Chapter Text
All in all, Harry can’t say this is one of his best days. Not the worst either, mind, but definitely not up there with finding out he was a wizard, or joining the Quidditch team, or winning the war. Far, far from it, in fact.
Draco is yelling at him, calling him all kinds of unsavory names as they both chase down the rogue Unspeakable that had the brilliant idea to try to rebuild a Time Turner in order to go back and make sure Voldemort won the war. Honestly, so unoriginal.
Harry, absently, with that part of his brain that goes places even in the middle of a chase, finds it particularly unfair that Draco’s insults aren’t as equally distributed towards their suspect’s lackluster plan as to Harry’s reckless streak. But then again, that’s Draco for you. Always up for telling Harry just how much of an idiot he is.
Harry runs, lungs burning with the strain, the air tasting stale the deeper they delve into the Department of Mysteries. The little Hermione-voice in his head is pointing out with all its entitled superiority that the air tastes just the same as it does five floors up seeing as it’s all magically ventilated and purified, but Harry is the one who’s running into the bowels of the Ministry, footsteps echoing deafeningly on the floor, breaths coming out in harsh pants as his body twists and turns and tries not to lose sight of the fucking asshole who has no rights to be as fast as he/she is.
“Just fucking— Dammit, Potter, wait! I’ve called for backup, you absolute pillock!”
Despite his incessant yelling, Draco is following behind, running just as hard, spells aimed just as true. Too bad their suspect dodges better than Ron whenever their boss tosses paperwork at him.
The rogue Unspeakable keeps running, firing off curses blindly over their shoulder, ducking into door after room after door. Harry has flashes back to his last foray this deep into the Department of Mysteries and none of them bring back happy memories.
The Unspeakable fires another curse, a sickly yellow one vicious enough that Harry feels the heat of it even after he dodged it. He has a moment to spare a thought for Draco’s benefit, worry crossing his mind as it always does for his partner. There’s a loud bang and then a string of heavy curses. Harry allows himself just a peek to be sure and breathes out in relief when he finds Draco fuming and with the hint of a limp but otherwise unharmed.
He keeps running, chasing, hunting. Draco lags behind, but Harry is glad for his partner’s steady presence as he always is, for the comfort of having someone he trusts absolutely having his back even when he throws protocol out the window.
When they turn yet another corner, Harry’s brain takes a while to process what his body is already loudly screaming at him. His breathing turns ragged, faster — and it has nothing to do with his sudden loss of stamina. His heart hammers away in his chest, hands going clammy, shivers running down his spine.
Then it clicks, as loudly as the echoes of their footsteps in the room. The Chamber of Death.
Harry falters, for just a moment, but enough for his suspect to gain an advantage. Swearing heavily, Harry fires a heavy-powered Petrificus Totalus at them which misses for just an inch but explodes the stone step the Unspeakable had just abandoned. He fires spell after spell, barely bothering to duck the returning fire.
Finally, his aim hits true. The Unspeakable falls to the floor, stumbling headfirst into the cold stone, arms jerking forward to break the fall.
Harry stalks closer, jogging down the steps.
“Toss your wand over to me.” His voice sounds winded but strong, and the suspect’s hand tightens on the wand, fingers clenching and unclenching as if they’re deciding what the best course of action for their continued uninjured state will be. “Now.”
Harry makes it down all the steps and the Unspeakable’s hand drops to the floor, wand still held tight. Harry’s prepared to fire another Petrificus Totalus, determined to take the choice away from them, when the absolutely unmitigated bastard speaks.
“Fiendfyre.”
Harry doesn’t have time to do a thing before green flames erupt from the tip of the wand, indistinctly-shaped flames turning into animals of all kinds, spreading across the room at a frightening pace.
Harry freezes for a moment, watching in horror as the fire consumes the Unspeakable. Their screams have an unhinged, gleeful quality to them that chills Harry to the bone. The air grows unbearably hot, the smell of burning flesh and fabric drifting over with the advance of the army of fire demons. The screaming continues.
Snapping out of his shock after what must have only been seconds but felt like a horror-filled eternity, Harry runs.
Adrenaline courses through him, primal and instinctive as fear takes over his rage at the complete idiotic, suicidal action of a madman. The fire spreads, animals galloping across the room and consuming everything, chasing him without mercy or consideration. The flames have spread out all around him, the only place they’ve yet to reach is the dead center of the room, as if an invisible force is keeping them at bay. For now.
There’s a yell, loud and panicked and painfully familiar. Harry lifts his eyes up and sees Draco — wide-eyed, frozen, utterly panicked.
Harry’s heart gallops in his ears, the sound near as deafening as the roaring of the vicious flames. Heat licks at his skin, the fire coming closer and closer, wyverns and hydras and basilisks advancing on him, whatever barrier is keeping them at bay losing its power.
Harry sees more than he hears Draco’s pleas of despair. His lips mouth around Harry’s name in both prayer and anguish. He makes aborted moves to step closer, to come into the room at all costs, even though Harry knows the one thing that still terrifies Draco to this day is fiendfyre.
