Chapter Text
There was something to be said about the utter chaos that a mixture of time, death and what was likely a poorly timed concussion could do to someone like Harry Potter. The war was raging around them as the three of them raced away from where the Room of Requirement continued to burn. Lungs burned with exertion as the Golden trio moved around corners throwing stunners and hexes at those that were not in student robes and were not recognized as trusted adults, though those dwindled even more after Sirius’ death back in Harry’s fifth year. And then she appeared, like a continued curse meant to appear at stressful moments in Harry’s life. Sometimes he felt he hated her more than Voldemort. Bellatrix Lestrange.
Her manic eyes switched to a moment of clarity at coming across the three teens then they gleamed. Pleased at having stumbled upon them while she was busy bringing terror and chaos to the hallowed learning halls of Hogwarts.
“Itty bitty baby Potter! And the filthy blood traitor and…” she paused grinning ugly at Hermione “their pet mudblood. How goes my work on your arm, lovely?” she simmered in a sickly pleased voice, twirling her arm as she started towards them.
“Filthy bitch!” Ron cursed out throwing a curse at the witch in anger at remembering Hermione’s screams and the way he and Harry had tended to her wounds after having escaped Malfoy manor.
What Harry had not realized was the Draco and the other surviving member of the fiendfyre of the Room of Requirement had been close behind the trio having been trying to go the castle’s exit which, to fault of the Slytherin’s own, happened to be in the same direction Harry and his friends were fleeing.
“Draco! My favorite nephew, of course you were chasing this filth, trying to capture them for the sake of your family’s honor! I’m so pleased!” Bellatrix exclaimed giggling and waving her hand towards the blonde in invitation for him to join her in what she seemed to think was cornering of the other teens in the hall.
Harry, and it seemed Ron, didn’t hesitate and began firing curses at the witch. Both fueled in desperation whereas Ron was more so in a rage for what this disgusting woman had done to the girl he had fallen in love with. Harry was going to cast again when Bellatrix fired something his way and with the call of one curse from the witch’s mouth another voice called a shout of “Expelliarmous!” sounding more startled than convicted or even angry.
Bellatrix’s wand was disarmed and flew into the wait hand of none other than Draco Malfoy, who looked both panicked and surprised. Either because his disarming spell had actually worked, but more likely that when his Aunt casts at Harry Potter, something twisted in the young Malfoy’s stomach at their, the students, only chance against the chaos going on in the castle being unable to fight.
The Black sister’s face twisted in an expression of pure fury at having seen who it was that had cast and caused her to lose her wand. She let out an intangible shout of displeasure “You…you DRACO! How dare you cast at your Auntie! And for what? FOR HIM!?” she pointed a sharped painted black nail towards Harry. “He will kill you for this, he will torture you and then torture us all for your betrayal.”
Harry noticed the witch was devolving into panic as her thoughts seemed to come to some kind of conclusion that not only was Draco done for because of what he’d done, but potentially his whole family as well, her being included in that extension. It didn’t seem that anyone had seen it but Harry, her hand reaching in her sleeve for something else.
“I can only do this for you Draco and hope you end quickly and that I will be forgiven for your betrayal for correcting you this way.” Bellatrix’s voice was calm in a way that made the hairs on everyone’s arms stand on in. It was calm in a way that Harry had never heard her voice before and with statement came a flash of silver. A knife.
Then Harry was moving, cursing himself as he did, for the second time that day rescuing Draco Malfoy at this risk of his own life but this time was different. As his hands reached Draco’s figure and he had pushed the blonde out of the way the knife hit a target. With Harry’s arm outstretched the knife slammed in the upper left of his chest, slightly beneath the collar bone area.
For a moment, inside the hallway of Hogwarts where the enemy groups had stood against one another went silent.
“No…..NO!” Bellatrix cursed, her knife had hit POTTER. In a way that was surely fatal as she was a heavy handed thrower and it looked as though the knife had embedded itself deeply. He was not hers to kill, only her Lord’s. He’d said that, over and over again that they could maim and injure Potter. Capture him preferably but that his death was to come by Lord Voldemort’s hand and no one else's.
