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Chapter Text

He’d invited them over to Grimmauld Place for lunch. Rose and Hugo — and Teddy, over for the last week of summer holiday — were playing what sounded like an exciting game of exploding snap upstairs, while the three adults chatted in the sitting room.

Hermione updated Harry on the latest Ministry legislation passing through her department; some of the more conservative members of the Wizengamot were pushing a bill that would deny werewolves hospital access unless they “voluntarily” subjected themselves to infertility potions. The entire Department was up in a tizzy over it, though not all for the same reasons. Hermione was appalled to find how many of her coworkers supported the bill, though relieved that both the Magical Healer’s Union and the British branch of the International Confederation of Healing were voicing strong opposition.

Ron interjected here and there with quips about various of the more prominent conservative legislators — and just where they could stick their stupid bills — and assured Hermione that most people in the auror department knew the reasoning for the bill was bigoted nonsense, since a good third of the force have had to deal with unreasonable anti-werewolf sentiment. Hysterical neighbors calling the aurors to remove a local werewolf for “looking at me funny” and “walking too close to my house” were only vaguely amusing the first couple of times. Then they just became an annoying waste of time and manpower.

Harry nodded along, made small exclamations when appropriate, and heard absolutely none of this. He was too busy trying to think of a way to tell his two best friends that he planned on undoing and rewriting reality for his own selfish reasons.

Ron is in the middle of describing his first auror trainee charge, a nineteen year-old fresh Hogwarts graduate who immediately made an impression (“I swear, none of us were ever that naive—”) when Harry can’t delay it any longer.

“I’m dying,” he says.

His mouth is dry and he can hear his own heart beating, stuttering with the sudden weight falling from his shoulders in the silence that follows his declaration. Ron’s easy smile falls so suddenly it could have almost been comical had his face not been steadily draining of color as the silence stretches. Hermione is staring at him with her mouth slightly open, eyes wide and darting from his face to his hands to the slight hunch of his shoulders and back, trying to find something in his posture, his expression, and letting her teacup fall into its plate with a little clink when she doesn’t find it.

Her expression hardens and she sets both the cup down firmly on the coffee table that separates them. “Harry James Potter,” she begins in the same tone she uses when she’s about to rip someone a new one. “Start at the beginning.”

Upstairs, they can hear the faint sounds of the children playing. A small explosion. A short burst of laughter. Harry gulps.

The beginning had been the end.

Harry hadn’t felt quite right after the Battle of Hogwarts.

He hadn’t noticed right away. For months, time passed not in minutes, but the count of weary faces as they cleared the floor of the Great Hall, listing names and trying to find next of kin. There were no marked hours, only stretched pieces of time spent arranging funerals and hospital stays and arrest warrants and pardons. Harry stopped counting the days by 24-hour intervals and instead counted the number of times per night he would wake up, gasping, blankets plastered to his skin, convinced it wasn’t over, that they’d missed something. His nightmares consisted of burning lightning-bolt scars and their implications, and Harry would wake up in a panic, phantom pains bleeding into reality only to send him spiraling further. For months, there would be no rest for Harry Potter.

So really, among all of this, it was understandable he hadn’t noticed.

He had retreated to Grimmauld Place as soon as there’d been a reprieve of requests (Mr. Potter, an interview please! — We need your first-hand testimony for — Our condolences to you all — deserve an explanation — Gringotts demanding reparations — want to meet your godson, perhaps? — An endorsement from you would go a long way in — called you in as a witness, I hope you don’t mind) and firmly locked the door behind him. The Weasleys had been grieving, and not only had he felt like an intruder in their home but his residence at the Burrow in the aftermath of the Battle had meant the family had been bombarded daily with owls congratulating the Boy Who Won, asking for either his time or his presence, or otherwise demanding his attention. He’d felt he was sullying something sacred by staying in what should have been the quiet home of a family slowly piecing itself back together. He couldn’t have stayed. Ron understood.

Hermione had tried to join him, but he’d shut her down firmly. She had her own family to deal with at the time, had to restore her parents' memories and then manage what would no doubt be a terrible fallout when they realized what she’d done. Harry had assured her he understood, there was no need to stay for him when he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, more so now that any immediate threat to his life was gone. Family was important, after all. In the end, Hermione had wrangled a promise from both Harry and Ron to contact her immediately if anything happened — anything, Ronald! — and quickly packed her bag for Australia.

Harry had entered Grimmauld Place and been happy to find Kreacher unharmed, if a little miffed with their sudden departure. The old house-elf had very easily “done away with” the lone Death Eater that had tagged along in their Apparition (Harry didn’t want to know), and was quite insulted his Master had doubted the safety of his house. He made his displeasure known constantly, but obeyed Harry without resistance and had notably kept up with the house’s chores in his absence. The house, still under a half-broken Fidelius Charm, successfully kept out any unfamiliar owls and uninvited guests. Finally, Harry had time and peace enough to think.

And his nightmares took a turn for the worse.

It had been easy at the Burrow, surrounded by people he loved, waking up to Ron’s reassurances that no, Harry, he’s not coming back, we all saw him die, mate, it really is over. It had been easy to dismiss the phantom pains that sometimes bled through his dreams into his more violent awakenings as just that — phantoms. It had been easy to see the logic in Hermione’s conclusions, that the dreams aren’t from his perspective, you’re not feeling his emotions, these aren’t visions, Harry, they’re just nightmares. It had been — not easy, no — bearable. Without his friends, however…

Not for the first time, Harry felt weak.

How could he possibly put his feelings in the aftermath of the war into words? How to describe the fear, the doubt — the hysterical certainty, when he managed to spiral down far enough into panic — that he had failed, that it wasn’t over? How do you tell your best friends that you used to break down in the corner of your dead godfather’s old bedroom at three in the morning, knees drawn up tightly, trying to bury your head in your arms, trying to pull yourself so small that you disappear completely, sobbing in great, hiccuping breaths? How do you tell the two people who have stood by you in the hardest of times that you had, at one point, begged your extremely upset house-elf to kill you — before attempting it yourself, this time with a nicked basilisk fang, only to be stopped, restrained, and forcibly fed a stolen Calming Draft by the same extremely upset house-elf?

You couldn’t. He couldn’t.

“I’ve been studying soul magic,” Harry says instead, trying to sound confident.

There’s a beat of silence.

“Have you really?” Ron’s voice is faint, face still an unhealthy shade of gray.

“I — yes. I, er…” Harry looks down into the now-empty teacup in his hands and tries to sound nonchalant. “I — expressed — an interest in soul magic and, it turns out, Kreacher knew of some books in the Black library that went a little more in depth and — oh, don’t look at me like that.”

Hermione was doing her best impression of a furious Professor McGonagall, lips so thin they were almost gone. “You dabbled in necromancy? From the Black family library? Oh, Harry, what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Harry can’t help the defensiveness that seeps into his tone. “Necromancy is only one aspect of soul magic, and that’s not what I was doing.”

“Then what — why —?”

“The horcrux —”

Ron’s face goes even paler as he snaps to attention. “What horcrux?”

“Well I didn’t make one if that’s what you’re thinking.” Hermione opens her mouth to speak but Harry continues, a little louder. “I wasn’t dabbling, okay? I just wanted to make sure it was gone —”

“What horcrux?” Ron says again, this time more firmly.

“My scar horcrux. I just wanted a way to know it was really gone.”

“Your scar?” Ron says, slightly alarmed but mostly baffled. “Why? Did it hurt again?”

“…I just wanted to be sure.” There must be something in his tone, Harry thinks, judging by Hermione’s expression of slow realization. He should have known she wouldn’t accept his more-than-lacking explanation.

She leans back into the couch, crossing her arms and pinning Harry with a hard stare. “And just when, exactly, did you begin studying ‘soul magic’?”

Harry looks away. “…’Round the end of ninety-eight, thereabouts,” he mumbles.

Ron runs both his hands over his face. “Merlin’s bloody bollocks, Harry.”

Hermione’s not faring much better. “You’ve been dabbling in necromancy for fifteen years!? And telling us this now?”

“It’s not necromancy —”

“What did you find?” Ron cuts in.

“Don’t encourage him!”

“You said you were dying,” Ron reminds the room and Hermione snaps her jaw shut because, yes, he had indeed started this conversation by declaring he’s dying. “So what did you find? And why the bloody fuck did you wait fifteen years to tell us? Is… is it Voldemort? Is he back?”

The last three words are almost whispered, and it’s amazing how the atmosphere in the room feels instantly heavier, how easy it is to fall in to resignation, how the despair of the war lurks always around the corner, waiting only for three words. Harry doesn’t let it linger.

“No. Voldemort’s dead. And all his horcruxes with him.” It’s news he’s happy to deliver, had certainly been happy to learn, before the reality of the statement hit him. Some of the tension leaves the room, but his two friends don’t say anything, waiting. “It’s not Voldemort or the horcrux — or, well, not really.” He winces. “No… it’s my soul that’s the problem.”

Kreacher had been very helpful, after both he and Harry had calmed down (Kreacher’s not be losing any more Masters!). The old house-elf, after prying the basilisk fang from his hands, pushing him unto his bed, spelling the blankets to hold him, Apparating in and out of an apothecary to steal and force-feed him a Calming Draft, had stayed, teary-eyed, by his bed side and refused to lift the spell restraining him until he’d explained his actions.

So Harry, numb and tired under the effects of the potion, had talked. And talked. And talked. (That’s why I have to die, Kreacher, don’t you see? Or else everything will have been for nothing. Regulus’ sacrifice will have been for nothing.

…Oh, poor, ignorant, half-blood Master. Kreacher sees his Master is still a stupid little boy.)

Th effects of the draft had only just been wearing out — after hours — enough to allow Harry to flush with embarrassment as the elf admonished him, but not enough that he would shake under the realization of just what exactly he had almost done, just how far he’d allowed himself to sink into despair. No, that would come later. At the time, he had felt only embarrassment as Kreacher listed a dozen other ways to make sure the horcrux was gone, some of them being almost common sense, like attempting to speak Parseltongue, and many magical in nature.

One of them in particular had caught Harry’s interest. The only method listed that would truly satisfy him, the only way he could be completely sure.

(Family magics can be showing Master his soul.)

Harry pauses, unsure of the best way to put this. “It’s… damaged.”

“Damaged how?” asks Ron.

And this is steadier territory; Harry feels himself relaxing marginally. He has not been sitting idle these past fifteen years after first viewing his sorry, deformed, bleeding soul. His days have been spent in research. In fact, for the first couple of years, they had been spent solely on research and nothing else.

“It gets a little technical from here on out, but bear with me. I can let you see my notes later if you want,” he says, looking at Hermione. She nods curtly. “Essentially, the horcrux ripped a hole in my soul. Or, specifically, the violent removal-via-Killing-Curse of the horcrux — which was stuck to my soul, which had in turn grown around the horcrux — ripped a hole in my soul. Imagine getting shot with a muggle gun, for example, and healing the wound but forgetting to remove the bullet. Now imagine someone Accio-ing the bullet out, years later.”

Ron was frowning at the muggle analogy, but nodding along. Hermione, however, quipped in, “But wouldn’t you be able to heal? I mean, if we’re going with the bullet analogy, it would be just like getting shot again, following the same trajectory and everything. Why not heal the wound again?”

“That’s where the Killing Curse comes in. Think about what it does, at it’s core. Souls can heal, yeah, but only if they’re attached to the living. You’ve never seen a ghost heal, have you? The Killing Curse completely detaches a soul from the realm of the living. And I was… I was dead, Hermione. I died that night, and even though I was able to come back… it all comes down to timing, really.

“The first time I died, when Voldemort tried to kill me in my crib — yes, I died back then, too, let me finish — my mother’s sacrificial magic pulled my soul back. It held me in the realm of the living, basically reviving me the same moment I died, so that the Killing Curse was instead redirected to Voldemort. The horcrux attached itself to me only after Voldemort was hit with his own curse, so you see, I was alive the first time I was ‘shot’. And my soul healed around it.

“The second time, though… The curse hit both me and the horcrux. We both died. I just left it behind when I came back, meaning the separation happened… while I was dead. More than that, I used the horcrux’s tether to the world of the living to come back. Maybe the gun analogy wasn’t the best. That second time was more like… being speared by an entire javelin, shaft and all, and then forcing myself back through the entire javelin again to get back to where I was. And then staying that way, still speared, just at the other end of the javelin, all throughout the rest of the Battle of Hogwarts, before Vanishing the javelin all together.” Harry shudders, remembering the absolute mess of a soul he’d seen when he’d first performed the Soul-Viewing ritual. “It can’t heal. I don’t know if I can describe just how much it’s not healing. My soul’s been essentially bleeding out all this time.”

Hermione doesn’t even look mad anymore, she looks more like she’s in pain. “Oh, Harry. Why didn’t you tell us?”

“We could have helped,” Ron says, finally regaining some color. “We will help. There’s got to be a way.”

Harry looks away again and shakes his head slightly. “It wasn’t really bad at first. No need for alarm, really. It wasn’t healing, but it also wasn’t getting any worse… until some four years ago, I think? The tear seemed to be getting bigger, the ‘bleeding’ more profuse… and I started feeling some effects.”

It’s mid afternoon, and the sun cascades through the airy, gossamer curtains he’d bought when he’d redecorated the townhouse. The sitting room is bright and open, made out mostly in warm browns and light beige with various blue highlights in the upholstery. This place hasn’t looked dreary in more than a decade, but still the room feels cold. He can no longer hear the children upstairs and he idly wonders whether they’re hungry yet. Harry’s sitting in his favorite armchair, the one with an unobstructed view of the hallway, and he steadily ignores the stares of his two best friends sitting across from him on the couch.

“What sort of effects?” Hermione finally asks.

My wand doesn’t recognize me half of the time, Harry thinks. My magic’s erratic at best. I can’t produce a Patronus anymore. It crumbles just as it forms, even when I cast perfectly. I’ve lost the most personal connection I had to my father.

“Trouble with magical output,” he says.

I can remember being happy, but every day it gets harder to remember what happiness felt like. I can almost feel myself unraveling, I can hardly empathize with people anymore, I’m restless all the time and nothing holds my interest for very long. And the fear. I’m so afraid.

“Mood swings,” Harry adds. “Nothing alarming, really, there’s no in-your-face symptoms, it’s just… my soul is fading away.”

It will be worse than dying, Harry doesn’t say. My soul is being destroyed, I won’t ever get to move on, I will just disappear. I will never see my parents again. I will never join Sirius, or Remus, or Fred. Or you two, when you pass. I won’t ever heal or feel comfort again when it’s over.

I’ll suffer, ironically, the same fate as Voldemort. You see? I was right, in the end. I lost. I lost, he destroyed me.

“I suspect,” he continues, and he still cannot look at them, “that the last days will look something like the aftermath of the Dementor’s Kiss. Before my heart gives out.”

Ron lets out what sounds suspiciously like a whimper; no one acknowledges it. “How long?” he asks, and doesn’t attempt to specify.

Harry understands anyway. “At this rate… seven years, give or take a few months. Still a ways to go.” But I can’t endure this any longer. Please, I can’t. I can’t live like this. Harry will never admit to these thoughts.

“Okay.” Ron breathes out all at once. “Alright, we’ve got time, then. We can do this! ‘Mione can do some research — no offense, mate, you might have missed something, and I — I know Jemma, you remember Jemma? She transfered to the Department of Mysteries last year, I reckon if there’s anything that can help us, it’ll be in the Department of Mysteries. I can cash in a few favors and get us in, and you’ll see, mate, you’ll be alright before you know it.”

Harry has already looked into the Department of Mysteries. While the Unspeakables have done some studies into the subject of souls in the Death Chamber, they would never be able to fix his soul. It simply cannot be fixed. The most Harry might be able to get out of the Death Chamber is a swift death by walking through the Veil. It is possible he would then be able to meet his parents one last time — before his soul disintegrates without the tether to the world of the living — but Harry seriously doubts it. It is still Plan B.

Hermione’s face is calculating. “You already have something in mind, don’t you, Harry?”

Despite himself, Harry smiles. “How’d you know?”

“You’ve kept this a secret all this time. And you didn’t tell us even when you realized you were dying.” Her voice becomes hoarse towards the end, so she has to clear her throat to continue. She sounds like she’s physically forcing the words out of her mouth, like the strain of it is painful. Harry knew, since about the time Ron asked for his help planning his marriage proposal, that he would be driving a wedge in their friendship with the magnitude of this secret. He realized, right about the time Hermione asked him to be the godfather of their child, that he’d missed the deadline in which his friends may have understood his need to keep something so personal quiet, that waiting any longer meant committing to lifelong secrecy. And he knew, this morning, that telling them after so long would hurt them deeply. Hermione’s arms have shifted slightly; instead of being crossed, it now looks more as if she’s hugging herself. “So why would you tell us anything at all? Why now? You must have found a way to fix your soul, but you need our help.”

“I need you help,” Harry agrees softly.

There’s something to be said about Ron’s determination to focus on practical matters. The tension is clear on his shoulders, there’s no doubt Harry’s betrayal of trust hurts him just as much as it hurts Hermione, but still he trudges on. “Out with it, then. What’s the plan?”

“It’s going to sound crazy,” Harry warns.

“You know we’ll always help you, Harry,” says Hermione. It’s an an accusation as much as it is reassurance.

Harry takes a deep breath. He can hear the children running around upstairs, likely playing tag, and it sounds like the type of normalcy he’s never experienced. It’s a foreign sound, even after spending years around them, and he doesn’t know quite what to do with the feeling.

“My soul can’t be fixed. Period. But it wasn’t always like this. If I were to go back — to a time when my soul was complete…”

There’s a moment of silence, then Ron — “You want to go back in time.”

“Yes.”

“To when you had a healthy soul.”

“Yes.”

“Mate.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s not how time travel usually works,” Hermione points out matter-of-fact, knowing Harry wouldn’t have brought it up if he hadn’t already found something worthwhile.

“Not usually, no,” he agrees easily. And this is the moment of truth, the crux of the matter. This is when he either sets out on this crazy venture with the help of his two friends, or he severs his friendship for the rest of his short, miserable life. He wets his lips and says:

“But, then, time travelers don’t usually remove their souls before setting out.”

Harry Potter, Savior of the Wizarding World and formerly acclaimed Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, knows far too much about the foulest forms of Dark magic. He can’t not know. Despite his words to Hermione, the study of soul magic can only go so far without delving into necromancy, which in turn can only toe the line of gray morality for about two dozen spells or so before plunging full into the Dark Arts. Harry may not practice the latter, but after fifteen years of study, he is well-versed in them. He knows, step by step, how to make a horcrux. Most importantly, he knows exactly why each step is necessary and how they affect the soul. He knows all the ins-and-outs of possession, and could write a dissertation on the nature of the Killing Curse had he had the slightest inclination. He’s had more first-hand experience with all of these subjects than any other person alive.

Harry Potter, at thirty-three years of age, knows more about Voldemort’s favorite branches of magic than the Dark Lord himself when he’d died. That was the good thing about not being a pioneer in the field, he supposed; one could easily expound on the other’s mistakes. Tom Riddle — as his pitifully mutilated soul knows wherever it’s eternally suffering — made a lot of mistakes.

This only makes the prospect of becoming a pioneer in time travel all the more daunting. Theoretically, he has it all figured out. Time travel as they know it is limited because the traveler’s soul is permanent. If a second, future soul exists in whatever time frame, its very nature resists all attempts to change the circumstances that led it there, resulting in the sort of time travel that works only in closed loops. If, however, the traveler was separated from their soul at the exact instant they went back in time, the soul of their past self should, in theory, automatically replace it, thus removing any limits over changing the past. One soul. No closed loops. No destiny.

If he fucks up the timing by even a second, Harry could end up a soulless shell lying somewhere abandoned in the wilderness, eaten by the carrion of the past — at best. At worst — if his Concurrent-Bodies' Soul Theory was wholly incorrect — he could rip apart his past self’s soul so badly that they both became something less than human, irrevocably changing the outcome of the war in Voldemort’s favor. But that probably won’t happen. Everything he’s studied points to it not happening.

(There is approximately a 2.9 percent chance of that happening.)

He knows the risks. He is prepared to face them. Much as he wants to, he cannot face them alone.

Neither of Harry’s friends can seem to bear to look at him right now. Ron is very still, forehead leaning against his knuckles, hands clasped together in front of him as if in prayer, eyes closed. “Mate… Harry, do you hear what you just said?”

“It’s not a horcrux —”

“’Horcrux’ shouldn’t be your measurement of right and wrong!” Hermione snaps. She glances at Harry and shakes her head helplessly. “Right. That’s it. Rose! Hugo!” she calls towards the hall, standing up and grabbing her bag. “We’re leaving!”

“Hermione, wait! It’s not a measurement, I just wanted you to know — it’s a whole different process — there’s no Dark magic —!”

He tries to reach out to her but Ron quickly steps in front of him, still not looking at him.

“Ron, I swear, it’s not —”

Hermione turns around anyway. “Really, Harry? Really? You swear it’s not Dark magic? There’s no sacrifice involved, it doesn’t hurt anyone, there’ll be no corruption?” Harry hesitates and it’s enough of an answer to her. She scoffs. “Right. Rose! Hugo! Come down!”

“N— goddammit — it’s a material sacrifice only! And the only person it will hurt is me!”

“KIDS! WE’RE LEAVING!”

The pitter-patter from earlier gets louder as Rose and Hugo come bounding down the stairs with all the energy inherent in small children. Behind them, Teddy leans against the banister and watches the scene downstairs curiously.

“Is it lunch time now?” Rose asks.

“Change of plans, sweetie, we’re eating at home.”

“Oh, okay. Why?”

“Hermione, please —”

“Harry,” says Ron, “just… leave it.”

“Thanks for watching them, Teddy,” Hermione says with a smile, visibly strained only because he knows her so well.

“It’s no trouble. We had fun.”

The family of four makes their way to the front door, only the children turning back to wave goodbye. Outside, the sun is bright and the slight breeze is the only relief of what has been an uncomfortably hot summer.

“It’s the only way I’ll see them again,” Harry whispers.

Ron, as he closes the door behind his family, sends him a look of deep pity.

The door clicks shut.

It isn’t until a week later, a quarter to ten in the morning on September 1st, that he hears from his friends again. Teddy is upstairs still, scrambling to find various missing knick-knacks because Harry’s advice to pack last night went unheeded, as always. Harry’s alone, packing the last of the lunch he prepared for Teddy in a nondescript lunch-box because Teddy had refused to carry his old, cartoon werewolf-themed lunch-box the minute he turned fifteen. There is an impatient tap on the kitchen window, and he recognizes the grumpy countenance of the Granger-Weasley family owl, Errol Two.

It’s a single, hastily-written note, and Errol Two does not wait for a reply.

Harry —

Bring your notes. We’ll look them over.

It’s tentative, but Harry smiles.

Chapter Text

He had almost begun to think everything would be alright, when it happened. Eleven years after the Battle of Hogwarts on the dot, Harry Potter had woken up in his private quarters in a cold sweat, knowing something was wrong. He could not express how exactly he knew, but after so many years of constantly checking on the state of his soul, he’d become much more in-tune with it. The feeling of wrongness manifested as a dull ache behind his eyes and a flush to his ears, as if developing a cold. Anxiety settled around him as a sort of muted, manic restlessness. He had to move. He had to check.

He’d reached for his glasses on his nightstand, groggy but unwilling to wait, and wandlessly conjured three floating Bluebell Flames. The one benefit of being so in-tune with your own soul that it could wake you up, Harry had thought idly, was how much easier wandless magic then became. The downside was waking up at — he cast a quick Tempus — half past three in the morning. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and grabbed his wand anyway. Best to get it over with; he had a joint Slytherin-Gryffindor third year class first thing in the morning.

Though magically taxing, the ritual was simple. Harry had had to wait until Samhain the first time he’d done it, when the latent magic of the world was concentrated enough that he could use it to fuel the ritual, but it had gotten easier the more he’d performed it. Those days Harry could view his soul at any time, given some privacy. He shuttered the windows in the room and double-checked the wards he’d placed over his quarters. It’d be just Harry’s luck for a wandering first-year to suddenly barge in while Harry was in the middle of a ritual that toed the lines of legality.

It had been intimidating, that first, desperate time nearly eleven years ago. The only ritual he’d ever been part of until then had been Voldemort’s revival. Not the best introduction, to say the least. But this particular ritual had become familiar. Harry himself was not so easily intimidated.

He levitated his bed to make room, revealing the small chest that had been under it. From it, he took five small glass bowls and placed them in a wide circle. In each bowl he placed a small, carefully bundled, dried bunch of cypress sprigs, and stepped into the circle. Five small counts of Incendio had the sprigs burning, and a small cutting hex to the palm of his hand had finally chased the last of his grogginess away.

He pointed his wand at his bleeding hand, held out in front of him splayed as if against a barrier, and began incanting, “Oculimay superanima lucidum.” As he incanted, he moved his wand slowly left to right as if tracing a line with its point. “Oculimay superanima lucidum,” again, with each trace of the imaginary line.

The blood from his hand, which had been dripping down freely, stopped midair by the time he finished the first incantation. By the second, it had gathered, following the imaginary traced line, until it was an actual line of blood originating from the palm of his hand and floating midair in front of him.

“Oculimay superanima lucidum…” he continued nearly a dozen times, until he judged the line thick enough, just the slightest bit woozy, and gave one final upward flick to his wand. There was a soft tearing sound and the line split wide from end to end, as if it was a giant eye opening. It opened into a world of white, lighting up the room like daylight.

And Harry, as he had done the first time he performed this ritual, felt his heart stutter and drop to his stomach.

Souls, as Harry had come to find, do not exist in any shape comprehensible to the human mind, so when humans force a window into the realm of souls with the explicit goal of viewing them, the mind and magic compensate. The first view into the white world is something akin to an opal. There is a pearly sheen to it, iridescent and shifting. The longer one stares at it, the more a shape becomes distinct, coalescing first into a kaleidoscope of colors, all sharp edges, then converging into something one can understand.

Eleven years ago, the image that had greeted him had been his own naked seventeen year-old body, head cleaved completely open, like a watermelon, lying still. It looked like something had reached into his scar with both hands and pulled until his skull had cracked, and then attempted to crush what remained of it. He could see bone beneath the deep red mass of what had once been his face. He could make out teeth with what he supposed was half a tongue. Since the world of white had no floor, the blood pooled in an undefined mist around his body — the representation of his soul — like some sort of noxious gas.

The image had never changed throughout the years, hadn’t even aged with him. But there — where the damage had previously stopped right below his chin — his neck ruptured down the middle smaller, thinner lines of blood stretching out from it like vines. A foretelling of the end.

