Chapter Text
When Harry feels the solid ground under his feet and the sudden quietness of the room, he lets out a deep breath.
Hermione had been quite sure that it would work, of course, but it is still a relief to have concrete proof of her absolute brilliance. Not that he would ever voice this moment of doubt to her.
Looking around, there’s no question that it is indeed the same room he’d been in just seconds before. The furniture is the same, though it somehow feels less homey. When Harry had first come to this house, seemingly abandoned for over twenty years, he’d been surprised at just how inviting it felt. Like someone had put their own personal touch to it, one which resonated deep inside him.
Now it has the peculiar effect of feeling just slightly off. There are pictures on the wall, which hadn’t been the case before, but Harry’s not sure that that’s the issue.
Shrugging the thought off, he casts a Tempus spell which tells him it’s 00:01 a.m., January 1st, 1975.
He smiles. So far, at least, his mission has been successful.
Forging a fake identity thirty years into the future and making sure that it sticks thirty years into the past is certainly no small feat — for which Harry is ever so glad that that task also fell to Hermione’s wonderful genius.
He breathes another sigh in relief when he steps into Gringotts to get access to his vault and the blood test proves he is, indeed, Harry Jonas Hawthorne. Single heir to the family vaults due to his father’s untimely death at the hands of a particularly vicious Nundu while they’d been away in Uganda, where Harry graduated as a proud alumnus of Uagadou School of Magic.
Harry is very grateful for Draco’s insistence that if they were going to come up with this fantastical story, then Harry should at least have the forethought to learn everything he could about Uagadou, life in Uganda, and, especially, wandless magic, which is their main focus for learning magic there.
He might have grumbled a bit (a lot), and complained about all the extra studying he had to do on top of his usual workload a bit (a lot lot), but he does send a silent thanks to future-Draco when the first person to ask him where he went to school, upon learning about it, eagerly asks him for a demonstration on wandless magic which is just, “Oh so fascinating, they should really teach that at Hogwarts”. Harry is inclined to agree, if only so that he wouldn’t have had to spend an extra year and a half killing himself over it.
Once the right people have learned about his skills, Harry casually applies for a consulting job at the Ministry at the incentive of one of his new acquaintances. When he gets an owl back after the interview to ask him to go to the Ministry, level nine, Harry smiles.
Their plan was coming along just swimmingly.
Harry has to reluctantly concede that being an Unspeakable in the division of Life and Death of the Department of Mysteries is much less stressing — and much more interesting — than being an Auror.
There’s the whole not running after bad guys thing, which can get quickly annoying. Also, the paperwork goes more along the lines of ‘Today I tried to research. I wasn’t so successful,’ rather than the pages and pages he normally has to write as an Auror about every single detail on the cases. He thinks that both Hermione and Draco, the actual Unspeakables, might have something to say about his work method, but they’re not even thought processes in their parents’ lives yet, so Harry cheerfully keeps at it.
Besides, he does like to think he brings a certain je ne sais quoi to the division, what with his whole dying and coming back to life experience.
Less fun is perhaps working so closely with the Veil and having to bury a lot of memories and face many resurgent nightmares — but he thinks it’s overall quite worth it.
There’s also the little blossom of hope, which he holds quite close to his heart, that he’ll maybe one day get closer to understanding the mysteries of the Veil and perhaps even be able to bring Sirius back. It’s a small hope, barely more than an illusion, but it does give him strength on the days where it all gets to be a bit too much.
Going back in time thirty years was not the product of a rash and ill-thought-out plan. On the contrary.
It took them months and months of arguing and hair-pulling — and one instance of an all-out brawl — for everyone to finally agree that traveling back in time would be the only viable solution to their insurmountable problem.
It then took over two years for them to all agree on a plan, work out all the kinks, tie all the loose ends, and, most importantly, figure out how the hell they were supposed to do it.
In the end, it came down to Hermione and Draco emerging out of the Malfoy library after a three-day hole-in with a ritual that was, without a doubt, one of the darkest Harry has ever heard about. He’s obviously not counting the whole Horcrux-making process — that stands on an entirely different level.
