Chapter Text
Harry hit the ground running, literally, because Magical Law Enforcement still hadn’t figured out a dignified way to exit a Portkey.
He landed in a stumble, his boots sliding on the rain-slick cobblestones, and he only avoided face-planting because someone grabbed the back of his robes.
“Easy there, Chosen One,” said Ron Weasley cheerfully. “Floor's not going anywhere.”
Harry straightened, flicked rain out of his fringe, and glared over his shoulder. “You say that now, but the Department of Mysteries only needs five minutes and one questionable experiment.”
The alley around them was narrow and twisted, squeezed between old buildings leaning toward each other near Knockturn Alley. Dark storm clouds hung low above them, heavy with the promise of rain. The damp air buzzed softly with magic, leftover traces from wards, recent Apparition, and a faint, strange ripple of messed-up time.
Brilliant. Exactly the sort of thing that made Unspeakables twitchy and Aurors underpaid.
A second Portkey popped into existence behind them, dumping two more people in a messy pile of limbs and loud cursing.
“Bloody hell,” Tonks muttered, rolling onto her back and scowling at the cracked brick above her. Her hair flashed magenta with irritation, then settled back to its mission-appropriate dark brown. “Remind me why we can’t just Apparate?”
Behind her, a tall witch in dark green Unspeakable robes dusted herself off with chilly dignity.
“Because,” Hermione Granger said, voice crisp, “the time-distortion around the target location interferes with standard Apparition. If we tried, we’d risk splinching across multiple temporal coordinates. Do you want your arm stuck in next Tuesday?”
Tonks sat up, paused as she processed that image, and shuddered. “Point taken.”
Harry surveyed the alley, wand already in his hand.The brick wall on the left was twisted, bending inward like someone had tried to fold it in half and then abruptly stopped. A lantern overhead flickered between lit, unlit, and an unsettling state where it contained three flames at once.
“On the bright side,” Harry said, “if we die horribly, at least it’ll be very revolutionary.”
Hermione shot him a look. “We’re not going to die horribly.”
Ron snorted. “You say that every time.”
“And we haven’t yet, have we?” Hermione snapped, then added, “Statistically speaking, our survival rate is quite impressive.”
Tonks tapped her wand against her thigh. “Can we have this existential crisis after we arrest the people messing with time?”
Harry’s wand gave a faint, eager hum in his hand. He exhaled, letting the noise of the alley fade into the background. The faint twist of wrongness in the air pulled at his instincts. Merlin, he hated time magic. It made his scar itch in ways that were deeply unfair, considering Voldemort had been dead for over a decade and really ought to stop contributing to his ongoing stress.
“Right,” Harry said. “Quick briefing, just so we’re all on the same page.”
Ron groaned. “Mate, we had a briefing in the office.”
“And then you fell asleep halfway through it,” Hermione said.
“I didn’t fall asleep, I blinked aggressively.”
Harry ignored them. “Targets are a group calling themselves the Chronos Circle. Self-important name, small-time record until three days ago when they broke into the Department of Mysteries and stole six regulated Time-Turners and one unclassified device that made three Unspeakables cry.”
“It did not make us cry,” Hermione said stiffly. “We were blinking aggressively.”
Tonks snorted.
Harry grinned. “The Circle has a pattern. They’ve hit artifact traffickers, vaults, anywhere with rare magical objects. No deaths yet, but they’ve left some nasty hexed traps behind.”
“Carter’s team ran into one of those last week,” Ron said. “Half of them spent the afternoon thinking they were goldfish.”
“Mind-displacement charms, possibly mixed with temporal feedback loops,” Hermione said. “If they combine that with uncontrolled Time-Turners—”
“—we’ll have a mess,” Harry finished. “Hence us. Elite team, hand-picked for talent, discipline, and unparalleled maturity.”
The three of them stared at him.
Tonks said, “We’re buggered, aren’t we?”
Harry grinned. “Completely.”
Hermione rolled her eyes, but he saw the edge of her mouth twitch. “Focus. The Circle is inside that building.” She nodded toward the leaning warehouse at the end of the alley. Its boarded-up windows oozed a faint silver-sand glow around the edges. “My probes picked up multiple time signatures and at least one unstable field. We have to secure the stolen objects before they destabilize further.”
