~~~~~~~~~~~ Throwing Out the Script ~~~~~~~~~~~
~ Chapter 2: For Want of a Wand ~
Note to self, Murphy's a dick.
That was Harry's first thought as he woke up, accompanied by a throbbing ache on the top of his head. Well, his actual first thought was hide the purple! but that didn't count because it wasn't actually coherent.
"Oh, that smarts," he mumbled, his instinctive move to try and press a hand against his head revealing another problem. His hands were tied. "Oh, fuck you Murphy."
He was lying on his back on the wooden floor beside a bed. His hands tied together above his head on the other side of one of the bed frame's heavy wooden legs by a jump rope of all things. His nakedness had been covered with a sheet, which he appreciated despite it probably not having been put there for his sake.
A few experimental tugs gave him the impression that untying his hands was not going to be a simple matter.
By accident or design the method by which he'd been bound was actually quite restricting. He couldn't sit up properly because that would try to force his arms behind his back, requiring dislocation. As if that weren't enough, any movement threatened to dislodge the sheet covering him. He would have thought these inconveniences were expertly intentional if not for the ridiculous circumstances and the lack of Anti-Apparition wards.
Harry awkwardly raised his head to look around the room. He was alone and the door was closed.
There was a soft pop and he was standing in the middle of the room.
"Hn," Harry groaned, rubbing the bruise on his head with his now free hands. That Apparition had gone much better than the previous two, but he was definitely still recovering from whatever the ritual had done to him. A short-range line of sight Apparition should have been silent and effortless for him.
The good news was his vision was clearer than before. Not completely restored, but enough to be workable, and it suggested that he was recovering quite well.
Snatching the sheet off the floor Harry wrapped himself in it and made his way back to the desk. If he had any common sense he should be getting the hell away from Privet Drive, but his suspicions were too much to ignore. His emergency stash being replaced by toys, the new look of the room, a letter smelling of potions ingredients addressed to 'Lily', and a redheaded girl?
Don't jump to any conclusions, Harry told himself. The letter he'd seen before getting brained was gone, but searching through the desk turned up two other letters quite quickly, both signed by Deputy Headmistress McGonagall. One was a list of supplies for a fifth year student at Hogwarts, and the other was a letter congratulating Lily Evans on becoming a Prefect.
Well… fuck. This could be a problem.
That would explain why the wards at Grimmauld Place were ignoring him. He wasn't Lord Black anymore as far as they were concerned. Or not yet. Something like that. Harry wasn't ready to believe he was twenty something years in the past quite yet, but it was looking at least circumstantially possible. A botched ritual meant to seal him outside of time sending him back in time wasn't too farfetched… well, it was too early to say at this point.
Harry quickly checked through the drawers looking for anything useful. A wand, information, food…
I'm hungry, Harry realized, frowning. As if being wandless, naked, and possibly in the past wasn't bad enough. That's just great.
A quick search of the room didn't turn up anything useful either. Lily, if that's who she really was, apparently was still in the process of moving in. It was weird to think that his room had once been hers. He'd always been under the impression that the Dursleys had bought the house, not his grandparents.
Keeping the sheet wrapped around him, Harry snuck into the hallway carefully. The hallway was empty but he heard muffled voices coming from the master bedroom. They got clearer as he stealthily made his way towards it, positioning himself by the closed door.
"...should go to the police," a woman's voice said.
A girls voice answered her. "But he was looking at my stuff! If he saw something about magic I could be in trouble for breaking the Statute of Secrecy."
"Well then let's go to the magical police."
"Aurors mum, and what if he didn't see anything?"
"Better safe than sorry. If there's even a chance he saw anything I'm sure the Aurors will understand. How do we contact them?" It was a man who was speaking this time.
"There's a bunch of signaling spells, but I've only memorized the the emergency one. I don't think this counts. I should have the whole list somewhere in my trunk. I'll go get it."
Thinking quickly, Harry positioned himself on the side of the door opposite the stairs. There hadn't been a trunk in the room, so it was mostly likely on the ground floor. The redheaded girl exited the room, turning for the stairs without so much as a glance in his direction. Her wand was in the back right pocket of her jeans, making it almost absurdly easy to steal.
Harry darted forward, one hand keeping the sheet from falling off him and the other deftly reaching to snatch the wand. The instant his fingers were on it there was an almost tangible feeling of relaxation and relief flowing through him. Being wandless had been making him tense and on edge to an extent that he hadn't realized until it was gone.
"Lily!" the man's voice yelled out in warning as Harry hopped back so he wasn't in front of the open door.
