Chapter 7

It sounded like telephones ringing in stereo. Everyone checked their cell phones. “One of them’s me,” said Willow, pulling her phone from her pocket, flipping it open, and checking its display. “It’s Giles.” She lifted the phone to her ear. “Hey, Giles! What’s up?”

With Willow’s phone silenced, it became clear that the other ringing sound was coming from the apartment’s office. “I’ll get it,” said Xander. “I’m expecting a call about that leaking pipe in the east wing.” He disappeared through the office door.

“Really?” asked Willow. “Who was asking? … Didn’t anyone think that was strange? … Did they get the full package, or just the public version? … Did they say why they wanted the information? … Okay, talk to you soon. Bye!” She snapped her phone shut, with a frown on her face.

“So, what was that about?” asked Dawn.

“A Sir Humphrey Appleby, from the Department of Administrative Affairs, pulled yours and Xander’s files from the British Home Office,” said Willow.

“Which ones did they get, and why did they want them?” asked Buffy.

“The public consumption versions,” said Willow. “There was nothing in the request about why they wanted the information, which I suppose is a good thing. If it had come in with a plausible reason for asking, they might have gotten the full package.”

“So, who is this Sir Humphrey guy?” asked Buffy. “The name sounds familiar. Have I already given him the lecture, or am I going to have to explain to another government bureaucrat why it’s a really bad idea to mess with us?”

“That’s just it,” said Willow. “He doesn’t exist, and neither does his department—outside of an 80s Britcom—but no one in the Home Office seems to have noticed that when they were complying with his request for information. They just put the files into the interdepartmental mail system, and they vanished. They didn’t come back as not being deliverable, or left sitting in the mailroom. They got delivered to someone.”

Xander came back out of the office with a bemused expression on his face.

“So, got the plumbing problem all patched up?” asked Buffy.

“No,” said Xander. “It wasn’t the plumbers. It was Harry Potter—sounding remarkably like I sound like in recordings, if you ignore the accent. He wants to talk to me about our mutual problem.”

“Just you?” asked Dawn.

“No, he said I could bring some friends along. His wife wants to meet the girl that the paper has been accusing him of having an affair with.”

St James’s Park was lovely in the spring. The trees were covered with buds of new growth, flowers were blooming, birds were singing. Neville looked around again for anything that didn’t belong. Most of the tourists had disappeared from this part of the park, drawn to the Changing of the Guard ceremony that would be starting in a few minutes at Buckingham Palace.

A large table had been set up in the partial shade provided by one of the trees, with eight chairs—four on each side—set up around it. Four of the chairs were waiting for Harry, Ginny, Hermione and Remus, and the other four were waiting for this Zander Harris guy, and three of his friends.

Neville saw one little old lady that he thought might be Tonks—you never really knew with her—and he spotted Ron trying to look inconspicuous. There also seemed to be a few more young Muggle women in the park than he would have expected. A couple of them seemed to be doing some sort of strange slow motion dance—without any accompanying music—and there was another pair who were tossing a spinning disk back and forth between each other.

Another girl was looking at him, and he did a double take when he recognized her. She was one of the American witches that he had met in Diagon Alley the other day. What was she doing here? He supposed that he would find out soon enough. She smiled, and walked toward him.

“Er, hello, um, Kennedy, was it?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

Her grin broadened. “That’s right, and I guess I’m here for the same reason you are: I’m watching my friend’s back.”

“You’re a friend of Harris’s?”

“Yep, and you’re a friend of Potter’s, along with her …” Kennedy nodded toward Tonks. “… and him …” A nod toward Ron. “… and a couple other people hiding in the bushes. There’s even one guy who seems to be invisible.”

Neville was surprised that she’d spotted his friends, even Dean Thomas, who had borrowed Harry’s invisibility cloak. He knew that many wizards stuck out like sore thumbs when they tried to pass as Muggles, but everyone here today was either Muggleborn, or had had their wardrobes approved by Harry and Hermione, who did know how Muggles dressed. “How did you do that?” he asked.

“Not me,” said Kennedy. “My girl Willow did it. She tells me that you people have very distinctive auras.”

“Auras?” asked Neville. Auras were something that Professor Trelawney talked about, and Neville had thought that they were nonsense, like most of the other things she said, but maybe he’d have to reconsider that. He still didn’t really believe it.

“Yep,” said Kennedy. She checked her watch. “And it looks like it’s show-time. Here come my friends, and it looks like yours are here too.”

Neville looked around, and he saw two groups of people approaching the table. Harry, Ginny, Hermione and Mr Lupin in one, and another group with a man who looked like Harry, the girl from the Daily Prophet picture, Willow, and an older gentleman.

Xander recognized all four of the people who stood across the table from him and his friends. There had been pictures of three of them in the books that Willow had brought back from Diagon Alley, and the fourth looked like he had stepped out of a picture of himself.

“Harry Potter, I presume,” he said, holding out his hand to his doppelgänger.

