To Define Treachery
Chapter IV / State of Mind
by en extase
What do you expect me to write in here? I already know what you are...
A pause.
Whatever you want. I'm here to listen.
Riddle took the abrupt eviction in stride, wordlessly stalking upstairs to gather his things. Harry remained where he was, watching as the silent form of the older boy disappeared from view. He had nothing but his spectacles, the clothes on his back, and a choice.
He looked to the base of the staircase, then to the doorway where the old seer had so recently stood. Then back to the stairs again.
Stay.
Run.
Frowning, he listened carefully to the sounds of rummaging through the drawers of the study upstairs.
By intuition he knew he didn't have long to come to a decision. Riddle surely had a contingency in place to stop him in his tracks if he made a break for it. Maybe the door was somehow automatically enchanted to stay shut from the inside still. Maybe there was some kind of boundary spell that would trigger the moment he set foot outside.
And he was still without his wand. So was Riddle, but he seemed to be in control of his magic nonetheless despite this.
There were so many things that could go wrong, very fast.
But remaining here was fraught with its own perils as well.
Riddle had claimed he had spared Harry and whisked him off into hiding on a whim. He wasn't inclined to believe the words of a snake, and so had no idea as to what true purpose Riddle had in mind for him. He had to assume that he was still slated for death.
Riddle had seemed as close as Harry had ever witnessed to being distraught, and that presented him with a narrow window of opportunity.
He had to take it, and hope that the doorknob wasn't locked by magical means. The only thing on his side was that Riddle would hopefully assume that Harry lacked the sheer balls required to escape out from right under his nose.
He bit his lower lip and tried to clear his head of distractions.
In theory, he knew what he was supposed to do. It was so simple. The daring Boy-Who-Lived. The one student who found the Philosopher's Stone, braving the defenses of Hogwart's professors, and vanquishing the man with two faces. The one who descended into the Chamber of Secrets, knowing that he'd find a basilisk waiting for him.
All he had to do was move one foot in front of the other until he reached the door and run for it. But he found he was rooted to the spot.
He had hardly been conscious of it till now, but being made a prisoner for weeks did things to one's state of mind.
Being locked up in one place. Running in loops through the same halls and flight of stairs that had been linked to each other. A cruel little labyrinth with no one out and living at the mercy of a killer. Indecision wracked him as he stood there in the entrance hallway... he became aware of an unfamiliar sensation in his wand hand.
Swallowing, he looked down to see it trembling.
This is not me, Harry thought, staring at it aghast.
An externalization of cowardice. The hand of a fearful child awaiting punishment from his betters.
What would his friends say?
What would McGonagall and Dumbledore think?
How would his housemates react if they bore witness to this sad specimen?
"What's the matter with you," Harry murmured to himself.
This is unworthy of a wizard of your House. You are still a Gryffindor.
He swore it was his imagination, but he thought he could hear a faint "Are you?" in another voice taunt him.
He closed his hand into a fist, and the trembling ceased.
He flexed his fingers, inwardly willing the banishment of the cold that had set into his hands, and squared his shoulders.
An intake of breath, and he strode to the door and opened it.
No shock as he touched the doorknob.
No alarm as he tentatively walked onto the doorstep.
Nothing at all to indicate that he had broadcast his actions to the floor above.
He had to raise an arm to shade his eyes as he stepped into the falling daylight. The sound of car engines, the wind rustling through the trees and carrying the conversations of pedestrians. It took his vision a few seconds to adjust. It was like living in a black and white film, then being thrust into the real world. He judged the time to be late midday.
He retained enough presence of mind to pull the door close behind him, slowly enough to avoid slamming it but fast enough to avoid agitating the hinges and betraying his plans for escape prematurely.
Can't stay in one place long... Let's get moving. .
He crossed the street in a hurry, ignoring the roughness and heat of the sun-cooked asphalt of the road on his bare feet. He took as long strides as he could verging on breaking into an outright run, for inside his very being screamed to get as far away as possible.
BEEEEEEEEP
He flinched at the suddenness of the sound of a car horn honking from barely a few feet's distance from him. He cursed his inattentiveness as he looked sideways through the windshield of a Volkswagen to see an angry young man wearing a baseball cap behind the wheel, eyes bugging out and face paling at having nearly ran over a twelve year-old.
He fled across the rest of the street, mortified to feel the stares of countless Muggles following him. He risked glancing up at the windows of a residence on the opposite side of the street and saw a middle-aged women looking at him in concern, and he tore his gaze away, heart pounding. The attention being drawn to him poured fuel on his paranoia, and he kept his gaze forward, trying not to conjure up the image of Riddle watching him from the upper storey of the seer's home. He flexed his fingers again, but the unsettling tremor had not yet returned.
He was dressed in his undershirt and pants which alone were not so conspicuous, but his lack of shoes certainly was.
The worm of fear and anxiety was agitating inside of him. It made it difficult for him to focus his mind at the task at hand.
But I must, he thought.
Positively leaping onto the sidewalk, he made a beeline for the nearer end of the street.
What was his task?
He ducked his gaze down as he raced past an elderly couple, unheeding of the grizzled husband who uttered a surprised yelp and was forced to hop aside to dodge the boy-missile.
I have to send word to Dumbledore.
Let him know that a grave threat had risen with the physical manifestation of Voldemort's younger self. If he could accomplish that, and he knew the old headmaster would know what to do. Ginny was dead at his hand, but she could be the last. It could all be set right.
But that meant reaching Dumbledore, and he was a long ways off from that.
He rounded the corner and redoubled his pace, swerving left as he picked his direction on nothing but flight instinct.
He did not think, much less glance at the signs naming the streets at the intersection. He kept his eyes focused on what was in front of him so he could weave around passerby without smashing into people. He absolutely failed to register a black dog walking in front of him and nearly ran it over. Only an angry yell made him notice just in time, and by reflex he moved onto the grass of a lawn as the snarling, vicious-looking creature leapt up at him, straining the owner as he reined it in with the leash. Harry could only offer a breathless apology as he kept running. His feet pounded the pavement relentlessly, until his entire lower body was left numb.
Another intersection, this time he went right. He could only hope he was moving toward the edge of the neighborhood.
