Disclaimer: As the author, I do not own any part of Harry Potter, the world he was written in or the characters therein. All these belong to J. , and I'm just using them to tell a story. The challenge that inspired this story belongs to Whitetigerwolf. Thanks, my friend.

Chapter 2: Road to Liberty.

Fate and Destiny stared at the gameboard of mortal existence between them. What had once been a simple three dimensional sphere had grown distinctly abstract as Time was twisted out of shape. One section in particular seemed to be a four dimensional moebius strip. As one they turned and glared at the third player. "Oops," Lady Luck said, insincerely. "Must have rolled a seven."

Destiny raised one of the dice and carefully counted the sixsides, each properly marked. "I shouldn't be objecting, I suppose, but aren't we going to at least tryto be fair?"

Luck shrugged. "Texan proverb: If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'."

Harry sat up, and looked around at the blackened earth of the crater he and Hermione sat at the bottom of. It was ten feet deep where they were, and sloped gently up to the nearest edge, twenty feet away. He quickly looked himself over, somewhat glad that he was wearing clothes this time, then checked Hermione. They were both wearing what amounted to cowboy-style outfits, pants and shirt, with a wide-brimmed hat and boots. The boots were perhaps the most unusual as they were dragon-hide. Beneath them, cushioning them against the ground, were two leather dusters. The leather felt a lot like their boots did.

He reached down, and hesitated for a moment before laying his hand on Hermione's shoulder and gently shaking her, ignoring her protests of "Five more minutes, mum, I'm dreaming about Harry...", although they did make him pause for a few seconds.

Leaning close to her ear, he whispered. "Stop dreaming, Hermione, I'm right here."

The squeak as a highly embarrassed young woman popped up was almost as entertaining as one of the Weasley twins' pranks, although Harry wasn't in much of a position to appreciate it, as her rapidly rising head caught his nose. Fortunately, it wasn't broken, or even bloodied, as Harry's Seeker-honed reflexes had him pulling clear of her for the most part, but even clipping the nose on her way to full wakefulness was... distracting, and painfully so. Biting off swear words before they could escape his mouth, Harry promised himself he wasn't doing that again in a hurry.

"Oh, Harry, I'm sorry..." Hermione's horror-filled apology cut off when her emerald-eyed friend put one finger across her lips, which started to tingle pleasantly where he touched them. To distract herself from the accompanying rush in her emotions, she began looking around them.

"No need to apologise, it was my fault for getting too close," Harry said. "Now, where do you think we are? The 1890s sometime of course, but I can't narrow it down further than that." Staring up at the bright blue cloudless sky, and taking in the heat they both felt, he was fairly sure they weren't in England any more. As the two teenagers climbed from the crater, they were certain of it. Wide, open prairie spread out around them, miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles, as Harry put it in a half-joking tone of voice.

Hermione was muttering as she began to take their bearings. "Sun's there, this is the northern hemisphere, open prairie with few trees, mountains over there, let me see..."

Although it delighted Harry to see how his best friend was going about figuring out where they were, Harry felt he had to interrupt. "Hermione..."

"Not now, Harry, I've nearly got it, I might know where we are," she said, a look of fierce concentration on her face.

"We're in America, the Old West, probably Arizona," he said.

"What? How could you know that?" She asked incredulously. She stared at Harry, who was looking past her. As he took her shoulders and gently turned her around, she saw a rail road in the distance, with what looked to be buffalo (bison, her mind corrected her absently) between them and it, and what looked to be a cowboy walking towards them. He had red hair, like the Weasleys, a bright red shirt and blue denims, with tanned leather chaps. He wore a six-gun on his right hip, and a lariat dangled from the left. On his head was a wide-brimmed hat, much like their own. "Okay, Harry, you win, we're in the Wild West."

"Howdy, strangers," called the cowboy. "Ah'm a mite bit curious where you're from. Name's Bill, Billy Prewett. Whut brings y'all way out here?"

"Uh, sorry, Bill, we're a bit lost," said Harry. Sharing a glance with Hermione which as much as asked out loud "Should we tell him our real names?", and receiving a barely perceptible head-shake, he went on. "We're from England, had to move out here, and not used to all this." Here he waved his hand at the surrounding country side, buying himself time as he thought fast. "We don't even know exactly where here is, or which way it is to the nearest town. I'm Wolfe by the way, Harrison Wolfe. This is Maia Hawke." He was inspired in his choice of names by the crests on the robes they'd worn when talking to Death. "We'd be very grateful if you could help us out."

Bill scratched his chin. "You're in Texas, Wolfe. That way lies Arizona, that way's Nevada, and if you go thataway long enough, y'all will find California. The nearest town's Liberty Springs, jest follow the train tracks and you'll get there. Oh, and look me up if'n you're ever down Pecos way, alright?" Satisfied that he'd helped out all he could, Bill whistled up his horse and rode away, with a shouted "Gwan, Tornado, gidjap!"

