Falling through time was immemorable for Harry only because he was unconscious throughout it all, When Hermione spoke those last words of the ritual, the world, however briefly, disappeared, and when he woke, it was to darkness and a sturdy chair to which his arms and legs were bound. Trying to tug himself free from the rope coiled around his limbs like a restricting boa wouldn't free him, but it was a sort of unacknowledged, universal truth that, when one woke tied up in an unfamiliar place, some sort of struggle had to be put up, even if it yielded nothing.

He didn't keep at his required struggling for long though. Once it became obvious raw strength and dogged resolve weren't going to see him free, he decided it might be best to save his energy for something more likely to see him out of this mess. Something like assessing the situation or observing his surroundings.

And after only two seconds of assessing and observing his surrounding, one thing became glaringly obvious: the ritual hadn't fucking worked. The stupidly fancy desk that wouldn't at all look out of place acting as a center piece in someone like the Prime Minister's office was still sitting with its back to two floor to ceiling windows that remained uncovered enough to silver-wash the room in the light of a less than full moon. The fire had been doused, the ritual cleared away, and Hermione was nowhere to be seen, but this was still, unmistakably, his study. He must have passed out from inhaling all of that smoke coming off of their ritual fire, granting the wizards busting down his door no opposition in taking Hermione wherever she'd disappeared to and tying him up to be dealt with in whatever way they deemed fit.

More wriggling was to be done, this time not in an attempt to squirm free, but in an effort to see if there was anything on him that could be used to get him out of these ropes before whoever had tied him up returned. A wand would be preferable, but he'd take a handily sharp belt buckle if that wasn't an option.

But, of course, his captors weren't complete idiots, his wand was nowhere on his person and anything that may have been used to cut away his binds had been removed and kept carefully out of reach. Of all the times the wizarding world decided it wanted to be competent, it had to be now. He was completely at their mercy, no amount of straining and struggling would get him out of the ropes and time was just about up as, somewhere outside the door, mingling voices and several different sets of footsteps approached.

He wanted to do something, he wanted to buck and squirm and wriggle his way to freedom, but knowing the chances of him accomplishing anything were slim to none, Harry forced himself still and the hissing of his breath to go completely silent. His captors were steadily drawing close enough for him to distinguish what was being said between them and he couldn't miss a word.

"The tremor was powerful, just about knocked me off my feet. And the shockwave that came after is what I'm blaming my singed nose hairs on."

"And he was unconscious when he arrived? He wasn't awake to give you a name or tell you where he came from?"

"Nope, he was down from the moment I found him. Thought he was dead at first, gave my Monty and Moira the worst of scares."

What? None of the voices were familiar, that in and of itself wasn't too strange, there were plenty of people in the wizarding world Harry had yet to meet, but their talk of powerful tremors and singed nose hairs was odd, and the question about getting his name and where he'd come from was outright baffling. These men knew him, they'd come for him.

Unless, of course, they hadn't.

Unless, of course, the ritual hadn't failed, not exactly, and that worst course of action Hermione had mentioned had come to pass.

He didn't try to feign unconsciousness when the door swung in, no point in wasting time with the act if that really was the case.

The first two men to enter were unremarkable enough, one was tall, one was slightly less so, they shared the same sort of coloring with dark hair and dark eyes, though their features couldn't have been more different. The most remarkable thing about them were the robes they wore, an outdated version of the same ones Tonks and Kingsley as Aurors had once sported.

Point one for the theory of screwed up timelines.

One more man entered, he too had dark hair, slightly curled but otherwise neat, but his eyes were strikingly blue; he was just the slightest bit familiar despite the fact that Harry had not once laid eyes on him before this moment.

"Look at that," one of the maybe-Aurors urged "he's woken."

The second maybe-Auror nodded at Harry, a polite but distant greeting. "Evening, lad. You feeling all right?"

Harry nodded hesitantly.

"Good, good. I'm Auror Bones, this is my partner, Auror Sully."

The only Bones in the Ministry had been Amelia Bones, who'd been killed at the very start of Voldemort's return. There were no Sully's that he was aware of, at least not among the Aurors.

"Do you know what brought us here?"