It was not until he felt he had built up a scant buffer of distance that he finally noticed that, after making another corner, the street had widened by quite a margin.
He slowed to a halt as he was given his first view on the city's impressive skyline looming over a line of homes, the setting sun bathing it in a golden glow. He averted his gaze to avoid the glare of the sunlight reflecting off the glass facades. He walked a dozen yards further, then his attention was drawn to a mass of blurry colored, entangled lines in the periphery of his vision. He adjusted his spectacles carefully and peered closely at the map of the city's public transportation service. It was plastered to the glass of an empty bus stop.
He read the name of the city: Birmingham.
"Okay," he said in a small voice, "That's not very good."
An idea sprung up, and he latched onto it, mind racing as fast as a Nimbus. He didn't need to get to Hogwarts and to Dumbledore's office all on his own - he could get to London and make his way to the Leaky Cauldron. There he'd find a friendly wizard or witch who would help him get a message sent.
A few minutes ticked past as he expectantly looked around, waiting for the bus.
Then he realized that this was going to be a little more complicated than that.
He had no idea of the time so the schedule of stops was useless to him. He had no change for the busfare, and he had no way of predicting how anyone would react if he asked for enough to board the bus when it did arrive. They were as likely to ignore him as a street urchin as they were to help him. Or they would go overboard and drag him off to the police station. That was itself a thought he considered, but he forcibly reminded himself that the Muggle authorities were as capable of protecting him as... Unable to think up a suitable analogy, he resumed his mad dash further away from the seer's house. Suffice it to say that his only chance rested with his ability to hide from Riddle.
He dimly remembered the fact that Birmingham was one of the most populous cities in the United Kingdom, second only to London if he remembered elementary civics correctly. That would undoubtedly work in his favor. But he had to keep moving. He drilled the point home into his head over and over again.
His first priority was to disappear into the city, and right now he was keenly aware of just how close he was still to the house. Did the honking of that damn car alert Riddle? A new stab of anxiety fueled the adrenaline coursing through his veins and he committed himself to disappearing into Birmingham's dense interior. From his quick lookover of the map he knew was in a little neighborhood nestled within the city not far from its outskirts. He had to move inward.
Before too long at his unrelenting pace, the rows of homes of the neighborhood gave way to the more metropolitan parts of the city.
The traffic was picking up in volume, and he saw that many cars were turning in onto a turnpike leading toward the vast clusters of skyscrapers and high-rises that formed the heart of the city. He determined that he would go there next. He looked around, and followed a long sloping street uphill till he reached a bridge.
It was only when he was a halfway across the footpath that he allowed himself to rest, leaning against the side of the bridge. Panting heavily, his mind was blissfully blank as he recovered from what had turned out to be a massive, prolonged sprint. He watched as the flow of cyclists and cars shot past. He turned around, and peered through the chain-link fence that continued above the shoulder-high walls guarding the side of the bridge.
Try as he might, he could not pinpoint the house he had fled. It was lost amidst an indistinguishable mass of trees and suburbanite sprawl.
He'll find you... the doubt within him voicing itself again.
He felt a very real twinge of worry as he considered that Riddle must have discovered his absence.
But he was still roaming free, so he figured he had a shot at ultimately making it to London. That was all that mattered.
Allowing himself another five minutes of rest, he resumed his trek, this time at a more leisurely pace. While he had rested, the surge of adrenaline had receded and left him feeling fatigued. An ache had set in his feet; they were tender and he knew it would be unwise to run another marathon anytime soon.
Hopefully he would have no need.
The crowds soon swelled with people hauling their shopping bags and purses, chatting cattily to each other.
He wandered along with the crowds. Far from being intimidated, he felt that the masses of shoppers and pedestrians and the occasional watchful policemen and traffic guards served as a cloak for him, disguising his movements. The impersonal quality of the urban environment made him feel at ease.
There were maps of the concentrated area of the malls and the surrounding streets on display every few intersections. For all the good it did him; he was still unsure of his next move. Despite his relatively action-packed life, he was still a twelve year-old with scant frame of reference to make his way unaided in the second most populous city in the country. He was still trying to flesh out his plans. He did notice symbols that marked the locations to the train stations throughout Birmingham and out of the West Midlands. It wasn't that far to London. Maybe three hours or so, he judged.
He was rather strapped for cash, though. He frowned. Without his wand, he had to do things the Muggle method, and that required money. Somehow he had to overcome his lack of it.
A lump formed in his throat. The ever-moving stream of people flowed past him, and he feebly willed himself to open his mouth and ask someone for help. Nothing came out. he couldn't break the reluctance that held him back. He'd never considered himself arrogant, and certainly he would be the last person to ever have an entitlement complex…but he'd never expected to be reduced tobegging.
In a roundabout way, the Dursleys had done him a small favor through their callousness. Harry had never had to debase himself by begging for scraps: he knew he'd get nothing more than they gave. If they sentenced him to a stint in the cupboard, he knew that no amount of pleading or childish tears would move them to deduct a single hour. If anything, they would draw pleasure from his misery. So he never had reason to plead.
He glanced at a window to see his reflection looking back at him.
He looked waifish enough, more so if he could manage to cry. Maybe he'd try and tug on the sleeve of an older lady, surely she'd be more likely to feel sorry for him. If only some merciful soul would take pity on this poor lost boy and give him enough money to get him back to London. He would just be so grateful, and…
Countenancing the thought was unbearable.
He looked up bleakly at the faces passing him by. He hoped to see someone who looked kindly, or patient, someone he felt he would stand a better chance with. They moved just fast enough though he couldn't get a clear look long enough.
Look at them... None of these people have the time nor inclination to help you...
They were all too busy, and he was paralyzed, caught between his pride and his shyness to approach someone.
So he gave up. Slowly, he began trudging along, directionless.
He had to do something.
He kicked angrily at a plastic bag as it fluttered past. The wind snatched it out of his way before he made contact. It lingered before him as if teasing him, before drifting entirely out of sight.
What was the big picture here?
He had to remember what was at stake. No one else knew that the greatest threat posed to the wizarding world even existed. Riddle was laying the groundwork for his future plans unchallenged. His mind put forth an endless stream of nightmare scenarios. A new reign of terror. Chaos as the Dark Lord's supporters rallied behind him. Hogwarts no longer the sanctuary it had always been.