Harry had stared, the only sound in the room the drip, plop of his blood on the floor; he’d forgotten to heal the cut on his palm and it ran in warm rivulets down his fingers, falling into a small puddle at his feet. Behind him, one of the burning cypress sprigs crackled. He’d stared, immobile and uncomprehending, as the sprigs slowly burned out and the window slowly closed, leaving only the dim Bluebell Flames lighting the room.

He would not go back to sleep that night.

It’s only four days after Harry drops off his notes at Ron and Hermione’s flat that the two of them barge in with no warning. The doorbell hasn’t rung in years; the only people who have access through the wards at Number 12, Grimmauld Place are welcome at any time. Harry hears the crack of Apparition at the entrance hall and calls up, “I’m in the kitchen!”

His friends look harried. Hermione’s hair, usually tamed down for her job at the Ministry, looks just as wild as it did during their school days, but it is hardly visible behind the pile of scrolls she’s carrying in her arms. Ron is still in his Auror robes, clearly having just ended his shift, and carries only a muggle notebook, which Harry recognizes as his notes.

Harry stamps down his apprehension at the conversation yet to come and says, “Maybe we should move this to the library.”

“Yes, please,” comes Hermione’s voice behind the wall of scrolls.

The library is on the second floor, and the three walk up the stairs in silence, tension mounting. They lay the scrolls down over different tables in the magically-expanded room, one in particular is unfurled, revealing a larger version of the ritual circle Harry had drawn in his own notes as well as several feet of comments, questions, and thoughts all in Hermione’s hand.

She jabs her finger at the runes along the edges of the ritual circle. “First of all, you’re going to tell me how this doesn’t make a horcrux, when it’s specifically designed to bind a soul to earth!”

Harry sighs and sits down at the table. “Did you read my notes on phylacteries?”

“Of course I did! And they sound just like —”

“They’re similar only in that they serve the same purpose.” Harry looks up at Ron, who’s still holding his notes, and gestures towards them. May I? Ron hands them over without a word. “A phylactery,” Harry says as he flips to the right page, “is a container for the soul, created by a wizard to bind his soul to this world so that he may live forever, yes.

“But!” Harry continues before Hermione can say something. “Unlike a horcrux, a phylactery doesn’t require a split soul. It houses the wizard’s complete soul, so no murder is required to create one. The process, too, is completely different from creating a horcrux — it’s much more complicated, for one, and requires much more finesse, time, and materials.

“And — you know I won’t actually be making one, right? You read — yes, okay, of course you did. So you know I only need this ritual to remove my soul from my body, not to live forever. There’s just nothing else I could do. Giving my soul a destination — having a phylactery set up — is the only thing that could prevent me from just dying or becoming a vegetable when I, you know, remove it.”

Hermione plants her hands firmly on the table, leans slightly forward to look Harry in the eyes with all the cold determination of a war general commanding their troops, and opens her mouth. What follows is a straight eighty minutes in which Harry does his best to summarize his knowledge of the soul magic at play, Hermione attempts to find all possible flaws in his plans by questioning everything she has not already concluded, all interspersed with grudging admiration at Harry’s “quite ingenious” arrangement of how the two-fold ritual should be arranged, and finally —

“Of course, I have a lot of things to add to your notes regarding the past. The dates you gathered are all very useful, Harry, and I appreciate you extrapolating on the consequences of the events you want to change, but you didn’t give any thought to the practicals of actually having to live in the past!”

There’s a disbelieving scoff from the corner of the room, and Harry suddenly becomes aware that Ron hasn’t spoken since this conversation started. Hasn’t spoken to him today at all.

“Mate?” Harry says nervously. Ron’s sitting a little ways apart from them, in one of the fluffy lounge chairs interspersed along the west wall, listlessly turning over his auror’s badge in his hands. “Are you following?”

There’s something bitter about the way Ron smiles, something cold. “Does it matter? You seem to be having a grand old time without me.”

“Ron!” Hermione drops the parchment and quill with which she’d been enthusiastically jotting down even more notes like they burnt her, guilt clear on her face. “I’m so sorry, I — you know how I get sometimes, with research —”

“I know.” Ron turns his cold stare to Harry. “What’s your excuse, then?”

Harry stares back at him, calculating. “…Something you have to say to me, mate?”

Ron sits up straighter in the chair. “Yeah, there’s something I have to say! I —” he stops, takes a deep breath and exhales slowly after a pause. “I love my family.”

Harry stares stupidly, thrown. Even Hermione looks confused.

Despite this, Ron continues. “I love my children — dunno if you’ve noticed, I have two. I like my life. My job. My home.” He throws his hands in the air, gesturing all around him. “Hell, Harry! I like how far we’ve come — all of us, and not just us three, but the world. In general. I’m happy.”

A light bulb must have gone off in Hermione’s head because she suddenly looks understanding. “Oh, darling, I know. I love our life, too, but… Maybe we should talk about this first.” The without Harry goes unsaid, but he hears it none the less.

“Don’t. Don’t — just — let me finish.” Ron turns back to Harry, leaning forward slightly. “I look at all the things around us and I can’t help thinking… how much of it was all chance? How much of our life was just… circumstances lining up just right? Would I have kissed Hermione if our lives hadn’t been in danger? Would I have become an auror if I hadn’t seen my family fight a war? Would I — if we hadn’t found you wandering King’s Cross alone, would I have gone to find your compartment on the train? Would we even be friends anymore?

“Harry, you wrote down all these things,” he motions vaguely to the scattered notes, “about how you plan on defeating Voldemort, and saving all these people and fixing things, but… you only ever consider the war. What about the rest of it? What about — our lives, Harry?”

The soft, startled “oof!” of a student trying to backtrack at the sight of him had finally snapped Harry out of his trance. He’d been staring out a window in the west fifth floor corridor for an indeterminate amount of time. He had just wanted to see the sun set over the forest. He had just wanted to think…

It was nighttime.

Harry turned around, clasping his trembling hands behind his back in what he’d hoped was a casual manner. Immediately, he spotted the form of a student trying to tiptoe away into the next corridor. “Miss Andrews, shouldn’t you be in your common room?”

Ana Andrews, a very curious second-year Hufflepuff already infamous among staff for her nighttime wanderings, had turned to him with a sheepish expression. “There’s five minutes until curfew still,” she’d said. “You wouldn’t take points now, would you, sir? Exams are already over!”

“You’d be surprised the kind of things that happen after exams. But that’s neither here nor there. Come on, I’ll walk you down.”

She’d gone willingly enough, seemingly excited to talk to him despite the circumstance. They walked together through the halls of Hogwarts (his school, his work, his home, and once — just once — a battlefield), Ana chattering all the way. Harry only half-listened, mind elsewhere. It was a shame, really, to not have truly listened to her that last time they spoke to each other.

It would be his last term at Hogwarts (in ruins, bodies all lined up side by side in the Great Hall, rubble and blood and broken glass — ). He could tell, after only a month of observing the progress and effects of his worsening soul, it would not be long until he could no longer reliably perform magic around students. It was just as well, he tried to tell himself. He needed the time for research anyway. Perhaps he could come back, once he figured it all out. This wouldn’t be the end of him.

This couldn’t be the end of him.

Eleven-year cycles, he’d thought. Eleven years living, eleven years dying.

“…heard there was this room, from the house elves in the kitchens! Erm, not that I’ve ever been to the kitchens of course. This room, it’s supposed to give you what you want — anything you want, when you most need it! But I think — and Marcia agrees with me — that if Hogwarts had a room that grants wishes, then surely it wouldn’t stay in one place? What if I wished it was right next to our dormitory, what then? Alfred thinks —”

The Fiendfyre had taken the Room of Requirement out of commission for years before it finally burned itself out. All the artifacts in the Room of Hidden Things had been lost to it, but the Room itself remained, cavernous and empty, black with soot, the air heavy with the hint — the slightest trace — of Dark magic. It was something he’d learned to recognize over the years studying his soul and all the magics that could influence it. The last time he’d walked into the Room, he’d gone not three steps before he could hear it — faint, so faint, but making the hairs on the back of neck stand on end — the last, desperate, wailing cry of a soul dying.

And there — there, beyond Hogwarts’ (his home, his life, his death, his end) front doors, slightly ajar as noted by a sliver of moonlight — there lay the Forest. It stood tall, and dark, and just as imposing as the first time he’d seen it, barely eleven and so, so blissfully ignorant of what would await him there. What he would lose. What he would… leave behind.

He hadn’t gone very deep into the Forbidden Forest since… since…

He didn’t want to know. He wouldn’t be able to bear it, if he took three steps into that clearing and heard — faint, so faint it could almost have been his mind playing tricks on him — the final throes of a soul dying.

(Whose soul? Whose soul would he hear? He knew — he was the only who knew — more than one soul had been destroyed during the Battle of Hogwarts.)

“…sor? Professor Potter? Are you alright?”

He wasn’t. He was incredibly far from ‘alright’ but that’s not something one tells a twelve year-old student, late at night after exam week.

Harry had become aware that he had stopped walking altogether, staring blankly at the Forest through the slightly open door as little Ana Andrews attempted to bring him back to earth. Curious as to what had him so entranced, she peeked around him. “Marcia says there’s a nest of acromantula in the Forest. But Marcia says a lot of things… Is there actually?”

“There used to be. The Headmistress got rid of them once the colony… made itself known.” Hagrid had been devastated, but he had been the only one. There hadn’t been many spiders left anyway, not after the Death Eaters…

Everyone had lost something.

“I trust you can make your way to the Hufflepuff common room from here, Miss Andrews,” Harry said absently. This would be his last term at Hogwarts. He would try to come back. Hogwarts (everything, everyone) would always be his home, and if Harry had any say in it, he would come back.

But.

“Erm, yeah, I can go by myself. Professor?”

This could be his last chance. If he couldn’t fix his soul, if he couldn’t find a way to stop its degradation… He had to see them again. One last time.

“Then this is good night. To sleep, Miss Andrews.”

“Your lives.” Harry’s voice is flat.

Ron’s face is steadily growing red, whether in embarrassment or anger, Harry isn’t sure yet. “Everyone’s lives! Everything we’ve accomplished, all we’ve fought for! We won the war, rebuilt the wizarding world. And, yeah, I’ll admit there are a lot of things we could be doing better, but we’re working on it, Harry. I — I’m proud of us, who we are as people,” Ron ends in a mumble. It’s embarrassment, then; his best friend never really got the hang of speaking frankly about his feelings. He clears his throat. “I need to know you’ve got all this in mind, is what I’m saying. How you’re going to change not just the war — everything.”

Harry stares at him, head reeling. He knew, logically, that not everyone’s life is dictated by the actions of a man fifteen years dead. Not everyone is defined by Voldemort, what he did, and what he caused. The war ended years ago, but Harry has always been fighting, has kept fighting one way or another. He forgets, sometimes, that people have moved on.

Hermione, looking misty-eyed, is off her own chair in a flash and throwing herself to her husband’s arms with a heartfelt “Oh, Ron!”, as she’s wont to do whenever Ron says something she deeply approves of. Positive reinforcement, she had told Harry after many a raised eyebrow when it happened in public. Can’t skive on it. She’d been flustered but clearly enjoying herself, clearly comfortable in her husband’s arms. Ron is in a similar state now, sputtering slightly but holding tight to her, to her shoulder, the small of her back. He reciprocates the kisses she plants on his forehead.

Harry looks away.

Hermione’s notes are in disarray, scrolls spread out over three different tables. It takes him a minute to find his own notes buried among them, the single notebook in which he’d tried to explain, convince, reassure. It seems paltry in comparison.

He understands, Harry thinks as he flips through it, stopping at the section labeled Deviations/Consequences. He’s never had a family of his own, but he’s had hints of it. He’d tried very hard with Teddy, every time he visited over the weekend, over the holidays, on the odd day that Andromeda needed a babysitter. One could track Harry’s efforts through letters and gifts, through gently-wiped tears and soft-spoken comforts after a bad dream. There was tangible, observable evidence of the effort Harry put in being there for his godson, which he tried to build upon every time they saw each other. Before Teddy went home.

Harry had tried, too, at Hogwarts. The members of his dueling club, the regulars at his seminars — they, too, as they parted ways at the end of their seventh year, said it had felt something like family. The teachers in the staff room on Christmas Eve, as they exchanged presents and prepared to leave, would say something in the same vein. The Weasleys, after the awkwardness of seeing Ginny and himself in the same room had abated, would assure him…

Always a step removed, but Harry understands. In the same, intimate way a drowning man knows the value of dry land, Harry understands.

Family is important.

Harry trudged through the Forest, following a memory, heart pounding in his ears.

(You’ve been so brave.)

The moon had been bright that night, nearly full. It was only after he had passed the expanse that separated Hogwarts from the Forbidden Forest, once he was under the canopy of trees, that Harry conjured three, floating Bluebell Flames around him. He would need his wand free.

(We are… so proud of you.)

The Forest is treacherous at any time, but more so at night. More so while walking alone, upset and uncaring of the amount of noise he’d been causing as he scrambled through the twisted roots and grabbing brambles. The acromantula colony was gone, but they were far from the only dangerous creatures in the forest.

(He will want it to be quick. He wants it over.)

But the prospect of danger had never stopped him. As it was, no creature stumbled across his path, not even the most benign wildlife. The Forest was silent but for one Harry Potter.

He had followed this path exactly twice in his lifetime. The first, back when he was twelve, he’d followed the spiders with Ron at his side, neither knowing what awaited them. The second, Harry had walked escorted by the dead, following a couple of Death Eaters and knowing exactly what waited for him at the heart of the Forest.

(Quicker and easier than falling asleep.)

That night he walked alone. He followed only his own desperation.

(You are nearly there. Very close.)

What he found was this: The clearing that had once housed Aragog and his descendants was being slowly encroached by the rest of the forest, though not nearly as much as one would have expected, being utterly empty. It was like the forest itself had paused at the edges of the small clearing, as if the wildlife sensed something unnatural had happened here, as if the land itself shirked it. There were no new saplings, no vegetation claiming the space as its own. Even the moss, inching its way slowly over the carcasses of fallen trees, seemed to resent its own presence there.

Harry, too, stopped at the edge of the clearing. He knew, from the angle at which he stood facing the center —

(I thought he would come. I expected him to come.)

— that this was where he’d dropped it.

The Bluebell Flames flared, and Harry swept his eyes feverishly over the ground even as he managed to croak out, “Accio Resurrection Stone.”

Nothing happened.

A ragged breath, and Harry said, more firmly, “Accio Resurrection Stone!”

But nothing stirred on the forest floor.

(I was, it seems… mistaken.)

“No… Accio Resurrection Stone! Goddammit, Accio Stone! Accio!” Harry fell to his knees, sweeping his hand over the top layer of leaves, brushing aside the dirt on the ground even as he continued, wand in a death grip, “ACCIO RESURRECTION STONE!” He dropped his wand, using both his hands to search the ground. “Please!”

(You’ll stay with me?)

“Just once!”

(Until the very end.)

“Don’t do this!” he pleaded — to the Stone, to fate itself, to the hand life had dealt him — Harry didn’t know, but he hoped the words carried. He hoped, irrationally, that the words had reached him, standing here on the same patch of earth more than eleven years ago. He wished beyond all reason that the words had carried backwards, that his seventeen year-old self had heard them. He wondered how he could have ever been naive enough to believe that the dead — of all things — would wait for him.

The dead moved on. They went on.

Harry couldn’t.

He had willingly given up two of the Hallows. Even now, as he searched for the Stone, he was running from death. Harry was Master of nothing, why would it answer to him?

“…Accio Resurrection Stone.” Wandlessly, for all it was worth. “Acc—”

He allowed himself one single, gut-wrenching sob that resounded in the forest clearing like thunderclap, before joining the world in its silence.

There was nothing waiting for him. There was no one here.

He clapped a hand over his mouth, scrunched up his eyes.

And then — there! — faint, so faint, as if through the veil of death — a mockery, an accusation, the promise of retribution.

The sound of a soul dying.

Harry gives his two best friends a moment to themselves and focuses on his notes. His head bowed, eyes tracing the slant of his own handwriting, Harry says, “I’m sorry if I sounded flippant in my notes. I do know what’s at stake, Ron. Truly.” Then, a bit quieter, “I’d never risk your happiness if I could help it.”

“That’s not to say you shouldn’t do it,” Ron says, and his tone makes Harry look up at him. Ron is staring at him so intensely that Harry feels somehow exposed. He shifts in his chair, uncomfortable. “I’ll still help. I see you, Harry. I know what’s at stake, too.

“I’m not saying this,” Ron waves one hand to encompass the whole conversation, the other still gripping Hermione, who’s half sitting on his lap, “to make you feel guilty. It just needed to be said. I read your notes, too, mate. You weren’t thinking about my family when you wrote them. No, don’t deny it. It’s — well, it’s not fine, but I get it. Not sure you do, though.

“You are going to change things, Harry. Without meaning to. So I want you to really think about it — and get the crisis over with before you jump headfirst into the past.”

“I have thought about it,” Harry insists, frowning. “I’ll stay out of it as much as possible and change things for the better — there will be no second war.”

“That’s not the point.” Hermione straightens up with a sigh, standing fully upright with a hand on Ron’s shoulder. “He’s doing it again,” she tells her husband, who nods sagely, and the two seem to have an entire conversation with only a look. “You’re doing it again,” she says to Harry. “You’re putting the whole world on your shoulders. And look, if there’s anyone who can bear that weight again, I’d trust you to do it. But you shouldn’t have to.

“What my dear husband,” she squeezes his shoulder, “is trying to say, is that — you’re not omnipotent, Harry. Different circumstances will lead our lives in different directions. You won’t be able to help it. You’re setting yourself up for a ton of guilt when you realize that, so you better realize it now and not when you’re fighting a war near single-handedly.”

Harry shakes his head. “I'll purposely leave Hogwarts and your families alone.”

“I appreciate the thought, but it’s just not possible. You’re going to drastically change your own past self’s life by saving your parents. When we meet the ‘you’ from the past, our lives will have changed. Anyone who meets any other person you save — their lives will change, too.”

“That’s what I’m saying, mate,” Ron adds. “You only thought about the war. You know, short-term.”

Nothing about the war has been short-term, Harry wants to say. He can think of a dozen ways in which the war haunts the wizarding world off the top of his head — the chaos that came with restructuring a Ministry whose top officials had been Death Eaters or sympathizers, the rampant accusations of being said Death Eaters, the ardent denials, the ramifications of rushed trials, the consequent push for maximum punishment and no-tolerance stance against anything remotely Dark or Dark-leaning, the missing muggleborn files that left hundreds of magical children unidentified in the muggle world, the relation between the muggle Prime Minister and their own left in tatters, the widespread mistrust in the wizarding government, the immediate attempts at historical revision…

Harry holds his tongue because his friends know all this already, none of them quite agreeing with the other two over which direction the Ministry should have taken. It’s something they used to argue about, around the same time Harry had first started studying soul magic. The stress of being one of the few people that the public still saw as a powerful, trusted figure — someone who everyone expected to take a leading role in restructuring the government and handing out justice — had been a major factor in the breakdown that led to it.

Harry fiddles with his wristwatch as a thoughtful silence settles over the room. It’s nearly half past seven. His friends will have to leave soon, no doubt having asked Molly to watch the children until dinner.

“I know I can’t control everything,” he says finally, throwing his notes onto the table and turning to face them directly. “I’m not delusional. When have I ever had anything under control?”

That earns him a small chuckle from Ron but Hermione looks troubled. “I checked, you know,” she says, pointing to the notes on the table. “I checked your writing for signs of onset madness, delusions, excessive fear or obsession. I couldn’t find anything; the whole thing is quite sound.”

“Gee, thanks,” Harry says wryly.

“You’re welcome,” says Hermione, completely unapologetic.

“It really isn’t about being mad, though,” says Ron, also glancing at his watch. “It’s about your — thing. Your saving-people thing,” he clarifies, distracted.

“Thanks,” Harry says again.

“You make bad decisions when you focus on your failures,” he says matter-of-fact, and Harry has to bite down another thanks. Ron continues: “So when it happens, just focus on all the people you’re helping instead.”

When it happens, Harry notes. Not if. When I fail to change the world for the better.

“We’d best be going,” says Hermione, also noticing the time. “Can we leave the notes here?”

Harry nods.

“Great, then. Read them over. Ron’s got a late shift tomorrow, but I’ll drop by as soon as I’m out.” The two of them start heading out, and Harry holds the door open and walks them to the entrance hall, where the wards allow outside Apparition. Hermione stops to give him a hug just as they reach it. “Take care of yourself, Harry,” she says quietly next to his ear. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Ron likewise claps him in the shoulder. “Goodnight, mate.”

And with a crack! his two friends are gone, a marked improvement from their last departure.

Harry thinks about goodbyes.

Chapter Text

Over the next few weeks, Harry, Ron, and Hermione go over the details of the plan and tie up loose ends. They seek each other in between their daily lives, in the off-moments when Hermione isn’t being hounded for overtime at the Ministry, whenever Ron’s auror duties release him for a couple of hours, whenever Molly or George can babysit the kids. They meet at Grimmauld Place as an unspoken rule, the memory of headquarters perhaps too strong to ignore. The notes do not exit its library; there is no doubt that at least one of the rituals they plan on performing is highly illegal, and the morality of the whole affair is murky at best. They write nothing in letters and speak around it during Floo-calls at Harry’s insistence. It’s only paranoia when Azkaban isn’t a misstep away.

Harry busies himself preparing one of the most important aspects of the ritual — the circle. Had he just been traveling back in time or just making a phylactery, drawing up the respective ritual circle would have been quite simple. Performing two highly dangerous rituals at once, however, required creative thinking.

Simply putting one circle inside the other wouldn’t work; the different sizes and order of placement would denote one ritual as encompassing the other, which would affect the timing. Overlapping circles would likely negate the runes. Combining them into a completely new ritual circle was a risk too big for even Harry to take. He knew his way around ritual magic — had even created some small ones of his own — but this? This was barely-tested, rarely-documented, highly volatile pieces of magic. He’d have to combine them to an extent, but he maintained — and Hermione agreed — that the extent of it should simply be performing them at the same time.

So how does one stand at the center of two circles without overlapping, combining, or putting one inside the other? All without any extra, interfering magic? The answer came to him while fiddling with the Black lordship ring he kept on a chain around his neck: You add another dimension.

Harry spends the rest of September simply trying to get an audience with the goblins. He’d paid back all the damages incurred when he and his friends broke out of Gringotts on the back of a dragon (Ron and Hermione’s fines as well as his own, despite their protests; he was the only one of the three who could actually pay them, and he wouldn’t let his friends incur lifelong debts for their pride) but while that may have appeased the goblins enough to allow him back into the bank, Harry found there were many ways they could express a grudge. But perhaps “grudge” isn’t the right word. Bill’s explanations of goblin culture go over Harry’s head, but from what Harry can grasp, the goblins aren’t “vengeful” so much as they are bitter. They apparently did not appreciate the wizarding government’s complete failure to punish the trio in any way for breaking into and stealing from the bank. (In accordance to the1752 Goblin Accords, the Ministry holds jurisdiction over any legal action taken against any witch or wizard who have committed a crime against the goblin nation so long as said witch or wizard makes it outside goblin territory alive, Hermione had recited. Honestly, Harry, do you hear a single word that comes out of Professor Binns’ mouth?)

All of this leads into the fact that the goblins would attend him… eventually.

September passes in hours spent in covert meetings with his friends and days spent in the endless struggle that is making an appointment with the Artificer Guild, an international all-goblin guild that is just about the only place Harry could find someone with enough skill in metallurgy to complete the kind of ritual circle he needs. Even if he could find someone else, it is widely known that the goblins are the best metal workers in the world. The fact that the Guild acts outside Ministry jurisdiction in order to maintain complete neutrality helps, of course; they don’t care about a random wizard practicing soul magic, no matter what his name is.

Harry sends letters, Floo-calls daily, shows up at the relatively small office that is the Guild branch through a side entrance in the Gringotts building. His paperwork is “misplaced”; he’s left kneeling at the hearth for hours before being informed that regrettably, no one is available to take his commission at this time, he should call back tomorrow; when he manages to schedule an audience, he waits in line the entire morning, only to be told to wait in a different line, then a different line, and while every other client is seen to within an hour, he is finally informed that, regrettably, the artificer assigned to him has suddenly become indisposed, would he like to reschedule for tomorrow? For next week? Next month, perhaps? Never, Harry reads between the lines. Give up. He doesn’t.

It is only through sheer stubbornness that Harry manages to wrangle any information out of the secretary: His assigned artificer’s name is Enruk and he has, apparently and regrettably, had a very unfortunate week. He’s had three family emergencies, two medical emergencies, one home break-in that required his immediate attention, and been magically locked into his own office accidentally — all within minutes of being able to meet with Harry.

It’s nearly six in the afternoon, he’s been waiting a solid ten hours to reach this counter, the eighth consecutive day he’s waited as much, his appointment time has been reshuffled throughout the day more times than he cares to count, and the goblin behind said counter is once again trying to feed him some bullshit. This time, the goblin secretary attempts to convince him that no, they can’t assign him a different artificer and, unfortunately, Enruk has just been carted off to St. Mungo’s after discovering he’s severely allergic to the wyvern leather of the gloves his last client had worn when he’d shaken his hand. That’s when he hears it.

He’s drifting off, only catching about half of what the secretary is saying — looking far too smug to be believable — and that’s the only reason he catches the tail-end of the conversation two goblins are having as they walk by. “-morrow, Enruk! Then we shall see.”

Harry immediately snaps to attention, ignoring the secretary in favor of the two elderly goblins seemingly heading toward the exit. “Enruk?” Harry asks loudly.

The goblin on the right, the eldest of the two, with pointed ears so long they curled downward and had tufts of white hair coming out of them, turns around at his name. A look of deep annoyance overcomes the goblin — Enruk — once he realizes who has called him. His face twists into a sneer, as most goblin’s faces do whenever they’re forced to interact with Harry. “That’s Master Enruk to you, Mr. Potter,” he says.

“My apologies, Master Enruk,” Harry cedes easily, hurrying to the goblin’s side. He has no doubt a renowned artificer holds a Mastery. “I’m glad to see you’re well. I wish to speak to you about a very ambitious project that would benefit greatly from your skills.”

“I’m sure it would,” he grumbles. “Unfortunately, my shift is almost over. Come back tomorrow.”

“There’s still fifteen minutes left of our allotted time, Master Enruk. I must insist.”

“By the time we reach my office, there would not be,” Enruk says nastily. If looks could kill, Harry thinks.

“Then I’ll be brief. I assure you, you won’t regret it.”

“Your word means nothing to me, boy.” The goblin glares, but Harry says nothing to this, waiting. Enruk’s frown deepens. The seconds tick by. Finally, with a long-suffering sigh, he waves his companion away and jerks his head towards a door beside the counter, motioning for Harry to follow him. “Most wizards can take a hint,” he says, slamming the door open.

