Early in the morning on his fifth birthday, Harry was awakened from his slumber by a violent crash coming from the hallway. Shooting up from his thin mattress and narrowly avoiding smashing his head against the stairs above him, Harry gingerly pushed the door to his cupboard open as far as the old lock would allow.
From what he could see, the front door had been blasted into the hallway, and it was now laying on the floor just outside the cupboard, smoke rising gently from the surface. He could hear voices, then footsteps moving up the stairs. The small boy slowly pulled the door shut again and wrapped his arms around his knees in the corner of the cupboard. He could hear shouting coming from upstairs, then three brief flashes of familiar green light shone through the cracks of the door.
"He's not here!" a voice shouted from the top of the staircase. Several other footsteps paced through the hallway and into the kitchen.
"There's nobody down here either!" a harsh woman's voice called.
"Imbeciles," a quiet voice hissed from the entryway. "Homenum Revelio," the voice whispered, and Harry felt as if a cold breeze had just rushed through him. With a crack, the door to the cupboard flew open and Harry's vision went red.
The Dark Lord Voldemort triumphantly threw open the door of the death chamber in the Department of Mysteries. A small bundle followed him into the room, wrapped loosely in black cloth, as he walked down the stone steps towards the ominous archway in the center of the room. He dropped the bundle unceremoniously onto the floor next to the arch, eliciting a pained grunt, and turned to the crowd that had followed him into the room.
"My friends," he began, lifting his arms to the mass of robed people, "today is the first day of a new magical world. I know we faced many setbacks, but none can halt progress. With the help of my loyal followers, I have defeated Death itself!" His red eyes flickered around the room. Most of the people present were wearing black robes and bone white masks, though he'd brought some of the more powerful members of the Ministry, so they could bear witness to his majesty. Indeed, even Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, bloodied and barely conscious, was kneeling in the first row with several wands pointed at his head.
"Today," he continued, "is a day that will be remembered for all of history. This is the day that witches and wizards will rise up and take our rightful place above the uncivilized brutes that we've hidden from for so long!" The Death Eaters shouted their approval. "There is just one more thing to take care of," he said, bringing silence to the chamber once more. He turned and flicked his wand at the bundle by his feet, vanishing the cloth and reviving the boy.
"Harry Potter," he said as the small boy groggily wiped his eyes and clambered to his feet, arms wrapped around his thin frame, "savior of the Wizarding World, Boy Who Lived. Do you have any last words?" The boy just gaped at his surroundings, completely bewildered by this turn of events. "Very well." With another flick of his wand, Harry was lifted into the air and moved in front of the archway. "Farewell, Harry Potter," Voldemort said, before launching the boy backward through the Veil.
Harry's entire world was light. Colors appeared and vanished faster than he could identify them, along with colors that he'd never seen before. He felt a vague sensation of motion, as if he were flying through the air at speeds he'd never moved before. This went on for what could have been years, or perhaps even seconds. Nothing he'd experienced in his short life had come close to preparing him for something like this.
Suddenly, with absolutely no warning, he had a body again, and could feel the wind against his skin. He opened his eyes slowly and smiled as he saw a clear blue sky above him. Underneath him, he could feel… nothing? His eyebrows furrowed, and he turned his head to look at what he was lying on top of. His eyes widened almost comically, and a wordless shout of terror flew from his lips.
He was falling. Somehow, he'd come back a huge distance above the ground, and now he was falling back to earth. He could see rivers snaking through the forest, with their iridescent purple leaves fluttering in the wind. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized that the leaves were the wrong color, but his conscious mind was far too concerned with his imminent demise for it to really process.
As he continued to fall, things came more into focus. Oddly enough, he could already make out the details of the leaves even though he was still far above them. The purple canopy grew closer and closer, until finally Harry realized the leaves were massive. The one he was falling directly towards must have been a hundred feet across at its widest point. Harry curled in on himself as he approached.
Lissandra gently pushed the handcart along the edge of the forest, pushing one of the metal fenceposts off every twenty yards or so. Cassiud followed her progress, putting the poles upright and syncing them with the rest, slowly constructing a fence along the boundary of their newly-bought tract of land. Eventually she ran out of fenceposts, but she smiled when she realized how close they were to their starting point. One more load and they would be done, and then they could finally get their farm running. She leaned against the cart, smiling as Cassiud eventually caught up with her.