He knew little of the events of the First War. Only that it had scarred his world and shaped his generation, and carved fear so deeply into the minds of grown witches and wizards that they were terrified of speaking Voldemort's name aloud.
Nothing might happen for months or even years. But once things were set into motion, there would be blood. And all of it would be on his hands if he failed here.
He caught sight of a tall, professional-looking fellow in a business suit leaving the first floor of a tall building not too far from here he was. The man was finishing donning a overcoat, and had a package fitted in the crook of one arm. In his hand was a little leather wallet, matte-black and sleek.
A darker thought crossed his mind.
Watching like a hawk, he waited for the man to finish looking at the receipt of his purchase. He was going on autopilot, paying no attention to his surroundings. The gentleman folded the reciept and stuck it into his wallet, sliding wallet into the outside pocket of his overcoat. It was loose enough that Harry was certain that he could make it with a quick snatch.
He doesn't need it. Take his wallet off him and he'll have lost a pittance. Your cause is more important...
He began moving toward him, shadowing a burly man accompanying a little daughter, subconsciously judging the man's strides and picking the spot where they would cross paths.
His Seeker hands twitched in anticipation - they had caught greater prizes than this.
The unwitting man took no notice of the boy drawing closer. In no time at all, the distance was halved.
Just like catching a Snitch, Harry... the voice goaded him.
Harry braced himself and readied his hand -
'''Ey!"
The call was forceful, commanding.
He stopped.
The wealthy-looking fellow passed without so much as glancing at him, and Harry didn't move on inch even as the outside pocket fell within his reach.
He lowered his hand, shaken.
He swallowed, feeling a sick sensation in his stomach.
Was I...
Was he really about to rob someone just then? Beggary was too low for him, but he had been a hair's breadth from becoming a common thief? No better than Dudley and his gang shaking up kids for their lunch money?
He squeezed his eyes shut, and blew out a long, shuddering breath.
"You!"
It took him a moment to realize that it wasn't the voice of his own conscience that had brought him back from doing something he would regret - but another person. He turned his head to the side, peering into the shade of an alleyway.
He saw a homeless man lying against the wall, his legs sprawled out in front of him. He was clad in tattered clothing, his jacket in slightly better shape than his torn-up jeans, but only just. His hair was long, scraggly, and grimed with dust.
"Yeah, you! Haul your midget ass over here," he slurred, motioning for Harry to come closer with his hand.
Harry was on the fence on coming another inch closer to him. The alleyway wasn't well lit, and the man didn't seem all there.
He looked back to the main thoroughfare, and could see the back of his would-be victim disappear from sight.
He did owe something to this fellow for unwittingly stopping him from becoming a thief. The stain on his conscience would take a long while to scrub off. So lieu of knowing what he was going to do otherwise, Harry decided to see what he had to say.
He walked toward the man cautiously, stopping a few feet short.
"You look dazed, kid."
"You look drunk," Harry retorted.
The man's eyebrows rose, and he raised his hands in a defensive gesture. "Okay, okay. No need to be that blunt."
Harry shrugged. "Anyways... what did you want?"
The man didn't say anything, instead taking a long draught from a half-empty whiskey bottle that had been hidden at his side. Harry watched with a neutral expression and waited for him to finish. Once drained, he threw it over the chain-link fence at the end of the alley, where it shattered upon landing.
"I'm kinda thirsty now," the man finally decided. He looked back up at Harry and blinked, as if seeing him for the first time, "Hey. You got any money kid?"
Harry cracked a smile and started laughing. The answer was such a cliché that he couldn't help but be amused. Was he expecting answers, a clarification of purpose? On some level, he supposed he had been. That first shout had snapped him out of a weird episode. It had been a fortuitous coincidence, a man calling out in a drunken stupor. Nothing else.
The man was starting to get offended.
Harry shut up. He cleared his throat and turned his pockets inside out.
"I'm in the same boat."
"Oh."
The drunkard lost interest in the penniless boy, shifting over to his side and starting to take a nap.
Rather let down by the whole encounter, Harry turned to leave, but the man shot up straight.
"Wait a sec!"
He rubbed at his eyes, then peered more closely at his visitor. His eyes drifted down.
"God damn, in a right spot you are. You aren't wearing a single shoe!" he exclaimed.
The man was right. Harry wasn't even wearing one shoe.
"Asking a juvenile street rat for change, how low can you go?" he scoffed, shaking his head in disbelief.
The man looked genuinely saddened at this realization and at Harry's youth, and it fired him up from the comfortable buzz. His eyes looked more alert when he looked back up, scrutinizing his form.
"You haven't been out on the streets for too long," he observed, resting his chin on a hand as he sat cross-legged. "Just trying to figure out what to do, eh?"
Harry nodded. That was more or less his situation.
"Ah. I know the feeling," he said sagely.
"I mean, I have some idea of what to do," Harry was quick to add. He hoped the despair had not crept into his voice.
His plan was vague and rather big-picture, true, but it wasn't as if he were completely out of his depth, he reasoned.
The man quietly absorbed this. He looked like he was waging an internal struggle. A look of guilt came over him, and he had clearly gleaned that Harry was in a bad situation.
"Sorry kid, I can't help you," he said abruptly. He turned away, curling up.
His nerves were starting to get the better of him. Harry suppressed a flash of irritation.
"Okay, I'll be going on my way."
As soon as he turned though, the man bolted upright again.
"Damn it! Yeah, just go ahead and emotionally blackmail a total stranger. Stupid fucking kids and their guilt-tripping sad eyes," the man cursed vigorously.
Harry watched completely non-plussed. As far as he knew he'd been schooling his features into a relatively mild expression.
""Okay," the man declared gruffly, "I'll help you."
He looked up at some of the emergency fire escapes to the apartments above. The man grunted as he hauled himself onto his feet, and Harry winced at the noise of his back creaking as he went through a variety of stretches vigorously, as if preparing for a workout at a gym.
