Chapter 4

In Which Harry Goes Travelling and Loses His Trousers

Harry pulled himself out of the briars that had obligingly softened the landing where Rosie's abrupt teleportation had thrown him. It was just as well that his clothes were a lost cause from the mud as their new tears and blood stains were not helping their appearance. Harry looked around at the trees.

"This does not look like London," he helpfully informed the house elf. Rosie looked around as well.

"Is master being certain?" Rosie asked.

"Quite certain."

"Rosie may be a bit out of practice, my Master. Rosie will do better." And so saying, and with a great deal of wheezing, Rosie grabbed Harry by his wrist and jerked him again.

Pop. Harry looked around. He saw the word 'London' written out nearby. There was also the word 'Zoo'. Most of Harry's attention, however, was not on reading nearby words but in fact on the way the massive tiger was stalking towards them.

"Eep." Said Harry.

"Look mummy! There's monkeys with the tigers!" a small excited human called from the proper side of the enclosure.

Harry had just enough time to feel a mixture of abject terror and indignant outrage before Rosie said, "hmm," and they jerked sideways yet again.

Pop. Hooooonk! They were staring into headlights. Pop. Wheeooh wheeooh! Security Alert! 'Isn't that the prime…' Pop. Silence. Trees. Grass. Scantily clad joggers. Screaming children. They were in a park. Rosie plopped over in a dead faint, gasping for every breath.

"Thank you, er, Rosie," Harry said to the house elf. He hoped it wasn't dying. He hoped they weren't about to be arrested. He hoped they were still in London. For several minutes, both boy and house elf didn't move, simply enjoying the lack of death threats, sirens, and mud. Finally, when Harry's stomach began to growl, he decided to make a bit of effort to find out where they were. There was something very odd about the park, though Harry couldn't quite place his finger on why.

"Wait here," he told Rosie, because Rosie looked quite odd and Harry didn't want to scare people off or answer awkward questions. Rosie wheezed a bit in reply and stayed lying on the ground. Harry stumbled off towards the nearest people, which happened to be a mother pushing a pram and holding hands with a young girl.

"Er…excuse me," said Harry. "This might sound odd, but…where am I?"

"Cowling Park," the mother answered, giving him a confused and slightly suspicious look. "Are you British?"

"Dirty!" the little girl shrieked, pointing at him with her free hand while attempting to fit the hand her mum held into her mouth.

"So…this isn't London, then?" Harry asked, the feeling of something being very odd and very wrong growing.

"Of course it's London," the woman answered, her suspicious look growing. "Is this some kind of joke? Is that why you're talking with the funny accent?"

"What? This can't be London," Harry answered, though he supposed it could be on the outskirts of what he thought of as the city.

"Monkey!" the little girl shouted happily. She wasn't pointing at Harry.

"Right, nice to meet you, sorry to take up your time!" Harry said quickly, not daring to look behind him, and he hurried away. It wasn't until he got behind a tree that he dared to look back, half expecting to see Rosie trundling behind him like some strange disobedient puppy, but all he saw was the woman staring after him, the same confused and suspicious expression on her face, before she went on her way.

So, he was in London but the woman thought his accent was strange and this place looked nothing like the city. Even in the middle of a park he should see tall buildings in the distance, surely! Also there should be more tourists wandering around with dazed expressions from a long day of sightseeing.

He tried to think about what might have happened, huddled by his tree, when a random jogging man went by.

"Morning," the man said with a tilt to his head as he passed by. Harry stared. It wasn't the morning. It had been three in the afternoon when he left his room over the Leaky Cauldron and by this point it had to be at least four, more likely five or later. Then he realized all at once what had been bothering him all that time. The sun was high in the sky as though it were around midday.

The time was wrong, the accent was wrong, even the trees looked a bit wrong. With growing dread, Harry ran after the jogger.

"Excuse me!" he said, and the man paused, though he kept jogging in place, one hand going to his neck and the other checking his watch. "What is the exact address of this place?"

"Cowling Park, London, Ohio," the man answered promptly, just as though that weren't quite an odd thing to ask, his eyes still glued to his watch.

"Ohio…where is Ohio?" Harry asked, feeling as lost as ever.

"South of Michigan, north of Kentucky, east of Indiana and west of New York," the man answered, and then he jogged on again, not even bothering to look back. Harry stared after him. New York. He definitely had heard of New York. It was in America. He was in America. In a town called London, but in America.

"Awesome!"

Harry had never been to another country before, let alone to one all the way across an ocean.

On the other hand, Harry was covered in mud, had no proper money, and he couldn't exactly leave Rosie gasping beneath a bush either. It wasn't exactly the ideal circumstances to explore. Still, he was in America! Surely he could do something fun before he figured out how to get back to his London.

