Been pretty busy lately. Will same more in author's notes.
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At first Harry didn't even know where he was. Then he realized. He was at Godric's Hollow in front of his parents' graves. He had simply wanted to get away from it all that he didn't have a clear destination in mind when he apparated. He crouched in front of their graves. It seemed so empty now that he had actually met them through his and Voldemort's wands. The graves that held their body were pitiful substitutes for their spirits that had actually talked to him.
The place gave off a melancholy aura as the graveyard seemed signify everyone that had died in order to help him kill Voldemort. His eyes had glistened with unshed tears as the full force of what happened hit him. What had been his driving force for the majority of his magical life had just ended: the quest to kill Voldemort. Now everything just felt pointless as everyone he loved was no longer there to share it with him. Thoughts of ending his own life entered his thoughts before he quickly threw them away. He had promised her he would live.
He tried to calm himself as he thought, 'What would Hermione do if she were in this situation? She always knew what to do. I was just the one who did whatever felt like the best idea at the moment. If only I could go back in time. But all those time turners back at the Ministry were destroyed.' He growled in frustration. Nothing ever seemed to go his way. 'There has to be a way! What would Hermione do?!' He gave a sigh of exasperation and smiled fondly. 'Of course. She would go to the library.'
'What is there that could even help in a situation like this?' Thoughts of bringing Hermione back to life quickly reached his thoughts and exited just as fast as he remembered just how faulty the stone of resurrection was. It merely gave the user what was desired to be seen, not the actual person brought back from the grave. The person would usually go mad with grief at what he was seeing and Harry didn't fancy having that happen to him. Bringing someone back to life was a big no for him as there were too many things that could go wrong. Hermione was gone and there was nothing he could do about it.
The thought struck him like a lightning bolt. 'I could go back in time!' Quickly, disappointment filled him as he remembered that all the time turners at the Ministry had been destroyed. He doubted that they were easily made since no one had even mentioned it before. Whoever knew how to make them was probably long gone and aurors would have probably used them if they had someone that could make them.
He thought to where he could even find material on such an obscure subject such as time travel. Dumbledore had rarely mentioned it despite how useful it would have been. He never even used a time turner, even though many of his problems would have been fixed with such a device. 'There's got to be a bloody good reason why. How many people could have been saved with a time turner? He could have even stopped himself from getting poison by the ring!' There were two possible reasons that he could think of; either using time turners was extremely dangerous or it was dark magic. Harry was willing to bet that it was the latter. Why else would Hermione, a mere schoolgirl at the time, be given one to complete homework of all things if it was so dangerous that the famed 'Leader of the Light' wouldn't even use it? Logic, he concluded, was not something that witches and wizards had in abundance.
Dumbledore had probably feared using it because it wasn't light magic though. Harry mentally scoffed. He had killed his first man when he was eleven (technically when he was one, if you counted destroying a man's body as 'killing') and things had only gotten progressively worse as the years went on, so fearing something because of dark magic didn't faze him as much as it would have back when he was still in Hogwarts.
'So time travel is probably something related to dark magic, or at least magic that Dumbledore wouldn't have approved of. But I don't have access dark libraries. Hogwarts definitely wouldn't contain anything close to that since even the Polyjuice potion is in the restricted section and with McGonagall in charge, nothing would have made its way there either. If only Snape had been in charge longer, there might have been a chance.'
His eyes widened and he mentally berated himself. Wasn't he now the owner of the Grimmauld Place? Although Sirius was more light than dark, he was hardly the norm for his family. They probably had numerous dark artifacts along with a library full of information on dark magic. After all, they were centuries old.
With that thought in mind, he set off for Grimmauld place. He apparated to the doorstep as it had been heavily warded against apparition. Once Harry and Hermione had found out how valuable of a base it was for operating and recuperating, it had been put under the Fidelius charm again with Harry as the sole secret keeper with Hermione performing the charm. The reasoning for that it was a familiar place and, under the Fidelius charm, it was safe since only Harry and Hermione knew about it.
He quickly shut the door behind him as he walked in. He stopped for a moment as he realized that he didn't even know where the library was.
