Vertop
Harry made a sound. It wasn't a sound that he meant to make, it wasn't one that he was happy to have made.
It was a sound because Harry was going to die and anyone would be making a sound when they knew death was coming for them.
"You good?" The man sitting beside Harry gave him a sideways look, it might have been concern, Harry didn't know his features well enough to be sure.
"No." Harry's grip tightened on his armrests and everything shook again and another sound escaped him.
"We're going to die," Harry breathed. "God, why did I let you talk me into this?"
Harry was the one who convinced people to risk their lives, that was half of his personality probably. Hermione said that once, it wasn't important. What was important was that Harry was going to die buried in metal and fire, choking on his blood, Sirius's brains scattered on the ground beside him.
"Pup…" The man beside Harry, the boring and dull looking muggle man that Sirius was impersonating, worked hard to get Harry to release the armrest between them so he could squeeze his hand hard. "Muggles do this all the time," he whispered to Harry. "It's probably perfectly safe."
Everything shook again and Harry felt as if his stomach dropped from their ridiculous height. Broomsticks could not go as high as they were, logic could not fly as high as they were.
Why had Harry asked to sit by the window?!
"Hello, passengers, this is your pilot speaking."
Harry's breathing had become shaky, he was shivering. The pilot was about to tell them that airplanes were a joke and that they should all say their last words before the crash.
"We are experiencing some turbulence as we fly over Paris. Please keep your seatbelts on. Our lovely crew will be coming around with refreshments once it's safe."
"See?" Sirius whispered in the unfamiliar voice that Harry hated. If Harry was going to die then he wanted to see Sirius beside him - not some - some drab muggle with a stupid mustache and ugly glasses.
"If it's not safe to drink water then what is safe?!" Harry hissed at him. That announcement wasn't soothing, it only had Harry ten times as stressed as he pulled on the seatbelt he never released to make sure it was still latched.
It was, though Harry's sweaty hand made it feel loose and he tried to tighten it even more. Harry's waist was unfamiliar, it was much larger than Harry had ever been before and it was uncomfortable when he tightened the belt down as far as it would go.
"You love to fly," Sirius said, as if it were the same thing at all!
"On a broom," Harry reminded him tightly. It was cool on a broom, there was fresh air and happiness. An airplane was an oversized death trap that the muggle Harry stole a hair from had paid to ride.
"Alright, alright." Sirius looked around carefully before he pulled his ‘carry on bag' out from beneath his seat with the hand Harry wasn't squeezing too tightly. It was a joke, Sirius's bag. They had fit half of a library, all their clothes they wanted, everything they purchased from Diagon Alley, and Harry's trunk inside of the bag.
Maybe that was what the problem was, Harry thought wildly, his teeth chattering with every shake of the plane. They had put too much weight on the plane - or they were being punished for locking the two muggle blokes in a restroom closet.
All Harry knew for sure was that they were going to crash and Voldemort was going to take over the world. Dumbledore would never pay for what hadn't done yet, Voldemort would make Barty Crouch Junior his right-hand man, and Snape was going to be thrilled when Harry and Sirius never returned to Hogwarts.
The last part was the most distressing thought, really.
"Drink this." Sirius had dug around in his bag while Harry continued to panic and thrust a small potion vial at him. It was the dark blue potion Harry had before, dreamless sleep.
"One swallow should get you to Tirana," Sirius said. "Go on. I'll force feed you the polyjuice at the hour."
Harry only hesitated long enough to wonder if it was better to die awake or not. Not, he decided, snatching the bottle from Sirius quickly.
It would be different if the last thing Harry could see was Sirius, but Sirius didn't look like himself and Harry wasn't interested in looking at some bloke when he died.
Harry tipped the bottle back to take a mouthful and then pulled Sirius‘s hand to his lap as the potion began working through him.
"See you in Hell," Harry murmured with his eyes closing already. It was meant to be a joke, Sirius didn't laugh.
"No God would refuse you."
Harry's lips curled up in a grin… that was exactly what he thought about Sirius.
To Harry's immense shock, they didn't crash.
Harry was shaken awake by Sirius once the plane was on the ground at the Tirana International Airport in Albania. It was hot and late and Harry was rather disoriented while Sirius guided him off the plane and out of the airport.
