Harry Potter and the Serpent Items: Part 3

Once Tom had left, taking Harry’s order and the menu with him, the black haired boy just stared after him.

“So you’ll get me into trouble, but you won’t get me out of it?” Harry grouched at the golden bracer that was poking out from under his jacket sleeve, the snake on it seeming to look delighted, though he knew that it was a figment of his imagination.

He should take it off. Take it off and throw it away, or get it melted or something, but Harry didn’t want to and not only because Dumbledore had asked him to look after it. There was something about it, something special that made him rather protective of the golden item, even though he hadn’t heard anything about it before and neither, surprisingly, had Hermione.

Really, he thought, the one who he needed to speak with the most was Dumbledore. He had seemed to know what the bracer really was, even if he hadn’t given Harry any real information besides ‘look after it and it will look after you’. He would know what these blackouts were and how to stop them.

He had just finished his meal when there was a knock on his door.

Harry’s hand strayed to the pocket that held his wand as he approached the door, wary considering his experiences today. “Who is it?”

“A friend.” A bright voice informed him, one he knew rather well, “And her father.”

Harry opened the door to find Luna stood on the other side, long dirty blonde hair tucked up neatly and pinned in place by a golden decorative haircomb adorned by a serpent, a sharp contrast to her robe which was a garish combination of all of the colours of the Hogwarts houses in a zigzag pattern that left Harry dizzy after looking at it for too long.

“Mr Potter.” Mr Lovegood nodded to him as the pair entered the room, “I hear you need an escort for the day.”

“I don’t want to be a bother.” Harry tried, knowing that this could be one of his few opportunities to lose the Lovegoods before they were dragged into whatever he had gotten himself into.  

“No bother. No bother at all.” Mr Lovegood waved it off with a smile, “If a friend of Luna’s needs an escort, I’m more than willing to oblige. Xenophillius Lovegood,” The man offered Harry his right hand, “Nice to meet you.”

“Harry Potter. It’s nice to meet you too.” Harry nervously offered his own, before realising too late that the bracer was still showing. It didn’t matter too much. Mr Lovegood gained an odd look for a moment before shaking Harry’s hand briskly.  

“And now we’re acquainted shall we go?” Mr Lovegood asked, “I’m sure that you have lots of places you need to get to and our shopping list isn’t small either.”

“Actually I was just...” Harry trailed off as Luna latched onto his arm and pulled him out of the room and down the stairs, before heading towards the entrance to Diagon Alley. “Gringotts...”

“Well of course we’re stopping at the bank first.” Mr Lovegood informed him with a slight chuckle, “Can’t buy anything without money after all.”

Luna nodded briskly, still hanging onto Harry’s arm like a limpet. The boy thought he heard a comment about ‘Potter and Loony Lovegood’ from a couple of the students who were here with their parents on a trip , but he tried to ignore them. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard the insult after all.

He was surprised to feel Luna stiffen slightly and he touched one of her arms, unsure what to do to help her relax. It appeared to help though as Luna blinked at him and gained a smile as they stepped through the archway to the biggest wizarding high street in Britain

Harry Potter and the Serpent Items: Part 2

When he awoke he was on a bus. Not any kind of bus. This one was apparently called the Knight Bus and it swerved between cars at a horrendously erratic rate, squeezing itself into gaps that there was no way it should fit and somehow managing to drive up the wrong side of one of the roads entirely without being noticed by a single Muggle.

Harry had no idea how they did it, or how he had ended up on the bus in the first place, but he wasn't going to complain as moments after he had 'woken up' he arrived at Diagon Alley and had disembarked along with all of his luggage.

Part of him was curious as to what had happened to Dudley and then another part had already decided that it was a really really bad idea to ask and focused purely on getting himself inside the Leakey Cauldron and then on to Gringotts the first opportunity he had. After all if he was going to be on the run for the rest of his life the wanted to at least be able to afford food and drink, along with somewhere to stay.

The moment he walked into the wizarding pub, he knew something was up, as people had obviously noticed him, but unlike the last time he had come without the Weasleys, he wasn't mobbed. He didn't think news of what had happened in Surry could have reached here that quickly but then he couldn't know everything that was possible with magic...

"Mr Potter. Welcome." Tom, the barkeeper here, hurried over gesturing for one of his staff members to take over behind the bar before ushering Harry upstairs and out of the public eye. "I wasn't aware you were coming."

"It's an unexpected stop." Harry admitted, hoping not to get drawn into a conversation about why he was visiting. "I'm only passing through on my way to Gringotts."

"You want to be careful wandering around on your own." Tom sounded honestly concerned, "It's all over the newspapers, Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban last night and everyone's up in arms about it. It's not safe for anyone to be wondering around alone right now, least of all you."

Harry blinked at him in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Sirius Black was a Death Eater, one of the worst." Tom looked shocked that he didn't know that, "And you're the one who stopped You-Know-Who."  Tom glanced around nervously for a moment and then continued on a completely different note, "Now if you stop here for a moment and have some of our pub grub, there's a Pure Blood family who pre-ordered their food arriving in a few minutes, the Lovegoods. They'll watch out for you and you'll never be bored."

"I don't know..." Harry hesitated. The last thing he wanted was to hang around a predominant Pure Blood family right now. Not when he was uncertain when he was going to have another black out and was trying to stay out of sight.

