And I can’t stress that enough. Everything where in is own my JK Rowling. I’m just doing this in honor of the new film. And quite frankly there should be more Urban fantasy, crime noirs.
The sun was shining. The birds were chirping. London still reeked, but that couldn’t be helped. All in all it was a glorious day for a narcotics bust.
The peddler unrolled a blanket. The stuff was cut into green bricks piled into a neat pyramid like the high dollar Chinese tea. He mopped the sweat on his forehead with the bandana tight around his throat. The sun was beating down. A drug deal in broad daylight? It not like the Muggles would even notice this buggy anyway.
“See anything you like?” The peddler crowded the man. He wrung his hands.
“What is this?” the man sniffed at one of the bricks. “Pixie Dust?” It reeked with magic. Probably charred the hair in his nostrils. The peddler’s chin bobbed. Pixie Dust was the street name for Glamour. A highly, controlled substance. In the hands of Muggle – nothing. This was Fae magic in solid form. The Fae used this stuff as a medicine to inoculate themselves from this iron world. A wizard took this shit, and he’d be higher than a kite as the two very different kinds of magic tore through his body. The last decade of the Quidditch hall of fame should get pitched, because of this stuff.
“I’ll take fifty kilos.”
The peddler blanched. “Fi-fifty?”
“You don’t want to play in the big leagues? Because I’ve got the Galleons.” The man untied his purse. The glittering of the Gringott’s vault on the bottom of it nearly blinded the peddler. The man snapped the purse shut. “Ah, ah. Do you have the stuff?”
“Not on us…” The man scratched the base of his neck.
“…Us?”
“Well, I’m sure you could come to some kind of arrangement with the Boss? Yeah?”
“When?”
The peddler’s eyes darted back and forth. He squatted behind he buggy and knocked four times. Four knocks returned. The panel on the side slid back. The peddler gestured and ushered the buyer through the black square. There was another room inside the cart. He assumed the man in the waistcoat seated at the end of a long table was the Boss. The buyer was immediately patted down by the two thugs the flanked the doorway.
“I’m afraid I have to ask for your wand. Precautions, you know?”
“Lovely. But I seem to have left it in my other pants.” The Boss cocked an eyebrow. “What? You were just going to take it anyway.”
“Accio wand,” the Boss leveled his own wand at the buyer. Nothing. “Huh, very well. But such a dark room. Why the sunglasses?”
The buyer snorted. “Are we doing this deal or all you small fries just having me for a wank?”
The Boss nodded. One of the thugs snatched the buyer’s glasses before he could protest. The dab of make-up on the man’s forehead was smudged by the greasy thug’s thumb. Of all the Auror exams, Harry only passed disguise by the skin of his teeth. The Peddler came through the door behind with wand at the ready. What Harry did pick up during his Auror training i.e. his life from age twelve till now is that in such close quarters a wand belongs to whoever wants it the most.
The peddler reeled from the punch to the throat. Harry jabbed the pilfered ash wand between the thugs crashing down on him and gave the boss the Severus Snape special. The portly fellow crashed into the wall upside down. The room shuddered, then jerked, and all of its contents took a tumble. Somewhere in the middle of a London park, a cart fell over for no apparent reason. Harry landed smartly and was already on the balls of his feet. The thugs lost no time pulling their wands in the tumble.
“Accio EVERYTHING!” Harry screamed and raised the wand over his head. The thugs turned on their heels. They could only stare as all the furniture shook under the call of Harry’s spell. He tip toed over their inert bodies and approached the visage of the hanging man card that the boss had become. He pulled the hem of the Boss’s robe back over his face. Of all the things that Harry wished that Wizards would pick up from Muggles, it was pants, or at least a proper pair of knickers.
“There is a Muggle killer on the loose. We’ve found this shit. Your shit over every one of their bodies! Who have you been selling to?”
The Boss spat in reply. He couldn’t get the trajectory quite right being upside down and all. He just ended up with spittle running down his own face. “You can’t make me talk. You can’t fucking touch me!”
Temptation hissed in Harry’s ear. He could make this man talk. Harry could make this man dance on his mother’s grave. Or scream out the answers in duress. Or make him watch as everything he has every loved is blanketed in green light. Temptation’s forked tongue tickled the back of his neck, but he was better than this. He took the Boss by the hair and made him look into eyes with the shade and seriousness of a killing curse.
“I don’t think there is anything I can do to you that fate and nature hasn’t already. But I will take you to jail. Oh, I don’t think you’ll even do a dime in Az, but we’re put your picture in all the Goblin newspapers. You’ll go before a judge. He’ll just throw up his hands, set you free, and dare you to walk home. I hear Goblins take this sort of thing very seriously.”
Harry paused. A picture was not the only thing worth a thousand words.
“Now, I’m sure we could come to some kind of arrangement.”
***
Harry contemplated the green streaks across the hand mirror in the musty flat. His mobile chirped. “Yeah, Ron?”
“I haven’t seen anyone in the back.”
“Check the fire escape.”
He snapped the mobile shut and slide it back into his belt clip. Mixing Muggle tech and magic was still off limits, but under the new Ministry magic that looks like Muggle tech was kosher. He sniffed at a jumper hung over the back of a chair. The hollow eye socket of a skull watched him from the patch on the sleeve, and the snake peered out from the other. Harry immediately pounded the jumper into the table. The tip of his wand burnt through the Dark Mark. Rage boiled in his gut the same kind of rage reserved for a Swastika at a Bris.
The boy registered in his peripheral far too late. Harry took a corner of the table to the lightning bolt. The boy was standing over him with the Phoenix wand. Guess he wanted it bad. A jinx flashed from the tip. Harry threw up his hand in a panic. A pulse streamed through the air like petrol vapor. The wand clattered to the floor and rolled away from the boy. The wandless bit doesn’t always work, but Expelliarmus would always be his forte.
Harry made a dash for his wand. The toes of his right foot clenched into a wither claw. His knee refused to bed. A botched Petrificus Totalus. Still it’s amazing how much little things like that can slow a man down. His trainer dragged on the floor behind him like it was encased in concrete. The boy walked over and plucked the wand from the floor.
Merlin’s pants, this kid’s about my son’s age. He’s been using the Glamour to keep his marker from going off. The boy hovered the tip of the phoenix wand over Harry’s heart. His gaunt face grimaced.
“AVADA-”
“Harry? I’ve heard shots. Is everything ok?”
The wand flashed and the mobile went up in smoke. “Potter?” the boy hissed. This was not the nostalgia he wanted. Every year that scar faded just little bit and every year he got harder for strangers to recognize.
The boy thrust his wand forward.
“Do you think that’s such a brilliant idea, you little twat? Voldemort -” The boy cringed. “tried three times to kill me with that spell. As an infant only a mere scratch! I killed him with a fucking disarming spell. Do you really think you can do any better than your precious dark lord? Try it! You must know how that worked out for him.” Kid probably wasn’t even in diapers yet by then.
The wand shivered in his hand, but confidence returned. “Imperious, lick my boots, Potter.”
Perfect. Using every ounce of strength left Harry pulled himself to his feet. “No.”
The wand slipped from the boys hand and rolled into Harry’s inert foot. A red bolt jetted across the room. The boy sprawled over the back of the table. Ron stood in the doorway smoking wand aloft. Harry let himself fall on his ass.
“Christ, Harry, one of these days they are going to call your bluff. What then?”
Harry shrugged. “Die, I guess.”
