"I Am...Who?" by Malika Potter
Chapter Notes: Harry travels on the Knight Bus to the Leaky Cauldron, and learns about money. Meanwhile, Ron and Hermione make an interesting discovery.
Harry looked around the strange bus. It was full of beds, most of them full of strangely dressed people. The man who’d welcomed Harry onto the bus stepped up behind Harry and cleared his throat. Harry jumped.
“Welcome to the Knight Bus,” repeated the man dully, “My name is Sam Wesley, and I can help you with anything you need aboard this bus.”
“Er, thanks,” muttered Harry, relieved to finally be getting far, far away from the Dursley’s.
Sam continued to look at Harry expectantly. Harry suddenly realized that the man expected Harry to pay him, and Harry remembered that he didn’t have money.
“Er, how much is it?” Harry asked, hoping the fare wouldn’t be too high.
“Two Galleons,” Sam said crisply.
For a moment, the request seemed perfectly normal to Harry. Then his mind twisted into a knot and Harry was confused. Galleons? Was Sam crazy?
“Excuse me?” Harry asked in what he hoped sounded like polite confusion.
Now Sam was looking at him as though Harry was the crazy one.
“Two Galleons,” Sam repeated dully, as though he’d said it many times. “It’s actually rather cheap.”
Harry didn’t know how to respond. Sam, however, obviously thought that Harry understood him, because he continued to talk conversationally.
“So where are you headed?” he asked Harry, although Harry could tell it was part of his job, not friendliness.
Harry didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t tell Sam that he was happy where ever he was far away from the Dursley’s and Kinselton for obvious reasons, so instead he tried to make up an excuse. He stuttered, until a thought popped into his brain.
“Er, where is the nearest inn?” he asked, hoping that the question didn’t seem too absurd, and that Sam would know the answer.
Sam didn’t seem to notice Harry’s anxiety or confusion, because he answered promptly.
“The Leaky Cauldron. I think that they still have rooms available,”
Again, Harry’s mind recognized the words at first, but again it twisted into confusion and worry. To hide his confusion, Harry just nodded instead of saying anything. Sam seemed to think that Harry’s nodding was normal, because he called up to the driver.
“Leaky Cauldron!”
He then turned back to Harry, and cleared his throat once more.
“That’ll be two Galleons,” he repeated, holding his hand out, palm up.
Harry swallowed rather nervously, unsure of what to say in response to this. Suddenly, Harry heard the voice begin to speak.
“Reach into your pocket. In it, you should find a twenty pound note. Give it to the man and apologize for having Muggle money,” directed the voice.
It was the same voice, but at the same time, it was different. It was the first time that the voice had actually tried to help Harry. Usually, it just insulted and jeered. In spite of himself, Harry took a chance and listened to the voice. He tentatively put his hand into his right pocket. A crumpled bill found his hand, and Harry sighed with relief. It must have been left over from his lunch, or was it? He cautiously handed it to Sam.
“Sorry for the Muggle money,” he muttered apologetically, hoping that his words wouldn’t seem too out of place.
Sam looked at the money as though it was very strange and unusual. “Muggle money…” he murmured faintly, as though he was stunned to see such a thing. “I haven’t seen this in a while, it must be worth at a fortune.”
He gave Harry a handful of silverish coins for change. Harry slipped them his pocket. Now Harry was beyond confusion, and getting a little worried. Why was Sam so strange? He used such unusual terms, like Galleon, Muggle, and Leaky Cauldron. Harry hadn’t even heard a single one of the words before now…or had he? A tiny part in the very back of Harry’s brain argued. He was sure that he’d heard all of those terms before. However, before he could bring the thoughts out, something else in Harry’s mind pushed it away into nothing.
Harry sat down wearily onto the edge of one of the empty beds. Maybe everyone on this bus was so strange because it was a bus for foreigners, Harry told himself, although he hardly believed it was true.
“Oy!” called Sam from the front of the bus after a few minutes. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Trevor,” Harry answered automatically, although he was unsure of why he was hiding his name. “Trevor McKinnon,”
Sam nodded and scribbled the name down on a notebook that he took out of his pocket. After a few minutes of listening to Sam and the driver talk to each other, Harry felt himself slowly drift off to sleep.
After what seemed like only a few minutes (although it was really almost an hour), Harry felt his bed be shaken as though it was trying to wake him up.
“Trevor!” Sam called cautiously from the front, “It’s your stop!”
Harry peered out the window to see a grimy looking pub out of the windows. It didn’t look very appealing, but Harry decided to take a chance and see if there was somewhere that would take him in. The silver coins jingled in his pocket as he stepped off the train.
“Thanks,” he muttered to Sam before he turned to face the dirty place that Sam had called the Leaky Cauldron.
Harry opened the door cautiously as he walked inside. More strangely dressed people crowded the building, and Harry felt a couple eyes turn to him. He flattened his hair over his strangely shaped scar so he wouldn’t be too easily recognized. Harry wasn’t sure why, but he felt the sudden urge to hide.
“Keep your head down,” directed the voice, who seemed to be worried that Harry could be recognized as well.
Harry angrily rubbed his scar, which began to throb painfully. He didn’t understand how the mysterious voice in his head could act so cruel, then so helpful and understanding now. The man at the counter looked suspiciously at Harry as he approached.
“Hullo,” Harry muttered to the man at the counter.
The man didn’t say anything, he just stared at Harry blankly and suspiciously.
“How much are rooms?” Harry asked, reaching into his pocket and fingering the silver coins that Sam the bus assistant had given him.
“That’ll be one Galleon, and five Sickles,” said the man.
Harry pulled the silver coins out of his pocket and put them on the counter. He had no idea if they were Sickles or Galleons, or even if the man would accept the strange silver coins.
“Please help…” he though desperately to the voice inside his head, scarcely believing that he was actually pleading the evil voice for help. Luckily for him, the voice answered.
“The silver coins are Sickles. There are seventeen Sickles in a Galleon, so you owe him twenty-two of them,” directed the voice.
Harry cautiously counted out twenty-two of the silver coins, and gave them too the man. He accepted them without a second glance, and Harry heard himself sigh with relief. He took his key to the room and trudged wearily up the stairs his room. As soon as he got there, he plopped down on the bed and promptly fell asleep.
The woman was still following him, and she was still smiling her toadlike smile. The girl with the bushy hair ahead of him continued to walk deeper in to the woods, as he wearily trudged behind her. Suddenly, several horselike men jumped out from behind the trees. They had the body of horses, and the torsos of humans. Harry blinked in surprise, and took a step back.
“Ron!”
Ron heard Hermione call him urgently from the common room. He thundered down the stairs and saw her standing directly at the bottom of the staircase to the boy’s dormitory. She held up a newspaper and pushed it into his hands eagerly.
“Harry’s been sighted!” She practically shouted into his ears. “The Aurors think they have a lead!”
She was so excited that she almost ripped the paper in half. Several people from around the common room flocked over to read the article as well. Harry’s absence from the Wizarding World had been the main source of interest for the past few months.