Lost in Time
Summary: One Harry James Potter was temporarily temporally displaced – and none too pleased about it.
PROLOGUE
Harry Potter was temporarily temporally displaced – and none too pleased about it.
It was his responsibility, they'd told him – since it was his last expedition into the DoM nine years ago that had caused the last batch of time turners to be destroyed – that he acted as their guinea pig for their new and improved models. He wouldn't die, they'd insisted. He was, after all, Master of Death and, if he found himself too far away from his own timeline, they had set up a temporal beacon which he could home in on and use to get the hell out of Dodge. Perfectly safe, they'd said. It wasn't even the first prototype, they'd said. He'd be fine, they'd said.
Bullshit.
Harry didn't want to be here. Harry didn't want to be the Department of Mysteries' latest test subject. But, Harry didn't also want the DoM making it any harder for him than they were already and, if this was the price to pay to get them off his back, he'd figured that it was worth it.
Of course, being thrown through a temporal vortex that made you feel like you were chewing on your own innards was not advertised as part of the deal.
And neither was, for that matter, the rough landing.
THUD!
Harry's entire body seemed to crumple upon impact with the ground. There he lay, his glasses skewed, his robes dishevelled and his face smeared with something – something that Harry severely hoped was not animal manure. It took a couple of seconds for Harry to remember to breathe, but when he did, he was rolling over and dry heaving on the ground, suddenly glad he didn't eat anything before his … (Flight? Jump? Deportation?) … departure.
"Never again," he coughed out, nursing his ribs. He didn't care what they offered him; it was someone else's turn to be thrown through space and time.
Harry staggered to his feet, noticing immediately the harsh dryness of his surroundings. Sandy plains stretched for miles and miles in each direction, with no sign of human settlement in any direction. The sun beat down harshly upon him, despite the cooling effect of the strong wind.
"Shit."
It was official: Harry James Potter, Boy-Who-Lived, Saviour of the Wizarding World and latest guinea pig for the Department of Mysteries, had no idea where on Earth – if he was even on Earth – he was supposed to be.
"Brilliant," Harry muttered to himself. "The infamous Potter Luck strikes again."
With an elongated sigh that spoke of long suffering, Harry drew his wand out from its holster on his arm with a flex of his wrist. Feeling the familiar grip of his wand in his palm, Harry allowed his analytical side to take over.
Activating the fail-safe to get out of there wasn't an option. The DoM would just send him back if he hadn't gotten any information as to where he had ended up. But that information wasn't going to be easy to find…
Harry sighed again, before laying his wand on his palm.
"Point me," he said.
It felt like he had walked for miles before he caught sight of the settlement, but it had probably been longer. With no major landmarks, apparating in such an environment was dangerous and it wasn't certain if flying with his broom was an option either.
The blur on the horizon was like a godsend to Harry. Through the heat haze, he wasn't able to make it out in enough detail to risk apparating there, but it marked the beginning of the end. All he'd have to do would be walk up, ask someone for the year, then find some secluded place to locate the temporal beacon back home and bam, he was out of there. Job done. No strings attached.
Wrong.
He was within two hundred metres when the smell hit him. The putrid, repugnant smell that Harry would recognise anywhere. The smell that had hung heavily in the air of the final battlefield. The smell of rotting flesh.
Subconsciously, Harry quickened his pace, moving at a jog, then breaking out into a full sprint. His lungs burned in the heat, but Harry ignored it, pushing forward with unrelenting pace.
It was a truly horrific sight, he arrived to.
Corpses, barely recognisable, scattered across the ground. Blood like paint on the walls. Complete and utter deathly silence.
And, right in the centre, chained to a wall, beaten and bloody, a boy, barely sixteen.
Harry froze in place, his eyes glued to the boy, one thought circling in his mind. Too young. The kid was far too young.
Don't interfere, they'd told him. Don't screw with the timeline. Screw that. If they'd wanted a passive bystander, they should have sent someone else.
The next decision that Harry made changed his life.
Looking back on it, he wasn't sure what exactly he was thinking as he hoisted the boy up onto his shoulders. He probably wasn't thinking at all as he raised his wand, ready to cast the recall spell.
He knew exactly what he thought about it now, though:
Damn his hero complex.