“And we’d rather not rip time apart,” Harry said. “People get touchy about that before tea.”
Ron clapped him on the shoulder. “You good then, captain? Plan?”
Harry looked over at his team. Ron stood firm, grinning like he was eager to jump into a fight. Tonks was practically vibrating with energy, her nose flickering into a hawk’s beak and back again. Hermione was tense and fully locked in, her hand tight around her wand.
They were his. Trusted him. Relied on him. Also stole his lunch from the Auror break room, but nobody’s perfect.
“Same formation as in Wales,” Harry said. “Ron, you’re with me on point. Tonks, flank left, watch for traps. Hermione, you’re our anchor. You sense the time fields shifting, you yell, and we stop, even if we’re in mid-action. Everyone shielded, no one pokes anything glowing without Hermione’s approval.”
“I’d like that in writing,” Hermione muttered.
“Also,” Harry added, “I heard a rumour that whoever arrests the leader doesn’t have to do the post-mission paperwork.”
Ron’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not regulation.”
“It is if I say it is.”
Tonks brightened. “Dibs.”
She moved past him, boots silent on the slick stones despite the faint clank of whatever she’d stuffed in her pockets today. The warehouse’s front entrance loomed ahead, its door sagging and held together by rusted iron bands. The air around it shimmered, faintly distorted, as if someone had cast a heat charm in the middle of November.
Hermione murmured something under her breath, wand moving in tight, precise circles. A translucent web of glowing runes sprang into view over the door, threads of light stretching up and around the brickwork.
“Wards?” Harry asked.
“Temporal misdirection woven into a standard anti-Auror shield,” Hermione said, eyes narrowed. “If you push through without the key, you’ll get… scrambled.”
“Scrambled how?” Ron asked warily.
“Best case, you lose about a minute of short-term memory.”
“And worst case?”
Hermione hesitated. “You might exist in three slightly different moments at once.”
Tonks winced. “I did that once in training. Headache for a week.”
“We could go in through a window,” Ron suggested.
Harry studied the building. Most of the windows were boarded up, the wood burned-looking, but he could still feel magic running through the bricks like veins.
“No good,” he said. “They’ll have layered the wards across the whole exterior. If the door’s trapped, everything is.”
He looked back at Hermione. “Can you bypass it?”
She sniffed. “Of course I can. It may just take a—”
The door exploded outward with a teeth-rattling bang, blown clean off its hinges. It flew into the alley like an enraged dragon, spinning end over end.
Harry didn’t think. His wand snapped up.
“Protego Maxima!”
The shield flared into existence in front of them, a curved wall of blue-white light. The door slammed into it, shattered into splinters, and rained down harmlessly onto the cobbles.
Ron whistled. “Show-off.”
Tonks stared between the wreckage and the now doorless entrance. “Please tell me that was one of you.”
“It wasn’t,” Hermione said tightly.
Shouting echoed from inside the warehouse. Light flared as a jagged green bolt shot past, followed by purple sparks and the sharp crackle of combat spells hitting stone.
Harry’s stomach did that unpleasant swoop it had perfected during the war. “Guess we’re not the only ones invited.”
“DMLE backup?” Ron asked.
“Carter’s squad was twenty minutes out last we heard,” Hermione said.
“Could be the Circle fighting among themselves,” Tonks suggested. “Or another gang. Or—”
A curse sliced past the doorway, slamming into the alley wall and sending a shower of bricks flying.
Harry didn’t wait for more theories. “We’re going in. Shields up, stunners only unless you see a Killing Curse. Try not to die; I’ve got dinner plans.”
“With who?” Ron asked as they moved. “Because last week you said you’d finally ask—”
“Focus, Weasley.”
Harry led them through the doorway, shield still hovering in front of him.The air slammed into him, heavy and buzzing, both hot and freezing at once. His vision went blurry for a moment before clearing again.
The warehouse interior was enormous, much larger than the building had any right to be. Stacks of crates and shelves stretched up into a shadow, forming narrow aisles like a maze. Lanterns hung from the high ceiling at odd intervals, their light stuttering as if someone were flipping them on and off very quickly in another room.
And time was wrong.
