Harry Potter And Bella Back In Time

Moody nodded quietly, and Harry could almost see the man thinking over all the possible holes and flaws in his explanation. He wasn't aware he had been holding his breath until he released it sharply when Moody nodded. "You got identification on you, son?" Moody finally asked, more pleasantly than Harry would have expected.

"Of course." Harry reached inside his robes, glad to find his passport quickly. He didn't want to have to pull out the entire envelope and have to explain why he just happened to be carrying his entire life history's worth of documentation around with him. He handed the Muggle passport to Moody.

The auror browsed the pages for a few moments with a crooked smile. "Muggle passport?"

"It's pretty convenient, especially since I sometimes decide to wander out there." Harry shrugged. "I'm sure I can find some wizarding ID, if you'd like me to."

"That's all right, son. You like travelling the Muggle way, eh?"

"I like seeing the world," Harry replied noncommittally.

"Good for you. You travel a lot, eh? Born in Australia, and most recently from the States. And lots of stops in between."

"Yeah." Harry chose not to elaborate, deciding that he couldn't tell a lie if he just kept quiet.

"Guess that explains your lack of a distinct Aussie accent," Moody grumbled to himself. "Parents move you around a lot? You must've been pretty young on a lot of these moves."

Harry merely shrugged and nodded, deciding not to make up anything about his imaginary parents unless the auror asked. If Moody jumped to his own conclusions and figured he didn't need to ask, Harry saw no reason to elaborate.

After a little while, Moody finally handed the passport back. "The witnesses we've talked to seem to agree that you're not one of the people who started the trouble, Ashworth." Moody looked him up and down with a lopsided grin that looped positively creepy on his face. "Though I could have told that just from looking at you. We're not going to charge you with anything. Generally, I would say that you were a fool to even try to take on that many people, but they," he waved vaguely in the direction where aurors were still taking statements, "agree that you probably did save a lot of people from getting injured, and you seemed to have no problem handling yourself."

Harry took the passport back, relieved that the forged document had passed muster. "Thank you."

"Try not to make a habit of it. Constant vigilance, son."

"No problem," Harry said. "I didn't exactly want to start a fight with anyone. I don't even know what those folks were fighting about, in the first place."

Moody rolled his eyes. "It's purebloods. They're dissatisfied with life, the Ministry, each other, so they take it out on whoever they run into at the time. I wish that it was only the young ones doing this, but things are getting tense even among the family heads in the Wizengamot." The auror's tone told Harry all he needed to know about what Moody thought about those sorts of politics.

"I see." Harry hoped that Moody would keep talking and reveal more. He had tried to find out more in the news about what had facilitated Voldemort's rapid rise to power, and wished he had asked about it more in his time. Dumbledore had mentioned that it had involved a lot of sudden and unexplained deaths and disappearances, but so far, Harry hadn't heard anything even remotely like it in the current news.

"This incident is going to cause trouble," Moody grumbled, more to himself than to Harry. At the young man's curious look, he nodded his head over to the damaged building. "That's owned by old man Belby, he's related to Bagnold, and they're both going to be having wild ideas about who hired those amateurs to do this, even if they just happen to be a bunch of idiots who randomly picked this place to start a fight."

"Ah. Seems odd to me, though, that there were that many fighting back," Harry commented, trying to prod for more information.

Moody nodded. "True. Like I said, tensions are running high, and as much as I hate to admit it, neither side is playing entirely fair. I'm guessing Belby hired his own goons, just in case."

Harry decided not to ask about the Unforgivables. He was convinced he had seen them used, and dearly wished he'd paid more attention to the background of them when it was taught in DADA, since he knew they'd been regularly taught up to when the ban on the Unforgivables was put into effect, but he couldn't remember when that was.

"Well," Moody clapped his hands, apparently remembering that he did have a job to do, "you'd best be on your way. You planning to be in town for the next few days?"

The question caught Harry by surprise. "Yeah. Why?"

Moody gestured over to where the last of the group was being transported away. "Just in case those nitwits try to argue that they weren't caught red-handed and seen by a dozen witnesses. We might need the additional testimony at their hearing."

Harry glanced over at the people he'd knocked around. They didn't look particularly friendly or intelligent, but they didn't need to be to shoot him intense glares the likes of which he'd come to expect from the Death Eaters he knew in the future. It almost made him shudder that even before Voldemort's rise there were people like that in the world. It had become almost too easy to blame the dark lord for all that was wrong with the wizarding world, and it took quite a bit of effort to remind himself that Voldemort hadn't caused the evil, he had compounded it.

"I'll be around. Owl me if you need me. I'm staying at the Leaky Cauldron for the moment until I find a job, so Tom should know where to find me." Harry wasn't sure how exactly it was that owls found people by name, and hoped that there wouldn't be a problem with his assumed name. Even so, he could always claim some magical problem or another, which was why he'd let Moody know to ask Tom, just in case. He resolved to find out about the owling matter, and hoped that if there was a problem, it'd be a reasonably easy fix. With a muttered nod of acknowledgement, Moody shook his hand and turned away.

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