Exit Stage Left
••Travelling Trivialities••
…just what the hell happens now?
§Parseltounge§
So he was a time traveller.
A reluctant one, at that.
Harry briefly wondered if it had ever happened to someone else before he dismissed the thought as pointless.
Having nothing better to do, he sat at the table and chatted to Tom, hearing little tales about how Hogwarts had had a recent vermin problem, which had caused Albus Dumbledore to hang around the Cauldron more than Tom had ever wished. Apparently, the man had tried to start up the 'Cult of Candy', which had somehow eventually resulted in half of Diagon Alley being snowed under by conjured sugar for a few hours and the Aurors that had showed up on the scene being subdued through use of quick-drying Ice Magic. Funnily enough, the Minister seemed all too happy to reinstate Albus as Headmaster after that, if only to avoid the rampant property destruction and the headache it bought him without Albus occupied.
Harry, who had not read the Prophet at all in his second year and guessed that Malfoy may have banned newspapers by that point because he was sure that he would have remembered hearing about Albus doing something as insane as this, (apparently it had happened early 93'), had thoroughly enjoyed the image of Dumbledore on a sugar-high laughing manically while proclaiming the Awesomeness of Candy.
Tom's tone had been ironic as he had said, "Well, that Dumbledore has an incredibly low tolerance for firewhiskey, and with his removal from Hogwarts he was a bit on the blue side so we really should have done something about it in the first place." He grimaced slightly, as if he was remembering the level of chaos caused by the Headmaster.
Tom had continued on to assure Harry that the Union of Wizarding Shops (UWS) had now drawn up an action plan for when something like this happened again.
Harry was beginning to suspect the poor arrangement of unfortunate acronyms was more of a wizard-thing than a strictly Hermione-thing.
That aside, Tom kept telling him little anecdotes about the clientele and other business owners of such-and-such shops, and Harry listened to each story eagerly.
An undeterminable amount of time later, Harry reluctantly stood up from the bar, sheepishly patting down the conjured robes while saying to Tom rather lamely, "Huh, I must have left my money in my other set of conjured robes…"
Toms waved a hand, dismissing Harry's distress over not being able to pay for the meal; "Oh, that's ok, lad, we were all young and stupid once – you mark my words. Really, the story was payment enough." He winked at Harry, rolling his eyes at his own admission.
Harry disagreed, "Nah, Tom – I'll tell you what. I'll go and get some money out of Gringotts, and pay you for the breakfast along with perhaps renting a room for a few weeks?"
Tom smiled and nodded, "Ok, that will be fine – here, let me just go get the book."
Tom bustled away, waving his wand negligently at the dirty plates that had been sat in front of Harry, taking them with him. Harry tapped his fingers against the table impatiently for a few seconds before Tom reappeared with his log book.
Harry could see the charms and spells that ensured people used their legal names and felt a little nervous, but decided he'd just laugh off the fact that his name was the same as the Boy-Who-Lived… 'terrible annoyance, I tell you; whenever I say my name, people shout "Where?!" should be a good enough excuse… hopefully.
Tom handed him a quill and inkpot (dammit, he was going to carry around a pen when he wasn't wearing conjured robes) so he picked it up and signed 'Harry James Potter' without a second thought, mostly so he couldn't talk himself out of it.
In that moment, he was relieved that Tom was on the other side of the bar talking a lunch order.
This was because his ink was moving and rearranging letters, squirming around in a way bizarrely reminiscent of ferret Draco right after being fished out of Crabbe's pants. When it stopped moving, his eyebrows climbed towards his hairline, for the spells and charms that ensured real names were used apparently decided that his name was Daniel Harrison Bennett.
Well what do you know?
Apparently, Hermione had worked in a fresh name for him… although how she came to Daniel Bennett would be something he'd never guess at. Besides the fact that it had no possible relation to 'Harry Potter', of course.
Which, now he thought about it, was a Good Thing.
Who would be stupid enough to go back in time with a name like, oh say 'James Evans'? It would be a huge stupid clue to people who might catch on that there was something strange about him to look at and go 'James Potter, Lily Evans; oh, he could be their future kid that time travelled to defeat a Dark Lord!'
Well maybe not, but there was still the possibility; after all, he wouldn't put it past Dumbledore to make that strange leap of logic.
