Harry could barely hold his wand up. He felt drained, like a pumpkin squeezed to pulp. Amelia had done what he could not. Sacrificed herself so that Voldemort could not take her and use her to control magical Britain.
It was an act of sacrifice, of civic duty, one that took his breath away and turned his blood to ice.
But it was only worth it if he could survive his encounter with Voldemort.
Britain could not lose Amelia Bones and Harry Potter on the same day.
Voldemort's Polyjuice dissipated as he walked in, leaving Harry look at a hybrid of himself and the snake-faced monster. Cat-like pupil slits hovering within Harry's green eyes, until they glowed red once more.
Red with rage, as the Dark Lord stared at the fluttering veil.
"She took a coward's route."
"She held a bravery that both you and I do not hold." Harry answered quietly.
"Brave? To choose death?" Voldemort shook his head. "I would not have harmed her."
His face turned to chalk-white, he simply sauntered past a wary Harry. To the stone dias, to the veil. "A pathway to death. To the next world." He murmured.
"Does it frighten you?" Harry asked curiously.
Voldemort drew himself up imperiously. "Why fear what I have conquered?" His eyes narrowed as he looked back at Harry. "And you?"
He raised an eyebrow. "The next great adventure, as Dumbledore says. No, I don't fear it. Why, you think I've conquered it as you have?"
Voldemort's unnaturally long fingers twirled his wand thoughtfully. "Who knows, Harry Potter? After all, you hold the power unknown." He reached into his robes and retrieved the glowing white prophecy ball.
He touched his wand to it and a voice began to play. A voice that Harry realized he knew. Professor Trelawney's voice, only it was unlike he'd ever heard her.
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies...."
Harry frowned as Trelawney's voice died out, as the power of the prophecy lay uncomfortably in the room. "Power the Dark Lord knows not…" He muttered. What was it? His harem ritual? Yet Tom know of the bond he'd created…but perhaps it was more abstract, like Tom couldn't know of the extent of the power.
It was a foolish man who obsessed over prophecies.
Voldemort studied him. "What secrets do you hold, Harry Potter?" The Dark Lord gave him a swift, piercing look, but Harry blocked the intrusion into his mind with ease. Harry knew the feeling of Tom's slippery Legilimency intimately, had built his mindscape specifically to defend against it.
They both laughed, oddly, two elite wizards reduced to playground tricks.
"Neither can live while the other survives." Voldemort said, abruptly.
Harry gripped his wand. "Yes."
"Prophecies are foolish, aren't they?"
"Yes." Harry turned so his side profile was slim.
"And yet…"
"Indeed."
But as Harry was about to throw the first curse, Voldemort only sighed and walked past him. Harry watched in confusion as the Dark Lord stopped at the door.
"Come, little Harry Potter." His smile turned silky. "Even with all my years, I still feel the need to display my dominance in front of an audience. Amusing, isn't it? With death conquered, magic bending at my whim, I am yet to defeat the concept of the ego."
Harry watched him disappear, heard the cheers of the Death Eaters outside. He understood — Voldemort had bled in Hogsmeade, bled a lot. An immortal made man. Now he had to prove his might in front of his doubting men.
And Harry had nowhere to go. He glanced back at the fluttering veil. Magic had its mysteries. Maybe Amelia was in a better place, a better world, a better time.
Or maybe she was just dead.
He thought of his girls, of Hermione, of Narcissa, Apolline, Helena and Hannah, Marie.
He wasn't ready to join Amelia.
He still had so much to do.
Harry stepped out into the wide chamber containing the time-stream.
Voldemort stood in the stream itself, eyes closed as the white ethereal light swam around him, casting his skull in an incongruent angel glow. And beyond, the Death Eaters, clapping slowly, features bathed in excitement.
Hermione stood at their front, Bellatrix's faces cast in a fanatic glow. What turned her from the girl Narcissa spoke of, her sweet excitable sister full of drive, to this mad bitch? Even Narcissa hadn't been able to tell him.
It didn't matter.
One thing at a time.
"Come, Harry. Feel the power of the time stream. Pure magic, a ley line torn in two so it could be studied."
Harry stepped into the vapour stream — having conquered the time of it, he simply stood, feeling his magic buffered and renewed, his reserves rejuvenated. He felt powerful.
Voldemort cracked open red eyes. "They built the Ministry over this ley line, centuries ago. It lay here like a dusty wand, power untapped, and what greater sadness is there? But a single quarter century ago, I had enough influence in the Ministry to push them to rip it up and study it." He smiled with those papery thin red lips.
