Lovely Lie

It’s awful that he can’t trust his own translator and guide in this very, very, very alien universe. Also that the said translator and guide, the only other “adult” mind other than his, has such opposite views with him.

He tells HK-47 that.

The robot-head – now perched on a far corner of the desk – is offended, and plaintively asks why.

He snorts. In-between bites of another ready meal he drew from the drawer under the desk after feeding Teddy and lulling the baby to sleep, he tells the self-claimed assassin “droid”, “I asked you about things that would help me and Teddy navigate this place. And you told me to get a weapon and money instead. You didn’t even explain what they were beforehand, or if I’d be comfortable with stealing things.”

“Objection: I just gave you a piece of advice, Master, based on the parameter you gave me!” HK-47 squawks. “It was up to you whether you would act on it or not, or if you would add more parameters. I have no power over you, Master.”

And Harry James Potter freezes with a forkful of shepherd pie half-way up to his open mouth.

`Did I just blindly obey someone again? Why am I like this? How do I change? Why did I assign morals to a robot, anyway? Especially one who so proudly proclaimed itself as an assassin?`

The thought churns in his head, in his heart, in his belly. His mouth feels like a little field of ashes, even as bile tries to climb up into it.

So, slowly, deliberately, he closes the lid on the plate of barely eaten meal, Scourgifies his fork and knife, lays them in their appropriate holders on the lid, taps the rune that activates the lock and stasis field on it all, and stows the whole thing back in the drawer under the desk. He fetches the baby sling and a sleeping Teddy, afterwards, then strides out of the bedroom without saying anything to the now-worried-and-exasperated-sounding robot-head.

He needs to think.

No, he needs to deal with himself. And he can’t do that in this environment, with the reminder of what and how he’s lost so visible and tangible and there. He needs a totally different environment, but one that is still safe for him and his charge.

And, last he read, Hermione sent him whole fields of various crops. He could go plunge into the trunk – or trunks, even – holding them, then, and just… revel in nature… for a while.

With that in mind, he flicks his wand and summons his waistbag to him, toes into the boots he left just outside of the bedroom, closes the door firmly behind him, and marches into the next-door room in search of the desired trunk or trunks.

Hermione was as meticulous as ever, fortunately, for there is a roll of parchment pinned by the door just inside the room that details what are in it and where. Because he forgot to summon the catalogue mascarading as a letter from the bedroom, and doesn’t want to deal with the whole thing at present, anyway. Relatively bite-sized realities are better, at this point.

Even better, now he notices that there are labels on the outward-facing side of the miniaturised trunks and their shelfs, just like in a library.

In fact, come to think of it again, the system is identical to a non-magical library, like his primary school had, which he spent lots of time in. There are just a few adjustments to the names, owing to the fact that the things held here are not books but shrunken wooden trunks containing various things, from books to footstuffs to landscapes.

But, anyway, the system is there, and he can just use it.

Given the realisation, he practically breezes through the navigation. And, in short, he is standing in front of a rack of shelfs that purportedly holds trunks containing all sorts of farms – fruit orchards, flower fields and adjoining bee farms, tree plantations, mushroom and vegetable fields, grain fields, animal farms, all.

His thoughts skitter away yet again from the full realisation of how many farms he is in charge of and what it entails, and instead focus on which farm will be best for him right now. `And Teddy. Don’t forget Teddy.`

He chooses the trunk that Hermione has labelled “TROPICAL FRUITS ORCHARD”, in the end. Because he doesn’t think he can see an apple orchard yet. Because the Burrow had an apple orchard, as he all too keenly remembers.

He brings the nearly-matchbox-sized trunk to the spot to the left of the door going out that seems to have been purposed for just this occasion, lays it on the middle of the space, then taps the lid with his wand while mentally commanding it to enlarge as the instruction on top of the nearby list says. His heart thumps wilder and wilder all the while, somehow, and it squeezes itself hard when the apparently one-and-a-half-metre-long, one-metre-wide, half-metre-deep trunk is revealed in its old-but-cared-for glory.

It's only worse when he unlatches the lid and something in the metal mechanism pricks him, and the revealed space is just blank wood with the words “STAND HERE” scrolled on the middle of the trunk’s bed with golden paint that stands out against the nearly black finish.

`Mee wouldn’t intentionally harm me or Teddy, would she?` he reminds himself. `Come on, Harry. You can do this. Time is a-ticking, too.`

Pursing his lips and glaring distrustfully at the lettering on the blank space inside the trunk, he lays protection spells on the sling holding Teddy. Another layer of protection for his godson is never a wasteful thing, he reckons.

With that accomplished, he takes a deep breath and steps onto the trunk’s bed, right on the lettering.

And, right as his left foot joins the right one on the small space inside the trunk, the said space lowers, with no warning but a slight shifting underfoot, unlike non-magical lift.

And it’s a lift indeed! A lift with three solid sides and open front that brings him and Teddy down past the bed – ceiling? – of the trunk and into the view of sunny blue sky over so many trees, sprawling from horizon to horizon like a decadently rich and fluffy forest-green rug.

