The Free City of London, Viceroyalty of Britannia, Empire of Romania, Year of Our Lord 7185
Before anything else he needed to figure the history, and how exactly this Latin Empire had taken over England and possibly the . entire world. There had to be a point of divergence somewhere… his immediate thought was the library he had been told about, but getting there would require a bit of give and take, he figured. That much knowledge wouldn't come for free.
Before that, though, there was the matter of food and rest. He had been having a long day before he had been thrown into an entirely different timeline, so the prospect and food and rest were nice. Well, as long as there wasn't something up with them. Harry figured they wouldn't- they wanted the information he had- but he hadn't gotten this far by lacking in caution in weird situations like this.
(A dose of Veritaserum or similar seemed more likely than anything else, but they hadn't opened with that like they could have. They held themselves to some sort of standard, at least.)
His dinner turned out to be an important piece of evidence: there were potatoes. Potatoes were American, so it meant that these Latins had gotten all the way to America, probably because someone had told them it was there. If Harry and the mysterious 1989 man showed up, surely others had, some had probably talked about America, at the least. What Harry hadn't seen, though, were things that looked like factories or even any guns in the tower's armories. That wasn't as good of a sign as it could have been, if they were all wizards. A wand would beat a gun most of the time. Well, sniper rifles or whatever, but a wizard could subvert a military horribly.
The house he was in was another curiosity. Of course, it was cut off from the rest of London so he couldn't make an escape without getting caught, but it was nice in its own sort of way. The people here loved their stained glass: one window was of a rose in bloom, while the other was an image of a ram, horns caught in a bramble of thorns. That was paired with a lot of paintings inside, to a degree that was almost gaudy.
Look this way, and there was a cherubic face. The other way? Two. Stare into the corner? Nope, there was an intricately carved faux-tree-looking pillar thing. It was an almost painful amount of detail, but he could hide from it by closing his eyes and trying to get some sleep under a lovely blanket covered in some sort of flower pattern.
It was still dark when the bells began to toll, ringing and ringing and making sure any further sleep was impossible; honestly, Harry couldn't force himself to sleep anymore, not when he was handling a situation like this. Unfortunately, he couldn't spend much time sitting in the room, processing things or trying to gather more evidence. He had a mass to get to, after all, and there was not a moment to lose!
What followed was a thoroughly confusing hour of pontificating (pun intended) in a language that he didn't understand. The chapel would have made a medievalist very excited, Harry imagined, but it seemed to suffer from the same excess of detail that his plagued his previous rooms. Massive quantities of stained glass, a large statue of Jesus in agony, lots of gilding, and enough incense to fill the entire room with haze, an assault on the senses.
Harry didn't really participate, which led to some thoroughly awkward questioning about Anglicanism- which, surprise surprise, the fanatically Catholic literal crusader blokes weren't huge fans of- but he got out of it without too much trouble. They wanted something from him, after all.
After that, there was breakfast, and Harry asked a question: "No meat?"
The Viceroy- who apparently had a lot of spare time to investigate Harry's case- shook his head no. "It's Friday."
"What?"
"We don't partake in meat on Fridays, Mister Potter."
Harry almost thought to ask why, but he was pretty sure that he could guess the reason. "That library you talked about, can I see it?"
"It would be possible." The Viceroy trailed off, giving Harry an expectant look. He sighed. Alright, what could he give this guy? They clearly wanted to know about the old world…
"I think the Pope is still John Paul the Second?" Harry suggested, vaguely remembering that Vernon liked him specifically because he was anti-communist.
"Good to hear." The Viceroy remarked. "We had heard of the name, but details were sparse. The last visitor was a die-hard communist who was trying to prevent the fall of his union. He was no fan of the Pope."
Harry hid his shock by swallowing some 'delicious' lentils. The last person who had ended up here was specifically trying to change the past- which explained a lot, thinking about it. The Latin Empire hadn't survived to the modern day, so it was possible they had tried the same stunt and created this alternate reality? Maybe? He couldn't be quite sure.
The Viceroy looked almost hopeful. "Do you remember anything else about him?"
"I think he was a Pole?" Harry suggested.
"Not Italian?" The Viceroy mused. "I suppose you wouldn't know anything about the first John Paul? We know he must exist, but we don't know when."
"Not a clue, sorry." Harry said. "But do you have a list compiled somewhere?"
The Viceroy chuckled. "I suppose it's only fair that you get to see it. Come along."
The library was, without a doubt, one of the most splendid buildings Harry had ever seen, a beautiful thing of polished marble and dozens of buttresses, soaring upwards almost without end, ending in roofs of glimmering copper tile. There must have been thousands of individual windows, including no small number of stained glass ones he couldn't make out.
How did he see this? He got to take a broom there… under escort. He might have been able to outrun them with careful flying, but he didn't want to try it while he was still in the middle of London. Harry landed near the escorts, in the middle of a splendid garden that bloomed with brilliant flowers despite the chill. Such a simple use of magic, keeping flowers warm during winter…
What was less fun was having to give up his wand. They were apparently quite serious about avoiding theft. (Harry almost expected to get doused by some sort of Thief's Downfall ripoff, but that probably risked damaging the books.) The person who took the wands- and who checked him for hidden magical tools- put them in a lockbox and placed it in a sort of dumbwaiter. Watching the box sink into the depths of the building made his skin crawl, but it was necessary.
