The homeless man I'd shared pizza with two days before handed me the travel pass. I handed him back a five pound note.
"Any problems?" I asked.
He shook his head.
I looked at the pass. It was a season pass that would let me use the buses and the tube. The cost made me wince, but it would give me the kind of freedom that my bicycle alone wouldn't. I'd found a tube entrance in the opposite direction from the library. It wasn't far from my culvert.
London had the kind of public transportation system that Brockton Bay never had, even in it's glory days, and with it, the entire city was open to me. That meant more opportunities to seek out places to get free food, but also to find places for entertainment.
As it turned out, the hardest thing about being homeless was sheer boredom. There was only so much time you could spend in the library, especially since I couldn't check any books out. I couldn't even speak in front of anyone who was a police officer, because they'd probably ask for my passport.
I'd been trying to fake a British accent, but Nigel the homeless guy thought it sounded terrible.
Apparently I sounded like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
In my previous life I'd gained many skills. I'd learned how to fight, and to move silently. I'd learned how to intimidate people, although when you were backed by a swarm of millions of stinging insects, that wasn't all that hard.
I'd never had to use other accents, and I wasn't really sure how to go about it. My best bet was simply to listen to people, keep my mouth shut and try to talk like they did.
"You ready for the next part?"
It worried me, trusting Nigel even this much. I'd spun a story about how my poor mum was in the hospital and I was on the run from an abusive stepdad. I wasn't sure how much of it he believed. The only important thing was that he not go to the police, and that he help me.
He nodded.
I handed him a couple of pieces of jewelry that I had stolen, and together we walked to a pawn shop. Nigel had has ID, and I made sure only to give him pieces from my original family's jewelry box. Hopefully if we got caught I'd be able to argue that it was part of my inheritance, and within my rights to take it.
He came back out with two hundred pounds thirty minutes later. It was possible that the pieces might have been worth more, but I doubted it. The other Undersiders had fenced jewelry before, and you never got anything close to their value when you did.
He handed the money over without question though, and he seemed grateful to have it.
I slipped it into a fanny pack that I wore under my shirt. It was another thing I'd stolen from the second house I'd been in. It was wide enough that it could fit a book, but far too shallow. It was perfect to put money in, and since I didn't have a wallet and it fit in the front I was less likely to get pickpocketed.
My biggest risk was that someone would grab my backpack, which had some of the jewelry I'd stolen stuffed in it. I had it stuffed under some clothing and other crap, hoping that no one would notice.
"I might be able to get more later," I said. "Well have to use another shop, though, so as not to arouse suspicion."
"You are a strange little girl," Nigel rumbled. He had a deep, rich voice and he was black with a beard that was speckled with gray. I wondered what had led him to be out on the streets, but I didn't ask.
We got another pizza and split it, and then Nigel showed me how to make a hobo stove. It was made using a tin can, or cans up to the size of a paint can, although he warned me not to use anything that had toxic chemicals in it.
We parted amicably, and I felt a lot better, especially once I'd retrieved my other goods from the half dozen hiding spots I'd put them in.
I quickly found that life was a lot easier with the Travel Pass. Buses and subways really did reach a lot of the city, and there were now places I could access that I never would have before.
There was a Sikh temple that offered free food to anyone. I didn't dare go there too often because they would likely call child services if they thought I didn't have anyone. It was nice to have a free meal though.
Museums were easy; they weren't part of my overall plan so much as they were a way to help fill the endless days.
I went to the market and would buy foods that were just about to expire; usually these were cheaper. The problem was that they usually were in batches larger than I could eat before the insects got to them.
For three days I explored the city, and then I started to notice them.
It started with a woman who was wearing her dress backwards. She looked as though she'd rather be anywhere than where she was, but she was buying things at a shop.
Then there was a man who looked like he belonged in the nineteen fifties. His clothes were outdated and he didn't even seem to be wearing them ironically.
I tried to follow these people, but they always vanished shortly after I did.
Once I became aware of it, I saw more and more people like that. There were a surprising number of them on the Tube. They all looked like they were tourists from the way they looked around and whispered to each other, but they all had British accents.
It felt very strange and discomfiting.
The funny thing was that the people around me didn't seem to notice a thing. Either these people were so common that no one noticed anymore, or there was something else going on.
My control over insects grew. After three days I was up to sixteen insects at a time. It was still a minuscule number, but it made tracking people a lot easier. I could follow two sets of them without looking as though I was following them.
