Harry lay in the darkness of his little alcove, clutching his decrepit wand in one of his hands, repeating 'lumos' time and time again.
The wand barely emanated the faintest sputtering of light before dying as if nothing had ever happened. Finally, after the eleventh time, the sputter turned into a spark that spat out of the wand like a small, living flame.
Harry squashed it with the heel of his hand, alarmed by it, thinking of the wooden floor and how easy it would be to catch fire. Of course, nothing happened, but he still quit trying to get it to work.
It was of no use to him now, and it would probably do more harm than good if he kept on trying to have it respond to him. He kept tracing back how much that wand meant, how connected it was to him… how connected it had been to Voldemort. Maybe the wand is symbolic, he thought to himself, a bit bitter. Severed ties with You-Know-Who severed ties with what he had grown to call it home. Severed ties with himself.
He shook his head as if to spill the bad thoughts from his ears. He couldn't afford to think like that - he would find a way to get back, he had to.
In his head, it was ridiculous that he shouldn't. It was inconceivable. He rolled the wand away as if it were poisonous and then shut his eyes, trying to sleep against the oppressive darkness and stifling heat yawning over him like the massive, breathing mouth of some terrible creature.
He didn't realize when he had fallen asleep because of how black his surroundings were, but he finally fell into a deep slumber, compensating for the awful night he had spent in this new stranger's home.
Only now, it wasn't strange, and he felt a bit more comfortable letting his guard down and falling soundly asleep without the fear that someone would hurt him, that some unknown darkness would come crawling out of the vacuumed shadows in the walls. He awoke to grumble and grumpy - it irritated him quite a bit not to have any windows to know what time it was or how long he had slept.
He was completely disoriented. His eyes were puffed and red. Finally, he convinced himself that he should get out and stop sleeping unless he wanted another sleepless night and headed out the door.
In the common-area living-room kitchen, Mrs. Cormier had set a pot over a crackling fire, and a thack-thump came from a carving knife slamming against wood as she chopped up some vegetables.
She smiled as she saw him emerge. "Why, you just about slept through the whole day, Harry!" She exclaimed, clearly at her ease. "Just in time for dinner, though," Harry smiled at her and stifled a yawn as he set himself on one of the little cushions on the floor. He had the distinct impression that it would've been inappropriate to offer any help to Mrs. Cormier - a custom that was probably very strange in this day and age, but he couldn't help it. She brushed him off again, a little flustered. But having got that out of the way, he felt a bit awkward just sitting there.
He scratched at his neck. "So, Uhm, where's Guidry?" He asked. "Out," Mrs. Cormier responded loosely. Harry didn't want to pry - after all, he was a guest here, and he had already done plenty to invade these people's privacy. He didn't want to annoy them or pry on top of that. "Could I ask you a question?" Harry finally said, eager to break the silence that Mrs. Cormier was clearly so comfortable with. "Sure thing, sugar," she said, slipping the chopped vegetables into the pot by the fire. "Do you know… any magic?" She paused at that, then smiled. "Well, where'd you think Guid got all his tricks from, hm?" She asked with a wink. "You mean…" "Well, he'd never admit it, but he was jus' a sullen old faithless cowboy 'fore he met me. Wasn't a spiritual man, my Guidry." Harry frowned.
It was hard to think of Guidry, the man with the hundreds of crystals dangling from his neck and the crazed voodoo look as non-spiritual. "So, you're the one who knows?" She shook her head ruefully. "Ain't none of us know nothin' about magic, Harry. If you pretend you do, then you'd be lying through ya damn teeth." "You mean voodoo." "Any magic," she corrected with some authority. "Even what you be learning at whatever school you come from. You can put it in a book, try to… control it, harness it and whatnot with a wand… truth of it is, ain't no one really understand it." Harry brushed a hand over his knuckles, thinking over what she was saying.
It was odd, thinking of it like that. Magic not being something that was understood was weird to him - he had always just assumed that it was simply him that sucked at it, that people like Hermione, Dumbledore, or even Voldemort were masters of it, and that it all came easily, but was it possible that they were just as in the dark, maybe a little bit less? He thought of everything he hadn't thought was possible becoming possible in the wizarding world, of the impossible, terrible power of the killing curse, Voldemort coming back from the dead unnaturally.
His own time travel. Did anyone actually have any idea of what was going on? It was a terrifying thought that magic hadn't been tamed, somehow. "My wand-" Harry began. "Tha's only a means of limiting you, Chrissakes!" "But wand-less magic… it's - you know… hard." Mrs. Cormier let out a snort, her knife coming down hard on the chopping board. "Magic ain't supposed to be easy. No textbooks, no pre-made vessels (like wands), no nothing can explain it. Much less help with it." "I don't even know how to use magic without my wand. The only times I've been able to do it was when… I was emotional," he admitted. "Is all wizards emotionally stunted? Ain't there no way to harness that emotion? Y'all should be getting ya heads checked, not given access to dark magic."
