Chapter 4
“Stop that.” Harry batted the toddler’s sticky fingers away from his glasses and retreated to the other side of the pool. The toddler screeched a denial, making grabby hands and chasing after him so he could continue his assault. "No. These are mine. Mine." He pointedly ignored the laughter coming from Wei Wuxian and the old man as he was forced to pry the boy from his leg.
Harry didn't know what to do. He had never spent much time around the kids in the years below him in primary, and he certainly hadn't ever interacted with anyone as young as this, but he knew enough to know that shoving him away would be excessive. He held the kid at arm's length and widened his eyes pleadingly in Wei Wuxian's direction. "A little help please?"
Mercifully, the man listened. Still chuckling, he walked over and picked the boy up. "Ahyuan." He rattled off something that sounded vaguely chastising and the pair retreated to the old man's side.
Harry, free at last, quickly returned to scrubbing up. Now that he was no longer so sweaty and gross that he wanted to slip out of his own skin, being naked around two adult strangers was almost too awkward to withstand. The sooner he finished, the sooner he could change into the spare robes Wei Wuxian had pulled from one of his magical pouches.
More importantly, the sooner he finished, the sooner he could fish through the pockets of his school robes to look for the stone.
He'd been preoccupied when he first woke up, but now that he'd been given time to think, Harry was desperate to figure out what had happened to it. It could have fallen out of his pocket at any point during his fall or the confrontation with Quirrell. Or, barring that, Wei Wuxian or the healer might have removed it at any point while he was unconscious. He hoped they hadn't. They didn't seem like bad people, but with the general state of things he'd seen so far, he wouldn't be surprised if the promise of an unlimited supply of gold was too tempting to resist.
Of course, in order for that to be an issue, they would first need to recognize it for what it was.
Harry and his friends had looked up every mention of the stone that they could get their hands on in their quest to protect it, but none of the books had known exactly what it was meant to look like. Between the language barrier and the sheer improbability of a random eleven-year-old possessing the most valuable alchemical treasure in the world, it was incredibly unlikely that anyone here would realize the philosopher's stone was anything other than a mundane rock.
Then again, Harry had no idea if there were spells to identify such things. He still didn't know very much about what magic could do. For all he knew, a simple wave of one's wand might reveal the stone's nature.
...he was clean enough, surely?
Harry dunked himself in the chilly water one last time to rinse off and then made his way over to his discarded robes as casually as could. Halfway there, Wei Wuxian called out and pointed to the spare robes he'd set aside for Harry. Right. He forced himself to change directions and smothered the unhappy frown which threatened to overtake his face. A few extra moments to get dressed wouldn't make a difference if the stone was still there. And if it wasn't, he would still need to get dressed before he went looking for it.
He gathered the slightly threadbare clothing in his arms and retreated behind a leafy shrub to dress. The robes were a bit different than his school robes, which consisted of a smock-like underlayer and an overrobe that fastened in the center-front, but they weren't so different that he couldn't figure them out.
"That's not how you wear that."
At the unexpected voice right next to his ear, Harry yelped and nearly fell into the shrub. "...What?"
The ghost scoffed. "Only the dead cross their robes that way. It's left over right for the living."
After a moment of gaping, Harry refolded the fabric. "...Thanks." He eyed the ghost's blood-stained clothes, which were indeed folded right over left. Suddenly, he realised what this meant. "You can speak English!"
"Excuse me?"
Harry shook his head. "Sorry, not English. I know dead people don't actually speak any mortal languages." At the start of the year, Hermione had asked Professor McGonagall why the older ghosts didn't speak any Old or Middle English, which had resulted in a short lecture on ghosts and their characteristics. At the time he'd found the information a bit disturbing, but now he just felt relieved. "Could you translate for me? With the people here?"
"That depends," said the ghost.
"On what?"
"On if you can convince them not to exorcise me before I get the chance."