I was in the West End looking through bookstores. While the proprietors kept giving me suspicious looks, no one stopped me as I leafed through books that no ten year old would have bothered with. I was hoping to find something... anything about the people who I was trying to follow. Surely with as many of them as there were someone would know something?
Had their obliviators murdered everyone? Even that would have been noticed; people went missing every day, but usually it was for understandable reasons. They were being followed by an abusive boyfriend, they had a drug habit, they were unstable.
I stepped out onto Charing Cross road, and I noticed another couple walking by' Their clothes were just as outlandish as the others I had seen, but again no one seemed to be taking notice. It was almost as though there was some kind of stranger effect, one that no one was able to see through but me.
Was it because I had powers?
I sent a small swarm of insects to follow them, while keeping a few to watch behind and around me. I followed them at the edge of my range, which was more than a block away.
They moved into a building, and I cautiously approached it, my heart skipping a beat as I saw it.
It was nestled between a bookstore and a record store. It looked old and strange compared to the more modern buildings around it, almost like it was something from another century. Considering that London itself was full of buildings like that, it wouldn't be a surprise, except that this one looked much, much older.
It was a tiny, dingy looking pub. There was something strange about the way people looked at it; their eyes slid away from it, as though they couldn't see it at all.
It didn't have a sign out front. I felt reluctant to step inside; I was a minor after all, and going into a bar would draw attention that I didn't need.
Yet this was the first lead I'd had in three days. I felt for my knife in my pocket.
It was definitely illegal to carry around in Britain. I'd found that out on my last visit to the library. They didn't allow mace or pepper sprays either. Not allowing people the tools they needed to defend themselves was hard to comprehend from an American viewpoint.
Taking a deep breath, I slipped inside the pub.
It was dark and shabby, but the moment I stepped inside I knew I was in the right place. The people here were all dressed in ways that were subtly wrong, with some actually wearing black robes. There were old women wearing outrageous hats, and men who were playing a kind of chess. It took me a moment to realize that the figurines on the chessboard were actually moving by themselves.
The man behind the bar looked at me. He was bald, with dark skin and he didn't have any teeth.
"Just got your letter, did you? There's still been a few stragglers."
My face froze, and I clutched my knife in my pocket harder.
"Where's your parents?" he asked.
"They thought I could handle it myself," I said, shrugging. While I wasn't much at acting, I'd learned how to bluff with the best of them.
He scowled. "That's not smart. The Alley is safe enough most times, but the big rush is over with and there aren't so many kids there now. You'll be fine as long as you stay out of Knockturn Alley. That's not for the likes of you."
Gesturing, he stepped out from the back of the bar.
"You'll need help to get through until you get your wand, then you can do it on your own. If you've got muggle money, take it to Gringotts and they'll change it for you."
At my expression, he looked around and leaned toward me.
"Having muggle money isn't something to be ashamed of. People don't like to talk about it much, but I'm guessing you're a half blood from the way you're dressed, and because you aren't with one of the tour groups the professors sponsor for the muggleborns."
I nodded as though I knew what he was talking about.
He led me to the back of the bar, and I tensed. I had two bees hiding on the nape of my neck, ready to attack and at least try to sting his eyes out, but it might not be enough.
He paused, and then turned to me.
"This is important to remember; once you get your wand I don't want you to come back and keep asking. It's the third brick up, and the second across."
The bricks were low enough that I could reach them. He tapped one three times and the wall opened out into another world. It didn't open in a mechanical way; the brick quivered as though it was alive, and then a hole appeared in it that grew larger and larger.
The large archway led out to a cobbled street that twisted and turned out of sight.
I forced myself to look unimpressed and stepped through, and the hole vanished behind me. There was a stack of large metal pots... cauldrons according to the sign in the nearest shop.
One shop had a sign advertising dragon livers, but I couldn't understand the prices. Another sold owls. Why owls instead of other kinds of birds I had no idea. There were shops selling broomsticks, and telescopes, bat wings and newt eyes.
It was all a little overwhelming. It was like Salem Massachusetts had taken witch mania to heart and had a shopping district entirely dedicated to stereotypical witches. It was a little tacky as far as I was concerned.
Yet the people here didn't look like they were humoring their children. They didn't look like they were shopping ironically. There were adults unaccompanied by children; most of them in fact, and they seemed deadly serious in the things they were buying.
Furthermore, there were signs that things weren't as they seemed. I could see a little boy gesturing at a toy broomstick that was floating behind him without any obvious strings. There were things in windows that were moving that should not have moved.
Everyone here had that distinctive look about them, and there were a lot of people wearing black robes. There was something about their expressions, though, that was worrying. Everyone seemed tense, as though they were looking over their shoulder. When I'd been a villain in Brockton Bay it wouldn't have registered with me at all. In a city ruled by gangs everybody looked like that.
