Chapter Text
“So long as my heart beats, i will remember you near
I was alone for a long time, the only child
A monster at the bottom of a homemade bunk bed
And from afar I saw the lights die in the fog
Just as the darkness was lit up again, in your eyes was a storm i saw.
you’re my hero for you’re as weak as i am”
-Kent
The death eaters had chased them to a dead end. Spells of all colours slammed and bounced against the brick walls. His hands were shaking with adrenaline and he could nearly taste the blood on his tongue.
Approaching like a marching band drumming an impending doom, a vivid adrenaline-drugged feeling filled his body. For a split second, he just stood there, confused, his body frozen as if the noise alone had stunned him.
Then the force reached him.
A heavy, blunt punch to his abdomen drove the air from his lungs. He staggered backward. His eyes widened shakily as he felt his stomach almost compress where the spells collided and injured him.
He tried to focus on what was happening, but any time he directed his thoughts to Hermione and Ron who were still fighting the other death eaters his thoughts seemed to get brutally dragged away. His thoughts seemed to be pushed down a single train track.
Colours filled his sight and he was unsure whether it was the spells flying or his senses failing. He heard a loud bang and familiar, panicked noises, and it took him a minute of rapid shallow breathing to realize that it was he who had fallen to the ground.
————
The verdict fell swiftly, like a morning flight to London.
He tried to open his eyes, but the more he struggled the brighter the light shone. Like a tunnel at the end of the light, in an icy land, such a beautiful winter sun appeared in the distance, blinding him with its intensity.
He slowly started to regain mobility in his body, and he whimpered as he felt the harsh cold seep through his thin clothing.
He shot up on his feet to figure out what had happened and to escape the biting cold, but that was not much of a respite, as his bare feet touched the snow-graced ground. His stiff and frozen hand snapped to his side, but his wand was nowhere to be found.
Great, he thought bitterly.
He looked around, hoping to find some useful information about his whereabouts.
There was in a flat field covered in pearly snow, but he himself seemed to be standing on a snow covered dirt path. There were traces in the snow, as if a horse and carriage had recently travelled along it, even though the landscape looked as if no life had ever graced it. Along the road stood dry, cold bushes in even rows. The ditches were filled with snow, so that if there had been any trees growing nearby they could have descended into them. Although, there were only bushes growing there, of various sizes, with branches from the root all the way up.
He couldn’t see any sign of someone, but that still raised the question of how he ended up.. wherever this was.
A wind travelled along the landscape, caressing the blanket of snow and biting into his cheeks, making him shiver.
With the wind a whisper was carried, a harsh rude snarling that didn’t befit the childlike voice carrying it in the least.
“-and the boy you never knew, thinking thoughts you never thought, and all his anger snarled and exploded towards a time where nothing happened, in a society that always seemed deep asleep. He walked those unforgiving streets in similarly trashed shoes as yours -but who cared how far he walked? Who cared how the days wandered, for in a thousand of them he would not exist anymore-”
Harry couldn’t tell if it spoke to him, for him or of him, but the voice seemed targeted on him nonetheless.
The wind picked up, lifting the snow like dead puppets to perform a morbid show, and he could feel the storm like shattered pieces of glass had dragged through his veins in a warp speed, spreading like a plague through his body.
The whispers raised to such an awful noise and rapid rambling that he covered his ears out of fear. All in vain, it seemed, for the voice didn’t care. He was unsure if he had cried out or not; he couldn’t hear himself any way.
Abruptly, the blackness of a void surrounded him, shielding him from the childlike whispers and wrapping him in cotton.
—
Harry came back to himself all at once. Air tore into his lungs like he’d been drowning.
His body jerked upright, the movement sharp and instinctive, the legs of the chair scraping loudly against the floor. The eerie winter wonderland finally faded from his senses.
For a moment, he didn’t know where he was.
The room was small. Dim. Still. And directly in front of him -only a few feet away- someone was staring at him.
Harry froze. The girl in the mirror stared back.
His breath hitched as he looked at his uncannily wrong counterpart, and he saw how the girl’s eyes widened in fear. Harry tore his eyes away, using the excuse to look around the room instead. His frail hands dug into the wooden desk in front of him, and the only thing that could be heard through the room was his quiet, rapid breathing and the rabbit-like tattoo of his heart.
Sunlight spilled across the quiet room, catching on gilded mirrors, bundles of soft beige linen and the hush of old-world elegance. Dust floated in the honeyed sunlight, pooling across a worn persian rug and a big bed covered in clouds of linen and pillows. The scent of warm vanilla filled his senses, and the sharp contrast of the calm environment made him feel immensely out of place. His entire body was still shaking from adrenaline and a cloud of confusion and disbelief still covered his senses.