Lily spun around, freezing in shock as she saw him with her wand in hand. "You, you were, but–"
Harry nearly winced at the terror his passive Legilimency was picking up from her. "I got cold feet." His tone was light and reassuring. "Letting a girl tie me up naked to her bed is much more of a third date kind of thing for me." He was hoping that the humor would lighten the mood.
She was standing stock still in fright. Harry took the opportunity look at her. Somehow he'd been expecting to react… well more, to be honest. There was no urge to call her 'Mum', no longing to embrace her, no surge of love. There was no doubt looking at her that she was a teenage Lily Evans, but that was it. She wasn't some random stranger to him, but emotionally speaking she wasn't much more.
Harry wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but this teenage girl in front of him was not his mother. She hadn't given birth to him, raised him for the first year of his life, and sacrificed herself for him. There was in her the potential to be very much like that woman, perhaps even exactly like her if he hadn't already irrevocably changed the past with his presence. But even if everything went as before and she had a son named Harry with green eyes and black hair, that Harry would not be him.
But just because she wasn't his mother didn't mean he was comfortable with how scared he was making her.
"I'm not going to hurt anyone, this is just a big misunderstanding. I'm doing you a favor really. Keeping your wand in your back pocket is just begging to have your bum blown off," Harry said, smirking. "It'd be a shame to lose one as nice as yours. Go back into the room and we'll get this sorted without any violence, ok?" Lily's terror had faded considerably, but part of it had been replaced by indignation. Harry felt a little weird that he'd noticed her in that way, but she was very pretty so he shrugged it off. It was better than perving on Lestrange after all.
Harry picked up a surge of relief from her as she caught sight of something in the room, running in. Oh bugger, he thought as he looked in and saw her and an older woman hiding behind a tall man with auburn hair streaked with grey, holding a double barrelled shotgun. Most likely this was Lily's father, whose name no one had ever bothered telling Harry.
"Put the stick down lad," the man said, hesitating on the word stick as though he were thinking of saying something else first. Like wand. "This doesn't have to end badly."
Harry dialed down his passive Legilimency so he was just picking up on the man's surface feelings, as sensing three completely unshielded minds was doing a nasty number on his headache. The only thing he needed was to watch out for any intent to pull the trigger so he could react to that. It would be trivial to shield, or disarm or otherwise incapacitate the man, but there was also the Trace to consider.
He didn't want to bring the Aurors down on him. He could cast a Baffling Ward to hide his magic but that would take a few seconds to cast and be too obvious to hide. The man would shoot at him, forcing Harry to shield or to disarm him beforehand, which would be caught by the Trace. It was a catch 22. He wasn't afraid of the Aurors, but he was trying to keep a low profile until he could figure out what was going on.
"I know this is a wand, so you don't have to beat around the bush there. This is just a horrible misunderstanding," Harry tried to explain. "I don't much fancy getting tied up again."
"Well then you shouldn't go around being weird and naked in other people's rooms!" Lily chimed in, the shotgun apparently making her feel rather safer.
"There's a perfectly good explanation for why I was naked in your room, sniffing your letter." Harry frowned. "That sounded way worse out loud than I was expecting."
"If this is just a misunderstanding, put down the wand and we can talk this out," the man tried to convince him. "I can pull this trigger a lot faster than you can blurt out latin, so it's not really helping you to have it and it's just making things a lot more tense than they have to be."
Harry almost sighed in exasperation. Muggleborns and their parents tended to have a rather inaccurate view of just how out of touch the Wizarding World really was, especially when it came to technology. The parallels between the Wizarding World and medieval times for muggles were thought to extend far beyond what they really were. It wasn't their fault, not really.
Muggleborns didn't take Muggle Studies classes, after all, assuming they already knew more than the class could possibly teach. Unless they were Hermione Granger, of course, and even she dropped the class after deciding that she didn't have to take every damn class Hogwarts offered. Most of Muggle Studies was nothing new for the muggle raised up until N.E.W.T level, but the point of the class wasn't simply to inform students about the muggle world–Wizardkind really didn't care about that. What mattered was what effects the worlds did and could have on each other, both direct and indirect.
"Mr…" Harry trailed off, letting Lily's wand drift off to the side non-threateningly, drawing small circles with it seemingly subconsciously.
"Evans," the man supplied, relaxing a bit. "William Evans."
"Mr. Evans, please don't take this as a threat but I can cast nonverbally, and I just cast a Fire Suppression Ward," Harry said cautiously. He hadn't really cast anything, but leaving William with the impression that he was in charge of the situation wouldn't be helpful at all.