Harry walked slowly back to where he had left Rosie, his eyes turning every which way to try and take in the general American-ness of his surroundings. He failed to see any cowboys charging down the street, or gun wielding thugs, or car chases, which he had a vague sort of idea was the kind of things one saw in America. At least that was the sort of things in films; not that he'd seen many films but he had been able to catch glimpses when the Dursleys watched TV. Dudley always liked films that had a lot of shooting, and since apparently everyone in America owns a gun, many such films took place in the US, usually around California but occasionally in the Old West or in New York.

Harry didn't know where Ohio was located among the United States, but it didn't seem to be a place where much of anything interesting went on. He did hear screaming, but most of that came from a small playground in the park. He could see a road nearby too where an occasional car went by. The cars didn't speed or go careening round corners. They just went along normally, albeit on the wrong side of the road.

"Rosie?" Harry said when he reached the bush where he'd left the house elf.

"Master?" the bush wheezed back.

"I don't suppose you know magic for cleaning clothes or making money?" Harry asked.

"This servant is knowing how to remove dirts and muds," the creature gurgled. Then it did nothing.

"And will you clean our clothes?" Harry asked after a long moment. Rosie slowly sat up. It looked Harry up and down. Then Rosie's fingers snapped.

Harry felt something a bit like having a large, unpleasantly wet sponge plunging over him. In the next moment he was still quite damp and also rather cold, but all of the mud had been vanished. So had the majority of his clothes.

"Eek!" Harry exclaimed, upon discovering that the only clothes Rosie had left behind were a very inadequate pair of old pants, particularly since, like all Harry's muggle clothing, these had once belonged to Dudley. Also, it was way too cold out to run around in what was basically a pair of baggy shorts that had been safety pinned so they didn't fall off his slighter frame.

"Hmm," said Rosie, who like Harry was now considerably less dressed, to the point that Harry was now fairly certain that Rosie was, in fact, female, unless house elf anatomy was significantly different from humans. Rosie snapped her fingers again and she was clad in a fluffy towel. A similar towel was no wrapped around Harry's shoulders to far less effect, considering his larger size.

"It seems our clothings were more mud than clothings, master," said Rosie.

Harry eyed the house elf suspiciously. Thus far, every time Harry had asked for her to do something, she had failed miserably. On the other hand, Harry was in a London and he was free of mud, and Rosie was rather old. Did he dare ask her to try for London again? At least now he was back to some form of civilization; was there a way he could make his own way back to London that didn't involve explaining to authorities how he got to Ohio without a passport or plane? Ohio had wizards too, didn't it? What where American magic users like? Or did they burn them all way back in the witch burning days? Harry vaguely recalled having to write a paper on the subject. Oddly enough, that had been back at his Muggle primary school rather than for Hogwarts.

Thinking of the usual ways of travel finally jogged Harry's memory into thinking properly. Of course! He had just recently discovered a way that wizards could travel from anywhere! Possibly, even from the swamp, though he suspected the bus probably needed an actual road to travel on, even if it was magic.

"I'm going to try something," Harry told Rosie, "Try to stay out of sight of other people."

Then, taking his own advice because wandering around in his underpants with only a towel for covering wasn't exactly the way he wanted to meet people either, Harry started to make for the nearest street. Then he had a moment of panic and had to run back when he realized Rosie had vanished his pockets along with most of his clothing. Luckily, his wand and the bag of coins he had on him hadn't been vanished after all; they were lying on the ground around the bush.

This time he approached the street even more cautiously, being forced to hold his wand and money in his hands. He furtively crept towards the street, trying to look normal as a car went by. The car ignored him. He crept more cautiously than ever and nearly fell over when he stealthily ran into the jogger from before.

"Hello," said the jogger, "Bit chilly for a swim, isn't it?"

The jogger went on. Harry and, he hoped, Rosie reached the street. Rosie turned out to be surprisingly good at being invisible. With an anxious glance around for gawkers, and one hard look at a particularly curious squirrel, Harry casually raised his wand to the street.

He wondered if the bus would be able to come all the way from the United Kingdom, across an ocean to a completely different continent. Now that he was trying it, it seemed rather unlikely. So when a vehicle actually did appear with a sudden pop, Harry was so startled he fell over yet again.

It wasn't a triple decker bus. It wasn't even a double decker or even just a bus. A fullsized steam locomotive roared past then came to a stop in a loud squeal of tortured metal. The carriage nearest to Harry opened its doors and a railway conductor stepped down iron steps to stand before Harry as Harry stumbled to his feet, gathering up the coins that had fallen out when he dropped their bag.

"Where are you off to, today?" the conductor demanded impatiently as he pulled out a gold pocketwatch and glanced at the time. "Well, hurry up, we don't want to be late!"

"Er…do you go all the way to London? In England, I mean?" Harry asked.