He doesn’t make it into the room at all, which Harry breathes in relief at. The fire is threatening to spread out as well, making lazy leaps at breaking out of the room. It’s almost as if Harry’s presence is the only thing keeping it contained inside so far, as if it must vanquish this one enemy before destroying the city.
There’s no way Harry will let that happen.
Harry sends Draco one last heartfelt look, mouths, “I’m sorry,” knowing full well he will never be forgiven, before he sends his magic in a wild bid to lock the room down.
He feels a kind of earth-shattering, momentary relief at hearing all doors snap shut. Then it’s just him and a field of fire surrounding him and threatening to consume him. Harry’s steps are driven further and further back until he feels the impossible drift of cold wind coming from the Veil, where Harry has steadfastly avoided looking at so far.
There is no Apparating out of the Ministry, no portkeying out of the Department of Mysteries. No broom with which he can make daring, impossible — Gryffindorish, Draco would say — escapes.
Harry makes the only decision possible — he takes a step back and falls into the abyss.
Harry was entirely convinced he would have ended up at a King’s Cross type scenario. Or maybe just… nothing. One or the other, but both definitely meaning he was one hundred percent dead. For good this time.
Reality is not quite as kind.
The hitting the ground after a considerable free-fall part certainly hurts like hell, but he’s quite positive that that’s not what real dying would feel like. And, to be honest, he’s probably one of the few people alive who can confidently say that they died and came back to life, and the empty nothingness of platform 9 3/4 was positively heavenly compared to the amount of pain he’s feeling right now. Everywhere. In places he wasn’t even certain could hurt. Places he wasn’t even aware existed in his body.
“Bloody fucking hell.”
That about sums everything up.
So, Harry’s getting more and more positive that he’s not dead, although how alive he is remains to be seen.
He takes some shallow breaths, because anything deeper sends knives through his chest, and slowly tries to assess his body for damage.
Can he sit up? Barely. His head is spinning, his vision could be a lot better. Right. Glasses would probably help with that but his seem to have flown away. Wand? Not broken! Hurray for small miracles.
He summons his glasses, repairs them, and when he puts them on decides that his vision is still not great, quite sure the world’s not supposed to be swimming, so a concussion of some sort is most likely the culprit.
Continuing with his mental checklist, he’s pretty sure he’s got a broken leg and his left wrist is either horribly twisted or broken. Or both. Nothing else looks terribly out of place from the outside — which says nothing about the inside. He’s quite sure he’s got a few cracked ribs if the amount of pain it causes him to breathe is any indication.
Still, it could’ve been way worse.
A quick look around tells him that he is in the middle of some sort of field, with no houses as far as he can see, no sounds of cars or trains or people.
He puts aside the observation that the Veil is clearly some sort of portal to another place on earth rather than the realm of death, and focuses instead on getting out of this situation, lovely as this dreadfully uncomfortable piece of land may be.
He rests his head on the ground to take a deep breath, immediately regrets it, curses like Mundungus on his third bottle of firewhisky, takes a shallower breath, and thinks.
Options. Not many. He’s got no idea where he is, no one around to ask for help, no way to contact any of his friends because he is certainly not risking a Patronus when he’s not sure it’s safe (and that’s if his current condition even allows him to perform such a high-grade spell). So basically he’s on his own.
Alright. He’s been in worse situations before. More times than would be healthy for a normal human being, even. He can do this.
He lifts himself up again gingerly to a semi-sitting position and braces himself with determination, his wand held tightly in his hand. Then he pauses.
Should he do magic on himself with a concussion? Probably not.
He does it anyway.
“Merlins’ saggy left bollock!” Setting broken bones hurts like a bitch, good thing there’s only one more to go.
Another series of expletives later and he’s heaving in ragged breaths in between winces of pain, but at least the worst is over. He opens his mokeskin pouch and quickly summons some potions, taking them in one gulp and hoping that they work in stabilizing, if not fixing, whatever’s wrong with him on the inside. And he’s sure something’s wrong because there’s a bruise across his stomach that’s growing by the minute and it is not looking good at all.
On the bright side, he can stand up now. Maybe. Well, he gets there in the end, even if it might be considered more slouching than standing.
Next on the list: where to go.
A hospital sounds like the next logical step, even to his concussion-addled mind, but with no idea where he is, it’s a bit tricky. Apparating is out of the question; he might just leave half his body behind, and not the bad half either.
Illegal portkey it is then. He waits for the familiar and still unpleasant tug in his belly button and falls promptly on his ass when he lands, immediately regretting all of his life choices in the span of a few seconds.
Surely being burned alive would’ve hurt less?
He lets out a heavy groan because everything fucking hurts, takes another round of shallow breaths to gather his strength, and lifts himself up again.
And is faced with the depressing conclusion that he’s not in St Mungus.
Somehow, Harry’s landed smack in the middle of a clothing store. Luckily it’s not packed, so no one seems to notice his sudden appearance, but he is decidedly not in the right place.
He curses his luck and wonders what could’ve possibly gone wrong, deciding that the floor is exactly the best place to be at the moment while he thinks about his next move.