Harry, newly christened Daniel, sighed and ran an agitated hand through his perpetually messy hair. Oh. Hermione hadn't been able to beat the Potter hair into submission.
Well, better women than she had probably tried and failed that insurmountable task as well.
Hmm, he really should find a mirror somewhere, if only to know what he looked like now.
Ah, well.
Tom was suddenly at his elbow, (he really was a short man) and he looked at the book before exclaiming, "Thankyou, Mr. Bennett, for your business on this fine morning. It has been a pleasure, and you can pay for the room and meal tonight when you get back."
Harry/Daniel quirked a grin and shook Tom's hand, saying, "No, thankyou, Tom – and please call me Daniel."
Tom nodded, and Daniel (he really should refer to himself as such lest he forget) moved towards the Diagon Alley entrance point.
Standing in the small space with only the bin for company, instead of tapping the brick and entering the wizarding center he waved his hand and transfigured the conjured robe into jeans and a long-sleeved shirt before blinking away, decidedly not towards Gringotts Bank.
«±ΰ±»
Daniel arrived a bare second later in a place he knew well – the park in Little Whinging. Blinking the spots out of his eyes, he looked around to see if there was anyone around that he'd have to obliviate (fortunately no one was) before strolling over to a nearby bench to take a seat.
He rolled up the arm of his shirt and examined his recently reluctantly-acquired tattoo in the light. Now, without the panic of the realisation that his friends had turned on him and snapped, he could recognise the straight line of a mixture of kanji, hiragana and katakana script scrawled in a vertical line from the underside of his wrist to his elbow. That was about all he understood about it; a few months ago (or was it now years in the future?) Hermione had discovered that Japanese script was extremely well-suited for small rune-workings and had almost over dosed on potions for memory retention, elevation and comprehension in order to learn the language quickly so that she could play around with it.
It was a very scary few weeks, accompanied by an even scarier Hermione.
But enough about his scary intellectual traitor/friend; he pulled up her instructions on how to work the designs via occlumency (wizard's way to cheat memory recall) and moved to focus on one symbol that meant 'storage'.
Very original, magic is.
And if you didn't catch the sarcasm in that last sentence, then you have a very dull future of being unable to interpret sarcasm, one of the four essentials for a humour-filled existence. Pity for you.
He frowned and tilted his head, tapping the small design with a touch of magic, mentally congratulating himself when it glowed a little. He hissed the password, §you're insane§ (hey, he'd been under duress at the time!) and wasn't particularly surprised when it worked like it should have; it always did when Hermione invented it.
He now had in his possession a little trunk the size of a box of matches.
Now, the magic that he had performed thus far wasn't all that noticeable or flashy, but he'd bet his left hand that somebody would grow suspicious if they saw him resize the trunk and walk into it.
So he did the responsible thing; he looked around the park (which was still empty) before he got up off the bench and skulked behind the bushes so he could use them as an (admittedly pitiful) cover.
Declaring himself in the clear he dropped the trunk, enlarging it in mid air. He absently saw the initials D.H.B embossed on the lid, but ignored thinking about his new name by touching a finger to the letter 'D', which glowed softly as he heard a lock unclick and saw the lid pop open, kind of like when you open the boot of a car.
Daniel grabbed the lid and pushed it up all the way, only a little put out to see it held his clothes (and shoes) neatly folded into sections which he could tell made use of the apparent extra size (hard to guess how much) of the compartment. With a quick switching spell, he put on proper clothes (it was never a good idea to wear conjured items because of a few drawbacks, namely the danger of the magic running out and leaving the unwary starkers; not to forget the fairly high risk of being hit with a Reversing charm in the wizarding world; it was apparently one of the top 3 most used spells, according to the Bureau of Utilitarian Magic Sector) before closing the lid on the boring compartment.
He repeated the unlocking action, this time pressing the 'H' on the lid, and opened it only to look down at a row of books. He scowled; why hadn't they given him anything interesting?
Oh, he forgot that Hermione 'Being Expelled is Worse than Death' Granger put it together.
Of course it wouldn't be cool.
He only kept the lid open long enough to see the catalogue sheet stuck to the bottom of the lid (it worked a lot like an electronic search-engine, only with the books inside) before he shut it and opened up the third and last compartment via the letter 'B'. This one proved to be a bit more interesting.
