Harry Potter as written by William Gibson
Necromancer
The sky over Knockturn Alley was the color of dead ashes left in a fireplace, after a Floo call.
"It's not like I'm drinking," Harry heard, as he opened the door and entered the Snake-and-Skull pub, "it's just that my body's developed this massive Firewhisky deficiency." It was a wizard joke---you could hang around in Knockturn Alley for your whole life and never run into a single Muggle.
Harry Potter had once been a Seeker. One of the best in the game, he had helped his team, the Chudley Cannons, win victory after victory. Then he had done the one thing that could not be forgiven. He had taken money from gamblers who wanted to have some power over the point-spread, to avoid catching the Snitch until the spread had been beaten.
The people who had caught up to him had been very kind. He could keep the money, they said. In fact, they insisted that he keep it, because he was going to need it. They would make sure he never made the same mistake again.
They had dosed him with a potion that gave him unendurable vertigo---but only when he was on a broom. Strapped to a bed in the Leaky Cauldron, he had hallucinated for twenty straight hours.
Harry, like all Quidditch players, had lived to fly---and now he could not. He still had his magic, but the thing that he'd loved most was now forever beyond his reach.
Now he hustled for his living, under his new nom-de-guerre of "Harry Greeneyes." Nobody here knew he had once been the Boy-who-Lived, the Quidditch star, Harry Potter---and he wanted to keep it that way. He was a wand for hire, and available to the highest bidder, like many others in Knockturn Alley.
Knockturn Alley was like a complicated dance, where if you went too fast or too slow, you could end up as potions ingredients, or a fading memory in the minds of real old-timers like the Swede, who tended bar at the Snake-and-Skull. It was a real-life experiment in Social Darwinism, where only the toughest and most ruthless survived.
At first, every Knut Harry had made had gone toward finding a cure, but even the finest Healers, first in the UK, then the rest of the world, had shaken their heads sadly. The potions he had been force-fed were experimental neurotoxins, not even on the market yet, and even the Black Healers in Basin City, California, could figure out a counter-toxin or spell.
Pushing through the crowd, Harry elbowed aside a hag who was busily arguing over prices on some hot potions ingredients and got up close to the bar. The Swede looked at him incuriously. "The usual, Swede."
"You're getting kind of predictable, Greeneyes," commented the Swede, as he drew a glass of Muggle-made Guinness and handed it over at the sight of Harry's cash. "One of these days, someone's going to be waiting for you."
"Predictable helps my customers find me, Swede." Harry took a long pull of the beer. It was an unusual taste for a wizard, but he had found he actually preferred Muggle-made beers after his experience with the potions. Most potions reacted very badly to Muggle drinks, and he was taking no chances on anybody dosing him, ever again.
"Ha ha," the Swede commented sourly. "Her---" he pointed at the hag---"she's twice as profitable for me as you are. You, I let stay here for the amusement value." The Swede wiped down the bar. "By the way, a girl was in here earlier, asking for you."
"A job?" Harry leaned forward. Living the way he did, with an ostensible address that he actually never went near, and several real boltholes that he used for sleeping, was expensive, and although his services weren't cheap, he never managed to save much money.
"Maybe." Just then, Harry felt a hand on his shoulder, and he whirled, bringing his wand up to bear. "And there she is now."
Harry found himself facing a bushy-haired girl wearing what looked to him like Muggle-made mirrored sunglasses. She was dressed in a pair of skintight black leather trousers and a black dragon-hide jacket. "Hi. You're Greeneyes, aren't you? I want to talk to you."
"Don't talk to anybody without I know their name," Harry managed to say; he could see the wand in her hand, not quite pointed at him.
"Call me Mione. Mione Millions. My boss is looking to hire you." She gave him a sardonic smile. "I think you'll like what he has to offer you."
"What could he have to offer me? The Swede here should have told you I don't come cheap."
"How about a cure for that little vertigo problem you've got?" That got Harry's instant attention, before the wariness that kept one alive in Knockturn Alley took over.
"Impossible. Even the Black Healers have given up on that. It'd take a potions genius to do that---and how did you know I had a vertigo problem?"
"Easy." Mione Millions held out a piece of parchment. "My boss is a potions genius. He wants you to do a job for him." Harry scanned the parchment; although he had not been a great student in Potions class, he had learned more than enough from having talked with the experts to see that this did, indeed, look like a solution to his problem. The thought of being able to fly again, to be able to go back to Quidditch---it was incredibly tempting. "Why'd he send you, by the way? Why can't he come himself?"
"Easy. He trusts me---and I've got talents you don't expect." All of a sudden both her hands were the paws of a gigantic cat, and she slipped the claws out of their sheaths, playfully running them down Harry's chest, not quite hard enough to tear his shirt.
END
