Chapter Text
Harry awoke to a dull throbbing in his head. Opening those startlingly green eyes, he was also vaguely aware of his shaking limbs that were attached to a shaking body lying in the damp grass, dew brushing cold wetness against any exposed skin. His mind was a mess of memories and images, trying to riddle out what had happened to him. There was a brief moment of clarity when the sixteen-year-old realized what hit him.
... Flashback ...
He had been walking home from the general store, a jug of milk and some eggs clutched protectively to his chest. Harry knew that if Dudley found him, his cargo would suffer just as much as he himself would, and that was not acceptable. Aunt Petunia would just about kill him if he managed to waste money by ‘losing’ the food he was sent out to retrieve. Never mind the fact that none of the food was for him .
No, he had been starved again that summer, just like the last five years. And his entire life before that. It had gotten worse this summer, though. Since receiving news of his godfather’s death, Vernon had brought the beatings back tenfold, enraged at the wizarding world at large, Harry specifically. So, when Harry practically crashed into a couple of people in strikingly familiar black robes, it was almost a welcome experience.
“Oh Merlin. Wonder what they’re here for?” Harry muttered sarcastically.
The taller of the two stepped forward, and he caught a brief flash of white-blond hair from under the shadows of the hood. “My, my, my, what are you doing away from your wards? The Dark Lord sends his greetings, Potter.”
Harry rolled his eyes and scowled. “Fuck you, Malfoy.”
Suddenly, there was agonizing pain. The curse had been whispered so quickly that the teen didn’t have a chance to mentally prepare himself for the nerve-damaging torture curse. He let out a whimper before it stopped, as quickly as it began. The two Death Eaters weren’t playing this time around.
“You must have better manners, Mr. Potter,” Lucius drawled. “Even a half-blood Gryffindor such as yourself should know better than to be rude to your elders.”
“Sorry,” Harry spat, “but my temper’s a little short from dealing with my relatives.” He cast a pained glance at the groceries lying discarded on the street. If he managed to get away from the Death Eaters, it would only be to run right into the hands of people only slightly less likely to kill him. Sometimes he wondered why no one asked about his appearance at the start of the school term.
Lucius cast a glance at the bag, then back at Harry and his stick-thin form. A disgusted look crossed his face for a moment under the mask, and he sneered, “Dumbledore can’t even protect his Golden Boy from filthy muggles? That’s just wrong .”
Harry smirked, “This coming from one of Voldemort’s Inner Circle?”
The other Death Eater, who had remained silent and immobile up to this point, pulled out a vial of golden liquid. The potion in the vial looked almost grainy, kind of like shifting sand. When the second masked figure uncorked it and tossed the thing at Harry, the teen’s instincts made him reach out and catch it, upending the entire thing onto himself.
Lucius whirled around to face his ally, the bone-white skull mask hiding his rage. The other Death Eater simply Disapparated and left behind the Malfoy Lord and the Boy-Who-Lived, who was shimmering and flickering.
Following the unnamed Death Eater’s lead, Lucius Disapparated, but not without one last annoyed glance at the Gryffindor Golden Boy, bane of his master’s existence. The world faded to black as Harry lost consciousness.
... End Flashback ...
Harry gasped as he sat up, and suddenly realized that was a mistake. His head spun, still throbbing, and his tremors from the Cruciatus curse certainly weren’t any better. Looking around, he noticed that things looked very... different. The houses were either vacant lots or brand new, the few cars he could see were not modern in the least, large and bulky.
The potion. That potion that had covered him, it looked kind of like... sand. Hourglasses, time, the faint shimmer that had covered his body. It really could only be one thing.
“Let it never be said I couldn’t figure out something so obvious,” Harry thought.
Glancing down at himself, he realized he had nothing more than the clothes on his back and some spare change in his pockets from the groceries. Not even his wand, because that had been locked up in his trunk with everything else before he could get it into his hidden spot under the floorboards. Harry had once again experienced his uncanny Potter luck, getting him out of a deadly situation and into one only slightly less terrible.
