They soon found themselves in front of Gringotts, at a busy intersection in Diagon Alley. Bellatrix turned to him with a triumphant smirk. "That was a job well done!"
"If you say so," he shrugged.
"Now, we're going to have to come up with a name for you, if you're really intent on not revealing your real one."
"Smith? Maybe Jones?" Harry offered.
Bellatrix snorted in disdain. "Oh please . Give me a break. Where's your creativity? If I'm going to get you connected, you're going to need a more distinguished name. A pureblood name." She eyed him critically. "You are a pureblood, right?"
Harry frowned as he wondered how to answer. "Yes, as far as I know," he replied slowly. Technically, it wasn't a lie. The Potters were an old pureblood family, and while Lily Evans, his mother, had been a Muggle-born, he wasn't entirely sure about the rest of her family. It was a shaky bit of not telling the whole story, but it would have to suffice.
"As far as you know?" Bellatrix echoed.
"What, you have something against being Muggle-born?"
"Not really," she shrugged, "though, everyone else does."
"I see."
"Couldn't I just say that I'm a distant relative of the Blacks?"
Bellatrix shook her head. "You'd never get away with it. Auntie has that pedigree chart at Grimmauld Place. You'd be exposed the instant you opened your mouth."
"Oh," Harry said, mentally reviewing the name of every pureblood family he'd heard of.
"I've got it: Harry Ashworth," Bellatrix announced. "I can work with that."
"Ashworth?" Harry asked. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I can pull it off," Bellatrix told him. "They used to be quite common in England, but they migrated to Australia and New Zealand. There's enough of them over there that none of them would be able to say you aren't an Ashworth, even if you did have the misfortune to meet one or two."
Harry mulled it over quickly. He'd never even heard of an Ashworth, so meeting one by chance seemed unlikely. "All right," he agreed. "I'll be Harry Ashworth."
"Great," Bellatrix said. "Let's get going, Ashworth. I don't have all day."
"Where were we going?" Harry asked.
"Well, Ashworth, you look and smell like a slob," Bellatrix said, breaking it to him kindly-at least for her standards, anyway. "First, we'll get you a room at the Leaky Cauldron to take care of the smell. Then we'll see if there's anything we can do about your looks."
Harry started to protest and tell her that he'd been a prisoner for quite a while, but decided that it would be better to keep any details about the future a secret. No need for her to know who he'd been fighting for -and against - in the future.
A much younger looking Tom the barkeep was able to arrange a room for Harry and he took a half-hour to shower and clean up a bit while Bellatrix waited impatiently. He sputtered in protest when, tired of waiting, she stuck her head into the bathroom and peeked around the shower curtain several times to ask if he was done yet.
After he had finished showering and gotten over his mortification - to which she'd laughed - he had then been hauled him to the shop that would be called Madam Malkin's in the future. At this time, however, it bore the name of Messrs. Malkin & Malkin-Master Tailors. "Must run in the family," Harry muttered to himself.
"What was that?" Bellatrix asked.
"Nothing," Harry told her curtly.
Bellatrix spent the next hour mercilessly giving directions to the tailor who was fitting Harry while thumbing through various fabrics and patterns. Harry did not get to choose what he ended up buying; but luckily, Bellatrix did have some good taste, though it was a little dramatic. At least it beats the taste in clothing she'll develop later in life, he thanked God for small favors. He did not want to end up running around in all black, torn and tattered robes looking like a maniac.
They stopped in at various other shops where Bellatrix insisted that Harry buy different trinkets that no pureblood should be without, though he really didn't understand the point of having a penholder with built-in ink bottle when he used a separate ink bottle to begin with. And a quill that didn't fit the penholder. At one store, they bought a trunk and Harry was grateful for having something to place his purchases in. He also found himself glad that he'd bought a very, very big trunk, because no matter how much they shopped, they kept buying more. So much in fact, that he could practically feel the bag of coins in his pocket getting lighter as he pulled out coin after coin.
Harry and Bellatrix didn't linger long in any of the shops they visited. Harry had heard that girls could spend hours shopping and had even seen it with Ginny back in his time before everything went to hell, but Bellatrix seemed very impatient. Somehow though, they did manage to squeeze in a stop by almost every single store in Diagon Alley, even if Bella just stepped in to grab an owl-order form for Harry's growing collection.
