CH 1: Bad News Before Breakfast (Patreon)

Saturday found David walking the ward line he had slowly erected around Aldeburgh over the last decade, making sure each anchorstone was fully imbued. He had already refreshed the protections on the solstice, but this morning’s paper had sent a jolt of anxiety down his spine so now he was retracing his steps.

He had been getting ready to open his shop for the day when an owl dropped off a copy of The Daily Prophet, one of his few connections to the world of his birth. It was only the bold headline–eye-catching even by the standards of the rag– that prevented him from tossing it onto the pile of papers he kept meaning to vanish. 

“Catastrophe at the Cup!” the paper wailed. Below the headline a leering skull and snake loomed over the campgrounds that had hosted the Quidditch World Cup. Just before the picture looped David could see a family running across the bottom of the frame in terror. David grimaced before crumpling up the paper and throwing it aside. The Daily Prophet was only useful for the headlines and often not even that. Besides, he knew the bones of what was to come.

Being reborn in the world of Harry Potter had been an unexpected surprise, although not an unwelcome one. He had enjoyed his first life to be sure, but he had never been one for close connections and hadn’t left much behind. He suspected the biggest impact he made the first time around was a funny headline for those more inclined towards gallows humour; it wasn’t every day a man was startled into high voltage lines by a squirrel. 

His only big regret–besides not verifying why exactly the transformer wasn’t working before he flung the cover open–was that he had only seen the Harry Potter movies once and never bothered with the books. As a result, he recognized a lot of the last names of his classmates in Hogwarts, but very few of the first names. James Potter was clearly related to Harry Potter somehow, a father or uncle perhaps, but he was two years David’s senior and a Gryffindor so David never ran in similar circles. Not that he minded, even the “enlightened” purebloods like Potter and Sirius Black were right bastards at times. He hoped Lily Evans milked him for all the Potter family was worth when they started dating; the muggle born witch was too good for James otherwise. 

He was saddened to hear that Potter and Evans had had a son named Harry. That was one of the few plot points he did know. David had considered reaching out to them and warn them about their impending demise, but couldn’t figure out how. He had talked to Evans a few times–they shared an academic fascination with charms–but that was hardly a relationship that allowed for vague letters warning about a betrayal from… someone. One October morning he woke up and realized he could no longer remember where the Potters lived and his owl just flew in confused circles when he tried to write her a letter. Three weeks later they were dead and the first war was over. 

Now he had woken up to another event he remembered. The conflict that had been simmering in the margins of the wizarding world was heating back up to a boil and David had every interest in staying as far away from it as he could. He was happy in Aldeburgh. It was a quaint muggle town on the eastern coast of England and about as far from the centers of magical society as he could find. He was mostly confident that his warding could stand up to all but the likes of Voldemort and Dumbledore and had done his best to make sure not to draw the attention of either man. 

Still, better safe than sorry he thought, so instead of sitting behind the counter of his antiques shop and thumbing through his latest acquisition–a fascinating tome on warding in the Abbasid Caliphate–he was walking the banks of the Alde, sweating in the morning sun. 

“Good for nothing Ministry, can’t keep a handle on a gaggle of terrorists and thugs,” he grumbled as he swatted at a particularly stubborn vine with his walking stick. It was turning into a blisteringly hot day, and in order to maximize the power of his wards he had been forced to place the anchor stones along the river to take advantage of the natural magical barrier running water created. While this was good for his long-term protection, in the short term it meant he was being eaten alive by bugs.

“What am I paying taxes for if the Aurors can’t manage to arrest a bunch of OWL-level dropouts?” It was almost impressive, David mused, that Fudge made Thatcher look good by comparison. Before he could continue his monologue about ministerial incompetence he came upon the next anchorstone. 

It was an impressive bit of warding, if David allowed himself a moment of pride. A chest-high pillar of obsidian, polished to a mirror sheen and positively covered with inlaid silver runes. David knew that it was driven just as deep below ground as it stood above it, part of a network of forty seven plinths that cast a net of protection encompassing Aldeburgh and the surrounding countryside. David had incrementally improved the wards over the years, the obsidian pillars representing his third and most comprehensive scheme. 

When he had first graduated Hogwarts he had only been comfortable with Elder Furthark and knew only the ministry approved protections. He shuddered to think about just how paper thin his defenses had been in those days; barely more than notice-me-nots and intent-based alerts. Now if someone stumbled across the obsidian pillars they would see a dizzying number of runes in languages encompassing traditions from the Picts to the Sumerians. 

Along with alerts for those with magical ability entering Aldeburgh with the desire to do harm, David had latent anti-transport wards ready to be activated, creature detection wards, some nasty Greek curses based around xenia, and a whole host of defenses that would send him to Azkaban should the Ministry come poking around. Not that they would. He had managed to invert the standard muggle-repelling wards into a wizard-repelling ward that would make any wizard or witch that didn’t have a specific reason to come to Aldeburgh dismiss the town as unimportant. The stones themselves possessed strong blood-based deterrents that prevented anyone David hadn’t keyed into the protections from noticing them. He had long decided that Ministry regulations deserved lip service at most. 

The diamond at the top of the pillar glowed with magical energy, bathing the surface of the stone in an ethereal blue light. Not that David expected anything else. He made sure to top the gems off every solstice and diamonds had the deepest magical reservoir of anything outside the realms of alchemy. Hideously expensive though, David thought, especially when you needed fifty of them. He had been keeping an eye on the lab grown gem industry but so far they couldn’t produce anything large enough for his needs and he had been forced to source the diamonds from Grigotts. 