The ladder from the lowest landing attached to the apartments didn't reach the ground level, but that didn't faze him. He made a show of bending his knees and swinging his arms back and forth in tandem as he warmed himself up for a long jump.
Now that he was standing and not slouched over dead drunk against a wall, Harry could see that the man was fairly tall, though there was still a height difference of several feet between the top of his head and the lowest landing he seemed to want to access.
The man rolled up his sleeves and backed up to the opposite side of the alley and rubbed his hand. He took a running start and leaped. His foot met the wall and he instantly pushed onto his toes as they met the bricks, levering up enough to grasp the bottom of the landing. Huffing and puffing, he pulled himself onto it. He picked up a pot at the corner, and unceremoniously yanked out the leafy plant it harbored, sending soil scattering everywhere. He rummaged through to the bottom of the pot, and produced a satchel. He nonchalantly dropped back down to the alley, sinking low as he met the ground to dissipate the energy of the fall. Opening it, he started withdrawing fistfuls of banknotes and stashing them into the inside pockets of his jacket. Some were crumpled up by messy folding technique and others were slightly faded by water damage, but Harry got a good enough look to see the denominations printed at their edges.
He blinked in surprise. If they weren't counterfeit, then this was the most well-off homeless bloke he'd ever met.
"There's a nice department store just a block down from here. They'll have shoes in your size. Let's go on over," he said confidently, moving to where the alley fed into the main street.
Harry was a little perplexed at this unprompted and rather sudden display of charity.
The drunkard – who somehow no longer seemed as drunk - noticed Harry's reticence.
"I ain't a kidnapper or nothing like that," he said indignantly, "We'll be where everyone can see us if that reassures you. Plus, it's about time I switched alleys anyway."
For lack of a better plan, Harry shuffled over and followed the man's lead.
It even fit into the master plan as a little sub-item, getting shoes.
They made an odd pair.
The homeless guy and his sidekick, Harry thought.
Whereas passerby had paid him no attention, they had a more pronounced response to his new companion, making a point of actively swerving out of his way and keeping a distance. They looked nothing alike so there were concerned looks sent his way, but thankfully no one made to separate them.
"It's going to start getting cold out in an hour or so. Remember, you can always just drink alcohol and it'll warm you right up," the man lectured, careless to the reactions of others.
"Thanks," Harry said dryly.
The man was amusing in his own way.
"Do you know where you're going?"
"Course I do. I've got the maps of entire boroughs and cities all memorized, up here in my noggin," he bragged, tapping the side of his head.
He certainly looked like he knew where he was going. Of course, fools could be as confident as wise men. That was no guarantee that he actually knew what he was talking about.
A suspicion was brewing though, and Harry had to lay it to rest.
"Sir?"
"Yeah?"
"Aren't you… you know, drunk?" he asked as tactfully as he could.
"Nope."
"Oh," Harry said, frowning.
The man said it with such conviction that he decided he'd just leave it at that.
"Hey kid."
"Yes?"
"Cool scar," he said, without looking sideways at him.
Thankfully, the man didn't stare. He sounded like he meant it, so Harry took it for a compliment.
"Oh. Thanks. People say that to me all the time."
"How'd you get it?"
"I got it in a car crash."
"You don't sound like you mean it."
Harry set his mouth into a thin line at the insinuation, but his companion didn't push the issue.
"Left here."
They reached the entrance of the department store, a long sequence of doors laying in front of them to accommodate the flow of people in and out.
"Here," he said, handing Harry a one-hundred pound bill. "And get something to eat for us on the way out. Something hot, preferably."
Harry accepted it. "Um, thank you sir. What about you?"
"I'm going to the barber's shop," he said, pulling a long strand of dull hair in front of his eyes and making a face. "Take your time. And don't get lost."
As it turned out, Harry was going to have to take his time whether he wanted to or not. The department store was connected to a wider mall complex, all lit by the long, angled skylights that met to form a triangle. He mentally made a note that he'd come in through the southwest entrance, and kept track of where he was going. Not that he was overly concerned about getting lost, it wasn't as if shoe stores were going to be too far afield.
The place was abuzz with chatter. He did distinctly look out of place barefoot, but he was well-used to the stares by now. He went up the escalators, and watched the bustle of hundreds of families doing their summer shopping over the side of the handrail.
He pondered the sense of scale laid out before him. Diagon Alley was dwarfed by it, its main street falling well short of matching the length of the central walkway. The Wizarding World was minuscule in comparison. Here, in this few hundred meters of commercial complex, there were more Muggles than every child, professor, and ghost of all four Houses.
There were probably half a dozen others like it in this single city, and numerous smaller ones. He wondered how many were there in the entire United Kingdom.
There was a kind of grandeur to it that Harry hadn't appreciated till now. Hagrid had once told him that the wizards kept to themselves because they didn't want to be bothered. But maybe there was something else to it.
The throngs were just as numerous on the second floor. Sales representatives seeking to notch a sale were engaging customers in the aisles of the shops, trying not to seem overly aggressive. He moved hurriedly. A security guard glanced at him briefly, before returning to reading his newspaper.
He walked into the children's section and browsed the rows of boxes punctuated by pristine, fresh pairs of shoes on display. He ignored the whining of a bratty boy not far from his own age, and picked out a pair of sneakers that looked nice. Black with slim white linings, it looked sharp and he could run in it. It was good enough for him.
He seated himself at one of the benches and tried them on, wiggling his toes and testing the fit.
Satisfied, he went to the sales counter and handed a hundred-pound note expectantly. He declined a bag and the bored-looking girl at the cash register handed the shoes back with his receipt and change.
He halted in midstep on his way out, remembering to get socks, and went back.
The first thing he did upon leaving was take a detour to the restrooms. Ducking into the men's room, he set his box securely onto the counter with the pair of socks lying atop it. He hurriedly pulled a dozen paper towels from the dispenser and dashed them under the water faucet to get them sufficiently wet. He balanced himself on one foot and scrubbed the other with the fury of a ravenous Cerberus. He switched to the other foot, and after drying himself thoroughly, he put on the socks and shoes, throwing the box away.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he headed back towards the escalators. His tenderized feet had been right at the edge of giving under him. He idly wondered whether Dumbledore had ever had a similar kind of experience that led to his peculiar fondness of socks. It was fun little speculation.