“I’m afraid I’ve always been rather dense,” Harry says.

Despite his height, Enruk walks briskly, for which Harry is thankful. It would have been all too easy for him to stall long enough that their scheduled appointment time expired. Through the door is a long, dark hallway, narrow but with a ceiling so high the space feels cavernous. There are office doors interspersed by sconces on the smooth marble walls every few meters. Harry tries not to sag in relief when Enruk leads him through a door labeled M. A. Enruk not two minutes later.

The office is small, though just as high-ceilinged as the hallway, and every surface of it seems to be covered in scrolls of blueprints and small metal trinkets. Enruk climbs a step stool to sit comfortably on the high desk in the middle of it all, not bothering to offer Harry a seat himself. “Speak,” he says.

Instead of doing so, Harry reaches into his robes, pulls out his own blueprints, and hands them to him.

“The elements need to be perfectly balanced, taking into account the etched runes,” he says after a moment.

Enruk is studying the blueprints intently, frown slowly giving way to a completely blank expression. He picks up an over-sized magnifying glass and studies it closer. Ten, then fifteen minutes pass in which Enruk examines his plans in silence and Harry stands awkwardly in front of the desk. There’s a chair but it’s piled up with more scrolls, and he’s not willing to risk the goblin’s further ire by presuming he can move them.

“This… in conjunction, this is…” Enruk’s head snaps up, eyes narrowed. “What do you plan on doing with this?”

Harry thought this might happen. As an artificer, Enruk is likely familiar, if not proficient, with ritual magic. Enough to recognize the elements of time and soul, at least, though these specific areas of magic are such fringe and taboo subjects that he honestly doubts the goblin realizes what the individual ritual circles do. It’s much more likely he’s fishing for clues with his question. Harry certainly hopes so; Ron and Hermione are the only people by far whom he trusts with the information of what is basically a soul-activated time machine.

Keeping all this in mind, Harry tilts his head slightly and considers the goblin. “Does it matter?” he asks. “I will not shame the goblin nation.”

The sneer comes back full force. “Your word means nothing to me,” Enruk repeats.

“Nevertheless, you have it.”

If anything, this makes Enruk’s expression sour further. “This… soil component you wish incorporated into the silver ring, what purpose does it serve?”

“I will provide the sand myself,” Harry doesn’t answer the question. He’d worked very hard to acquire the two pounds of the Sands of Time necessary for the ritual. Breaking into the Department of Mysteries had been much easier back when Voldemort had deliberately set it up for him. “I’ll include instructions on its proper handling as well. It’s not something one can just touch.”

Enruk smiles unpleasantly — not that Harry has ever seen a goblin smile pleasantly, it’s just something about the teeth… “I am certain I will figure it out, Mr. Potter,” he says, making it sound like a threat.

Harry doesn’t doubt he could, given enough time to study the circles. As it is, the old goblin is probably counting on the fact that all goblin-made products come with a clause of re-ownership, meaning Enruk would gain back whatever he made once Harry died. Harry sees no reason to inform him that if all goes to plan, he will never have made it in the first place.

“You will take my commission, then?”

“If you have the gold.” Enruk then names a sum that Harry knows is more than triple the amount of gold he would have asked of anyone else. Not for the first time, Harry thanks his lucky stars that Sirius left him the entire Black fortune. He suspects that, were he still alive, Sirius would have been overjoyed at Harry squandering it.

Before Enruk can even begin giving him a bloated overview of how long his commission would take to make, Harry says, “I’ll give you double if you can deliver it within a week.”

Enruk smiles wider, flashing even more teeth. “Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Potter.”

It was on the second or third meeting at Grimmauld Place that Hermione had brought up the subject of money. The three of them had been sitting at the kitchen island, Harry just having finished pouring boiling water into the cup noodles. Ron and Hermione had been having a slow day at work and had decided to come over for their lunch break, surprising Harry out of his afternoon nap. He’d been eyeing the cup noodles forlornly — it was times like these that reminded Harry just how much Kreacher had done for the house, and he missed the old elf terribly — when Hermione had spoken up.

“You can’t just take money into the past, I hope you realize,” she’d said.

“Well, not all of it, of course,” Ron had said absently, checking his cup as if there were any chance of it being ready after only a few seconds.

“No,” Hermione said slowly. “Not any of it.”

Vaguely alarmed, Harry had asked, “Why not?”

She’d rolled her eyes. “Our coins have serial numbers, as well as the dates they were minted on. If anyone were to just look down as you were paying them, they might realize you’re from the future!”

“No one looks at those things, Hermione,” Ron had said dismissively. He’d checked his noodles again. “And if they did, no one thinks ‘time travel’ first. They’d probably think it’s a misprint.”

“Or a counterfeit,” Hermione shot back. “Which would bring it to the attention of the goblins, who would realize the gold is genuine and draw several conclusions.”

“I’ll just use old money,” Harry had reasoned. “There’s more than enough of that in the Black vault.”

“Do you think you’re the only wizard to think of time travel as a means of doubling their gold? I’d bet my wand the goblins have set enchantments in place to recognize doubles.”

Ron swore. “She’s right, mate. I remember Bill telling us about the Time Fraud Amendments of… of 1867, I think? You really don’t want to take gold into the past.”

“Time fraud?” Harry had been indignant. “This isn’t some get-rich-quick scheme, I’m trying to prevent a second war!”

Hermione had said “They have no way of knowing that!” at the same time Ron said “Like any of that matters to them.”

“We were trying to defeat Voldemort, weren’t we?” Ron continued. “It’s been fifteen years, and d’you know how long it took me to make a withdrawal last time I went to Gringotts? Five hours! It’s not our bloody fault the Ministry didn’t pack us off to Azkaban. They have no right to treat us like this.”

“They have every right,” Hermione had argued. “It’s not like they’re denying us service. We’re just… unlucky enough to be made examples of. They have to prove to the rest of the world that stealing from Gringotts has consequences, don’t they?”

Before the two can descend into the old argument any further, Harry cut in, “What about muggle money? I could exchange the galleons now…”

“It’s still risky, Harry. Any money you’d get from an exchange would definitely be current. And the exchange rate back into galleons during the eighties…”

Harry had groaned, head in his hands. “Am I supposed to go back with nothing?”

“You could always take things to sell,” Hermione offered.

Ron shook his head, then swallowed thickly, mouth full of noodles. “Pretty much anything of value is covered by the Time Fraud Amendments. Jewelry and artworks and books and such. Anything goblin-made goes without saying.”

There was a pause in which the three of them ate their noodles, thinking.

Finally, Harry had said, “…Potion ingredients?”

Things like Venomous Tentacula leaves and unicorn tail hair were still covered by the Time Fraud Amendments, Ron had assured them. He also assured them that aurors have no way of tracking when or where said potions ingredients were harvested — other than the perpetrator telling them outright — so they have no feasible way of upholding that facet of the law. “A shame,” he’d said solemnly. Then, “I think we’ve still got basilisk fangs. Those are worth a lot, aren’t they?”

They were indeed. It was lucky that they had enough to spare.

Hermione, as an advocate and legal representative for many magical beings in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, often received small gifts of appreciation. These gifts occasionally included things such as the client’s own teeth, hair, or feathers.

(“Creepy.”

“It’s sweet, Ronald. Sometimes these are the only things of value that they have!”

“Yeah, but who in their right mind gifts someone a necklace made with their own teeth?”

“Werewolf teeth are extremely coveted for protective amulets! They can easily sell for forty galleons a piece.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not creepy.”)

Ron agreed to check auror records for black market dealers active in 1980 for ingredients like the basilisk fangs, which couldn’t be sold to the average apothecary. Harry didn’t tell him he was more than capable of navigating the black market by himself. One didn’t buy tomes on soul magic at Flourish and Blotts, after all; Harry knew Knockturn Alley like the back of his hand. He appreciated Ron’s willingness to get that information for him anyway.

For his part, Harry simply bought expensive potions ingredients with abandon. The state of his current bank account would not matter when he traveled thirty-three years into the past. The monetary value of the materials they gathered should be enough for him to live comfortably for a few years without having to worry about work; he would be able to concentrate on defeating Voldemort and coming out of it with an unscathed soul.

And so, with the help of his friends and quite a lot of patience with goblins, Harry finished the preparations for his travel back in time by mid-October.

The preparations for removing his own soul were a completely different matter… Personal. Relatively easy to complete.

There was only one thing left.

This isn’t necessary, Harry thinks for the dozenth time.

“Thank you, Minerva,” he says, bowing his head slightly towards Headmistress McGonagall across the desk. The portraits of past headmasters pretend to sleep around them, the more daring peek curiously at him between fake snores. The portrait directly behind McGonagall is notably empty. “I know this is out of the blue…”

“Nonsense. I wouldn’t deny you an audience with your own child, Harry.”

He purses his lips at this, but manages a slight nod.

McGonagall manages to look even more severe in her old age, her eyes piercing. Her hair is beginning to white, but is pulled just as tightly in a bun. She looks like a bird of prey ready to weather the next storm. She sees right through him. “He is your child,” she says sternly. “Blood or not, he’s yours. You raised him.”

“Andromeda—”

“Is his grandmother, not his father. A boy can find family in many places, as I’m sure you know.”

Harry is spared the lecture by the subject of their discussion knocking politely on her office door. At her beckons, Teddy enters the room holding a summons and looking nervous. “Am I in trouble, Profe— Harry!”

Edward “Teddy” Lupin is wearing a thin cloak over casual muggle clothing, having no doubt been summoned out of a weekend spent leisurely with friends. Or maybe a weekend spent frantically studying, Harry thinks, noting that his electric blue hair — which turns a very pretty shade of lilac at the sight of Harry — is in a state of disarray. He smiles. “Hi, Teddy.”

Nothing’s going to go wrong, this is completely unnecessary.

McGonagall stands and nods at the two of them in turn. “I’ll give you two some privacy. It’s no trouble,” she assures Harry before the protest leaves his mouth. “I promised Hagrid to look over his latest pumpkin batch.” Turning to Teddy with faint amusement, she says, “You’ll be able to stand inside this year’s jack-o-lanterns.”

As soon as the door closes behind her, Harry catches Teddy by surprise with a crushing hug.

The portrait directly above the entrance, overlooking them, is also notably empty. He notices the occupants of several other paintings around the room leave their own portraits, trying to follow McGonagall’s bid for privacy.

Teddy hugs back, but only for a moment before pulling away to look at his face. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

Nothing will go wrong. This isn’t goodbye.

“Nothing’s wrong. I just came to tell you… I’ll be leaving the country at the end of the month. For research. I’m not sure when I’ll get back, so it might be a while before we see each other again.”

“…Oh.”

It’s times like these, watching Teddy’s hair roots slowly turn gray, that Harry wonders whether his rapid-fire change of colors is a fun way to express himself — a habit developed by someone who holds no reservations about projecting himself to the room — or an honest, subconscious reflection of his emotions. He’s never asked, knowing Teddy holds his metamorphmagus abilities close to his heart as a personal connection to his mother. He feels he should know by now anyway.

“Where are you going?”

“Abroad,” Harry says vaguely. “Many places. I won’t stay in any one place for long.”

“But you’ll write to me?”

“Of course, whenever I can.”

Teddy smiles faintly. The gray of his hair does not recede but it progresses no further. “You better write. I’ll set Grandma on you, don’t think I won’t. She’d find you.”

Harry gives a shudder and it’s only half for show. Andromeda is a force to be reckoned with, especially when she feels her family has been wronged in some way. “I’ve no doubt she would. But let’s not resort to such drastic measures right off the bat, alright? Give a man a fighting chance.”

“Have you told her already? This means you’re canceling our Christmas plans, doesn’t it?”

“It does. How’s school going?”

Teddy’s clearly unimpressed at his deflection, but he thankfully indulges him. “Terribly. The teachers are insane this year.”

“Well, it’s your OWL year.”

“That’s no excuse!”

The two of them sit down in front of McGonagall’s desk and Harry listens to his godson bemoan for a good half-hour the ever-increasing workload assigned to his class this year piling up with his prefect duties and History Club responsibilities. Because Teddy had — for some reason, utterly incomprehensible to Harry — co-founded a History Club with a seventh-year last year, which left him the sole president of said club now the other co-founder had graduated. Teddy’s love for the subject — ???! — meant he wasn’t willing to give up the responsibility despite the strain it put him under.

“I’m not complaining, though, of course. It’s been an absolute blast —” !?!? “— and everyone’s been really great about it, even though I bet it’s really obvious I have no idea what I’m doing. Professor Ryans — that’s the new History PA — he's been really helpful. He’s sponsoring the club and he’s the unofficial ghost ambassador. He’s really good at talking to them — even the Bloody Baron has entire conversations with him!”

Harry raises his eyebrows; that is impressive. He wonders whether this Professor Ryans is simply good at dealing with the often morbid habits of the dead or whether there truly is a “correct” way to speak to ghosts. And does the same apply to any disembodied soul? “I suppose he must be good at it, having to work alongside Binns all the time,” Harry acquiesces. “Why do you need a ghost ambassador?”

Teddy visibly perks up at this, a fire lighting up in his eyes. His hair turns a bright Hufflepuff yellow. But just as he begins explaining — “We’re trying to set up a live recreation of some of the most important events in Hogwarts based on ghost accounts. We’re holding audition-” — the fireplace lights up with the bright green flames of Floo travel and out steps Neville Longbottom, covered in soot and… something else. It’s orange and stringy, and the smell of it reminds Harry of pumpkin juice, oddly enough.

“Neville?”

He does a double take. “Harry? What are you doing here?”

“Good morning, Professor Longbottom,” Teddy greets, though it sounds more like a question.

“Hm? Oh, yes, hello, Mister Lupin. I suppose that’s why-” Neville shakes his head. “Never mind that. Sorry, Harry, I’d love to catch up, but there’s no time.” With that, Neville strides purposely towards McGonagall’s desk, where he starts rifling through the drawers.

“Is everything alright?” Harry asks, just now noticing that Neville is holding a wicked-looking axe in one hand.

“Erm, well, yes. Sort of. There’s just a little mishap with the pumpkins. Hagrid and I were experimenting, see. With muggle synthetic fertilizer. But I think we used too much — aha!” Neville pulls from McGonagall’s desk what seems to be an over-sized version of a prefect’s badge, big as a dinner plate. Seeing Harry’s questioning look, he sighs. “They’ve developed sentience. Minerva tried to carve one and now they’ve all awoken.”

“…I’m sorry?”

Neville grimaces. “Yeah. So am I.” He gives the big badge two quick taps with his wand and leans forward as if speaking into a microphone. “All prefects and Head Students please report to Professor Hagrid’s pumpkin patch for crowd control.” Harry and Teddy both look down at Teddy’s own prefect badge — pinned to his waist — which is transmitting Neville’s message in a tinny voice. “I repeat: report to the pumpkin patch for crowd control. Herd the students into the castle. Do not approach the pumpkins. Thank you."

“Herd?” Teddy asks rather wryly.

Neville hums in agreement, apparently missing the tone. “They’re flocking to the spectacle. I’ll have to review basic plant safety next week — they should all know better by now. It’s all fun and games until somebody gets eaten.” At Teddy’s concerned gasp, he adds, “Oh, no worries. They’re just pumpkins. They can’t actually digest anyone. It’s just, you know —” he waves the axe “— a hassle. And a waste of pumpkin.”

“You’re trying to salvage them?” Harry tries not to laugh.

“Of course! It’s not their fault they’re sentient.” Neville steps into the fireplace with a fistful of Floo powder. “Nice seeing you again, Harry. We should go for drinks some time. Mister Lupin, the badge goes over the heart.” Then with a “Hagrid’s Cottage!” Neville is off in a flurry of green fire.

There’s a quiet moment in which Teddy pins his prefect badge to his chest with a near-imperceptible sigh. “Duty calls, I guess.”

“I’d have thought you’d be more excited to watch Professor Longbottom battle a horde of giant, feral pumpkins with an axe.”

Teddy clutches his chest in mock-offense. “I am going to shepherd all those stray students into the castle, just like I was told to do. If I accidentally summon my camera and, by whatever magic, some photographs of the epic battle make their way throughout the school tomorrow — well, that’ll be a coincidence, I think.” At Harry’s raised eyebrow, Teddy gives a shrug. “I can multi-task.”

Harry takes one last good look at his godson as he stands. His hair is still yellow, though a shade paler than before, and a good deal messier than when their conversation began. He’s developed a habit of running his fingers through his hair whenever he’s excited or nervous; he’d kept doing it during their conversation. The prefect badge is slightly crooked, like the smile he gives Harry when the latter hugs him one last time. Merlin, are they the same height? “Alright, Teddy. I’ll see you s… as soon as I can. And send me a copy of those pictures.”

Teddy pulls away with a little huff. “They’ll be waiting for you here. Make it back by winter hols.”

Harry smiles sadly. “…Goodbye, Teddy.”

There is a weight to his words, it is almost palpable. Perhaps Teddy can feel it, because he frowns uncertainly, pauses. Harry notices his eyes are green today — a vibrant, bottle green, just like his — and he’s confused by the sudden lightheadedness that overcomes him at the sight, the sudden wrenching feeling in his heart. He thinks — for one desperate, irrational moment — that it simply isn’t worth it. All this planning, all this effort, the lying — it simply isn’t worth having to hear his godson say goodbye. Harry’s broken soul cannot put a name to this painful feeling, cannot explain why this single word would hurt so much. He thinks, perhaps, there had been a time when the answer had been obvious.

He feels… disjointed. Cold.

This isn’t goodbye, he reassures himself, not understanding why he needs to.

Teddy seems to have arrived at a conclusion because he says, so firmly it sounds more like a demand, “I’ll see you later, Harry.” Then he smiles, and with a final wave goodbye, he’s out the door.

Harry listens to his godson’s footsteps rapidly descending the spiral staircase and fading away, immobile. When he can no longer hear them, he sighs and leans against McGonagall’s desk. “Still spying for Dumbledore, then?” he says, looking up at the portrait in front of him, directly above the entrance.

Severus Snape’s portrait is notably no longer empty where it hangs looming over the room. “Rest assured, Potter, that if I were spying, you’d have no way of knowing it. Albus is under the impression that you are unhappy with him.” Snape sneers in case there was any doubt about what he thinks of Harry’s unhappiness. “He thought you would not want to see him. There was the implication that you left in… less than amicable terms.”

Harry runs his hand through his hair in frustration and scoffs. “Yeah, you could say that.”

His relationship with Dumbledore was not an easy one. He wavered heavily between idolizing the old headmaster and thinking him a selfish fool, depending on the day.

The months before discovering the damage done to his soul, that liminal space between winning the war and discovering soul magic, was time spent in awe of the man. Walking to his death had been the most difficult thing Harry had done in his life; if he was being honest, Harry was glad he hadn’t had to live with the knowledge that he’d have to die all throughout the Horcrux Hunt. He honestly did not know whether he would have been strong enough to do so. Forgiving Dumbledore for keeping this from him was easy enough, especially after finding out the old headmaster had planned on Harry surviving despite this. Any leftover resentment was assuaged by the knowledge that everything had turned out all right.

This changed, obviously, once he viewed his soul. Here was something Dumbledore had not foreseen, he’d thought bitterly. Here lie the consequences of meddling old fools playing with the lives of others. Who did Dumbledore think he was, giving him hope without even researching the necessary soul magic? Horcruxes can only be destroyed when the vessel is damaged irreparably, Dumbledore should have known this! Who did he think he was, putting Harry’s very soul on the line with only his half-baked theories to lean on?

His rage had waned, however, the more he researched soul magic. Nearly everything was theoretical, the practice being so taboo. What little practical knowledge there was tended to be Dark and focused on necromancy, and written records of it were both rare and illegal. He eventually found the text that Dumbledore must have based his theory on — Necromantic Ritual Components by Antares Black — which theorized that certain souls may find their way back into their bodies without living aid given there was already a connection strong enough to another still-living body. The theory was sound, as far as Harry could tell, if optimistic. It might have even applied to him, given that Voldemort used Harry’s blood for his body… had there not been a horcrux in the way. There was no literature on living horcruxes, not even theories. Truly, Voldemort had been a pioneer in the field. Harry couldn’t, in good conscience, blame Dumbledore for not knowing of the damage that reviving in such a way would cause his soul. No one could have known.

This is why, when he received his DADA Mastery and began teaching at Hogwarts, he was inclined to speak to Dumbledore’s portrait as one would speak to an old friend. More than that, he needed guidance. Even three years after the end of the war, after stating time and time again that he would not be pursuing a political career, the world demanded his leadership. It seemed no matter how many times he told the press he would be teaching kids ages eleven to seventeen — not working with or within the Ministry, not catching any more Dark wizards, not staging any more revolutions or surviving Killing Curses — he remained a legend, representative of all the good witches and wizards of Britain. And when he refused the role — Harry Potter: Too Powerful to Care?; Boy Who Lived Makes Quick Retreat; What the Savior of the Wizarding World Could Be Teaching Your Children; Defense Against the Dark Arts or Indoctrination? The Origins of Potter’s Army — the rumors started. Dumbledore’s portrait had helped him through the wild accusations and demands, having experienced exactly the same thing after defeating Grindelwald only to continue teaching Transfiguration at Hogwarts.

Sometimes it felt as though Dumbledore was the only one who understood. The crushing weight of the world on his shoulders. The lies, the secrets. The… guilt. They spoke of Grindelwald and Voldemort, of love and souls, justice and death. They spoke of the state of the wizarding world, of expectations. Of Hogwarts.

The first time Harry attended the Hogwarts staff Christmas party, Headmaster McGonagall gifted him a portrait — a picture of a plush purple armchair in front of a roaring fireplace, unoccupied. Just as Harry was about to ask, the inhabitant of the painting stepped into the frame.

(Harry, my boy.)

It was a brother portrait, McGonagall had explained. So that Harry would no longer have to set up camp in her own office every single time he wished to speak to Albus. She’d looked at him pointedly while saying this and Harry had flushed as the small group of teachers staying at Hogwarts for the holidays laughed amiably at his expense.

(I’m — er — sorry about that, Professor.

How may times must I tell you, Mr. Potter? You may call me Minerva.

Harry, then.)

He’d hung the painting in his office, where they could chat in private as Harry graded tests and essays, and tried to draft polite refusals to the then-constant Ministry letters trying to persuade him of finishing his Auror training, of getting more involved in politics. The refusal was easy, but the politeness was harder to come by as the letters grew more insistent. Dumbledore’s portrait would talk him through it.

The first major disagreement came in the form of a letter — not from the Ministry, but from an angry mother demanding to know why her son was receiving barely an Acceptable in DADA class, and granting him permission to “motivate him with a quick and firm hand,” as if asking teachers to hit her child was normal. Concerned, Harry spoke to the child, a painfully timid third-year Ravenclaw who refused to express himself in anything more than shrugs and nods or head shakes for the first three tutoring sessions Harry had offered him. After about a month of paying attention to the child, Harry had a bleak enough picture of his home life to try and do something about it. Dumbledore, however, did not.

(Children have a small frame of reference, Harry. They tend to exaggerate their woes.)

At twenty-two years of age, well into his second year of teaching and having watched Teddy grow into a happy four year-old, Harry had a newfound idea of how children deserved to be treated. He had been surprised at how truly new this idea was to him — that children shouldn’t be hit or neglected by family, that he wouldn’t wish that on anyone. He’d never been on the other side of the situation, never been in a position of power in which he could actually do something to help. Things that had seemed inevitable as a child suddenly looked like inexcusable lapses of responsibility. He’d thought he’d understood, before this. He’d thought there had simply not been another way, that the adults in his life were just as limited in power as he had been. He’d thought as little as possible about the Dursleys.

Standing there, in front of Dumbledore’s portrait in the middle of his office, staring in disbelief at his old mentor’s twinkling blue eyes, he saw not the apologetic helplessness he’d subconsciously expected…

(It is not in our place to interfere with the way families discipline their children.)

…but simple refusal.

And Harry had snapped. How many people had turned away from an injustice when they saw it simply because it wasn’t their place to help? When had that ever stopped Dumbledore before? What kind of person did Dumbledore think Harry was, that he would turn a blind eye now, after everything? What reason did he have for doubting the child’s words, with trust so hard-earned and clearly afraid? What reason had he had all those years ago, to belittle Harry’s own struggles, to doubt his words? Why had nobody taken his casual descriptions of an abusive household seriously? Why had nobody helped him?

And where did Dumbledore get off, telling Harry he shouldn’t help either?

The portrait had come down, after much angry shouting on Harry’s part, and been Silenced and stuffed upside down behind a heavy bookshelf, facing the wall. Harry had marched to McGonagall’s office immediately afterward, still fuming but determined to appeal to the highest authority available.

He did not find the support he wanted.

(I know it’s different in the muggle world, but when a magical child is truly mistreated, one can expect their magic to act up. Rest assured, unless this student is having problems controlling their magic, it’s unlikely that to be anything serious.)

Harry had barely restrained himself from continuing his tirade, had just left curtly and tried to appeal to Professor Flitwick, the student’s Head of House. It was with growing despair that he listened to the short professor go on, apologetic but firm, about how no one would believe the word of a thirteen year-old who refused to speak most of the time over the word of his very outspoken mother. How there was no proof of anything, how accidental magic would most likely erase any proof within the hour if it was ever even there. He tried to comfort Harry by claiming that accidental magic would also protect the child if he was in any true danger, that he could rest easy with this knowledge.

But Harry had his own, first-hand knowledge, and so he knew none of his professors’ arguments had any basis on reality. As he spoke to other members of the Hogwarts staff, however, he was forced to admit this was much bigger than Dumbledore’s personal failings. Only one other teacher seemed to share his concern over students’ home lives — Professor Carrie McCall, the Muggle Studies teacher, who had also been raised in the muggle world. The entire wizarding world seemed to hold very backwards beliefs about how children should be treated, and a very narrow definition of abuse that did not take into consideration their mental or emotional wellbeing. Even within this narrow definition, there was hardly any legal action a concerned adult would be able to take to rectify the situation.

It took months — nearly a year after their argument — for Harry to pull the dusty portrait from behind the bookshelf and warily place it back where it had hung in his office. They’d stared at each other for a long time.

(I’m not giving up on this. Hermione already has some ideas. I’ll use all the weight I hold as 'Savior of the Wizarding World' if I have to.

…You’re a braver man than I was, Harry. I would expect nothing less.

Hmph.)