“They’re as loopy as fruit cakes the pair of them.” Tom continued as if Harry hadn’t spoken, “But they’re good people. Besides, the girl’s about your age. You’ve probably seen her around the school.”

The name was familiar. Harry had met a Luna Lovegood last year when everyone except his friends had thought that he was the Heir of Slytherin.  The girl had seemed fascinated by his ability to talk to snakes and had even attempted to see if she could learn a little bit, but she had been weird. There had been occasions where Luna hadn’t really seemed like herself and others where she had seemed as nutty as a fruit cake.

Thinking about it in those terms, it was probably the same family.

Harry’s grumbling stomach seemed to answer the question for Tom who ushered him into a private room and handed him a menu, “Just you wait here, Mr Potter, I’ll bring your food to you.”

Harry Potter and the Serpent Items: Part 1

Harry was in deep trouble.

When he’d come home from his second year at Hogwarts it had been with triumph as he had bested a basilisk, defeated the ghost of Voldemort for a second time and saved Ginny’s life.

Except that he didn’t remember any of it.

 The last thing he remembered was putting on the strange bracer he’d spotted at the bottom of the pool in the Chamber of Secrets. The next thing after that was escorting Ginny from the Chamber, sorting hat in one hand, Gryffindor’s sword in the other and a very dead basilisk behind him and he had no idea how it had happened.

Which had made explaining to everyone what had happened in the Chamber rather difficult. He’d tried to come up with something convincing but Dumbledore had known and when he’d questioned Harry on his own, the boy had shown the Headmaster the golden bracer he’d found.

Which was when Dumbledore had gained a rather odd look and told him in an enigmatic tone to take care of the bracer and told him not to worry.

Harry would have been more than happy to comply with that request, after all the bracer wasn’t exactly heavy, was obviously magical since the snake that wrapped itself around the protective piece of equipment had tightened its coils specifically to fit his arm and loosened again when he wanted to take it off at night, and the Headmaster had mentioned that it came with gifts and told him that he would give him more information when he found it.

However the blackout in the Chamber hadn’t been the only one. From the moment he’d gotten off the train and met up with his Uncle, he’d gone through the rigmarole of typical daily life with the Dursleys. Until things had started happening. Things that couldn’t possibly be classed as ‘good’.

Dudley’s friend Piers had been bullying him, Harry had had a blackout and Piers had been found the next day babbling like a lunatic.

Petunia had been starving him like she normally had, favouring her whale of a son over the nephew that she had been forced to take in when his parents had been killed and after one particularly bad morning where she’d forced him to cook breakfast but not let him prepare enough for himself, he’d had a blackout and woken up in the cupboard under the stairs with enough food to feed him for a week.

But this one had to be the worst. Uncle Vernon had started on him, about how worthless he was and how he was another mouth to feed and it wasn’t even like he was doing anything useful, and he’d clipped Harry around the head. Now this hadn’t been anything new. It had happened before. Never hard enough to do damage but it had been enough to trigger an episode and Harry had had a blackout.

Now he was on the run, kicked out of the Dursley home for having been caught at the scene of the crime, having somehow used magic to turn Vernon comatose, and he had no idea where he should go. It wouldn’t be long, he was certain, before someone reported it to the Aurors and he had a horrible feeling that ‘I don’t remember’ wouldn’t be a viable excuse. Nor would it stand up if it was taken to trial.

The problem was he had no options. He had no Muggle money and all of his wealth was tied up as wizarding galleons, sickles and knuts, which meant that before he could do anything he needed to get to Diagon Alley.

This was perfect. Except that he had absolutely no clue how to get there, short of flying on his broom, which, he supposed, he could do if he put on his invisibility cloak and it wasn’t like he could get into much more trouble than he was already in. Still it was a last bar one resort, having learnt his lesson about flying objects and how much trouble they could get you in when he and Ron had driven his dad’s flying car to school after Dobby had barricaded the gateway to platform 9 and 3/4.

“Great, just great.” Harry grouched, as he kicked the kerb, trying to think. “No train fare, no flying cars and no...” Harry trailed off as he realised that he was being watched out of the windows of number 4, Privet Drive. They’d probably already called the Muggle police to come and arrest him already and were just watching to see when it would happen.

That thought made his mind up for him. He started walking. Not to Diagon Alley of course, just away from the Dursley home, half worried about explaining himself to the police, who most definitely wouldn’t take ‘magic’ as an excuse and half worried because he still couldn’t remember what had happened to leave Vernon like he was.

“Oi! Freak!” Harry winced as his cousin caught up to him, his tone furious. Understandably so.

Dudley seized Harry by the jacket and spun him around to face him. Rage was obvious on his features and Harry had a horrible feeling he wasn’t getting out of this one without a lot of bruising.

“You better fix whatever you did to Dad or I’ll punch your face in.” Dudley threatened, meaty fist raised, prepared to strike.

“I can’t.” Harry admitted, though he knew it wouldn’t aid his situation any.

He was right, Dudley’s fist struck his stomach hard, winding the almost thirteen year old and causing him to crumple up in a ball on the ground, coughing hard.

“Fix. It. Now.” His cousin punctuated each of his growled words with a boot to Harry’s stomach, “And whatever you did to Piers.”

Harry felt it, felt the Bracer on his arm grow warm as Dudley backed off slightly, and then darkness overtook him as he fell into a warm sleep.