A concerned-looking lady finds him lying on the floor a few minutes later, and Harry soon finds himself being carried away in an ambulance to the hospital, having neither the wherewithal nor the will to say anything otherwise. Luckily, he has the presence of mind to hide away his wand in his mokeskin pouch. Look at him being concerned about the Statue of Secrecy when his body feels like it’s trying to pay him back for all the abuse he put it through during his life.
St Mungus or not, Harry decides he doesn’t particularly care who’s treating him when the Muggles give him a bunch of painkillers while they prod and probe at him. He does care when they start talking about surgery and opening him up to stop the internal bleeding, but by then he’s far too out of it to put much of a fight.
Not that there was much he would fight about anyways, he couldn’t just very well tell them to hold their medieval torture devices while he called the magical healers.
On the plus side to the Muggle treatment, however, drugs. Harry discovers he’s only got good things to say about Muggle drugs.
The first specific hint he gets that something peculiar is happening is when he wakes up after surgery, abdomen covered in bandages, and the doctors ask him for his name.
The reaction he gets for his response goes somewhere along these lines:
“Harry Potter? You’re serious?”
“Like the books?”
“Oh, you poor fella, that must be so annoying.”
Harry blinks at them a lot. Then he asks, just to be sure, “You are Muggles, right?”
And then that changes the two disbelieving and one sympathetic look to three identical ‘Oh boy, we have a patient’ looks.
Harry’s next doctor only introduces himself as Ismael, but Harry knows enough about the Muggle world to know he’s a shrink — besides, all his questions about hearing voices that other people aren’t aware of and seeing things only he can see are about as subtle as Mr. Weasley trying to pass for a Muggle.
Harry thinks he does an alright job in convincing them that it was the after-effects of the anesthesia making him loopy, but he honestly can’t be too bothered to care.
His trusty mokeskin pouch, unable to be removed or seen by anyone other than him, remains firmly around his neck after the surgery. He calmly fetches his wand, summons a healing potion to help with all the scaring — internal and external, thank you magic — and then summarily discharges himself without so much as a look back.
Life doesn’t get any less strange after that.
Harry discovers he’s in London, though not his London. St Mungos — or where it should be — truly is a department store, it wasn’t just faulty spell casting due to brain injuries. The Leaky Cauldron is a respectable looking pub, not a single dirty glass or cobweb in sight, and unfortunately named Donuts — he’d checked, suddenly in the mood for one, but there was no sign of a single donut. Or pastry, for that matter.
Diagon Alley simply doesn’t exist, no matter how many times Harry sneaks up to the nearest rooftops, straining his eyes with a vision-enhancing spell in the vain hope that it will suddenly materialize a whole neighborhood in the middle of central London.
So Harry is definitely not in his London. Which London he ended up on he has absolutely no clue, but somehow that doesn’t seem to be the important part at the moment.
First, he needs to know why Muggles from another universe — realm? world? He’s still not sure what he’s dealing with here — knew who he was. Or at least, knew of someone with the same name as him. Someone who’s in some sort of book.
Harry goes to the first bookstore he finds and gets a particular sort of look when he asks if there are any books that mention a Harry Potter. The girl walks away muttering under her breath about how completely unbelievable it is for someone his age to be so clueless and wondering if he’s been living under a rock.
Harry decides that it’s perhaps best not to say that he’d only lived under the stairs until he was eleven, and even that had been in another universe, in all likelihood.
The girl comes back with a stack of seven books of various sizes. Harry stares at her for a moment, unsure what to say or think, and then numbly pays for them, immensely glad that pounds are still pounds in this strange world and that he’s always been in the habit of carrying some with him — along with a whole host of other things which would make even the most obsessively prepared people give him a curious look.
Two hours later, Harry shifts uncomfortably in his park bench, bum a bit square from sitting too long, and decides that the only obvious conclusion to be made is that he has fallen into some sort of hallucinatory coma, probably brought about by a particularly nasty curse from the Blacks. Grimmauld Place is still a surprise when it comes to discovering new and unpleasant ways to be unexpectedly cursed, even for someone who’s lived there for nigh on fifteen years.
But that must be it. It’s the only possible reason why there is an entire series of books written about his life. Or at least his Hogwarts years.
Granted, two hours is not enough time for him to read even the first one, but he’s skimmed through all of them and, up until the fifth book, they’re generally quite accurate, if a little overly fantasied in some places and under in others.
There are eerily specific accounts of Hagrid flying little baby him on Sirius’ motorcycle and Dumbledore leaving him on the Dursleys’ doorstep, of how he had no idea he was a wizard and finding out about the magical world thanks to a friendly half-giant. It goes on to detail his various adventures and mishaps at Hogwarts, from fighting trolls to leading a teenaged army.
Harry flips through the pages in a daze, stunned at how very true most of the stories are. How in Godric’s name has someone from a whole other world gotten such detailed — and private — information about him?
And the most baffling thing is, Harry has no idea who this JK Rowling person is supposed to be.