"Fire suppression? That doesn't even make any–oh, because it's called a firearm, ahahahaha!" William's tension disappeared as he chuckled, a deep and booming sound. "That's not how it works."
"Isn't that a fireleg though?" Harry joked lamely, milking the humor for all it was worth. He much preferred being laughed at to being feared. At least from this family. "It's a bit long to be an arm, isn't it?" Lily giggled, which was an improvement. "Kidding, kidding. Guns have been around a long time, and the basics of their function have not changed overly much. In order for the gunpowder to propel anything down that barrel, it has to ignite. Thus, a basic and standard Fire Suppression renders any firearm within its boundaries rather useless." A bit of Albus's manner slipped through as he explained. All of his explanation had been true, except for the part where he claimed to have already cast the ward.
Harry was hoping that William wasn't the sort of man to try shooting him on the chance that he was lying, but it wouldn't be a fatal problem if he did. Shielding a projectile, or many projectiles if it was using buckshot wouldn't be a challenge at all if they weren't magically empowered. He would just prefer to get through this without using any magic and alerting the Aurors. If Lily had been well behaved it was doubtful she'd know exactly how the Trace worked and what would have happened if he had used magic.
"Ah, that makes sense," William said uncomfortably, his shotgun not making him feel very safe any more. He wasn't as tense as he had been when Harry had first shown up, hopefully because Harry had been acting reasonably.
"So how about you set down the gun, I'll set down the wand, and we can discuss like reasonable people. Or as reasonable as we can be when one of us is dressed in just a sheet," Harry amended.
William narrowed his eyes at Harry. "If it's useless, why do you care if I'm still holding it?"
"As a show of trust, so we can relax a little more," Harry lied. He was pretty sure he wasn't going to be randomly shot at this point, but no need to risk anything, right? "Here, I'll go first."
Harry took a few steps and laid down the wand on a table, carefully threading his magic around the handle. Albus Dumbledore had been a true master of wandless magic, using every subtle possibility to its fullest potential and then some. Harry wasn't in Albus's league, but he was no slouch. He returned to his position by the door, raising an eyebrow at William to say your turn.
A conflicted expression appeared on William's face briefly, before settling into a resigned look as he aimed his gun more firmly at Harry. "Sorry lad, but I'm can't take any risks, not with my family. Get your wand Lils."
Guess he didn't buy the ward story, Harry thought. Can't really blame him for that though. He never would have put down the wand if it truly put him in a helpless position, but he'd been hoping to get through this amiably. If his passive Legilimency gave even the slightest indication that he was in danger of being shot it would be easy to apparate away, or snatch the wand back using the wandless anchor he'd put on it.
Lily crossed the room, keeping as much distance between them as she could. As soon as she was close enough to grab her wand she did, and hurried back to her father. She stood a bit behind him and to the side, aiming her wand at him. Harry smiled as his Legilimency caught a stray thought from her, an urge to stick her tongue out at him.
"You said there was a reasonable explanation for all this?" William said, relaxing now that Harry appeared to pose no threat to him. His gun was now pointing at the floor between them and his finger was off the trigger.
"Yeah about that... can you just lend me some clothes, I'll disappear, and we can all pretend this never happened?"
"I can't let all this go. Something's off about this, and I'm not comfortable with just letting you walk away."
"This is what I get for playing nice?" Harry asked wryly. Lily was holding her wand within a few feet the shotgun, which gave him an interesting idea. It was easy enough to use his connection to her wand as a conduit to lace another anchor onto the firearm. "Well, I won't take it personally if you don't."
"What?" William was confused.
Harry mentally yanked, snapping his fingers for the sake of theatrics. The wand and the gun flew out the relaxed grips they were in towards him. The wand was moving faster so he snatched that out of the air first with his right hand, catching the shotgun with his left.
"Merlin's saggy left tit!" Harry cursed as he realized he'd forgotten about the sheet he'd been holding around him. It had fallen to the floor when he took his hands off of it. "I did not think that through," he muttered.
"Lily!" Mrs. Evans admonished sternly.
Harry flushed bright red as he saw Lily looking him over appraisingly. He fumbled a bit with the shotgun, trying to cover himself and keep the wand trained on the Evans at the same time. "Don't look! Turn around, all three of you," Harry ordered.
They did so reluctantly, trying to keep him at least peripherally in view.
Harry placed the shotgun on the ground and drew the sheet back over his shoulders.
The smart thing to do at this point would be to cast a Baffling Ward, now that obviously doing magic wouldn't start a shootout. Then he should Obliviate the Evans, and Confund Lily into not thinking about her wand for a couple of days so that he could use her wand to help him pick up one for himself somehow. Then he could sneak her wand back in and lift the Confundus Charm with no one being the wiser.