Hermione froze on the spot. "Harry," she whimpered.

"Yes?" Harry was very wary of Hermione like this. She could do anything.

"I know who that man was." The statement was flat. "Obviously he's related to Molly Weasley somehow, but more: We were just talking to Pecos Bill! He was an American wizard who kept ignoring the Statute of Secrecy, claiming it got in the way of helping people. The only reason he got away with it was the way people talked about him sounded like a tall tale."

"Huh," Harry grunted. "I take you read about him somewhere?"

"Yes, of course I did, and I can hardly wait to..." Her voice trailed off as she went white as a sheet. A very white sheet, too. "Oh, no Harry, it's a disaster!" She latched onto her raven-haired friend, holding him tight as she started crying.

Harry was nearly panicking himself. "What? What's wrong, Maia?"

Although she loved the new name he'd saddled her with, she wasn't calming down. "There's no libraries!" With that she dissolved into tears.

It was a long hike along the tracks as the two of them walked, and as they did, Hermione told Harry what had happened after she woke up and he'd passed out. How the inner circle of Voldemort's Death Eaters, and the Dark Lord himself had shown up, and just as everything was darkest, the Order of the Phoenix had arrived, and a huge battle had ensued. During the fight, Sirius had been blasted through the Veil, the very same one as Umbridge had put them through, which had Harry worried for a moment, until he realized that Sirius might still be alive, and possibly here! But the worst had happened, and Voldemort had incapacitated Dumbledore by flinging curses at bystanders, and striking while the former Headmaster of Hogwarts was protecting them. On discovering the prophecy had been destroyed, the Death Eaters had shed their robes and silenced their prisoners, as their Lord made his exit. Then the Aurors had arrived, accompanied by anyone else who thought they were of importance. Neville had managed to get Ginny and Luna out, and Ron was still affected by the brains. A bitter Hermione had snarled about it being the only time she thought he had any. At the 'trial', Ron had put it all on him, the still unconscious Harry Potter, and was released, for his 'honesty', into his brother Percy's custody. As he'd passed the two of them he'd muttered "No sense all of us going down, is there?" before being ushered from the courtroom. At the point where the defendants were asked if they had anything to say in their defence, she'd found she'd been silenced. The rest was history, if you could call something that wouldn't happen for a hundred years history.

"We need to change the way things are done, don't we?" Harry asked, not really needing an answer. "The only Death Eater that was really stopped was Dolohov. All of the others, no matter what we did, were just brought back into the fight by their friends. They weren't fighting by the same rules, and I almost lost you."

"Harry, are you suggesting we stoop to their level?" she spoke softly, worried. If Harry went Dark, strong as he was, the world would be in trouble... not least because she knew she'd go there with him...

"No," he replied after a few minutes of silence. "Not at all. But it's obvious that Professor Dumbledore's rules didn't work. What happened to him, anyway?"

Hermione closed her eyes for a moment. "He was Kissed, Harry. He's gone... will be gone... ooh, I hate time travel!"

Harry dropped his head, acknowledging the grief he felt at the loss of one who was almost like a grandfather to him. "And we can't change that when we get back, either. Anyone who died has to stay dead. My parents, Dumbledore, even Sirius... Wait, Sirius! He went through the veil! He might still be alive somewhere... when... ooh, I know what you mean about Time Travel."

The two continued walking, following the tracks, buoyed up by a faint, against-all-the-odds hope that they might not be alone, towards the town they could just make out in the distance.

As the strangers came down the street from close by the station, they were watched, closer than they might have suspected, and a boy from the stables had made a dash to the Sheriff's at the other end of the street. Partly winded, he gasped out the news.

"Two strangers, Sheriff, came in along the tracks," he panted. "Guy and a girl, not too much older'n me, look yonder an' you'll see 'em."

The sheriff gazed in the direction the boy had indicated, and sure enough, he saw them. It felt for a moment like he'd been kicked in the chest, hard. What had happened back there, that these two would be here and now? As the two stopped by the saloon, grabbing water from horse trough out front of the place, the sheriff started walking. "You did well, Mark," he told the stable-boy, flicking a silver dollar in the lad's direction, "now you run off and tell Old Sam to get the chest I left with him, okay. Tell him the sheriff's up to no good, and to bring it to Gallows' Saloon."

As Mark ran to do the sheriff's bidding, motivated by a whole dollar, the sheriff paced up the street as the two strangers splashed down their faces and straightened. The boy, with black messy hair and emerald eyes, and the girl, with eyes of a warm brown and the bushiest mane of hair he'd ever seen, registered his approach and turned, their eyes widening. Even from twenty feet away, he could hear the whispered words that escaped his godson.

"Sirius, I knew it, you are alive..."