Shimmering pockets of distorted air hung between the shelves, bubbles where objects moved slightly slower or faster than they should. One crate flickered between intact and shattered; in another, a glass orb rolled to the edge, fell, hit the floor, then snapped back onto the shelf, over and over.
At the far end of the warehouse, near a raised platform stacked with glowing artifacts, two groups were dueling.
On the left, a cluster of robed figures in mismatched masks, probably the Chronos Circle, were taking cover behind overturned crates and firing curses in overlapping arcs. On the right, a smaller team in dark grey uniforms returned fire with brutal precision.
“Who the hell—” Ron began.
“Later,” Harry said. “Hermione, temporal stability?”
“Barely holding,” she snapped. “The longer they fight near those artifacts, the worse it’ll get.”
“Brilliant.” Harry flicked his wand. “Tonks, take right flank, herd the masked idiots away from anything that looks like it wants to explode. Ron, on me. We’ll cut through the middle, break up the other team. Hermione—”
“Keep the building from collapsing into last Thursday, I know,” she said. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”
“I never do anything stupid,” Harry said, already moving.
A hex streaked toward them. It looked like a twisting rope of sickly yellow light. He swatted it aside with a lazy wand-flick, sending it ricocheting up into the rafters where it burst into harmless sparks.
“Oi!” someone shouted from the grey-uniform side. “Watch your deflections!”
“Stop firing curses at my face and we’ll talk!” Harry yelled back.
Ron laughed under his breath as they dove between two stacks of crates. “You’re in a mood today.”
“Paperwork day,” Harry said grimly, sending a silent Stunning Spell around the edge of the crate. It hit a masked witch square in the chest; she dropped like a sack of galleons. “If this turns into a ‘who’s-in-charge’ argument, I’m faking amnesia.”
“You can’t fake amnesia,” Hermione called, her voice barely audible through the buzz of magic.
Harry angled his wand up and cast a quick Disillusionment charm over himself and Ron, the air around them shimmering metallically. “Watch me.”
They moved, shadows among shadows, zig-zagging between crates as curses lit the air. Tonks was already at work on the right, her distinctive whoop giving her away as she vaulted over an overturned trolley and body-slammed a masked wizard into unconsciousness.
“Wotcher!” she yelled cheerfully as he dropped. “Thanks for playing.”
On the other side, the grey-uniformed group had noticed the new arrivals.One of them, tall and square-shouldered with a shock of pale hair showing under his hood, barked something Harry didn’t catch, and their formation shifted. Two wands swung toward Harry’s last visible location.
“Friendly!” Harry shouted, cancelling the Disillusionment with a wave. “Auror Office, Department of Magical Law Enforcement! Stop shooting at me unless you fancy explaining it to Kingsley!”
For a heartbeat, the spells hesitated.
Then one of the grey-robed witches snarled, “Get your own bust, Potter!” and let fly a Blasting Curse that blew a crater in the floor half a metre from his foot.
Ron’s head snapped around. “Did she just—”
Harry met the witch’s eyes across the chaos. “Excuse me,” he called, offended. “This bust is on a Department of Mysteries alert. You’re poaching our apocalypse.”
“Time Enforcement Division,” the tall man shouted back, his accent clipped, foreign. “This is our jurisdiction.”
“There is no Time Enforcement Division,” Ron muttered.
Hermione, from somewhere behind them, said, “Oh. Oh, bloody hell.”
“Hermione?” Harry called.
“The Ministry just approved it,” she said through gritted teeth. “Last week. New subdivision under International Magical Cooperation. They’re supposed to handle temporal crimes across borders—”
“And nobody told the Auror Office?” Ron demanded.
“I told Robards,” Hermione said. “He said he’d ‘file it appropriately.’”
Harry ducked as a curse sizzled past his ear close enough to scorch hair. “Right. Mystery solved. Tonks, status?”
“Four down, two running away, and I’m eighty percent sure that crate is trying to eat me,” she yelled back. “Otherwise peachy!”
The artefact platform at the far end pulsed, a wave of nauseating heat rolling through the warehouse. One of the flickering lanterns above sparked, split into three, then merged back into one again.
Hermione swore, which Harry mentally marked as a very bad sign.
“Stability?” he asked.
“Dropping!” she shouted. “Some idiot just triggered one of the stolen Time-Turners!”