They would have many other, smaller arguments, and revisit this one in particular any time Harry thought Dumbledore showed signs of forgetting it. It occurred to Harry that the old headmaster had never seemed so real, honest, and human in life as he did as the portrait of a dead man. It was a sobering thought, especially once Harry started counting his own secrets. He wondered sometimes, how the rest of the world perceived him. He wondered whether the public already saw him as a distant, wise, powerful war hero whose opinion could sway the Minister, who could lead the wizarding community if they so needed. He wondered how many people believed the rumors that he was at Hogwarts not to teach, but to recruit. How many looked to him and saw a cunning manipulator? He called in a lot of favors trying to pass legislation protecting the rights of children, it was true. He had thrown his name around like it was a party favor. Did that make it wrong?

He could forgive Dumbledore his mistakes, his inaction. He needed to forgive Dumbledore and his mistakes and his inaction. He would look at the same Ravenclaw boy — years later, which is how long it took for the Ministry to actually investigate, and saw bitterness in those young, resigned eyes — and needed to know he could be forgiven.

(Does it get easier?

Failing? No, Harry.)

Harry kept coming back to Dumbledore, despite their disagreements, because he was the only one who understood. Oh, the portrait knew nothing about Harry’s research into soul magic, knew nothing of the various… experiments Harry had had to conduct to truly understand how souls worked. Harry wouldn’t trust anyone with that knowledge, not even a painting, not until he absolutely had to. But then, that’s exactly why he was so sure Dumbledore understood, even without knowing. Some things were better left unsaid.

No, Dumbledore’s portrait knew nothing of Harry’s dive into soul magic, which is why it was surprised when Harry confronted the painting about his soul one day, eleven years after the Battle of Hogwarts, on the last week of term. Harry had been numb and blank-faced, hovering oddly somewhere between emptiness and rage. He’d just realized he would never see his parents again, had just spent the night desperately searching for the Resurrection Stone and failing.

(I wonder… whether you thought I owed something to the world, or perhaps you thought that I, as a good soldier, simply had no right to myself, to my own soul?

…Harry? What-?

Or maybe… maybe you thought that was the only way to really be rid of us. Maybe I underestimated you, and you knew exactly what you were asking me to do, exactly how I would be destroyed. Did you think I was contaminated? That I did not deserve an afterlife?

Harry! What are you talking about?

I was happy! I was ready! I wanted to move on — and you convinced me not to!

I do not know what you are talking about-

I was DEAD! I should have STAYED dead! I SHOULD HAVE DIED!

Dear lord, Harry! How long have you had these thoughts?

WHY? WHY? WHY DID YOU TELL ME TO COME BACK? Had I not done enough? Had I not already given my life to the war, to the fight? What more do I have to give? Why isn’t it over? I-i-it should be over. Why? Why didn’t you just let me die?!

Harry. My boy, please — what are you saying?)

It hadn’t mattered how Harry phrased it. It didn’t matter that, eventually, Dumbledore’s portrait had pieced together enough of Harry’s pleading and accusations to form a vague idea of what Harry was talking about. It didn’t even matter that, once the portrait had figured out that Harry had spoken to the real Dumbledore after taking the Killing Curse eleven years prior, it had tried to answer him.

(Is it truly so difficult to believe, that I simply did not want your death on my conscience?

DAMN YOU AND YOUR CONSCIENCE!)

It wasn’t a real answer. Harry could not think of it as a real answer, because it had suddenly become irreversibly clear — this wasn’t Dumbledore. This was a painting, made to look and speak and perhaps even think like him, but it wasn’t Dumbledore. His mentor was dead, had been dead for more than a decade. He had never apologized for leaving him with the Dursleys, never been forgiven. He had not sat jovially next to Harry as he graded papers, or talked him through frustrating Ministry invoices. He had not given him tips on keeping the students’ attention while lecturing, or reminisced about the silly things first-years would write on their exams when they didn’t know the answer on a test. He had not listened to Harry when he explained different kinds of abuse and why they all mattered, or helped him write his speeches. He had not been there for Harry. Dumbledore had died. Dumbledore was dead, and had moved on without him even as he told Harry to go back. Dumbledore had left him and Harry was never going to see him again.

And this painting — this enchanted canvas that was such a mockery of a man — it would never give him a real answer because it had not been there, had not been the one to tell him to come back. It wasn’t Dumbledore.

(INCENDIO!)

It wasn’t anything at all.

Harry rubs his temple with a big sigh. “…You could say that,” he repeats softly.

Snape looks at him expectantly, arms crossed, and arches one eyebrow.

“Oh, I’m not going to tell you what happened,” Harry clarifies. “You’re a terrible gossip. I really shouldn’t fuel your habit.”

The looming portrait of Snape looks so offended it’s almost comical. But he recovers quickly. “You two are truly cut from the same cloth. Neither can express an ounce of consideration to those you have clearly designated as… lowly servants. I see all these years as a ‘professor’ have taught you nothing of respect.” He manages to channel so much disdain on the word professor that Harry can practically see the air quotes around it. “Tell me, Potter. Did you think I decided to expose myself to your presence because I wanted to say goodbye when you decided to insult me? Or was it simply too entrenched a habit to break?”

Harry didn’t want to speak to Snape right now, and had in fact insulted Snape in the hope that he’d leave, but Harry wasn’t about admit that. “Alright, Severus,” he says in the same tone a parent might employ when indulging a child. “Go on, tell me what you want.”

For a moment, Snape looks angry enough to leave, but then his expression darkens. His voice is low and dangerous when he says, “Albus believes you are desperate and distraught. He seems to think that we all have reason to fear what someone such as yourself might do when… afraid.”

Harry tries very hard to keep his expression blank, but he doubts Snape misses his sharp intake of breath. How much has Dumbledore been able to glean from that last argument? Harry doesn’t remember the day clearly enough to be sure of just how much he might have revealed. But most importantly, Harry needs to know whether the damned portrait shared his suspicions with anyone capable of stopping him.

“Who’s ‘we’?”

Snape sneers back. “What kinds of places are you visiting, that you felt the need to say goodbye to your godson?”

“What are you implying?”

“Merlin forbid I imply anything that doesn’t spare your fragile feelings.”

They stare at each other, at an impasse. Harry does some quick thinking.

“I think both you and Dumbledore should keep your respectively large noses out of other people’s business,” he says. “But if you really must know — I’ll be going to the continent, but I won’t be staying there for long. Perhaps America, at some point.”

Lying has never been easy for Harry. He finds it simpler to skirt the truth, to hide and mislead. He truly does plan on visiting the continent in his near future — Albania, to be precise; if all his research into the subject was correct, Voldemort hid Hufflepuff’s Cup within his own lot of land, gifted to him by a Death Eater, before his fall in 1981, and had only placed it in the Lestrange vault after his revival. Harry would need to retrieve the Cup once he made it to 1980, so he would indeed have to visit the continent.

And after all this was over, Harry would like to revisit Latin America. He had a lot more freedom to work there, with soul magic being considered morbid — and reserved to a few select communities — but a perfectly reasonable area of study.

“And what, pray tell, will you be doing there?” Snape asks through a sneer.

“Research, didn’t you hear?” Harry tsked. “You’re losing your touch, Sev.”

“Do not,” Snape hisses. “Do not. I know what you’re doing. You’re as subtle as a knife to the neck. Shall I afford you the same favor? Very well — I know exactly the type of magic one researches when ‘desperate and distraught,’ Potter. You’re a fool if you think you’ll find solace or strength or whatever it is you’re looking for in the Dark Arts. You will find yourself alone and persecuted — nothing else!”

“Speaking from experience?” Harry asks before he can help himself.

“Albus should have given up on you years ago,” Snape goes on as if Harry hadn’t spoken, nose high in the air and looking down at him in disgust.

Harry sighs and, despite himself, calls out just as Snape begins to walk out of the frame. “Se— Snape! Professor — wait! Please.” Snape pauses, half out of sight. “Look, I’m not researching Dark magic. I’m not distraught or anything like that. The research — I just need to find some people I’ve lost touch with. It’s… personal. You don’t have to worry.”

Snape studies him for a moment. Harry is hyper-aware of the other half-dozen portraits in McGonagall’s office still listening in to their conversation. It’s true, he thinks and tries to convey so on his face. It’s true.

“…Albus will be glad to know.”

If Harry knew Dumbledore at all, and if he read the situation correctly — who knows what Snape is thinking at any time, really? — then Dumbledore would not have told anyone his suspicions at all, and Snape came here of his volition after drawing his own conclusions.

Harry gives him a small smile. “That wasn’t a message, Professor. It was just for you.”

Snape scoffs. “Goodbye, Potter. And good riddance.”

Chapter Text

Most soul-related rituals rely on the influence of the sun, and so one would ideally perform them under direct sunlight while it is highest in the sky. Ritual magic, as a rule, should be performed during a day of power — Samhain, Beltane, etc. — when the latent magic of the world is most readily available, in case the wizard performing the ritual is not strong enough to carry out the magic he has set in motion. Harry has no idea whether the three of them together would be strong enough to send a person thirty-three years into the past and remove their soul at the same time, but it’s best to err in the side of caution. Even after they have everything ready, they wait for Samhain.

The goblins delivered the rings to the specified clearing in the Forest of Dean within the week, earning double the gold, just as Harry promised. It now sat safely within various wards, undetectable to both muggles and magical folk.

Hermione had scolded him for his carelessness with money when she’d heard the deal he’d made, but trailed off once Ron pointed out that this was Harry’s last time to use it. The silence after that had been awkward.

“If something goes wrong,” Harry had started.

“Oh, don’t even start,” Hermione said.

“If something goes wrong,” Harry said more firmly, “I’ve split what’s left of the Black fortune between Teddy, you two, and the Hogwarts fund. Teddy gets the house, but you get the library books… and my research. Don’t throw it away, please. I know you think it’s Dark and dangerous and, well, it is dangerous if you don’t understand it fully. That’s why I’m leaving it to you.”

Hermione looked uncomfortable at that. “I think I’ve had just about enough of soul magic for a lifetime. I don’t know if I’m the best person…”

“It’s my life’s work, Hermione. Please take good care of it.”

“Your life,” Hermione’s tone had brokered no argument as she spoke, “is worth much more than however much research you made into whatever subject for however long. You’ve accomplished more than that.” She’d swallowed thickly. “But fine. I’ll take care of it.”

The silence after that had been tense as well, heavy and uncomfortable. Harry had turned to Ron. “I’m leaving you all my Quidditch gear,” he’d said, aiming for a lighter tone.

Ron had stared at him for a good twenty seconds, jaw clenched. He’d let out a little huff and said, “Thanks, mate. But we’re not going to get any of it, alright?”

The three of them stand in the same clearing now, weeks later, only fifteen minutes till the sun is at its highest peak on Samhain. The ritual circles — the ritual rings, more accurately — stand before them. The two inter-locked metal rings are seven feet in diameter, carved with the necessary runes, and crossing each other perpendicularly so that the array is able to stand on its own, slightly sunken into the soft earth of the Forest of Dean. One of the rings is golden, to represent the Sun and the soul; this is the ring that will separate his soul from his body and direct it towards a phylactery. The second ring is made of silver, to represent the Moon and the passage of time; through the center of this ring runs another thin crystal ring — a vial, essentially, holding an unbroken line of Time Sand, which will facilitate Harry’s time travel. From the angle at which Harry stands, the rings look like a big gold-and-silver X against a forest backdrop.

Harry is wearing old muggle clothes and a long coat obtained at a thrift shop, all manufactured before 1980, courtesy of Hermione’s meticulous eye. The same can be said of his trunk, which is an ordinary trunk save the fact that it is filled with expensive potion ingredients and what few necessities Harry will immediately need once in the past. They’d considered magically expanding the space, but dismissed the idea given that they could not predict how magical space might interact with large-scale time travel. In his hands, Harry holds his old moleskin pouch, on which he’d painted a string of archaic runes. His invisibility cloak is draped over his left shoulder, glistening silver in the sunlight.

Ron hangs back next to Harry, who’s quietly contemplating the objects he’s holding, as Hermione clears the forest floor of any dry leaves and double checks that everything is ready. “Is that…?” Ron asks, looking at the moleskin pouch.

Harry nods. “This’ll be my phylactery.”

Ron gulps, eying the pouch with a small crease on his forehead. “What’s… what’s in it?” Then, noticing Harry’s discomfort — “Sorry, never mind. I know it’s personal,” he says, sheepish. “I was just curious, is all. I dunno what I would choose if I had to pick things that represent my soul. Where do you even start?”

Harry could answer that question, at least. “Souls are very isolated,” he says, turning the pouch idly in his hands. It weighs hardly anything. “It’s just you and your thoughts. So it all comes down to self-perception. Never mind what anyone else thinks of you — how would you describe yourself?”

What made Harry who he was? Was it a series of events? Was it his blood? A prophecy? What shaped Harry’s soul into the bloody mess that it now was, and what could best hold it together?

A phylactery , unlike a horcrux, must be some sort of container. A box, a bag, a jar — a moleskin pouch gifted to him on his seventeenth birthday by the man who delivered him to both the muggle and magical worlds. A phylactery stands in place of one’s body. It is an inanimate representation of the wizard who made it, and must be filled with whatever makes the wizard who they are, representations of their soul.

The first object Harry chose had been the most obvious. He is a wizard, he has a wand. Storing his wand in a container that is not supposed to be opened ever again might have been a difficult decision had he just been a normal wizard making a phylactery, but given the circumstances… Harry had taken his holly and phoenix feather wand from the mantle above the fireplace in Grimmauld Place where it had lain, covered with a fine layer of dust — the first wand to have chosen him, proof that he belonged in the wizarding world — and snapped it. His magic had been so unstable for the past few months, he didn’t even remember the last time he’d used it. His magic was broken, his wand should be broken. Harry had carefully placed the two halves into the moleskin pouch, fingers brushing against the red feather feebly holding them together at the break.

He would need a different wand in 1980 anyway.

The second thing he chose had been in the pouch before — his first snitch, with the memory of his touch. Let that snitch represent all the fun he’s had, all the lighthearted times in his life, his love of flying. Freedom and thrills and relatively friendly competitions. Winning.

And never mind what it had once contained. (If Harry is honest with himself — and he is, he has to be for this to work — the lack of Resurrection Stone, the last time he saw his family… it is just as representative of his soul as the snitch.) It went in the pouch.

Admitting that he needed something to represent the decade of his formative years spent at the Dursley’s was… difficult. Almost as difficult as actually finding an object to represent those years, having purged himself of any memorabilia as soon as he’d left. He almost hadn’t done it. Harry was a lot of things, however, and coward wasn’t one of them. He and Dudley exchanged letters on holidays, and the occasional postcard between — stilted, impersonal things written to a person they both knew intimately as family, and didn’t know at all as people. Harry was therefore surprised, relieved, and confused when Dudley admitted to having kept “his things” in a box all these years, deep in a storage shed full of old furniture they’d taken from Privet Drive when they’d moved and had never bothered getting rid of. “His things” in this case referred to old, frayed hand-me-down clothing Harry had deemed too threadbare to pack, unneeded school textbooks that Dudley must have rescued, some broken trinkets they’d found under a shelf in the cupboard, as well as a couple of drawings Harry must have made in primary school that had somehow made their way into Dudley’s pile of cherished childhood drawings. Harry had taken the box with a strained smile, exchanged pleasantries so awkward they were painful, and did not look back.

There was a small toy soldier among the trinkets, originally part of a set that had been given to Dudley, made Harry’s only because it was bent beyond repair. He could remember being grateful for it, once upon a time. He could remember playing with it while in his cupboard, the way the light from underneath the locked door would reflect dully against its surface as Harry mobilized it against the dust bunnies on the floor, how he pretended the soldier’s disfigurements were battle wounds, proof only of his strength. Six year-old Harry had not thought about pain, or consequences. The soldier weathered on in his games, completely unaffected.

Perfect. It went in the moleskin pouch with no small amount of bitterness on Harry’s part. Everything else in the box found its way to the bin.

At least, everything would have, had Harry not idly flipped through his first-year copy of A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot. There — stuck to the inside of the back cover, preserved only by the fact that Harry had never once reached the end of that book — was his Hogwarts acceptance letter. The wax seal of the letter had left an imprint on the last page of the textbook, it had to be pried off.

Mr. H. Potter
The Floor
Hut-on-the-Rock
The Sea

…He must have stuck the letter in the book for safekeeping while searching for names for Hedwig. He’d completely forgotten. The edges of the parchment were soft, the folds so fine that the slightest tension as he unfolded it might rip the page.

Dear Mr. Potter,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

But this was good, Harry thought, trying to ignore the deep ache in chest. He’d been looking for something to represent Hogwarts and the pivotal role it played in his life. Hogwarts was more than his school — it was the first place he ever felt accepted, loved. What better to represent his home than the first time he ever saw its name?

Any reminiscing about Hogwarts was cut short as it reminded him of the last object he was considering, had been considering from the beginning. He knew — the knowledge churned within him like a stomachache — that when considering a vessel for his soul, Harry hadn’t been the only person this past century to think of Hogwarts.

He thought back to the night Dumbledore explained to him the concept of horcruxes, to that haunting conversation in which he extrapolated on why Voldemort would not have simply made any old piece of junk into a horcrux. Voldemort was incredibly self-important, the two of them had reflected, and so he had chosen only objects that were worthy of the honor of containing a piece of his soul. Grand objects of historical importance. Looking back, Harry thought they’d been too hasty in their conclusion. Harry did not feel self-important while choosing objects for his soul. Gathering pieces of himself was harrowing; Harry felt vulnerable, strangely exposed even though he was the only one who’d know what the objects would be. From this position, he could see the choice of horcruxes in a new light.

The diary was proof Tom Riddle was the Heir of Slytherin, proof he had a place in the wizarding world. The ring belonged to his family. Nagini had protected Voldemort when he was at his weakest. The locket, the cup, the diadem — Hogwarts.

Family and acceptance and safety… All these things that should be home.

It was difficult, when considering where to store your soul for eternity, to not think of home.

Personally, I wouldn’t have stolen the priceless historical artifacts, Harry had thought as he carefully folded the letter back into its envelope and placed it inside the pouch, but the sentiment’s the same, I suppose.

He had then turned to consider the final, dreaded object again with a grimace.

When Kreacher had died two years ago, he’d been buried in the Black family plot with a locket around his throat, as per his dying wish. At the time, Harry had implied Kreacher had wanted the locket. Ron and Hermione had handed Harry the shattered remains of the locket horcrux under this implication, and Harry had not corrected them.

Kreacher was buried with the locket that Regulus had conjured, a token of his beloved master, the last piece of magic he had cast.

Harry kept Slytherin’s locket.

The diary had been seized by the Ministry along with the rest of Dumbledore’s possessions that had not been bequeathed to anyone in his will. The ring — the Stone — was lost. The diadem had been destroyed completely by the Fiendfyre. Nagini’s corpse had also been burned during the clean-up after the Battle of Hogwarts. Hermione probably still had Hufflepuff’s cup, the one horcrux she’d personally destroyed, a trophy of sorts tucked away in a dark corner of her Gringotts vault.

Harry kept the locket in his room, under a loose floorboard behind his wardrobe.

It made sense, didn’t it? If a sick sort of sense, at that. Being a horcrux had most definitely made an impact in his life — changed him, changed his life. More than that, being a broken horcrux had dictated a good part of his actions for the past fifteen years. He’d be a fool to deny it.

The light played on the ornate S on its surface, glinting on a jarring crack in the metal as if mocking him. The clasp was loose, the face was dull. He could hear the clink of broken glass from the shattered windows inside it when he turned it around. Damaged beyond repair, Harry thought.

And so it joined the rest of the seemingly worthless objects in Harry’s moleskin pouch, no matter how sick it made him feel. A wand, a snitch, a toy soldier, a letter, and a locket. Useless, broken, sentimental things.

A phylactery.

“Compared to everything else we had to do, it was easy,” Harry says, and he and Ron trail off into an all-too-knowing silence.

He watches Hermione pace in front of the ritual rings, taking last minute measurements again and again. She won’t find anything wrong, he knows; he was here last night double-checking everything himself. The runes are carved perfectly, the arrangement impeccable. There is nothing else the trio can do to make sure Harry travels safely thirty-three years into the past, to midday November 1st, 1980. One year before his parents died. One year before his soul became host to a Dark Lord.

One year to stop it from happening.

Hermione joins them, worrying her bottom lip. “Everything is ready,” she says. “Five minutes.”

Harry nods and sets the moleskin pouch directly in front of the ritual rings, in a clear patch of dirt where he’ll have an unobstructed view of it. He’s nearly tackled down by the force of Hermione’s hug as he straightens up.

“Find us,” she says, and tightens her grip on him.

Harry pretends not to notice she’s wiping her tears on his coat shoulder. “I’ll be old enough to be your dad,” he says gently. And you won’t even know we were friends.

“Find us anyway,” she insists urgently. “Promise. Promise me.”

“I…” Harry hates breaking promises.

While Harry is debating with himself, Hermione reaches out behind him and drags Ron into the hug, who tries to embrace both of them. The result is Harry being sandwiched very tightly between them, nearly smothered by Hermione’s hair.

“Best to just promise her, Harry,” Ron says, voice soft.

It’s a fairly chilly day in autumn, but Harry is warm between his best friends. He smiles sadly, just to himself.

“Okay,” he agrees, and if he sounds choked up it’s because of the tight space. “I’ll find you. I promise.”

“Good,” Hermione says fiercely. Then a small chime sounds from her wristwatch and she pulls away, drying her eyes. “It’s time.”

The sun is at its apex in the sky.

Harry steps into the ritual rings along with his trunk, invisibility cloak hung over his left shoulder. There is a small fire pit in front of him, within the rings, in which several logs of wood lay waiting. Hermione stands to the left of the rings, wand out. Ron stands similarly off to the right.

Harry slips the cloak off his shoulder, runs his fingers through its silky surface. It shimmers in the sunlight, like woven water.

(The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.)

Whether one believes this is Death’s Cloak itself or simply a beloved magical heirloom that has aided Harry in countless adventures, this cloak is without doubt his most valuable possession.

Harry grips the cloak tightly, feeling very much like a child clutching a blanket. This cloak has always been his last defense.

(Use it well.)

The ritual calls for sacrifice.

(He asked for something that would enable him to go forth from that place without being followed by Death. And Death, most unwillingly, handed over his own Cloak of Invisibility.)

His own father had died before he could give Harry this cloak, but James Potter’s story wouldn’t end like that again. Once Harry arrived in 1980, he’d make sure James would live to hand this cloak over to his son himself, with no old headmasters in between.

“I’m ready,” he says.

Hermione waves her wand in a complicated motion with a look of deep concentration on her face, ending with a slash pointed at the fire pit in front of him. “Inflamari diabolica!”

Green fire sprouts from the end of her wand, lighting the logs. There are shapes in the flames — birds and snakes and small rodents made of fire — straining against Hermione’s control, eagerly devouring the wood. Before Harry can lose his nerve, he drops his invisibility cloak unto the fire pit. The Fiendfyre immediately turns blindingly white, the figures lose all semblance of shape, and it releases a cold burst of wind and what sounds like the shriek of nails against a blackboard.

Harry isn’t sure whether that was supposed to happen or whether that was something unique to his cloak being destroyed, never having made a phylactery before. He has no time to think about it. Breathing in the smoke deeply, Harry begins incanting the Ancient Egyptian spell required of him. He’s memorized the sounds, but from what Harry was able to translate, it says something along the lines of “I have naught but my soul. It is precious. It is mine.”

At the same time, Ron begins his own chant, wand tip pressed against the silver ring, whose runes slowly begin glowing.

Another deep inhale. The smoke smells like damp earth. He repeats, “I have naught but my soul. It is precious. It is mine.”

Harry looks directly at the moleskin pouch, sitting innocuously some fifteen feet in front of the ritual rings. Its own runes have begun to smoke, seemingly burning themselves into the material. The white smoke is everywhere around him, his eyes are burning, his lungs protest at his persistently deep breaths, but Harry does not look away from the pouch.

“I have naught but my soul—”

Harry becomes aware that his cloak has finished burning, Hermione has successfully called off the Fiendfyre, inexplicably shapeless and white until the end. He can see her leaning heavily against a tree in his periphery vision, exhausted. The smoke continues to hang heavily around him, confined to the ritual rings.

“—It is precious—”

Ron has finished chanting his part, the silver ring is alight and shimmery with power. An echo of it — a mirage double of the ring — appears to emerge from the original and begins to spin horizontally, on its axis. Harry cannot hear his friends as the sound of rushing sand fills the air, seemingly from nowhere.

“…It is mine.”

Just before the mirage of the silver ring would have obscured his view of the phylactery in its rotation, Harry feels something tear inside him.

If time goes on, he is unaware of it. He can’t breathe from the shock of it, and he drops to his knees, doubled over in pain. Except, it’s not just pain, it’s grief. He feels as if all strings tying him down to the Earth had been snapped all at once. All attachments — friendship, family, love, happiness, peace — everything is gone in one moment. The sense of loss so absolute it feels like a physical blow, is the only thing keeping him grounded in reality.

He cannot close his eyes, does not have the presence of mind to process why he might want to. He can only stare, unseeing, as the silver ring spins faster, faster, as the world outside the ritual rings becomes blurred.

Day, night, day, night, a thousand times day and night, faster…

And then the real pain hits.

It hits a near-catatonic Harry like a lightning bolt straight through his heart. The pain is so utterly consuming he could almost believe he’s been hit by the shortest Cruciatus in the world if it weren’t for the fact that the imprint of the pain remains even after the initial burst.

Something’s wrong, Harry thinks. Limbs too heavy to move, thoughts slow to form, pain radiating from his chest, Harry lays hunched over his trunk where he fell, unmoving.

Heavy white smoke, wet earth, day, night, day, night, so fast it’s a strobe light, red, night, red…

Why is he seeing red?

I’m bleeding, is the last thing Harry realizes before he’s hit with the same all-encompassing pain, starting at his head and traveling through him, like a sledgehammer to his temples.

Harry passes out just as everything abruptly stills around him.

…He’s cold. That’s the first thing he realizes. He’s covered by a layer of dew that’s sunk down through his coat.

Every muscle in his body is stiff, and the pain from his back and ribs rivals the pain emanating from his head after having spent an indeterminate amount of time unconscious draped over his traveling trunk.

He cracks open an eye… his left eye, as the right side of his face is completely crusted over with blood. There is a small pool of blood soaking into his trunk where his face rests on it. Judging from the occasional trail of warmth over his eyelid, he is still sluggishly bleeding.

He is cold, lying in his own blood, limbs too heavy to move, alone in a clearing of what is obviously the Forest of Dean, though the trees look different. It is daybreak.

One thing at a time, Harry.

He scrunches up his eyes, concentrating on his coat, and casts a Warming Charm. “Focillo,” he croaks.

Warmth immediately surrounds him, and the relief is so intense Harry could cry. He laughs instead, ignoring the way the crusted blood pulls at his face when he grins. He cast that charm wandlessly, and it worked exactly as it was supposed to — his magic is working again!