Mood brightened, he browsed the restaurants back on the ground level. He wasn't sure what his unusual benefactor wanted, so he got Italian paninis and chips along with bottles of water.
He headed out.
Objective: acquire socks completed.
By now, the last vestiges of light were starting to fade with the sunset and the air felt distinctly cooler. Harry took the paper bag of the meal he'd bought to an unoccupied table near the street corner where his generous homeless friend had told him to wait.
It wasn't long before he noticed vaguely familiar man coming over.
He'd replaced the jeans with a fresh pair of black trousers that closely fit him. He'd kept the brown jacket. His hair was still moist from washing, though it wasn't much shorter. He hadn't taken much off, and had most of his hair swept to the side save for a few stray forelocks that hung over his forehead. There was enough of a natural wave that it held. His shirt beneath the jacket had cartoonish-looking cat and cactus hybrid. The thorny green thing was rather cute in all honesty.
His face freshly shaven, he looked an ordinary guy in casual dress, a far cry from what he'd look like a few hours ago.
"Hey," he greeted cheerfully as he reached Harry, seating himself across from him. "You got something for us to eat?"
Harry pushed the second bag across the table.
"You didn't have to wait on me," the man remarked as he unwrapped his meal. "You're polite. I can tell you had good upbringing."
Harry ducked his head, embarrassed that he'd noticed. The last comment was off-base, but correcting him on that would have been pointless.
Both were hungry, and started wolfing down their sandwiches. Still warm from the press, the toasted bread was crunchy, but they were determined to make short work of it.
"Hey, what's your name?"
"Albert." The man looked up and reached across the table, offering Harry his hand.
He gladly took it, shaking it as firmly as he could.
"I'm Harry. Pleased to meet you."
"Likewise. How're the new shoes treating you?"
"Great. Thank you very much sir," Harry said earnestly. "Listen, I just really appreciate your being so nice, and… and-"
"Not at all… I did what any decent person would have done," Albert again waved him off, returning to his food.
"I'll repay you, eventually," Harry said.
Albert smiled. "A good deed is its own reward."
Harry felt the urge to say more – but he was also deathly ravenous, and he hadn't eaten enough to take the edge off the hunger, so he dived back into his sandwich.
They ate in silence for a while. Neither had good manners and ate far too fast for polite company, but there was a mutual, unspoken understanding that they wouldn't judge each other by the usual standard of etiquette.
Albert beat him to the end of the sandwich. He sighed in satisfaction, taking a minute to relax before as he opened up the complementary bag of potato chips and started popping them into his mouth at a much more relaxed pace.
"If you don't mind me asking, what brought you into the general vicinity of my alleyway? I'm curious."
"Like you said," Harry said, chomping down around a mouthful of salami, ham, and cheese, "I had to make a run for it not too long ago. I've only been wandering around here since this morning."
"I thought so. I mean, you still had the look of someone new to the streets."
Albert wiped his hands free of crumbs.
"I am too," he confided, "You know, between places. I used to be in a… violent line of work as recently as a few months ago."
The admission was so utterly frank that Harry had to consciously process the statement and decide how he was going to react.
He took it for granted that he wasn't going to run screaming, regardless of what heinous crimes he might have committed. He could be Hannibal Lecter reincarnate, and he wouldn't care less. He was too damned tired.
And maybe he went he was into professional fighting, in which case Harry saw no reason to judge someone negatively for an honest livelihood.
"Why are you on the run?" he couldn't help but ask.
"Ah well. My story isn't very child-friendly. Sure you want to hear a scandalizing tale of drugs, double-crossings, beautiful femme fatales, and stone-cold killers?"
Of course, Harry wasn't deterred by the warning (which he thought was almost delivered deliberately to make it more tempting). The obvious proposal was there, waiting to be made.
"How about we exchange stories?" he said eagerly.
Albert chuckled.
"Is this where you tell me how you actually got that scar?"
Harry thought for a moment.
"Sure!"
"In that case… fine. You owe me though, so you go first."
The truth was stranger than fiction.
"Well, I'm a wizard," Harry said bluntly.
Albert made a scoffing noise, but it was good-natured and his eyes were mirthful.
"I see."
"I'm on the run from the dark lord who killed my parents."
His stony facade breaking, Albert began laughing, leaning back in his chair.
"Okaaaaaay," he snickered, "Why don't you show me a magic trick? So I know you're not pulling one over me."
"I would, but I can't, cause I don't have my wand," Harry said matter-of-factly. "Can't do anything without it."
Albert chuckled as he contemplated his answer. It wasn't a laugh-out-loud hilarious thing to say, but the longer Harry held his gaze with that intense look of conviction and honesty, the funnier it became over time.
Finally, he cracked, and started laughing. He laughed harder than he had before, then he started choking. But he didn't stop laughing even as his face turned an alarming shade of red. Jumping up, Harry shoved his chair back and raced over. He swung his arm as hard as he could, slapping Albert's back until he coughed up the food he'd accidentally swallowed. He went on right on laughing, even though now it sounded like dry-heaving.
"Ahahahahaha," Albert rasped out pitifully, wiping at his eyes. "Hahaha!"
He took the napkin offered to him by Harry and pressed it to this mouth. The table shook as he brought a fist down in an effort to steady himself and ride out the rest of the laughing fit.
Albert finally looked up.
"You are one icy, smartass kid. Just said all of that without so much as blinking," he croaked, voice still tremulous from laughing, "Are you sure you didn't just gave yourself a scar because it looked cool or something?'
Harry's face flushed red. "What? No – what?!" he sputtered. "Of course not! That's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard! People just don't give themselves scars just because they look cool!"
"People do!" Albert countered just as hotly.
Harry's indignation melted away, and now he was the one fighting off a sudden bout of laughter at the ridiculous assertion, his anger defused.
"Hehe, relax, relax. I believe you. Hahahaha… Want to hear my story?"
Harry calmed himself down, straightening his back and generally making a show of giving Albert his full attention.
"I was telling the truth, so I expect you to as well," he warned.
Albert took one look at his stern expression, and immediately looked down, mouth twisting as he fought to keep his face straight.