"I didn't know then that it would take fifteen years to see the fruit of my labour." The Dark Lord chuckled. "But nothing about that fateful night could be predicted…my faithful Death Eaters, new and old, they wondered how I could be hurt by this boy, by this old magic."
Voldemort smiled, shuddering as the magic filled them both. "This is why I'm grateful to duel you here, Harry. Powered by the ley line, you will feel the limitless reserves that I do, joined in brotherhood by my loyal Death Eaters. Do you feel it?"
Harry vibrated, the sensations intense. A warm heat in his core, fingers twitching, the scent of something indescribable. Magic most pure.
"Here, we are equals." Voldemort declared. "But only one of us can walk out of here. Dumbledore cannot interrupt us—"
"What did you do to him?"
"Nothing." His tongue slithered out to lick his lips. "The Supreme Mugwump attends the International Confederation of Wizards — a closed chamber, four hours of discussion between governments and schools across the world. As ever, Dumbledore is his own worst enemy. Bellatrix?" He called leisurely.
To Harry's right, Hermione checked a pocket watch and bounced from foot to foot. "One hour left, my Lord."
"Can you survive for a whole hour, Harry?" Voldemort trembled with excitement.
Let 's find out.
Harry's chest felt light, adrenaline flooding him. This was a bad fight — no allies, a duel where his opponent set the rules. And worse, it was what the dueling community called a full canvas. An environment where there was nothing to use — nothing to Transfigure, nothing to Animate, no material to create into cover.
A blank canvas was a room in which two great mages could create a beautiful duel, one that could go for hours, desks into dragons, water-pipes wrenched from the ground to spout ice warriors into armies, walls torn to form trenches.
A full canvas duel could last less than a minute.
"Expelliarmus." Voldemort said mockingly. The watching crowd laughed.
Harry batted it away with his wand, eyes flicking around the room. The walls still held many clocks, hundreds of time faces staring down at him, taunting him with how slowly they ticked. But he didn't have the time to create another clock guardian or another 'big fan'.
Harry flooded the stones at Voldemort's feet with a pool of water and electrified it just to make the Dark Lord move. He dodged a Cruciatus and deliberately took a Cutting Curse into his hip so he could turn the resulting gout of blood into bubbling ooze that sank into the stone-cracks. Blood magic, the unique art that Tom had learned by delving through Aztec pyramids in Mexico — it was powerful but it needed an unpleasant source.
A shield to block an Entrail-Expeller, a flock of birds to throw themselves into the flock of daggers Tom threw at him. A fiery whip to snap against Tom's hip — yes! The Dark Lord jumped back and laughed as his skin was burned, his black robes seared.
Voldemort clapped his hands together, hands steaming and frozen in blue blocks, hands that wrapped around Harry's fire-whip and pulled him closer.
Harry scowled. He needed distance, buying time for his blood-magic ooze to slide through the channels between each stone tile, a red goo in slow motion. The time stream was an endless source of power — there was no magic too intensive to cast, but it was time itself that was the limit.
Stones torn from the floor to form a guardian, but Voldemort interrupted his animation. Harry scythed off his own robes to create a fluttering black-cloaked monster, like a Dementor, but Tom set it alight and banished it at his own Death Eaters, who laughed as they destroyed it.
Voldemort was in his element, showing off to the audience. Batting away Harry's spells, flying in the air to dodge his concoction of arrows-melded-to-Bludgers. And then when he floated back down to the ground, so did an acid rain cloud from above that Harry hadn't noticed, green rain drops that sizzled into his clothes, into his skin.
But Harry's blood ooze wobbled closer, and when Voldemort's feet touched the stone, they rose up to form a symbiotic jelly-like pair of hands, hands that seized at the Dark Lord's legs.
Voldemort thought he was victim to a trick both of them favored — creating a third party to seize the feet, holding them still for a single second to receive an overpowered finisher. Harry had done it to Bellatrix, to Rodulphus. Tom had done it all across Germany's dueling circuit.
But the blood-monster rose from the stone as Voldemort cast spell after spell at it, growing from hands to shoulders to torso, until it was not just hands but man. Harry grinned — the Dark Lord had fallen for it, empowering his blood-guardian with panicked spells.
Two Harry's stood, one man, one man-made, a globulous mixture of bloodied flesh and fleshy blood, like a statue carved from fresh human remains. The blood guardian seized Voldemort, but his touch left flesh-melting imprints on the Dark Lord, like Harry's hands on Quirrel all those years ago. Skin burnt to a raw red, shiny.