He gapes. And he is still gaping when the lift settles on the ground in front of a patch of grassland – or is it a patch of lawn? – with the first line of trees – mango trees, it looks like – standing old and proud a few metres beyond.

Well, he has another reason entirely for gaping when footsteps – plural and human, it sounds like – then trot towards the lift from the left. And soon a trio of humans – in non-magical-styled work clothes – indeed come into his field of vision that is limited by the wooden sides on the left and right of the lift.

They stare at him.

He stares back at them, and shrieks inwardly, `She never told me that she was going to smuggle not just Teddy along with me!`

And then the two men and one woman of… Asian descent?… bow deeply to him, looking sincere if awkward, and he can’t help but flinch, squawking, “Why’d you do that?”

“Lord Potter,” is all the left-most man says, in a clumsy, thickly accented English, and the addressee flinches again.

“Did my friend put you up to this?” he demands. And, when the trio just stare on with a politely confused look, he amends in a slower, more careful pronunciation, “Did my friend… push you to follow me here?”

The woman standing at the rightmost shakes her head. “Lady Ermi tell where you go, and why. We have no family, outside garden, so we free to choose, and we choose to follow you. We want that. Garden our life. Your family good to us too.”

He slumps in place, and hugs Teddy closer from outside of the sling for his comfort. “Are you all that have followed me here? Or are there more people in this… garden?”

He sighs when they admit that there are more people here other than the trio. And the sigh gets deeper, much more heartfelt at that, when they reveal that “Lady Ermi” said that other “gardens” were being staffed by other people. Those working here have even visited other places via the Doorway system.

“Why’d you do that if she didn’t even push you to come here with me?” he whinges plaintively. “You know you can’t ever go home now that we’re away, right? Did she tell you that?”

The woman out of the trio rocks her head slightly in a shruggy motion. “We know only this place. From children to adult we always here. It home. We like here. Lady Ermi say okay we continue stay here. It safe. It good. Now we can go from place to place too. We barter for eat and milk. Then there ‘safety measure’ if something happen. Nice. So why not?”

It’s a simple reason, but the depth of her conviction is very clear for all that, and Harry finds his breathing get stuck in his throat, witnessing it.

He is now responsible for not just Teddy, true, but he can’t resent these people about their one-sided decision to come along. This place – no doubt transplanted from its original location, wherever it was – is their home, after all, perhaps even for two generations or more, and they are a community unto themselves, as mentioned or implied by the trio, so he – via Hermione – is the one that uprooted them in the first place, however much he didn’t want to do so.

Speaking of the lordship, though… “What do you know about why I never visited you before? And what do you think of it?”

The matching scowls on all three brown-skinned faces are not promising. And then the leftmost man grumbles, “We hear Lord Potter lost. We send letter to Lord Dahm-bel-dor. But we get no answer until Lady Ermi come and tell us. We know Lord Potter lost until just now, so when Lady Ermi aks we want what, we say we want go with Lord Potter.”

And all Harry can say to that is, “Oh,” while his mind rails, `Damn you, Professor Dumbledore! Why’d you never tell them, even if you didn’t tell me? And it’s my right and responsibility to be there with them! I can’t just take the money from their produce and never show up to thank them even once! It’s wrong!`

This just upsets him even more, unfortunately, on top of what HK-47 inadvertently made him realise. So, desperate to achieve at least some inner peace as he actually set out for, he asks them for permission to stroll among the trees with his godson.

And how relieved he feels when the woman just says, “Okay. With guide, sir? Or alone? Nada can speak Eng-lis good. I can aks her to come help you.”

“Do you have a flying broom I can use to fly among the trees?” he asks back after some thought. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like some fruits, too. I could help you pick fruits for yourselves or for storage, actually. I like picking fruits.” Then, after another pause, he adds, “Could you send people through the Doorways? Ask them if they could meet with me here some time? We need to coordinate and plan. Nada could help translate for me, then, if it’s more comfortable for you to speak in your native language.”

The happy looks he gets are gratifying, and he wants to see that again – again and again and again and again.

This first time is enough, though, for now.

The old, squat, sturdy-looking broom – more of a thinnish log with a physically padded and stirrupped seat and short, trimmed branches for bristles, actually – with a large woven basket dangling securely from near the tip of the shaft is equally enough, he hopes.

“Let’s pick some fruit, Teddy-bear,” he tells his godson, who seems to be more active in this nature-smelling place judging by the babbling and cooing and waving hands, as he swings a leg over the hovering “broom’s” shaft. Then, with a nod to the trio of workers, up he gently climbs to half-way up the trees, testing the capability of his current ride.

Well, even on just this paltry height, he feels like he has left all his problems down there on the ground! The “broom” is steady, too,if much less sensitive than he was used to even on a Cleansweep, let alone a Nimbus, forget the Firebolt. He finds that he can even safely feed Teddy while cruising along the rows of trees, when the baby begins to fret! But then again, the workers here might indeed benefit from such a steady ride when picking fruits: no wobbling, no tipping to the side, not much response to the rider’s movements.