He exhaled slowly. He looked back up at Harry and was all business.
"Okay. By violent line of work, I meant organized crime," he said, a calm looking settling over his features.
There went the possibility of being a trained boxer or cage fighter.
"Oh," Harry said, unsure of what to make of it. "Um, how big or organized do you mean?"
"One big happy family," he said shortly. "My branch worked out of the South Midlands, where I was in charge of the Milton Keynes. Lots of open places there. Excellent for body disposal. A few pretty decent pubs, too."
"How come you're not working with them anymore?"
Harry leaned forward, munching energetically on his panini.
"It's kind of a fucked up story. I got this chick pregnant... Very fine bird," he reminiscenced and he leaned onto the rear legs of the chair as he looked skyward, a fond look on his face, "... but her father was my boss."
"Oh wow."
Harry had seen enough movies to think that didn't seem very smart. The sentiment must have showed on his face because a rueful smile appeared on Albert's.
"As you can imagine, mafia consiglieres don't take too kindly to lowly enforcers messing around with their daughters. They have the guns and guts to act out in ways the little people can't."
He heaved a long-suffering sigh.
"You do everything right, the seduction goes without a hitch, you pick what you think is a discrete location, and you even pull out of her just like you planned."
He shook his head in seeming disgust.
"What do you mean by that last part?" Harry inquired.
"Oh." It finally dawned on Albert that he was talking to a kid quite a ways from his teenage years. "You know… when you have sex but don't want the girl to get pregnant."
Harry's understanding of human reproduction was murky at best, but he was sure he had heard of what Albert had referred to somehow, in one context or another.
"Doesn't that not work?" he asked, wrinkling his nose owlishly.
"Apparently not," Albert said sourly. "But…"
Here he raised a finger dramatically, "You see, I had the foresight to pioneer a revolutionary secondary method to fall back on if the first ever fails. In the event of the unthinkable, when your first line of defense has fallen - you pull out of the country. Clever, eh?"
Harry smiled disbelievingly, somewhat bewildered by this whole line of conversation. He liked this friendly former mobster a lot, but the concept of someone walking out on a situation like put a bitter taste in his mouth, and left him conflicted. And the entire subject made him feel awkward. He hadn't even kissed a girl on the cheek yet.
"Does that mean you… you have a kid?" Albert looked awfully young to be a father.
"Well, no, cause she got rid of it a few weeks into the pregnancy. But her father found out…"
The easygoing aura that had surrounded Albert like a second skin was diminished, and a brooding quality laced his words.
"How come? Was he watching or something?" Harry asked, the confusion evident in his voice. It had seemed like Albert had done it with subtlety, only for it to turn out he had been caught.
"What? NO!" Albert yelled, looking at him with a disturbed expression, "She normally has a shadow, a bodyguard. I thought we'd given him the slip, but he put two and two together… Surprising, actually. Always thought he was dumb muscle and brawn… Anyway, here I am."
"Haven't really gotten out of the country though," he added, scratching at his chin. "Still working on that part."
"Oh! That was what all that money was for?" Harry gasped, "Sorry! I'm so sorry about that."
Albert waved his fretful apologies away dismissively.
"'All that money?'Hah! I used to blow that much on poker every week, and still had enough left over to live like a king!" he bragged. "Making money isn't hard. You have a skillset, and you find someone who wants to use it, and you get your money. So think nothing of it. I'm not so cruel and heartless I'd just ignore a kid in a situation like yours."
He stopped balancing on the rear legs of the chair and let it fall forward.
"You know… I'm actually glad I called you over and helped you out. I hadn't done something my folks would've approved of in quite a while."
"Yeah," Harry said, swallowing.
How would your own parents react to your actions, in the Chamber? Do you think they would have approved…?
"Heh. I'm been such a demoralized wreck," Albert said with a self-depreciating laugh. "It shakes you up, when your whole life turns upside down. When your bank account gets frozen, you can't show your face where you used to be the guy running the joint… after you've put everything into building your life up, and it all just comes… tumbling down."
He held his hand in front of him and wriggled his fingers, pantomiming a collapsing house of cards, before letting his hand fall and thud onto the table.
"Is it tough, being on the run from so many people?"
Albert considered the question.
"Well, I've been avoiding the motels. Had to make do under bridges, dark alleyways, fight off the occasional junkie… But there's no choice. You check in at the wrong place, and you might have visitors inside of ten minutes flat."
That explained why he'd been crashing in the alleyway despite the respectable sum of money he'd amassed.
"What about any friends that would let you stay over?" Harry probed further, starting to have a sense of what Albert's life had been like.
"I never really had any outside the family," Albert hung his head, thinking. "Never was the best at striking a good work-life balance."
Loneliness, Harry thought.
Maybe it wasn't mere luck that had driven Albert to call out to him drunkenly.
"And you have to keep your face hidden, plus you can't stay in any one place too long. That's the most important thing. I mean, there are ways around it, but they can get into extreme territory. I, for one, am not going to get facial reconstruction surgery willy-nilly. I mean, would you if you had a visage of masculine perfection like mine?" Albert asked with a winning smile.
"Yes," Harry said seriously.
"Awwww…" Albert deflated visibly. "Harsh, my friend. Very harsh."
"Honest," Harry countered, "Seems like a small price to pay for eliminating such a big risk. I'd rather let it go… just start over."
"It's part of who you are," Albert said mildly. "I'd just never get used to seeing someone else's face in the mirror. I'd always wish I'd dealt with the burden of my identity. That's the last thing these cocksuckers will take away from me."
"Hm," Harry made a noncommittal noise.
"You know, the timing has been interesting. I'd been in a rut for weeks," Albert said with a hollow laugh. "For some reason talking to you got me to stop drowning myself in hard alcohol for a while... I remembered I wasn't there to just die of liver failure."
"Yeah, I feel the same! I wasn't in a really good position either, right before I ran into you," Harry said brightly.
They fell into a contemplative silence.
The street lights were starting to turn on, banishing the darkness that was starting to set in and keeping the shadows at bay.
"Albert," Harry began, "do you know how I can find a way to London?"
"Ah. Did a little recon work after having my hair cut. Morris Avenue, train station. The next train out to London is two days from now. We should have no problem boarding when it arrives."