Daniel gazed down into the trunk with something akin to suspicion – who knew what they had booby trapped the thing with?
In only a few seconds (pretty much his attention span for suspicion) his curiosity got the better of him and he carefully moved so that he could get onto the vertical ladder that was apparently the entrance.
The moment his feet hit the floor, the light blinked on (yes, singular) and he found himself in a roughly rectangular room of about 2x5 metres.
Well. Not exactly what he'd imagined when they said the trunk had a "room in a compartment".
Sigh. He should have guessed.
It was Spartan in design; all it had was a bed that was obviously made to fit only one person, as well as a desk against the opposite wall. The only other thing in the room was some kind of box in the corner that looked vaguely like a mini-fridge and was actually something that he recognised as the wizard-version of a refrigerator; it had spells to keep food edible for up to ten times longer, was able to hold a lot more than it should, had lightening charms so it was easy to move around and was powered by a kind of magical battery that the wizard had to keep charged.
Daniel felt that if wizards went camping, this would be what they'd take in the place of an esky. Of course they wouldn't, so he guessed it didn't matter either way.
Getting back to the room. Or should he call it his room? Maybe he didn't want to.
The trunk-room didn't really have anything else; just one large window that covered a whole side of the longer stretch of wall and was obviously enchanted (it had a lovely view of some beach) and that was pretty much it.
Oh, there was also one door that he discovered led only to a very small room that contained a toilet and some shelves, which didn't have anything on them, either.
Obviously the room was very basic, and was to be used as a last resort for when he couldn't find anywhere else to stay.
Daniel scowled and sunk down on the (admittedly comfortable) bed. Only Hermione could design a boring room in something as cool as a secret compartment that you could carry around with you.
She may as well have just nicked the Weasley's cat-smelling tent and shoved it in his trunk.
…Or not, because he wasn't sure he was that ungrateful that his trunk-room at least didn't come with a non-negotiable odour.
Something yellow caught his eye, and he dragged himself off the bed (ok, maybe Hermione didn't do that bad a job) and moved over to the desk.
On it was a little post-it.
Written on the post-it, in Hermione's handwriting, were the words 'Check the draws, idiot.'
No joking – Hermione had called him an idiot of a piece of stationary.
Fantastic.
Big breath in, big breath out; relax your mind, do not let the anger control you, you control the anger.
Or at least that had been what his fifth (consecutive) occlumency teacher told him worked to 'calm your mind'. He was fairly cynical about whether it worked or not, but it had stopped him from blowing up the Room of Requirement when it had sent him a note saying 'plan more, stupid' just before it dumped a pile of books literally on top of his head, all related to survival in bizarre situations.
He would still rather roll over for Voldemort than admit that those insanely bizarre spells had come in handy, especially the one about turning rocks into marshmallows (don't ask).
He scrunched up the post-it and threw it over his shoulder before going for the top drawer.
In it were a few things that he was sure she'd never have given him had she known she'd be around afterwards - it was all the stuff that they'd stolen off him over the years for the "continued existence of the universe, Mr. Potter, and for Merlin's sake get your hand out of that!"
On the top was his 'Codex of Ward Cracking' (self-written from his work breaking into DE homes and possible Tosser bases) along with a 'Complete Compendium of Weasley's Wonderful Pranks and how to Make Them'. Next was an object of his own creation, the 'Do-it Bot', which was really just an animated toy robot that, when told "do it" would go off like a police siren while running around like Dobby on a punishment kick. Quite explosive, if he said so himself – he'd had that taken when he accidentally set it off in McGonagall's office and (somehow) caused a minor earthquake in the Forbidden Forest which had (by a completely innocent coincidence that was in no way his fault) been the main precursor of the Great Centaur Incident.
But it is better not to think of the Centaur Incident and how they had come to the (misguided and baseless) conclusion that the World was Ending and in result somehow caused the fiery destruction of a good ¼ of the forest in their drunken revelry (he had come to believe that centaurs and alcohol should never be uttered in the same sentence, let alone be together in reality).
Of course, that day had put the Fear of McGonagall into him; to this day he would rather sit through a Percy Weasley cauldron-bottom thickness lecture or pry his eyes out with a spork than cross Minerva McGonagall.