The real Harry cast spell after spell, using his advantage — but most of his chain dissipated into the blood guardian accidentally blocking the Dark Lord.
Voldemort shrieked and shrank back. Since magic only bolstered Harry's creation, he imprisoned it instead, stone shackles from the ground to freeze it. A swish of his wand to shift his acid cloud over the blood monster. A flip of his wand and Tom performed a complex self-Banishment to push himself twenty feet back, creating space.
The Dark Lord's eyes were furious, but he was laughing. "Blood magic, Harry? I can safely assume that Albus was not your teacher, then."
"I stand on my own two feet, as I told you." Harry said firmly.
"Your secrets will unravel with each drop of blood." Tom snapped off a Killing Curse with contemptuous ease.
Harry's answering curse met it in midair. Suddenly, his wand vibrated with a familiar electric surge, his fingers seizing up.
A beam of gold light connected from wand to wand.
Priori Incantatem.
His feet lifted from the ground, as did Voldemort's, until they were high in the cavernous chamber. The single thread of golden light splintered, the beams arcing, refracting, from wall to wall, until they were a thousand strong, a web of gold. A dome. A cage. A shield.
The first time their spells had met in midair since the graveyard. Harry had almost forgotten — brother wands. Echoes of their most recent spells, screams of pain and rage.
But as Harry floated in midair, he saw the clocks in greater detail. There was still so much time to go. Help wasn't coming any time soon.
But the power of the time stream flowed into them both, that river of white passing through the web of gold.
If only I could speed time up. Harry thought. He was in the time stream. The Unspeakables must have a way to control it, to change variables as they studied. But as his body strained and shuddered with the dual magics of the stream and the Priori Incantatem, he could barely look around.
There was no console, no lever. There were only the clocks on the wall, clock faces embedded from floor to ceiling. Not for decoration, Harry realized.
One of them must be a device to control it…a Time Turner in the wall. Clocks small and large, some wood, some gleaming gold, but how could he recognize it?
He needed the magic of time. But he only knew two spells that dealt with time. Priori Incantato, forcing wands to show echoes of the last spells it had performed. And…the healing spell he'd used on the Unspeakables, used by Egyptian mummifiers to rewind the damage they'd caused to the skull after draining the brain.
Voldemort laughed from across the golden cage, their wands locked as the beam pushed and pulled between them. "A moment's reprieve, Harry Potter, before your death!"
Harry thought. Only a fool made a spell in mid-battle. But if he used the mummifier's spell, twisted it, inverted the intent…could he push time forward, use the power of the stream to his advantage, so he pushed his whole body into the future? Inverting spells…it had been done.
A Banishing Spell that worked on one self. The Momentum-Reversing spell was an invert of the Slowing Charm, used by Aurors and Mediwizards to catch suicide attempts, sending those falling from windows hurtling back through them.
Harry let himself lose the duel of wands. Echoes of the victims of his spells, but he hadn't cast the Killing Curse, so none were ripped from their realm to the mortal plane.
Voldemort smirked. "You have power, young Harry, but will is the difference between us. The will to be great, the will to kill—" The Dark Lord cast the Killing Curse once more.
This time, Harry answered it with the time magic of Ancient Egypt, his wand twisted, his mind focused as he tried to invert the spell's intent. "Hatshepsut alhayaa altarjie ankh-sut." The white spell was almost lost in the glow of the river, but it met Voldemort's curse once more, just before it ended Harry.
The golden beam again. Their feet lifted into midair. "You do this again and I will have no choice but to have my Death Eaters rip us from it!" Voldemort yelled over the rushing magic, like a waterfall embedded with the beat of war-drums.
Harry wasn't looking at his opponent. He was looking at the wall.
At the clock-hands that span, faster than he could see.
It was working. The hours span, a thousand faces turning faster than he could see, a blur of colors. Harry's head threatened to split in two, dagger-sharp pain in his scar, and his forehead must have been bleeding, for his sight was covered in red.
The chamber was vibrating. Stones fell from the wall. The clocks were…going up on the wall, rather than falling. Harry could not turn his neck, a strain on his muscles like he was flying fifty thousand feet in the air. But from the corner of his eyes, there were people. Echoes. Misty figures.
Voldemort laughed and laughed in mania. "I don't need my wand, Harry." He screamed — and then his eyes narrowed.
Once more, Harry's head pounded, invaded, that silky slithering presence of Tom's feather-light Legilimency. But Harry was shaking as time blurred, his mind not able to defend itself. His body was breaking.
