Chapter 3

Xander walked down Charing Cross Road, loaded down with shopping bags, and with Dawn beside him. He looked around at a world that was back in focus for the first time in several days. His new glasses felt a little weird on his nose and ears, and he was jumpy about anything moving too close to his face—afraid that it might knock the glasses away—but it was nice to be able to read the street signs for himself, and to have depth perception again.

He’d talked to Willow about her casting another spell—one to make him look like his old self—but she hadn’t liked the idea. For one thing, it would have required making changes in the Council’s wards, unless he wanted to banish himself from the building, and every exception that she built into those wards weakened their overall protection. Xander had to agree that the protections placed on the building were more important than his personal appearance.

His appearance was improving. He and Dawn had gone shopping for a new wardrobe, between when he’d had his eyes tested and when his new glasses had been ready. Xander liked his clothes a little loose, but after the change, he’d felt like he was wearing a tent in any of his old shirts, and he’d worn a couple of pairs of his work socks to keep his shoes from falling off his feet. His pants hadn’t been too bad. He’d had to take in his belt a couple of notches, but the legs were still the right length. He was just as tall as he’d ever been, but now he was a lot slimmer. Now he was fully decked out in new clothes, that fit the way he liked them to fit. Dawn was a good shopping partner. She liked his taste in clothes, and didn’t try to force him into something more fashionable, the way her sister did the few times he’d gone shopping with her, but she did have a better eye for colour than he did so she made sure that everything he bought matched fairly well.

Now he was enjoying a pleasant walk with his girlfriend, back to their hotel, on a warm spring day. Xander noticed the appreciative looks that Dawn got from many of the guys on the street, and felt a little smug that some of the girls were giving him similar looks. There was one person, though, who gave them a look that bothered him. He looked at them as if he recognized them, before he ducked into the entrance to a pub. It was a strange looking place. The sign hanging over the door had a picture of a witch stirring a cauldron. It was the sort of image that would make smoke come out of Willow’s ears, if she saw it. The man came out again about a half minute later, dragging another man who was carrying what looked like an antique camera, and pointed at them. The man with the camera took their picture.

If the guy had just been on the street, and taken a picture, Xander wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but there was something strange about the two men. It seemed that they had very deliberately taken the picture of him, or Dawn, and he wanted to know why. He called out, “Hey!” and started to move more quickly down the street toward them.

The men turned and ran away. They ducked into an alley between a couple of buildings. Xander and Dawn ran after them, but when they got to the alley, it was empty.

“Where’d they go?” asked Dawn.

“I don’t know.” Xander handed off his shopping bags to Dawn, and checked a dumpster. He quickly turned away from the smell of the rotting restaurant scraps that it contained. He tried the doors entering into the alley, but found that they were locked. The other end of the alley was blocked by a tall fence. A Slayer might have gotten over it that quickly, but Xander doubted if any other people could have. The men being out in daylight eliminated the possibility that they’d been vampires, but he supposed that they might have been some other sort of demon that was passing as human.

“Okay, this is weird,” said Dawn. “Did you recognize either of them?”

“No, did you?”

“Uh-uh. So, why’d they want our picture?”

“I have no idea…other than pretty much any guy would like to have a picture of you.”

“They seemed to be looking at you, more than me,” said Dawn.

“If you say so.” Xander took one last look around the alley, without seeing anything that could explain how the men had vanished. He checked his watch. “Damn! We’re supposed to be meeting Willow in twenty minutes. We better hurry up, if we don’t want to be late.”

Harry heard the crack of someone Apparating into his front garden. There were only a few people who could do that without setting off alarms, and even they usually used the gazebo in the village green, rather than popping directly onto his property. It was generally considered impolite to Apparate too close to your destination when you were dropping in to visit someone.