With a groan, he pulled himself to his feet and straightened the oversized clothes he was swimming in. There was only two ways to get himself out of this situation, and both involved contacting people he had no clue how to reach, given that he didn’t know what year it was.
“Right then,” he sighed, “off to London. Hopefully some policeman will see me and take pity on me... yeah, like that’ll happen.” Head to Gringotts, Harry thought. The goblins would have customer confidentiality, and would be more likely to help him than some random wizard on the street, since in the future he actually had a decent amount of money.
After about an hour or so of walking, with only another seven or eight to look forward to, a passing car suddenly slowed and pulled up next to him. Alarm bells went off in Harry’s head as he recalled his aunt and uncle always telling Dudley to be cautious when approached by strange people. The teen stepped off the side of the road, aiming to put more distance between himself and the car, before its driver called out a greeting.
“Hey, kid! You look like you need a lift,” he called cheerfully. Staring suspiciously at the young man, Harry noticed his vivid green eyes and felt a sense of familiarity. Shaking off the feeling, he stopped as the car did.
“No, thank you. My... relatives told me to avoid strangers,” Harry replied politely.
The man, only barely out of his teens, laughed at his reply. It wasn’t a mocking laugh, though, it was warm and friendly. Cautious though Harry may be, he wasn’t exactly paranoid, and this man seemed trustworthy.
He motioned to the empty passenger’s seat, grinning. “Fair enough, but you look like shit, sorry to say. I was heading to London, business trip and all, and it’s in the direction you’re headed right now. Thought I’d offer a lift.”
Harry looked into the man’s eyes, searching for deception, malice, anything. He didn’t find it. “I’m actually heading to London, myself,” he admitted, shrugging at the man’s wide-eyed look. It was a long way, but he already knew that.
“Bloody hell, you’d be walking for hours! C’mon, hop in,” he insisted, still surprised. When Harry complied, he offered up a hand to the much smaller person. “My name’s Jack. Yours?”
Harry actually smiled slightly. He liked the man, his friendly attitude. “Harry. What’s your business trip about?” He was curious about it, and there was a chance it could give a hint to what year he was in.
Jack shrugged. “Real estate plans, it’s not that interesting, but it gets the bills paid, and sometimes you get to see what the future will be like. Brings hope to some of the people, bloody war we’re in right now.”
Nodding, Harry filed that information away. War, there were only two in recent times, at least in the muggle world. Based on the cars, Harry guessed that it was sometime in the forties, because that was when Grindelwald was controlling the muggle leader, Hitler.
“So,” Jack continued, “you gonna tell me what you were doing walking to London from Sheerwater?” He had a curious gleam in his eyes, and it was mildly disconcerting to Harry at how much the man seemed to pick up from a glance.
He decided to tell him a half truth. “It was actually from Surrey, but I’d already been walking for an hour when you came by. I’ve got some people I have to see in London, and if I’d been smart, I would have kept more than spare change on me.”
Jack let out an exasperated sigh, and ran a hand through his short, auburn hair. “Kid, you are insane . I didn’t think anyone would willingly walk eight or so hours when they could take a taxi or a train or something faster.”
Harry laughed bitterly, looking out the window. “My relatives wouldn’t care. Glad I’m going to be of age soon, saves me the trouble of dealing with them. It was bloody brilliant of you to offer me a ride, so thanks.”
After that, the conversation strayed to more light-hearted topics, often filling the car with the friendly laughter of Jack and the sarcastic comments of Harry. It was a pleasant ride.
An hour later, Jack pulled onto Charing Cross Road. The teen sitting beside him was staring out of the car with a relieved look on his face. If the man was honest with himself, he didn’t want to leave the kid there with almost no money and no way to contact anyone.
“This where you want to be, kid?” he asked, unsure.
Harry nodded happily. “Yeah, this is brilliant! Thanks for your help, Jack,” he replied, pushing open the car door. “Maybe I’ll see you again sometime. We could have lunch, talk some more. You’re good company.”
The young man laughed, and said, “So are you, Harry. Hey, let me give you my phone number, in case you need to reach me. If you’re ever in trouble, ring me up.” He scribbled something on a sheet of paper, and pulled out his wallet, taking out a few pounds.