Simple enough. The only cause for concern was that it meant staying here another forty-eight hours in the same city as him.
"It'll be the fastest way," Albert continued, ticking off the reasons for taking this course of action with his fingers, "We get on in Birmingham, get off in London. No hassles, no delays, no sidetracking. We're here, communicating in person, with no way for anyone to eavesdrop. There's zero chance we get surprised."
"Can you take me there sooner?"
"Sooner than two days?" Albert raised an intrigued eyebrow.
"I… I can't let someone find me."
"You mean this dark lord of yours?" Albert asked, the humor evident in his voice, but the real urgency in Harry's eyes gave him pause. "Hey look, I believe you… If someone is after you, I think I might be able to help you, whoever this guy is. Then you don't have to worry about anyone and keep looking over your shoulder."
Harry's fingers dug into the tablecloth. "That won't be necessary. I just have to get away from him, that's all that matters. If he finds me, you simply walk away. Period," he hissed.
"Jesus," Albert remarked, smiling uncertainly. "Okay, I'll respect your wishes."
"Good."
"That still leaves the issue of lodging though," Albert said with a frown.
Harry didn't see the problem.
"That's fine! I'll just stay out here, with you."
"No," Albert shook his head adamantly. "Christ, I'm not about to let you sleep out here in the streets. I still plan on getting some sleep, and don't want you getting snatched. There's a better option."
He held up his hand to forestall any protestations. He thought intently for a moment.
"Birmingham Central Library," he declared. "Third floor, there's an administrative area for collections with access to a separate stairway that no one ever checks. You can sleep there undisturbed. You hang out around there while I need to retrieve a few things from my caches across the city, I should be done by the time the train arrives. Do you follow?"
Harry nodded vigorously.
"One more order of business," Albert said, taking a sip from his water bottle. He set it down, folded his arms, and fixed Harry with a solemn look.
"What's that?"
"We need to give you a mafioso soubriquet."
"A mafioso sobrio-what?" Harry echoed.
"It's just for fun," Albert said, grinning widely, ". At least until we get to London, we're partners in crime. And that means you need a nickname."
"Uh-huh…"
"Mine's Arsonist Albert – I know what you're thinking! Before you ask, no I didn't burn down things or immolate my enemies alive," he added hastily. "It's just because of the alliteration."
Harry cracked a reluctant grin.
"Okay," he agreed.
"Alright," Albert said, a delighted smile on his lips as he rubbed his hands together as if plotting, "Let's figure one out for you. Think of something that starts with 'H', and then put that before your name."
He remembered playing cops and robbers at school. It was the faintest memory, before Dudley had poisoned the well with his peers. It had been fun while it lasted.
"Hacker Harry?" he offered.
"Hey come now. It's your own name we're talking about here, you're not even excited about it. No no, let's not settle for mediocrity."
"Oh…"
It was really the only crime-related thing he could think of.
"Aw yeah, I got it," Albert exclaimed, snapping his fingers, "Hooligan Harry!"
That actually sounded pretty good to Harry's untrained ear. He opened his mouth to say as such –
"No WAIT!"
Albert's eyes narrowed, studying Harry's face closely.
He snapped his fingers, and spoke in a low, deadly serious baritone. He raised his hands in front of him for effect.
"Hostage-taking Harry."
He leaned back, smug as a cat.
"What do you think?"
"Well," Harry ventured to say, "I actually kinda thought the first one sounded pretty neat."
"See, that's where you're wrong. Hooliganism isn't very high up on the criminal hierarchy. Hostage-taking is way more badass, and it still fits in with the alliterative theme," Albert said firmly.
"Whatever." Harry shrugged, trying to hide his disappointment. "It's fine by me."
"I mean, check this out: Hostage. Taking. Harry," he recited forcefully, punctuating each word with a vicious jab of his index finger in Harry's direction. "One hundred percent pure aggression, truly befitting a man of action. My God that is terrifying. Just raw, unadulterated, hostility."
"Man, I can see you in another ten years. A lean, mean, killing machine with a scar to match. Who takes hostages."
"And…" He trailed off, seeing that Harry wasn't buying it.
"Trust me, it'll grow on you," Albert said with a wink.
Their attention was drawn to a bus rounding the corner. "Anyhow. We should get on our way. We don't want to get there after the library's closing time."
They hurried to the bus stop and got there in time to board just as the last person already there waiting finished paying the fare.
They found adjacent empty seats and relaxed, Albert checking the routes printed above the midsection doors and making sure they were headed in the right direction.
Sleepiness was starting to overtake Harry. His eyelids drooped, the weak fluorescent lights overhead blurring together with the amber outside. Albert kept an eye on the bus's progress toward their destination.
He curled up against the window, trying to get into the most comfortable position. Albert's silhouette was unmoving in the corner of his eye. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to fall asleep, mind thankfully blank.
"Hey," Albert said suddenly, jolting Harry from his nap.
"What's that," Harry mumbled. Hardly any time seemed to have past.
"That building we're coming up on," he said, pointing to a tall skyscraper visible through the windshield.
Harry shook the cobwebs from his mind. He'd never taken very well to having his sleep interrupted, but Albert's words penetrated and he peered over the seat in front of him.
There were still workers visible in the windows, working in the cubicles and clocking overtime hours.
"Pulled off my first heist there," Albert whispered. "A corporate rival wanted design specs, so I impersonated a middle manager. Took his credentials, walked right in, threatened the access codes off him, downloaded half a database's worth of info. Had to handle a few tricky confrontations with people who knew the real guy."
"Whoa, really?" Harry whispered back, his interest piqued.
"No, it's just a random office building. I just made that all up to wake you, since we're almost there," Albert said in a deadpan voice, before breaking out into quiet laughter. "You're so gullible."
"You know, you're an asshat," Harry said, upset.
"Nuh-uh! By criminal standards, I'm positively an angel. Only killed a couple of folks, didn't even rob people except for, like, a few times. I mainly just enforced debts - which, in a way, is kind of noble. And on top of that, I split the costs for the abortion procedure," he said haughtily.
"Woooow, you split the abortion costs," Harry repeated sarcastically. "You're a paragon of virtue aren't you. A real Mother Teresa."