He was already half way to the door when there was an urgent pounding on it. Dobby still beat him to it. The house-elf had gotten rather over-protective of Harry in the last few days, once it became clear to everyone that Harry’s sudden inability to do magic seemed to be permanent, along with his change in appearance. Harry could tell from his posture that Dobby was all set to send whoever had come calling on their way again when he opened the door.

Ron didn’t give him the chance. He just barged right past the house-elf, waving a copy of The Daily Prophet in the air. “Have you seen this?”

“Uh…no,” said Harry. “I stopped subscribing years ago. The Quibbler is a more reliable source of news.”

“I’ll say.” Ron looked around. “Is Ginny here?”

“No, she had to go to some meeting with Zonko’s, about the new Halloween line of Wheezes. They’re saying that they want to drop the margin, or something like that.”

“Halloween?” asked Ron. “It’s only May.”

“She wanted to get this sorted out before she starts her maternity leave,” said Harry, “and they need to get the orders finalized early, so that they can get production ramped up to deliver on time. In July, it’ll be the Christmas line that they’re worrying about. Why do you want to see her?”

“I was hoping to head her off before she sees this for herself.” Ron waved the newspaper again. “She’s going to go spare when she finds out.”

“Finds out what?”

“Oh.” Ron handed him the paper. Harry unfolded it, and saw the headline: “Harry Potter Seen in London. (Who’s the Girl?)” Under it was a picture of someone who certainly looked like Harry—the way he was supposed to look—walking with a pretty, dark haired girl on his arm. Neither of them looked happy to be having their pictures taken. As he watched, it seemed that the photographer started to run away from them, and the couple chased after him.

“When was this taken?” asked Harry.

“According to the story, it was yesterday afternoon,” said Ron. “I asked a couple of Forensic Wizards to have a look to confirm that.” He pointed to a newspaper box that ‘Harry’ ran past. “That’s yesterday’s copy of the Times there. The shadow angles confirm that it was about 3:15 in the afternoon, and that…” He pointed to a storefront in the picture. “…is the bookshop next to the Leaky Cauldron.”

Harry started to read the article in the paper. Rita Skeeter’s by-line at the top of it did not bode well for its overall accuracy. By the time he finished the first paragraph, he was wanting to hex her ears off. By the time he reached the end of the article, he was thinking about practising a couple of the Unforgivable Curses on her. Perhaps it was a good thing that he didn’t seem to be able to do any magic, at the moment. “How can she write this crap?” he asked. “I mean really! ‘Secret tryst with an unidentified Muggle!’ ‘Abandoning his poor pregnant wife!’ Like I’d ever do anything like either of those things!”

“Yeah, by the time Ginny was done with you, there wouldn’t be enough left for me to stomp into the dirt,” said Ron.

“Wait,” said Harry. “You had the Forensic Wizards look at this?”

“At first it was to prove it was a fake,” said Ron, “but it seems to be genuine.”

“I was at Hogwarts all day yesterday!” said Harry. “With Ginny!” They had flooed up to their old school to consult with Professors McGonagall and Flitwick about his problem, and to have Madam Pomfrey examine his missing eye, to see if there was anything she could do about it.

“I know,” said Ron. “Hence the me not stomping you into the dirt part of this conversation. It looks like you’re not only not looking like yourself these days, but now there’s someone else out there who is looking a lot like you.”

The door slammed open. “I’m gonna kill that bitch!” snarled Ginny.

“Ah…you’ve seen the Prophet then,” said Ron.

“How can she think she can get away with this?” asked Ginny. “It’s one thing to twist the truth around like she usually does, but this! This is a new low for her, faking pictures and printing lies like that!”

“Ron was just telling me that the picture seems to be real,” said Harry.

“What?” asked Ginny. “It can’t be! You were with me all day yesterday, and you…well…you don’t look like that anymore.”

“Never the less, it seems that someone who looks a lot like Harry, really was walking on Charing Cross Road with a Muggle girl yesterday afternoon,” said Ron.

Ginny took the paper away from Harry, and looked at the picture. “Physically, it looks like you, but the clothes and glasses are wrong.”