As if on cue, a masked wizard near the platform yanked on a glittering chain. The hourglass at its centre spun wildly, not the neat controlled twists of regulated use but a chaotic blur.
Time shuddered.
For one dizzying instant, Harry was everywhere at once, standing in the alley, in the warehouse, on the platform, on the floor. The sensation ripped through him like a wave, pulling memories loose—green light, Sirius falling, Dumbledore on the tower, Ginny laughing, Teddy’s first accidental levitation, paperwork stacked three feet high—
“Harry!” Ron’s voice cut through the roar. “Mate, stay with me!”
He dragged himself back into the now, breath coming hard. His scar throbbed, old lightning aching under new pressure.
“Right,” he said, voice hoarse. “Change of plan. Hermione, can you lock that Time-Turner down from here?”
“If I could see it, maybe!” she shouted. “But some imbecile stacked three crates of cursed mirrors in the way—”
“On it.” Harry sprang forward.
Ron swore and followed, covering him with a steady barrage of Stunning Spells. The grey-uniformed team seemed to have grudgingly accepted their presence; their spells now soared over Harry’s head toward the Circle instead of at him, though one witch still shot him occasional dirty looks.
Harry vaulted a broken crate, slid under a low-flying curse that left his hair tingling, and came up in a roll behind a stack of crates marked HANDLE WITH CARE: TEMPORALLY SENSITIVE.
“Subtle,” he muttered.
A masked man lunged at him from the side, wand raised. Harry didn’t bother with a spell; he twisted, grabbed the man’s wrist, and used his momentum to flip him to the ground. The wand went skittering away.
“Hi,” Harry said pleasantly, pointing his own wand at the man’s face. “Two options. Stun or surrender. I’m very good at the first one.”
The man spat something unprintable and reached for a knife.
“Stun it is,” Harry sighed, and flicked his wand.
The man went boneless. Harry stepped over him and pushed on, the distortion thickening around him like fog.
The platform was close now, the air buzzing so hard it made his teeth ache.Up close, the stolen artifacts were impossible to miss. There were six regulation Time-Turners, their hourglasses glowing faintly gold, and one… thing.
It hung in the air above a pedestal, a metal sphere about the size of a Quaffle, its surface covered in shifting runes that never seemed to be in the same place twice. Time rippled around it, making the edges of Harry’s vision blur.
“That’s new,” he muttered.
“Don’t touch it!” Hermione shrieked from somewhere behind him, her voice climbing into that panicked register usually reserved for Ron and cauldrons. “That’s the unclassified object! Do not touch it, Harry James Potter, I swear to Merlin—”
“Not touching, not touching,” he called back. “I’m just… looking.”
The masked wizard with the out-of-control Time-Turner stood on the platform, his eyes wide and fever-bright behind the slits of his mask. The chain of the device was tangled around his arm, the hourglass spinning so quickly it was a blur of molten light.
“Stop!” Harry shouted, raising his wand. “Drop the Turner, step away from the shiny forbidden nightmare orb, and we’ll all go home slightly less traumatised than usual.”
The man whipped his head toward him. “You don’t understand,” he said, voice cracking with something like religious fervour. “Time is broken. We’re just… rebalancing it.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “You lot always think you’re the first people to notice time is unfair.”
“We can fix everything,” the man insisted. “Undo the war, undo the deaths, undo your mistakes—”
“Already tried that, thanks,” Harry cut in, the words sharper than he intended. “Didn’t take.”
The man faltered. “You… you used one?”
“Long story.” Harry took a careful step onto the platform, feeling the boards warp under his boots in a way that had nothing to do with carpentry. “Listen. You’re playing with forces that can turn this whole place into a paradox smoothie. Put it down.”
The man’s grip tightened. “You’re Harry Potter.”
“Unfortunately,” Harry said dryly. “Which means I’ve seen how this story ends, and it’s never with the bloke raving about destiny walking away happy and well-adjusted.”
“You don’t get it!” The man’s voice went high and desperate. “We’ve seen what’s coming. We’ve seen him—”
His words strangled off as his eyes rolled white. The Time-Turner blazed, a flare of blinding light.
Harry swore. “Hermione! It’s overloading!”