"The potion should wear off in about three minutes," Sirius told him as they ducked in a dark car garage. "Let's wait in here before we find a hotel."
Harry nodded with a yawn and looked around while they waited. There were some people walking toward their cars or away from them, all of them speaking a language Harry didn't know or understand. The signs were the same thing, all marked in a foreign language.
"What language do they use here?" Harry asked Sirius.
Sirius shrugged as he began shrinking, his features changing, his hair growing and darkening.
"Albanian, probably," Sirius said. He shook his arms out and laughed at the clothes that were too large on him. "Give it a minute, I had to fight with you to drink the potion," he told Harry.
It did take a minute for Harry to begin changing back to himself, shrinking and becoming Harry again. When he was himself, Sirius offered him his glasses, bracelet, and the two rings he had to take off when he first changed back in London.
"Do I look alright?" Harry asked self-consciously, patting down his hair when Sirius kept staring at him.
"What? Yeah." Sirius shook his head and grinned crookedly. "I was thinking about - no, you know what? Let's find a cab."
Harry was bemused by whatever Sirius's thought was that he didn't want to share, but he forgot it quickly when Sirius started teasing him.
"Unless you think cabs are terrifying too?" Sirius asked, absently taking Harry's hand as he was prone to do. Harry liked it.
"Shut up," Harry huffed. "I don't understand why they made the plane shake like that? It's not as if there were rough roads, it's fluffy clouds!"
"Horrifying, deadly, fluffy clouds."
"Shut up!"
Sirius kept it up while they hailed a cab and Sirius was able to point on a map to where they wanted to go. It was a guess, as Harry tried to explain. They had done some research and Harry thought that Voldemort's wraith would be in the forest in the deepest part of the country.
When they found a forest that fit Harry's idea called the ‘Tomorri Mountain Forest' Harry was sure that would be a good place to start their search. Voldemort had an ego larger than England, he would hide away in a place with ‘Tom' in its name.
Or he would avoid it at all costs, either way: Harry thought it was a good place to start.
Their cab driver took them to Berat, the city closest to the Wizarding City of Vertop. Harry wanted to sleep and shower before they went to Vertop and Sirius wanted to eat. It wasn't as difficult as it should have been to get a hotel room rented to them. Sure, they looked like children and were unaccompanied in the middle of the night with one bag between them, but they also had magic and Sirius.
The bloke running the hotel had been all too accommodating for them and Harry sighed when he saw that Sirius had got them what seemed to be the most expensive room in the hotel.
"You're ridiculous," Harry said as he inspected the lavish room they had for the night.
"Who cares?" Sirius laughed and jumped up on the bed so he could dramatically flop down and spread his limbs out on the bed. "It's the holidays, we're saving the world. Why not do it in comfort?"
Harry didn't have a good reason to argue and when he saw the enormous shower with an entire shelf of soaps lined up for use.
Sirius ordered dinner while Harry took a shower that turned into a bubble bath. Harry didn't question how Sirius managed to get food delivered in the middle of the night, he was sure the easy answer was ‘magic'.
"Come eat." Sirius grinned at Harry from where he was surrounded by strange looking food. "I don't know what any of this is, but you have to taste it!"
Sirius held up something orange on the end of a stick and Harry warily moved toward the bed so he could try it.
"Oh." Harry's eyes widened. "Siri! That's amazing!"
"Tavë Kosi," Sirius said, looking pleased when Harry scrambled up on the bed to try more dishes.
"I have no idea what that means," Harry said, exasperated and hungry. Sirius must have ordered a dozen dishes and they all looked interesting.
"Me either," Sirius said. "That's just what the bloke called it. I'll get a charmed translator tomorrow. Or I'll make one, they might not have it…"
Harry listened to Sirius explain how he was the smartest wizard to walk the world - not in those words - while he tried a little bit of everything. Everything was delicious, even if it looked questionable. Sirius laughed when Harry said so.
"We can explore tomorrow," he said eagerly. "Let's try everything!"
"Yeah," Harry agreed, liking that idea. He scrunched his nose and pretended to not be disappointed when he added, "After we find Voldemort?"
"Oh." Sirius paused for a second before nodding with much less excitement than before. "Yeah, we should do that first."