"There you are, asking all the wrong questions, Bones." Sully was the larger of the two, but he immediately came of as far less serious than his partner. "He knows just as well as we do why we're here. The real question is what brought him here."

If the names of the two Aurors wasn't a pretty good indicator that Harry had landed somewhere other than where (or rather when) he was supposed to, their complete lack of recognition certainly was.

A scowl, one that was every ounce the unbearable fifteen year old Harry who'd done nothing but skulk around Hogwart's like a miserable sack of angst his entire fifth year, fixed itself to the nineteen year old slayer of dark lord's face as he cast his eyes down to his lap. "Was an accident," he muttered.

"No doubt, and one you won't be punished for if you go on and tell us what happened," Bones encouraged.

"My mate didn't believe me when I told him I'd learned to apparate, I just wanted to prove him wrong, pop to the boundaries of the Forbidden Forest." Harry shrugged petulantly. "Turns out he was right, I don't know how to apparate."

"I thought as much," Sully nodded, proud of himself for whatever reason, "Hogwarts student."

However, Bones was frowning. "Apparating isn't possible within Hogwarts' wards."

Harry, striving to adopt his former roommate, Seamus's, attitude of casual indifference and cheerful naivety shrugged his shoulders. "Could be why I ended up here. Do you think I broke through the wards? That could mean I'm powerful, like Merlin."

"I find that to be incredibly unlikely." Bones flicked his wand, releasing the tight ropes that held Harry immobile to his seat. "Come, let us head off and leave Mr. Potter and his family to what's left of their evening."

Harry gingerly rose from his seat, rubbing at the inside of his wrists where the ropes had rubbed uncomfortably. "Mr. Potter, did you say?" he queried innocently. "Is that where I wound up, the Potter's home?" He turned his gaze to the mostly silent Potter patriarch who still stood nearby the partially closed door. Perhaps he had seen the man before today, there was a parlor on the main floor of the manor in which the portraits of several of Harry's relatives, his grandparents included, had hung. He'd ventured in there only once, at an hour so late all of the portraits had long since fallen asleep, he hadn't gone back since.

"I apologize for interrupting your evening, Mr. Potter….Fleamont Potter, is it?"

The man expressed his confusion with a small downturn of his lips. "That would be my son. Are you not classmates? You look as if you would be in the same year."

Henry Potter then, Harry's great-grandfather. If that wasn't confirmation of his and Hermione's massive blunder, nothing was. "Yes, well different houses, I tend to get names mixed up."

"Speaking of," Sully piped up, "you never did give us yours."

"I didn't, did I?" Harry bounced on the balls of his feet. "Well, about that….Stupefy."

There was a ripple through the room and the three wizards before Harry staggered back a few steps, they seemed disoriented, but still clearheaded enough to reach for their wands, so he repeated the spell again, this time more emphatically.

"Stupefy."

It had its intended affect this time and the men collapsed, unconscious.

Hysteria disguised as humor burst from his lips. How the hell had that actually worked?

Quick work was made of rifling through the two Aurors' pockets, his wand was in Auror Bones' robes, before he was out of the room and headed down the stairs. The Monty and Moira Henry had mentioned earlier, Harry's grandfather and great-grandmother, were waiting in the same parlor Harry and Hermione had been reading in only a few hours earlier. Moira was pacing agitatedly in the space before the fireplace while Fleamont watched his mother. Twin stunning spells met them before they even realized Harry's presence.

And that's about when his momentum careened to a halt. There was no protocol for what one should do when they found themselves thrown back to their grandparents time, which was pretty foolish on his part seeing as Hermione had told him from the very start that this was a very big risk. But that was fine, he was good at working under pressure, Voldemort would still be alive if he weren't.

Step one was finding how far back he'd gone. The exact date was what he needed. The parlor in which Fleamont and Moira were unwillingly napping in held no answers, but in the family dining room, on a small table off to the side of the room, was what looked to be a recent copy of the Daily Prophet. At the top was the date; December 25th, 1941.

The day was right, and the month, the plan had always been to go back to Christmas, it was the year that was off. By sixty-six years.