"One more load, then?" he asked with a smile as he approached.
"I hope so. We've only got another hour or two of daylight, and I was hoping we could let the livestock out tonight," she responded.
"We'll get it done, don't worry," he said, taking a sip of water from the bottle she handed him. "And even if we don't, there's no rush. It's not like we've got a deadline for this."
"True enough. You want to take a break? I can get—" she stopped talking as she heard a strange call coming from the forest. "What was that?" she said, getting to her feet and staring into the dark woods. "There it is again."
"I've got no idea," Cassiud responded, "but whatever it is, it sounds wounded." He grabbed his rifle from his back. "I'll go check it out."
"You're a fool if you think I'm not going with you," Lissandra answered with a smile. She tapped the pistol on her hip. "You know I can take care of myself."
He sighed but smiled back at her. "Yeah, I know. Come on, it was this way." The pair picked their way carefully through the unfamiliar forest, following the strange noises. They eventually came upon a small clearing, and carefully peeked through the underbrush.
"What… what is that?" Cassiud whispered, staring incredulously at the strange creature. "I've never seen anything like it."
"I have no idea," Lissandra answered. "I think it's injured though, look at its arm." Indeed, one of the creature's forelimbs was bent at a strange angle, and it was cradling it gently as it continued its strange vocalizations. She made eye contact with Cassiud, and the pair carefully made their way through the bushes and into the clearing. Lissandra cleared her throat as they revealed themselves, drawing the creature's attention to them. It immediately ceased making the odd sounds, though it still held its limb gingerly.
"Hey there," she said slowly, her hands outstretched towards it, "we're not going to hurt you, I promise, we just want to help." It flinched away from her as she approached, and some new sounds emanated from its mouth. It almost sounded like speech, but it was completely unintelligible. There was an undeniable intelligence in its eyes, though. She put her hands on her chest. "I am Lissandra," she said slowly. "Lissandra. That is Cassiud," she continued, now pointing to him. "Lissandra, Cassiud. Who are you?" she asked, gesturing to it.
Harry did his best to blink the tears from his eyes, trying to focus on the woman in front of him. She was speaking a different language, he was sure, but it seemed her name was Lissandra. She looked very strange, with blue skin and strange looking hair. Then, she gestured and indicated Cassiud, and Harry nearly screamed again. The creature was nearly seven feet tall and had a metallic sheen where he could see its skin. In addition, its face was distinctly avian in appearance, but it had a humanoid figure. These two, Lissandra and Cassiud, were the strangest beings he'd ever seen. She was now pointing at him, a hopeful expression on her face, and Harry numbly realized she wanted his name.
"I'm Harry," he croaked out, his throat raw from his earlier screaming. The blue woman smiled at him, and walked closer, hands still outstretched. She helped him to his feet, her hands cool against his skin. "Where am I?" he asked, hoping she would understand, but his hopes were dashed when she just looked confused. Instead of answering, she continued speaking in another language, voice still calm and low, and calming him down involuntarily. Slowly, the trio made their way through the woods.
"What is it?" Cassiud asked quietly as Lissandra exited the bedroom they'd put the strange creature in for the time being. The door slid closed automatically behind her with a soft hiss.
"I have no idea, Cass," she responded wearily. "It's almost like a cross between an Asari and a Quarian, oddly enough. I just don't know how he managed to get in the middle of the woods like that, and with nobody else around."
Cassiud stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. "We'll get it figured out. Tomorrow, I'll head into town and check the extranet for any mention of a species like it. Perhaps they're native to this planet, and he just got separated from his pack or something."
"I don't know," Lissandra answered. "I'm practically certain it's intelligent, if its response to our names was anything to go by. It called itself Harry."
Cassiud tapped the door panels, setting an alarm to tell them if this Harry woke up. Lissandra had managed to set the bone in its arm and had determined that it was a levo-based organism, like herself, and given it a large ration. It balked at the strange food at first but had eventually devoured it after deciding it didn't have much to lose.
"Well, there's not much else we can do today. Come on, let's head to bed," he suggested. Lissandra nodded, leaning her head on his shoulder.