Harry wasn't exactly enthusiastic about their plan either, but they had to. They had to find Voldemort's wraith, they had to kill it. It would save lives, save people who didn't deserve to have their lives cut short.
They had to. It wasn't exactly optional.
Vertop wound up being - for lack of a better word - magical.
The entire town was protected by shields and charms that Sirius explained nobody non-magical would ever see. Once they walked through the wards, Harry gasped at the displays happening all around them.
There were children riding flying carpets, clutching each other and giggling while they rode just above the heads of the others. There were hippogriffs in a pen together, along with creatures with rainbow wings that Harry had never seen before.
Harry could see rows of houses clustered together with different colored roofs, playful music spilling from each house and mixing together. The shops had signs that Harry could never understand, but filled him with a sense of excitement anyway.
The first thing Sirius wanted to do was search for something to translate languages for them. Harry didn't have a clue where they'd look for that, but he let Sirius pull him around the village shops anyway while he hunted. Sirius didn't speak Albanian, thankfully as Harry wasn't sure how much more inadequate he could be, but he did do dramatic enactments of what he wanted to each shopkeeper they encountered.
"I…" Sirius swung his arm out then pointed at his eye. "Want to buy…" Sirius pulled a bag with coins in it from his pocket and shook it. "A translator." Sirius pointed to his ear then mimed speaking a lot with a confused face.
"You need…" The ninth shopkeeper Sirius did his ridiculous miming to smirked when Sirius's jaw dropped at his very rough and accented English. "One of ‘dis." The man pulled up the brim of his oversized hat to point at a very small white contraption in his ear.
"Ah, yes." Sirius was sheepish as he accepted one of the magical contraptions the man held out. He offered one to Harry as well, which was handy.
"Thank you," Harry said politely after they paid. The man nodded at them and Sirius was quick to run out of the shop.
"That was embarrassing," Sirius laughed once they were back outside. It had somehow managed to get even hotter in the few minutes they had been in the shop and Harry grimaced at the way his shirt stuck to his sweating back.
"For you," Harry said, happy to see Sirius make a fool of himself on occasion. Harry looked at the little white disc they bought and wondered how it would stay in place. The answer, as Sirius would have said if Harry asked, was magic. Harry lifted the disc to his ear and it affixed itself - instantly turning all of the indecipherable music into melodies that played for Harry to understand.
"‘For you'," Sirius mimicked him, not unkindly. Sirius did as Harry did and let the disc attach itself to his ear and Harry could see from the twitch of his eyebrows that it worked just fine for him as well.
Harry bounced on his shoes, sort of wanting to explore a bit since he was able to understand the local language. The signs were still a mess to him, but he could at least guess on what was offered in the shop based on the comments of the people who left them.
"Harry…" Sirius reached a hand out toward Harry as he whined Harry's name and batted his lashes at him in a pout. "We have all summer to find Voldemort, right?"
Harry linked his hand with Sirius and felt a small smile creeping up on him.
"Right," Harry agreed, knowing it wasn't quite true. They still had to search for Pettigrew, decide what they were doing about Barty… but they were both free. At that moment, they were free.
"So… maybe we explore some? Try some local cuisine? Waste some money?" Sirius suggested. "I'll buy you a present…"
Harry laughed at Sirius‘s bribe, an unneeded one. They did have all summer, in a way.
"Yeah, alright," Harry agreed. He grinned at Sirius's triumphant expression. "It better be a brilliant gift."
Sirius took that as a challenge and decided that he would find ‘the greatest memento ever' while they ran around and acted childishly. Harry was more interested in trying all the weird foods - he drew a line at sheep brains - while Sirius tried to decide what shop had the best line of magical items.
Harry got distracted in a bookstore when he saw house elves walking outside, chattering away, lazily strolling with their arms linked.
"You thought all countries used elves for labor?" Sirius asked when Harry pointed it out to him. "What did you do in History? Sleep?"
Most of the time, yeah.
Harry got a better history lesson from Sirius than he imagined he would have from Binns anyway. They started walking around the residential area of the town, just looking at the different houses and lawns, while Sirius told Harry about the history behind house-elves.
"Back before Hogwarts itself was established, when magic was still being shared freely between wizards and muggles, there was a kingdom in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania. King Caldrian, known as the wise elf, ran his kingdom through many decades of peace, his father ran the kingdom through peace before him.