Unfortunately even the thought of doing that to them left a foul taste in his mouth. There was no way he'd actually be able to go through with that.
In the same situation Voldemort would have no reservations Obliviating them and making Lily think she'd lost or broken her wand if he couldn't just kill them outright. Even Albus would have been able to rationalize Obliviating and Confunding the family with the intent of returning the wand at a more convenient time, but Harry couldn't bring himself to do the same, not to the Evans. Lily wasn't his mother, but she wasn't nobody to him either.
This would be so much more manageable with Obliviation. Stupid morals, Harry pouted mentally. Why can't I just be selfish sometimes? Now how do I fix this?
Harry took the opportunity to cast a Baffling Ward now that he wasn't going to be interrupted by a shotgun blast to the face. The Evans tensed up as he carved glowing purple runes into the air.
"Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt anybody." he reassured. It took a bit of time to cast this particular ward, as it needed to be hidden from detection as it was cast if someone with the Trace was in range at the time. Harry wasn't sure exactly how much range the Trace had, but he was pretty sure he was in it.
"What are you doing?" Lily asked. She stared at the runes, her brow furrowed.
"Oh, nothing important." Harry finished up and the runes faded into the air before she could get a good look at them. Not that a Hogwarts student would be able to puzzle out their purpose. A flick of the wand over the sheet and it tightened around his body, morphing into a button up shirt with a tie and slacks. "I'll be borrowing the sheet if you don't mind."
The tie was bright orange with moving snitches on it. Oops, Harry thought, tapping it with Lily's wand. It jumped over his shoulder and grew into a black cloak with a hood. Much better. A few more flicks gave him socks, shoes, and boxers. Commando wasn't really his style.
"Can you tell me why I still have to buy you clothes?" William asked his daughter dryly.
"I'm not that good at Transfiguration. That was like N.E.W.T level." Lily was looking rather impressed.
An unanchored Baffling Ward had limits to what it could hide, so Harry hadn't used permanent Transfiguration. Reversible inanimate to complex multipart inanimate was actually O.W.L level but being skilled enough with it to make clothes that looked like clothes, and actually fit in one step was beyond any N.E.W.T student not intending to obtain an E.A.G.L.E (Extremely Advanced Graduate Level Exam) for one of the more advanced branches of Transfiguration.
It was oddly pleasing to have someone so impressed with him. Harry knew it wasn't quite deserved, given that he could and did siphon knowledge and skill from the world's foremost Transfiguration expert. But for as long as he could remember impressive things had been expected of the Boy-Who-Lived.
Even the people who knew he'd driven off a hundred dementors as a third year weren't properly impressed. Yes, they found it impressive, but not to the degree that doing something once thought nearly impossible should warrant. It felt a bit petty to be annoyed by that, but there was always this background feeling that he wasn't good enough when he wasn't absolutely amazing.
Being amazing was just living up to his name, and there was always a sort of patient disappointment (or glee, if they disliked him) if he was anywhere near normal. Harry couldn't help but think of the boa constrictor he'd seen in the zoo with the Dursleys when he was eleven. Dudley had been so annoyed with the snake for not doing anything, as though the reptile had an obligation to be interesting because he was watching.
Sometimes Harry felt like he was that snake trapped in a glass prison. The rest of the world was the fat, spoiled brat tapping on the glass, annoyed that Harry wasn't being entertaining every time they felt like looking.
Would that make Voldemort me in that analogy? Harry smiled as he realized something.
"I'm in Brazil," he murmurred. Annoying a snake that was behind glass was one thing. Far fewer people would be brave enough to do the same to one in the wild.
"You're in England." Lily was looking at him weirdly.
Oops, didn't mean to say that out loud.
"Metaphorically, I'm in Brazil," Harry started to explain, before stopping himself. "You know what, it's a long story. Let's just say I've had a weird day… maybe two days now."
"As long as you realize that you are literally in England," Lily asserted over her mother's shushing sounds. "Being held at wandpoint by some weird pervert I found naked in my room is one thing, but it'd really start being scary if you thought you were in Brazil."
Harry was a bit miffed, but he had to smile at her bravery in the face of a weird pervert holding her at wandpoint who may or may not think he was in Brazil.
