As much as I wanted to investigate the strange nexus of dark magic hidden in the depths of the swamp, it wasn’t a priority right now. The pangs in my stomach were really starting to get to me and it was entirely possible that I was being surrounded by Aurors even now. Something was stopping me from apparating to Diagon Alley, but there were other branches of Gringotts I could visit depending on where in the world I’d ended up.
It was time to get out of here. I’d be back, but for now other things took priority over my curiosity. Something about the tether between me and this place told me that I could always find my way back here, no matter where I went. Until then, I put the mystery of what exactly I had sensed and the strange corpses filled with dark magic behind me.
I doubted I was going to find anything palatable in this corpse-littered swamp, so I needed to get out of here. In my moment of connection, I’d gotten a general feeling of this place’s size, and it was pretty big. If I went the wrong way, I could be trudging through nasty swampland for hours before I found anything. I needed to get my bearings and see if there was anything resembling civilization somewhere nearby. Wizard, muggle, I didn’t particularly care which I found right now. I just needed something.
Taking a firm grip of my wand, I apparated a hundred meters straight up. I began falling immediately, the air whistling in my ears and gusts of wind buffeting my robes. Thankfully, my lack of skill with a broom actually came in handy for once. I had a lot of practice falling from the sky, and usually I didn’t have the benefit of already holding my wand.
I flicked my wand through the air, years of practice having rendered both the words and wand movements of the slowing spell moot. My rapid fall stopped abruptly, leaving me hanging motionless in mid air. Usually I would have just slowed my fall instead of stopping it, but I wasn’t at Hogwarts and knew how to apparate now. This way I had all the time I needed to look around and when I was done I could just pop back down to where I’d started without worrying about the wind blowing me out over the water.
I turned slowly in the air, peering down at the ground far below. Everything looked rather tiny from up here, the trees reduced to little shrubs and the dirty water and small islands blending together into a single brownish-green mass. The swamp extended out around me in all directions, but in the east––a quick four-point spell told me which way North was and from there the rest was easy enough––I could see what looked like one of those big, dirty muggle cities. It was pretty far away, but that wasn’t an issue for a proper wizard like me.
Hopefully the city was big enough that there was a wizarding community living somewhere around it. I could go looking for it once I’d filled my belly, and, with any luck they’d be able to point me towards the nearest Gringotts branch. Having a few thousand galleons in my pocket would open up a lot of potential options for me going forward, but for that to happen I needed to hurry.
After double checking that my disillusionment spell was still working––it was––I apparated again, aiming for the side of a wide, gray road I could see in the distance. I apparated a few more times in rapid succession until I reached the city itself. From there, I decided to continue on foot, searching for something that resembled a pub or restaurant. Muggles did have those, right? They must.
It took some time, but eventually my nose led me to a strange-looking establishment by the name of Big Belly Burgers, the name proudly emblazoned above glass doors on a bright yellow and red sign. It offended my sensibilities to eat at such a Gryffindor-themed location, but it was the first place I found and was clearly too muggle to know of the irritating fools it shared a color with.
The doors opened without me needing to touch them as I approached, and I nearly tripped over my feet in surprise. I couldn’t see the presence of any sort of spell on the doors, so this must be some form of muggle technology like Hogwarts Express. Very clever of them; it must have taken a truly exceptional muggle to devise such a magical-seeming door. Perhaps it was the work of a squib? An interesting question, but ultimately irrelevant.
This ‘Big Belly Burgers’ establishment was nearly empty when I entered. A bored-looking female muggle in a garish red-and-yellow uniform stood slouched behind a counter staring intently at a little black rectangle in her hands, mechanically chewing away at seemingly nothing like a cow.
Behind her, I could see a strange looking, very metallic, white-tiled kitchen where another muggle in a similar uniform was scrubbing some sort of cooking surface with a metal scraper, producing a somewhat unpleasant noise. At least the place looked rather clean, I noted happily. Without the help of house elves and spells, I knew that many muggles were content to wallow in filth, but this place seemed rather well kept.
Above the counter was a well-illuminated board upon which a number of odd-looking dishes were displayed along what was likely their names and prices. I was glad for the pictures, for without them I would have had no idea what a Joker burger was, nor what is the difference between it and a Drizzle Doodle.
I blinked as suddenly the board changed, the items on it replaced by new pictures and new names. Once again, my still-active magic sight spell could detect no magic, besides the low level of ambient dark magic that seemed to suffuse this place––a consequence of being so close to that swamp I assumed––but that should have no effect on this strange menu.
I was still staring up at it in confusion when it changed again, going back to the pictures I’d seen as I’d first entered the restaurant. Very odd, I had no idea muggles had something like that, and it seems like something I should have heard of.
Well, no matter. This…Cheesemeister Deluxe burger looked quite palatable and very large, just the thing to quell the ache in my belly. I approached the counter, then suddenly realized that I was still disillusioned and hastily ended the spell, hoping the muggle hadn’t noticed me.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
She seemingly hadn’t, not even once I’d reappeared in front of her. I loudly cleared my throat and she finally looked up at me, not even bothering to move her head. “Welcome to Big Belly Burgers, I’m Sarah, what can I getcha?” she drawled, her voice dripping with indifference.