The guy who looked like him grasped his hand, while keeping a wary expression on his face. “So, you’re Alexander Harris. I’d like to say that I’m pleased to meet you, but under the circumstances…”

Hearing his voice, but with an English accent, seemed very strange to Xander. Even after living here for a couple of years, he still couldn’t do an English accent to save his life—he knew; he’d tried. “Please, call me Xander. My mom’s the only one who ever calls me ‘Alexander’.”

“Okay, Xander,” said Harry. “This is my wife, Ginny…” He indicated the very pregnant young woman by his side. “…and our friends Hermione Granger, and Remus Lupin.”

“How do you do,” said Xander. He held his hand out toward Dawn. “This is my girlfriend, Dawn Summers, and our friends Willow Rosenberg, and Rupert Giles.”

Everyone smiled, and said “hello” to everyone else, and they all took seats lined up on opposite sides of the table, with everyone facing their counterpart on the other side.

“So,” said Harry. “We seem to have a situation here. I’m not sure how much you know about me…”

“Quite a bit, actually,” said Willow. She produced the Rita Skeeter book from out of her bag, and Xander saw everyone on the other side of the table wince.

“You can’t really—”

Willow cut Hermione off. “Yeah, I know.” She pulled out the second book, the one Hermione had written, out of her bag and laid it on the table beside the other. “This one seems to be much more informative.”

Everyone looked much happier to see that book, except Hermione, who blushed a little.

“Though I can tell why the Skeeter book is a best seller,” said Willow. “It is a much more exciting read, even if it does play a little fast and loose with the facts.”

“More like she just made stuff up, if she didn’t know the truth, or thought that the truth wasn’t exciting enough,” muttered Harry.

“So, you know all about us, but we know hardly anything about you,” said Hermione.

“Didn’t learn much, breaking into our flat?” asked Dawn.

“About the only useful thing we learned there was your phone number,” said Harry.

“We are listed,” said Xander.

“Yes, but we still wanted to get a look at the place where the bloke pretending to be me was living,” said Harry.

“Hey! I’m not pretending to be anyone!” said Xander. “I didn’t plan for this to happen!”

“We had pretty much figured that out,” said Hermione. “If you had planned this, you wouldn’t have had to go shopping for new clothes. We did learn something else during our visit to your flat: you do know something about magic.”

“That’s because I’m a witch,” said Willow.

“You don’t have a wand,” said Hermione.

“I’ve never needed one,” said Willow. “I’ve never met anyone who used one before we found The Leaky Cauldron.”

“You practice Ancient Magic?” asked Hermione.

“Some people call it that,” said Willow. “It’s always been just plain old regular magic to me.”

“Isn’t Ancient Magic supposed to be Dark?” asked Ginny.

“Darkness is largely a matter of intent, and how it is used,” said Giles. “Magic is a tool, that can be used for good, or ill.”

“The exact same spell, can save a life, or take it, depending on how it is used,” said Willow. “A levitation spell can be used to save someone from falling, or to drop them on their head from a great height.”

“Or in our case, a spell meant to strip away magical disguises, somehow made me look like Harry, and him look like me,” said Xander. “Would you people have any idea why that happened?”

“We have a theory,” said Hermione.

Harry watched the strangers as they listened to Remus tell them about the spell that Sirius had found, and what he had said on that drunken Halloween night several years ago. They caught on to the implication pretty quickly, that Harris was the real Harry Potter, and that Harry was the real Xander Harris.

Despite that, Harry couldn’t help thinking about the comment that Harris had made earlier, about his mother. It was just beginning to dawn on him that if they were right about what had happened, he might have living parents. He didn’t know how that made him feel. On the one hand, he had become used to thinking about James and Lily Potter as his mother and father, and while he had never met them, he had met their shades, and felt their love for him…only now it might not have really been him that they felt those things for.

He couldn’t help but ask. “What are your parents like?”

He felt Ginny and Hermione tensing. They knew how much he missed his mother and father, how he might feel about the possibility that he might now have a chance to have living parents.

Harris just shrugged. “They’re my mom and dad. We’ve mostly ignored each other as much as we could for the last decade.”

Harry couldn’t understand that. “Why?”

“They drink too much,” said Harris. “They yell at each other when they get drunk, and if I’m in the room, they yell at me too. I moved out of the house as soon as I was able to, and have had as little to do with them as I could, ever since.” Harry saw Dawn reach out and take his hand. He saw Harris’s eyes suddenly widen. “Hey, you don’t think that they could have known? That they were that way because they knew that I wasn’t really theirs?”

“No, Xander,” said Willow, giving him a hug. “That had nothing to do with you. Even if they had known, they should have treated you better.”

Harry couldn’t help but agree. He was sure that, had they lived, James and Lily would have treated any child put into their care a whole lot better than the Dursleys had treated him, or for that matter, how Harris’s parents seemed to have treated him.

“I think that, for now, we should concentrate on how to ‘fix’ this,” said Giles.

“Should we fix this?” asked Remus. “I mean…if this is who they are really supposed to be…” His voice trailed off.