"I don't know what we're going to set you up as," Bellatrix explained as he stuffed the sheets of paper into the trunk. "You'll want to be able to order anything you might need. Did you have a job before your accident?
Seeing where Harry had stuck the latest owl-order form, Bellatrix muttered under her breath, reached in, and uncrumpled the pages, neatly sliding them into a side pocket where they would be safe and out of the way of anything else he might toss in.
"It was sort of in the line of auror work," Harry said vaguely.
"Good luck having that happen again," Bellatrix said. "That would take more identity papers than I think you can afford."
Not if I empty the Black vault, Harry thought dryly, but didn't say anything out loud.
They passed Ollivander's. Harry briefly considered going in to buy his old wand, but he ultimately decided against it. Either Dumbledore or the Ministry would be notified of the wand's purchase and furthermore, it was unlikely that anyone other than Harry would come to purchase it for years to come. It could wait. Not to mention the fact that he would end up running into the brother-wand problem again, which wasn't something he looked forward to. No, maybe for now it would be best to keep the Black wand he'd taken from the vault. It seemed to work reasonably fine, but he'd have to fully check it out before going into battle with it.
They concluded their shopping before long and were walking back to the Leaky Cauldron - well, Bella was walking, occasionally prodding Harry with a long, manicured, fingernail, while Harry was struggling with his trunk. It did have enchantments on it to make the inside bigger and lighter, but there seemed to be a limit on how much weight it would reduce. As it was, he found himself struggling to drag it along. It took a good fifteen minutes before Harry had had enough and shrunk the trunk - remembering to put a weight-enchantment on it - and stuffed it into his pocket, while Bella looked on with an amused smirk that clearly told him she thought him an idiot for not thinking about it earlier.
"Don't say it!" he warned her. She wisely kept silent.
They had almost reached the pub when they ran into trouble, heralded by a loud groan from Harry's companion. She stepped up in front of him and glared.
"What's wrong?" he asked, trying to spot what would cause her to react that way.
"It's the Three Stooges," she muttered darkly, just as Harry spotted the three very familiar figures walking around the corner: Remus Lupin, Sirius Black… and James Potter.
Harry froze at the sight of so many familiar, if younger, people. Remus Lupin had vanished on a top-secret mission for the Order in his time, and had never been heard from again. The werewolf had been presumed killed, but no one knew for sure. Not even Voldemort would answer that question when asked. Sirius, of course, had been killed while dueling his own cousin, Bella, during Harry's fifth year at the Ministry. And then there was James Potter-his father, the man Harry had heard so much about but had never gotten to meet.
Surprisingly, it was James Potter who opened the verbal gun ports the instant he saw Bellatrix. "Getting more manuals on how to torture muggles, Bella?" he asked with a sneer. "If so, you missed your exit. Knockturn Alley is that way."
"Bugger off, Potter," Bellatrix shook her head. "You're not even worth my time. And for your information, I do not torture muggles in my free time. I also don't harass other students, humiliate them, or make them a laughingstock for my own amusement ."
James stepped into her way as she tried to walk past. "You Slytherins don't deserve anything better, anyway. Backstabbing snakes, the lot of you."
Bellatrix arched an eyebrow. "Oh really? And I suppose you Gryffindors are so much better?"
"At least we know the meaning of the word loyalty!"
"Everyone else calls it idiocy," Bellatrix countered. It brought Harry up short. The words were the same as the older Bellatrix had spoken to him, back in the cell.
"I wouldn't expect a Slytherin to understand."
"You don't understand it, yourself, Potter," she replied haughtily. "You spout all this drivel about honor and loyalty and integrity, but you don't have a damn clue as to what it actually means."
James sneered at her. "And you Slytherins do? You don't even know the concept of loyalty."
"At least we have a brain to understand it with!"
"We never got to finish our duel back in DADA last semester," James growled as he stepped forward, drawing his wand from his belt. "How about we finish it now? Or are you scared, Black?"
"In your dreams, Potter," Bellatrix replied evenly, flicking her wrist and catching her wand in one smooth motion.