"I'm not a weird pervert. This has just been a colossal misunderstanding. Somebody I don't get along with ambushed me, and next thing I knew it was morning, I was completely naked, and it felt like my head had been cracked in two. Metaphorically speaking. I tried to apparate to my old room and ended up in yours for some reason." Harry was a bit surprised that he managed to explain it in a way that was all technically true. "Oh, and I smelled ashwinder eggs on your letter. And then you tried to crack my head in two. Literally."
"Your old room?" Lily noticed shrewdly. "Like at your parents house?"
"No, my Aunt and Uncle's old place. My… father isn't exactly someone I'm can take my problems to." Harry had been about to say parents, on account of the fact that they were dead, but in a weird sort of way he had brought his problems to his mother. Kind of. "And I tried to go to my place first, but the wards suddenly didn't like me. Three guesses who's responsible for that." Indirectly, sure, but still responsible. "The bastard made me homeless."
Hey, this half truth thing is pretty fun, Harry thought. I see why Albus liked to play it like this all the time.
"Your father kicked you out?" Mrs. Evans gasped. The look of abject pity that appeared on her face grated on Harry for some reason.
"Wait what? No, my father is…" dead? And the guy with his face and name doesn't have a clue who I am? I shouldn't have tried to explain anything at all, this has gone way too far. "Well… I don't live with my father. And you know what, that doesn't really matter. So now that you've heard my totally true and believable sob story, you'll let me borrow this wand for a few days so I can work things out?"
Even if Harry couldn't feel the hell no! that Lily mentally screamed, the look on her face would have made it obvious.
What am I doing? Harry asked himself. What had started as a prideful need to explain that he wasn't in fact a weird pervert was edging towards a tentative plea for sympathy or help. He shouldn't be involving the Evans at all. I need to get out of here.
"Right, that's unreasonable," Harry said before Lily could vocalize her objection. "And I suppose lending me enough money to buy one would also be out of the question."
Wands were not cheap. Seven Galleons hadn't seemed like much when he knew he had mounds and mounds of them in his vault. Harry'd never had to worry about money before, but Hermione had once mentioned that she'd actually gotten some kind of grant to help her pay for hers because she was a Muggleborn. The Weasleys hadn't replaced Ron's for the whole of second year, which probably harmed his education more than anyone wanted to think about.
"It doesn't feel like a question when you're holding us at the end of a wand," William said carefully.
Harry winced. "That's a fair point. This has gotten way out of hand." He flicked the wand over his transfigured cloak, applying several weak deception charms. A Notice-Me-Not, a Dimmer on the hood, and a few other Obfuscation charms. The trick was to make them weak and varied, not overpowering. A slash through the air briefly revealed the glowing runes as they broke apart and faded away. "I'm sorry for troubling you all, and I hope we can just forget this ever happened."
Unable to refrain from one last piece of theatrics, Harry let go of Lily's wand in thin air, where it hung there unaffected by gravity. With a soft pop, he was gone.
The interesting thing about Knockturn Alley was that it was laid out mostly in order of affluence. The closer the shop was to Diagon Alley the better the quality of its goods. For example Borgin Burkes, famous for the rather questionable legality of their stock, was only a minute's walk into the alley.
A high-end shop like that would be useless for Harry's plan. It would be far too well protected.
Harry needed a wand. A free wand to be precise. Which meant he was going to need to steal one.
So he found himself deep within Knockturn Alley, in a very shady second-hand shop selling absolute junk. His Legilimency had verified that the shopkeeper knew that his merchandise was at least mostly stolen, so Harry had no moral qualms with the idea of stealing from him.
The selection of wands in the shop was truly abysmal. There were nine in total, none of them in very good condition.
Harry had come up with with around twenty ideas to try and pick up his old holly and phoenix feather wand from Ollivanders, every single one of them came up far short of rational. Once he had the wand in hand it was conceivable that he could simply blast his way through the wandmaker's Anti-Theft Wards and run the hell away, but that would end up with the Aurors on his tail. Not to mention he didn't want to do that to the old man. No, he'd have to get the money to buy it somehow.
Putting aside the issue of buying, stealing, or simply convincing Ollivander to give him the wand, there was still the question of what he could or should do.
The year was 1975. He was pretty certain of that at this point. But what did that mean?
Could he change history, or had this all happened 'before'? If he could, had he already changed things by showing up at the Evans'? If he could change things but hadn't so far, should he do so?
Harry simply didn't know. He needed time to think. And a place to sleep. And a wand.
He'd briefly entertained the idea of going to the current version of Albus and asking for help, but that idea had been nixed rather quickly. He knew the Headmaster, knew that he wouldn't trust anybody with the kind of power and influence detailed knowledge of the next quarter century would give. That was even without considering the potential for Harry's mind to be unduly influenced by Tom's or Albus's memories. Albus would be terrified of the possibility that Harry could decide to crusade for the 'Greater Good' like he once had.