Slowly, Harry lifts himself into an upright kneeling position, muscles and joints protesting all the way. The pain is inconsequential next to the fact that he can now use magic reliably, even if more complicated spells are beyond his wandless ability. He sways, dizzy — probably the blood loss, but that’s okay. Hermione had made sure his first-aid kit was stocked full of useful, freshly-brewed potions. Harry opens his trunk with a click and Summons the first-aid kit just for the sheer joy of watching it fly those twelve inches into his hands.

He downs a small vial of Blood-Replenishing Potion first, because it would be a shame to pass out again at this point, and casts a gentle Tergeo to get rid of the dry blood on his face. He takes out the circular hand-mirror included in the kit to asses the damage.

As he thought, it’s his scar that was bleeding. This was troubling in and of itself, but far more troubling is the fact that the wound has somehow gotten much, much bigger. Where there had once been a small, lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead — more reminiscent of the rune Sowilo — there was now one long, jagged gash that ran from the middle of his forehead down to his jaw, just barely missing his right eye. It is still bleeding a steady drip onto his chest, his shirt already stained red. He has suspicions about that, and — sure enough — when he looks down his shirt, he finds the scar he’d received from the second time he’d taken the Killing Curse has also been expanded. It now starts where his previous scar had been, precisely over his heart, and trails a deep red line down to the last of his ribs. They have not replaced the original scars, Harry notes, but seem to have been inflicted on top of them.

This… holds a lot of implications about Harry’s method of time travel. However, seeing as how Harry can cast magic with an ease he hasn’t experienced in years and is not currently a soulless vegetable, it seems his Concurrent-Bodies' Soul Theory was correct, and that’s the important part. He resolves to think about it later as he pulls out the Essence of Dittany from the first-aid kit. It burns something fierce, especially on his face, but three drops of the potion is enough for the injuries to completely scar over, as if they’d had months to heal instead of hours.

Harry traces the scar on his face gingerly. It is sensitive still, after the accelerated healing, standing pink and slightly raised against his skin. He knows from experience that it will fade with time, but never truly disappear. No different than the first time, he supposes, though significantly more conspicuous. It isn’t particularly thick — doesn’t disfigure his face as some of Mad-Eye Moody’s scars did his own, for example — but it will undoubtedly be the first thing people note about him.

It could be worse, Harry thinks, remembering the the image presented to him the last time he performed the Soul-Viewing ritual. The way his head had split open…

The thought makes him shudder, sets off alarm bells somewhere in his subconscious. Something is… off. He can cast magic again — which means his soul is healthy and whole once again, right? It means the two-fold ritual was a success, surely. The giddiness this had inspired is rapidly fading as an uneasy feeling settles into his stomach. It should mean his soul is undamaged, but Harry has learned to trust his instincts when it comes to his own soul. He feels whole and unfettered, but he also feels… heavy. As if he were carrying something.

Harry needs to see his soul.

He can’t, of course. Cleaning and Warming Charms are all well and good, but Harry needs a wand to perform that kind of magic.

And he needs money for a wand.

Thankfully, this is easily remedied. Slug & Jiggers Apothecary has always been eager to buy rare potion ingredients from travelers looking to sell their finds, and Harry has plenty of merchandise.

He casts multiple counts of Tergeo and Scourgify on both his clothes and his trunk, making sure there are no traces of blood that might alarm people in Diagon Alley.

And Apparates to the Leaky Cauldron.

Into chaos.

Harry lands on top of someone, the trunk at his side hits a stout wizard upside he head, and they all fall in a heap. The Apparition point — usually kept clear for incoming customers — is packed with witches and wizards. Harry apologizes to both the elderly witch on which he landed and the stout wizard he’d knocked down, but is brushed off with a good-natured laugh all around.

“Not your fault, lad, not at all!” the wizard has to shout to be heard over the din of the pub. “Look around ya’! Today’s no day to hold a grudge!”

Harry takes a few steps away from the Apparition point, forcibly dragging his trunk with him and knocking into a few more people on his way. The whole pub is full to bursting. He receives no more than a few annoyed glances as he forces his way to the counter, but it seems no one in the Leaky Cauldron can be put out this morning. All around him are the sounds of celebration. There are raucous toasts being made on all corners of the pub, several people standing on top of tables giving slurred speeches, and at least two different groups of drunk wizards are attempting to sing. Behind him, he hears the same stout wizard give another good-natured laugh as someone else Apparates on top of him. Near the entrance, someone seems to be shooting off different-colored sparks into the air in an imitation of fireworks, to the delighted shrieks of everyone in their vicinity.

“Excuse me — pardon — excuse —”

Tom the Bartender is harried when Harry finally reaches the counter. He watches Tom use magic to siphon butterbeer into a dozen tankards at once and send them levitating off to different tables with no small amount of spillage. There is no time to speak to the bartender before he begins on another batch with a look of near-manic concentration.

But that’s okay. Harry doesn’t need to ask Tom what the hell is going on. On the bar counter there are papers strewn about, newspapers and rags alike, discarded after only a cursory glance. It doesn’t matter which one Harry reads because they all report the same news, they all bear near-identical headlines:

THE DARK LORD HAS FALLEN,

HARRY POTTER: BOY WHO LIVED

Harry could swear he feels his heart stop. He no longer hears what must be hundreds of witches and wizards crammed into the Leaky Cauldron celebrating all at once, he no longer feels people bumping into him or the press of the counter against him. Everything narrows down to a point — to the narrow point that is the small printed date on the corner of the copy of the Daily Prophet in front of him.

November 1st, 1981

A year after his intended target.

The paper slips from his fingers, but Harry doesn’t notice. A young witch bumps into him and spills her drink on his coat, but Harry doesn’t notice. He doesn’t even hear her apology or the concerned “Okay there, mate? You look like you’ve seen a boggart!”

Past all the fog that makes it difficult to think and the ice that’s running through his veins, Harry only has room for three thoughts:

It is 1981.

Lily and James Potter are dead.

And Harry Potter is, once again… a horcrux.

Chapter Text

There is a picture of him in the paper, a candid photograph of an infant, black and white. Harry looked to be just a few months old, just barely managing to sit down unsupported. As it was, he seemed to be having trouble with it; baby Harry in the photo leaned precariously to the side as he tried to shove his entire foot in his mouth. Gentle hands would push him upright again whenever it happened, followed by a flash of light — his mother, taking the picture — and little Harry would stare dazedly at the camera before once again attempting to eat his foot, and the whole thing would start over.

The photo commemorated no special occasion. It is a personal photo, just a mother wanting to take a picture of her baby. It is a snapshot of a tentative peace caught forever on loop.

It is under the headline HOW HARRY POTTER SURVIVED DEATH.

Journalists were having a field day. The Daily Prophet kept printing new issues, hastily titled after the approximate time they were printed, trying to keep up with the sudden influx of breaking news. Not only had the Dark Lord been defeated, but a massive auror raid had led to the arrest of twelve Death Eaters and twenty-three of their un-Marked recruits. They were running, scattered and scared, and the Ministry was utilizing all available forces to take advantage of the situation. Moreover, several Ministry officials — alarmingly high-up — claimed with equal amounts horror and relief to have just been released from the Imperius Curse. The Prophet was of the mind that the public needed a play-by-play of the arrests and ongoing investigations.

And the Potters. There wasn’t a single issue in which they weren’t mentioned. Every account of how exactly Voldemort came to be defeated grew steadily more detailed: It happened in Godric’s Hollow and the Boy Who Lived survived with no more than a lightning-shaped scar, said one article. Lily and James Potter fought bravely in their home, said another. The Killing Curse rebounded and there is no known explanation, said a particularly helpful article in the Noon Prophet.

Bloody vultures. Harry feels sick.

The offending article is less an account of how to survive the impossible and more of a compilation of all available information, including crime scene observations from the aurors, testimony from Bathilda Bagshot, and quotes from Albus Dumbledore himself confirming that the scattered ashes they found in the wreckage of Godric’s Hollow was in fact what remained of Lord Voldemort.

It doesn’t matter what the article says. He has no idea where they got such a picture. He’s never seen it before. He was supposed to have seen it before. It was a family picture. Just a few hours ago, Harry had had a family.

It’s been hours, he thinks. He’s been sitting on his upturned trunk in a dark corner of the Leaky Cauldron for hours. He’s not sure. Time has passed irrationally. A single minute stretches on with Harry hyper-aware of his body, every ache magnified to the edge of unbearable. His breathing is deafening, it’s difficult to make out even the raucous voices around him. He can feel his heart throwing itself against his ribcage, too fast, too loud, just this side of painful.

And then the torturous minute ends, and four hours have passed and Harry has no recollection of them passing.

It occurs to Harry that he’s having some sort of nervous breakdown.

It does not occur to Harry that he could stand up and stretch to ease his aches. That he could grab a drink from one of the many patrons who have cheerfully declared to the whole pub Next round’s on me! and ease his thirst.

Harry cannot comprehend the idea of relief at the moment.

There is an emptiness clawing at his insides, tinged with desperation. The simple act of holding himself together in public summons a fatigue that goes down to his bones.

It is tempting to never move again at all.

The celebrations continue around him, what seem like hundreds of people popping in and out throughout the day simply to confirm the news and spread the word about other celebrations taking place around Britain. They pay him no mind.

Likewise, Harry ignores the coming-and-goings of the wizarding world. This corner of the Leaky Cauldron is a world all on its own. He notices his fingers trembling as they hold the copy of the Noon Prophet, so he sets it aside and clasps his hands together, brings them close to his body. Hunger, he tells himself. Magical exhaustion. From the time travel. He closes his eyes tightly.

Harry is alone.

Get up, Harry.

It should not be this difficult. He’s always been able to get back up before.

Enough wallowing.

Then again, Harry had never been alone before. Ron and Hermione had always been there, whether or not he’d wanted them to be. As had the Weasleys. Dumbledore’s Army. The Order. Even Snape, though he hadn’t known it at the time. Hell, even his parents — through both Priori Incantatem and the Resurrection Stone — had found a way to be with him. Harry was never truly alone.

He isn’t even supposed to exist in this time.

In 1981, he is not Harry Potter.

He could die, right now, and no one would know any better. The timeline would remain unchanged.

(Dear lord, Harry! How long have you had these thoughts?)

As long as he didn’t die via soul magic — as long as he didn’t use the Killing Curse — young Harry Potter, his present counterpart, would grow up just the same, oblivious to the sacrifice he would have to make. And his present counterpart would make it, just as he had. Perhaps this time, instead of Dumbledore, young Harry Potter would encounter an older version himself in that all-white world between life and death. Perhaps they could depart together, their shared soul undamaged, horcrux and all.

And let the rest of the world deal with Voldemort.

Let the rest of the world deal with the war, and its consequences, and a Dark Lord who may or may not be defeated without his aid.

Let the friends he has already mourned die once again, let an unknown amount perish in addition to them. Let Hagrid carry his truly dead body out of the Forest, and the fight resume around his corpse. Let the survivors mourn him instead.

(Do not pity the dead, Harry.)

Would he have done it, had it not been Dumbledore who greeted him? At seventeen, had someone explained to him the damage he would be doing to his own soul by reviving and leaving the horcrux behind, would he have still gone back? At seventeen, not knowing the despair a broken soul causes, could he convince himself to leave his friends in the uncertainty of war for the certainty of an afterlife?

…Could he even do it now?

Harry heaves a great sigh, runs his hands down his face, tired.

“Damn you and your conscience,” he mutters.

The cobblestones look the same, Harry thinks idly. Head down like this, he could almost pretend he hadn’t just traveled thirty-three years into the past.

…Thirty-two.

Diagon Alley is crowded, not busy. People are out and about, blustering and loud and rushing from one store to another, but they trade only in gossip and news. Some stores — Potage’s Cauldron Shop and Wiseacre’s Wizarding Equipment, Harry notes as he walks by — have signs proclaiming themselves closed for the festivities, please drop by tomorrow, thank you. Slug & Jiggers is mercifully open, even as the witch behind the register is deep in conversation with several chatting customers when Harry steps into the apothecary, a small bell at the door jingling as he steps inside.

“Madam Jiggers,” Harry greets with a small inclination of his head.

“Be right with you in a moment,” says Mrs. Jiggers behind the register. To the small cluster of witches, she bids hasty farewells.

Harry stays on the far side of the counter and begins pulling jars out of his trunk. By the time Mrs. Jiggers finishes her goodbyes (“—yes, of course, the minute Horace drops by, I’ll let him know—”) Harry has about a dozen bottles and glass mason jars of varying sizes full of potion ingredients all set out.

“Ah. Selling, then?” Mrs. Jiggers feels around beneath the counter and pulls out a pair of heavily-magnified goggles with smaller stackable lenses to boot. The result is Mrs. Jiggers appearing to have one massive eye and another eye slightly smaller than would be normal. “Let’s see here — oh!” Her comically disproportionate eyes blink in surprise as she takes in the amount of ingredients in front of her. “My, but you’ve been busy. Been doing some traveling, then?”

“Yes,” Harry answers stiffly, not in the mood for conversation. Then — realizing just how long this is going to take as Mrs. Jiggers pulls out several cotton swabs, small vials of clear liquid, eye-dropper tools, and various strips of what he recognizes as enchanted paper used to test the quality of ingredients — Harry adds, “Just made it back to London.”

Mrs. Jiggers hums her acknowledgment as she inspects a bottle labeled Dragon’s Blood (Antipodean Opaleye) with the materials. “First of many, by my reckoning, now that You Know Who’s gone. I know plenty of your lot fled the country when things started heating up.”

“…‘My lot?’” Harry asks, knowing full-well he won’t like the answer.

“I mean muggleborns, of course,” Mrs. Jiggers says easily, looking pointedly at Harry’s old coat and trousers. “Now, I’ve nothing against muggleborns,” she continues, completely missing Harry’s expression as she sets aside the dragon’s blood and begins unspooling a unicorn tail hair. “But one can’t help but notice that, for people who insist they belong in our world, they sure do jump ship the minute the political climate doesn’t favor them! Now that You Know Who’s gone, they’ll all come flooding back.”

Harry grits his teeth and reminds himself he really needs this woman’s money.

“Not all muggleborns left, of course,” the woman just doesn’t stop. “Credit where credit is due. You’ve heard of the Potters, right? I hear,” — she drops her voice to a conspiratorial tone — “that the wife was a muggleborn herself!” She looks Harry over once again and nods. “Did you know her?”

Harry lets out a deep breath. “I did not.”

“Pity.” Mrs. Jiggers drops her attention back to the ingredients. “She was one of the good ones, I tell you. A good witch. Good wife, stayed with her family until the end. Ah —” She looks up at Harry as if just realizing something. “I don’t blame the ones that left, of course,” she says, hands up in a gesture that is somehow just as condescending as it is meant to be placating. “I appreciate the trade opportunities that come with travelers.”

Harry hopes the grimace he gives can be taken for a smile. “Of course.”

It takes far too long for Harry’s liking, but Mrs. Jiggers is thorough with her examination of some of the most expensive potion ingredients her store has to offer, despite the uncomfortable silence on Harry’s part only increasing with her every small comment. At around the hour-mark, Mrs. Jiggers makes a half-hearted attempt to sound interested in Harry’s supposed travels — a conversation he cuts short, since he didn’t actually gather all of these ingredients in the wild and has only a faint idea of how such things are managed. His shortness seems to reinforce whatever estimation the witch holds of him; she looks slightly smug throughout the rest of her inspection.

Finally — finally! — Mrs. Jiggers re-seals the last jar in the lineup, one containing seven beozars, and looks up to him with a smile. “Such high-rate ingredients! And variety, too… Let’s call it an even two hundred galleons, hmm?”

It’s less than a fifth of what he paid for them, but then, he knew they’d be worth less in the eighties, and had taken into account that what he’d bought had been marked up. Still… “I think this is easily worth eight hundred.”

Instead of haggling, as Harry knows is common practice when selling to a shop in the Alleys, Mrs. Jiggers continues to smile sweetly at him. “I think I’d know quite well what these are worth, seeing as I sell them. You won’t get a better offer anywhere else. Really, I’m doing you a favor.”

Harry scoffs. “Well, I think you want to take advantage of any odd muggleborn that comes your way, betting they won’t know any better. Too bad for you, I do know how much my ingredients are worth.”

“I don’t think you’re in any position to argue with me, son.” She pushes the jars on the counter a little farther from him. “You clearly didn’t gather all of these yourself. One can only imagine where you actually got them.”

It’s been a long time since Harry has last been wrongfully accused of stealing. Indignation is quick to rise. Harry leans forward slightly over the counter, voice is low and dangerous. “And where, exactly, are you suggesting I got them from?”

Mrs. Jiggers backs away slightly, eyes flicking from Harry’s face to his hands and back again. Harry doesn’t have a wand — wouldn’t have drawn it for something like this anyway — but Mrs. Jiggers doesn’t know that. “I — I’m sure I don’t know!” she stutters out before giving him another once-over and seemingly finding confidence in what she sees. “The aurors are sure to find out, though! I’ve — friends — who are aurors, you know!”

“Your friends would be hard-pressed to find any evidence of wrongdoing!” he snaps, even as his heartbeat quickens. It would be all-too easy for aurors to look into his trunk and find a half-dozen ingredients whose sale is highly restricted by the Ministry. She could be lying, but given that Harry knows the Slughorn family co-owns Slug & Jiggers Apothecary, he has little trouble believing she has friends in high places who would happily investigate any suspicious individual giving her trouble.

Stupid, he berates himself. Neither he nor Ron or Hermione — (a sudden pang of grief goes though him, a wave of hopelessness; he corrects himself) — he hadn’t foreseen this. He’d known anti-muggleborn prejudice would be at all-time high while Voldemort was about, but he hadn’t realized it would extend to him personally, even knowing he would be wearing muggle clothes and have no established connections to the wizarding world.

Mrs. Jiggers remains undeterred as Harry contemplates his stupidity. “Oh, please. As if anyone could gather four different types of dragon’s blood while gallivanting out in the wild — on the run, most likely!”

“Funny thing about friends is that anyone can have them — as I do, in a dragon reserve in Romania,” Harry says impatiently, tapping his fingers against the counter. “Even funnier is that you think you can scam me by threatening to call the aurors for merchandise you clearly want—” he gestures to the way Mrs. Jiggers has subconsciously leaned protectively over the ingredients “—and have already tried to buy, even while you’re the one claiming it’s stolen. So you can Floo your friends, and I can Floo mine, and we can drag this out for however long it takes to verify each of our claims — and then, when your baseless accusations turn up nothing, we’ll see which of our good names has been dragged through the mud.”

There’s a pause in which Mrs. Jiggers glares daggers at him, no doubt weighing his words and her chances, the legitimacy of the ingredients and his alleged friends, who they might be and the weight they may carry, his blood status and the political climate, her reputation and what he may be capable of doing to it — until, though gritted teeth — “Five hundred galleons.”

“Eight hundred.”

“Five fifty. I’m being reasonable.”

“Seven ninety. So am I.”

She makes a half-strangled, disbelieving noise. “I’m not going to-”

“Then I’ll take my business somewhere else.” Harry makes a move to grab the nearest jar.

“Six hundred, final offer.” Mrs. Jiggers puts her hand on top of the jar.

“Seven fifty and you might still have my patronage after this.”

“Seven hundred and you never set foot in my store again!”

“Deal!”

Mrs. Jiggers puts away her horribly-magnified inspection goggles with a few blinks and an indignant huff. She pulls out her wand, a thick receipt book, and a quill from under the register — the latter which promptly starts making note of the transaction, then sets about making a copy — and disappears into a backroom for a couple of minutes. When she comes back, it’s with a small bag of gold in her hands, which she drops in front of him unceremoniously. “Seven hundred galleons. Now get out of my store.”

Harry peers inside the bag, grabs a handful of galleons, and lets them slip back down through his fingers, raising an eyebrow at Mrs. Jiggers. It’s common courtesy for the storekeeper to cast the Counting Charm when dealing with large amounts of money, but he supposes he shouldn’t have expected courtesy from this particular storekeeper.

“Numera,” he says, concentrating on the money in his hands, and a smoky number 700 momentarily rises from the bag. He hears Mrs. Jiggers gasp, but pays her no mind. “That’s in order, then. Goodbye.”

He leaves the apothecary with both his gold and copy of the receipt in his pocket, trunk trailing after him, and looks around. That was too close for comfort. It is much too soon for all their plans to fail — though their plans failed the second he arrived in 1981 — especially for something as silly as a disagreement over potion ingredients.

Harry tries to think helpful thoughts.

He’s just congratulating himself on successfully avoiding a confrontation with aurors — he’s near the intersection between Diagon and Vertic Alley, just past the offshoot to Knockturn — when he runs straight into an auror raid.

Auror certification takes three years of training and at least five NEWTs no lower than an E. Once Kingsley Shacklebolt became Minister of Magic, he waived the need for NEWTs to anyone who survived the Battle of Hogwarts, but not the three-year training regimen. Which put Harry in the odd position of being an authority figure in the public sphere, a war hero, and a bottom-of-the-ladder new recruit within the Auror Corps.

Harry was about a year into training when he realized he just couldn’t do it.

He’d already been looking into soul magic by then, had already performed the Soul-Viewing ritual and was desperately trying to find out all he could about souls, unwilling to believe the damage was permanent. The Black Library, while large, was hardly the end-all be-all to soul magic. It was probably horribly out of date, Harry reasoned. If there was anything out there — anything out there — Harry was determined to find it.

It’s just that, well, books on soul magic — any type of records, really — were difficult to obtain, especially during the wave of no-tolerance policies against Dark magic that the Ministry had just passed and that the aurors, specifically, were supposed to enforce. That’s why he was nervous when, one morning, he received a summons to Head Auror Robards’ office and found not just his boss waiting for him at his desk, but Minister Shacklebolt himself, sitting on one of the seats opposite him and looking grim.

“Morning, Kingsley,” Harry greeted as he sat down beside him, stomach in a twist. Robards gave a disapproving huff at the casual address, and it only made Harry feel a little worse; Robards had never been impressed with him. “I didn’t know you’d be here as well. Is something wrong?”

“Your indiscretion has come back to bite us in the ass, just like I said it would,” said Robards.

Kingsley held up a hand and Robards quieted. “Hello, Harry,” he said with a tired smile. “I wish I didn’t have bad news every time we met.”

“’S not your fault,” Harry had said, staring at his intertwined fingers on his lap. He wished he’d gotten more than four hours sleep the previous night, maybe then he would be less jittery. Though he now had proof that the scar horcrux was gone, the nightmares had not abated, had only morphed to include a world of white — an incredible, unbearable white — and his skull being slowly pried open as the ghosts of his family watched and did nothing.

“Yes. Well, culpability aside, it is up to me to take responsibility for these things. Let’s get right to it, I’ve a meeting at ten.” Kingsley took a deep breath. “Harry, have you read Skeeter’s new book?”

Robards pushed the book in question forward on his desk with a single finger, as if in disgust, and Harry was treated with the sight of a fifteen year-old Tom Riddle smiling smugly at the camera, holding his plaque for Special Services to the School on the cover.

Death and His Followers: From Head Boy to Dark Lord was Rita Skeeter’s most controversial book to date. Released on the one-year anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, it received harsh criticism from the press, but that didn’t stop it from selling out the same day.

Harry swallowed tightly. “I’ve skimmed it.”

“You may have noticed, then,” Robards began lowly, “the entire chapter dedicated to horcruxes, for which Skeeter cites — you.”

“She doesn’t—” Harry stumbled. “She describes the basic idea of them, but she doesn’t even say what they’re called—”

“Which only goes to show — the wizarding world’s worst gossip monger can restrain herself better than the thrice-dammed Boy Who Lived!”

Harry had flinched, drawn into himself, which had only made the Head Auror scowl deeper. Perhaps, if he could have had more than a couple of night’s full rest in a row, if he hadn’t already been so on-edge, wasn’t being followed by what felt like a deep ache in his chest that left him so constantly tired… he might have been in a state of mind to defend himself.

Kingsley sighed, again the sound of disappointment. “You know we would have preferred it if you had not mentioned the fact that Voldemort made horcruxes to a courtyard full of people at the Battle of Hogwarts. I know,” he raised his voice slightly when Harry looked like he would speak. “I know you had your reasons to goad him so. I am not here to discuss that. What’s done is done. We must move forward.” Kingsley looked down at his wristwatch. “Head Auror Robards and I set up a watch in a few underground markets. Undercover aurors — and several inside sources — keeping an ear to the ground for anyone who might request information on horcruxes, necromancy, soul magic and the like.”

“Oh?” Harry wondered whether his prison cell could be comfortable if Kingsley succeeded in his latest endeavor of taking the dementors out of Azkaban. “Why’s that?”

“Use your head, Potter,” snapped Robards. “The first thing any stray, loyal Death Eater is going to do will be to try to revive their master. My aurors may have purged wizarding Britain, but we know several small players fled the country, and we know he had quiet supporters in the continent. They may even feel optimistic about it, now that it’s public knowledge that horcruxes were involved. Who’s to say there isn’t any way to repair one of them, to bring Voldemort back?”

“There isn’t. He’s dead.” And Harry should know. He was studying ‘horcruxes, necromancy, soul magic and the like’, after all.

“I believe you,” Kingsley said, placating. “That won’t stop them from trying, however. It also won’t stop any curious young witch or wizard interested in the term they overheard in that final battle. So we set up a watch, kept an eye out for signs. There were a few leads. We caught the Greengrass patriarch attempting to smuggle back some of the books that were confiscated from Malfoy Manor, for one.

“There has been an increase in activity lately, however. We may have a copycat on our hands. Head Auror Robards believes this is due to Skeeter’s book bringing it to attention, and I’m inclined to agree.”

“A copycat?”

“Many of the requests for texts on necromancy can be traced down to one man,” said Robards. “Slippery bastard. He’s been making plenty of noise, but no one who’s dealt with him has seen his face. He calls himself Thomas.”

No one has seen his face. Harry schooled his expression into one of mild concern, despite wanting to slouch in relief. “It’s a common name,” he said.

“It’s a pseudonym,” Robards said slowly, as if explaining to a child. “And after this thing came out—” he pointed to Skeeter’s book “—calling themselves Thomas while dealing in necromancy is a statement.”

He had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from correcting Robards. Harry hadn’t been making any sort of statement by blurting out ‘Thomas’ when a suspicious back-room seller had insisted on a name. He’d just been caught off guard, and since he’d recently been reading Death and His Followers, ‘Thomas’ had been the first name that came to mind. Truly, this was all Rita Skeeter’s fault.

Harry hadn’t even been researching necromancy, just soul magic theory in general. Authors tended to lump the two subjects together, but he doubted that defense would hold up in court. After being hounded for the worse by the Ministry, the press, and the general public over the last few years, Harry wasn’t keen on relying on his popularity to keep out of trouble. His fame would turn on him; it always did.