“I know,” said Ron. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in plaid flannel.”

“And that shirt…well…” Ginny hesitated for a moment.

“What?” asked Harry.

“It doesn’t fit,” said Ginny.

“It’s not that bad.”

“Harry, ever since you were seventeen, and stopped wearing your cousin’s hand-me-downs, I’ve never seen you go out in public in a shirt that didn’t fit you perfectly,” said Ginny.

“I don’t do that!” said Harry. “I’ve never cared that much about what I look like!”

“You’re right, you don’t worry about whether or not what you’re wearing is in style, or if the colours clash, or anything like that, but everything that you do wear, fits.” Ginny pointed to the picture again. “That shirt is just a little bit too big. Not enough to be a bother, but if you’d been given that shirt, you’d have shrunk it about half a size before you went out in it.”

Harry took another look at the picture. “Really?” He supposed that the shirt did look a little big on the guy, but wasn’t that the way that sort of shirt was supposed to look?

“Yes, really,” said Ron.

“So, is this guy looking so much like me just a coincidence, or do you think it’s got something to do with why I’m looking the way I do?”

“He’s even got your scar. That’s taking coincidence too far,” said Ron.

“But why would anyone want to look like me?”

“You’re famous. Maybe he did it to get the chicks. That’s one good looking girl.”

“I’ll tell Hermione on you, if you’re not careful,” said Ginny.

“She probably has no personality,” said Ron earnestly. “Shallow. Only attracted to him for his fame, and money.”

“The paper thinks she’s a Muggle,” said Harry. “I’m only famous among wizards. Is she really a Muggle?”

“They seem to have gotten that right,” said Ron. “She isn’t a British witch, and we have no immigration record of anyone who looks like her coming into the country. She is most likely a Muggle.”

“So, what were they doing outside the Leaky Cauldron the other day?”

“From the bags he’s carrying, I’d guess shopping,” said Ginny.

Harry might have transferred out of the Auror department, but he still had the training, and he’d kept some of the tools of the trade. One of those tools was something that Dean Thomas had invented. He called it “Psychic Paper” and claimed that he’d gotten the idea for it from watching the new Doctor Who series on the BBC. When you showed it to someone, they saw what they expected to see. Tell them that you were showing your identification as a police officer before flashing a piece of Psychic Paper at someone, and they’d see police identification.

He didn’t expect that it would be difficult to identify the people in the Prophet article. He might not be able to use his wand, but charmed items still worked for him, and he could still use the floo. Armed with his Psychic Paper, and Muggle photographs of the man and woman extracted from the article, he flooed himself to Grimmauld Place.

The old Black house was still Headquarters to the Order of the Phoenix. It had been cleaned up a lot over the last few years, but the portrait of Sirius’s mother still hung in the front hall. The curtains that had covered it were replaced by some more substantial shutters, but her muffled shouting could still be heard when an unwary visitor disturbed her. The house-elf heads still lined the stairway. Like the portrait, they were permanently affixed to the walls; no one had managed to find a way to dislodge them.

The Order had curtailed most of its activities, so the house was nearly empty again. Harry was beginning to contemplate selling it, but the wizarding real-estate market was depressed at the moment with so many former Death Eaters having their property auctioned off by the Ministry at bargain rates. He might get a better price if he just razed the place, removed all the concealment spells from it, and sold it as an empty lot on the Muggle market.

Harry wasn’t surprised that there was no one in the kitchen when he tumbled out of the fireplace. He was a little surprised to hear someone falling down the stairs, a few seconds after his arrival, but that gave him enough warning that he was expecting to see a dishevelled Tonks appear in the kitchen door. She looked at him for a moment, with her wand held ready. “Harry?” she asked uncertainly.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Ron told me what happened. Is that really you?”

