Though the man only looked slightly less suspicious than Harry with his mystical attire, once he wasn't alone, and they walked with a purpose and direction, the stares were reduced, and they swept past the busy streets in a flurry, the man's cloak whooshing behind him almost comically. "Who are you?" Harry asked him, trying to tug his arm away, still.
The man was far taller than he was, but he didn't seem to be particularly bulky, although he had considerable strength.
Then again, anything could be buried under the cloak he wore. The man didn't reply, just led him through what seemed to be the town square, pushing past throngs of drunk, gay people and taking Harry to a quieter, more secluded street.
It still seemed to have some shops, but they were the kind that was closed this time of night, unlike the bars and taverns in the centre.
The two finally stopped before the strangest shop on the block. As the man drew up a key from the depths of his cloak to open the door, Harry took a look through the massive window. 'TAROT READER. EXPERT ON THE MYSTICAL' It read in blocky, dark letters.
It read many more things, but before he could work it out, the man opened the door and shoved Harry into the shop.
In the darkness within, Harry couldn't make out a single solid shape before him, and he was keenly aware of the cloaked man's absence.
He thought that that would be his end, that the man had gone looking for a hacksaw and would now dismember him limb from limb. But, instead, he reappeared, illuminating the room with a candle lamp in his hand. "Come," he croaked at Harry.
From the light of the single candle, he could discern various hanging figures and strange objects set all around him, propped up in different ways, like a less dangerous but more intriguing version of Borgin and Burkes.
Harry snapped his attention from it as the man moved away together with the lamp, taking the light with him.
Thankfully, the floor wasn't as filled with knickknacks as the rest of the shop was, and he didn't stumble much aside from the occasional loose floorboard.
The man began going up a narrow set of stairs glued to the opposite wall of the shop, and Harry carefully followed after him, watching his step lest he should fall in this unfamiliar territory.
The possibility seemed all too likely considering his wobbly knees and weak though excited state.
He was full - exploding, in fact - with strong, powerful emotion, but he couldn't say what it was.
It wasn't pleasant, however, but it didn't torment him, either. Upstairs, a fire was crackling, and Harry could see his surroundings far better. There were comfortable-looking small pillows scattered before the fire together with some tatty blankets.
Pots, saucepans, and various kinds of spoons hung low over a small, round table with a few splintered stools.
There were a couple of cabinets, a small counter space, and what Harry thought was an icebox.
The stranger set down the lamp on the counter opened a drawer and withdrew long matches, which he used to light other lamps hanging from the shallow ceiling. The man's head almost touched the top of it.
As he watched the man illuminate the room, Harry stood frozen in place, completely uncomfortable, unsure of what to do.
It wasn't like he was too keen on running now that he was already here - besides, where could he go? Maybe this man was a wizard, too - an odd kind, granted, what with the tarot readings and whatnot, but a wizard nonetheless, and therefore a person that might grasp his situation and subsequently help him.
He didn't want to interrupt the man's process, either, and he felt weird speaking, so he just stood there like the world's dumbest statue. Finally, when the man was done, he faced Harry and took off his cloak. Harry was more than a little shocked at his appearance.
He had expected some sort of spaghetti-Western character, a Clint Eastwood of sorts or some kind of variation.
Instead, this man was lanky and tall, his skin a deep, copper tone that seemed bright and slightly sweaty. His lips were large and shapeless, his nose flat, his eyes bulging, large and beige from his head, giving him an overall insane look.
His dark dreads were lined with bits of gems and different colored metals, and the clothes he bore beneath his cloak were all tattered and worn but seemed comfortable on him.
He wore approximately a million different satchels and purses around his body and innumerable necklaces.
Try as he might, Harry couldn't place his age - he seemed old but young, withered but lively, ancient yet childish.
His face was lined but, given the murderous expression he was looking at Harry with, it could've just been premature frown lines.
Harry gulped, immediately far more uncomfortable than he had been just a minute before. "Where you from, boy?" The man asked him, moving to get a pot that was hanging from a strange contraption.
Only then did Harry notice the different crystals all the metals were incrusted with, and that seemed inlaid in every surface. "Little Whinging," Harry sputtered.
Then, he checked himself. He was certain this man wouldn't know where in the hell Little Whinging was located. "England," he corrected. "Gathered s'much," the man mumbled. "Frilly little accent," he said to himself, filling the pan with questionable water from a little sink at the side of the counter.
Harry didn't even know what the man meant by what he had said, and he hadn't even fully understood it between the man's low tone and his incomprehensible accent. "Excuse me, sir, but where exactly are we?"
He asked heatedly, hoping that the man wasn't a complete lunatic and perhaps had some idea about what was going on, and therefore wouldn't be so shocked at Harry's externally ridiculous question.
He had also decided to treat the man with the utmost respect, lest he attempted to make the pot he was holding a hat for Harry.
The man's back was turned to him, completely uncaring and indifferent towards the boy as he loaded the pot with random things, which was odd to Harry - surely the situation wasn't strange just to Harry, right?
How often did this man encounter random British teenagers in clothes that appeared to him as if from the future? "Louisiana, U S of A," answered the man stiffly. So, it was Louisiana.