I didn’t particularly like her tone––that was no way to address a Black––but for now I needed her to provide me with food. “I would have one Cheesemeister Deluxe,” I ordered.
“Would you like to make that a combo?”
I peeked up at the board again, unsure what a combo was. It was currently displaying the other items and the word combo was nowhere in sight. “Uh, yes,” I told her haltingly.
“What drink do you want? We have zesti, diet zesti, orange zesti, canta, diet canta, salt phd…” she rattled off a half-dozen more names I’d never heard in my life.
“Do you have…pumpkin juice?” I asked haltingly, “Or butterbeer?”
“Is root beer fine?”
That sounded like an actual beverage instead of whatever morgana-cursed muggle swill zesti was. “Yes, that’s fine.”
She set her little rectangle aside and poked the boxy thing on the counter beside her several times. “That will be eleven-seventy-three. Will you be paying with cash or––”
My wand came up, “Confundo,” I muttered, and the muggle’s eyes turned glassy for a moment. “I have already paid for my food,” I told her.
She blinked rapidly. “Oh, I’m sorry, I must have punched it in wrong. Here, let me just…” she poked the box a few more times, then tapped something hanging from her waist against it, making the strange thing beep.
“There you go, take a seat wherever you’d like and I’ll have that out for you in just a moment.”
“Good.”
Most of the tables were strewn with crumbs or colorful paper wrappings, but I managed to find one in the corner that looked like it had been recently cleaned. I cast a silent wiping charm on the chair, then gingerly sat down in the hard, unnecessarily-red seat.
As I waited for my meal to be brought to me, I looked around the restaurant, my nose wrinkling in distaste at all the brightly-colored furnishings and rubbish strewn across several tables. I stopped when my eyes landed on what looked vaguely like a wizarding portrait, though the frame was made of something black and shiny and it was attached high up on the wall at an odd angle.
Two muggles, a man in a blue suit and a woman in bright red dress, were sitting side by side at a long table. They were clearly talking, though I couldn’t hear anything they were saying, and words kept appearing and disappearing in a blue box at the bottom of the portrait. To my surprise, the words looked like something I would expect to hear from a wizarding wireless broadcast, and not a portrait. Was this some manner of…news portrait?
The muggle girl came over and set a tray down in front of me. “Will you be needing anything else?” she asked.
I peered suspiciously at the food on the tray, then shook my head. “No. I appreciate the brisk service.” I had expected to wait for another half hour or more, but it had only taken the muggle cook a few minutes to prepare my meal. Even a house elf would be proud of such speedy service.
“Would you like me to turn the volume on the TV up for you? I saw you were watching it when I came over.”
I gathered that TV was the name of the portrait I had been examining. What a genius idea, a way to make portraits be silent when their input wasn’t necessarily. Such a spell would have made certain parts of Hogwarts much more tolerable. “That would be good.” I paused, frowning momentarily. She was a muggle, but she had done me a useful service. “I appreciate it.”
She smiled at me and winked. “Happy to help.”
I dug into my meal, finding the ‘burger’ to be quite tasty, though greasier than I would have liked, and the little potato sticks were crisp and salty. The root beer was…not what I had been expecting, but paired adequately with the rest of the meal.
I nearly choked on my mouthful of bread and meat when the girl did something to the portrait and I could suddenly hear what the two muggles were saying.
“...following up on our earlier story, it looks like the Justice League were successfully able to drive off Wotan before the villainous sorcerer was able to blot out the sun. This marks another big victory for the league on a day they’ve already had some pretty big victories. Captain Cold, Mister Freeze, and several other villains were apprehended earlier in the day by members of the Justice League.”
The man leaned forward slightly, “Yes, it sure does. Something else to celebrate tonight when you’re setting off fireworks, folks. It's awful that these villains are trying to stir up trouble on such a big day for all Americans. I’m sure Superman and the others just wanted to enjoy the day, maybe have a barbeque, but no, these superpowered wackos just keep causing trouble.”
The image changed suddenly, the two muggles and their table shrinking down until they occupied only a tiny corner of the portrait while the rest of it now showed a slightly hazy image of a flying man in a tight blue outfit with a red cape attacking a blue-skinned wizard throwing strange spells from his hands with no wand in sight. A moment later, another person appeared, this one an older man in a top hat, white gloves, and black suit who was also doing magic.
What the… This… I’d already gathered that I was in America––I’d walked past no less than three red-white-and-blue flags and the muggle girl’s accent gave it away as well, but MACUSA was a signatory of the international statute of secrecy just like Britain was. There was no way they should be allowing muggles––and the muggle waitress was clearly staring right at the portrait––to see this, any of this.
And who was that flying man? There were only a handful of wizards who could truly fly without a wand in the entire world, and I didn’t recognize him as one of them. I didn’t understand what was going on!
And then I saw something else that absolutely shattered my understanding of the world. New words appeared at the bottom of the portrait. A date. July fourth…two-thousand-and-ten.
My burger fell from my suddenly limp fingers and I sagged backwards in my chair. The question wasn’t where I was. It was when I was. Muggles and wizards had used the same calendar for centuries, it was just easier that way. And the last time I’d checked, it wasn’t two-thousand-and-ten. It was nineteen-thirty-seven. Sweet Merlin, what in the world was going on.