Harry looked away from his father and realized what was going on. Glancing over at Sirius and Remus, he knew that he couldn't expect any help from that corner - Remus was frozen in shock while Sirius was trying to remind James that they were still subject to the underage magic clause. James wouldn't listen and raised his wand despite Sirius' advice. In response, Bellatrix stepped into her own dueling stance.
Why me? Harry complained to himself as he drew his own wand, flicking it in one smooth motion without uttering a word. Both Bellatrix and James found themselves staring at their empty hands in surprise as their wands flew into the air, arcing gently to land in Harry's outstretched hand. He glared at the two of them, feeling a bit odd that he was actually going to reprimand his own father.
"That's enough, both of you," he said slowly, letting a bit of his annoyance seep into his tone. He had seen enough fighting in his time - fighting that had cost lives, that had been deadly serious. This was just a squabble between two students who didn't know any better and were going way overboard in settling whatever score they had to. He was sick of people needlessly getting hurt. He purposefully walked in between the two and turned full circle, arms crossed over his chest, to look them both in the eye. "Are you through acting like bickering children?"
"Wha-" Bellatrix opened her mouth to protest, only to be cut off when Harry glared at her.
"You call yourself a Slytherin!" he chuckled. "Let me tell you what I've learned about Slytherins in the past, the good ones and the bad ones: they all had one thing in common. They prided themselves on their cunning, their smarts. Subterfuge, cloak and dagger, intelligence," he said, tapping his temple, "that is what they're good at. Charging off into a fight at the first insult is something unbecoming of a Slytherin."
Bellatrix closed her mouth, her eyes wide with surprise at his declaration as she suddenly looked at him in a new light, as the realization dawned on her that despite his seemingly young age - he didn't look much older than someone who had graduated Hogwarts a few years ago, twenty to twenty-two at most, once he'd cleaned up. Realization that he understood, not just the horror stories everyone told of the Slytherins, the derisions and snide remarks, not just the way the dark wizards and most of her family twisted the teachings of Slytherin and the meaning of the house to be backstabbing, treacherous, and self-serving. He understood the real meaning of the house.
"And you!" Harry spun around and leveled a glare on his father, who had by now been restrained by Sirius and Remus. "You call yourself a Gryffindor! She's right, you know - honor, loyalty, integrity, bravery, you understand nothing of these things. You claim honor… your honor is above petty squabbles about practice duels unfinished - when you fight for your life, when you're asked to guard something with your life, when you are entrusted with something that could cause many deaths… that is when you show honor! Doing what's right, even when it's tough, that's what bravery is about, that's where you show your integrity, not when you drivel on about your perceptions of ideology when you know nothing about it!" It took Harry a moment to realize that his voice had risen to almost a shout, and that he had a captive audience around him that was deathly quiet.
Sirius was the first to break the silence, managing to close the jaw he had hanging open in slack-jawed amazement. "Whoa." He turned to his long-time friend. "He's got you there, mate. I told you going out and picking fights with Slytherins is a bad idea. They're not all bad, you know."
"Who the hell are you, anyway?" James demanded as he tried to break free of the grip Sirius had on his arm.
"It doesn't matter," Harry answered quietly, almost softly, realizing how much attention he'd drawn to himself, even as the crowd dispersed. "But you have to understand one thing: what you're doing now… it's childish, and dangerous. You were willing to start a fight in a crowded area, and you are both underage. A lot of people could have gotten hurt, and why? Because you ran into a classmate who happens to be in a different house ? Tell me, do you go around picking fights with any Slytherin you run into?"
When James shrugged defiantly, Harry sighed. "It doesn't matter now. But I really suggest you try to understand what the houses really stand for, before you go around picking fights again." He turned around and handed Bellatrix back her wand, and passed James's to Sirius, who pocketed it with a slight grin.
The sound of soft clapping caused all five of them to turn around. Standing in the shade of a tree, next to Florean Fortescue's ice cream parlor not twenty feet away, was Albus Dumbledore. He was eyeing Harry with an intrigued twinkle in his blue eyes.
"Well said, young man. Well said indeed," the headmaster said as he stepped forward.