Hogwig screeched.

"Ow," I said, wincing. "I will have extra for you when you come back, which should be later this night since Salazar should respond quickly. And he'll feed you."

Hogwig screeched again.

"Look, just, please, I'm in a hurry," I said, holding out the parchment.

Hogwig swelled and ruffled his feathers, and gave me another right-angled look, this time from the other direction. After a few moments though, he roughly grabbed the parchment out of my hand and flew back out the window. Which I then closed.

When I turned around, everyone was looking at me as I had grown a second head. Eva was also looking excited.

"What was that?" she asked.

"A messenger owl," I said.

"A messenger… owl," John slowly repeated. "That you argued with."

"Yup," I said.

"How does it even know to find this… Salazar?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Heck if I know. He just does. It's magic."

"And can anyone call upon this owl?" Elfleda asked.

"That one? No. He's a friend's, I don't have one of my own," I replied.

"Hmm. And he'll be back with a response tonight, in your opinion," she noted. "How close is this Salazar?"

"Cornwall," I replied.

John, Elfleda, and Eva all looked at each other, then back at me.

"Magic," I repeated, this time with special emphasis.

Shortly after that demonstration John got called away to do some job or another, leaving me alone in the small library with Elfleda and Eva. Predictably, Eva was the first to ask a question.

"When do I get my own owl?"

"Sometime after I figure out how to get an owl, and how to keep one," I replied, then gave it some more thought. "But probably not too long after. Unlike with some kinds of magic, the worst thing you can do is have it fly away because you're not looking after it properly. And I suppose it would make a good test of responsibility."

Eva made a sound vaguely akin to a squee.

"Why don't you have one of your own?" Elfleda asked.

"I just didn't see the point previously. I mean, I was a solitary hermit. I see the point now, to keep in touch and so on, but back then?" I shrugged. "Looking after a horse and myself was tough enough. I didn't want to add an owl on top of it."

"Why?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Why was it tough?" she asked. "With your skills you could be a metalworker, a jeweler, a merchant, more."

I sat back and sighed. "I could, I suppose. I could be… a lot more, if I wanted to. I certainly have the options." I looked at Eva. "Something you're going to learn, Eva, is that as you accumulate power, more gets offered to you. I don't think there's a wizard or witch alive or dead that hasn't been offered or is at least aware of a more direct route to power. A lot of them could seem attractive, and some are, but there's always a price." I flexed my gloved left hand, staring at the spot where Lasciel's sigil had been once. "But to tie it back to your implied question, Elfleda, it's because… it's familiar, living like I do, doing what I do."

And that was it, really. I broke some of my rules before coming here, and getting involved in politics and a project as big as the project broke some more, and in comparison to everything I'd done expanding my business a little was barely even an issue. I mean, I was already liberally employing magic in my home and was a court wizard; selling custom-made jewelry to have a more comfortable life was minor next to that. But I also felt adrift. The only familiar faces around were all enemies, and I didn't even get the opportunity to relax and not constantly watch my back. I wanted to hold onto something familiar, because sometimes, I felt like snapping.

And considering just how many bad options I knew I could take, I didn't want to snap.

"I see," Elfleda said.

"I'm not sure you do," I replied. "But I don't really want to get into it."

She nodded slowly. "You said you might be leaving again soon?"

"Depends on what Salazar's response is. There's some maybe-bandit problem down in Cornwall, farmsteads disappearing," I said. "Assuming I do have to go, that'll take… about a month? Riding there and back, however long the investigation takes…" I groaned. "Why didn't I get someone else to do this job?"

"To be closer to me?" Elfleda proposed.

I snorted, then sighed and looked at Eva. "I really need to figure out a better way to teach you. Repeatedly leaving for extended periods of time isn't going to work in the long term."

"Could you not simply fabricate some excuse and take her with you?" Elfleda asked.

Eva looked both nervous and excited at that.

"If I were traveling alone, maybe," I hedged. "But in this case I'm going to be traveling with the king's wizard, Armaund Malfoy."

Elfleda snorted. "Malfoy?"