“No offence,” said Harris. “Even if I really am supposed to be Harry Potter, I kinda like being Xander Harris. I’m not cut out to be anybody’s Chosen One. I’m more used to being the Chosen One’s sidekick.”

Harry saw Harris’s friends all smile at that, but he had no idea what he was talking about. He could understand the sentiment though. He often thought that it would have been much easier to go through life, living in obscurity. “I can sympathize with that,” he said. “This last week has been the only time I’ve been able to go anywhere in the wizarding world without someone making a big deal about it, but still, I’d like my old life back. I’d especially like to be able to do magic again.”

“Hmm?” asked Willow.

“One of the side effects of this, seems to be that Harry has lost his ability to use magic,” said Hermione. “It follows logically that Xander should have picked up his ability.”

“That’s interesting,” said Willow. She tilted her head a bit, as she looked at him intently. “Yes…your aura is pretty much like that of a normal person’s. You don’t have that something extra that Xander’s picked up, or that any of your friends have.”

“You read auras?” Harry asked, dubiously.

“Not well, but it’s something I’ve picked up. Still, I haven’t noticed Xander doing any magic.”

“Without a wand, you probably wouldn’t,” said Hermione. “Untrained Wizards sometimes do accidental magic when under great duress, but unless something really stressful has happened to him in the last week, I doubt if you would have noticed anything strange happening.”

“Most stressful thing that happened was when I started looking like this,” said Harris.

Hermione nodded. “Even if you had a wand, it would take weeks to learn even the simplest of spells, except…”

“Except what?” asked Harris.

Harry knew where this was going. “There’s a spell that wand-makers use, to match up a wizard with a new wand. Since the new wand is usually going to a child who hasn’t learned any magic yet, it doesn’t require that the wizard knows any magic. The wand just reacts to them.”

“Have you got a wand-maker nearby?” asked Harris.

“No,” said Harry, slowly drawing his wand from his sleeve, “but we know one. Hermione thought that this might come up, so we had Mr. Ollivander re-prime this one.” He felt very uncomfortable as he handed it across to Harris. “Why don’t you give it a wave?”

He watched Harris carefully as he took the wand, and saw his face light up. He swished the wand through the air, sending off a cascade of red and gold sparks. “Wow!” said Harris. “This is just…Wow!” He hesitated for a moment, before handing it back to Harry, obviously reluctant to let it go again.

Harry took it, and laid it down on the table between them. “If you’re the real wizard…maybe the wand should be yours.”

“I still don’t understand how the spell could have switched their powers too,” said Ginny.

“I have an idea about that,” said Willow. “Um…if I can have one of your hairs?” she asked Harry.

“One of my hairs?” asked Harry.

“Just a quick DNA test to confirm something,” said Willow. “Don’t worry, I won’t keep it.”

Harry hadn’t been worried about that, before she said anything, but then he started thinking about all the things you could do with someone’s hair. Snape probably could have made half a dozen different deadly poisons, that would only affect the one person that the hair came from. He thought about the little bit that he knew about DNA, from his early years in a Muggle school, and what he’d seen on TV. He sometimes thought that the education he had received at Hogwarts was woefully lacking in some areas. He looked at Ginny, Hermione and Remus, and didn’t see any indication that any of them thought that this was a bad idea. He’d given Harris his wand for the test, and he’d given it right back. A hair wasn’t any greater danger. He reached up, separated out one hair from his head, and plucked it loose. He handed it to Willow.

She smiled at him. “Don’t worry. If I’m right, I’ve already got lots of samples of these.” She pulled a glass vial from a pocket, unstoppered it, shoved the hair in, replaced the cork, and gave it a vigourous shake. The vial glowed green in her hand.

“One hundred percent match,” said Willow, “which isn’t surprising, since Xander hardly matches his old DNA at all, anymore.”

“What does that mean?” asked Ginny.

“It means that the transformation goes right down to the molecular level,” said Willow. “And since your sort of magic runs in families, it’s carried in the genes. And now Xander has Harry’s genes, so now he’s got Harry’s magic too.”

“But it’s really his own magic,” said Harry. “He’s the real Harry Potter.”

“We know that,” said Dawn, “But my Xander was pretty happy with his life, and you might have had some bumps along the way, but I think that you’re pretty happy with the way yours turned out. I don’t think it will do anybody any good to keep you swapped like this. Better to just switch you back.”

“We’ve been looking,” said Hermione. “Even with what Remus told us, we haven’t been able to find the spell that Sirius used. The Hogwarts library took some damage during the last battle with Voldemort. Some irreplaceable volumes were destroyed, and some others were removed by Death Eaters before the battle that haven’t been recovered. I’m afraid that whatever spell Sirius used, was in one of the missing books.”

Willow smiled, while reaching into her pocket again. “We don’t need the original spell. I’ve got something better.” She pulled a small, ornately carved wooden box out of her pocket. She placed it on the table and opened it, revealing a glowing green marble, about the size of a Snitch.

“This is a Draconian Katra,” she said.