Turning his head, Harry dimly saw Draco’s pale face, heard someone shouting, maybe Ron, maybe Hermione—but everything was dissolving quickly, as though the world were ink dropped into water. He tasted iron in his mouth as blood worked its way up his throat and out his mouth in a exerted cough and then heard screams, it was almost definitely Hermione.
He looked down at the knife finally and noticed engraving, triangles stacked on top of one another, their points touching and runes that he was now noticing on the hilt beginning to glow a sickly greenish hue. It felt oddly reminiscent of the death unforgivable. His mind, and chest felt like they were on fire as he listened to Bellatrix’s screams of anger and, was he hearing right, maybe fear? His eyes finally met those of Ron and Hermione’s, both of who already had tears beginning to run down their cheeks and he thought Hermione might be trying to say something.
“Run.” He got out, it sounding slightly gurgled and he felt like wincing as more blood spilled out. “Have to…RUN” he insisted. eyes pleading with them, begging for them to flee while Bellatrix was in the midst of panicking. He couldn’t be saved, he felt a certainty in that. But if they could get away, if the two members of the remaining chosen family he’d made could get out of this to finish what they’d started. That’d be enough.
Of all the things that could be his end and it was a dagger, this dagger. This dagger that was till glowing in a way that surely meant the damn thing was cursed on top of just being lethal when it was stabbed into some. He felt weaker and his body fell to his knees, vision darkening further than just the edges. Weirdly enough he wasn’t thinking of his parents as he felt himself becoming detached from his body in a way that only meant death was surely near.
He thought of Sirius, of the only adult that seemed to care for him while not coddling him. Fat lot of good it did the man whenever he tried to speak to him, there were always others around, they’d never truly gotten to be what Sirius had spoken of to him, those two years ago. He thought of the promise of being a family with Sirius, a proper family, of them in Grimmauld place. That dark home that could have been made something of together, maybe with Remus and Tonks as well.
Grimmauld Place.
The words echoed in his mind as the world went truly black.
He woke to the smell of dust, old wood, and something faintly of blood. He was lying on a narrow sofa, staring up at a cracked ceiling he knew intimately. But it wasn’t right. The wallpaper was intact. The chandelier hung straight. The house felt… alive. Less suffocating. Less warped by years of war.
Number Twelve. Grimmauld Place.
Harry shot upright with a gasp—and immediately doubled over in pain. He looked down at his side and while shirt and part of his pants were drenched in blood, along with a hole in the material where the knife had entered, there was no wound. Sharp stinging pain as he had felt when the knife had entered, yes. But there was no longer a wound as well as no longer a knife either.
He looked around and it wasn’t anywhere on the surrounding floor either. What on earth happened. He heard rustling from outside the closed door and tensed looking at it, trying to stand but still feeling disoriented.
The door creaked open and he heard a voice…one that should not be possible and it had his body panicking even more.
“Moony, I swear I heard something—” The voice was young, no deep gravel that had likely been caused by years of suffering from within the walls of Azkaban. It was careless but also held a tone of curiosity that could come from the youth of someone exploring something.
Harry looked up. Four young men, boys really, stood in the doorway, wands raised. He knew three of their faces from encounters with older more scarred versions, he knew of the last from photographs, from stories. And from the Mirror of Erised.
James Potter.
Sirius Black.
Remus Lupin.
Peter Pettigrew.
Nineteen, maybe eighteen but alive and whole and so clearly unmarred by the more severity of war that he’d seen in later photographs after he’d been born. Which meant that Harry POtter was very very much not in the right time. And that something was deeply wrong but he couldn’t help but exhale. His Dad was here. Alive. Whole.
James stepped forward first. His glasses were crooked in exactly the same way Harry’s often were. “Who the hell are you?”
Harry stared. This wasn’t right. They weren’t supposed to be… Harry tried to answer but his mouth felt slow. His thoughts seemed to slip like smoke before he could voice them. “I” His voice cracked. “I was— I’m—” was any of this real? Nothing came out properly. The words felt tangled together, too big for his tongue and also like there was too much that had changed in his world since Harry had closed them back in Hogwarts.
Sirius’s grey eyes sharpened. “He looks like he’s seen a ghost.”