"Only a suggestion my arse," Harry muttered to a Hermione that hadn't been born yet, he tossed the newspaper back onto the table and sunk into the seat before it. "The bloody lunar phase was important. How the hell am I supposed to go forward sixty-six fucking years?"

The ritual had specified that once done there was no going back, he would have to relieve every year. But surely that hadn't been taking into account cases like this? If the ritual malfunctioned there had to be some way to rectify the mistake, because if there wasn't….If he was stuck here….What would he do if he was stuck? It was nineteen forty-one. Harry's parents weren't even an idea yet, his grandfather was still a Hogwarts student. Voldemort was still just a kid. He paused.

Voldemort was still a kid.

Sure he'd been pretty powerful while young, but not near as powerful as a (newly-named) protégé of death. If Harry wanted to, he could kill him. Now. Tonight. Stop him from ever creating a Horcrux, ever killing Myrtle and framing Hagrid, he could stop him before he grew to become the awful creature he'd known in his timeline, so many people would live for it. His parents would live.

"I would abandon that line of thinking, quark, and quickly."

Harry whipped around, knocking his chair to the ground with an enormous clatter, and glared up at Death. "What are you doing here?" he hissed. "How are you here?"

"I would be a poor cosmic deity indeed if such an inconsequential restraint as time got in my way."

"You can time travel?" Harry perked up. "So you could send me back to my time, or rather the time I was trying to get to in the first place?"

"No." Death looked around the room, surveying the horrible striped wallpaper that hadn't been around by the time Harry had inherited the manor. "While I can pass back and forth in time, I cannot bring along passengers."

"But time travel is still an ability you possess and so, technically, one I possess. Teach me how."

"Teach you?" Death seemed faintly amused by the idea. "Passing through time is not a learned ability, it is instinctual, one you cannot do until you simply can. How would you instruct someone on how to perform an act that is akin to breathing? To controlling one's limbs?"

"So you can't take me along as your passenger," Harry summarized. "And you can't teach me how to time travel. What use are you then? Why are you even here?"

Death allowed the angered statement to pass over his head as if it hadn't even registered, and, knowing the deity, it likely hadn't. "I'm here to prevent you from creating a future far worse than the one you've just left."

Harry shook his head, confused.

"The thoughts you were entertaining, killing your dark lord to prevent the deaths of your allies, it is a dangerous one."

Harry scowled. "How could it possibly be dangerous?"

"Tom Riddle, for better or for worse, changed the world. Killing him would create a far different future, one that I cannot guarantee would be better."

"I can't think of a single way in which a world without Voldemort would be a worse one."

"That's because you lack any sort of common sense. Among his victims could have been a wizard far worse than he ever was or could become, one who would rise to cause an infinite amount more destruction than he ever could."

"Right," Harry said dully. "The devil you know and all that…." He sighed, then righted the chair he'd knocked over and fell back into it. "So I'm right back to where I was before, sixty-six years in the past with no plan and nowhere to go." He glared up at the ceiling, refusing to allow the moisture building up in his eyes to escape.

The first traces of devastation were beginning to tighten his chest. Sure he was immortal, he could wait out the sixty-six years, but that was a long time to be alone.

"Get away from England. Europe if you can."

Harry blinked, dispelling the gathering of tears he was still resolutely holding back, then looked Death's way. "What?"

"The further you are from here, the less you might be tempted to change things. Run into any trouble in this time and those from your present will be able to find you much easier. Ergo, leave Europe."

"And go where?"

"Wherever you want. You have nothing holding you here."

Harry laughed, confused and a little amazed, Death was trying to comfort him, this frigid being who had made it very clear from the start how insignificant he considered Harry to be had seen the panic attempting to grip hold of him and had offered an attempt at soothing him. Sure, he was awful at it, the reminder that he had nothing for him in this time was actually pretty crushing, but the attempt itself did what Death's words hadn't.

"I guess I could go to the States. The culture's not too different from here, so I won't be completely out of place. Plus they have enough of a magical presence that I have places to go to look into ways back home, but not so much of one that I would be found easily. And their part in the war with Grindelwald was-is much smaller than the communities here in Europe what with the distance between our two continents acting as a buffer."