Harry looked at her curiously. She was right in saying that wizards needed therapy of some kind. In fact, if he thought about it, he had a hard time trying to think of one that didn't have some kind of grave problem. "Did you learn all this from your parents?" He asked timidly. He knew that a lot of squibs had rocky relationships - at best - with their parents, and for all he knew, Mrs. Cormier came from a line of pure-bloods who had decided to dump her the moment it was clear that she had not a single magical bone in her body.
And, as he had expected and partly dreaded, Mrs. Cormier tensed up quite a bit at his question, her swift knife stopping mid-air. It slowly returned to its previous rhythm. "No," she said simply. "My parents-" she began, with a great strain to her voice. But just at that moment, the downstairs door flew open, and Guidry waltzed through, screaming up at them. "Molly! That Got-darned boy up yet?"
He grumbled, hovering a bit down there before finally marching up the stairs. Mrs. Cormier gave Harry an apologetic smile. "There's the sloth," Guidry huffed. Clearly, he hadn't arrived in a particularly good mood. He went over to Molly, placed one of his hands on her waist, and gave her a slow kiss on her cheek. He could be grumpy all he wanted, but it seemed that he had his priorities in place.
He slumped down next to Harry without looking at him and then pulled out his cigarette rolling instruments. His slender fingers pulled out the slightly transparent rolling papers and the smaller pouch that kept the tobacco nice and tight, Alastor Browne brand. "I ain't taking in a slacker," he said, packing the tobacco on his small rectangle of paper. Harry vigorously shook his head.
Guidry finally gives him a single stink-eye and then returned to his task, not bothering to talk further. It was harder to feel at his ease with Guidry, and Harry felt guilty for thinking so. After all, it was him that had saved him at first.
Harry figured that his conversation with Mrs. Cormier was impossible to retake, especially with Guidry there, and he felt Guidry's presence like a looming obstacle to interaction, so he just sat there, looking into the fire, smelling Guidry's burning tobacco and listening to the soothing sounds of Mrs. Cormier's cooking. Despite feeling woozy and still craving more sleep, he felt awake, ready - he wanted to start working with Guidry as soon as possible, wanted to do everything in his power to get back home.
He would've started that very evening if he had felt he had the room to ask for it. But, of course, he didn't, yet somehow he sat tranquil with the knowledge that Guidry probably wouldn't be the type of person to let him idle and waste his time, even if he had wanted to.
Dinner passed relatively calmly, and with a full belly, Guidry suddenly became more appeasable, even though the difference between his good and bad moods were barely noticeable, at least to him so far.
Mrs. Cormier tried to fill the silence, asking Harry some more questions about where he was from, what he liked to do, who his friends were, but most of them were just flat-out painful to Harry. She even asked if he had a 'special someone back home, to which he shook his head violently and blushed.
He really didn't unless you counted an awkward kiss with a girl who was crying to be a 'special something.'
He also found that the simpler he spoke (that was, with the most basic language), and the more hand gestures he used, the better he was understood - they seemed to have a tough time with his accent. He noticed that Mrs. Cormier was careful not to ask about anything that might reveal to her any concrete facts about the future or what it might have in store.
He thought that a lot of people in their position would've felt inclined to learn all that they could find the best way to juice the knowledge that they were provided with, get rich or become living saints. But Harry had the distinct impression that Mrs. Cormier was very wary of magic, of upsetting the laws of the universe, probably, and that she probably respected it even more than Guidry did.
It's not that he thought that Guidry wasn't very cautious with that sort of thing, from what he had seen, due to his aversion to magic, but he seemed calmer about having it around him, using it to his benefit, or keeping it close to him for his job. Harry saw no crystals on Mrs. Cormier's neck or other signs that she might be spiritual, but he thought she might just know more than Guidry.
After all, hadn't she practically said that she'd taught him everything he knew? After dinner, Harry insisted on helping Mrs. Cormier out with clearing out the table, partly because he was wary of being so idle and partly because those stifled interactions and endless moments with Guidry by the fire were tedious and nerve-wracking, always feeling like they were on the verge of having a conversation but that a rock wall impeded them.
After a whole load of reluctance from Mrs. Cormier's part, she finally let him stack the dishes, but not much more, muttering, "strange place the future must be," as he did so. Mrs. Cormier made some tea for them, and they all sat before the crackling fire, even though it was sweltering.
Still, Harry was grateful for it, feeling some sort of alien coldness begin to settle into his bones that he wanted to usher out as best he could. He didn't want to think too much about that odd feeling in his chest or the one in his head, the ones that had been present since he had memory.