"The Kingdom was beautiful, a utopia of magic and acceptance. The elves shared their home and their fruits with the goblins, the fae, the wizards, the sprites, and any who asked for their help. Elf magic is as strong as wizarding magic, possibly stronger. The Olde Elf Kingdom was the symbol of everything good and right in magic."
Harry realized that he wasn't being given a history lesson, but instead told a story. It was fine, Harry would just need to remember to not accidentally place any of the information Sirius told him on any exam.
"As it always happens, there was an army building against the elves. Led by the Shadow Sprite, the first sprite created, an army started envying the elves. Sprites, of course, are just as powerful. But they weren't happy, not like the elves, and they thought it was because the elves were more powerful.
"King Caldrian had been warned by wizards seeking favor that darkness was approaching his kingdom. If the Shadow Sprite attacked, King Caldrian feared that it would siphon the power of the elves and overwhelm the harmony in magic that kept the different factions at peace. To prevent the loss of life of his elves, and the loss of magical harmony, King Caldrian made a decision that impacted elves for eternity."
They had reached a spot on the mountain that the village was nestled at the foot of. Sirius paused to look out at the view and Harry watched Sirius, spellbound, as he finished his tale.
"King Caldrian chose to seal away the Kingdom. Caldrian informed the other elves what his decision was and his most trusted knight, the devoted Bratherly, fought against it. Even if it would prevent a magical war between elves and sprites, Bratherly couldn't watch the King sacrifice himself.
"When King Caldrian insisted it was the only way, Bratherly embraced him and completed the ritual himself. It cost him his life and it sealed away the utopia that other magical beings would travel the world to witness. The loss of the kingdom forced the other elves to disperse, spreading out across the world in search of a home like they once had. Elves, you should know, are happiest in communities, with a family.
"The house-elf tradition began when elves would offer their services in exchange for homes and communities. The elves became attached to the wizards, to the homes where they raised their children. It was wizards who twisted it, called them slaves. If the elves wanted, they could rise up… become the darkness that their king once gave his life to fight…"
Harry shivered, a side-effect of Sirius's excellence at story-telling, and Sirius shot him a cheeky wink.
"It'd serve us all right, wouldn't it? I'd like to see the likes of Lucius Malfoy being enslaved to Dobby for a day."
Honestly? Yeah, that would be excellent.
"Sirius, how could you say that?" Harry clicked his tongue and shook his head in disapproval. "That is your father that you're talking about."
It took Sirius a moment of gaping at Harry to realize that he was joking and then he threw his head back and laughed.
Then he tried to push Harry off the cliff of the mountain they stood on and somehow it turned into a full duel between the two of them.
They didn't get much done in the ‘find Voldemort's wraith' department, but Harry had a good day regardless.
It was better when Sirius, true to his word, gave Harry a ridiculous present. There had been a witch selling paintings in a stall and Sirius stopped to ask her to paint Harry. Harry, refusing to be the subject of a painting, pulled Sirius in with him.
The painting itself, which Harry loved, wasn't exactly the best gift ever. It was Sirius's instruction to the witch when she saw Harry's scar and became excited by it.
"I'll pay extra if you leave the scar out of the painting," Sirius said, his words translating to Albanian through the magical earpiece.
"No scar?" The woman shook her head, but continued to move her charmed paintbrushes while she muttered questions about their sanity.
"Thanks," Harry told Sirius gratefully.
Sirius nudged Harry's shoulder with his own.
"Anytime," he said.
It was a far cry from the summer before when Sirius thought Harry should cut his hair short and show his scar off to enjoy the fame - or whatever stupid idea he had.
They looked the same in the magical painting Sirius bought, the one that moved but thankfully didn't speak, but Harry thought they had changed quite a bit since they were dropped in 1991. They were still Harry and Sirius, except they were also HarryandSirius.
There was also the whole ‘Harry was so in love with Sirius that he would destroy his own kingdom to make him happy' bit, but Harry was beginning to suspect that it wasn't entirely new either.
So Harry was screwed up, Sirius clearly didn't care.
"You're messed up, I'm a monster."
If Sirius was a monster, Harry was a monster.