His mind was breaking.
Magic filled them, that endless reserve from the time-stream, but whereas before it rejuvenated, now it simply powered their fall into madness.
Harry choked. Closed his eyes…and re-opened them.
Not two eyes, but four.
His head split with pain…but his sight split with two visions.
In one, he panted, kneeling on the cold stone floor, looking at Voldemort opposite, shaken himself. The time told him that salvation was still very far away.
And in his other vision, he knelt in an empty chamber, the time-stream gone. Two vast runes on either side of the chamber, walls stripped of their clock-faces. The runes were seals, Harry realized, his cold blood curdling inside him. Seals for the ley lines.
Harry swallowed the bile that rose.
He hadn't gone forward in time, but back.
And yet when he rose to his feet, he did so in two worlds. The world he knew and the one he didn't. Voldemort's attack of his mind had splintered it, and the astonishing power of the time stream had amplified his time magic spell, so that he'd sent some part of himself back in time.
And remained in his own timeline too.
Harry groaned from two mouths.
"Don't fuck with time magic, moron." He muttered.
Voldemort gasped a laugh in the modern timeline. "The time stream is more powerful than I could imagine. For a moment, I thought us travelling back in time, thought you'd escaped me once more."
Tom didn't know, Harry realized. Didn't know that Harry was there and yet not there.
It was a nightmare, he knew, one that filled him with fear. Fear that he would be stuck, two parts of a whole, mind as garbled as Lockhart's, unable to be with his girls.
And yet.
And yet.
An opportunity, too. Split in two, perhaps one half of him could help the other escape Voldemort.
Voices in his head. No, not in his head. Five senses had become ten, but he heard strangers speaking.
He Disillusioned himself, thankful that he held his wand in both timelines. Two Unspeakables entered the chamber.
"—all I'm saying is that it ain't easy to just undo the seals on these ley lines."
"Someone once unleashed them to power the Ministry."
They stood and studied the large seals. "Someone put a tiny crack in them, that isn't the same thing. Then they sealed ninety percent of that crack with runes Merlin himself would probably struggle to figure out."
"Can't you ask Ying Yue? She's the runes queen."
"I can't, with the new rules and these new walls. No interproject talk. Soon, I won't even see her. I have to do it all myself."
"We're hiring runes and charms people. Monk's doing interviews all day. We'll figure it out." His colleague assured him.
Harry's mouth was dry. He was fifteen or sixteen years in the past, where they looked to unleash the ley lines.
In the future, Voldemort snarled and wrenched up thick vines from the stones, but from each vine stemmed a thorny plant-mouth that spat Cruciatus curses.
Harry lit it up in torching flames — and had to stop himself from torching the Unspeakables with his wand-hand in the past.
This was going to get confusing. But he had to make sure he wasn't seen back here — nobody liked a time-traveller. He scarpered from the main chamber and into the Death Chamber.
But here, there was no veil. It was a room in thought — a stone dias half-constructed, a ring of yellow safety barriers around a pit in the floor. An empty cup of tea flattened down papers of diagrams of a dias Harry had already seen built.
It was surreal. The chamber around them was half-built too, enormous stone blocks layered to waist-height. The vast floor was beginning to be segmented all around, chambers in construction everywhere Harry looked. The brain chamber, the library of prophecies, another with a huge beating heart. A sleeping Nundu in another.
Harry wondered. A plan sketched itself in two minds, a diagram began in the past and finished in the future.
In the future, a distracted Harry barely survived, screaming as a bubbling purple spell corroded his shoulder away.
In the past, he slightly corroded a stone in the wall, a curse of decay linked to a time-delaying rune. Each stone block was thicker than three men, because magic this powerful had to be contained.
The block fortified with linking runes and wards, each block charmed together, an impenetrable and inescapable chamber.
But if the stone was broken at its core, before any charms or runes or wards…
In the future, he jerked his head back before Tom's stone-serpent could snap its jaw down. To his side, Hermione-a-trix giggled. Harry rolled away and darted for the Death Chamber.
A gout of fire lit his arm up as he yanked the door open, but he slipped through and locked it.
Harry frowned. A Switching Spell on the stone dias and the stone he stood on — Voldemort would be slowed down by the whispering veil in his face.
The moment of truth.
Harry chained a dozen spells at the stone block he'd sabotaged fifteen-odd years before. Decayed over time, the block disintegrated easily. A hole to freedom.
