Chapter Text
It was easy, in this world, to assume an identity.
Harry had learned soon after his arrival that something… catastrophic had happened to this universe. Some purple alien asshole snapped his fingers and for five years people disappeared. Five years later a big green guy snapped his fingers and brought everyone back… exactly where they were when they disappeared.
The identity of the guy Harry had stolen had no family before the Blip. Not really. Well, no one to miss him during and no one to look twice at him after.
It also helped that this wasn't the first dimension where he'd come across doppelgangers. This was just the first one that didn't have wizards as he had known them in his home world.
Henry Black was the son by surrogacy of Mr. James Potter-Black and his husband Cyrus Potter-Black. He was had by surrogacy via a woman named Jillian Evans. Jillian had been an adopted cousin of Cyrus. And Henry was just about the right age for Harry Potter to slip into his life.
Researching the life he was stealing for himself with every intention of staying in this reality for the foreseeable future, Harry learned that his supposed parents had died in 2015 while visiting Jillian who had married and moved to Sokovia with her husband, an anti-war activist. Jillian, James, and Cyrus were not among the survivors of what was called the Battle of Sokovia.
Their deaths left Henry Black to live with a biological aunt. A miserable cow if ever there was one. Who died as a result of the Blip. She had been in surgery when the doctors and nurses were blipped away. She died on the table before anyone noticed.
He inherited a town-home in Tennessee from his parents, which he had lived in with the hateful aunt until her death and his own disappearance.
It didn't take a genius to figure out after finding the plans for a group trip and flight information how Henry Black likely died… The plane he was on… wasn't where it was when he was Blipped.
Harry reckoned it was a long way down for Henry and his friends. A year after the Blip and Harry was certain Henry wouldn't be coming back.
The main sticking point was the neighbors who knew him, in passing mostly, cogged onto his change of accent. So for the 5 years of the Blip Harry worked very hard to train his natural accent out of his voice until it was mostly gone.
Though when he was angry it would come out a bit.
He ended up selling the town-home and taking the money to move elsewhere in the country to start fresh. New life, literally, and a new him.
So Harry became Henry and got a job in a bar so he wouldn't run out of money from the house sale too quickly.
And he settled in for an uneventful life, away from anyone that even remotely knew the guy who's life he stole. Hiding away in a melting pot of a city. He'd become just some guy with a tragic past he never wanted to talk about. The bartender who listened to your troubles, but didn't burden you with his own.