Harry sighed. “First time we met, you came with the Advance Guard to take me away from Privet Drive…”

“Sorry about that,” said Tonks, after he had told her a couple of stories, “but you know what Mad Eye always said: ‘Constant…’”

“‘…Vigilance!’” Harry finished up with her. “Yeah, I remember.”

Tonks tilted her head a bit as she looked at the eye-patch he was wearing. “So, you going to get yourself an eye like his?”

Harry shook his head. “I asked Madam Pomfrey about that. Whatever’s happened to me seems to have turned me into a Squib. I can still do some stuff, but a magic eye like Moody’s won’t work for me.”

“Nothing wrong with being a Squib,” said Tonks. “The only relatives I’ve got left who’ll talk to me are Muggles.”

“I’d love to stay and chat, Tonks, but I’ve got some things I’ve got to do.”

“That’s okay,” said Tonks. “I’m coming with you.”

“What?” asked Harry.

“I said ‘I’m coming with you.’ I thought that was pretty clear.”

“Why?”

“You’re my friend, and it has occurred to some of us that whoever did this to you might be planning to do more. You’re pretty much defenceless against magical attacks now. Maybe that was what they had in mind. There are still a few Death Eaters that we haven’t caught yet.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” said Harry.

“I know, but you might need a friend,” said Tonks.

Willow frowned at the sign hanging over the doorway to the pub. “I mean really! That is such a negative stereotype!”

“Don’t let it get to you, sweetie,” said Kennedy. “Remember, we’re trying to be inconspicuous while we check this place out. See if we can find out who was so interested in Xander and Dawn.” She opened the door for her girlfriend, and then followed Willow into the dimly lit interior.

It took a few seconds for Willow’s eyes to adjust to the dim light. She quickly decided that she wouldn’t have to criticize their sign to draw attention to herself in this place. It was early afternoon, during the lull between the lunch crowd and people stopping by for a drink after work, and as she expected there weren’t very many people present, but what people there were…

There were maybe a dozen patrons in the pub. One table had a group of four people sitting around it, and there were a couple of pairs of people at other tables. A third of the people present seemed to be lone barflies. The mix was pretty much what she had expected to find at this time of the day.

No, that wasn’t what was unusual about them. What was unusual was their clothing. Fully half of the people present were wearing what looked like some sort of robes. No one was wearing anything that looked even remotely in style. If it wasn’t for the total lack of a party atmosphere, she would have thought that they’d intruded on some sort of costume party.

The decor of the pub looked like whoever had decorated the place had been trying for an 18th century look…or maybe they had just never updated the decor in the last couple of centuries. Even the lighting seemed to be pre-industrial revolution, coming from candles in sconces on the walls, and a large chandelier hanging in the centre of the room. Willow doubted if this place complied with the London fire codes.

A silence settled over the pub as Willow and Kennedy approached the bar. Willow felt like every eye in the place was on them as she took her seat. The hunchbacked bartender came over to them, with a suspicious look in his eyes. “What can I get for you ladies,” he asked. The tone of his voice implied that what he’d really like would be for them to get up and leave.

Kennedy ignored the tone in his voice. “Could we have a couple of beers, please?” she asked. Willow recognized the ‘spoiled rich girl’ tone she sometimes adopted in her own voice.

The bartender seemed to relax a bit when he heard Kennedy’s accent, but he still looked suspicious. “You’re Americans?” he asked as he pulled a couple of pints of draught beer for them.

“That’s right,” said Willow.

He placed the beers on the bar in front of them. “We don’t get many visitors from overseas.”

“We’ve been in England for a while, but we’ve spent most of our time up around Cambridge,” said Willow, pulling a ten pound note from her purse to pay for the beers.

The bartender frowned for a moment at the money, as if he wasn’t that familiar with it, before he went over to his till. It took longer than Willow expected, like he had to hunt around for the correct change. She took a sip from her beer while she waited.