The teen stared at the money, surprised. “I don’t need the money, Jack.”
“Take it,” he insisted. “I know you probably have some money, but not enough on you to even get a meal. If you want, call me later, pay me back. You’re a nice kid, you don’t deserve what you’ve gone through.”
His eyes widened, shocked and fearful. Stumbling back a few steps, he stared at Jack, wondering how the man knew what happened to him. He was always so careful to hide it, and no one ever cared enough to ask.
“I’ve seen how thin you are, Harry, and that look in your eyes is like some of the men who come back from the war. Please, do me a favor and take it for now?”
Slowly, Harry reached out and took the money, along with the scrap of paper with Jack’s phone number. It was a precious gift, from someone who actually seemed to care about Harry for himself, not any title, no task he had to complete. Jack liked him as a person, and he could honestly say that he was friends with the man.
Giving him a sad smile, he waved to the man and walked away, heading to the Leaky Cauldron just two buildings away. Jack watched him leave, casually strolling towards... a building he hadn’t noticed before. It looked more archaic than the surrounding shops and storerooms, an iron-wrought sign hanging above the door.
The door opened, and he saw a person in a robe step outside, nodding to Harry as he disappeared inside the bleak looking pub. The person in the robe turned on the spot and vanished with a loud pop.
Jack turned back to his car, idly wondering if he had imagined the whole thing with Harry and picking up the teenager. He checked his wallet to see if the money he gave the kid was gone for real, partly hoping that it had been one massive hallucination, and that the poor boy who looked starved and exhausted wasn’t real.
He was.
Harry slid through the open doorway before it shut with a click. Inside the wizarding pub and inn, everything was familiar, albeit slightly newer and cleaner. At the bar, a younger Tom was washing out glasses peacefully, humming under his breath. There were only a few patrons sitting at the wooden tables, and the lighting was dim as ever.
Strolling casually up to the bar, Harry made sure his fringe was covering the distinctive scar before shooting the wizard a cheerful grin. He nodded to the two people at the bar who glanced up as he approached, and turned back to face Tom.
“Would you mind opening the entrance to Diagon for me? I don’t have a wand on me,” he asked politely, pinning the bartender with an innocent look. "My mum made me leave it at home, since we’re not supposed to do magic outside of school and all.”
The bartender smiled back, and replied, “Sure, kid. Give me a minute to get my customer a drink, I’ll be right over.”
Harry nodded appreciatively and walked through the back door to wait by the brick gateway. While many things had changed, the Leaky Cauldron would probably always be a constant in his life. He doubted even Voldemort would do anything to the crucial point for wizards and witches traveling between muggle and wizarding worlds.
After another five minutes, the green-eyed teen was walking briskly down the alley to his first, and most important, destination. Gringotts, of all the places he could go, would be the most likely to understand his situation and keep his secrets. There were no doubts that the goblins valued their customers, past, present, and future. Harry just hoped they’d have some means of financial aid for a stray time-traveler.
The bank was as magnificent as ever, with its finely carved marble columns, heavy wooden doors, and intimidating air. The guards standing at attention by the doors shot him suspicious and wary looks, obviously reacting to his shabby appearance. It made sense, to him, because why would a nearly-broke teenager who obviously had issues clothing himself head into a large bank other than to attempt robbery? Never mind the fact that he would not even come close to succeeding.
Arriving at the head desk, he gently tapped the silver bell and awaited an employee. He had no idea what their reaction would be. When a grumpy, older goblin appeared and stared down at him unnervingly, he took a deep breath and mentally prepared himself.
“I have some... sensitive information to discuss. I realize that I am not a customer at this time , but I will definitely be one in the future . It would probably be in your interests to listen to what I have to say,” he explained. “I am a Potter, by blood.”
The goblin sneered, before nodding slowly. “I will take you to the Head Goblin here, and you may discuss things with him, Mr. Potter .”
Harry smiled in relief. “Thank you, Mr...”
The goblin looked mildly surprised, before supplying, “Whitepick, Mr. Potter."