As he meandered his way to the next anchorstone he debated if it was time to bring the anti-transport wards to active status. On the one hand, forcing any ne’er-do-wells to be abruptly ejected on the outskirts of town would allow him plenty of time to respond or flee. On the other hand, if he happened to catch a bystander in his net it would draw a lot of attention he would rather avoid. Before he could reach a decision he was startled out of his musings by someone calling his name.

“David, fancy seeing you here!” a woman called out, “what got you out of your shop so early?”

He looked up to see a woman in her early thirties jogging his way, her hair put up in a tight pony tail and dressed in running gear that looked vintage to his eyes but was in fashion by the sensibilities of the day. It didn’t take long for David to place her.

“Ah, just thought I would enjoy me some sun today, Mel,” he said. 

Mel shot him a doubtful look, and rightly so. David wasn’t the most outdoorsy of men. He had a light tan–it was hard to be a warder without spending time outside setting up and restoring protections–but he had never been athletic and it was only because he often got distracted with research that he was more lanky than pudgy. 

“If you say so,” Mel said, visibly unconvinced, “just make sure you’re not collapsing out here all on your lonesome.”

David couldn’t help but scowl briefly. He liked living in a small, out of the way town because it meant he was the only wizard for miles. It also meant that he had nosy neighbors and Mel, being one of the few constables in Aldeburgh, was nosier than most. 

“Don’t worry,” he replied, “I’m just out for a light stroll and I’ve always got an inhaler on me if I need it.” This even had the benefit of being true, although these days his inhaler carried a blend of calming draught, strengthening solution, and pepper up. 

Mel nodded before resuming her jog along the footpath. David enjoyed watching her shrinking form for a moment before continuing his walk to the next anchor stone. He could apparate to each one in turn, but was leary about how closely the Ministry tracked apparition. Maybe he was being paranoid, but a bit of walking wouldn’t kill him. 

He glanced up at the midday sun and sighed. A bit of walking probably wouldn’t kill him.

The next day he was regretting his decision to walk to the whole ward line in one go. As he shifted in the chair behind the counter, trying to find a comfortable position for his aching legs and back, he once again vowed to get in better shape. Really he should have taken a couple days to top off the wards or broken out his ancient cleansweep and flown. Even if he hadn’t been on a broom since a disastrous game of pickup-quidditch in fifth year and was mildly afraid of heights, surely he could’ve put up with it if it meant he avoided his current predicament.

Hindsight was twenty-twenty he supposed, he would just have to put up with being sore for a few days. Luckily for him, the last estate sale had netted a plethora of Victorian-era furniture that he was still in the process of restoring, so it would be a while before he needed to do any heavy lifting. 

David could never figure out why other muggleborn and halfblood wizards didn’t open antique stores like he had. Aldeburg’s Amazing Assorted Antiques–just because he disliked much of the wizarding world didn’t mean he was immune to its naming schemes–had provided him a comfortable living with relatively little effort over the years. A few weekends a year he would trawl estate sales and pawnshops for old items in poor condition that he could easily flip for a profit. Some reparos to get whatever he had bought in working conditions and a few slightly more advanced charms to get it looking as new as a muggle would expect from something of the era would net him a tidy number of pounds for an afternoon’s work. Really any student that could get EEs on their charms OWL could’ve done what he had.

Consequently, David’s little beachtown store was bursting at the seams with rare muggle books, beautifully maintained pieces of furniture, and all sorts of tchotchkes that antique collectors went crazy for. Not anything rare enough to get museum curators writing to him, but he could count on making a sale or two a week, and plenty of tourists wandered through his shop, especially on a summer weekend like today. 

As such he was unsurprised to be interrupted from his reading on how the Emirs of Baghdad liked to ward their prisons–harshly and with little worry that anyone trying to escape would be captured alive to be re-tried–by the bell above his door letting out a cheerful chime as another potential customer wandered in. What he was surprised by was the pen in the jar in front of him started vibrating angrily: an indication that someone had just tripped the magical detection wards for his store.

He hurriedly silenced the alarm before turning to great whatever witch or wizard had just walked into his demesne. He was drawn up short to see that it was Mrs. Smithwick, a woman he recognized as the wife of the local grocer. A woman he was certain was a muggle.

“Excuse me,” she asked, “you wouldn’t happen to sell antique luggage by any chance?”

“Ah, I believe I have a few examples in stock,” he answered absently, still trying to figure out what tripped his ward. He noticed that the woman was holding the hand of a young girl, presumably her daughter. “What sort of luggage are you interested in?”

“Oh, lovely,” Mrs. Smithwick replied, a relieved smile across her face, “I’m looking for a trunk of some kind.”

Oh. Bugger. David remembered smiling and nodding through a story about Mr. Smithwick’s daughter’s birthday last week when he was doing some shopping to restoke his pantry. Mr. Smithwick’s daughter’s eleventh birthday.

“My baby girl got into a prestigious boarding school, you see,” Mrs. Smithwick continued, not noticing that David’s polite smile had frozen into a strained rictus of a grin, “and they are terribly old-fashioned about what they’re allowed to bring.”

When it rained it poured.