“He looks like a ghost,” Peter muttered.
Sirius’s grey eyes narrowed, sharp and suspicious. “You’re not Order.”
“Obviously,” Peter muttered.
Remus’s gaze lingered on Harry’s face. “He looks familiar.” and then his gaze drifted down to Harry’s clothes. “Oh Merlin what on earth happened to you, are you bleeding somewhere? You’re hurt!” The werewolf’s nose flared, scenting the blood more fully now that he was in the same room as the young intruder who looked…well he looked like hell.
James stiffened.
Harry realized, with cold horror, what they were seeing.
He was almost as old as they were now, seventeen years old, a legal magical adult but he knew what they were taking in, he had his mother’s eyes and his father’s face. And something else, something darker, a presence he’d never quite shaken since the night he’d first brushed it in Godric’s Hollow.
“I was fighting,” Harry blurted out as they all moved a bit more towards him. The sentence felt wrong, like it belonged to someone else. This whole thing felt like it belonged to someone else, why were they here? Or maybe why was he here since they clearly were doing something before he arrived.
“Fighting who?” James demanded.
Harry dragged a hand down his face. Focus. Focus. “My name,” he tried again. “Harry. I’m…” words really weren’t working for him today. Harry.” He could see confusion deepening on their faces and panic fluttered in his chest. If it was near the war time, however soon into it it may be, he needed to make sure they knew he was NOT an enemy. That he wasn’t going to hurt any of them.
“I’m Harry Potter,” he forced out. “I was fighting…fucking Riddle more like I was trying to— no, he—” The memory hit him like a curse.
Bellatrix’s rage and then her knife. The stabbing and everything starting to blue around him, the knife glowing weirdly. “The knife” he murmured. Something had happened when the knife stabbed him, it had to have. Nothing that glowed after it made contact with blood was ever good and it just had to be his luck that it was his blood.
Rage surged up, hot and blinding. “Riddle!” he spat, magic crackling in his veins. “That bastard!” The serpentine burn beneath his collarbone flared making his tongue feel like it was stumbling over itself. “Harry Potter. Riddle” slurring out as he was trying to get his bearings over the absolute insanity that was his life at having been chased by a Dark Lord and then being involved in a war.
It was then Harry noticed the room had gone silent and he ran back his words in his mind. Shit.
Sirius blinked. “I’m sorry. Your name is what?”
Harry froze. “I didn’t! I meant…” But looking at their faces it seemed some damage was done.
James’s grip tightened on his wand. “Harry. Potter. Riddle.”
Peter made a small, horrified sound, like the coward he was.
Remus’s eyes narrowed in suspicion but also was able to smell some panic coming off the boy and wondered if it wasn’t him slurring the words that caused a misspeak.
Harry’s head swam. “No. No, that’s not— I’m Harry. Potter. He’s Riddle. Tom Riddle. I was fighting him. I was trying to kill him, he was trying to kill me. I don’t…” but his protest was interrupted.
“Mark him,” James said abruptly, his tone speaking for it not being a choice.
Harry’s stomach dropped as Sirius stepped forward, grabbed Harry’s wrist, and yanked up his sleeve. There was no Dark Mark but as Black stepped back Harry’s damaged shirt fluttered from the movement at having his sleeve be jostled. And through the torn fabric beneath where his collarbone sat, where the knife had entered and, if memory served correctly, ended his life. There was a faint and silvery serpentine scar, light pink and nearly white that he had never seen before. It glimmered briefly under Sirius’ grip, reacting to magic in the room.
Sirius let out a low, stunned breath. “Merlin,” he whispered. “It looks like a bond mark.” While his parents didn’t have once, Cissa had insisted upon getting married in the olde ways when she’d married Malfoy and as such had a silvery style scar that lay slightly above her collarbone. As did Lucius have one of his own.
“To who?” James demanded.
“You said you were trying to kill You-Know-Who,” Sirius said slowly, “but you also introduced yourself with his surname.”
“I didn’t!” Harry snapped, then winced as pain lanced through his ribs again.
James stepped forward abruptly. “Who hurt you?”
The question was sharp, instinctive. Protective. And it had Harry looking at him really look at him. His father, young and alive and not yet marked for death by a mad man for a half heard prophecy.