“Try to stabilise the spin!” Hermione shouted. “Slow it down evenly, don’t stop it, or the backlash—”
The sphere above the pedestal pulsed, a low, resonant thrum that Harry felt in his bones.
“Of course,” he muttered. “Unclassified my—”
The masked wizard screamed. The Time-Turner’s chain snapped in two, links flying like projectiles. The hourglass spun free, hanging in midair above the pedestal for one impossible moment, then snapped toward the sphere as if yanked by a hook.
They collided.
The world screamed.
Light exploded outward in a concentric ring, visible, tangible, a wave of brilliant white-gold that hit Harry like a Bludger to the chest. Time tore open around them, not as a crack in space but as something deeper and older, reality’s version of a sucked-in breath.
“Harry!” Ron yelled.
He dug his heels in, thrusting his wand forward. “Protego Totalum!”
The shield snapped into being just as the wave hit. It crashed against the barrier, trying to dig claws into his magic and drag it backward. Harry pushed harder, muscles trembling with strain, magic pouring out of him.
Behind him, he heard Hermione chanting. The steady rhythm of her stabilizing spells wrapped around his shield like supportive beams. Tonks swore creatively enough to make a sailor blush. Someone on the Time Enforcement side screamed, “Shut it down, shut it down, shut it—”
The sphere at the centre of the maelstrom cracked.
Hairline fractures raced across its surface, glowing lines of molten light that expanded, widened, and then burst. The runes tore free, becoming streaks of pure, humming power that spun outward in a cyclone.
Time didn’t just warp; it folded.
For a heartbeat, or maybe for an eternity, it was hard to say, Harry saw everything.
He saw himself at eleven, staring up at Hagrid, heart pounding with impossible news. He saw himself at seventeen, walking into the forest to die. He saw himself at thirty, asleep at his desk with ink on his cheek. He saw flashes of things that hadn’t happened—or hadn’t happened yet—Hermione with a streak of silver in her hair, Ron holding a baby he didn’t recognise, Teddy in Auror robes, Kingsley looking older, horribly tired.
And behind everything, just barely in the corner of his vision, he could tell someone was there. Not a clear figure, more like a cold, bright pressure that curled around him and set his scar burning with old memories.
No, he thought wildly. Not again. I did this already. I won. I’m done.
The presence turned toward him. For an instant, green eyes met red in a place that wasn’t a place at all.
Then the world snapped.
Something hit him in the side, hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. He felt himself lifted, flung. His shield shattered with a sound like breaking glass. The platform vanished from under him; the distorted warehouse, the flickering lanterns, his team’s voices all whirled into a roaring vortex of colour and sound.
He hit something solid, head-first, and pain exploded white behind his eyes.
Dimly, through the ringing in his ears, he heard Ron shout his name. Hermione screamed a spell, voice breaking. Someone grabbed at his robes but caught empty air as time slid out from under him like ice.
The last thing he registered was Tonks’s voice, furious and terrified and distant, like it came from down a long corridor.
“Hold onto him!”
Too late.
The vortex yanked, twisting him inside out, stretching him thin over too many moments. His consciousness flickered—here, not-here, everywhere, nowhere.
And then, mercifully, the darkness surged up and swallowed him whole.
-
Harry woke up because the world was too loud.
Not because someone was yelling. Not because a spell had gone off. No — the rain was too loud. The soft patter of droplets somewhere above him hammered into his ears like someone had set his hearing to max sensitivity.
He groaned and curled tighter against himself, hands clamped over his ears.
Merlin’s left kneecap, what happened?
He tried to push upright, but the movement made everything worse. The air washed over him, thick with scent, strong and complex and overwhelming. Dust. Damp stone. Moss. Something sharp like ozone. Something sweet like honey. And even closer, he caught the ghost of his own scent, suddenly unbearably intense and cloying.
His stomach rolled. He swallowed hard.
He was Harry Potter. He had fought Death Eaters, cursed objects, the occasional cursed sandwich Ron dared him to eat. He did not get nauseous because the air smelled too… everything.
But now he was shaking, sweat running down his back, and a deep instinct in his bones urged him to hide. Hide and curl up and don’t let anyone see you, small and quiet and safe and—
“Nope,” he rasped to himself, voice embarrassingly thin. “We are not doing… whatever that was.”