No, Albus Dumbledore would not trust him. Coming clean to his old mentor would be a horrendously bad idea. It was a sad truth.
Well, at least the getting a wand is doable… sort of.
The wands were priced as two Galleons apiece, and they were likely the most expensive items in the shop. The shopkeeper, a tall and lanky fellow with a squashed looking nose, had reluctantly taken them out from the warded glass display case when Harry had expressed an interest in them. He'd tried to have Harry pick one out while they were still in there, but Harry had feigned a loss of interest, quoting one of Ollivanders' little sayings about compatibility. The potential loss of a two Galleon sale was enough to get them out.
The man hovered by Harry with a warning glare as he lightly touched each of the wands, trying to figure out which one was the best fit. He didn't intend to use it for very long, but even the best of these scuffed pieces of junk wasn't going to be very nice to work with.
Two of the wands were actually surprisingly compatible with him. Neither of which he'd want to use in the long term, but far better than he'd been expecting.
Finding a faint crack in one of the wands allowed him to make his choice. Using the same trick that he had on Lily's wand earlier, he laced the uncracked wand with a bit of his magic to provide and anchor. Then he picked up the wand with the crack in it as though to look at it more closely.
Briefly making eye contact with the shopkeeper yielded a strong feeling of anticipation.
Harry's eyes narrowed fractionally. He knows it's cracked. It wasn't much of a surprise. He'd picked a shifty looking shop to ease his guilt at stealing, but this wiped out any lingering bad feelings about his plan.
"How much is this–" Harry began to ask, flicking the wand as though to get a feel for it. There was a squealing sound, and a glowing blue blob leapt from the end of the defective wand, swerving up to splash against the ceiling.
"You twit!" The shopkeeper yelled, lunging forward to snatch the wand out of Harry's hand before he could do anymore damage. In that moment of distraction he didn't notice the other wand jumping off the counter and into the sleeve of Harry's cloak. "Out! Out! Get out of my shop!"
"I didn't mean to do that," Harry insisted apologetically. He was shoved in response.
"I don't care, out out out!"
The intent based Anti-Theft Ward had been utterly useless against Harry's Occlumency, but the other wards he'd managed to pick up on weren't something he could bypass without a wand. So he'd decided to obviously set off all the wards in an 'accident' as cover for them legitimately going off.
Harry was shoved repeatedly and none too gently as he meekly complied to complete the act. An extra hard shove sent him stumbling out the door into the Alley.
"Oof, watch where you're going punk."
Harry mumbled an apology to the figure he'd bumped into and tried to slink away. Knockturn Alley was actually fairly safe for those that didn't draw attention to themselves. Discretion was highly valued, and attention-grabbing disruptions were dealt with quickly and harshly.
"Oi, get back here and apologize properly."
Bugger. The plan had been to unsuspiciously disappear before there was any opportunity for the shopkeeper to notice he was missing merchandise. Whatever the man thought was a 'proper' apology was just going to delay him unnecessarily. Maybe he won't follow me.
A glance behind him dashed that hope. Not only was the man following him but he was also drawing his wand, and it looked like he had friends.
Harry ducked into an alleyway between a shady looking potions shop and a magical tattoo parlor. Keeping with his luck, it was a dead end.
"Not very bright, are ya laddie?" the apology seeker said as he and his two friends blocked the exit.
Annoying. Guess I'll have to deal with this. "Look, I'm sorry about bumping into you. It was an accident."
"Sorry isn't enough, not now that you've so conveniently put yourself in a nice dark alley." The man's grin was rather predatory. His companions, a man and a woman, chuckled darkly. The woman waved her wand around, casting a silencing ward over the area.
They have amber eyes, Harry noticed. Their sallow complexions, their facial bone structure, and the fidgety energy in their stances made the picture a bit clearer. They were werewolves, but not like Remus. Judging by the signs he could see, the onset of their transformation was a day or two away.
There were two fundamental ways that werewolves dealt with the effects of the oncoming full moon.
Those like Remus Lupin repressed the feelings and the urges caused by the curse in the days leading up to the full moon, and suffered for it. It was draining, made the transformation even more painful, and had long term negative effects on health.
Then there were those that embraced the curse, let it bleed into the rest of the month. The transformation would still only occur in the three nights of the full moon, but elements of it would seep into their human forms. The longer and more fully they embraced it, the more entrenched the effects would become. There were physical changes like the telltale bright amber eyes, elongated limbs, enhanced strength and magical resistance. But the real problem was the mental effects. Embracing the curse meant accepting the bloodlust, the sadism, and the desire to hunt.