"What do you think this is, the Jules Verne Express? We don't do global, just sea to shining sea."

"Well…can you take us someplace that does go to London?"

"You want Grand Central," the conductor answered, "It has passages to most any major city in the world. That'll be 15 dollars and 15 cents for a ticket for you and the elf."

"Oh," said Harry, looking down at his coins, "Do you take British wizard money?" He held out some of his coins.

The conductor grumbled about kids who don't even bother converting their money when they go on holiday, but he did pull out a sort of calculator, tap a few buttons, and then said, "Two galleons, three sickles."

Harry looked through his coins and was relieved to discover he had enough, hopefully even enough to get him home once he got to Grand Central, wherever that was. He handed the man his money and the man did something on his calculator that made it suddenly spit out two tickets. He punched a hole into each then handed them over.

"And your change," the conductor finished, dropping a few coins into Harry's hand. "All aboard! Next stop, Salem, Massachusetts!"

Harry hurried up the steps after the conductor, pausing only to make sure Rosie had followed only to discover that somehow Rosie was ahead of him. By the time they stumbled into the car, the train was already in motion and the conductor was nowhere to be seen. With a shrug, and relishing in the sudden heat inside the carriage, Harry slowly made his way to the nearest free seat. The seats were made out of wood, rather like park benches, and had small tables between them. Harry sat down next to a window and Rosie sat down under the table at his feet.

Harry took the time to tuck the tickets away into his coin bag for safekeeping and then looked at the coins the conductor had given him for his change, curious about what sort of money they had in America. He found he had three large round coins. They seemed to be made out of wood and on one side it said a large five painted on it along with tinier writing saying 'United States of America' and 'One Nickel'. On the other side was a painting of a buffalo. The buffalo turned its head and looked at Harry, then bent over to try and eat the year printed at the bottom of the coin. Over its head clouds forming the letters 'In God we trust' floated by.

After checking the other coins and finding them to be the same, except that in one the buffalo was running away from something, Harry slid them into his bag as well.

"You could sit in a seat, Rosie," Harry told his house elf then, glancing under the table.

"This servant is preferring the floor, master," Rosie answered, and didn't move. With a shrug, Harry turned his attention out of his window. They were passing by fields and fields of something brown.

"I always wanted to see America," Harry remarked. "Somehow I didn't think it'd be sitting on a magic train in my pants and a towel with a house elf at my feet."

He got to see quite a bit of America before they reached Grand Central, as the train ride went on and on past small towns and fields. Occasionally he got to see some deer or a man on a tractor but mostly he saw wide open fields. After a bit of this, Harry explored further along the train. He wondered if there was a food car.

He walked through his mostly empty carriage and then the next which had a family with small children who were climbing all over the chairs and running up and down the aisle while their parents peacefully sat in a corner and looked out the window. The next carriage had some sort of business meeting going on. All the people had a sort of grave, formal air to them despite the fact that they were all wearing bright feathers as part of the American version of robes. The 'robes' in fact more resembled wooly dresses with gun belts and feathered head pieces. Harry might have thought he'd stepped into an old Western after all except somehow the 'cowboys' and the 'Indians' were the same people and they all had the same stiff sort of air that important politicians or bank clerks got. They all paused in whatever they were discussing when Harry trundled awkwardly through, clutching his towel about his shoulders and trying to pretend this is how people where he comes from normally dress.

The only good thing about the entire situation was that no one pointed and said something like 'Isn't that Harry Potter?'. He wondered if it was because he wasn't famous in America or if it was just that no one expects a famous British boy to suddenly show up in his underpants on a train in America. Either way, they mumbled quietly and solemnly to each other until he left. He could hear their voices growing louder again as the door closed.

The next carriage was much calmer, carrying quite a few elderly ladies whose American robes were much prettier than the business people wore and their head pieces far more elaborate, some being hats like Harry was used to and some being pointed witch hats and some being feathered or jeweled hair pieces. Their husbands were there too, looking properly subdued and quiet in the way husbands tend to look when their wives have convinced them to go someplace social when they'd be just as glad to sit at home.

"Oh you poor dear," one of the woman said, having noticed Harry, "Whatever happened to your clothes, boy?"

"They got muddy," Harry answered truthfully, "A house elf tried to clean them and vanished the clothes too."

"Oh dear," the lady said, laughing kindly. "They do try their best, don't they? Here, I think I can manage something with this." And she took Harry's towel, made some complicated movements with her wand, and the towel transformed into a green knee length sort of American robe, rather like what the other men were wearing.

"There," said the woman, "I thought green might bring out your lovely eyes."

Harry awkwardly struggled into his new robe. It went on like a shirt except it ran down to his knees and was heavier and thicker than what he was used to wearing. The outside was quite rough, in fact, though the inside luckily turned out to be softer. In fact, the texture was quite similar to the towel.