Two Harrys smiled. Two Harrys left the Death Chamber. One scurried through like a rat, fingernails digging through stone to pull himself into another chamber. A little illusion charm behind him, so Tom didn't notice his tunnel immediately. He was getting the fuck out of here — Tom would clear out when Dumbledore arrived with a clutch of Aurors, Unspeakables and Professors, those too afraid to enter without Dumbledore at their side.
At least he hoped Tom would leave — his plan to make Harry a villain only worked if he wasn't found skulking around, and he'd gotten his objective, mostly. The prophecy and Amelia's death.
The other Harry simply walked out, back through the time chamber, all the way back to the elevator.
Two Harrys took deep breaths in the calm of the elevator. Their heads throbbed, hearts pounding, scars red raw.
What a life I lead. How am I going to fix this?
He bit his lip hard, if only stop himself from sinking into despair. He wanted to tell himself it was going to be okay, but he didn't feel it.
In the past, in an elevator that was newer, bronzed wood panel gleaming, the door opened.
Someone walked in — a redhead in a gray pantsuit, tugging nervously at their jacket.
"Lucky number seven, please." Her laughter was a little high.
Harry stared in wonder. Had his madness sunk in? He wanted to laugh, cry, break down, sleep.
She glanced over her shoulder at him, eyes narrowing.
Green eyes.
His mother's eyes.
Harry gaped at her, his mind awash, a beach littered with plastic debris, more and more with every wave. She was here, alive. Of course she was…it was what? 1980? She was young, nineteen, twenty…out of Hogwarts and—
"Are you okay?" Her voice was soft, her eyebrow raised. "I'm sorry, I really need to hurry, I have an interview—"
"Right, yes, sorry." Harry said flatly, jabbing the button for floor seven. The elevator rose from the atrium, over a lobby of gleaming tiles, the fountain of gold statues.
Below, Harry caught sight of a different flash of red hair, a woman in a strict pantsuit and a tight hair-bun, marching through the lobby and juggling thick binders as she tried to keep up with her boss. A younger Amelia, making a name for herself in the Ministry.
He shook himself. He couldn't miss a single second with his mother.
"Y-you're interviewing?"
"Yeah. You too? Probably the same position." Lily blew out a long breath that pushed her hair from her eyes. "Think I might throw up." She shot him a sardonic smile.
Harry pinched his palms, taking a shuddering breath. He was not going to sob in front of his mother.
But she looked so beautiful, so full of life. Warm and vivacious, the way he'd imagined her, the woman from the photos in the book Hagrid had gifted him, only she stood an arm's reach away.
An orphan's dream made reality.
"You'll…you'll do great." He said quietly.
"It's just difficult to be everything they want you to be." Lily sighed. "It was only a couple of years ago I was doing my NEWTs and that's so much easier. Only one right answer. Now I need to be independent but also work in a team, self-assured but not make out I know more than the boss."
"Confident but not arrogant." Harry added.
"Right!"
The elevator was rising too quickly. The lights flashing on the panel.
No. Harry didn't want this to be over so soon. A twist of his wand and the elevator lurched to a slow crawl.
Lily frowned. "Oh, no! They've got elevators like Hogwarts' stairwells. Minds of their own!"
Harry's smile was tremulous. Could he reach out and touch her, just once? To know she was real and not a figment of a very long day?
"Are you okay?" Lily was peering at him.
"Yeah, yeah." He shook himself. "Tough day. Stomach feels funny."
"Mmmph!" Her eyes went wide as she foraged in her bag. "I know just the thing." She retrieved a small jar and poured green berries into her hand. "Mistletoe berries. Eat, eat!"
"Aren't mistletoe berries poisonous?"
"No, no, no. The mistletoe itself is but the berries are good for the stomach." Lily paused in thought. "In small doses," she amended.
"Reassuring."
"Relax," she grinned. "My friend Alice gives me them, helps with morning sickness."
"Oh, you're—" Harry swallowed.
Pregnant.
Pregnant with him. "You'll…you'll make a great mother."
"You think?" Lily popped a berry into her own mouth, staring down at the magical sights of the Ministry in motion. Her lips twisted. "I…I hope so."
"I know so." He said firmly. He wished he could tell her how amazing she'd be — how she would sacrifice everything for her child, grant the old magics of love to protect him from the most evil of magics.
But anything he said might change the foundations of the future — and he couldn't risk that. Because now he had his own loves to worry about, his own family.
Harry opened and closed his mouth a dozen times. What should he say to the mother he'd never had? There weren't words enough. "You…you thought about names?"
