Harry spent most of the day trying to hide from Tom and the rest of his patrons. It appeared that everyone who frequented the Leaky Cauldron had read that morning's Prophet, and were able to recognize him. He briefly considered putting on a glamour charm to conceal his features, but decided against it. At least it wasn't nearly as bad as the Boy-Who-Lived hype he'd suffered through in his younger years. After eating a modest breakfast at the pub, Harry spent a few minutes debating whether to risk actually going outside.
It was only when he caught a group of girls pointing towards him as they chattered in excitement, holding up a copy of the Prophet, that he decided that braving the outside might be a good idea. The last thing he saw as the door to the pub swung closed behind him was the girls getting up from the table in an attempt to follow him. A last-minute decision turned Harry around and took him through the door to the Muggle part of London. Harry was glad that he had decided to just wear a simple pair of jeans and a shirt with his coat.
He stood outside in the frigid air for a moment, holding his breath and praying that the girls didn't follow him. They didn't, and he let out a sigh of relief. He hated fan girls. Zipping up his windbreaker and muttering a quick warming charm, he set off in no particular direction. He spent an uneventful day wandering around the streets, enjoying the way he could just blend into the Muggle environment. It was Christmas Day, and aside from a few straggling shoppers who were desperately trying to find Christmas gifts, or were trying to return them, the streets were deserted. It was snowing lightly, and the ground was coated with a fine sheen of white that crunched under his feet.
He didn't realize how much time had passed until the ringing of old Big Ben announced that it was late in the day. With a start, Harry looked up. The sun was already setting, which was no surprise this late in winter, even though the clock had just only chimed five in the afternoon. Harry quite easily found his way back toward the Leaky Cauldron. It was ironic that, as much as the wizarding world disliked having anything to do with the Muggle world, in the later days of the war, it had been their salvation. Safe houses in the Muggle world had been used to house government officials and high-ranking Order members in an attempt to protect them from assassination attempts. Voldemort's forces had initially been wary to venture out into the Muggle world. Their first few forays were met with vicious force. It was then that they quickly discovered that Muggle authorities were quicker to respond to disturbances than aurors.
It had rapidly become a bloodbath, and while a single dark wizard could very easily kill many Muggle policemen, Voldemort had quickly realized that he didn't want to. Now was not the time to attract the attention of the Muggle world. There were too many of them for him to wage a two-front war and come out victorious. It had forced the Death Eaters to come up with another means of locating and killing off their primary targets, which had given the Order precious time to keep relocating them. However, in the end, all it did was buy them time.
He stepped through the door of the Leaky Cauldron an hour later, quietly brushing the snow off his jacket. It was just the time between tea hour and the rush for supper, and Harry was glad that the pub was almost empty. It took only a few minutes for him to locate the dress robes that Bellatrix had insisted to buy, though it did take much longer to change. Sometimes he wondered if dress robes hadn't been invented by a sadist to torture poor wizards. It was only when he stood in front of the door, hand on the doorknob, that he realized he didn't really have any idea how to get to No. 12 Grimmauld Place the Muggle way. It had never really been an issue, since he had always either apparated, or flooed there.
"Can I help ye?" Tom called out from behind the bar.
Harry turned around and smiled sheepishly. "Mind if I use your floo?"
"Go right ahead, lad. Powder's up on the shelf next to the fireplace."
"Thanks." Harry nodded gratefully and went to the back of the room. " Tempus," he muttered, expecting to see the time displayed at the end of his wand. He yelped in surprise when, instead, the wand erupted in a shower of sparks and hissed angrily. When he tried again, the wand stubbornly decided to stay silent. "Great," Harry muttered. "Just great." Looks like I'll have to pay Ollivander a visit, after all . It wasn't like he had expected the wand to work for him indefinitely, but it sure would have been nice.
He dug into his robes and found his wristwatch. He was surprised and pleased to discover that he still had almost an hour before he was expected, and briefly wondered if Ollivander's was open right now. He didn't exactly want to bring attention to himself by getting a new wand, but going into the proverbial lion's den, a party attended by who knew how many pureblood families and potential dark wizards, without a means to defend himself, didn't sit well with him, either. Maybe it was for the better, after all, he thought as he turned the dysfunctional wand over in his hands. Someone there might have recognized the wand if he had drawn it, and he wouldn't have a decent explanation for how he got his hands on it.
"Tom," he called out.
"Yeh, lad?"