But I'd been a hero in Chicago for two years, and I'd seen how people looked who didn't live in a war zone. These people were tense, and I wasn't sure why.
Eventually I reached a large white building with a guard standing out in front. In my world he would have been defined as a Case 53, a parahuman whose powers had warped his body into something inhuman. Here those supposedly didn't exist.
He was shorter than me, swarthy, and with inhumanly long hands and feet. He stared at me rudely as I looked at the inscription on the doors, warning against thieves.
"Is this Gringotts?" I ventured a guess.
I'd heard the aurors talking about goblins and money, and the bartender had told me to get money changed here.
He grunted and nodded.
With my bugs keeping a careful eye on him, I walked past him, slipping inside the building. It was taller and more magnificent than any of the other buildings, and the inside had a lot of marble. I'd seen places as nice in Chicago, but never in Brockton Bay, which had been on the decline for decades.
There were a huge number of tellers, possibly a hundred, all of whom seemed like they were hard at work. All of them were goblins, if that was what the guard outside was. That made it clearer that he wasn't just some kind of strange Case 53 anomaly. Like parahumans, no Case 53 had the same deformities.
Yet all of these people seemed to be formed from the same cloth. They were all small, they all had basically the same skin tone, and they all had hands that were outside of the human norm. Their feet were presumably the same, but I couldn't see them behind the counter.
I cleared my throat and spoke to the first goblin that didn't have a line.
"I'm here to change my money," I said.
He sneered at me and pointed at the stall at the end. "Talk to Gorlok. Last goblin against the south wall."
I saw goblins weighing out gemstones the size of glowing coals. The value of just one of those gems was mind boggling, and I wondered if they were real or some kind of replica. If they were real, then each gem was worth at least a million dollars, and that was if their quality was low. He had a stack of them that he was weighing, which probably represented enough money to get my dying city back on its feet.
How much money did these goblins control?
"I'm here to change muggle money," I said. I didn't say into what, because I didn't know.
The goblin stared at me for a moment, then gestured for me to take a seat. Not knowing how much I would need, I slid two hundred pounds across the counter. Hopefully this wasn't a huge mistake.
He handed me back a stack of coins.
"Can you explain the exchange rate?" I asked.
He was obviously used to this question, even though his eyes narrowed at me. "Knuts are the smallest denomination," he said. "Twenty nine knuts makes a sickle. Seventeen sickles make a galleon."
"And how many galleons to a British pound?" I asked.
"Five pounds to the galleon currently," he said. "The number changes sometimes."
He'd given me thirty nine galleons, fifteen sickles and fifty eight knuts.
I hesitated. "Do you buy muggle jewelry?"
His eyes almost seemed to gleam, and he nodded. I felt uncomfortable, but I pulled my backpack around. I looked around.
"Is there somewhere else we can do this? I'd rather people not see what I've got."
He grunted. "First witch with sense I've seen in a while."
Flipping a sign up onto his post, he stepped down and around the bar they were all sitting at . He gestured for me to follow him, and he led me through one of the many doors.
"Witch has jewelry to sell," he said to an older goblin. There were goblin guards in the room, and the goblin had a jewelers' glass on his eye. He looked up and glared at me.
"You saw the sign out front," he said. "Trying to trick us is the same as trying to steal from us... and no one steals from Gringotts and lives."
"It's possible that some of it might be costume jewelry," I said. I looked at him. "But if I find out that you've cheated me... well, I've got a long memory too."
He grunted.
At his gesture, I handed him my backpack. Half my jewelry was buried behind the bush near my culvert; leaving it inside the culvert had seemed foolish.
"I can give you a third of what a muggle jeweler would charge you," he said. "Muggles like to overcharge, and they don;t like to buy back, but we've got some use for it."
I nodded. It was nothing less than I'd expected. If he'd told me he was giving me full value, I'd know he was lying. The fact that he didn't ask where I'd gotten it was worrying. He didn't seem to care whether I'd stolen it or not.
"I'll give you six hundred galleons for the lot," he said.
I stared at him for a moment, trying to do the math in my head. Six hundred galleons would be the same as three thousand pounds. That wasn't bad, all things considered.
"I'll take it," I said.
I could always transfer the money back to British money if I didn't find things to buy, and I still had the other half buried.
Taking the money, I was now six hundred and forty galleons richer than I'd been earlier today, whatever that meant. I wouldn't know how rich that made me until I actually went out and shopped.