He cursed inwardly as he would now have to find it in the giant house. Though he had helped clean it when Sirius was first getting back into living condition, it was still big enough that most of it had been unexplored. During the war, Hermione had been the one to do most of the intel gathering while Harry trained in magic.
When he finally found the door to the library somewhere on the second floor conveniently marked 'Black Library' he quickly noted exactly where it was so that he wouldn't have to search for it next time. As he opened the door and stepped in, he stared in awe at the sheer amount of books that it contained. There had to have been millions of books stacked onto bookshelves, each one looking as old and dusty as the next. The library started out as rows of bookshelves that began from one of the walls and had small corridors of bookshelves after it. To the right of where he was standing, there was an unlit fireplace with some armchairs and a few decorations around it.
As he scanned through the titles of some of the books, he quickly realized that none of them were suitable for his needs. In fact, most of the books could have been found in the unrestricted section at Hogwarts. Of course, he thought to himself. 'The Blacks were traditionally a dark family, so they must have found a way to hide everything that they weren't supposed to have, books on dark magic as well. The Ministry would have confiscated all of their stuff otherwise.'
He glanced around the library for a moment. 'They couldn't have hidden it somewhere too hard to get to, otherwise it would have been too much of a hassle to even get to their own things.'
His eyes lit upon the stone bust of some ancient person that sat inconspicuously next to the fireplace. 'No way…' He nudged the head of the figure backwards and it fell back with a creak as if it had not been used in some time. The wall next to it slid open with a silent swish. He shook his head. Did the magical community have to be so clique about everything? They waved wands and rode brooms, now secret doorways hidden by stone busts too?
He wasn't mad about it though. It was an easy way for him to reach what he needed to get. The thought quickly fled as he stepped into what was an another library. Though it was smaller, it was still big enough to intimidate Harry with how long he would have to spend reading. This room had no windows and was instead instantly lit by candles as soon as the wall opened. It silently slid shut behind him as he walked in.
In contrast to the normal library he had left behind, the design of this place had the bookshelves positioned circularly around the large, ornate desk that was in the middle with many more bookshelves set behind it. The books also didn't seem to be in any particular organized system and seemed as if they had been added as the family had gotten ahold of them.
'I'd best get to work then…' he thought as he picked up a random book and headed for the middle.
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The first few hours he had spent in an effort to organize the books into something that he could recognize, but he soon found it to be a fruitless effort. There was just too many and the covers of the books didn't give him much to go off of, so it was either learn at random or skim all the books before he could decide where to put them.
As luck would have it though, one of the books he picked up during his first hour searching through the library was on time travel. He ignored the rest of the books and spent hours pouring over that one in order in an attempt to find more information about time travel.
After a few frustrating hours where he had to constantly guess at what some words meant, as it was an extremely old book, he concluded that the book did not contain any information that was too important to him at the moment. It mostly contained theories of how time travel worked and the mysteries behind time turners. That meant that time turners had been around for a while and were extremely valuable if the Ministry keeping them locked up was anything to go by. Too bad their security wasn't enough to keep them all safe.
After what felt like forever, though it was probably wasn't quite that long, he decided to check and see how long he had been in the library. He was making his way out when he realized that the door to the original library was closed.
Much to his relief, right next to the door was another stone bust which had the exact same purpose as the last one. He push the head back, made his way out through the newly opened door and went to check the nearest clock that he could find.
He frowned as the clock pointed somewhere between three and four. That meant that at least a day had passed since he had been in the library. Just as that thought hit him, so did the fatigue. He had been fighting Voldemort for a decade and a half though, which meant that he was quite adept at shrugging off being exhaustion. Despite that, he knew that he would have to get some food and rest before he was able to function normally.
He had no desire to cook at the moment, which meant that he would have to go somewhere else for food. The best option quickly made itself clear to him as going to Diagon Alley would allow him to get some food into his system and assess the situation of what was going on after Voldemort's death.
After taking a quick shower and putting on some new clothes, he made his way to the front door of the house and put on his cloak of invisibility.