He dragged in a slow breath, which was a mistake. The scents became even stronger, so layered and vivid that he gagged and pressed a hand over his mouth.
Okay. Okay. Sensory overload. Maybe a backlash from the temporal detonation. Maybe side effects of being yeeted through the fabric of space-time like a drunk Niffler through a window.
He forced his eyes open.
He was on the warehouse floor. Alone.
“Ron?” he croaked. “Hermione? Tonks?”
Silence answered.
A cold, prickling panic crawled up his spine.
Harry pushed himself upright again, this time slower. His muscles felt wrong, not weak exactly, but tense and buzzing under his skin like lightning trying to escape. His balance was off too, the world tilting and swaying until he planted a hand on the wall to steady himself.
Still, he was alive. That was step one.
Step two: find the others. Preferably before the world went sideways again.
He forced himself to stand fully, breathing through his mouth to dull the scents. It helped… sort of. Everything still smelled like it was personally offended by his existence.
The warehouse was empty. No Time Enforcement team. No Chronos Circle. No swirling time vortex. Just the echo of distant footfalls and the flicker of lanterns.
He staggered toward the exit.
-
The alley outside looked exactly the same.
Which should have been comforting but somehow it wasn’t.
The colors were slightly too new looking. The shadows too sharp. The scents — gods, the scents — were an entire assault. People had walked through not long ago; their scents lingered in the air, thin and sharp like fading perfume. Old magic clung to the stones. A hint of metal. A hint of something wild.
And beneath it all, there was something else, a strange undercurrent that made the back of his neck prickle, that whispered danger and urged him to curl up and hide.
Harry gritted his teeth.
“Brilliant,” he muttered. “Survive a time implosion, get taken down by a bloody smell.”
He stepped deeper into the alley. His head spun, but he forced himself forward.
Find the others. Find out when this is. Where this is. Fix the stupid mess.
Footsteps sounded behind him.
Harry tensed, not because he was scared, but because instinct flared sharp and frantic, urging him to retreat, to fold in on himself, to present small—
“What now?” he muttered, half to the universe.
Two men rounded the corner.
Well. “Men” was generous. Their shoulders were broader than they had any right to be, and their posture screamed swaggering overconfidence. He could smell them before he could see them. A heavy musk mixed with a sense of dominance that pressed against him and made his stomach twist.
Great. Just what he needed. Douchebag perfume.
Both of them stopped dead when they saw him.
Then grinned.
“Oho,” said the one on the left, looking Harry up and down with an expression better suited to a steak dinner. “What’s a sweet little omega doing wandering alone?”
Harry blinked.
“I’m a what now?”
The one on the right whistled low. “Pretty one, too. Bet he smells even better up close.”
Harry recoiled half a step. Not because he was intimidated, but because the moment they stepped closer, their scents hit him like a punch. His knees buckled. His stomach lurched. His skin buzzed like it was about to peel off.
What the hell was wrong with him?
He forced himself to stand straighter. “Right. I’m going to need you both to start using actual words. What’s an ‘omega’? And why are you saying it like it’s supposed to mean something?”
Both men paused.
Then laughed.
“Oh he’s stupid,” the left one said.
“Even better,” said the right.
And then, because of course they did, they stepped into his space, crowding him back toward the wall.
Harry wrinkled his nose. “You two smell like someone tried to drown a goat in cologne.”
They laughed again.
Left Alpha leaned in with a smirk. “C’mon sweetheart, don’t play shy. Bet you’ve got instincts screaming at you, yeah? Bet you’re feeling all kinds of sensitive. Wanna know why?”
Harry lifted a hand. “Actually yes, I would. Also: don’t call me sweetheart unless you want your face relocated.”
Right Alpha clicked his tongue. “Feisty. That’s cute.”
They were close enough now that their scents were suffocating. Harry’s body reacted with a sickening mix of alarm and nausea, muscles tightening in weird ways, instincts screaming get away get away get away—
He needed information. He needed answers. Maybe these idiots actually knew something about where he was.
So he forced his expression into something neutral-ish.
“Look,” he said carefully. “I’m a little lost. If you could just tell me what the date is, or—”
The left one dragged a finger down Harry’s arm.