As he stood up in jagged motions, the old chair scraped gnawingly against the floorboards, and the maroon upholstery of the old chair matched his.. night gown? He grabbed the flowy arm of the night gown and furrowed his brow. Never in a million years would it befall him to wear something so fancy and, well, feminine. He squirmed uncomfortably and, blushing, continued to look around the room.
His sharp eyes fell upon the oak bedside table -specifically the picture frame on it. A beautiful girl that couldn’t have been older than 16 stood next to another girl that Harry found vaguely familiar. The girl had flaming locks of radiant auburn hair that wrapped and snarled around her torso, and her smile seemed haughty; her head raised high as if she knew looked down on anyone viewing the picture.
Harry picked it up with a furrowed brow, carefully so as to not drop it. He recognised the girl in the picture as the same person he had seen in the mirror, only the girl in the mirror had a more scared, vulnerable look that didn’t fit her haughty confident features in the least. He turned the frame around and read the name that was written in haughty, loopy handwriting:
Rose Harry Potter, 2009.
What had.. happened? How the hell had he ended up nearly a decade in the future, in a body that was not his own? A shiver racked through his body.
The last thing he remembered before the eerie winter landscape was that he, Ron, and Hermione had been running from stray death eaters.
They had been cornered into a dark alley, and with spells bouncing against the walls wildly, he remembered seeing two collide and, by chance, hurl towards him. They had hit him in his side, and right before his magic and consciousness seemed to spiral he had felt the muscles and skin in his side contract as if frozen.
Feeling like a total creep, he opened the maroon robe he was wearing to inspect, careful to still conceal.. those parts.
There, like he feared, wrapping like vines around his middle part, a vein like scar ran. It reminded him hauntingly of his curiously absent horcrux scar, only much larger and deeper. The raised skin seemed to run like wild rivers along his abnormally thin waist. The majority of the damage seemed to be in the middle, where the skin was so raised and wild it looked like the harsh sea. He was sure that that was a new addition to the girl's body, as it had been directly where he had been hit, and also because that kind of just seemed like his luck, didn’t it? For what’s another scar? The scar was most likely the price paid for the time travel.
He released the gown and let out a tired sigh. He slumped down on the warm bed that had bathed in sunlight and wondered what he were to do next. He had no idea what he was to do nor where he was. Had he simply time travelled, or was this a different time line, a different dimension, entirely? Did Harry Potter exist in this reality?
Could he run away before the people who knew this dimension’s Harry were even awake?
His question was answered with a resounding no as a loud crackling noise echoed through the room, and he let out a high pitched squeal, shooting up to defend himself against whatever it was. His mind was still running on high gear, and his breathing picked up.
“I’s sorry, Feepsy is not meaning to scare young mistress” The elf’s words would’ve seemed sincere, were it not for the unimpressed look she threw his way. It made him wince.
“You’re- don’t worry Feepsy, I just didn’t expect you” he smiled a crooked, nervous smile, hoping that the elf wouldn’t notice that he, probably, behaved differently.
“Young mistress be sitting down and I’s be dressing you” the elf immediately seemed to snap into authority, pushing and prodding him to sit down by the dressing table. Feepsy snapped her fingers, and with a jolt from Harry the rose-coloured satin robes were immediately switched out for a maroon dress -what was it with this girl and maroon- that was red as old wine. It was softly cut with layers upon layers of fabric falling gracefully in all the right places. It was faintly patterned with shadows of flowers, and was obviously made for warm light, slow movement; something for a young maiden. It wasn’t too fancy, and he could imagine an elite pureblood girl wearing it as daily wear.
It still made him uncomfortable though, and the tips of his ears reddened as he looked at himself in the mirror. Feepsy carefully brushed through his hair, taking care of any tangles and working through it methodically.
When she was done she looked at him in the mirror and said words that made him jolt yet again. “Master Riddle is expecting mistress in the kitchen, Master seemed quite angry, ma’am” she looked at him with a disapproving glint.
He froze.
Riddle?
He didn’t dare show his shock to Feepsy; she would surely notice something amiss. He cleared his throat, “What- What does he want with me?”
Feepsy looked at him as if he had suggested running through Diagon Alley naked. “Mistress is beings in the paper again. Feepsy isnt being reads it, but I’s be sure that its you and that filthy boy agains” She looked at him slightly disgusted before she turned around and walked out the room. He snapped back and followed her quietly.
“Mistress is beings a bad, bad wife. Mistress must be serverant, only then will Master respect yous”.
Harry kept quiet as he walked down the corridor, his feet tapping against the cold, hard marble. What the actual fuck had he gotten himself into this time?