"Yeah, I know. Why he willingly goes by that name I don't know, it's like hanging a sign that says 'DUNCE' around your head," I said. "You may have seen him. Bit tall, thin, wears all blue, lanky black hair."

"Ah. Yes, I have, briefly," Elfleda said. "You don't wish for him to know about Eva?"

"He's a self-serving as... bastard from what I hear and I don't want to give him any potential leverage," I said, crossing my arms as I turned from Elfleda to Eva. "I think I'll need to speak with my colleagues, see if I can't arrange some kind of rotation. When I took you on I was really expecting to have more free time and not have to gallivant around so much, beyond the monthly meetings, which I intended you to spend with your family." I sighed.

"Do you plan to ride all the way to Cornwall?" Elfleda asked.

"I'm not walking there, if that's what you're asking," I replied.

"Obviously not, but it's a coastal county, is it not? The stretch of land that sticks out to the southwest of this island?"

I nodded slowly.

"Could you not save time by taking a boat, rather than traveling by land?" she asked.

I settled back further and got to thinking. "Well, it's about a day from here to London on horseback, if you push it somewhat. And if you grabbed a boat right after you could. But there would need to be a boat heading west that was either planning to or was willing to stop off at Cornwall, and then there's the matter of payment…" I trailed off, then smiled. "Which actually I don't have to worry about at all. If I tell Malfoy one of my colleagues is already working on the problem he'll want to get there faster, so I can get him to cover the costs." I chuckled. "Yeah, okay, thanks Elfleda, that's a good idea."

She smiled and shrugged.

"That would cut it down to… maybe two weeks, if the Channel's favorable and the investigation doesn't take too long?" I guessed. "Still not great, but it's something." I sighed and stretched. "But, hopefully, Salazar agrees to go on without me and I can get Malfoy to waste his time on his own."

"Do you think that's likely?" Elfleda asked.

"That's why I said hopefully."

I was, predictably, woken up in the middle of the night by an insistent knocking against my bedroom window. Actually, I had two, considering the size of the room, so to be more accurate it was the window right above my bed. And it was loud.

Damn owl.

"I'm up, I'm up," I grumbled, half-flailing around in the dark before I managed to untangle myself from my bedfurs and open the window. Hogwig immediately flew in and dropped a letter on my head, circling for a bit before spotting the table full of meats and water I'd laid out for him and swooping down on it like, well, an owl.

"Where is, ah," I muttered, looking around by moonlight for a candle. "Flickum bicus."

With the bedside candle lit, I shifted in my bed and brought up the note, squinting as I did so.

I am not doing your work for you, but I will look into this matter. I will find you when you arrive.

And you will arrive.

My home is not in Cornwall. My English residence is.

Do not send me letters in the night again.

SS

"Hell's bells," I groaned, then tried to flop back onto the bed. The angle didn't really work though, and I ended up hitting the wall with my back. "Ow."

Hogwig didn't even look up from his meal.

"Just my luck," I muttered, carefully setting the letter down before getting up and moving over to one of my shelves to grab a quill and some ink. Hogwig seemed to notice at some point during the process, because when I turned back around he was giving me a death glare.

"You're going back to Helga aren't you?" I asked, shuffling back to my bed. "And that's a lot of food."

The glare lessened slightly.

I sat down, flipped Salazar's letter around, and started writing on the other side. I penned out a brief letter to Helga asking her to talk with Rowena and see if they could possibly establish a schedule to be substitute teachers for Eva if necessary, and to ignore the back side of the letter. After some thought, I also added,

P.S. How do you get an owl? Don't send a response, just tell me when we meet again.

I let the ink dry while Hogwig finished eating and drinking, then furled the letter back up and handed it to Hogwig, who left without any further fanfare.

There was a brief, paranoid moment where I half-expected something or someone to pop out of the darkness and announce itself, like Mab or Lea, and I carefully looked around the room. After confirming it was empty, I blew out the candle and settled back into bed.