After having decided long ago that Harry would be the one to go back, mostly because Harry was having none of it about his friends sacrificing their lives — and wasn’t it strange that he now considered Draco as one of his closest friends? — all that was left to do was gather all the ingredients for the ritual, wait for the summer solstice, cross their fingers, and pray for the best.
Harry was never one for prayers, but he thinks there might be something to it given his proven success.
Well, there’s still the matter of going back so, he’ll hold on to his judgment on that for now.
Harry is working on devising a ward that will allow him to get closer to the veil without running the risk of falling through when he lets out a groan in frustration and nearly rips a handful of hair off his head.
He can practically hear Draco’s voice in his head snarkily saying, “It’s not like it would make much of a difference in the overall look, Potter.” Because Draco is still a git even if they are friends, and he also still refuses to call him Harry for some unknown reason.
The smile at the thought of his friends is quickly replaced by the reality that he’ll have to wait five years to see them again. Of course, the same can’t be said for them, and Harry is still not sure how he feels about aging five years while his friends only age a few minutes, if that.
The ritual wasn’t very specific, but that’s Harry’s interpretation of ‘immediate return in the present time’. A present which is currently his future and it’s all… just bloody complicated.
Giving up on the ward creation for the day, Harry decides to heck with it and leaves work early. It’s not like they have an actual schedule what with all the purposeful mystery surrounding the job. After all, they can’t very well be Unspeakables if everyone and their cousin sees them every day, at the same time, coming and going from level nine.
Shaking off the last of his work-related thoughts, Harry decides his morose feelings deserve an indulgent trip to Sibilant Saigon, a Vietnamese restaurant just at the edge of Diagon Alley, too close to Knockturn for many ‘decent’ folk to approach, but where the food is absolutely delicious.
Harry thinks the current cook is even better than the one in the future, and he didn’t think it was possible.
The dim atmosphere that greets him, filled with the sibilant hisses of dozens of snake paintings and ornaments, also explains the absence of those so-called decent folk. Voldemort has already started his reign of terror and it’s common knowledge that he’s a parselmouth.
For Harry, though, the restaurant brings with it fond memories of dinners past — future? — where he and his friends would joke around the table and dare each other to eat everything on the menu, particularly the snake dishes.
“You can’t come to a restaurant called Sibilant Saigon and not try their snakes,” Ron would say.
And then he and Draco would trade suggestive looks and proceed to rib Harry until he’d just roll his eyes and say, “Yeah, yeah, we all know I like that type of snake too. Though I think I have a certain preference for dragon-bred weasel,” and his smirk at Ron’s outraged look and blustering words would make it all worth it.
Chuckling to himself at the memory, Harry sits quietly in his corner table, next to a beautiful painting of a red-headed krait. She’s one of Harry’s favorites due to the incessant string of lewd comments she makes about all the patrons that walk in.
Who knew a snake painting could make for such amusing company?
Harry always has a particularly good time when the snake turns her attention on Draco and he makes it a point to translate everything she says word for word while Draco becomes increasingly more flustered.
It’s a pity he’s missing out on that type of entertainment for the night.
It’s halfway through his meal when he nearly chokes on his pho and all but sees his death flash before his eyes. All because of the damned snake who decided that this was the perfect moment to say, “Oh, if I were a human I would leave that disgusting food and jump right on to that woman’s lap and fuck her senseless.”
Harry coughs, still recovering from his near brush with death by pho asphyxiation, and the snake merely keeps going for it.
“Have you even seen her, useless human man? Just get off your arse and go dive into that warm body, fill her with your seed, make a hundred babies with her. Oh, if only I could get off this painting! Have you seen those breasts? I want to lick them, to bite them. Hmm, I want to kiss her all over—”
“Merlin, Hanh! That’s—“ He splutters, quite at a loss for words. He settles for, “No way to talk about a woman,” because he can all but hear Hermione’s voice in his head and he most certainly agrees with it.