Death shrugged, seemingly lacking any further advice. His attempt at comfort must have momentarily drained him of any further compassion. "Whatever you decide to do, best decide it quickly as your ancestors and their guests won't remain unaware for much longer."

"Right." Harry rose from his chair and carefully pushed it beneath the table. "Okay, the U.S., I'm going to the United States. Merlin, that's far though. How am I even supposed to get there?"

"You're resourceful, I'm sure you'll figure something out."

Now that was just a bit too much for Harry, first Death had tried his hand at comforting and now he'd offered something that could almostbe considered a compliment.

The cosmic being didn't scowl at the look of utter befuddlement Harry turned on him, he was far too composed for that, but it was a near thing.

"You're still an insufferable quark," he snapped, then moved as if he were preparing to leave.

"Wait!" Harry jolted forward, his hand swung out, only a hair shy of actually touching Death. "Don't go yet. I…They can't know I was here."

"I hardly see how that concerns me."

"I was never very good at erasing memories. I need your help."

Harry's own throat twinged in dehydrated sympathy at how dry Death's next words sounded. "You need my help?"

He shrugged and tried for a charming smile. "Please?"

As a whole, the day had been pretty awful, his world had finally turned on him and he'd been thrown back in time with no real solution as to how to get back, but then Death nodded, reluctantly and face full of disdain, but he'd agreed to help and Harry's awful day became just the slightest bit miraculous.

"Please, just...try not to kill them. I sort of need them to exist."

"Don't tempt me."

A bubble of surprised laughter burst from Harry before he could contain it, who knew Death could be so amusing?

The small bit of happiness the being's antics had conjured managed to hold the worst of Harry's fear and disquiet at bay long enough for him to see memories corrected before leaving the Potter's home for the only place he knew.

The Leaky Cauldron was being manned by Tom, though one who was quite noticeably handsome with a full head of hair and nearly all his teeth in his mouth. A handful of knuts, nicked from a dish beside the Potters' front door, bought him a room for the night and a hot meal. The tumble through time had taken a lot out of him, he was starving and exhausted and if he intended to make it up the street let alone across the Atlantic he would need a good meal and a few hours of rest to help recharge.

One of the tines on the fork that had come with his meal ran along the skin of his forearm, where the dark mark would rest if he'd been on the opposite side of his war. It was the late hours of December twenty-fifth in the year nineteen forty-one. He had left September eighteenth of two thousand and eight. The metal utensil acted as his marker as, silently, he counted years and months until he had rows and columns of straight little lines of red to account for every year in between the two dates. Sixty six years and nine months exactly. That was a lot of years, too many years.

He was alone, with nothing else to distract him from becoming truly overwhelmed. Something dark and invasive unfurled within his chest, it had no physical presence that he knew of and yet it still somehow sat heavy on his lungs and made it immensely difficult to breath. He'd been fighting this presence, this invasive magic that made him see things he didn't want to see and left the distinct taste of death at the back of his throat, since the day it had manifested.

Death had told him, in an attempt at irony, to clear his mind, the books had told him something different. They had suggested not to clear his mind, but merely calm it, soothe the overwhelming emotion every thought and memory of his elicited; such a method was far easier and, in the long run, much more practical than attempting to cease all thought. But Harry was a creature of passion, he wore his every emotion like a proud patch of honor on his sleeve; he'd been learning to get a handle on it, he was no longer a moody teen who could use puberty and hormones as an excuse for his violent moods, but Merlin was it hard. Especially in moments like these, when fear and anger and confusion congealed into one enormous ball of angst that made practicing thinking and acting logically a task of incredible difficulty.

He banged his head against the solid wood of his headboard once, then again, then one more time for good measure, hoping that the sharp aching that blossomed at the base of his skull might shake him from his feelings long enough to allow him to employ some of the techniques he'd been teaching himself. The last thing that he wanted was for the gifts given to him by the Hallows to start acting up and send him into a crazed sort of panic the likes of which had only been seen once in that cramped bathroom when these magics had first forced themselves upon him. That would surely draw the very sort of attention he was hoping to avoid.