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When he apparated back to Diagon Alley to see what was happening now that Voldemort was dead, he quickly found that the entire community was in upheaval. Everyone was rushing around and the noise was nearly deafening which made sure that no one noticed the noise as he appeared. However, that did make it a bit harder to avoid everyone as they moved about. He soon found out the reason for all the commotion as he glanced over someone's shoulder at the front page of a nearby Daily Prophet.
Boy Who Lived, Slayer of You-Know-You, Has Vanished!
By Rita Skeeter
Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, has disappeared after numerous eyewitnesses saw him kill
the feared He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Now, where could our young hero have gone and…
He stopped reading as someone bumped into him and hurriedly looked around him. The headline was enough to give him a sense of what was going on anyway.
The person that had bumped into him was a tall wizard that didn't have any other distinguishing features other than that. He mumbled to himself as he looked around, "I could have sworn there was something…"
The man shook his head and kept walking.
No one seemed to have noticed the incident so he quickly ducked into the Leaky Cauldron that was nearby so as not to have a repeat of that. Now that Voldemort was dead, he no longer had to be in the limelight and would definitely not willingly step back into it.
The bustling pub seemed to be full of people but he still managed to find a seat that was empty. He had taken off his invisibility cloak and merely kept his head down while he changed his eyes to brown with a quick charm and a concealment one to hide his scar, doing wonders for keeping others' attention off of him. His hair had grown out over the years and he normally kept it in a ponytail in the back since there was little time to be wasted on haircuts during a war. Once the scar was out of sight, Harry Potter was usually not thought of.
He caught Tom the bartender's attention after a few minutes and waved him over.
"Hello, what can I get you today?" Tom the bartender asked with a smile.
"Just a couple of sandwiches and some water will do," Harry responded, without a hint of how wary he felt being next to so many people.
"Coming right up."
As Tom went to get his order, he listened carefully around at some of the conversations with a small hearing charm so that things weren't so muddled.
"…Potter did it again!"
"…where he went?"
"...probably died too, they're just hiding it..."
"…heard that his girlfriend got offed too…"
Harry quickly cancelled the charm and shook his dead. It didn't seem like anyone was discussing anything useful, but he was glad that it didn't seem like anyone knew where he had gone.
As Tom came back over with his food, he quickly ate and left after leaving a galleon on the counter.
As he stepped back out into the busy street he wandered aimlessly for a few minutes. He thought about the choices he had at the moment. There wasn't really anyone left to go to that he was familiar with as the majority of his time fighting was spent with Hermione at his side. Her parents still didn't remember that she even existed and he didn't want to be the one to give them back their memories and break the news to them at the same time, so that was a dead end.
Despite still being in the afternoon, his exhaustion soon left him with no other option but to get some rest. He hadn't gotten much sleep beforehand since he was preparing for the fight with Voldemort which meant that he had been running on fumes for a while now. The food in his stomach didn't him help with staying awake either so he eventually apparated back to Grimmauld Place to get some rest. The house seemed even gloomier than usual. During the war, things were hard but at least he had someone to share his burden with. Now, he didn't have his burden anymore but he also didn't have Hermione.
He would have taken Voldemort back if it meant that Hermione would still be there.
He slowly made his way through the house and to the bedroom that he used as his on the first floor. He stood in the doorway for a moment as he surveyed the scene. Everything seemed to have lost its color. The blue bed sheets seemed dulled and the carpet looked worn out. He trudged the short distance from the door to the bed, and as he collapsed, a final thought entered his mind before he succumbed to the embrace of sleep.
'Now I'm alone.'
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Alrighty. So I know this isn't much but things have been a bit busy lately so I haven't had too much free time to write anything. Also, the whole writing thing is still pretty new to me so I have to keep reminding myself that yes, there is a story that I'm writing and no, it's not just in my head.
This is still in the beginning so there's not too much that's happening right now. Things will speed up however and there will be some time lapses since I'm sure that not many people would like to read about every moment of the fifty year time jump from here to when Harry goes back.
I do have a bit more written, but I felt that this was a nice place to end it, short as it is, as a lot of changes will be happening and I don't want to wait too long in between my updates. Once I get the hang of writing my updates will have a lot more content, but for now I'm trudging along the best I can.
Questions and comments are welcome!