A growl ripped out of Harry so fast it startled even him.
Both of them froze, then grinned slow and delighted.
“Oh he’s close,” murmured Right Alpha. “Smell that? He’s about to go all pliant—”
“Touch me again,” Harry said pleasantly, “and I’ll feed you your own kneecaps.”
“That’s adorable,” Left Alpha crooned, reaching for Harry’s waist.
He didn’t even get close.
Harry grabbed his wrist, twisted, and slammed him into the opposite wall hard enough that dust shook from the bricks.
Right Alpha blinked. “What—?”
Harry kicked his knee sideways. Not enough to break it but enough to drop him like a sack of idiot potatoes.
Both men hit the ground groaning.
Harry stood over them, trembling slightly, shaken by the scents, the dizzy overload, and his own buzzing magic.
“Right,” he said, breath unsteady. “Info time. City? Year? Any chance a time implosion happened in the last hour? And stop calling me—”
A presence rippled through the air like a surge of raw magic.
Harry stiffened. His whole body locked, every nerve screaming in startled reaction.
A new scent washed over him. It was deep, dark, and intoxicating, like forest and cold night and something ancient, and it hit him so hard his knees nearly gave out.
Instinct roared: Alpha.
A real one. Not like the two idiots still groaning on the stones. This one’s power pressed against Harry’s senses, overwhelming and rich, and Harry’s breath hitched in his throat.
Bloody hell.
He forced himself to turn.
A man stood at the mouth of the alley.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Sharp features. Dark hair pulled back. His coat long and black, tailored to perfection. Hands in his pockets. Expression smooth and unreadable.
But his eyes —
His eyes flashed crimson.
Harry’s heartbeat stuttered.
Not Voldemort-red, not the sickly, snake-like distortion he remembered, but something deeper. Something predatory. Something impossibly, dangerously alive.
The air around the man thickened, thrumming with dominance that made Harry’s muscles twitch and his instincts collapse into a contradictory mess — fear, want, defiance, hide, don’t hide, run, don’t you dare run—
Oh no.
No no no.
Harry straightened, forcing himself upright even as his body screamed to fold inward.
The man’s gaze dropped to the unconscious alphas at Harry’s feet.
Then rose to Harry.
Slowly. Purposefully.
“Well,” the man said, voice smooth and twice as dangerous. “You handled them efficiently.”
The timbre of his voice slid into Harry’s bones like dark chocolate — warm, heavy, too much — and Harry’s knees nearly buckled again.
He clenched his fists.
“Great,” he said, aiming for snark and hitting something breathless instead. “Another one. If you’re here to call me omega too, I swear I will bite someone.”
The man’s lips curved.
Not exactly a smile.
But kind of.
“And if,” he asked softly, crimson eyes glinting, “you are an omega… would you still bite?”
Harry opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
Then made a noise that, disappointingly, sounded like a squeak.
His entire body buzzed under the weight of the stranger’s scent. His instincts were tripping over themselves, confused, overwhelmed, and barely restrained.
Harry swallowed, trying desperately to keep his voice even.
“Who,” he managed, “are you?”
The man tilted his head, watching him like he was something fascinating.
Something dangerous.
Something his.
“That,” he said, stepping closer in a slow, predatory glide that made Harry’s pulse trip, “depends entirely on who you are.”
Harry blinked.
“What?”
The man stopped only a few feet away, close enough that Harry had to brace himself on the wall to stay upright.
That scent.
Harry’s knees wobbled.
It rolled over him like smoke and warm dark magic, and he hated how his body reacted, his chest tightening, his pulse fluttering, his breath catching. Heat crawled up his neck and into his cheeks.
Bloody hell he was blushing.
He didn’t blush. He never blushed. Ron would never let him live this down.
The stranger watched him with unsettling intent, head tilted slightly, like someone studying a rare creature he couldn’t yet decide whether to pet or dissect.
“You’re newly presented,” the man said, voice low enough to vibrate. “Unclaimed… unstable.”
Harry swallowed. “I’m not— I mean, I didn’t— I’m not usually—”
He had no idea what he was trying to say. His mouth was operating independent of his brain, which was mostly static and oh Merlin don’t fall over don’t fall over.
“One would think,” the man continued, stepping even closer, “that someone with a scent and strength like yours would be… very hard to forget.”