"Oh yes," the lady said, still laughing kindly, "Though I'm afraid I can't do a belt for you."

"Thank you," Harry answered. Then, "Do you know if they serve food on the train?"

"Oh, that's quite easy," the lady answered, "Just tap your table and say what you'd like." Then to show him, she tapped the table in front of herself and said, "Iced tea and a Cherry Bomb." Almost instantly, a woman wearing a white tunic was walking up to the table with a silver tray on which two bottles perched. Harry didn't see how she appeared but he didn't think it was through the carriage door.

"That will be two dollars," the woman said and the lady handed her a couple silver coins from her purse. The server placed the two bottles on the table and then walked away. Harry could swear he watched her the entire time but somehow she managed to vanish without him seeing quite how it was done.

"There," said the lady, "Now, young man, you must sit with me and tell me about London." She pushed one of the bottles towards Harry, the one with red fizzy liquid. Its label read 'Cherry Bomb!' in loud red lettering against the backdrop of an explosion.

"Oh," said Harry, "Thank you, but I didn't want to impose…"

"Nonsense," the lady answered. "I certainly won't be drinking it; far too sweet for me, so if you don't join me now it will just be wasted. Here, you can order some lunch if you like, and then we can talk."

"I suppose I could," Harry said, "But Rosie will be hungry, too."

At the word Rosie, the house elf that Harry had left under the table several cars away was suddenly there, at his feet. Harry jumped and only just managed not to spill his drink everywhere by virtue of not having gotten around to opening the lid.

"Master is wanting Rosie?" Rosie gurgled.

"Oh…er…" said Harry, feeling his face heat up at being called 'master'.

"You must be the house elf that vanished this young boy's clothes!" the lady said cheerfully. "I'm Linda, by the way. Linda Moccasin. The name comes from the snake, by the way, not the shoe, but don't worry; I don't bite!"

"I'm Harry Potter," Harry answered, watching her carefully for signs of recognition but she didn't react. "And this is Rosie."

"It's lovely to meet you both," said Linda. "Now, Rosie, Harry and I were just going to sit down to lunch. You can join us, of course, but perhaps you'd be more comfortable joining my Coyote?" Before Harry could begin to wonder what Linda meant by that, there was a pop and a second house elf was sitting beneath the table. At least, Harry supposed it must be a house elf. It was the size of one and it had pointed ears. In fact, it had sharp features all over with a pointed nose and a pointed chin and it was dressed in clothes made from green leaves.

"Mistress called?" the elf asked with a smile that showed far too many pointed teeth.

"Thank you, Coyote," said Linda, "I was just wondering if you might show Rosie here the way to the elf carriage for lunch? Unless of course Rosie prefers to stay here?"

"This servant will go to the elf carriage, master," Rosie announced, and both elves vanished with a pop.

"Don't you worry about your Rosie," insisted Linda. "My Coyote will look after…her?"

Still not completely sure what had just happened, Harry nonetheless managed to order some chicken sandwiches. The server, a man this time, seemed about as happy as the conductor had been when Harry presented his British money, but a calculator soon appeared in his hands and soon Harry had another American wooden nickel as change.

The sandwiches were exactly the same as any he might get in England. The Cherry Bomb drink turned out to be a cherry flavored soda that exploded when he opened it. At least, it seemed like it had exploded in an eruption of fizz and a cherry had popped up so violently it hit the ceiling of the car. After that, though, the soda was fairly normal.

And while he ate and Linda sipped at her iced tea, he somehow found himself telling her the whole story of how he had gone to the bank and how he had arrived at his new estate and met Rosie and how he finally found himself lost in America in his pants.

"I should buy some new undies if I were you," Linda advised with a twinkle in her eyes. Harry turned a bit red but silently agreed. He rather wondered why he had never bothered to buy himself some new clothes before. Somehow, he supposed it had always seemed weird to use his wizard money to buy muggle things.

"Next stop: Grand Central Station, New York!" a loud voice screamed over the roar of the train.

That was Harry's stop. He jumped up, suddenly feeling excited as he realized he was going to be in New York. Surely he didn't have to go straight back to London?

"Just a moment, young man," Linda said. She grabbed a couple of napkins, did some complicated wandwork, and handed him a pair of shoes. They were made of leather and had green beads that matched his robe.

"Some moccasins from a Moccasin," Linda said with a smile. The train screeched to a halt. A good many people were getting off at Grand Central and the doorway was crowded. Harry clutched his wand in one hand and his money bag in the other and said goodbye to Linda.

"It was nice to meet you," Harry said.

"Nice to meet you too…Lord Bogwater," she answered. Then Harry called Rosie and together the stepped off the train.