New York never stopped moving. That was its illusion. Movement as life. Noise as purpose.
But if you watched long enough—not a day, not a year, but centuries—you began to see it for what it was. A body twitching long after the soul had left.
Harold Evans swept the sidewalk outside The Howling Stag with the slow, even strokes of a man who had nothing left to rush for. The broom in his hand was crooked, cheap, and bought at a corner hardware store three years ago. It didn't hum or glow. It didn't even sweep well. But it moved the way Harry needed it to.
Nothing magical. Nothing special.
Just him.
The shop stood wedged between a shuttered deli and a boutique that sold $200 t-shirts and incense no one lit. Its windows were dusted with time, stained by illusions too faint to register consciously. Tourists called it quirky. Locals called it weird. The few who understood didn't call it anything at all.
Inside, time didn't pass so much as pause. Shelves adjusted themselves when unobserved. Trinkets muttered to one another in languages that hadn't been spoken in millennia. A deck of tarot cards shuffled itself compulsively, as if dealing would make its prophecy easier to bear. A three-tailed kneazle stretched and yawned beneath a crooked cabinet of minor cursed objects, watching the world through a single half-lidded eye.
Harry liked the quiet before opening.