Harry’s breath stalled.
Scent?
No one had ever talked about his scent before. Hell, he’d never noticed scents like this until ten minutes ago.
And the way the man said “hard to forget” made Harry feel it in places he didn’t want to think about.
The stranger’s eyes swept over the alley, then returned to Harry with unnerving sharpness.
“I know everyone worth knowing,” he said simply. “And an omega who can flatten two alphas by himself doesn’t just arrive out of thin air.”
Harry’s cheeks burned hotter.
“Stop— stop calling me that.”
“What?” the man asked, voice amused. “Omega? You are one.”
Harry opened his mouth in protest, then swayed so violently he had to slap a hand against the wall to stay upright.
The man’s expression sharpened.
“You’re barely standing.”
“I’m fine,” Harry lied immediately.
He was not fine. His whole body felt like it was buzzing, vibrating, trying to crawl out of its own skin. His vision blurred at the edges. Every nerve felt tuned too high. His instincts were a knotted mess of run, hide, and please don’t come closer— actually wait come back— WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME.
The man took one slow, graceful step closer.
Harry’s stomach flipped. His breath caught. His legs nearly gave out.
“Stay back,” Harry whispered, mortified at how weak it came out.
One dark brow lifted.
“Why?” the man asked softly. “Does my presence overwhelm you?”
Harry’s face went up another shade of red.
“No,” he lied. “I’m— it’s— I hit my head. Or something. I just need— I’m trying to figure out where I am. When I am. Who you are. And why the hell you smell like— like—”
He clamped his mouth shut before he said something truly humiliating, like addictive sin in a suit.
The stranger’s smile sharpened.
“Who… I am?” His voice dropped. “You truly don’t know?”
Harry’s throat clicked as he swallowed. “No.”
The man stepped closer, close enough for Harry to feel his heat, close enough for his scent to settle around him like a blanket.
Harry’s knees trembled dangerously.
The man leaned in slightly.
“My name,” he murmured, “is Tom Riddle.”
Harry froze.
His stomach dropped straight through the cobblestones.
Tom. Tom bloody Riddle.
But not the Voldemort he knew. No red slit-pupils, no snake-face nightmare. This was… a man. A very handsome, terrifying, overwhelmingly delicious scented man with sharp cheekbones, crimson-flecked eyes, and a presence that made Harry’s body try to fold in on itself.
“Oh,” Harry croaked.
Tom watched him, eyes flickering with curious satisfaction at the reaction.
“You…” Harry tried again, but the words dissolved. “I—”
His vision wavered.
His knees buckled for real this time.
“Not again— oh bloody hell—”
The world tilted. He felt himself falling.
Tom moved impossibly fast.
Strong arms wrapped around Harry’s waist, catching him before he hit the ground. Harry’s face landed against Tom’s chest, where the man’s scent was the strongest — warm, rich, heady, lethal to Harry’s self-control.
Harry made a small, horrified sound that definitely wasn’t a whimper.
Tom stilled.
Oh no.
Oh no no no.
Harry tried to push away, but his limbs felt like pudding. His muscles wouldn’t cooperate. Everything was spinning. His instincts screamed safe and danger and hide in his coat immediately which was absolutely insane.
Tom’s arms tightened.
“Easy,” Tom murmured.
Harry wanted to die. Instantly. Preferably before Ron ever found out about this.
“Let go,” Harry mumbled weakly into Tom’s very expensive, very nice-smelling coat. “I’m fine. I don’t need— this.”
“You’re not fine,” Tom said, tone slipping into something coldly assessing. “You’re burning up. Unsteady. Overwhelmed. Your instincts are in chaos.”
“That’s not—” Harry tried, pushing again. “I don’t— my instincts are NONE of your damn business—”
But his vision swam and blackened at the edges.
Tom’s voice came from very far away now, smooth and dark.
“Shh. Don’t fight it. Your body is adjusting.”
Adjusting to what??
Harry wanted to ask.
He didn’t get the chance.
The alley faded.
The last thing he felt was Tom lifting him effortlessly, one arm under his legs and the other steady around his back, like Harry weighed nothing at all.
Mortifying. Absolutely mortifying.
Then darkness swallowed him whole.