When one pictures the Defeater of Voldemort, one would more than likely picture someone like Neville Longbottom who had become hardened and battle-scarred in the year leading up to the Battle of Hogwarts as he had protected those amongst the student population who'd fallen out of the favor of Voldemort's enforcers in the castle, not the little shrimp who looked like he was about six or seven and barely came up to Neville's waist. Harry James Potter, recipient of an Order of Merlin First Class and suspected half-breed had been the defeater of Voldemort however, and after he'd defeated Voldemort he'd retreated to the small cottage in the Scottish Highlands which had been left to him by a childless wizard named McCrimmon and did what he did best, tinkering.
The Tenth (technically eleventh) incarnation of the Doctor once joked that his Fifth self could save the universe with "a kettle and a bit of string". The Second incarnation of the Doctor could do it without the kettle. He may have been absolute pants at dealing with logic and numbers when compared to Zoe Heriot and some of his later selves, but if you handed him a space heater and a pile of junk, he could build you a working raygun and then drive off in the rest of the junk while you weren't looking.
It had been the Second Doctor who had adopted Harry in a ritual that gave him half his DNA, and the Second Doctor whom Harry had inherited most of his skills from. Skills that had puzzled the hell out of the people who had administered Harry's last seven I.Q. tests before he went off to Hogwarts since his results were merely average for his age, and the boy didn't appear to be gaming them like some geniuses had a tendency to do.
Sighing and pulling himself out from under the car he was currently restoring, Harry went to the kitchen to make himself lunch in the middle of the afternoon on the twenty-third day after Voldemort's defeat. Food didn't hold the appeal for him it did most others since he was nine, after his aunt Petunia had realized that he'd stopped growing a year or two earlier, figured that it had to do with his usual feeding schedule or lack of one, and started stuffing him full of food until he was sick out of fear that the authorities would realize that she and his uncle Vernon had been mistreating him. He had a few favorite foods that he enjoyed indulging in on occasion, but to him, eating had mostly become something to do to shut his stomach up.
He didn't know why his growth had come to a virtual standstill when he was about seven or eight, but sometimes when he closed his eyes, he dreamed that when he was about that age he'd once seen Everything. The dream that was filled with whispers of "Below average" and "It figures that the Doctor would do something like this completely by accident" was not a pleasant dream, nor were the shadowy half-remembered people in it. Half-remembered people who had seemed to take pleasure in prodding him with sticks as they herded him towards something. Up until Hogwarts, the only dreams he had that were worse than that one was the one where his mother died, and the one with the burning car.
Pushing his dark musings aside as he entered his cottage's small kitchen, he found himself jumping and diving under the table without fully processing why until a second later when he caught a glimpse of a grey cloak. His wand was in his hand before the shadowed face appeared in his line of sight when the figure who had been standing in his kitchen bent down to peer under the table.
"And people wonder why those who know you doubt your courage despite the deeds that prove your bravery." the stranger with the androgynous voice said as it sat down and showed that its hands were empty. "It is a pity that survival instinct is all too often mistaken for cowardice, child."
"I'm not a child!" Harry snapped, his small size and youthful appearance having been a sore point for the last several years, especially with all the girls his age and even some of the girls in the years below him treating him like he was their little brother or something. Not that he was interested, but still...
"As you may have seen during your rather...destructive tour of the facility, not all of the mysteries my department studies are of this Earth. Amongst your father's species you are still very much a child. Eight is near infancy, eighty is a mere youth, and a hundred and twenty is basically the new eighteen." the figure said, sounding amused.
"What do you want?" Harry asked, unhappy with the Unspeakable's confirmation of the fact that he was going to outlive his friends as he'd begun to suspect when he realized that he was still growing a little.
"There is something that needs to be kept out of Voldemort's hands because it was kept out of Voldemort's hands, and we need you to do it." the Unspeakable replied.
"I'd say that what you said doesn't make a lick of sense, but something similar happened to me during Third Year. The question I have is why do you need me?" Harry asked, having parsed the Unspeakable's statement and figured that it involved time travel. Since he'd thought that he was done with the whole Voldemort thing after he'd gone and fulfilled that prophesy, he was none too happy with this development.
"The dangers of apparating beyond a certain distance also apply for any time travel that is beyond a week or so. You however, being what you are, are protected." the Unspeakable replied. "That, and you were seen."
"And if I don't do it?" Harry asked, wanting to stay home, fix a few things, build a few more, and maybe go out with his friends into the Muggle world where he wouldn't be immediately mobbed on occasion. He'd had enough of adventure for the time being and wanted to finally let a bit of boredom set in before he went out and found an adventure that was more to his liking than the last several he'd been on.
The only thing that had allowed him to survive thus far was a little bit of speed and dexterity and a whole lot of luck. If he hadn't run back through that chess set and back again at the first sign of trouble from Quirrel, or run the Basilisk into a knot around that pillar, or run into himself coming and going, or any other number of things, he'd be dead several times over by now.
"If you don't do it, aside from the potentially world-ending paradox, there's the fact that Voldemort will get his hands on a powerful artifact which can cause an incalculable amount of damage nearly a decade before his first defeat." the Unspeakable said, pulling him out of his dark musings on what for him had been something of a seven-year war against Voldemort.
"Fine." Harry sighed, knowing that once again there had been no choice. For him, it was quite possible that the war with Voldemort would never end.
"The world thanks you Harry." the Unspeakable said not unkindly.
"Just let me get ready first. I've got to pack, and I've got a letter which will need to be sent to my friends after I leave to write." Harry said as he scooted out from under the table.
"Why don't you just tell your friends?" the Unspeakable asked.
"Because they'd try to go with me if I did." Harry said. "They'd follow me to the very gates of Hell, heck they'd follow me into Hell if I so much as mentioned wanting to bother Voldemort in the afterlife for the fun of it."
"I see." the Unspeakable said, sounding rather amused. "Your father tends to gather such friends to him himself."
Scowling at the mention of the man or whatever he was who had broken James Potter's trust, Harry turned towards his room to grab a few things he thought he might need. Even if the Unspeakable hadn't mentioned the world-ending paradox or the possibility of Voldemort winning, he might've gone anyways in order to keep the artifact he was being sent after out of the wrong hands. He'd had that "Saving people thing" since even before he'd been - unknown to himself - adopted by the Doctor. The reason he'd chosen the Harrowgates after all had been because when he'd landed, Wilhelmena who hadn't gotten over the loss of her only son a year earlier had been reaching for a bottle of sleeping pills.
"A meteor rock?!" Harry exclaimed as he stood in a ritual circle in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries two days later while the Unspeakables gave him some last-minute instructions. "I'm looking for a meteor rock?!"