He placed his hand over his chest, the point where the magic was at its most concentrated, and pressed just his fingertips inward. The sharp crescent of his fingernails were angled upwards so as to prevent them from cutting into his skin, but the pressure of his fingers into the unyielding bone beneath them wrought a strange sort of discomfort itself. Now his head ached and his chest twinged, the presence of the two separate sensations drew his attention away from the panic he'd been so close to succumbing too. Once its intensity had dulled just the slightest, he was able to force it back and away, wrapped up tight to be dealt with at a later date. Or never. He actually preferred never.

With his emotions slowly falling back into his control, he was able to try again at assessing his predicament. Sixty-six years (and nine months) in the past, with no money, no friends, and no way home. It was awful, but surely not as awful as facing a basilisk at the tender age of twelve, or a dark lord at only seventeen, and he'd made it out of both of those messes just fine. Or mostly fine at least. This was nothing different, only a mild setback in the clusterfuck that was his life. He just needed some order, he needed a plan to follow and keep him on track. And that started with getting to the States.

He was pretty proficient at apparating by now, but the distance was too wide to jump and he'd never been anywhere in the U.S. before so he couldn't exactly picture where it was he intended to land. Portkeys would do the trick, but it was Hermione who knew how to make them, not him, and while the Ministry could do that, it required some sort of proof of identification and galleons, neither of which he had. There were muggle means of travel, as well, of course, though he wasn't too sure about planes as he was fairly certain they were much different now than the reliable crafts he'd seen once or twice in his own time. A boat then, those had proved tried and true for centuries now, and though there was, again, the small matter of not having any money, a simple disillusionment charm would allow him the chance to try his hand at being a stowaway.

The London Port wasn't far from Charing Cross, a few hours walk perhaps, but barely even fifteen minutes on the Knight Bus. It took the last of his knuts to make the trip, but he was the first on the magical bus the next morning and so arrived at the port before any of the ships were set to disembark.

The port was enormous, it stretched for miles on either side of the River Thames' banks and handled dozens of ships, both passenger and cargo. A passenger ship would be best to stowaway on, these trips tended to last for days if not weeks, and he didn't want to spend his entire time under a disillusionment charm, if he were to sneak onto a ship with a fair amount of passengers it would be no issue blending in, his presence aboard likely wouldn't be questioned.

A bit of window shopping led him to the RMS Orion, it was an impressive size with a crowd waiting to board that was just as sizeable, it would be incredibly easy to get lost in a crowd that size. It was slated to leave for Ellis Island in New York in less than three hours, the trip was predicted to take nine days total. Harry hadn't ever been on a boat of this size, especially not for a journey so long, but he had no issue flying, not even unbound and unprotected on a broomstick, bobbing along a few waves in a fairly secure ocean liner was sure to be nothing.

And it wasn't; the trip itself was bearable enough, Harry had snuck onto the ship with not a single issue and seamlessly integrated himself into the group of second class passengers. He kept to himself for the entirety of the nine days at sea, speaking only when spoken directly to and otherwise acting the perfect part of the recluse he was setting out to be.

The first sight of the famed Statue of Liberty saw everyone on the ship stirring excitedly. They crowded the railing of the ship, pressing shoulder to shoulder and back to chest to watch as they glided in the direction of their new home.

The ship docked at Manhattan first, those in first and second class who had been cleared as healthy by medical inspectors were let off immediately, while the passengers who had ridden third class and any who hadn't passed the initial inspection would have to endure one final stop at Ellis Island before it could be determined if they would pass on to become U.S. citizens or be deported back to the lands they had been attempting to flee. Harry, once again donning a disillusionment charm and a notice-me-not for good measure, insinuated himself among the first group and, together, they disembarked the ship and stepped onto solid ground with a great sigh of relief.

Harry hadn't once strayed from the borders of the United Kingdom, and never had he gone anywhere without so little to his name. No money, no home, and only the clothing he wore, it was daunting, but that long boat ride packed like sardines in a cabin with a dozen other men had helped him to realize that, perhaps, this could be a cause for excitement as well. Harry had no intention of being here long, certainly not the sixty six years he had inadvertently traveled; he had resolved to find a way to the time he was originally aiming for, December of two-thousand and seven. It would be quite the task without Hermione to help with the research, but Harry couldn't constantly rely on his friend to do all of the work and now was as good a time as any to learn to stand on his own two feet. And so he dropped his charm, tightened his jaw, and stepped into the city.