Kingsley had been saying something while Harry contemplated his name-choosing skills. “—ardless of that. We can discredit Skeeter’s claims, misdirect anyone trying to follow his footsteps. That’s where you come in, Harry.”

He snapped back to attention.

“We need you to claim, publicly, that Rita Skeeter made a lot of incorrect assumptions about Voldemort’s life. That you, being the man who defeated him — who researched his life in order to find his weaknesses — know better than she does. We need you to claim she misquoted you — that you never described any… what does she call them? ‘Soul tethers’. You will claim that the objects you mentioned having destroyed at the Battle of Hogwarts — do not say the word ‘horcruxes’! — were simply powerful, ancient enchanted objects, which Tom Riddle stole and twisted with Dark magic in order to make himself powerful enough to temporarily resist a Killing Curse. There was no soul magic involved. Understand?”

Harry didn’t answer.

A small crease formed on Kingsley’s forehead and Robards bristled. “Harry,” Kingsley continued, “I can have my secretary draft a script for you, if you’re unsure. We have Barnabas Cuffe himself on standby, willing to take your thoughts on Skeeter’s book.”

“An interview,” Harry said tonelessly. He’d lost track of how many interviews he’d had by then. Journalists had literally tripped over themselves to reach him the first time he’d been out in public after the Battle. One of them had splinched themselves in an attempt to grab on to him as he Apparated away. Most recently, he’d taken questions after his speech during said Battle’s one-year memorial.

(Mr. Potter, do you feel responsible for the lives lost while — care to comment on the claims that you possess the Deathstick? — to the families whose children were present during — opinion on the tracking of spells in certain households?)

“Is there something you’re not grasping, Potter?” asked Robards, but Harry continued to stare at Kingsley.

“You want me to lie,” said Harry. “To the press.”

“We need you to misdirect potential copycats,” said Kingsley.

“It’s a stupid lie.”

“Potter!” Robards snapped. “Show some respect!”

Harry gritted his teeth and ignored him, much more confident now that he knew they weren’t on his trail. “I can’t take back what I’ve said already. And it won’t change the truth of what Voldemort did. People should know what he did, what he was like, what fear made him capable of doing… it was his undoing. He made horcruxes and it didn’t work. What does it matter if people know how he destroyed himself?”

“It matters because it puts others in danger,” said Kingsley, frustrated. “A Dark wizard will not think of horcruxes logically, Harry, any more than Voldemort did. They will see only an opportunity where others have failed, and we cannot allow them even to fail at making a horcrux, because every attempt means another death. Can you not see that?”

“Me lying won’t fix that!”

Robards slammed a fist down on the desk. “My apologies, Minister, but this is getting nowhere. Potter, we are not asking for your input. We are informing you of what you — as an auror trainee and Ministry employee — are going to do. Whether or not you want to! It is your duty—”

“My duty? Really? Is this what a typical auror mission looks like?” Harry ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up in odd places. “Do you usually rely on an auror’s public image to mislead the masses? I will not lie for your convenience.”

“No, you will lie for the good of the wizarding world!”

“Who are you to decide what—”

“I’m Head Auror. And this is the Minister of Magic — telling you that if you wish to continue a career as an auror, you will learn to follow orders!”

“Fine!”

Robards looked triumphant at Harry’s declaration, but the small, self-satisfied smile graced his face for only a second before Harry started pulling at the badge affixed to his robes declaring him an auror trainee.

Kingsley sighed — that same tired, disappointed sigh that Harry had just recently begun to think so insufferable — and massaged his temple. “Harry, please think about what you’re doing.”

“I have.” He undid the clasp of his badge and slammed it on Robards’ desk. “I quit.”

It is perhaps more accurate to say a particular auror runs into him, Harry thinks. To be fair.

The auror completely bowls him over, having made a sharp turn into Diagon from Vertic, bringing both of them down painfully over Harry’s trunk. He doesn’t apologize, doesn’t even acknowledge Harry apart from pushing himself off of him and scrambling up as quickly as possible with a low and fervent curse.

Spells whiz out of the offshoot to Knockturn Alley behind Harry, where some altercation is clearly going on. There are loud footsteps — someone running, successfully avoiding all spellfire, heading their way — and just as the fugitive emerges from Knockturn at break-neck speed, the auror straightens up completely, places himself in between the still-downed Harry and the offshoot, and shouts “Protego!” all in one fluid movement.

The fugitive smacks headfirst into the invisible barrier that was just formed in front of him, hard enough that the “Stupefy! Incarcerous!” from the second auror giving chase are clearly procedure, as they hit an already unconscious, prone form.

Harry feels like he might as well have taken that same Stunner to the face, for all he’s able to process the scene in front of him. There is a part of him that tells him he should leave now — it grows increasingly urgent the longer he lays there like a deer in headlights — but there is a much larger part of him, one which he has been repressing ever since he left the Leaky Cauldron, which has just broken through a dam. It is a sort of helplessness that he hadn’t felt since his teenage years. A complete lack of direction.

The two aurors are efficient (and of course they are, Harry knows they are). The first one — a broad shouldered man with wide ears — brings down the barrier between them while the second — a woman with a round face and prim, short blond hair — tries to disperse the crowd that has gathered around them.

“This isn’t a show!” she snaps to a young couple who’d begun a wave of clapping through the crowd. “Go about your business — and steer clear! We’re just wrapping up here.”

Her partner levitates the body of the unconscious fugitive — a fleeing Death Eater, Harry would assume, given the robes he’s wearing. It floats behind him as he finally turns to look back at Harry, an apologetic smile on his face.

It is immediately replaced by shock.

“Frank, what—” Alice Longbottom comes up behind her partner and husband, only to gasp when she sees Harry’s face.

Harry has the odd, fleeting thought that Neville looks a lot more like his mother than his dad.

“James?”

He keeps his face carefully blank, but forgets to breathe.

How long has it been since someone commented on his likeness to his father? He’s twelve years older than James was when he died last night. Harry looks his years, perhaps even older with his newly-acquired scar and bags under his eyes, and has a different build than his father besides. But he knows the resemblance is there for anyone who cares to look for it, for anyone who knew James personally.

It would not have been much of an issue, had James’s face not been recently plastered over all major print media. Their similarities may have been an asset when it came to explaining the plan.

There had been a plan.

Alice is the first to come down from the shock. Her face falls, surprise making way for deep grief as she shakes her head slightly. “No,” she says slowly, disappointed. “No, I thought…” She shakes her head more firmly and steels her expression into something professional. “My apologies, sir. You look a lot like someone we… used to know.”

Frank similarly tries to compose himself. He offers Harry his hand and helps him to his feet, looking at him oddly all the while. As Harry is righting his coat, he asks, “Would you happen to be related to James Potter, Mr…?”

“Thomas,” says Harry, and immediately curses himself for it. “Er — Evan Thomas. I don’t know a James Potter, though the name does sound familiar.”

The two aurors introduce themselves as Frank and Alice Longbottom, shaking Harry’s hand in turn. The unconscious floating Death Eater drifting next to them draws some curious eyes, but the crowd disperses when they see there won’t be any more action.

“Yes, I expect it would sound familiar,” Frank continues dryly. “He’s been getting a lot of press lately. Always knew he’d be famous, that James. Always knew he’d make the front page with all the trouble he got up to. He had the makings of a fantastic auror, he doe— he did. Everyone thought…”

Alice places a comforting hand on her husband’s shoulder. “We should bring the scumbag in,” she says, nodding towards the Death Eater. Then, in a smaller voice, “And we can ask for a break. I think we’ve earned one.”

Frank nods halfheartedly and turns back to Harry with a forced smile. “Sorry about… you know. I didn’t see you there. You’re not hurt?”

Harry shakes his head, uncomfortable. “I’m sor—” he has to clear his throat, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

The words taste like ash in his mouth.

“That’s very kind, Mr. Thomas,” says Alice. “But we really must be going now.”

There had been a plan.

“Wait!” Harry calls out before the two can Disapparate.

You’re in danger. The words are on the tip of his tongue. But he is not Harry Potter in 1981. He is Evan Thomas, a wandless muggleborn who returned to London just in time to see the war end, after presumably fleeing the conflict. His only possessions are contained in a trunk that, additionally, contains potion ingredients questionable enough that they cannot be sold to a normal apothecary. Were someone to look into his background, they’d find no record of his existence beyond this very morning.

Evan Thomas, as he is, should have no knowledge of future Death Eater plans. He cannot tell them how he knows they are in danger. He cannot even specify how much danger they are in.

The Longbottoms pause and look at him expectantly.

“I… I’d like to thank you,” he says, thoughts going about a thousand miles a minute. “That man — that… Death Eater — he was heading right my way. You protected me. Let me… let me take you out to dinner. Both of you. It would be an honor.”

Frank and Alice look at each other. Alice raises an eyebrow.

“We’re only doing our jobs, Mr. Thomas,” Frank says. “Thank you for the offer, truly, but it is unnecessary.”

“Please, I insist. I know it’s not much, but… it’s nice to feel safe. Let me thank you properly.”

“Really, Mr. Thomas—”

They go back and forth a few more times, Frank insisting the danger to Harry had been minimal in the first place, as the Death Eater was already disarmed by the time he took off running, and Harry doubling down on his gratefulness. Harry catches himself using some of the same lines that he’d personally been given after saving someone.

“Perhaps it’s not such a bad idea,” Alice interjects, glancing quickly at Harry before looking her husband in the eyes. “We could use a dinner out. Mr. Thomas is being very gracious.”

Frank huffs out a chuckle. “I suppose he is,” he admits. Alice looks at him pointedly. “Oh… alright. It’s not exactly protocol, but Bones can hardly dictate our free time.”

Harry’s ninety percent sure that, in the end, the Longbottoms agree out of pity. Perhaps it is something in his tone of voice, a sort of desperation that amplifies his claims that the aurors made him ‘feel safe’, but they look at him with compassion and misplaced understanding when they agree to meet with him at six o’clock in Carkitt Market for a casual dinner. It isn’t the first impression he had hoped to make on the Longbottoms — not as people who had known his parents, not as law enforcement, not as members of the Order of the Phoenix — but there are more important things at stake than his pride.

The Death Eater floating behind them begins to stir and Alice absentmindedly Stuns him again over her shoulder. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Thomas,” she says, and the two take turns shaking his hand again. “We’ll see you at six.”

“See you at six,” he replies weakly.

Frank and Alice Longbottom Disapparate with a wave in his direction, unconscious Death Eater between them. Harry stands in the middle of Diagon Alley, staring mutely at the spot where they had just been.

He’s going to need a wand.

Vertic Alley intersects with Diagon at a ninety degree angle, just a couple of stores down the offshoot into Knockturn and opposite the path besides Gringotts that would lead one to Carkitt Market. Vertic is, as far as Harry can tell, both more expensive than Diagon and less popular. The alley is just as wide as Diagon, but the lack of street vendors give it the illusion of being bigger. The flagstones lay in straight rows, and the stores are small and have only a ground floor, which makes the sky look bigger behind them.

Harry doesn’t come here often — not out of any dislike; Vertic is charming enough, and generally less crowded than other wizarding streets — just because the shops here aren’t ones he usually has any need for. As he walks down the alley, he passes a florist, a photography studio, a children’s clothes and toy store, a tea parlor, a travel agency, a divination shop — ugh — and a store that seems to be dedicated entirely to candles. The particular shop Harry is looking for is at the end of the street, its window displaying a world map with various pins on it and a table holding several wand holsters in different designs.

People visit Romero’s Widely Ranging Wands — as the sign above the door establishes — strictly to buy wand accessories. Holsters, custom handles, polish, and the like. Or so they claim. It’s a matter of national pride, after all, that Ollivanders provide all the wands for British children. And everyone knows Ollivander’s wands are best — who would settle for some imports? Even if the smaller sign beside the shop’s door did claim to be selling ‘Fares from acclaimed wandmakers all around the world!’

Harry misses his holly wand, but is acutely aware that it cannot be his this time around. There is another Harry to whom it belongs. Besides, it’s been so long since he last used his holly wand, and the fact that the last time he’d held it in his hands, Harry had broken it… it would feel wrong to hold it again.

There is no chime to signal his entrance to the shop, but it is unneeded. Romero’s Widely Ranging Wands is a small store, with only space for a few shelves (packed with wand accessories), the counter, and a narrow door which Harry can only assume leads to the back. Behind the counter sits a bored looking woman with more flyaway hairs than those pulled into the thick, black braid that falls onto her back. She stares blearily out the window until Harry stands right in front of her, at which point she startles so badly she nearly falls off of her stool.

“Welcome to Widely Ranging Wands, how may I help you?” she says hurriedly and automatically, with a slight Spanish accent.

Harry lets her gather herself before answering, “I’m looking to buy a wand.”

“Really? I mean — yes. Yes, of course, we have many wands to choose from.” The woman — Romero, Harry assumes — stands up straighter. “Do you have a preferred Wandmaker or style? An affinity you want to strengthen?”

“Erm, just… whatever fits best, I suppose.” It sounds more like a question.

Romero gives him an unimpressed look. “Yes, of course whatever fits, but how do you want it to fit? We can emphasize — oh, but don’t mind. I can show you the wands that resonate the best with your magic. Unless you want a custom-made.”

Harry didn’t know one could have a wand custom-made, and briefly wonders whether he could simply ask for a new holly and phoenix-feather wand, but abandons the idea with a small shake of his head. He doesn’t have the time to wait for any custom orders. “No, thanks. Whatever you have available is fine.”

“Very well. Here we go.”

Romero’s wand fitting goes very much like Ollivander’s in that Harry is accosted by a tape measure whose measurements are indecipherable to any but Romero herself, who takes ample notes. Apart from this, Romero asks him to hold several other objects: a small crystal sphere that turns a muted green in his hands after about a minute; a cup of water that doesn’t seem to do anything in his hands, but which Romero drinks from in between notes; and a small jar of seashells, which Romero asks him to shake and then pour over a velvet cloth which she’d set on top the counter. At this point, the tape stops measuring the distance between his ear and shoulder, and moves to measure the distance between individual seashells.

“Hmm.” She pauses in her note-taking, though the tape measure continues in front of her. “You know, Mr…?”

“…Thomas,” Harry says after a pause, trying to sound like the name is familiar. “My name is Evan Thomas.”

Romero nods slowly. Her eyes are dark in direct opposition to Ollivander, but they hold the same kind of unsettling depth when she looks at him. “You know, Mr. Thomas, most wands grow along with their wizards, so they always ‘fit’. There are arguments in the community — can the wand influence the wizard with its affinity just like the wizard can influence the wand with its use? It is very debated. What we do know, however, is that both wands and people change. And if they are not together during the change, wand and wizard can clash. You see it a lot when someone loses their wand and finds it again much later. That is most of my business, you know. Wizards too ashamed to go back to Ollivander because suddenly the wand that chose them when they were eleven does not choose them anymore…”

She snaps her fingers twice; the tape measure, cloth, and seashells clear themselves off the counter.

“As if change is something shameful,” she scoffs, still looking right through him.

Harry doesn’t say anything.

“I have several wands for you,” she says, turning to the narrow door behind her.

It opens and Harry can see that it does not, in fact, lead to the back, but into a closet with cubbies chock-full of thin, rectangular boxes. Romero takes a hold of a shelf and drags it to the side; the shelves slide easily, revealing even more shelves and wand boxes. She continues sliding the shelves — browsing — for what must be the distance of at least the entirety of Vertic Alley, plucking a box from here and there, humming to herself. When her arms are full, she places them carefully upon the counter and pushes the door to the closet closed with her foot.

“These might all choose you. The one you pick depends on where you are right now and where you want to go.” She waves her hand over the wands as if saying go ahead. “A simple Lumos will do.”

The process that ensues is very unlike his experience with Ollivander. The first wand he picks up responds to his magic well enough, he casts Lumos with no problem. When he looks up at Romero, though, she shakes her head and insists he try them all, focus on what he wants his magic to feel like, and take his time. Harry acquiesces and realizes that all the wands on the counter respond to him, though in minutely different ways. The short wand made of some dark, intricately carved wood feels almost sharp in his hands, as if impatient with him. Another, made from a light wood, makes his Lumos particularly bright, but the casting leaves him feeling exposed and there’s an undercurrent of dread to it. He puts that one down quickly.

He tries them all as requested, and then tries them again, feeling for those minute differences. After about a quarter hour of going back and forth, he comes back to a particularly vibrant wand. It is made of a light caramel brown wood with a couple of pink streaks running lengthwise. It feels… almost heavy in his hand, but in a comforting way. Familiar. When he casts, the light of his Lumos seems to shine up to and only up to the places Harry wants to reach, withholding the rest with an almost grim understanding of his magic. Resolute.

“Plum wood, White River Monster spine core,” Romero says quietly. “Twelve and one quarter inch. One of Thiago Quintana’s last masterpieces before his retirement.” She begins putting away the rest of the wands, though Harry gave no indication of having chosen this one. He supposes it’s obvious. It feels obvious the longer he holds on to it, like a natural extension to his hand. “Good for precision and protective spells.”

“How much?”

“Eight galleons. And I can throw in a holster for thirteen sickles.”

Harry declines the holster and pays without a fuss, not letting go of the wand for a moment. He tries to keep a pleasantly polite expression as he exits the shop, but gives up after a few seconds, grin spreading ear to ear.

Wandless magic is useful, but this is… this is…

He’s lightheaded with joy.

Harry has his full range of magic at his disposal for the time in years. He still feels that slight pressure on his shoulders, that subtle heaviness in his heart that he identifies as the foreign piece of soul lodged in his own, bogging him down. But for a moment, feeling the ease at which this wand calls on his magic, feeling that thrill of power — knowing he’s not helpless anymore — he could swear he’s eleven years old again, having just discovered magic.

He twirls the wand in his fingers, relishing in the simple act of holding it in his hands, and points it at his trunk. “Reducio,” he says, smile growing even wider when the trunk shrinks rapidly. He has to restrain himself from flipping it in the air like a coin, instead places it in his coat pocket.

Let’s see, what else…? Ah!

He doesn’t even have to concentrate to cast. “Expecto patronum!”

Silvery light erupts from his wand, immediately forming into a familiar stag. Harry feels like bursting. He grips his wand tighter.

Yes, just for a moment, everything is right with the world. Harry watches his Patronus trot around for a moment, drawing the attention of a few shopping wizards and a couple of young children, who begin following it in delight.

Harry’s smile steadily fades as he watches. He can almost pretend it was worth it.

After a few minutes, the Patronus comes back to him, looks at him with what Harry could swear is a chiding expression.

“I know,” says Harry. He swallows thickly. “I know… Prongs.”

Harry releases the spell. The stag Patronus inclines its head toward him as the light fades in the wind.

“You quit the auror program?”

Ron had paid him a visit during his lunch break, though Harry hadn’t realized the time back then, glancing at him just long enough to notice Ron’s auror trainee robes — a lighter shade of burgundy than those of full-fledged aurors — before turning back to his drink. He hadn’t heard Ron come in, but that was hardly surprising. He wasn’t sure how long ago he’d asked Kreacher to bring him the strongest liquor available in the house, but judging by how the kitchen was swaying slightly beneath him, it had been long enough that he was on his way to getting quite smashed.

“Yeah. So?” Harry mumbled, pouring himself another two fingers… or thereabouts, anyway. He was having a hard time measuring.

He jumped a little when Ron took the bottle from his hand out of nowhere. “So,” Ron said, ignoring the little noise of protest Harry gave as he placed the bottle out of his reach on the table. “Where’d this come from? You never said anything about wanting to quit.” He sat down on the chair opposite Harry, trying to catch his gaze. “You really left me to the wolves, you know? Everyone rushed me the minute the news got out. A little warning would have been appreciated.”

“Sorry,” Harry said in a small voice, guilt as deep as his cups.

Ron waved him off. “Nothing I can’t deal with. But what happened?”

Harry shrugged, took another swig. “I’m so tired, Ron.”

“Of training?”

“Of… just in general. I’m tired… Did you know—” Harry looked up, saw the deep concern on Ron’s face, and looked down at the table again. He drank the last of the liquor in his cup. “I missed my NEWTs,” he said quickly. “I told McGonagall I would self-study, you know? And take my NEWTs in June, even if I didn’t need them. But — NEWTs were last week. And I just — forgot, Ron.” Harry laughed helplessly, hands tightening in hair. “McGonagall, she — she said she looked forward to seeing what I could accomplish. And I—” He snapped his mouth shut, suddenly self-conscious.

“Hey,” Ron started. “You’ve had a lot on your mind lately. No one would blame — no, come on, Harry.” Ron moved the bottle further away when he tried to reach for it.

“Kreacher!” cried Harry.

The elf appeared in the kitchen with a soft pop!

“Harry needs some water, Kreacher,” Ron said before Harry could remember what he was supposed to say to get another drink.

“Whatever Master needs.” Kreacher snapped his fingers and Harry’s cup refilled itself with water.

“Thanks, Kreacher, that’s all,” said Ron.

The old elf bowed and was gone just as quickly as he arrived with another soft pop.

Harry gave a long, mournful no and plonked his head on the table. He heard Ron give a small sigh, the sound of a glass against wood, and then felt something cool against his fingers; Ron had pushed the cup of water into his hand.

“Come on, Harry,” he said gently. “I’m sure McGonagall hasn’t changed her mind. She never changes her mind.” A pause. “Is… that why you quit? So you have time to study for next year?” When Harry refused to say anything, he continued in a sort of aimless ramble. “It’s not a bad idea. Take some time off, maybe figure out what you want to do. Give yourself options, as Hermione would say… She’ll be thrilled for you. Probably go on one of her ‘told you so’ speeches, but thrilled, I’m sure. She never misses an opportunity to draw up a study schedule.”

A minute passed. Harry could feel Ron’s eyes boring into the back of his head, but he continued to study the fine wood grain of the table.

“Harry.”

He could feel shame crawling up his neck. He held very still, despite the kitchen’s persistent swaying.

“You can go back if you want to,” Ron said quietly. “Robards pulled me aside. He said to tell you — you’re welcome back, at any time. Said they could chalk up news of your resignation to rumors.”

Harry scoffed lightly. It figured. Harry Potter Resigns! was hardly the headline they’d hoped for.

He still couldn’t bear to look directly at Ron, but slowly he pushed himself to an upright position. He stared listlessly at the water glass in his hand, took a sip. It left a bad taste in his mouth.

“I’m so tired of interviews, Ron,” he said quietly.

“I don’t blame you, mate,” said Ron. “No one blames you.”

He hides in an alcove at the entrance to Knockturn Alley and changes his appearance before going any further; he has some foresight. Harry conjures a handheld mirror and points his newly-acquired wand at his face. Transfiguration has never been his best subject, but he manages to give himself a wider nose and higher cheekbones. Eyes are tricky, even for a Color-Changing Charm, so he opts to simply tint the lenses of his glasses slightly. He gives himself long, mousy brown hair and a scruffy beard that together conceal most of his scar, despite the fact that it’s much longer now. He knows from experience that nothing short of disfiguration will completely conceal his scar, not while he’s still a horcrux. Once he figures out a way to safely extract it, the scar should eventually fade.

If he can safely extract it.

The finishing touch is simply changing his coat’s color and concealing the pockets’ metal zipper, which is what Harry thinks gave it away as muggle clothing.

Knockturn Alley is never crowded, but it is outright deserted when Harry emerges from the alcove. The recent auror raid probably has something to do with that. He doubts the raid constituted solely of the Longbottoms after a lone Death Eater; Harry had likely ran into the tail end of it, and the Daily Prophet would report just how many Death Eaters had been captured in tomorrow’s paper. As it is, he can see some evidence of a fight — a few scorch marks on the walls, some overturned merchandise — and there is an official-looking notice placed on the front doors of the local pub, the White Wyvern, declaring it closed while under auror investigation.

The alley is narrow, the buildings looming, the shadows long. The sun sets early in Knockturn Alley.

Mr. Mulpepper’s Apothecary gives no indication that it is open. There is only one sign Spellotaped to the dusty display’s window: We DO NOT sell unicorn blood — DON’T ASK!

Harry doesn’t bother with the front door, knowing it’s closed so soon after a raid. He goes straight through the small gap between the buildings and gives three quick raps on the apothecary’s back door. It takes nearly a minute, but the door cracks open as much as it can while still locked with a chain.

“Business?” asks a raspy voice from within.

“Selling,” says Harry.

“Hmph.” The door closes, there’s the sound of a chain clinking, and Harry is ushered quickly inside.

Mr. Mulpepper is a wiry old man who doesn’t waste time on pleasantries — or any sort of chatter, for that matter. Harry places his merchandise on a worktable in the backroom of the shop, and Mr. Mulpepper appraises each of them. The process of selling and checking potions ingredients goes much the same as it did at Slug & Jiggers, albeit with ingredients whose sale is restricted and minus the strained conversation. If Mr. Mulpepper thinks his ingredients are stolen, he doesn’t mention it.

His eyes widen when he opens a particular wooden box. “Are these—?”

“Basilisk fangs,” Harry confirms. He’s only selling four of them, keeping nine fangs to himself. Enough to destroy all the horcruxes with some to spare, because why risk it? “Venom still intact,” he adds, and watches the storekeeper’s eyes glint with newfound interest in amusement.

Mr. Mulpepper is just as stingy as Mrs. Jiggers, and drives a harder bargain, but Harry still walks out of the store with nearly triple what he had before.

He passes once more by the closed-off White Wyvern, its windows dark and empty, the Ministry notice glaring at him from where it hangs on its front door. He grits his teeth and keeps going.

The Leaky Cauldron is full — not nearly as chaotic as it had been in the morning, but full. He half expects there to be no vacancy, but Tom just smiles at him and points him to his room. It’s only after he’s safely behind a locked door that he drops the transfigurations on his body, slumping down heavily onto the bed.

It is mostly silent in the room; he can hear various voices from Diagon Alley through the slightly open window, carried in the wind, but the raucous still ongoing celebrations within the Leaky Cauldron itself are muted behind his locked door. As if everything were happening far, far away from him.

He wards the room for privacy anyway.

Harry pulls out the shrunken trunk from his pocket, re-sizes it. There isn’t much left inside, with all the ingredients gone. A few sets of clothes and toiletries, the box of leftover basilisk fangs, the first aid kit, and…

There is a hidden inside pocket in the lining of the trunk, sewn in there by Hermione (And what makes you think I know how to sew? No, knitting isn’t the same, you should know how — oh, just — you’re doing it wrong, just give it here), sewn shut. Harry traces the seam of it, perhaps imagining the point at which it changes from an irregular line into small, precise points. It’s incredibly difficult to spot, right at the corner of the trunk and well-camouflaged.