Well, he himself benefits from such a ride beyond the ability to feed Teddy without having to touch down, truth be told. Because it’s very different even in shape to the broom he used to pick apples from the Burrow’s orchard, and it helps him anchor himself in the present.

The smells and shapes of the fruits hanging from these trees, too, as well as how forest-like this orchard is, with so many trees crammed together.

Sadly, duties await. So he returns to the lawn and the lift beyond it when the “sun” begins to dip low, figuring that it’s enough time for the workers – he forgot to ask for their names! – to have been able to gather the people he requested for.

And he can’t help but baulk when the same trio from before, now accompanied by a nervous leaf-green-hair-dyed young woman in office-type clothes, lead him to a large, sprawling hall not far from the lift, and he finds that the said hall is full of people of various colours and builts and sizes in various attires.

With their gazes all fixed on him, the moment the new woman leads him to the makeshift stage at one end of the hall.

It’s all he can do not to flee!

As it is, he just stares back once she has ushered him up to the stage, his whole body trembling.

He never stood before so many unknown people, became their sole attention, while he had nothing to distract himself or them, and couldn’t escape somewhere.

Worse, he asked for this, in a way. He just never expected that there would be so many people crammed into this hall.

In his experience, unknown people usually want to hurt him or fan after him, and it’s not good, especially when they are this many and he has Teddy with him.

And, humiliatingly, the young woman standing at his side – Nada? – seems to be quite aware of that, or at least his current fight-or-flight mind-set, for she whips out a clipboard from somewhere and feverishly jots down something while the murmurs in the hall pick up in number and volume, then jerkily thrusts it in front of him, and what she’s written turns out to be a point list of what he could talk about.

`Someone is managing me again,` he dimly realises through all the panic. But he goes on with the list, anyway. It’s that or just running out of the hall without a word, and he refuses to disrespect himself and his invitees in such a way.

First, “Greeting”: “Thank you very much for coming. I didn’t know there’d be this many people. But… thank you, for being here. I’m sorry I was never there for you before. Honestly, I never knew I’m a wizard till I was eleven and Hagrid brought my Hogwarts letter to me through a storm on my birthday that year.”

Second, “Explanation of current state/location”: “Umm, I hope you’re okay with moving worlds with me, because it’s permanent… and we’re in the new world, now. I don’t know how long it’s been. I wasn’t quite in my right mind when I arrived here. And I’m still learning about where we are. All I got from my location spell was ‘Level 45 of Coruscant’s Undercity’, and all I’ve found so far round here is… not so good. The tent Hermione gave me is good, though, and well-stocked, and I put wards round it, and this trunk was in it, still in it, so we’re all safe for the next while.”

Third, “Explanation of what will happen”: “I’ll still be learning and exploring, much as I can. Right now, though, I’d like to just rest. You’re welcome to come with me when I go exploring, but maybe not many at once? Just one or two, so I can keep an eye out better for all of us. You could come up with a roster of who go when. Just don’t fight among yourselves for it. And, other than that… I just want to build a life, wherever here is. Just live.”

He has to stop there, to close his eyes and take deep breaths and scramble for control of his expression and treacherous tearducts.

How silent the hall is in response to his reaction to his own words doesn’t help.

The glass of cool, lemon-infused water Nada’s just summoned for him helps, though, strangely, if not by much. `Did she put a dash of calming draught in here?`

Still, the fourth point is “Updates from everyone”, and he doesn’t think his nerves are able to cope with that right now, even if he drained the glass, especially given how many people are in here and how many trunks he must cover. He hasn’t even finished reading the catalogue for this storeroom, and what he has browsed are already mind-boggling!

So he jumps right to the fifth and last one, “Conclusion and messages”, and tells the silent-and-still assembly after a few deep breaths, “Thank you very much, again, for coming here. There’s just so many things we must discuss, and we can’t finish it all right away. We still have time, I hope, so let’s schedule individual times, and then let’s hold another meeting at the end of it. I’d welcome your opinions and suggestions on things, too, so… you could write them down, I guess, and I’ll come here or somewhere else, as regularly as possible. I’ll leave this trunk unshrunken, too, so hopefully you can… go out, if you would. Just, I warn you, the tent is much less impressive than even just this trunk. It’s more of a storage space, really, and still quite cluttered in some areas. Just warn me first if you’re going to explore the tent. I’m a jumpy cat nowadays. And, please, don’t go out of the tent, not just yet. It’s an abandoned space, but sometimes gangs come by. I had to dodge two when I arrived here, and these dragonhide things saved me, thankfully.”

He’s rambling, he’s quite aware of it, but he can’t stop it.

And, thankfully if even more humiliatingly somehow, he can see understanding in many of those eyes that have been staring at him.

Given the response, he takes the time to bow deeply to his audience before returning the clipboard to Nada and retreating from the makeshift stage. And then back to the lift he goes, back to the tent, back to his bedroom.

And, the first thing HK-47 says upon seeing him at the door is, “Greeting: Now, Master, are you finished sulking?”