He believed it was the suppressed sadism that came from dealing with Dumbledore on a close basis for nigh on sixty years that gave her the freaking horrifying weapon that was Her Anger.
And yes, it most definitely deserves capital letters. Her Wrath would also be an apt description, and all joking aside, it was past the upper-Voldemort echelons of 'thou-shalt-not-speak-its-name' fear.
But he was still happy to have his do-it bot back.
After those, there were other pieces of junk, a few beach-balls-in-a-bottle (they really were quite handy) and even a spare pair of prank-wings, the joke being that they actually worked (and were especially hilarious when one stuck them on a pig and allowed muggles to see the result… not that he did that, because that would be a breach of the Statue of Secrecy, and breaking the law is Wrong).
At the back he could see a rectangular locked box which was about the size of an A5 piece of paper, although in 3D. There was a post-it on that as well, and he pulled the box out and put it on the desk.
This note said 'Put hand on lid' so he did so, which made the box click open. It was obviously charmed to be bottomless, and he moved it around a bit so he could read the larger note stuck to the bottom of the lid. It went:
Dear Harry (or I suppose Daniel would be more appropriate now),
In this box is all the money that we removed from your vaults. Really, we didn't steal anything, although it was surprising to us that the goblins weren't all that sorry to see us stealing your stuff (really, what did you do to that dragon, Harry? They were quite vehemently against you, and I don't remember you mentioning that you did anything else that could have offended the entire Goblin Nation recently).
Do try not to Potter it up, yeah? We sent you back in time with enough things to ensure money would be no object, and as long as you don't offend anyone (or at least until you have some kind of backup to get you out of it, please) this should work.
All the books that we could get our hands on (that weren't complete fiction) we put in your library, and I guess you've already seen that it's in the second compartment.
Anyway, under this note is an enchanted piece of paper that will show the amount of money left and keep track of your spending in this deposit box, and in there is a leather wallet that we've linked to the box so you can get money out without carrying this thing around. We've also left instructions on how to change passwords and set up the wallet so it won't be stolen or opened by anyone else, so please look at that first.
Well, we hope you enjoy this second chance; good luck, Harry.
With Love, All those from 'That Castle'
«±ΰ±»
Daniel didn't stick around his small boring trunk-room for long after that; just long enough to grab the wallet and fix the spells on it before scampering back up the ladder and into the (mercifully deserted) park.
He quickly shrunk the trunk and put it back inside the weird tattoo on his arm. It was then, standing in the Little Whinging park, that he realised he had absolutely nothing to do.
It was funny really; he'd actually been able to ignore the fact that he had nothing to do in this time with smaller trivialities such as hearing about the miserable rise and fall of the Cult of Candy, and then being worried about having to use the name 'Harry Potter', and more recently digging around the trunk that had been packed by his friend/traitors for his crazy fall through time.
It was this that made him realise, in turn, that there were really only two options for what he would do in the future.
Option A was to be a good little time traveller and stay out of situations that could result in the unravelling of the universe as he knew it. This would undoubtedly include staying away from his younger-self and keeping out of all the fun.
Yeah, right.
Of course, Option B was to pretty much just do whatever the hell he wanted, to ignore the laws of time travel and to run the risk of extremely changing the timeline and ending up right back where he started.
Well, there never really was a chance of him being a good little law abider, and he didn't think his mini-me would want to kill him because he would probably be unrecognisable (what with being older and all) so that wasn't really an issue, and the whole 'ruin my chance at knowing what's happening' didn't really apply to him either because if it just turned out how it was before then being tossed through time would have been a moot point, right?
So it was decided! He'd just do whatever he felt like doing at the time, damn the consequences, and hope it would lead to the destruction of the Tosser and not the universe… well, that's about what he'd been doing in the future before this little involuntary 'Voldie-hunting' time-trip anyway.
Well, that little decision helped him in the long run, but not so much in the way of immediate goals.
Meh, he'd think about it later – he had to go pay back Tom now anyhow.
«±ΰ±»
Well guys, that it for now, I like reviews and I hope you enjoyed it; Skyflyte12.
Oh, and if you didn't get the kinda slanted joke about UWS, I meant that if said aloud it would be pronounced 'ewes', which is the name for a female sheep. Funny, no?