He retrieves the small scissors from the first aid kit and begins cutting.

There, in the isolation of a warded room at the Leaky Cauldron, with only the quiet snip… snip of the scissors breaking the silence, Harry lets himself think painful thoughts.

There had been… a plan. A carefully construed plan, devised first by Harry and meticulously edited by Ron and Hermione.

There had been research, a list of dates and locations of Death Eater raids, a list of names of those involved. There would have been a letter-writing campaign, a slow-but-steady approach to gaining the trust of the Order, of establishing himself as a reliable source of information, all while gathering horcruxes. He would have eventually approached Dumbledore, after proving himself an ally — and he could have met his parents.

Not as family, of course. He would have had to lie and, depending on how he was received by the Order, either claim to be a long-lost Potter cousin or change his appearance altogether. Best case scenario, he might reveal he was from the future to a few select people, and simply refuse to explain the how.

(Just tell them it’s for their safety or something. The magic is just too dangerous, etcetera. Bet Dumbledore will love that.

Ron, darling, my love? If someone told me they found a way to change the past without paradoxes and then refused to tell me how, I would hate them.

Good thing you won’t be there, then, huh, ‘Mione?

Ron.

No, he’s right. I could sell that.

Harry!)

They couldn’t have been a family, but Harry had hoped they might have been… friends.

His parents, who had died last night.

(Take me instead.)

The plan would need to be revisited.

Harry puts away the scissors and digs out said plans from the hidden pocket. It’s written in code, and mostly as keywords and strings of numbers that only Harry would be able to decipher as dates and locations — all crammed in ridiculously small handwriting into a few loose pages.

And tucked in between those pages, two things: a photograph taken at Ron and Hermione’s wedding featuring the whole family plus Harry, and the last letter Teddy had written him before he left.

He catches himself staring blankly at the space between himself and the photograph for an unknown amount of time, puts it down and shakes his head. He can’t… do whatever he’s been doing so far. Shutting down.

He is in the past, is he not? Even if he isn’t precisely when he wanted to be. People need him to keep it together. People needed him a year ago. The countless people who died in the war with Voldemort in the past year alone will not be getting up again. He has to keep moving, has to concentrate on helping however he can, and that means keeping the Longbottoms out of the crossfire for now.

Voldemort is still alive, even if only in the most generous sense of the word. Harry alone knows of the horcruxes. Harry is a horcrux. In all his years of research, he never encountered a way to destroy a horcrux without destroying its container. He may have been too late to cut the First Wizarding War short, but he is still in a position to prevent the second one.

Years of research, months of planning, thousands of galleons…

And his friends.

Lost.

Yes, the useless, pointless plan will need revisiting. It had been created under the assumption he would eventually be able to work alongside the Order. It had been created under the belief that Harry’s soul would be unharmed and untainted, that his very life would not be a fucking obstacle to their goals. Things were different now; Harry would have to work alone.

Harry is utterly alone.

It’s alright.

Does the war even matter anymore? Should he concentrate on figuring out what went wrong with the time travel and trying again? He doesn’t have access to the Hogwarts library, to the Headmaster’s collection, or to the Black library anymore — he doesn’t have the Black fortune. The ritual rings did not travel with him and he has no way of commissioning new ones, even if he were to suddenly know what he’d done wrong the first time. What hope does he have of undoing this?

There are thoughts that would consume him, if he let them, if he stood still long enough.

Harry has to move.

And he does. First by re-placing the plans in the hidden pocket, additionally protected by half a dozen concealment and locking charms this time around. And then by taking a hot shower in an attempt to relax. It fails.

The sun has set behind Diagon Alley by the time Harry is ready to go meet the Longbottoms. (For dinner. Merlin, what is he supposed to say?) He’s about to go downstairs when he hesitates, looking at his trunk. He’s confident any average wizard would be unable to open it, but…

Harry shrinks his trunk and stuffs it down his sock.

Those few seconds of hesitation are the reason he’s still inside the Leaky Cauldron when the news hits.

A barn owl flies in through one of the overhead windows just as Harry is about to reach the brick wall that leads into Diagon Alley. It is followed closely by a dozen owls more. A hush goes through the festivities as various patrons hurry to pay the owls out-of-pocket. It seems the Prophet has issued yet another bout of breaking news.

Harry gets a sinking feeling in his stomach. After this, he won’t be able to think about the Leaky Cauldron without thinking bad news.

The group of wizards closest to him — three generations of one family, by their looks — make impatient noises as the youngest of their lot fumbles with the coin purse. Harry is frozen on the spot, waiting. Gasps resound elsewhere in the pub.

“Bastards trying to get in one last hurrah!” says an angry voice from the direction of the bar. “They know their days are over!”

“Hurry up, lad,” says the eldest wizard of the group closest to Harry. “What’s it say?”

By the time the “lad” unfurls the newspaper, most people in the pub are deep in conversation once again and the overall mood has taken a dive. “Twelve muggles and one wizard dead!” he announces to the table’s various exclamations and disgust, eyes scanning the article. “But they caught the Death Eater that did it!”

“What Death Eater, lad? Who did it?”

Harry grimaces. He knows what the article says before the lad holds up the Evening Prophet for the whole table to see. MASSACRE IN LONDON, OVER 50 MUGGLE WITNESSES, reads the headline, accompanied by the photograph of a smoking crater in the middle of a street, right in front of an entrance to the London Underground and surrounded by muggle police cars and ambulances.

The lad points to a smaller picture further down the article, a photo of a young man being escorted by several Aurors out of the scene. The young man might have been handsome had he not been laughing and crying hysterically, covered in dust, ashes, and what one could only assume was blood in the black-and-white photo.

“Sirius Black!”

Chapter Text

Guilt settles on Harry’s shoulders like a well-worn cloak, heavy and familiar.

He used to stay up at night, after that disastrous night at the Department of Mysteries when he was fifteen. He used to lay awake through the small hours of the morning, wondering what he could have done differently. Counting the ways he could have done better, been better. And then the sun would rise, rays would hit dried-out eyes, settle across his pillow… and Sirius remained dead, Harry awake without him.

Could he have kept Pettigrew from killing twelve innocent muggles today, had he been there? Could he have stopped Sirius from pursuing him? Harry will never know, since accurate time travel clearly continues to be an impossibility for him.

He glances down at his wristwatch. It’s set incorrectly. He hasn’t adjusted the time to make up for his erroneous arrival in 1981. What time is it, really? Is his watch some two hours ahead, or ten hours behind?

Or am I just too late?

Harry shakes his head softly and keeps his gaze down. Every angry mutter in the Leaky Cauldron regarding Sirius Black abruptly cuts off the moment he steps through the magical gate into Diagon Alley, as if he’s slammed a door.

He has to keep moving. Sirius isn’t dead yet, he reminds himself. The blanket of guilt can wait.

Sirius… can wait.

Harry has a dinner date.

According to the files Ron had procured from DMLE Records, they’d targeted Frank first. They’d waited until he was alone, working some overtime at his desk in the Ministry of Magic while his wife went home ahead. A fellow auror spoke to him briefly at around seven p.m. on November 1st, exchanged nothing but friendly goodbyes before heading home himself. That was the last time anyone had seen Frank Longbottom sane.

Augusta Longbottom had declared both her son and daughter-in-law missing the next morning, and handed the aurors one of the most heartbreaking pieces of evidence Harry had seen on file. Augusta had dropped by his son’s house that same morning, as she had previously agreed to babysit Neville so that the couple could have some free time. She’d found the house already empty save for her grandson, crying in his crib. Tucked into Neville’s blankets had been a note, in Alice Longbottom’s handwriting.

A last, desperate note, so rushed it was nearly illegible:

Frank missing. DE past wards. At least three. Going out.

Going out, the note said, and Harry wonders what she meant. I’m going outside before they come in, maybe. I’m going out without a fight.

He thinks of Neville, tucked into warm blankets, undisturbed till morning.

The whole note had been splattered with blood, but there were no signs of a struggle. Harry assumed she’d purposely bled on the note, hoping for it to be used to scry her location. If someone had done so, there were no records of it. This doesn’t mean no one tried; there are a lot of legal hoops one has to jump through for the Ministry to authorize using human blood, so much so that Harry knows aurors have a habit of filing for permission retroactively, when they’ve already succeeded and there’s only a need for authorization so that their actions are ‘legal’ on record. Whatever wards the four Death Eaters had hidden under must have concealed them from blood scrying.

Harry morbidly wonders whether Frank was already insane by the time Alice was taken, or whether they took that descent together. It takes little more than three compounded hours under the Cruciatus Curse to inflict that sort of damage, from what Harry understands…

He looks at Alice Longbottom now, this woman whom he knows would willingly submit to torture and near-certain death if it meant her son had a better chance of surviving. It’s not an easy walk to take, quick as that decision must be made.

(Harry…! Harry, you’re not thinking of handing yourself over?)

She and Frank dressed casually for the occasion, their robes simple, complementary shades of blue, but clearly high-quality. They wore matching black cloaks, and Harry isn’t sure if they did that on purpose, if they meant to present such an unbroken front, a team even off the clock.

Alice sips her drink just for something to do, stares at the center of the table but sees something else entirely, a thousand miles away.

Night has already fallen and it is chilly enough that none of them shed their layers, but Carkitt Market looks beautiful, lit by hundreds of outdoor lanterns. The three of them are sitting in a circle at one of the tables in the outdoors terrace at Landings, waiting for their orders, and all of Harry’s attempts at small talk have ended in awkward silence.

He should have known — if the Longbottoms had been close to James, they must have also been close to Sirius. It’s been an hour since the Evening Prophet ran the headline, and it is clear by the look on Frank and Alice’s faces that they are having just a good a day as Harry.

He wonders if they blame themselves.

But that’s beside the point. They are here, with him, waiting for their orders at a popular restaurant in Carkitt Market, the chill of the evening just settling down. They are here, together, which means Frank Longbottom did not stay at the Ministry to work overtime, which means husband and wife didn’t get separated, which means neither of them has been abducted.

Miserable, awkward, Frank shifts uncomfortably in his seat, but he is decidedly not being tortured into insanity, so Harry counts that as a win.

Now if only Harry could ascertain they won’t get kidnapped as soon as they leave, that would be great.

And if Harry could be sure that Crouch Junior, Rodolphus, Rabastan, and Bellatrix Lestrange would be arrested despite not torturing the Longbottoms, that’d be fantastic.

Perhaps a letter. Dear Head Auror Bones, I must inform you that a group of four Death Eaters — all from powerful, influential families, including your own boss’s son — is currently attempting to capture and interrogate two of your best aurors. Proof, you say? No, no, I’ve none of that…

“—travels… Mr. Thomas? Evan?”

Harry is torn from his thoughts by Alice’s repeated bids for attention. “Hmm? Sorry — what was that?”

“I was just saying I imagine you must have met a lot of interesting people during your travels,” said Alice patiently, though her eyes were tired.

Ah, yes, his fictitious travels. The only time Harry has actually traveled outside of the UK was for his DADA Mastery thesis, which took him all the way to Latin America. As most things in his life out of the ordinary, it involved vast amounts of soul magic, and none of it is fit for pleasant, casual conversations.

“You know,” he says instead of explaining all this, “I’ve found that the most interesting people in the world are those you come home to. I’m glad to be back. If you’ll excuse me, I need to use the restroom.”

“Oh — of course.”

Frank winces slightly at the screech Harry’s chair makes against the floor as he pushes it back, and he can feel their stares as he weaves his way between tables across the restaurant.

Smooth, Harry.

But he can’t help the awkwardness of the situation. He can’t help his own reticence. The longer he sits at that table, the more he is convinced that this was a bad idea. What’s to stop Crouch and the Lestranges from simply enacting their plan a few hours later? Harry is stalling, not fixing.

He makes it to the restroom and locks himself inside a stall. His eye catches once again on his wristwatch.

(Two hours ahead, or ten hours behind?)

Perhaps this is the wrong approach altogether. Harry isn’t good at preventing confrontations. He can’t think of a peaceful conclusion to this; he cannot arrange for the guilty parties to face consequences without a fight and he cannot let them walk free either. He would take the fight directly to them if he could, but he doesn’t know where the four Death Eaters are currently based. Harry only knows where they were caught, after torturing Frank and Alice into insanity.

They had been found by chance. For whatever reason, the four Death Eaters had changed location, prisoners and all, and their new base of operations — a property owned by Barty Crouch Junior himself — was not nearly as well protected as their last. The DMLE file listed Alastor Moody as the arresting officer and very little information onward, so Harry suspects the Order of the Phoenix had been somehow involved.

Too bad the Order wasn’t big on record-keeping.

Harry rests his head against the stall door with a sigh. If he just knew where the Death Eaters are, he’s sure he can catch them unawares — but this is all wishful thinking, of course, because, vast as his knowledge of the future is, he hadn’t expected to have to deal with this specific situation and had therefore not researched the tragedy as in-depth as he perhaps should have.

He knows where they might be. He has a list of Death Eater hubs and known Death Eater residences and could hazard a guess, but that’s all it would be — a guess. There isn’t enough time to check all properties owned by the Lestrange family and perhaps the Blacks.

I can track Frank, Harry thinks desperately. If he let Frank get captured with a tracker on him — but no. Any wards that protect against blood scrying, of all things, will undoubtedly protect against tracking spells.

Unless… unless they’re conditional.

Spells like the Trace and the Taboo are conditional tracking spells, in which they can be placed on an action instead of a person. They will not activate unless this specific action is taken — actions such as performing underage magic in a muggle area, or saying the word ‘Voldemort’ out loud, respectively. Essentially, they are two-part spells — incomplete and undetectable until the action is taken, which is how they can easily get past wards. There is nothing for the wards to block or guard against, since the spell has not technically been cast as one passes through them.

Of course, conditional tracking spells are as powerful as they are complicated. There’s a reason that only large organizations have been known to use them effectively over vast regions, and that’s because the area of land one intends to monitor directly correlates with the amount of people it takes to cast it. Harry could probably manage… one of the bigger Lestrange properties.

Hardly useful.

But… Harry does know of one other two-part tracking spell, much, much smaller in scale.

The Collector’s Duo Spell is, technically speaking, a household dousing charm used to keep collections — or sets of items — together. Andromeda taught it to him during Teddy’s eighth birthday party, upon seeing Teddy unwrap a 500-piece puzzle box someone had gifted him. She’d cast the first spell on the whole box, and when they discovered a couple of the small pieces were missing weeks later, Andromeda cast the second spell and they were able to track down the missing pieces that had somehow made their way beneath the couch cushions.

Harry takes his coat off in that cramped Landings bathroom stall, examines it critically, eying one of the bottom-most buttons, which is starting to come loose. He starts casting.

“Partotum.”

Once he’s seated back at their table — their food has still not arrived, unfortunate but unavoidable with the amount of customers — Frank clears his throat. “So…” he starts, and Harry braces himself for another attempt at small talk. “What do you do for a living, Mr. Thomas?”

“Please call me Evan,” Harry insists for the third time that night. He then takes his time sipping his drink while he thinks of an answer. “I… used to teach — tutor,” he amends before they ask him where he taught. “Nothing nearly as exciting as being an auror, of course. I imagine that’s much more interesting…”

“What did you teach?” Alice asks, sounding mildly curious.

“Er, just… general Defense.”

“That was my favorite subject at Hogwarts,” Frank says lightly. “Did you attend…?”

“Hogwarts? Erm — no. No, I — er — I was privately tutored myself.” It’s a bad lie, one that wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny. Had Harry actually been muggleborn, it would have been extremely unlikely for his muggle parents to have the connections and direction within the magical world to be able to hire private tutors — not to mention enough money after the conversion rate into galleons. But Harry cannot claim to have gone to Hogwarts while in 1981; it’s too easily disproved.

Neither Alice nor Frank accuse him of lying, however. They simply look surprised. Frank blinks in confusion, but settles into a look of polite acceptance after only a moment. “Hmm, that’s a shame,” he says. “Hogwarts was fun.”

“Yes, I’ve heard.” Harry forces a chuckle, grasping for a change in subject. “I’ve heard stories — everyone seems to have at least one. Is — erm — is it true Hufflepuff throws the best parties?”

An age-old question, hotly debated among students whenever conversation is slow.

“Not nearly,” Frank says at the same time Alice says, “Oh, yes.”

Ah. Harry raises his eyebrows and hides a grin by taking another slow sip from his drink.

Frank rolls his eyes. “The amount of food present does not make a party great,” he says with such familiarity that Harry is sure this is the hundredth time he’s said it.

Alice gives a small huff, more out of fondness than true exasperation. “You only say that because you’ve never had it.” She places a mock-consoling pat on top of Frank’s hand and says to Harry, “Frank is still bitter he was never invited to a Hufflepuff party.”

Frank holds up one finger and makes sure Harry is looking at him as if to ascertain he’s listening. “No one outside of Hufflepuff house has ever been to a Hufflepuff party,” he says. “That’s a myth.”

“Their common room is lovely,” Alice says with a chuckle.

“Lies. No non-Hufflepuff has entered the Hufflepuff common room in at the very least a century—”

“No one invites poor Mr. Goody Head Boy,” Alice teases.

“—but it is irrelevant, because Gryffindor parties are the most fun, and that is what parties are supposed to be. Ergo—”

“Ergo, Merlin. That’s how I know I’ve won here, Evan. My husband gets formal when backed into a corner.”

“I most certainly do not.”

The conversation is ridiculous enough to draw a genuine laugh out of Harry, just as their food arrives. “Well,” Harry says as a waiter places a plate in front of him. “There’s one way to know for sure,” — he gestures to himself — “An impartial third party.”

Frank and Alice glance at each other, sharing a cautious look that quickly turns amused. “Very well,” says Frank — then to his wife, “You’ll see.”

Alice, though a Gryffindor herself, insists Hufflepuff parties were objectively the best, and believes her arguments should hold more weight as she — unlike Frank — has attended parties held by three different Houses. She describes the delicious buffets and live music present in the Hufflepuff parties as the three of them enjoy their own meals.

Frank simply describes Gryffindor parties with more and more fervor.

He describes how a few students would brave the patrolled nighttime corridors down to the kitchens, and how the whole House would greet them as heroes when they returned with the spoils. He describes one particular misadventure in which a giddy Gryffindor girl attempted to make the music louder by using Engorgio on the radio, and three other students had nearly been crushed amid their housemates’ laughter. He describes uproarious games that went on till morning and tired students who refused to go to bed and fell asleep right there in the common room, between their friends.

And if Frank’s voice wavers when he mentions four particular students and the pranks they would pull on those sleeping — if Harry’s breath stutters, if Alice suddenly goes still — they don’t draw attention to it. Frank doesn’t say their names.

Harry doesn’t settle the argument either way. He leans into nostalgia instead, and keeps the conversation going. He asks about Hogwarts castle, the grounds themselves, the teachers, the students, the House Cup. Frank and Alice explain his home to Harry as though to a stranger. Being four years older than James and Lily, the Longbottoms’ class was the first to be hit with the curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts post, and theories ran wild with them. They recall trips to Hogsmeade, attending the grand opening of Madam Puddifoot’s, watching as the rumors of the Shrieking Shack (—the most severely haunted building in Britain—) became legend. They recall Quidditch matches and prefect duties, group study sessions for their NEWTs and Sorting Hat songs.

They recall simpler times all the way through dessert.

At which point they’re interrupted by Barty Crouch Junior himself.

Frank is within arms-reach. Harry has subtly scooted closer throughout the meal; he fiddles with the torn-off button in his hand. Frank’s cloak has deep pockets, and they are just… an arm’s reach away.

That’s why Harry isn’t the first to notice. His seat is facing the restaurant and he’s concentrating on the Longbottoms, how they’re genuinely enjoying themselves as they share an ice-cream topped pie. What he notices is Frank’s gaze focusing on something over his shoulder.

Then comes a voice from just behind him, young and casual and unfamiliar in such a tone: “Well if it isn’t my favorite partners! Enjoying a good meal?”

“Hey, there, Junior,” Frank says with a wave.

“Young Bart,” Alice greets.

There is a presence at his back, someone leaning against the railing that separates the terrace from the rest of the market, just a foot away from him. Harry freezes, stops fiddling with the button, and — slowly — turns his head just enough to see him.

Barty Crouch Junior looks better than Harry’s ever seen him in memory or picture. He has sandy hair that curls a little at the end, freckles dotting his cheeks, and is not quite nineteen years old yet, if Harry remembers correctly. He’s the face of innocence.

“So this was that ‘important prior engagement,’ was it?” Crouch says in a lightly teasing tone. “Night out with the wife?”

Frank chuckles. “You caught me.”

“No matter, Frank. Can’t resent a man his life, can I? Oh, but, who’s this?” Crouch turns his attention to Harry, gaze sharp. Harry takes another sip from his drink and casually avoids speaking.

“Evan Thomas, a friend. We ran into each other earlier today,” Alice says, and she too is smiling. Harry wonders just how close the Longbottoms are to at least one of their torturers. How easy had it been for Crouch to simply… ask Frank to accompany him somewhere, alone?

Alice continues her introduction, unaware. “Evan, this is Barty Crouch. He works at the DMLE, in administration.”

Crouch turns that angelic smile toward Harry. He has dimples.

“That’s a kind way to say I provide the aurors their morning coffee,” he says, laugh just the right amount of self-deprecating to pass as endearingly humble. Beneath the cheerful veneer, Harry notices the small scrunching-up of his brows as Crouch takes in his face. “Mr. Thomas, was it? Pleasure to meet you.”

And he holds out his hand for Harry to shake.

Harry reminds himself they are in a crowded market.

“…Likewise,” he mutters, and engages in what must be the shortest handshake in known history.

Crouch is unfazed. “Say,” he says, planting his elbow on the railing and his face on his hand, so that his stare is now much closer to Harry, “haven’t I met you before?”

“I think I’d remember meeting the son of the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement,” Harry says, aiming for nonchalant. “If — I assume — that’s you?”

“Keep up with that sort of thing, do you?” Apart from a brief flash of annoyance in his eyes, Crouch gives no signs of ill-intent. He straightens up. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Barty’s keeping with the family legacy,” says Alice. “He’ll be the Head of the department in just ten years, watch.”

“Ten years?” Crouch clutches at his heart in mock-offense. “You wound me, Alice, I’ll be there in five.”

“Your coffee will need to be a fair bit better if you want to make it in five,” says Frank.

Crouch’s laugh sounds genuine, if a bit smug. “I deliver a lot more than just coffee, thank you. Which reminds me —” Crouch reaches into a messenger’s bag that Harry only just notices, and pulls out a bulky envelope with no address. “I was going to wait until morning to mail this to you, but since I have you here now… Bones would like you to look this over. Ah — just Frank, sorry.”

Alice stops just as she’s about to take the envelope from Frank’s hands. She frowns. “Just Frank?”

Crouch shrugs. “Said it was confidential.”

Harry’s certain, in that moment, that this is a ploy to separate the Longbottoms — and knowing Crouch, whatever lies inside that envelope is a portkey.

At the word ‘confidential’, Frank frowns and quickly tucks the envelope away inside his cloak, pulling it closer to himself. “I’ll look it over in private. Thank you, Junior.”

Oh, it’s definitely a portkey, Harry thinks. No witnesses when Frank opens the envelope in the privacy of his study, no wards to protect Frank from opening it if he carries the envelope inside the house himself, no one to claim he didn’t simply Apparate away on his own free will — except perhaps Alice, whom they’d no doubt collect later.

“It’s no trouble, Frank,” Crouch says with that same, easy smile. “No trouble at all. Though I should probably get going.”

Harry makes a split-second decision then. He concentrates on a glass pitcher, some three tables away, where a family of four is dining. He sends them a silent apology and, giving no outward signs that he’s performing magic, goes for a wandless, nonverbal Expulso.

It’s slow at first — a crack appears on its surface — and then all at once it shatters, drenching the table and eliciting a shriek from the lady closest to it. Frank and Alice react immediately, heads snapping towards the sound. Crouch turns also, face blank. Harry makes a show of startling slightly.

No one notices him drop something into Crouch’s open messenger bag.

It takes no more than a few seconds, and the Longbottoms settle down again. A waiter repairs the pitcher and dries the table.

“Some kid must have gotten upset or something,” Frank mutters.

Harry hums in agreement. He turns to Crouch, who is just straightening up, adjusting his bag. “Well, then,” says Harry. “Perhaps we’ll meet again.”

The smile Crouch gives him is unlike the ones before, full of teeth and promise. “Oh yes,” he says, “Perhaps we might.”

The Longbottoms don’t let him pay for dinner. He insists — he was the one to invite them, after all — but they wave him off, and Alice rolls her eyes and bids him to indulge her husband’s pride, however illogical. They settle for splitting the bill and part on good terms. He watches as they walk through Carkitt Market, hand in hand, as Frank leans in to whisper in her ear just as they turn the corner into Diagon.

Harry’s eyes dart to his wristwatch.

(Two hours ahead, or ten hours behind?)

Time to go.

He hurries to a dark corner of the Market, into the narrow alley between two closed stores, and pulls out his wand. Awkwardly, he casts the spell at the coat he’s still wearing, “Untotum.”

The coat glows briefly red. As the glow fades, Harry begins to feel the coat start to pull him forward, guiding him towards its missing piece — the button he’d planted in Crouch’s bag.

It’s weak, Harry thinks with a sinking feeling. He lets himself move forward with the straining coat, but the pull is hardly more noticeable than a strong gust of wind. Can he truly follow this? He’s only traveled by Blind Apparition a couple of times before — during his one year of auror training, where the tracking spells used to get to unfamiliar locations were decidedly stronger than this one. What are the chances that he’ll splinch himself horribly? And what other choice does he have?

Fuck it, he thinks, and tries to give himself over completely to the pull of the household tracking charm, mind concentrating only on keeping his body together, blank of destination — and Disapparates.

He’s weightless, being pulled along slowly — so slowly, he can’t breathe — through the rubber straw that is Apparition, until, finally —

Rain, thunderous, so thick he’s soaked completely in a second. It’s cold, and completely dark; a canopy of trees block out any moonlight. Harry feels faint. His spelled coat continues to push him forward, stronger now, but even this slight pressure makes him drop to his knees, dizzy. Why is he so dizzy? He lands in what is clearly mud, but — there’s something warm on his leg. What—?

Lightning flashes, just a hint of it through the trees, but it’s enough. Red. On his leg, from knee to ankle, as if someone took a particularly large potato peeler to his calf, taking a gouge of his trousers and all — red. He can’t see muscles because the blood pools too quickly for the rain to wash it off, but there’s no question that there’s a chunk of flesh missing. The blood is warm as it runs in rivulets off him, mixing down into the mud where he can’t distinguish it anymore. It’s warm, but Harry’s cold and getting colder.