These three were obviously not the repressing type, and by catching their attention and projecting the meekness he'd meant to use to melt into the crowd Harry had labeled himself as prey. That wasn't something they could ignore this close to the full moon–or rather it wasn't something they would want to ignore. The more they gave into the curse's urges, the better and stronger they felt.
Harry let himself fall in the calm of the Void, separating himself from his emotions. With the crap wand he was working with, he didn't want to leave any room for error. Their intentions would have been crystal clear even without his prodigious skill in Legilimency.
"This is the only warning I'm going to give you," Harry said coldly, knowing that they wouldn't heed it. It was his custom nonetheless. They weren't aware of his credo. "If you try to kill me, I'm going to kill you."
Early on in the war it had become clear to Harry that his enemies weren't afraid of the consequences of their actions. Losing a fight was rarely fatal. Prison was a minor inconvenience at first, and became a moot point once Voldemort took over the Ministry.
Albus and Tom's perspective on war and human nature had allowed Harry to skip years of angst and contemplation to come up with what he deemed the appropriate response.
If they came at him or others with lethal intent, he'd respond with lethal force. If only those prepared to be killed would try to kill, then only those who had sufficient motivation to take that risk would be a problem. It wasn't quite that cut and dry, but it was a good starting point.
Some cases were quite clear. If a wizard was killing or torturing someone for fun, Harry had no qualms about ending them. If they were participating in something unsavory due to some kind of pressure, they usually got one warning from him: If I ever see you doing this again, there won't be a next time. The 'I was under orders' excuse wasn't grounds for a pardon or much sympathy.
Some pressures were more excusable than others. Threats to families or friends, implicit and explicit, were a rather harsh reality.
Legilimency was a vital tool in determining who was acting of their own free will, and the combination of Albus and Tom's skill in the mental arts was the only reason Harry feel justified in the slightest.
Ron and Hermione had not been on board with his philosophy at all. Hermione in particular was up in arms about him 'playing at being Judge, Jury, and Executioner'. You think you have the right to kill? she would ask every time he did so. His answer never seemed to make any sense to her. I'm not exercising a right to kill. I'm just protecting the right to live in peace.
The three werewolves who had trapped themselves in the alleyway with him (although they thought it was he who was trapped) did not present any difficult moral dilemma to Harry. They wanted to torture and kill him for sport. If it wasn't going to be him now, it was going to be someone else later, and again and again. What they were planning on doing to him would earn them life sentences in Azkaban if they were to be caught.
Between death and prison, Harry thought that death was the more merciful option. Azkaban wasn't rehabilitation or justice–it was torture, plain and simple. Even if he would have preferred to put them in prison, that would necessitate actually letting them earn their sentence. On him or someone else.
"You're going to kill us?" The werewolf he'd bumped into chuckled, his savage grin becoming more pronounced. "You're not bright at all. Lacerat–AHHHH!" He fell back, blood and flesh exploding from his face as Harry used the counter curse to make the Mangling Curse backfire on him. It was easy to counter when you could read minds. The power behind his counter would have taken off his head had Harry's wand not been utter shite.
In the same motion of his counter curse Harry snapped out a black cord to wrap around the surprised woman's neck, cutting off her hasty "Cruci–" and yanking her into the path of the sickly yellow curse that the third werewolf cast. There was a loud crack as the curse impacted her shoulder, throwing her face first into the alley wall.
The first werewolf, his face bloody and mangled, spun back around howled "Flammalorum!" A surprisingly accurate flame whip snapped towards Harry, who caught it at the end of his wand. The werewolf on the end of the whip looked at Harry in shock, but the other one was already casting another curse.
A quick figure eight sent two loops spiraling down the whip, one of them colliding with the Bludgeoning Curse heading his way, deflecting it into the prone and moaning woman on the ground of the alley. She went silent.
The now chaotic loops of fire wrapped around the werewolf who had cast it, who tried to scream, sheer panic on his face. Harry didn't give him a chance, pulling sharply on the whip to dismember him. He parried three quick curses before the body parts hit the ground with wet thuds.
Harry's last enemy was clearly a cut above the first two. He hadn't frozen up in surprise, but had kept firing curses when met with unexpected resistance. And now he was rather expertly utilizing a dueling technique called banter.
Banter was the exchange of high speed curses and jinxes. The point was bog down the opponent in parrying and shielding to gain the upper hand, the tempo, and use the opportunity to Strike with something heavy. Generally speaking, trying to use a Strike, Smash, or an Ender without holding tempo just got you a facefull of banter. In one on one dueling, the victor was usually the one who gained the tempo with banter.