He’s not even seen the woman Hanh is drooling over but he can be quite certain that, even if she were a goddess walking the earth, that’d be no way to talk about her.
Besides, “I didn’t know you’re into the ladies. Is there even such a thing as lesbian snakes?” And this is suddenly a very important question that needs answers.
Hanh snorts as well as a snake painting can — a surprising amount, it turns out — and gives him a condescending look.
“Men are useless, why would I concern myself with them?” And then she gives him a very pointed look which conveys exactly how she considers him to be one of those useless men. He thinks that’s quite enough judgment for one night and is about to tell her to piss off when she rushes along with, “And why are you still sitting? Haven’t you heard all the things you should do to her? Do you need me to teach you? Do you not know where all the female pleasure parts are?”
Harry pointedly puts his hands to his ears and starts to shake his head one way and the other, humming to himself to drown out the sound of Hanh very loudly enumerating all the different erogenous zones in the female body.
All Harry knows is that whoever painted her is a great old pervert, and now all the other snakes in the restaurant have paused to hear her loud lecture. They’re disturbingly interesting, too.
Harry curses his life and all of his ancestors before him.
“Are you alright?”
There’s a delicate touch on his shoulder, just the fingertips, soft and hesitant, and concerned yet amused blue eyes meet his when he looks up.
And they belong to the striking face of Narcissa fucking Malfoy.
Harry’s brain freezes for a long moment.
Rationally, he knew he’d run into people he knows from his time. He’d prepared for that. Sort of. Mostly by being very determined that he would avoid any and all contact with Hogwarts and anyone sharing a last name with him or his friends. But he’d not prepared for being confronted with a face he knows.
And definitely not for it to be Narcissa Malfoy, of all people.
And she’s… Harry doesn’t even have the words to properly understand the way she’s looking at him, but it’s definitely not with the dislike he’s become so accustomed to, and that’s certainly evoking weird thoughts in his jumbled mind.
Such as, the woman is abso-fucking-lutely gorgeous.
“Now that is a proper woman,” Hanh says approvingly. “She didn’t wait for your useless arse to get up, she’s doing your job for you. Now don’t bugger it up!”
Harry chokes on air and his outraged eyes turn instantly to the devil-painted snake.
“Shut it, you perverted snake.”
He then immediately realizes that he has company — human company — and that most people don’t go around talking to snakes.
Yet, while the reaction he’s expecting goes more along the lines of a shrieked “Ahhhh,” and “Sweet Salazar save me,” or even a heartfelt “What the buggering fuck,” what he gets instead is:
“Oh. You’re a parselmouth.”
Just like that.
Harry blinks. And then again. He’s starting to think he’s got a real problem because Narcissa Malfoy just looks at him as if one of the night’s mysteries has been solved and now Harry is interesting.
And fucking Hanh just keeps egging him on about getting the hell up and fucking her already.
Harry does get up, but only because he can hear Draco screaming in his ear about being polite to a lady and especially one who is his mother. It’s a good thing, too, because he certainly seems to need the little push to be able to put his shock aside and act like a normal fucking person for once.
Even if to do that he has to pretend to be someone he’s not.
“I’m… yes. I am. I’m Harry, by the way, Harry Hawthorne. Sorry for the little show, Hanh is a real firecracker,” he says, sending said devil-snake an evil glare.
Hanh just looks at him smugly and keeps telling him to “Fuck the woman already, we don’t have all night. Put your baby in her belly!”
So Harry unapologetically Silences her and Conjures a blindfold for her eyes for good measure.
Narcissa lets out a lovely, heartfelt laugh at that, and Harry’s shocked face turns to her and finds her eyes dancing with mirth.
For some reason, this is what shocks him most out of tonight’s events so far. That Narcissa Malfoy is even capable of such a lovely, genuine laugh. He stares at her for a second too long thanks to that little tidbit.
Dear Merlin. The woman is absolutely stunning when she laughs.
He promptly shakes his head off the thought.