“The Dark Lord?” Sirius pressed, voice darkening. “Was it him?” Logically, that was a good assumption to make based on the info Harry had managed to spew out.
Harry swallowed. “No.”
They waited.
“It was Bellatrix,” he said.
The name seemed to echo.
James frowned. “Lestrange?”
Harry nodded, dazed. “She stabbed me.” that rush of magical exhaustion was starting to hit him once more as he felt woozy.
Peter’s eyes widened. “Bellatrix stabbed you.”
Sirius exchanged a look with James.
Remus spoke carefully. “Bellatrix Lestrange is… devoted.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Sirius muttered. “She’s obsessed.”
James looked back at Harry, eyes flicking briefly to the faintly shimmering mark beneath his collarbone. “Why would Bellatrix Lestrange stab someone who—” He hesitated. “—who appears to be… connected to Riddle?”
Harry’s mind lagged a second behind the implication. Then it clicked.
“Oh, for— no,” he breathed.
Peter shifted uncomfortably. “It could’ve been a disagreement.”
“A jealous disagreement,” Sirius added dryly, still not sure what to make of the bloody teenager that seemed to be connected to the man they were all trying to fight against.
“I was not!” Harry began, then faltered as the mark pulsed again as he started to try to clarify why he had mentioned Riddle.
Remus noticed. “That mark,” he said quietly. “It reacts to his name.”
Harry pressed his palm over it as if he could smother it. “It wasn’t there before.”
“Before what?” James demanded.
“Before I died,” Harry said, the words fell heavily like something forbidden from human speech. Not meant to be uttered by something who was no longer dead.
Sirius stared at him. “You keep saying that.”
“I remember it,” Harry insisted, frustration and grief tangling together. “The knife. I remember not breathing. I remember it stopping. I was dead.”
“And now you’re here,” Remus said softly.
“Yeah…yeah now I’m not…I’m just here.” Harry said tiredly his eyes staring a bit at nothing and taking on a blank and exhausted look as he remembered those he’d left behind after having taken the knife to the chest.
James ran a hand through his hair. “Alright. Let’s assume, for one mad second, that you’re telling the truth. You’re Harry Potter,”
“Just Potter,” Sirius cut in. “Preferably without the Riddle.”
Harry let out something halfway between a laugh and a hysterical breath. Why was he here?
“And you were fighting You-Know-Who,” James continued. “Bellatrix Lestrange stabbed you. Which suggests either you were close enough to him for her to get jealous—”
“I was trying to kill him!” Harry burst out.
“—or,” Sirius went on, ignoring him, “you were important enough to him for her to take it personally.”
Harry stared at them. They were piecing it together wrong. So very wrong, why was this going so wrong. It just had to be that he dies and instead of going onward or whatever nonsense Dumbledore had talked about death being, he’s somehow sucked back through time itself into a mess his own mouth got him into.
“I hated him,” Harry said hoarsely. “I hate him. I’ve fought him for years.”
“Years?” Peter squeaked.
Remus stepped closer again, studying him with unnerving gentleness. “You’re disoriented,” he said. “You’re not lying. But you’re not entirely here either.”
Harry looked around the room.
At his Dad who was alive probably not yet married as there was a lack of ring on his finger. Not yet targeted by prophecy.
At Sirius who was whole and whose eyes weren’t marred by something that only prolonged exposure to dementors could do.
And at Remus, who wasn’t marked by more scars that the few on his face and didn’t hold a grief around him from years of lost friends and full moon changes alone.
The war not truly having started yet in earnest as there was that lack of darkness around them that seemed to only build after months and months of desperate fighting. His chest tightened.
“I’m not a Riddle,” he said quietly. “And I’m not his.”
Sirius tilted his head. “Then why does it look like you bear a suspiciously snake shaped bond mark and say his name without any sort of fear of repudiation?”
Harry didn’t have an answer. All he had was the memory of dying and the terrible, impossible certainty that he had been sent back. But he knew for certainty he was not what they seemed to mistaking him for. He was not some lover or dark consort. But given that he was sent back to a time where they’re all still here, he could maybe be something else. Something far more dangerous.