Unfortunately for his foe, Harry was on a level above conventional dueling. In a fight with Albus Dumbledore, Tom Riddle, or Harry Potter, banter with minor spells simply wasn't a useful tactic. Their ability to cast finishers at the same speed as jinxes rendered banter completely ineffective against them.
It seemed as if Harry had been on the defensive the entire fight, because he hadn't really attacked. He'd simply parried and countered, because behind his attackers were innocent...ish bystanders. He didn't want a stray curse to hurt anyone unintentionally. Confident that he held the tempo, the werewolf decided to end the fight with a Disembowelment Curse.
Legilimency gave Harry a few seconds notice, not that it was necessary given the curse took five whole syllables to vocalize, and his enemy wasn't capable of casting this particular curse nonverbally. He caught the last piece of banter on the end of his wand, flinging it back to interrupt, followed immediately by his own finisher. The first motion hid the second.
"Eviscera–shit," the werewolf cursed, slapping aside his returned battering hex, not noticing the iron spike right behind it until it buried itself into his heart with a thunk. He looked at his chest in incomprehension for a few seconds as the life left his eyes, and he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
That was pleasantly anti-climactic. It had been a long time since he'd had such a relaxing fight. Even with his shitty wand, the difference between fighting Taint empowered Death Eaters and a couple random werewolves was ridiculous. Granted, only one of them had any skill worth noting. Speaking of…
Harry walked up to the corpse of the last werewolf, careful not to get any of the pooling blood on his conjured shoes. I know him, Harry realized. He was one of Fenrir Greyback's entourage… one he distinctly recalled being alive in the future.
What was his name? Ridger? Ruger? Rhigers, that's it. Rhigers and Greyback… why does that ring a bell? Well at least this answers one question. Harry could change the 'past'. He wasn't in a consistent, self-maintaining time loop, unable to change what had already happened. Voldemort's ritual had succeeded in completely separating him from the timeline. Not that time was technically a line. It was more like wibbly wobbly timey wimey… stuff. Even Albus didn't have a clear understanding of that mess.
The question of whether he would actually change things now that he knew that he could was a moot point. He'd already changed things, and he'd still change things merely by existing even if he went off to live as a hermit for the next twenty something years. Even if he could 'preserve' the previous course of events, the temptation to change them would likely be too much.
And suddenly the connection between the corpse at his feet and Greyback became crystal clear in the form of a Daily Prophet headline that he'd once seen while researching the vicious werewolf.
DMLE Believe Fenrir Greyback, Julian Rhigers, and Rhiannon Dulcotte Responsible for Oban Massacre.
The Oban Massacre was a fairly infamous event of the first war. It was truly a tragedy, but it would have been a footnote in history if it weren't for what it was a prelude for.
Voldemort had paid Greyback, Rhigers, and Dulcotte to undergo their transformations in the muggle town of Oban on the night of August 20th, 1975. The death toll had nearly reached a hundred before Aurors were alerted and managed to arrive to the scene to try and chase them off.
The goal of the night hadn't been been senseless slaughter of muggles, although both Greyback and Voldemort had considered that a bonus. No, the goal of that night was the aftermath. The Ministry of Magic had spent the entirety of the next day and more besides that trying to deal with what came after. Most of the active emergency personnel had been sent to Oban and had been tied up there for ages. Medical care was needed for those who'd survived the attack. Aurors and Obliviators had a right nasty time trying to maintain the Statute of Secrecy and try to track down the culprits. Even Albus had gone there to help.
So no one was prepared for Voldemort and some of his minions to show up to Diagon Alley in broad daylight. They were there to make a point.
There was a Muggleborn shopkeeper who had been loudly and bravely saying that he wouldn't live in fear of Voldemort, and wouldn't live in fear of his name. He would actually say the word 'Voldemort' aloud. The Dark Lord had decided that warranted his personal attention.
Voldemort had put quite a bit of effort into making people fear everything about him, and the shopkeeper's attitude had drawn his ire. His showmanship, marching down Diagon Alley in broad daylight for the express purpose of killing one man, was a devastating example of his grasp of psychological warfare. The message was clear. The Dark Lord Voldemort could kill anyone, in any place, at any time.
No one but Albus Dumbledore publicly said 'Voldemort' for the next sixteen years.
The date was August 19, 1975. It was clear to Harry that if he was looking to change history for the better, taking out Fenrir Greyback would be a fine way to start.