That is certainly not the way he wants to think about his friend’s mother, not to mention the woman is double his age and was married to a Death Eather.
Well, she’s not double his age now, his brain helpfully supplies. Is actually a bit younger. Harry decides that’s neither here not there.
“I wish I could’ve heard it, it must have been quite something indeed for you to Silence a painting,” she says, voice filled with amusement. “I’m Narcissa Black.”
Harry feels his body mechanically take her hand and press his lips to it, and the little Draco-voice in his mind echoes its approval. Harry wonders for a ludicrous moment if that voice has taken over control of his body.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Black. Even if I did just embarrass myself in the process.”
Narcissa smirks. “It was quite entertaining. I was just worried when my sister pointed out you seemed to be having some sort of fit,” she says, and Harry notices for the first time the table she was sitting at, a few tables across from him which explains Hanh’s premiere view.
Andromeda is sitting there, looking at both of them with curiosity and faint amusement.
Harry nearly does a double-take.
He was quite sure that Andromeda had been disinherited by the family at this point, as Tonks should be about a year old. Yet here she is, having dinner with her sister.
“I apologize for the scare,” Harry says smoothly, hoping to hide the small pause while his brain processes these new facts. “I was just… quite traumatized. I think whoever named her had quite a sense of humor.”
Narcissa’s laugh rings lightly in his ears and he can’t help but stare a bit at the sight.
Good Merlin but he’d never heard her laugh so much in his entire life. She should do it more often, he absently notes. It makes her look more… Just more.
“Well, at least you had some company, disreputable as it may be. It’s a wonderful gift you have, Mr. Hawthorne,” she says with a small smile.
Harry nods, still a bit astounded at her easy-going reaction. “It’s quite useful, yes. I… I’ve recently moved back to the country so I still don’t know a lot of people. This place helps, I guess,” he says, then bites his lip and frowns a bit at his sudden honesty. He certainly didn’t mean to share so much, and especially not with her.
Yet the look she gives him is one soft with understanding and a little undercurrent of something else, and Harry is soon faced with a coy smile and an insistent invitation to join their table.
Not wanting to seem terribly rude by refusing, he dutifully follows along, his bowl of pho levitating ahead of him and garnering a few amused looks from the rest of the patrons.
“Andy, this is Harry Hawthorne. Mr. Hawthorne, this is my sister, Andromeda Tonks.”
Harry kisses her hand and takes a seat after Narcissa, smiling at both of them politely.
Their table is tucked away in a darker alcove of the small restaurant, but it’s big enough to seat the three of them comfortably. His bowl of pho sets down with a soft clunk, a bit of the soup sloshing but remaining mercifully within the bowl.
It’s not one of those restaurants where the waitstaff know what you’re thinking before you do, or even care for that matter, so Harry summons his drink and place setting as well.
The two women give him identical looks of amusement.
It’s a bizarre situation to find the two sisters he’d thought were on the outs having a friendly dinner together — not to mention Narcissa didn’t even sneer at Andromeda’s last name. And they both just look so young.
It’s all quite surreal.
“It’s lovely to meet you both. But please, call me Harry. Mr. Hawthorne was my father,” he says, wrinkling his nose in distaste, the lie falling from his lips with practiced ease.
They laugh lightly, ask him to return the favor, and Harry has a moment of panic at his own fumbling with the situation because now he has to call Draco’s mom Narcissa and that is just a whole other level of weird.
Merlin’s balls, he’s a bit in over his head.
This was certainly not the plan. Not the plan at all.
“So what did the painting ever do to you, Harry?” Andromeda asks, and at least her easygoing personality is still a constant he can hold on to to keep his sanity.
Harry lifts his gaze up from his food and sees her eyes sparkling with amusement. She’s seated perfectly, her posture pristine, and she maneuvers the chopsticks like she was born using them. Like this, younger and less burdened by life, she doesn’t look as much like the Bellatrix he remembers. And he can see the perfect manners instilled in her by a noble family in her every movement, something she’s curiously more relaxed about in the future.