The beer was warm…even warmer than she was getting used to British beer being. She took another look around the pub, and noticed that some of the patrons were drinking beers of their own. Their glasses where showing the moisture from condensation on the outsides of them. She wondered if her warm beer was meant to discourage her and Kennedy from sticking around.

Willow felt something tickling at her shields. She normally kept herself closely warded, being careful not to interact with the magic around her. She opened her shields a little, as she looked around the pub again, and was surprised by the flood of power that she felt. This place was permeated with magic. She saw the bartender’s aura, showing the same sort of power that Xander was currently exhibiting. Everyone was radiating that same sort of power, to a greater or lesser extent, though no one here seemed to have as much of it as Xander did now. She decided to try a little experiment.

Willow reached out with her hand and ran a finger around the rim of first Kennedy’s and then her own glass, while concentrating on the perfect temperature for a pint of beer. It was nothing overt. To anyone who didn’t know about magic, it would just seem to be an unusual gesture. There was no light show; she didn’t speak any phrases in an arcane language. The only thing that anyone might have been able to see was the slight frosting of condensation that started to form on the outsides of their glasses.

It was almost like she’d thrown a switch. A gentle sigh ran through the pub, and everyone relaxed. Quiet conversations picked up again around them—too quiet for Willow to hear. She’d have to ask ask Kennedy later if she overheard anything interesting.

The bartender stopped hunting for change, and quickly pulled half a dozen coins from his till. “Sorry about that,” he said as he placed them on the bar in front of her. “I thought at first that you might be a couple of Muggles who somehow found your way in here.”

Willow resisted the urge to look too closely at the unfamiliar coins, while she wondered what a Muggle was. “That’s alright.” She swept them up, and dropped them into her pocket.

“So, you said you’re staying up around Cambridge?” asked the bartender. “I wasn’t aware of many wizards who lived up that way.”

Willow shrugged in what she hoped was a non-committal way. “I’ve got a friend who’s going to university there.”

One of the other patrons waved an empty glass, and the bartender excused himself, and went to get him another drink. “What’s going on here?” Kennedy whispered into Willow’s ear.

“I don’t know,” Willow whispered back, “but this place is full of magic.”

“So, that’s what’s making me itchy.”

“Act like everything’s normal, no matter what happens,” whispered Willow. “They saw that little cooling spell I did on our beers, and they think we sorta belong, even if we’re from the wrong country. Try not to say anything to change that.”

The barfly a couple of stools down from Willow pulled a folded newspaper out of her robes, and laid it on the bar. She didn’t seem to pay any more attention to it. Willow’s eyes widened when she saw the moving picture on the front page. “Excuse me? May I borrow this?” she asked the woman.

“Go ahead. Take it,” said the woman. “It’s yesterday’s edition, anyway.”

Willow took the newspaper, and showed the picture of Xander and Dawn to Kennedy.

Harry’s Psychic Paper had worked, just the way it was supposed to. He and Tonks had visited all of the shops that he had identified from the bags that the man who looked like him was carrying, and questioned the shopkeepers about who had been in that day. He had shown them the pictures of the man, and woman, and collected copies of their credit card receipts. Everyone was very cooperative with Inspectors Potter and Tonks of Scotland Yard. They hadn’t even needed to use his Psychic Paper to produce a search warrant to look at their records.

He now had a pair of names. At least whoever this was, wasn’t really pretending to be him. He was calling himself Alexander Harris, and the woman with him was named Dawn Summers.

They were close to the Leaky Cauldron when they were done with the last shop, so they decided to go there to floo back to Grimmauld Place. He and Tonks entered the pub. Harry waved toward the bar. “Hi Tom!” he called as he followed Tonks to the fireplace.

Tom was a bit surprised to have the stranger with the eye patch wave and casually call him by name, but he was with Tonks, and she was one of the best known Aurors in Britain. Heroine of the War Against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and holder of the Order of Merlin, Second Class. Whoever the stranger was, he must be okay. This seemed to be his day for strangers in the pub. The two American witches had left just ten minutes earlier.