Manhattan was an incredible place to be, the buildings were enormous, the streets never empty, and something was always going on. The look and feel of the place wasn't so different from London, even so far in the past, not just because of the architecture of the building around him, but also because of the energy the city's inhabitants unknowingly carried about themselves. Harry didn't know much about muggle history, he hadn't stuck with school long enough to know more than the absolute basis of the world's history, but he did recall enough from primary school to be aware of the fact that the second of two world wars was a great cause for concern right now and that the United States had only just recently joined the conflict.

Harry had become reluctantly familiar with the shadow war cast, he'd grown able to discern the presence of the horseman in the slightly hollowed cheeks of children living off of strict rations, in the frantic, precarious ways in which people had taken to living, unsure if the war would allow them to see another day, and especially in the exhausted, desolate shuffle of those who had lost family, blood or otherwise, to the battlefield. Not always did they die, but they never returned the same.

And yet despite the constant reminder that he world was no longer at peace, the stench of fear didn't permeate every street and store and home like it had during Voldemort's reign. Sure the odor of despair might waft past on a not-so-gentle breeze when another son was drafted or a telegram bearing the worst of news was received, but it never lingered, it always passed.

Harry oftentimes found himself admiring this resilience and drawing upon it for himself, especially during his first few weeks in Manhattan, because things were hard. The MACUSA center of operations resided in the same city he had taken up residence in, but he had resolved to cut himself completely off from the magical world. He was to live as much like a muggle as he could, a task made supremely difficult by his lack of legal documentation and the fact that he hadn't even attended high school. But that wasn't to say it was impossible.

If there was one thing that war was good for, it was creating jobs. Most of the higher paying ones in factories in office buildings had already been claimed by actual legal citizens, but the smaller, more overlooked jobs were still up for grabs and, more often than not, those looking to hire were so desperate for help they didn't ask for proof of citizenship. Harry found one such gig at a family run grocer; the couple who ran the place were in their later years of life, they had once had help maintaining their store from their three sons, but every last one of them had been drafted and shipped off to the battlefront within months of each other. So Harry stepped in to perform whatever physical task was needed, most often unloading the delivery truck and restocking the shelves, in return he got a couple of dollars every week and his pick of any fruits, vegetables, and other such perishable goods that had grown too old to be sold.

The little he earned wasn't enough to amount to even a month's rent in some of the more destitute neighborhoods in the city, all it was really good for was a few days' worth of food and, eventually, a few changes of clothing, but those two basic necessities were a start, the rest could be worked out given enough ingenuity.

With magic on his side, money really shouldn't be an issue, the dollars he was paid every Thursday could technically be stretched infinitely with the use of a duplication charm, but something about his duplicates always seemed off, it wasn't glaring, but they never seemed quite as authentic as they could be, and, after the horrible recession that had struck the country only a few years ago, muggles had grown especially good at spotting counterfeit currency. A befuddlement charm could certainly be used in ways as small as confusing his employers into paying him just a bit more or something as large as tricking potential landlords into believing he'd paid rent that month. However, either could figure out something was amiss before long and, even if they didn't, the continued use of magic on muggles would undoubtedly draw the attention of the Ministry. So instead of using his magic to con those he encountered, Harry settled for using it to simply build himself a suitable shelter.

The fantastic thing about New York was that it was full of convenient alleyways and hidey-holes for one to claim, and only a half days jaunt through the city found him the perfect one to hole up in. It was small, cozy even, and tucked away from the worst of foot traffic; the scraps of a dismantled bookcase were assembled with the use of a sticking charm or two to create him the perfect lean-to, and a few warming and impervious charms protected him from the worst of the weather. Harry only knew a handful of low powered wards, most of which he'd learned from Hermione during their cross-country camping trip, but they were more than enough to keep curious muggles and animals alike away from his shelter.

It wasn't much, he was living in an alley for Merlin's sake, but it was warm and somewhat private and, for someone who had never truly had a place to call home anyway, it wasn't half bad.