After I woke up for the second time, I set about packing a lot of odds and ends for a longer trip. Cloves of garlic, an iron baseball, a long chain of belts, and a few potions I didn't find useful for regular work. Like the blending potion. The last time I'd made that, it had worked really, really well… up until the point people started dying and all my warnings were ignored.

So I didn't use that around people anymore, and considering all of my prior work had involved people, that made it basically useless to me if something happened. But here and now? If I was stalking something in the woods or something like that, the ability to be ignored as part of the background was pretty handy. And it also served as a kind of detection system. Namely, if something saw through it, that was bad news.

Also, it might shut Salazar up. That would be a bonus.

It all went into a great big bag with extra padding, which in turn was going to on Shadowfax. The biter deserved it.

After that, I ate breakfast, grabbed the rest of my stuff, saddled Shadowfax, and headed off to the castle. There, I took the sealed writ from Robert, put it into a bag, and met up with Malfoy. Who seemed to handle a horse rather well, actually. Then we rode off.

It took about an hour of silent, sullen-on-his-end riding before he realized something. "We're going southeast," he said.

"Yup. And Cornwall's in the southwest. I know. But London's a port city, and boats are faster," I said. "I mean, I assume you do want to get this done quickly, right? I mean, I wouldn't mind taking the long, scenic route, it would give more time for my colleague to conduct his investigation."

Malfoy shifted in his seat to mostly-stare, partially-glare at me. "Your colleague?"

"Salazar Slytherin. I sent him a message last night. He's already on the case," I said. "I figured you'd be happy with that. Less time spent traipsing around the countryside."

Malfoy narrowed his eyes. "Salazar is a Spaniard. He cannot reach Cornwall in a timely manner except through the Ways."

"Sure. Which, you know, would be a problem if the king knew for sure that Salazar hadn't been in Cornwall, and thus get suspicious of the short travel time. And that is assuming, of course, Salazar isn't already in Cornwall. Which he is, since he lives there," I said. "Owls are just so useful, aren't they? And a lot safer and kosher to talk about them than the Ways, don't you think?"

Malfoy frowned slightly, probably at my use of 'kosher.' I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't know what it meant; Jewish oppression had been a historical constant for hundreds and thousands of years and probably would be for more, and I didn't have the first clue how to start fixing that.

That was a tangent though. The relevant bit is that kosher became a colloquialism for 'safe' and 'acceptable' and other similar synonyms. Which Malfoy wouldn't know about.

God, I'm bored. Boats suck. There's nothing to do. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Throughout the rest of the day we pushed our horses harder than would have been ideal were we on a longer journey, but as we planned to go by boat the horses would get plenty of time to rest. We got to London about half an hour before twilight gave way to night, rode through the city to the docks, and started hitting up portside taverns to try and find a merchant or fishing vessel that was going west and would be willing to stop at Cornwall.

Or I did at least. Malfoy grudgingly trailed after me, looking around the taverns with veiled disdain and not even taking a seat.

It took us a few hours of barhopping to find a merchant going west, at which point I graciously left the negotiating to Malfoy as it was, after all, his money we were using.

No, I wasn't deriving any enjoyment from watching him negotiate with someone 'beneath him', why do you ask?

I didn't manage to get him to spend the night at that same inn, unfortunately, but that was alright. The first day had gone well enough. Admittedly the bed in the room I stayed in wasn't great, but it was a whole lot better than sleeping outside.

Come morning Malfoy came back from wherever he was staying and we went onto the boat, stabling our horses down below and, in Malfoy's case, leaning on the railing in the front of the ship. Me, I helped a bit with loading the ship. Goodwill rarely hurt.

The rest of the day passed without incident, though Malfoy curiously spent a lot of time either at the front or the back of the ship. I really didn't pay that much attention to him though. The day passed in the aforementioned boredom – I'd brought some texts on magic to pass the time, but the rocking of the boat and the flickering of the candle made it really annoying to try and read – and ultimately I went to sleep.

Am going to sleep. Whatever.

"You've been avoiding me."

Author's Note: Introducing Harry the Hitchhiker, bumming around on Malfoy's dime.