“Harry is a parselmouth,” Narcissa interjects, sending her sister a certain look that escapes Harry’s understanding.
Andromeda’s eyebrows merely rise a bit but her voice is even when she asks, “Are you now? How interesting.”
Harry is beginning to think nothing fazes the Black women and he seriously wishes that this was the type of reaction everyone had given him when it had first come out in second year.
Harry hums, taking a bite of his pho. “It does come in handy some times, but at others, I really wish I couldn’t understand a thing. There are some things I can’t un-hear and Hanh is just… Well. I don’t even know how to describe her.”
“Hanh?”
“The snake,” Narcissa supplies, taking a dainty bite out of her own meal. Harry’s eyes nearly bulge at the sight of stewed snake morsels. Who even are these women?
“Interesting. And is this a genetic ability, Harry?”
Harry wonders if this is Andromeda’s subtle way of asking about his lineage, though he’s never known her to care about blood status, so it must be curiosity.
“From generations ago,” he says, thankful that Hermione had come up with a detailed family history that they could use to explain this. “One of my great-great-great-grandmothers came from India. So, not related to Salazar Slytherin, that I know of. Of course, all the pureblood houses are kind of related but…” he waves his hand in the air a bit and decides it’ll be better used to put more food into his mouth.
The two women look at him in fascination and Harry feels a bit like a museum piece — carefully studied and analyzed to the minute details.
He swallows the food down forcefully and takes another bite, only to have that annoying Draco-voice in his head pester him about table manners.
Gosh, he hates all these little voices. His friends aren’t even technically born yet.
“That’s certainly fascinating,” Narcissa says. She too is proficient with her chopsticks, and Harry stares for a beat at her delicate movements. He still struggles with his quite a bit. “And where did you go to school? I’m sure such a thing would’ve spread like wildfire in Hogwarts and I don’t remember ever hearing about a parselmouth in recent years.”
“That’s because I went to Uagadou. My father was a professor there, he taught Care of Magical Creatures. His specialty was on tropical and subtropical species.”
“How interesting. Did he come back with you?” Andromeda asks.
Harry shakes his head and affects a look of grief for his supposedly recently deceased father. “No. He… There was an incident with a Nundu.”
He’s met with identical faces of sympathy and feels a little bad for the lie.
Well, it’s not a lie exactly, it’s just that the Jonas Hawthorne who was a professor of Care of Magical Creatures in Uagadou and died of a Nundu attack never had a child named Harry. Or any child at all. Which is certainly what one requires when attempting to forge a new identity — fake parents who are very much dead and no other family to contest your legitimacy.
“That must be devastating, Harry,” Andromeda offers, and Harry gives her a tight smile.
“So you came here by yourself?”
Harry nods. “Yes. I thought I would try to make a new life here, return to our family home and see what life brings.”
“It must be very different from where you grew up,” Narcissa says.
Harry meets her eyes and finds a surprising level of curiosity and a hint of wistfulness, almost as if she wishes she had had the same opportunities.
Which must certainly mean that he’s seeing things that aren’t there because this is Narcissa Malfoy, a woman who looks down on anything that isn’t pureblood British high society. There’s no way she wishes for a life running away from Nundus and crocodiles in the tropics. There are bugs everywhere. And the humidity itself is just…
He shakes his head.
“It is, yes, but I’m enjoying myself quite a bit, even if I haven’t really found my footing outside of work.”
“Where do you work, then?” Andromeda asks
“The Ministry. I’m a consultant,” he smoothly says.
Narcissa’s eyes sparkle with something. “Ah, yes. Well, you will certainly require some leisure time after having to deal with all those bureaucrats for the week. You should join us some other time for tea then, Harry. We’ll introduce you around, it’ll be good for you to unwind.”
Harry meets her eyes and is a bit stunned when the offer seems to be genuine; she even seems to look forward to it.
He nods, a bit dumbly. “I’d love to,” he says, and he thinks he might actually mean it, even though he really shouldn’t.
Sweet Merlin’s beard, he’s ended up in some alternate version of the past. He must have.