Chapter Text
“here you are,” the woman murmurs, walking towards him with a bucket - he can see the steam coming out of it and squints - before placing it on the table in front of them with a small thud. water sloshes to the sides, some flying out in the size of a spit, before she wipes her hands on her clothing and presents to him a clean - well he hopes it is clean, he would rather not go through having an infected arm - looking cloth from the front pockets of her apron, which now that he can properly see, has specs of dirt, and is advancing towards him with it.
he tries hard not to flinch when she’s close, because this woman had literally saved his life mere moments ago and it should result in some sense of trust, and allows her to take care of him (take care of him.. something he hadn’t had anyone do in a long while.) although he ignores the icy feeling that he gets.
upon further inspection from his current view, he could see that the cloth had been squeezed to the point where it looked newly bought - not that they did that now in this era, he thought to himself, they probably scissored it off of some material laying around instead of going to the corner store and purchasing fresh ones - although ragged and smelling kindly of fruit with a sugary tinge.
most wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of doing so, and harry was a tiny bit grateful.
the bar they're currently in is cold and shabby, small with dark brown walls and red rugs - there are paintings on the walls of people harry has never seen in his life, although some of them he could remember seeing around hogwarts - and harry likes it. mostly because there isn't anyone here, he thinks. its empty and there is just the two of them. he almost asks her if she owns the place but thinks better of it and decides to stay quiet and look everywhere but at her.
whilst holding the warm heating cloth onto his arm, tending to his long jagged scar-injury carefully as to not cause him any pain, the woman notices his grimace. she casts her eyes back onto torn skin. “..’m sorry if it hurts, ain’t got any bourbon for it - so this will just have to do.”
when she moves, he replaces her hands position with his and looks pensively at the cloth pressed to him currently. after all thats happened, after all he’s been through, this seems like a small cut on a doe finger to him, which should be alarming but really.. it isn’t quite so.
“now,” she’s suddenly seated across from him, her hands clasped together, the bucket still on the table but seated away so that he’s the only thing in her line of vision, and she settles her eyes on his face as she begins to speak.
“how ‘bout you tell me how a young man like yourself got thrown into a time travelling mumbo-jumbo limbo, ended up on the roof of my bar, without breaking a damn bone, by the way - which.. i’m still trynna understand but we can deal with later, my first question seems to be of most importance at the moment, as i’m sure you’d agree?” she tilts her head, daring him to argue.
he’d expected questions, yes, an interrogation - maybe getting kicked out to the bloody curb - any sane person would if they were in this same situation, to be honest, but of course, she isn’t just anyone, he was starting to think, because she hadn’t done any of that. instead, she had offered him food, water, shelter (he hoped that meant he had a place to stay tonight, for he hadn’t any money - she must have understood of course..), and taken care of his injury. the least he could do is offer her some kind of explanation other than take her hospitality for granted.
but what exactly could he say? what exactly could he reveal? what was the damn year anyway? he didn’t ask earlier, or after she brought him inside and that he really regretted but it made some sense since he bloody fell from the sky and on her roof, injuring himself - again - as usual.
but really, he can’t explain any of it - because he’s just as lost as this woman is. he couldn’t even think straight because he was still stuck on recounting what he was even doing before this, how he managed to go back in time without trying. he’s still having to comprehend the fact that he made a dent in her roof, and quite a noticeable one too. he made a dent in her roof - and she brought him in and took care of him instead of ordering him to pay for the damages. so if a few bits of information is all that she was asking for, screw the timeline - screw protection.
harry looked down, appearing frustrated. how would he explain it exactly�? it wasn’t as if he had rehearsed this, he didn’t even know how it had happened, how would he make it make sense?
glancing back at the woman, he knew she was losing her patience. he had to form some kind of coherent sentence before she decides to kick him out - especially when the offer of shelter was still on the table, and oh did he desperately need it. he released a sigh. “i’m not actually sure.. one moment i was at hogwarts, then the next, i was falling? it felt.. almost like a dream. i woke up and nothing felt familiar, not anything - everything here looks different, older. i think that i may have, somehow, gone back over thirty years or so?”
“you think.. you think you went back in time?” she has a brow raised again and looks like she doesnt believe him - which, isn’t that surprising really, he doesn’t believe himself right now either, he was still trying to make sense of it all. time travel? going back in time? it sounded like an absolute joke when she said it out loud though.
“erm, yeah?” he winces, and its not because of his injury. he just feels embarrassed, because this is the last thing he thought he would be doing today- wait no, in the future, he thinks - or whatever the hell he was trying to say. the woman is probably thinking of dragging him out of the bar now, he hopes not.
he's not wearing his robes - he was wearing his pyjamas, he distinctly remembers - so she could probably call his bluff, but he's young enough to still be in school and he thinks thats why she hasn't opted to use different methods to get him out of her hair. he's still a little struck by her compassion, taking care of him like this. he's struck by any act of compassion, really, to be perfectly honest.
she’s leaning forward, looking at him in a way he doesn’t really like, almost distrustfully. “you never did tell me your last name, what is it?”
harry’s nervous, wringing his hands together underneath the wooden table, knocking his hands onto it and causing the bucket full of water to rock slightly - not enough for anything to come out of it though - then staring back at her with uncertainty.
“it’s potter.. my name is harry potter.” he murmurs.
to hell with protection and not mucking up the timeline, right? might as well go full-on stark naked, sprint up and down bloody hogsmeade shouting voldemort’s name. harry was sure what he did just now would absolutely have consequences, he knew it. he could have quickly made something up couldn’t he? like- like, maybe evans - harry evans, that would have been far better than what he had just exposed to this woman.
he was sure, mostly anyway, that his name wouldn’t do anything - from his surroundings he had come to some kind of conclusion that either this bar wasn’t getting too many customers in the past few years, or either he had been thrown so far back to a time when dumbledore was barely a man.
the way her entire body stilled - now that.. that told him otherwise.
he felt her withdraw back on her seat, the table moving again as she dragged her arms away from the table and onto her sides, staring at him with wide eyes.
thinking too deeply, rationalising the situation and the possibilities - harry froze slightly. he knew that his life had been a journey of twists and turns and horrifying events, creating chaos nonstop, merlin the fact that he had been sent back in time was enough evidence but he really, really hoped that her reaction had nothing to do with who he was thinking of, that the date of today was anything but what he was thinking of. he would pray against it with every ounce of his being. oh, how ironic it would be -
but a part of him -
- he doesn’t want to entertain his thoughts right now, he just wants to find out how to go home. he just want to go home.
he'd been stalling this whole time, waiting waiting and waiting for the right moment to ask the dreaded question - the one question that would wrap up the conversation and possibly send him reeling from its hard truth, because he had a feeling - he just had a feeling that it would be true. he pushed it to the back of his mind to let himself breathe, just breathe - but he had to face it now, if he ever wanted to go home.
then, with his heart running, he straightens, and whilst looking a bit pale, he asks what’s been floating in his head since he first got here - or well, landed here; “what year is it?”
the woman, the owner of the bar and the roof he created a dent in, does the head tilt again, even in her shocked state, and she swallows. he notices her expression change and she looks at him a little softer, a little kinder, a little gentler than she did before. “1979, august 10th.””