Lily snickered. "James — my husband, you look a little like him, funny enough. He wants an old name, like the royals. Like George."
"The names of the old kings, huh?" Harry smiled. "Edward?"
"Oh, no." She pouted. "Everyone would call him Ed. That's the problem with the classics. William becomes Bill."
"Elizabeth becomes Lizzie." Harry chimed in.
"Charles becomes Charlie." Lily nodded. "Maybe Henry."
"Henry?" Harry crossed his arms. He couldn't be named Henry. Henry Potter was not a mighty mage — Henry Potter was a broom salesman or a bureaucrat.
"Henry becomes Harry." Lily said softly. "And Harry? That's a kind name. You got kids?" She looked at him, taking him in properly. "You look young but with the war and all—"
"No kids, but," Harry stopped himself from staring at her. He thought of his girls, imagined Hermione round with child. "Soon. Yeah."
Lily gave him a reassuring grin. "You'll get there. I was worried too — am worried, I should say. My mum and dad, they were so focused on the idea of being good parents, they never really managed it, you know? Like it was a roleplay…perfectly kept gardens, food on the table."
Harry drank her in as the elevator crawled higher. She'd be gone soon and he still couldn't thank her, for giving him the life he led. Words tumbled from his lips, like each word would extend their time together. "I know, I know you'll do great. It's all about—" He cut off, his throat dry.
He couldn't say sacrifice. He couldn't put that idea in her head. What monster would he be? A child suggesting sacrifice to his own mother? He hated himself, suddenly, a burning disgust that ran from vein to vein.
"Sacrifice, right?" Lily nodded. "That's what I've read in this parenting book. Love is sacrifice and life is about taking every opportunity. You know, everything's in a book." Harry choked, hearing Hermione's catch-phrase come from his mother's lips. How alike they were.
"Y-yeah." Harry squeezed his eyes shut to stop himself from crying and then opened them once more. He couldn't miss a single second of her. The elevator dinged for six — he only had moments left.
"Hey…Lily. I…just want you to know. Everything is gonna be just fine, you know? Not at first, but in the end." His voice cracked, his stomach so twisted that he had to hold it. "It's all gonna work out. I swear."
Lily frowned, head tilted to the side in confusion. But her frown became a smile. "You're an odd one, stranger." She tapped her nose conspiratorially. "But I like the odd ones."
The elevator reached seven.
"T-thank you." The words bubbled from his mouth, because it was either talking or crying. "For…the mistletoe berries."
His arm stretched between them, hanging uselessly, half a bridge between two cliffs. He couldn't hug her, like he'd dreamed of. A mother's embrace, because they were strangers in an elevator, because she was a woman who'd been unfathomably understanding of his creepiness already.
She turned to leave and he closed his eyes firmly, willing himself not to cry. Her heels resounded as she walked out…and then back in.
"Hey?" Lily said.
Harry blinked wet eyes open.
"I shouldn't help the competition." She sighed. "But, don't mean to be rude, you look like you need it." Her hands feathered into his messy hair. "Let me try and fix your hair, because nobody will hire you like this. My husband's got the same problem but, well, you're not Lord Potter."
Harry watched, eyes wide, holding a breath that he never wanted to exhale, because even a breath might break this moment. His mother's soft hands swept through his hair, smoothing it down, trying to tame it, all while she admonished him for looking so unkempt.
He took her in, because he felt he'd never get another chance. The sparkling gleam of her emerald eyes, holding so much life. The way she nibbled on her lips as his hair bounced back to messiness.
Her exasperated sigh, her rolling eyes, toss of her hair.
"Alright, that's the best I can do." She swept a strand behind his ear and Harry closed his eyes, feeling her magic, the warmth of her hand, fingers trailing across his cheek. A mother's touch.
"Boys." She tutted. "They always need to be mothered. Good luck out there, okay?"
"Yeah." He croaked. When he opened his eyes, she was gone.
Harry cried.
###
His torn mind swam, a blaring cacophony of sensations mixed together, a cooking pot with too many spices, stirred by two chefs instead of one.
He wept from four eyes. He didn't know what to feel. He didn't know what to do.
But he knew, whenever he was sad or low or confused, he always went to one place.
He hadn't the energy to separate himself, so two Harrys Apparated to Malfoy Manor unthinkingly.
One Harry found wards but these were dated, old. Magic advanced quickly and especially under threat — these were top of the line wards for two decades ago, but Voldemort had broken through wards such as these easily. They were like the Greengrass wards before he'd paid for new ones.