"Bet your fucking ass I am."
They bantered back and forth in hushed tones, careful so that the other passengers wouldn't overhear. Harry had to stifle giggles more than once at the sheer, uninhibited shamelessness of his friend. He felt buoyed by a sense of lightness. He'd never made a lasting friend amongst the Muggles, but he thought Albert might become one. The man knew nothing of his true identity, but they were getting along well.
It was a first.
"Approaching Centenary Square," the driver's voice droned over the intercom.
The bus drew to a stop, and they were the last to disembark. There was a sharp wind at their backs, and Harry shivered as they walked toward an austere-looking monument that was the centerpiece of the square. Albert turned up his collar and buried his hands into his pockets but seemed otherwise unbothered by the temperature.
They followed the circular path surrounding the monument in a counterclockwise direction. Harry's eyes were drawn to it, but though relatively well-lit, he couldn't make much of it. Statues mounted on pedestal-like outcroppings bordered it like sentries, and it was crowned by a white dome.
"You can check it out in the morning," Albert said lightly, nudging him. "It's a neat memorial. But we gotta get inside first."
Harry tore his gaze from it. The circle of stone fed into a path that led between two massive buildings with dark-tinted windows.
"Made it. Birmingham Central Library."
Beyond the entranced framed by the two buildings, the library awaited.
Harry peered up. It was imposing, a word not often associated with libraries. It had a central three-tiered, inverse pyramidal structure, and easily towered dozens of meters into the night sky. Attached to it were facades, though the glass was tinted so he couldn't see inside. It did not look particularly inviting.
"Biggest public library in the UK," Albert explained. "More damn books here than you shake Shakespeare's dick at."
"Thanks," Harry said, shooting him a disgusted glare. "You could have just said there were a lot of books."
"You didn't think that was funny?" Albert said with a hurt look, "Laaaame."
"Okay it was a little bit funny," Harry acknowledged grudgingly, "It's just kind of a messed up analogy. And he was a great poet and all."
"That's true."
"Hey, you ever hear the crazy theory about his authorship?"
"What?"
Harry scrunched up his face in concentration as he tried to recall.
"I caught a snippet of this documentary, at my aunt's and uncle's house. Some Oxford professor was saying that maybe he took the credit for someone else's work."
They began trudging up the stairs leading up to the library's entrance.
"Nah… if you've read his stuff, it's clear that he's the same writer. The major tenets of his style are unmistakable. Either he's the real deal, or he somehow he had the same ghostwriter all the way through... That would be the most ridiculous confidence game of all time."
"Hm. Just thought it was interesting... Have you read any Shakespeare?"
"Pffft, I've read all of it. I played Prospero in secondary school, you know."
"Oh cool!"
"I owned that role, by the way. The director said I was so great he started crying."
Harry snickered again at his self-aggrandizement.
"What happens in that play?"
"If you really want to know, you should read it. Go ask the librarian where it is in the morning."
They reached the top of the steps.
"Time flies," Albert said, smiling as he turned to face Harry. "This is where we part ways for now."
"Are you going in too?"
"Me?" he said looking down at himself, wrinkling his nose comically. "Security would toss me out the moment they set eyes on me, and besides, I'd get the books dirty. I've got nothing against books, so that'd be a real shame."
"We'll meet up over there in two days' time," he said, turning to point back to the memorial behind them. "Can't miss it. At noon, so you have time to sleep in."
Harry felt like he had to say something.
"Hey, Albert," Harry said, tugging on the older man's sleeve hesitatingly.
The ex-mafioso turned back to look down at him.
"When you yelled at me, and caught my attention, you..." Harry searched for the proper words, "You snapped me out of this... very strange state of mind. Right when I was about to st-ste..."
Albert cocked his hand to the side, waiting.
"Thank you," Harry finished lamely, looking down at his feet. "I'm glad we met."
Albert sighed, bending his knees so that he was at eye level with his new young charge. He reached over to Harry's head with one hand, and into his jacket with the other. He extracted something, a small black object, and pressed it into Harry' shands.
"Here, this is my backup wallet," he said conspiratorially, "There's enough money in it so you can eat decently until we rendezvous. More than enough. Try not to spend it all."
Harry thumbed through its contents. There were several cards mixed in with the greatest abundance of bills he'd ever held in his hands.
"I'm counting on you to not lose it. Can I trust you?"
He nodded solemnly, and slipped it inside his pocket. Albert's smile widened, and he rose.
"You're a good kid," he said warmly, ruffling Harry's hair. "I'll see you in two days' time, and then we'll be on our way to bigger and better things. Alright?"
Harry nodded silently, any words he might have thought to say stuck in his throat.
Albert descended down the steps, whistling a warbling but energetic tune. He paused to look over his shoulder at Harry who was still watching him. Grinning, he waved unabashedly.
Harry mustered up a smile, and waved back in answer.
Watching the tall figure of his partner in crime reach the square and disappear from sight, Harry tried to reorder his thoughts. His mood was calm, pensive. Part of it he supposed could be attributed to the fatigue, as the day's events caught up with him physically. But the rest was that he genuinely felt better.
There's no reason to be morose, he reflected. Against all odds, a day that had begun on a massively rough start was turning out to be ending on a good note. And he'd made a great - though highly unusual – new friend.
He hardly dared to, but he felt optimism.
He opened the door.
So…
"Hostage-taking Harry," he spoke aloud as he walked into the tall entrance hall, testing the sound of it.
Unfortunately, the acoustics of the hall's interior floated his mutterings beyond the range he expected. He looked up innocently at the teenage girl who glanced at him on her way out, as if hurt that this stranger could ever misinterpret him as saying something so horrible. She smiled back as they passed, and her footsteps terminated in the opening of the door and then the sound of it shutting.
Albert had been right. The way the emphasis fell on the first syllables gave a bold and rather hostile ring to it. If an actual, hardened, hostage-taking criminal mastermind with that moniker existed, Harry would go to great lengths to make sure they never crossed paths.
Hooligan still sounded better though, in his opinion.
A/N:Sorry about that horrific wait.
I know this chapter may seem like it came out of the left field... but don't overreact.