Afterward, there was a massive pair of doors, charmed and balanced so perfectly that they opened with the gentlest touch. Inside, there was floor after floor filled with bookshelves, and doors leading to more rooms. A massive shimmering mosaic of gemstone made up the ceiling, and the floor was perfectly reflective marble, like a mirror under his feet, reflecting the same mosaic again.
They led him to the histories, another sprawling room whose most notable feature was a massive, wall-filling painting, depicting a battle Harry didn't recognize. He also assumed the angels flying overhead were a bit of an exaggeration. He gestured at it with a sort of questioning look- the translation spell had ran its course, so all he could tell was that the bloke was probably named Constantine.
Thankfully for his research, they had this sort of big glass sheet that did translation when you looked through it. Unfortunately, it was so big that Harry had to guess what titles meant and then bring the books over to check.
After that work, he did manage to get an answer: the complex piece of magic that caused this alternate timeline was executed in the year 1260, shortly before the Byzantine Empire came to take their city back. A massive collection of Latin knights and loyal citizens were gathered in Constantinople, and the spell was supposed to send them back to reinforce the Latin Empire. All it managed to do was send them to a world without any other people.
That meant they hadn't slaughtered their way across the planet; all they had to do was move into houses that were already built. The only things that didn't seem to come along with them were other people- there were still dragons, unicorns, and whatnot for wands, but the Latins had literally walked into Jerusalem without a fight.
While this was just conjecture, Harry figured it was like splitting time into two parts. You had the original timeline, and you had the Latin one, which sort of "caught" anyone who screwed with time too much in the original.
The histories also seemed to paint the post-divergence Empire as shockingly stable. Maybe because there was almost always enough land to go around, maybe because there was a single unifying mission in eventually getting back. The claim all throughout the books themselves was a unifying Catholic faith and a series of excellent monarchs… so there was also that possibility, Harry guessed.
More importantly, their historical commentaries and reconstructions gave definite proof that the Latins knew what guns and artillery did. And if knew that… they probably had plans to counter them.
(The nice man at the front desk did give Harry his wand back, of course, after making sure he wasn't trying to sneak a book under his shirt or something. There was also some sort of complex spell that made the memories hard to use in a Pensieve? Harry wasn't quite sure, but they were quite paranoid about it all.)
Harry wanted to maneuver himself to escape, of course, but he didn't want to give away too much information. Everything the Latins learned could be used against home once they figured out how to get back. That was if getting back was even possible….
A discussion revealed that the Viceroy did know where Hogwarts was, even if it was in the jurisdiction of the Viceroyalty of Caledonia. Harry grinned and asked if he knew where the Chamber of Secrets- and the giant basilisk contained inside- were. He did not know that, actually, so Harry had his ticket to the isolated mountains of Scotland, alongside a tragically large party of soldiers who were coming along to 'handle the serpent' (and keep him from running away).
While traveling, he did manage to get something very important: the translation spell. They were obviously a bit hesitant to teach it to him, but Harry argued it would be more efficient for him to know, and he did not stop arguing that it would be good for him to know.
His Parseltongue skills were rusty, but he remembered how Ron did it, so he managed to the get the sink open. After about five increasingly embarrassing tries, while the soldiers already thought he was weird for storming into a women's restroom. But the entrance to the chamber was open, and it was time for snake hunting.
Minor problem: the snake was super dead. The skeleton was really impressive though, so impressive that Harry managed to slip away into the thoroughly disgusting Hogwarts sewers while the soldiers walked under the ribs and analyzed the massive fangs. They were good, probably even great by their standards, but Harry Potter had genuine combat experience, knew the lay of the land, and also owned an invisibility cloak.
He didn't have the Marauder's Map, but he knew Hogwarts well, well enough to grab a broom without anyone noticing. By the time people realized he had managed to escape his guards, he was over the ocean and heading for Eastern Europe. He didn't have a particular target in mind, other than not Britain.
This timeline wasn't completely unfamiliar from home. At night, the cities still glowed, artificial spell-light filling the gap of electric light, so that people could keep busy all throughout the night. It was a funny thing, flying by places he knew to be notable cities back home and finding them completely dark. He supposed it made sense. There was no industrial revolution in the Latin Empire, no need to tap the massive coalfields under the isle. London was still a bustling metropole, but the countryside was shockingly pastoral.
Flying by broom into Europe wasn't a pleasant prospect, but he needed to get far, and he needed to find a big city to immerse himself in. Holland glowed like a lamp from kilometers away, but it was too close to Britain to comfort so he shot east. There were lights near the mouths of the German rivers- which Harry couldn't name- and a dark strand of water through the bottom of a landmass that Harry thought was Denmark. A canal?
Whatever the case, Harry managed to suffer his way through a good chunk of the Baltic before his eyes caught on a brilliant city. Sure, the other ones shone, but this one was different, the entire city seeming to glow a gentle, welcoming orange, looking almost cozy.
When he flew in close to see why, Harry realized that the color was due to the city's windows: thousands and thousands of them, each one a massive, flawless piece of amber polished and cut perfectly to fit in sills. They graced the sides of beautiful cathedrals, but they were also in the homes of common people, every way he looked.
When the sun rose, it hit the windows beautifully, the whole city caught up in the shining, so it sat on the shore of the Baltic like some kilometer-scale gemstone.
The Amber City of Danzig, the (New) Teutonic State, Empire of Romania
Unfortunately for Harry, another problem occurred to him after he landed. They probably didn't accept galleons, and even then, he wasn't sure the loose change he had on him was enough to get him a room.
Well, he was a wizard, right? He could rough it for a bit.