That’s bad, he thinks dumbly. Where’s the pain? He tries to move his leg to bring it closer to himself, and has to choke back a scream — There it is.

Harry pulls his wand out with trembling fingers — Shaking already? — and Summons the miniature trunk he’d stuffed down his sock. It nudges the wound as it flies towards his hand and he nearly drops his wand as he snaps his hand back to muffle a cry. The storm should cover up any noises, but he can’t be sure. If the two-part tracking spell worked at all, he’s in enemy territory right now.

As quickly as he can, Harry re-sizes the trunk and Summons out another Blood-Replenishing Potion. He chugs half of it before turning to the wound with a steady, “Vulnera sanentur, Vulnera sanentur, Vulnera sanentur…”

The rain washes away the blood as muscle knits itself together — but it’s uneven at places; Vulnera Sanentur is a powerful healing spell, but it works best at closing wounds, not muscle regeneration. He misjudged how much regeneration would be needed. Oh well, too late to change tracks now, and it won’t be the first ugly scar on his body. There’s another flash of lightning, giving him a clear glimpse of this new addition, lumpy pink skin running all down his lower leg.

Harry downs the rest of the Blood-Replenishing Potion and takes a moment to gather himself. He doesn’t bother fixing the tear on the leg of his trousers.

His coat continues its insisting pull, the tracking spell still in effect. Harry shakes off his misgivings, wipes at his eyes in a futile attempt to shield them from the storm, shrinks the trunk back and re-places it back down his sock. If he’s lucky, Frank Longbottom has not yet opened the envelope containing the portkey, and Harry can catch the four Death Eaters by surprise with no hostages. It’s only been a few minutes since he parted with the Longbottoms, after all.

He stumbles along the woods, following his coat’s pull and nothing else — only to be stopped short just a minute later.

Wards. Strong ones.

Harry readies his wand with a sigh. He supposes it was too much to ask for a household tracking charm to enable him to Apparate past such wards.

Then he smirks. It’s been a stressful day. He’s almost looking forward to a fight.

In the end, he doesn’t have to bring down the entirety of the wards surrounding what he recognizes as a Lestrange property — due to the particularly painful paralysis curse he just barely evaded that was woven into the Anti-Disapparition Jinx placed in the wards. It was supposed to restrain anyone trying to do exactly what he was doing, and keep them in a contorted position, twisted by their own broken bones, until the master of the house saw fit to deal with the intruder. A favorite of the late patriarch Bastian Lestrange, and present in all Lestrange properties since the late seventeenth century, as far as future aurors and curse-breakers had been able to tell when they’d stormed the place. It was easy enough to bypass if you knew anything about curses; Bastian Lestrange didn’t invent it to be a stalwart barrier against intruders, he invented it to be cruel.

Harry left the Anti-Disapparition Jinx where it was, not wanting any of the Death Eaters to flee so easily, even if it meant he couldn’t do so either. He left all Muggle-Repelling Charms, not wanting the local muggle authorities to get involved. He didn’t even look at the plethora of charms protecting the fauna. No, in the end, the only enchantments he had to dismantle were the Anti-Foe Wards.

Not easy by any means, but he had enough experience tearing down Anti-Foe Wards from when he tried to renew the wards at Grimmauld Place only to find that the house still considered him an enemy, Kreacher’s allegiance be damned.

(He brings down the Anti-Tracking Spells partly so Aurors can find them if Alice leaves a note again, but mostly out of spite.)

It takes him about thirty minutes. The break is barely visible — Harry can only see it after years of studying magical theory, of training himself to see it — a spiderweb-thin thread circle in the air in front of him, expanding from the tip of his wand. As if a very large bubble was popping in slow motion. The wards retreat, slowly and quietly, like a thread unraveling, all over the property. It will take a few minutes for the entirety of it to be exposed, but it’s a domino effect that’s difficult to stop, and anyway —

Harry walks over the property line with none the wiser.

The rain is gentler within the remaining wards, and not nearly as cold — a Fair Weather Charm, he thinks. Heaven forbid a rough storm damage the blood supremacist’s rose garden while they’re busy torturing aurors. The dichotomy of it makes Harry roll his eyes.

And indeed, there is a rose garden — and some sort of fern garden, and a greenhouse — Harry steps out of the small woods and into what he now realizes is the backyard of not just any property, but the Lestrange Manor in Norfolk itself.

He Disillusions himself. There’s still his faint outline visible because of the rain, and his footprints on the grass, but it’s better than nothing. The short sprint across the garden is spent glancing at each of the manor’s windows for signs of movement. All remains still and dark as Harry approaches the door. He hears it just as he places his hand on the doorknob — faint through various walls, but unmistakable — an agonized scream.

He’s through the door and closing it behind him before the scream even tapers off, lips set in a grim line. It seems Crouch’s portkey was successful.

(Two hours ahead, or ten hours behind?)

His coat pulls him forward more insistently, as if desperate now that they’re so close. It leads him down the hall and past a grand staircase. He hardly notices the opulence he’s come to associate with old pureblood homes, takes no heed of his surroundings past the need to memorize the way to the nearest exit. He turns into a parlor at the behest of his spelled coat, barely registering the messenger bag carelessly set aside on a coffee table, which is what his coat is leading him towards. Harry cancels the spell with a muttered “Finite” (becoming visible once again) and hurries to the far side of the room, where an otherwise-innocuous bookshelf is open slightly, revealing a hidden staircase leading down — because of course the Lestranges have a secret dungeon entrance in their parlor, of course they do. There’s another piercing scream of agony, cut short, and there’s no question where it’s coming from.

But it doesn’t sound like Frank Longbottom.

Harry descends cautiously down the spiral stone staircase and strains to hear what’s going on.

“—fighter, aren’t you?” The mocking tilt of a woman’s voice is immediately recognizable as Bellatrix Lestrange. “But for how long?”

“Protego!” comes the desperate voice of Alice Longbottom, followed immediately by the sound of several bouts of spellfire hitting a shield. “Protego maxi— aaaaah!”

Alice’s scream is joined by a mocking rendition by Bellatrix, quickly turning into laughter.

“S-stop playing around, Bella, just disarm her,” says the voice of Barty Crouch Junior, oddly strained.

A gasp as a spell is lifted. A defiant, if wavering, “Protego maxima!”

Someone snorts.

A different male voice — one of the Lestrange brothers — says, “See, Crouch? She wants to play—”

That’s as far as he gets before Harry rounds the final corner. He takes in the scene in an instant. They’re in a barren stone chamber, empty save for the torches on the walls. Directly in front of Harry are the four Death Eaters, three of them crowding their victims — Alice crouches in front of her unconscious husband, one hand holding her wand aloft, the other poised protectively over Frank, cornered — while Crouch looks on at the foot of the stairs.

Harry’s “Ventus tria!” sends a typhoon-level gale of wind hurtling into the narrow room, sweeping Barty Crouch Junior completely off his feet and into the Lestranges. The Death Eaters, caught off guard, crash first into the Shield Charm that Alice erected, then into the wall farthest from the exit once Harry sweeps into the chamber and adjusts the angle of the spell.

“Go!” Harry tells her, standing between the Longbottoms and the Death eaters pinned to the wall. “Go, go!”

To her credit, Alice wastes no time with questions. She immediately picks up her husband, drops the Shield, and rushes to the exit.

One of the Lestrange brothers — Rabastan — is the quickest to recover. He sends a silent curse into the wall — the only place his pinned hand can point to — and some dark conjuring slithers its way inside the stone only to spring up at Harry’s feet, forcing him to end the Ventus spell to counter.

“Stupefy!” Alice sends down the stairs, catching Bellatrix Lestrange just as the Death Eaters drop from the wall.

And the fighting starts in truth.

Here is a picture of a battlefield: The parlor room in Lestrange Manor is large, dark, and cold. One wall has windows facing the rose garden, though its current guests would be hard pressed to see it, what with the dark clouds and storm blocking all moonlight. Another wall is covered mostly by shelves filled with books, sculptures, and various expensive knick-knacks the hosts could show off. On the wall directly opposite these shelves is a grand, ornate fireplace, large enough for an adult man to stand in.

It is to this fireplace that Alice Longbottom hurries to, husband over her shoulder, as Harry holds off the Death Eaters in the bottleneck that the secret passageway behind one of the shelves has created. She throws a handful of Floo Powder into the fireplace, shouting, “Auror Office!”

Nothing happens, of course. The Lestranges would have made very incompetent Death Eaters indeed, had they forgotten to seal the fireplaces knowing very well they were going to kidnap a couple of Aurors. But it would have been tragic if they had and the Longbottoms kept captive only for lack of checking. Harry can’t fault Alice for trying.

Someone must have revived Bellatrix, because she comes into the fight like a sight from hell, and suddenly Harry is on the defensive.

He hears a crash behind him. “Evan!” Alice calls him.

Harry retreats behind the makeshift barricade Alice has created out of some overturned heavy, ornate furniture just in time for a good portion of the wall creating the bottleneck to explode into the parlor.

The bookshelf teeters dangerously from its hinges, but holds. Bellatrix takes cover behind it and the rest of the Death Eaters pour into the room.

“Crucio!”

“Stupefy!”

“Confringo!”

“Protego!”

“Cru-”

“Expelliarmus!”

Spellfire fills the air as the dust from the exploded wall begins to settle. Harry sees his Disarming Charm hit Barty Crouch Junior, who curses loudly but ineffectively as he takes cover behind a couch, wand shooting out of his hand and clattering onto the opposite side of the room.

Alice casts nonverbally and hisses, “Evan, can you—?”

“I’ve got it,” he confirms, and proceeds to cover her while she ducks down to attend to her husband, who was still unconscious. “Ventus tria!”

Rabastan Lestrange is ready for him this time, and counters quickly.

“Sanentur,” Alice whispers, running her wand along the form of her husband. “Sanentur… Rennervate.”

Rodolphus throws a sickly-yellow curse at Harry, who ducks and retaliates. Rabastan uses his distraction to strike. Bellatrix cackles.

Harry holds his own against three Death Eaters for a good ten seconds.

It is, thankfully, enough time for Alice to rejoin the fight. For Frank to stir between them with a groan. For the room to take a breath. For Barty Crouch Junior to use the brief lull in fighting to lunge at his wand. For Bellatrix to —

“Avada kedavra!”

Nothing survives the Killing Curse.

His students tended to shoot him incredulous looks whenever he gave this particular lesson, but he would only double down. Nothing survives.

It’s dangerous for them to believe otherwise. It’s dangerous for them to believe that the power of love will save them as it did Harry, once. Harry knows enough about soul magic and rituals to understand that whatever magic Lily Potter wove that Halloween night to ensure her son’s survival included some unreasonable risks, and while her love for him was essential in it all, her circumstances are near impossible to replicate. He would not recommend her course of actions to anyone.

He cannot, legally, explain how he survived the second time.

So, whenever he reached his lesson on the Unforgivable Curses, Harry grit his teeth and insisted, barring any prophecies and curse scars, nothing survives the Killing Curse. The rest of the lesson included zero demonstration of Unforgivable Curses on spiders. Instead, Harry went over how to avoid being hit by the Killing Curse in the first place. He would open the question to the class.

Dodge.

Simple and effective against most curses. It’s a strategy he’s emphasized every year, so it was often the first thing his students suggested. He’d put them through countless exercises to practice their evasion skills by the time they had this lesson, and when they say it, he’s confident only about half of them would be able to react fast enough to dodge the Killing Curse. It’s a grim thought, and it would keep him from awarding any points even if the student expounded on their suggestion. It’s an important lesson; he hadn’t wanted to distract from it by bringing something as trivial as house points into it.

Yes. The Killing Curse is a strictly verbal spell. The incantation — Avada kedavra — must be said out loud, so you have the possibility to dodge it. And? What else?

His students would fidget at this point, sensing his mood; his lessons are usually, if not lighthearted, then more optimistic than the tone he’d reserved for this one. They answered hesitantly, but they answered; he’d given them a hint.

Disrupt spellcasting.

Difficult to employ, since it requires an exceptional reaction time, but the Killing Curse is a strictly verbal spell, so it is possible to cut off the assailant’s spellcasting with a faster, nonverbal spell of your own. It allows you to hold your ground, which may give you the upper hand in a duel. It’s also incredibly, stupidly dangerous as a strategy for anyone who hasn’t completely mastered nonverbal casting. Harry could cast a nonverbal Expelliarmus with barely a twitch of his wand, and he encouraged every single student to aim for the same. In the meantime…

Not many students can think of a third option. They’ll say hide or take cover — variations of dodge — that skirt so close to the answer. He often has to say it outright, walk them through it.

Nothing survived the Killing Curse. When an object intercepts the curse’s path, it is also destroyed. There is no soul to sever from the object, so instead it just explodes. When dodging the Killing Curse, then, one has to keep in mind that hiding or dodging behind cover may very well harm you through the explosion of whatever object you hid behind, further giving your assailant an opening or incapacitating you altogether.

This can work to your advantage.

Close-quarters interception.

Especially effective when your opponent has taken cover being a relatively small structure. A nonverbal Levitation or Summoning Charm at the right moment can intercept your opponent’s curse just as it is cast, violently destroying the levitated or summoned object in their close quarters, forcing them to shield, cover, or retreat. Don’t just hold your ground — advance, with a low-energy spell that serves both defense and offense. Use your opponent’s curses against them.

That’s what Harry tries to do. That’s all.

Avada kedavra, says Bellatrix Lestrange, always so eager to hurt others. But many things happen before then. Harry will go over these few seconds countless times in the next days, weeks. And every time he’ll remember some detail he’d missed, think of something else he could have done. He will recall the scene years from now, wondering at all the change he has effected, and picture a sequence of events that perhaps never happened. He’s running high on adrenaline and the night’s blood loss has affected him more than he realizes.

Too many things happen at once. Back up.

Alice finishes healing Frank and hits him with a Rennervate.

Rodolphus Lestrange peeks from behind the love-seat from which he took cover to hurl an unknown, sickly-yellow curse at Harry, who ducks. The curse hits the fireplace behind him, but he pays it no mind, immediately retaliating with a “Stupefy!”

Bellatrix cackles, perhaps at the nonlethal spells her opponents are using.

Alice rejoins the fight in time to catch Rabastan Lestrange as he attempts to curse Harry in his moment of distraction. Frank stirs and groans between them.

“Avada-” Bellatrix begins casting behind the cover of the heavy-built bookshelf that once served as an entrance to a secret chamber in the parlor. Experienced duelists know to start casting before locking their wand on target; it gives their opponent a smaller time frame to dodge, retaliate, or disrupt spellcasting.

Rodolphus hits the ground, Stupefied, and his wand clatters and rolls away. Harry doesn’t register it, focus taken completely by the sound of Bellatrix casting the Killing Curse. The rest of the room seems to share his sentiment. The aurors tense beside him. The room itself tenses, creating a single moment’s lull in the fighting.

“-ke-” Bellatrix allows half her body to emerge from behind the bookshelf, wand arm extended and steady, a manic smile on her face.

Barty Crouch Junior emerges from his cramped spot next to the now-unconscious Rodolphus Lestrange, to dive for his wand —

(Perhaps he’d been waiting for a pause just like this one. Perhaps he was eager to fight with his comrades. Perhaps he was just young and foolish and inexperienced, and wasn’t paying attention at all.)

“-da-”

(The bookshelf. Close-quarters interception. A nonverbal Levitation Charm, so practiced it takes but the twitch of a wrist. Being an experienced duelist, Harry begins casting before locking target.)

— putting him directly in the path of Harry’s wand.

“-vra!”

It felt strange, the first time Harry had given that lesson. Trying to teach people how to avoid the Killing Curse when he’d been hit by it twice. The more he talked about it, however, the more uniquely qualified he felt.

The curse is unblockable. No Shield Charm can withstand it. The most powerful wards will fail to slow it down. Once the curse has been let loose, it will not dissipate, will not stop until it hits something. Your best bet is to dodge before the incantation is complete. To drop like a sack of bricks if you have to.

If you have time enough for your brain to register the green light coming towards you, it’s too late. You didn’t move fast enough.

Harry can at least attest to that.

A nonverbal Levitation Charm gives no indication of successfully being cast — no sound, no flash of light — other than the object of the receiving end jerking upwards at the behest of the caster’s wand.

For Barty Crouch Junior, it looks like standing up.

The green flash of light meets a target, and Barty drops to the ground.

(Harry drops him to the ground.)

There is a beat of silence. Then—

“Junior?” Frank Longbottom croaks.

Things develop quickly after that. With the addition of Frank on their side, the fight becomes three-on-three, and despite how exhausted the two of them must be, the Longbottom duo are a force to be reckoned with.

The Lestranges fight like professional duelists. That is, they tend to plant their feet into one spot and concentrate their spellfire to drive their opponent into a corner — or outside the hypothetical bounds of a professional dueling stage. Their dodges are minimal, favoring by far the use of shields. Their use of their surroundings is mostly reactionary, as though unused to fighting with obstacles between themselves and their opponents. In other words, their fighting style is fast-paced, focused, aggressive, and best suited for one-on-one fights.

The Longbottoms, in contrast, have trained as a team, and are well-practiced in fighting at auror raids, where the battlefields vary greatly. They communicate and work off of each other’s spells effortlessly, and seem accustomed to trading opponents, defense/offense roles, and physical dueling places continuously, making them hard to predict. They use their surrounding liberally and to their full advantage.

Harry keeps most of his focus on Bellatrix, the only other person in the room who seems to realize what he’s done.

She’d been startled when her curse hit one of her comrades, no doubt, but she pulls herself together in the next two breaths, no longer laughing. Her face is set in hard stone, eyes blazing with a hint of the madness that would one day overcome her. She sends an Entrails-Expelling Curse at him, which Harry swiftly dodges, quickly followed by “Confringo!”

Still unbalanced from the dodge, Harry only manages to put up a Shield Charm before she fires another Killing Curse, making Harry dodge even as his shield holds otherwise.

Bellatrix, it seems, is done playing with her food.

A flurry of spells, curses, and counter-curses fly somewhere to Harry’s left, where the Longbottoms and Lestranges are locked in a duel, but Harry is barely aware of them. One of the sofas in the room, hit in the crossfire, briefly catches fire before being frozen along with a good chunk of the floor. Frank responds by spontaneously and violently evaporating all the ice in the room, filling it with steam, which Harry immediately utilizes by re-freezing it into thin, sharp ice spikes that he sends hurtling to Bellatrix as Alice uses the brief lull in enemy spellfire to aim a “Deprimo!” at the ground at her opponent’s feet, trying to gain high ground where there previously was none.

The floor above the hidden room gives in with a loud crash, forcing the Death Eaters to either fall or scramble.

(The body of Barty Crouch Junior falls ungracefully, torso buried underneath the detritus.)

It is important to note, that humans, like most animals, become more dangerous when cornered.

Bellatrix’s smile, even half-buried beneath the hole that used to be the floor of the parlor room, is vicious — more of a threatening display of teeth — as she shouts, “Protego diabolica!”

For one heart-stopping moment, Harry balks. He doesn’t recognize the spell, but its relation to Fiendfyre is immediately apparent. Combined with Protego, what-?

“Evan!” Alice is shouting at him and then black flames burst forth from Bellatrix’s wand like an ever-enlarging fireball.

The only reason Harry isn’t immediately ashes is that Frank is fast and kind enough to to erect a “Protego horribilis!” wide enough to cover Harry from the onslaught of fire. They encase Bellatrix and the Lestranges in a tight circle of flames, harmlessly dancing on their shoulders while the fire spreads. The heat is so intense that Harry thinks every single hair in his body is singed, even behind Frank’s shield.

“Protego horribilis!” Alice covers their backs, the two shields curving into a circle around them as the dark fire twists and roars at Bellatrix’s command, winding around them to try to get them from behind.

“Protego horribilis!” Harry reinforces Frank’s shield as it begins to crack. The space where Harry and the Longbottoms crouch between the two shields becomes so hot that it distorts the air around them.

Sweat rolls down Harry’s face as he tries to maintain his shield. The fire has completely surrounded them, burning the room’s furniture in a matter of seconds. The manor itself — the ceiling, the walls — remain unharmed, from what glimpses Harry can catch of them. There aren’t many. He can’t see the Death Eaters beyond the flames at all. It’s hard to breathe as the fire takes more of the room. His vision starts to waver.

Now, Harry knows Fiendfyre.This isn’t quite Fiendfyre, despite the small, waifish creatures he can see begin to form on the topmost licks of flame. If it was Fiendfyre, he could confidently tell you several ways to put it out, just as he’d taught the sixth-year students who’d chosen this curse for a case study.

One, if the caster has either left or died, you could try to wrest control of the sentient fire from itself by casting the General Counter Charm, so long as your will and magical power is greater than that of the curse’s will to consume. Moot, since, Bellatrix is, more likely than not, still in full control of this particular curse.

Two, you could let it die out. Contain it with strong enough magical defenses that the fire has nowhere left to go and nothing left to burn. Quite the opposite position in which he and the Longbottoms find themselves.

Three — and Harry had not known this until a particularly enthusiastic student brought it to his attention — you can fight fire with fire.

“Get ready to put it out!” Harry shouts at Frank over the roar of the flames.

The auror looks at him incredulously. “What—?”

Harry backs away from his own shield as much as possible, pressing himself against the Longbottoms, and drops his Shield Charm.

“Frikalaithos!” he casts.

A stream of blue fire erupts from his wand, clashing with the dark flames that surged towards him as soon as the shield dropped. Where the two bouts of flame meet, they merge into ordinary orange fire, and halt their unnatural movement.

Cold Fire — what is known as Bluebell Flames in smaller quantities — is a hyper-controlled type of magical fire which burns on the caster’s magical reserves only and on anything physical not at all. It isn’t actually cold, the temperature can vary from warm to lightly singeing; rather, the spell leaves the caster feeling cold if they overdo it and magical exhaustion sets in. It’s quite the opposite of Fiendfyre.

Whatever type of cursed fire Bellatrix is using is close enough to Fiendfyre that its counterpart nullifies its cursed effects, leaving only normal fire behind.

Which still burns.

Frank curses behind him before casting a strong Aguamenti.

The Death Eaters, visibility hindered by the burning room as much as they’re hidden by it, do not notice their friendly fire is slowly turning into — just fire. Harry can tell the exact moment they notice by the startled yells that come from the direction of the hallway.

They were trying to run.

Alice is already on it.

“Stupefy! Stupefy!”

At least one of those Stunners find their target, given the thud heard immediately after.

There is a moment of confusion as both parties gather themselves, making their way through the burning room — licks of flame running up the walls now that no one is controlling it.

As Frank follows the attack, Alice grabs Harry’s shoulder, roughly pulling him to face her.

“Who—” she cuts herself off, lips pressed into a hard line. “Where are we?” she demands.

“Lestrange Manor,” says Harry, and pauses to clear the fire and smoke around them in a six-foot radius. “Near the North coast of Norfolk.”

“Expecto patronum!” A brilliant gazelle forms in front of Alice. “Moody,” she tells the gazelle, and repeats their location.

That is a good idea. Harry’s glad Alice was the one to do it; having to explain how he knew the Order’s secret messaging system on top of how he found the Longbottoms was not something he wanted to do.

They could certainly use the backup. Now that the Lestranges made their way further inside the manor, Harry and the Longbottoms are forced to give chase into a household that is clearly hostile to them. Though Harry successfully dropped the Anti-Foe Wards around the property, there’s nothing he can do about an old, magical household’s ambient magic, the paths that generations of witches and wizards forged within a building with nothing but force of habit. Lestrange Manor seems to be full of convenient hiding places for Death Eaters to regain their breaths and sudden obstacles for the people chasing them.

They’re all worse for wear by the time Alastor Moody proves he abides by his own creed of constant vigilance by showing up with two other Order members not five minutes after Alice sends her Patronus message.

Harry and the Longbottoms are engaged in an uphill battle — the three Death Eaters shooting curses down at them from the upper landing of the foyer, neither party willing to end the confrontation and run. Harry takes an unknown curse to the shoulder. He ducks behind the Longbottoms to quickly counter the effects before they spread, but it leaves his shoulder feeling rough and tender. He’s sure he’s lost a few layers of skin; the feeling of acid spreading across his shoulder lingers.

Moody bursts through the front doors, already casting. He finds them like that, Alice and Frank covering Harry while he deals with the curse that hit him, two aurors against three (presumed) Death Eaters, battling from lower ground while Lestrange Manor is steadily lost to the spreading fire.

As Moody and his reinforcements move in, Harry comes to the quick conclusion, fully aware that his existence in 1981 would not hold up to Auror Moody’s interrogation, that he needs to leave. Now.

Perhaps she can sense his skittishness, his hesitation at rejoining the fray. “Evan,” Alice starts reaching for him, a warning in her voice.

He scrambles back and runs.

He’d like to attribute the fact that he doesn’t get hit by a Stunner to his amazing dodging skills, but he knows it’s luck that he staggers at the right moment.

“Stupefy!”

“Crucio!”

“Expelliarmus!”

“Depulso!”

Harry ignores the sound of battle behind as he runs back through the burning halls of Lestrange Manor. Someone’s running after him.

“Blast it all — Evan! Flipendo!”

The Knockback Jinx smashes against a window and Harry wastes no time and jumps through it.

Whoever was chasing him seems to give up. Nothing stops Harry as he sprints past the rose garden, past the lawn.

“Who are you!?” someone demands from the broken window.

Harry Disapparates as soon as he makes it past the wards.

If he were in any better state, he would Apparate to two or three different places before his intended destination to ensure he was not being tracked. As it is, he Apparates to Charing Cross Road for all of two seconds before being hit with a dizzy spell strong enough that he’s deeply thankful to be able to walk the rest of the way to the Leaky.

A Notice-Me-Not Charm is all that’s necessary to avoid the wary gazes of the few muggles trekking the night in London. The streets are dark compared to Lestrange Manor, raging fire that he left it. That, and the adrenaline still pumping through his veins leave Harry jittery, hyper-alert of any sudden movements by the occasional passerby, all hairs standing on end every time a car rushes by.

No one pays him any mind.

By the time he reaches his room at the Leaky Cauldron, he’s about ready to collapse. He forces himself to take a quick shower anyway, washing away the soot, blood, and sweat that covers him, trying to feel more like a person in his own body instead of the charged wire his heart thinks he is. He forces himself to stay awake enough to apply burn salve where needed, healing ointment and bandages where he was caught by curses. There is an anxious bubble somewhere between his throat and his heart, that ever-present awareness of his soul he’d acquired over time, ringing like tinnitus, insisting that something was wrong.

Soon, he promises himself tiredly. He’d perform the Soul-Viewing ritual soon. Tomorrow.

Harry gives in to exhaustion shortly thereafter, damp hair leaving imprints on his pillow.