"Is Ollivander's open today?"
There was a brief silence as the barkeep rummaged around in a cabinet. "No, I don't think so. If it's an emergency, you can try Wanda & Wandel's."
Harry arched a curious eyebrow, never having heard of that place before. "Any idea where I can find them?"
Tom paused and thought for a moment before giving Harry some directions. "They probably won't be open, strictly speaking, it being Christmas an' all. But the owners live right above the shop, so they might not mind helping ye."
"Thanks."
Hoping that it wouldn't take too long and make him unfashionably late, Harry stepped out of the pub into Diagon Alley and attempted to follow the barkeep's directions as best he could. The wizarding street was nearly empty, especially in contrast with the Muggle parts of London he'd just left. Most of the shops were closed for business, and there was very little snow, something Harry attributed to the magically regulated weather in Diagon Alley. After all, it wouldn't do to have the British wizarding government shut down by a blizzard or a freak hurricane.
He passed a few shops he was familiar with, but as he took his time to wander the street, for once without having people muttering and pointing at him and reporters on his heels, he took in all the little details that he had missed on his whirlwind shopping trip with Bellatrix a few days earlier. There were a few shops he recognized - Eyelops Owl Emporium was still there, though the storefront and windows looked a little cleaner than they did in his time, and, of course, there was Florean Fortescue's ice cream parlor, which, to his great surprise, was actually open and selling ice cream.
There were a few other stores he remembered from his time, and he walked by quite a few he didn't - for one, there was a weaver's shop where Flourish & Blott's had been, and the bookstore itself had moved two houses down from where it had been in his time. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that the weaver - McWeird and McMurdo, Weaver's Inc. - was selling flying carpets. Harry at first shook his head at the impossibility of such a thing, before realizing that since there were actual flying broomsticks, it probably wasn't that much of a stretch for wizards.
The biggest surprise, however, came when he found himself standing in front of a place whose sign proudly proclaimed "Wanda & Wandel, Wandcrafters." The surprise, of course, was due to the fact that the wand shop occupied a location that was very familiar to him. It stood in the place of Quality Quidditch Supplies, the one store he had always liked to frequent with his friends, before the war had forced the government to shut down Diagon Alley. There were no brooms in the showroom, no "Quidditch Through the Ages," editions, no gleaming snitches and brightly polished quaffles. Instead, in their place, resting in ornamental display cases on a blanket of dark purple velvet, was a collection of some of the most beautifully crafted wands he'd ever seen.
Where most wands from Ollivander's were simple affairs, usually nothing more than a thin stick of wood that tapered off to a wide end to form a grip, these were elaborately carved with motifs ranging from flowers to mystic dragons. Harry blinked in surprise - this store looked rather classy, and no one in his time had ever mentioned it, nor was there any trace of it left in the Diagon Alley of his time.
Shrugging it off, Harry stepped up to the front door and discovered a sign announcing the shop's hours. As Tom had warned him to expect, Christmas Day wasn't included. Keeping the barkeep's advice in mind, Harry knocked anyway, hoping that the owners were home. When there was no answer, he peered into the darkened shop, his breath fogging the clear glass as he leaned in close. He couldn't see anything, and knocked again, a bit louder this time.
He let out a sigh of relief when a light turned on in the back of the store. Soon after, the lights in the shop proper came on, and Harry spotted a couple making their way to the door. The man was quite tall and thin, whereas the woman was shorter and stockier in build. Both of them appeared to be in their late forties, and Harry was briefly reminded of Uncle Vernon's sister - Aunt Marge. Unlike Aunt Marge, who seemed to like wearing an atrocious amount of makeup in an attempt to hide her continual sneer, this woman's face was clean and friendly, though the man looked rather irritated. Not that Harry could fault him, considering it was Christmas Day, and he was knocking on their door unannounced.
The woman reached the door first and pulled it open a bit. "May we help you?" she asked, her voice warm.
"I'm sorry to bother you on Christmas," Harry said quickly. "It's just that my wand fizzled out a few minutes ago, and I really need a new one."
"Ah, an emergency!" The woman smiled widely, nodding in understanding, though there was a slightly predatory gleam in her eyes that made him feel a bit uneasy. "Come on in, we can get you set up in just a couple of minutes."
"Thank you," Harry said, stepping into the shop.
The woman bustled around the place, looking for something, while the skinny man stood behind a counter, seemingly bored.
....
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