He had enough problems as it was without worrying about his teen angst. Sitting there, tranquil and steady, he almost started to doze off again before Guidry spoke. "Tomorrow, you'll start working here. Been thinking of how we gon' justify having a white boy with a fancy-pansy accent. Ain't nobody gonna trust a word we say about you, neither." Harry frowned, not quite understanding. "Why?" He asked naively. Mrs. Cormier shifted uncomfortably in her seat, tapping nervous fingers against her cup of tea. "Why?" Guidry spat back bitterly, his eyes suddenly aflame. "Settle down, Guid," Mrs. Cormier told him softly but firmly, turning her gaze from Guidry to Harry. "I don't know how it is in your time, Harry, but people here trusts a black person about 'sfar as they can throw them. Having a white boy under the employment of a negro… it ain't common, that's all I'll say. But Guid and I found a way to make it work, didn't we?" She asked Guidry, turning her head to him and resting a hand on his strong shoulder. He grumbled. Harry swallowed.
He wasn't even conscious of that kind of social problems in his own time, but he knew that that kind of racism still happened. So, once again, he felt the danger in becoming enveloped by the unnerving, massive sense of being in a world too wide, too beyond his reach of comprehension.
He felt he stood in a minefield, and each step was precarious. "That's right. But you gon' have to convince them, kid. Else there's boutta be a whole mess of trouble," Guidry paused. "Might still be," he said, reaching for his little pouch of tobacco. "The idea is," Mrs. Cormier continued, speaking very slowly and deliberately, "we gon' say you distantly related to us. Full story is I had a half-sister, bastard of my momma and some white man, and she had her own child. Another… bastard," she said, weighing the words carefully.
Harry reckoned that such a thing carried more weight here than back home. "She moved away to England, died in a fire. Since you ain't got a father and your momma just died, you ain't got no one to take care of you, so you came back to your closest family. It's a bit of a reach, but it'll make do." Harry thought it over. It was slightly far-fetched, but why would anyone disbelieve the story?
And yet, he wondered whether it would hold if the Cormiers' word meant so little in this day and age.
He thought about the story and realized that he was an orphan here, there, and everywhere. He didn't ponder it without a little amusement. "You understand?" Mrs. Cormier asked, stretching out a hand and laying it on Harry's knee affectionately. Harry nodded.
They spent the rest of the evening filling him in on the details of what his new heritage was. His mother's name, his father's absence, and the long journey from rainy England to hot, humid Louisiana.
He listened to it all and tried to soak it in as best he could. "But if anyone starts poking around and asking tough questions, you just withdraw. You just a little orphan boy, smack in the middle of nowhere. That part ain't even a lie," Guidry muttered. Mrs. Cormier smacked him upside the head and showed Harry an understanding and apologetic smile. "There's one thing…" Harry began.
There was something that didn't quite sit right with it. "I don't think I should keep my name," he told them.
They both looked slightly taken aback. Guidry started rolling a second cigarette, the little pouch on his lap. "Why's that, sugar?" She asked. Harry swallowed. He wasn't sure how to explain it. What he knew for certain was that there had been at least one prophecy written about him and that it had been professed well before he had been born.
What if there had been others? It was a little bit of a stretch, and he really was in the butt of the world, probably the last place where anyone would be able to track him down (he tried not to be too unsettled by the thought).
But there were other reasons, too. For one thing, if what Guidry had said was true, then there were other people from the future lurking about in the past, and if they came to find a certain Harry Potter with a scar on his head was living in the 1900s in Louisiana, they'd probably go batshit, and he couldn't predict what might come of such an interaction.
And for another point against using his real name, there was the matter of his identity to keep secret - he didn't want any record of any Harry Potter had lived before his time just in case something happened. He convinced himself that it was 'just in case something happened,' but he also felt the strangest urge not to use up too much of his time, too much of his identity here.
What if he had to stay here for years? What if he went back to his time and Ron and Hermione were still teenagers, and he was just a crazy old man? No, he didn't want any Harry Potter here. Harry belonged to the future, not to his new reality. He carefully explained his reasons (save for the last one) to Guidry and Mrs. Cormier, and they both agreed. Or, rather, Mrs. Cormier agreed, and Guidry grumbled again. "So… what should your new name be?" Mrs. Cormier asked chirpily as if it were a fun game.
But Harry didn't want to have anything flashy or special, just something normal, and he would've felt weird taking the names of anybody he knew.
It would just felt invasive. How many times had he actually thought of becoming a boy with no name, no identity, no distinguishable history that set him apart from other people in the most alienating way? And yet, he was heartbroken, thrown into this wild world. He huffed. He didn't want to overthink it.
His eyes skittered to where Guidry was putting away his little pouches of tobacco, Alastor Browne brand. He didn't think twice about it. "How about Alastor?" He asked simply. Guidry looked down at his tobacco and actually gave the barest ghost of a smile. His usual scowl quickly suffocated it.
Mrs. Cormier looked up as if tasing the word in her mouth. "I'm sure it'll do, sugar," she told him. "Now, best be heading off to bed. Lots of work to do." "And people to scam," Guidry put in, taking a drag from his cigarette. "Right," Mrs. Cormier said, rolling her eyes. She stood up and accompanied him to his bedroom as if he might get lost on the way.
He was actually very thankful that she had urged him out since he would've felt rude just up and leaving them. With a smile and a promise from Mrs. Cormier to be there if he should need anything, he went into his dark little bedroom and collapsed into sleep.