Disclaimer:
"Harry Potter" and all its characters belong to J.K Rowling.
I own nothing but the original characters I create.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 198: Miss Yafel Magical Artifacts
Harry opened his eyes and found himself on the cold floor of the shop.
"You couldn't even put me on a bed?"
The witch scoffed.
"You just woke up and already complaining. Beds are for guests, and I don't remember inviting you into my shop."
"Harry, how are you feeling?" Daphne was kneeling at his side.
He tried to stand up a bit, and it felt like he was being stabbed by a dozen knives.
"I feel…better, thanks."
Harry's eyes moved around the room until they landed back on the older witch.
"At least bring me some robes, don't be so stingy."
The woman's frown appeared to deepen.
"I care not for your comfort. I still have to decide if you are going to leave this place alive. Now tell me…who are you and how do you know my name?" She pointed her staff at him.
'At least she is still temperamental as I remember…' He wasn't sure if that was a good thing.
"I am Harry Potter," he answered.
"Never heard of you…" The witch responded.
"And I have not interacted with the House of Potter in a very long time…I am sure none of them had learned of my identity or about my pact." She added.
"I wasn't done..." Harry huffed.
"As for how I know your old name or about the pact you were forced to sign by that 'Crazy old Man'...you told me yourself."
"Oh?...did I?" Morgana didn't seem too fazed by his revelation.
"So you are claiming to be either…the reincarnation of an old foe of mine, or someone who tampered with the laws of time and space. Is that what you are saying?"
"Harry?" Daphne turned to him, unsure if she was supposed to hear this conversation.
He looked at her with a soft smile and patted her head gently.
"It's fine for you to learn some things. You deserve that much, and…unlike my sister, you have proven capable of keeping a secret."
Daphne felt incredibly happy to hear this but did her best to keep her composure and just nodded.
Harry glanced back at Morgana, who never took her eyes off him after he woke up.
"There is some truth in both statements I suppose." He took notice of her increasingly displeased expression.
"But I will explain it better. When I said 'I am Harry Potter", I didn't just mean in this timeline. I was originally born in a different one."
"You traveled from a different timeline?" Morgana became immediately interested, rather than surprised.
The same could not be said about Daphne.
"You are like…from the future?" She exclaimed.
"That was one of my theories!" She had thought long and hard about Harry's knowledge of magic. And one of the first things that occurred to her involved time traveling.
"I am from 'A' future. Not this timeline's future. I don't know what is going to happen here. The world where I used to live was very different from this one, too different to make anything else than some educated guesses."
"And so…in this timeline where you came from, you met a different version of me and I revealed some of my secrets…like the name I left behind...is that what you are saying?" Morgana asked.
"You did…before you died," Harry commented casually.
Daphne became worried about how this witch was going to react, but much to her surprise…she laughed.
"Ha!, yes…that does seem like the only scenario where I would reveal something like that."
"You have your answer then…can I have some robes now?" Harry requested again.
He could have conjured them himself, but he was trying to gauge this old witch's disposition.
Morgana stared into his eyes.
"As absurd as your story is...I don't feel any deceit from you. And I have heard much crazier ones." She turned around and walked behind the counter at the end of the shop before pulling out some simple black robes.
She then threw them at Harry and turned her attention to Daphne.
"What is your name?"
"Ehm… it's Daphne Greengrass, Madam…" She was not sure what to call her. Harry referred to her as 'Morgana' but she seemed to dislike that name.
"Madam Yafel will do, Miss Greengrass. From now on, you and…Mister Potter are my clients and are welcome into my shop." She handed Daphne a paper card.
"Hold this, and you will always be able to find my shop in Diagon Alley."
Daphne looked at the card she was now holding. It was made of white cardboard and said 'Madam Yafel, Magical Artifacts' in purple letters. It looked like a simple business card…perhaps a bit too simple.
"Mister Potter, do you know the reason you almost died today?" Madam Yafel asked him.
Harry frowned. He still hadn't been able to figure that out.
"Do you know the reason? I'm sure there were no flaws in the ritual."
"Ritual magic is already flawed enough…but that was not what went wrong. You already had the effect of a ritual inside your body and these conflicted with the one you did today…your body paid the price of that conflict."
"The effects of another ritual?..." He did not know what to think of that.
He never performed any rituals in this life, and the previous owner of this body didn't even know how to hold a wand. He looked at his hands.
'If it's not a ritual…then what is inside this body?...'
"By your reaction…you don't know what I'm talking about," the witch observed.
"Well…this is none of my business, but you should figure that out before doing more reckless magic on yourself."
"I will…" He needed to find out what happened. As proven by today's events, having unknown effects on his body can only end up in catastrophe.
"Now all that is left is…the matter of payment." Morgana glanced at him.
"You already took my blood." Harry had not missed the fact that the pool of blood beneath him had disappeared.
"Ah!, is true! where did all the blood go?" Daphne had been focusing completely on Harry and had missed that.
"That should give you at least a century or two," Harry told her.
"Mmm….aren't you a bit overconfident?....very well. But that would only cover my work, you still need to pay for the loss of my precious homunculus and the robes. Let's say ten thousand for the homunculus and fifty for the robes."
"That's so expensive!" Daphne exclaimed. She may not know the price of that weird baby, but with that amount of money, one could buy a large number of rare ingredients. And fifty galleons for those ugly black robes was just robbery.
The witch chuckled.
"If you can't pay, we can reach a different agreement. If you give the method you used to travel through timelines, we can call it even…"
"I will send my house elf with the money in a few days," Harry told her. He didn't take her request seriously at all.
Madam Yafel shrugged. She already expected that. Even if Harry knew how to do that, a method to travel through timelines like that was not something that could be bought with mere coins.
Harry adjusted the robes and looked at Daphne.
"Do you have my wand?"
She nodded and brought it to him.
"We should return to the castle before it gets too late. Or they will question our absence."
"Come visit again, my customers are always welcome." The witch said with a smile.
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