He didn't even think before shooting through them.
In the future, in the living room, Harry found Narcissa in a panic and hurled himself into her embrace, feeling like a little boy and ashamed all the more because of it.
"Ssh," She soothed him, drawing him down to the sofa, into her lap. "You're safe. You're here, I'm here." Harry scrunched up her peach-colored sundress with his fingers, shaking as she stroked his hair.
Just like Lily had.
In the past, he found the living room empty, but for a host of discarded wine glasses on the side tables, on the mantelpiece. But a hubbub of voices sounded from elsewhere in the manor. And a figure emerged from the doorway behind him.
It was her.
Bellatrix — but not her, all the same. Young and lithe, her long thick shiny dark hair gleaming and full, as she toyed with as it fell over her amused smirk, over her lidded black eyes.
"They're in the kitchen, you know. Or through the garden. You don't need to…skulk."
"I'm not skulking." Harry protested, drinking her in. "Who's in the kitchen?"
"Who else?" Bellatrix rolled her eyes. "The happy couple and the extended family. Blacks and Malfoys and a hundred other hangers-on. Amazing how much family turns up when there's free food."
Harry paused. Bellatrix was here, in Malfoy Manor. She'd have no reason to be here but for…a party celebrating Narcissa's marriage to Lucius. Or their engagement. Or their child. That thought made his stomach turn.
It was probably the latter — if Lily was pregnant, so was Narcissa.
"Which side of the family are you?" Bellatrix demanded, crossing her arms. She wore a dangerously high black skirt and a white blouse — Narcissa had told him she was trouble before she got married.
"Maybe I'm neither." Harry rose a brow. "Maybe I'm an intruder, using the party to scout the place before I rob it."
Bellatrix snorted. "Good stuff is in the cellar, be careful of the curses." She wandered into the room, twirling a wine glass. From the flush in her cheeks, she'd already had a few.
He just looked at her.
"What?" She growled. "He's just another rich asshole. Cissy would never have married him if she hadn't been pressured. Now she's got a bun in the oven and stuck for life."
"Cheers to the happy couple." Harry scooped up a half-drank wine glass and toasted her.
What was he doing?
"What are you doing?" Cissy asked as she watched his arm move oddly from where he lay in her lap. "Come back to me, my love." She stroked his cheek.
Harry blinked, looking up into her blue eyes. "I…had a fight with Voldie in the Department of Mysteries. There's…this ley line open, this, like, bleeding cut in our timeline, with so much power. And, and, he had me cornered and I had to try something, so I tried this time spell, but he was in my mind, Cissy!" He swallowed heavily.
"It's okay." She stroked his hair, holding him tightly, blinking away her own glistening eyes. "We were worried. There's a lot to talk about — they say you attacked the Ministry, that you killed Amelia. There's…there's witnesses. Peter's in a panic trying to stamp out fires, Rita Skeeter is trying to get in contact—"
"Cissy, you don't understand." Harry breathed out. "I'm in two places, two times. I'm here but I'm also back in ah, 1980, maybe? I'm talking to your sister, to Bellatrix, at a party you and Lucius are having."
She blinked back at him, mouth agape. Harry blinked too and he was watching the oldest Black sister cross her legs as she downed her wine glass and reached for another. "Mother and Father aren't pleased with me, of course, haven't been since she got married. It should be the eldest sister that gets married first, per tradition." She rolled her eyes.
"Who cares about tradition?" Harry said absently.
Narcissa touched his cheek. "So you're talking to big sis right now."
"Yes."
"She's there."
"Yes."
"What's she wearing?"
"Little black skirt, white blouse."
Narcissa's lips twisted. "Always the cocktease. Do you like it?"
"What?"
Her head dipped down to capture his lips. Her hand trailed down his body to take hold of his cock. "Do you want to fuck her?"
"No, Cissy, she's your sister. I love you, I don't—"
"I know you do." Cissy breathed out, smiling. "You love getting a family back together, don't you?"
Harry blinked again. Bellatrix huffed as she threw her long bare legs over the side of the armchair. "Like marriage is…grotesque as an institution. A lifetime bond to someone who couldn't even beat me in a duel, someone less educated, less intelligent, less ambitious—" She sighed in frustration.
"But you'd be okay with it if he was smarter, more powerful." How old was she? He couldn't sense the Dark Lord on her…but she wasn't just out of school either. Twenty-ish, or nearing thirty? Decaying without a magical tutor, and knowing it, about to fall for the promise the Dark Lord gave her?