It rang the smallest bell in Harry's mind, but he couldn't really place it in his mental image of the United States. He probably wasn't even able to locate New York or Washington on a map, much less Louisiana.
Was it in the south? He reckoned the accents aligned with his idea of the southern United States. "You ain't answer my question," the man reproached in a hostile tone, still throwing random spices and things into the pot. "Where you from?" "England," Harry repeated in a small tone, realizing even as he said it what the man had really meant. "England, 1995," Harry corrected.
The man paused, the sliced pieces of celery he had been holding clutched hard in his hand.
After a moment, he continued throwing in his ingredients and then hefted the massive pot to the crackling fire.
Harry supposed that that wasn't a good sign: having shocked this man, who seemed unshockable at first.
What year could it possibly be? Still, the man didn't turn back to look at him, and Harry had mostly withdrawn into himself by then, compelled, knowing that he should ask to know exactly when he was, but dreading the answer so fearfully he daren't pose the question yet.
After having hung the pot over the fire laboriously, huffing as he did it, the man wiped his sweaty brow and pulled out the smallest stool Harry had ever seen, setting himself on it, legs wide, elbows at his knees.
He looked comically large sitting on that dwarfish stool. Harry was still too worried to ask, but the man wasn't even looking at him but rather at the shadows that gathered around the room where the candlelight didn't touch.
They almost seemed to move if Harry didn't look at them straight-on.
The whole room suddenly felt oppressive and hostile, like there was some kind of madness lurking in the darkness that wanted to veer into the light and touch him.
Somehow, the man's severe gaze seemed to keep the shadows in check. But now, he came to the realization that he really must've been delusional by that point to be thinking such things.
The man suddenly looked at him. More specifically, at his forehead. Harry became painfully aware of his scar, as he always did when people looked at it fixedly. The man pointed at the lightning shape etched on his skin. "You're marked," he drawled. "Us… we're dark-dwellers. Marked by shadows," he spat at the corner of the room, where the darkness seemed to have pooled like a well of ink.
The spit came out brown. Nevertheless, the place was immaculate, considering that its dweller spat in it so comfortably.
Harry didn't know what he meant by 'being marked by shadows,' but whoever he was, this man knew something because he didn't know Harry at all, but he knew that his scar meant evil. "Are you a wizard?" He finally asked.
The man half-laughed half-choked in a dry manner, apparently indignant. "I ain't of that kind," he said with complete apathy. That kind? "Can you help me get home?" Harry asked, hearing how squeaky and pathetic he sounded even to his own ears.
Now the amusement in the man's face mostly melted away to something like pity and anger. "Help ye get home, you say? Do you know what this is, boy? If you got two brain-cells on each side of yer skull, you'll know that this ain't 1995," he spat again, this time into the fire.
It blazed up. He touched one of the crystals hanging around his neck. He stared down at the ground and then back up to Harry, who cowered near a corner but not too far lest the shadows eat him. "This here," the man said with a malicious smile, his charred, brown, and eaten teeth peeking unpleasantly from his cracked lips.
It was the most terrible smile Harry had ever seen in his life. "This here is 1905." Harry clutched whatever furniture was closest to him as the man stood and went to pick up a ladle from one of the hanging contraptions and stir the soup contently. 1905? He was ninety years into the past?
It couldn't be. There had to be some way to go back to his time, to where he belonged. He couldn't be stuck here, could he? His despair suddenly got the best of his fear, and he rushed to the scary man, who was stirring the soup.
The man looked up immediately and stared him down, his gaze telling him that if Harry got close enough to smell him, he'd poke out one of his eyeballs. "Listen," Harry pleaded shakily, "I - I need to get back to my… my time. I need to, I have things I…" but his speech faltered and sputtered out pathetically as the man began shaking his head. "Ain't no way, boy.
You know what kinda magic som'in like that need? 'Nd even if you had it - which you don't, you could run the risk with a helluva lot. But not with time. Not with time," he started shaking his head more and more, but by the last sentence, it seemed that he was speaking to himself more than he was to Harry.
He started muttering to himself, looking at his distorted mirror in the rusted surface of the ladle. Then, as he had his little moment to himself, Harry took a moment to think, the thoughts in his head all bundled up and tangled together like an old spool of thread.
He feared that what the man had told him sounded right, it sounded real, but he was even more afraid of it being the truth, of there really being no way back home. Not with time, he had said, and had Harry been a more inexperienced boy, he would've insisted - but he remembered the time-turner Hermione had used, how careful they had to be to go even an afternoon back - let alone forward, and ninety years from now.
Harry stumbled a bit on his feet, feeling the impossibility of the situation gather all around him like the hungry shadows in the corners. He grabbed onto the brick of the fireplace and burned himself and then sat - or, rather, fell - on one of the cushions around the fire.
His head swam. The sudden heat, the exhaustion, the impossible fantasy, even more, impossible than anything he had lived until now, pounding at his head mercilessly.
He became dimly aware of the man turning back to him, snapping out of his feverish haze. "You boutta faint on me, boy?" He asked, and Harry could only see his dark face going in and out of focus.
And when he finally did faint, the last thing he saw were those disgusting teeth. "Don't let the shadows get ya'" He heard before finally passing to blackness.