Bellatrix scowled at him. "As if anyone is. It's not about being okay with it, but at least there's an order to it, you know? Power begets power. Sooner or later, every wizard and witch hits a wall — the wall of what you can learn from the library."
"You need a teacher."
"Back in the day, the husband was the teacher." Bellatrix pointed her glass at him. "Like, nobody's fucking Merlin because of his great beard, right? But Morgana lets him get dirty because, helloooo, world's greatest wizard."
"I'm not sure that's in the history books—" Harry started. How much alcohol had she consumed?
She sighed. "I wish I knew someone who could help me with my weak points—" Bellatrix began.
Harry blinked and looked up at Narcissa. "Cissy, what was she bad at? Magically?"
"Charms and runes. She loves curses and Transfiguration."
"I'm a Charms master." Harry boasted. "Used to do archaeological digs in Egypt too, because of my Runes knowledge."
Bellatrix's eyebrows drew together. "Nobody asked, weirdo."
Harry shrugged. "Just saying."
"Well, whatever. I'm just saying, maybe then it would make sense. But even then it's like, the ambition, right? If one part of the marriage wants to have a bunch of children and the other wants to—" Bellatrix swigged her wine glass.
Harry looked through his other set of eyes. Narcissa was breathing heavily, biting her lip and his. "Cissy," He pushed her away, even as she moaned. "What's her greatest ambition?"
Cissy bit her lip. "At that age? She wanted to tear down the world. The Ministry was ruling against everything the Dark Lord apparently favored, trying to stamp out a movement but only making it bigger. They outlawed artifact creation, public duels, dark magic books, they outlawed international dueling tutors — they made one law against international academies that stopped her from going into a Spanish academy for duellists, because they were so frightened about the brain drain. People escaping Britain."
Harry turned back to his past self. Bellatrix wasn't meeting his eyes. "I just want the world to be different." She growled.
"Me too." Harry agreed, all too aware of the sudden phantom sensation of his cock getting sucked by an eager Cissy, fifteen years in the future. "The Ministry needs tearing down completely, like anything else that's not fit for function. These laws recently? I imbue objects with my magic and that's suddenly outlawed 'artifact creation'? I want to have a friendly duel with my friends in Hogsmeade? Nope, can't do that!"
Harry sighed heavily, placing his wine glass down with a thump. "Half my family library is now illegal, suddenly. My old tutors are losing their jobs. I'm just grateful I managed to get through MISCAT before they made studying abroad illegal. Excuse me, before they paused studying permits temporarily." Harry snorted. "It's like they want people to join the Dark Lord."
Bellatrix almost fell off her armchair. She bounced into the seat, black eyes wild with excitement. "Wait, you went to MISCAT?"
Harry took a slow sip of his wine. "The Magical International School of Catalunya? Yeah, just one of my tutors."
Bellatrix twisted her hands together like she was in physical pain. Her eyes wide, with a touch of the fanaticism he'd see in her permanently, fifteen years later. "You have to tell me everything."
Harry smiled as the fish took the bait. In two timelines, he settled back into the sofa.
Cissy moaned around his cock. "There's — mmmph — so much we need to do." She lathered his cockhead with her spit. "Need to stop the Prophet from publishing their story tomorrow." Her tongue swirled under his mushroom head. "Need to talk to Peter, figure out how to do damage control. See if we can convince anyone we know to run for Minister."
Harry pushed her hair from her face as she looked up at him with swollen lips, her eyes lidded in desire. "But it's so hot, Master. Helping you get into the panties of big sis, when she's so young and vulnerable." She panted eagerly, dribbling a long string of saliva onto his cock deliberately. "Is that what you want, Harry? Do you want Andromeda too, complete the family set?"
Harry arched his hips as she throated him, bobbing happily. Through all of his eyes, he looked at the sisters Black. One slobbering on his cock, the other who kept crossing one leg over the other, fidgeting with giddiness. He couldn't tell which one was more crazy.
He'd rendered his mind in two. He was trapped in a timeline, caught between getting back to his own time safely and the glint of an opportunity, of possibility.
The possibility of taking Voldemort's woman, his most favored, his most loyal. And bending her to his will.
He was a mummy's boy, after all. And his mother had said it best.
Love is about sacrifice.
And life is about taking every opportunity.
Bellatrix shifted in her armchair as she listened intently to his lecture on dueling. Her skirt rode up her thigh. She uncrossed her legs and revealed…
A flash of her pussy.
A glimpse of the barest thatch of black hair.
And an undeniable exposure of opportunity.