Harry's eyes slid open slowly the next morning as the orange sunlight slid across his face. He smiled at the warmth and rolled over. He laid that way for a few seconds before he shot up in bed. Why was there sunlight on him? He scanned the room rapidly, and eventually his mind caught up and reminded him of the events of the previous day. It had seemed like a dream, but his arm was still broken and set in a strange, translucent material, and he could still feel it throbbing. The walls were a mix of white and grey metal, and there were glowing displays he didn't have the first idea of how to use.
He began to hyperventilate, panicking at being in a new place that he had no clue how to get out of. He must have been gone from the Dursley's for nearly a day now, and he knew he would be facing the punishment of a lifetime after being gone for so long. Not to mention the fact that he was found by weird creatures he'd never seen before. He threw the thin, strangely warm sheets off himself and moved quickly to the window. He put up his hand to push on the glass, hoping it wasn't secured, and was shocked when his hand moved straight through the window. He could see a faint glow around his wrist where the window should have been, but he couldn't feel it.
His courage growing, Harry pulled himself up to the windowsill and hopped to the reddish earth on the outside. Hopefully, if he went far enough, he would find people that could help him get back to the Dursley's. With a last glance backwards to see if his escape had gone unnoticed, the small boy took off towards the forest as fast as his legs could move him.
Lissandra was feeding the small number of animals that she and Cassiud had bought when her omnitool began beeping incessantly at her. She glanced down and activated it and was shocked to see a video feed of Harry running past the still incomplete fence and into the forest. She locked the animals in their stalls with a tap of her finger before sprinting towards the area of the fence that Harry had gone through. This colony was rather new, and as such, dangerous wildlife still roamed the forests. In just over a minute she reached the fence, but Harry was already out of sight in the woods.
"Harry!" she called out, hoping he would answer but not expecting it. She moved into the forest as she dialed Cassiud's omnitool.
"Hey, Lissandra, what's—"
"Harry got out," she cut him off. "I don't know how, but he got out of his room without setting the alarm off, and next thing I knew, he was running past the fence."
"Damn it, I'll bet the window was set to just keep the bugs and air out, but not to keep him in," Cassiud cursed. "I'll head back, I'm not even to town yet."
"I'm in the woods, I'll let you know if I find him," Lissandra answered, then cut the connection. She leaped over the larger plants, using her biotics to lower her mass enough to clear them. "Harry!" She skidded to a stop and strained her ears, listening for any hint of motion. She heard a branch snap off to her left and immediately took off in that direction.
A deep growl split the air, causing her to stop once more. Slowly, she drew her pistol from the magnetic lock at her hip and flicked the safety off. Simultaneously, she pulled her biotics to their full strength, for the first time in several years. Her eyes scanned the underbrush carefully, waiting for any sign of movement.
She heard a yell, strange enough that she was almost certain it was Harry, followed by an earthshaking roar and thundering footsteps. Without a thought to her own safety, she barreled through the bushes towards the sounds.
Harry screamed as the massive creature crashed through the bushes behind him. He had regretted running into the forest almost as soon as he got to them, but he had gone so quickly he'd lost all sense of direction. Now, with the octopedal creature bearing down on him, he wished he'd just stayed with the strange people who'd first found him in the woods. With a cry of pain, Harry tripped over a large root after a sharp right turn and fell to the ground. The monster was close behind, skidding as it followed its prey.
Harry finally got a good look at the thing, now that he was almost certainly going to die. Six of its eight legs were so sharp they looked like spears, piercing deep into the ground with every step. The front two legs looked like a massive pair of pliers, poised to crush anything that got in their way. Two beady eyes glared at him from the sides of a wide mouth lined with sharp teeth. With a final roar, the thing leaped towards Harry, who threw up his good arm in a futile attempt to stave off his death.
With an almighty crash, the creature stopped short, slamming against a faint green barrier that had flashed into existence just as it was about to devour him. The barrier faded quickly, and Harry felt a bone-deep exhaustion hit him like a sledgehammer. He slumped to his elbows as his vision nearly went black, before looking back up as the monster got back to its feet.
With a fierce cry, the blue woman from before flew through the air, her foot wreathed in blue energy as she landed a heavy blow to the animal. She followed that up with several rounds from her pistol, slamming into the creature's carapace and chipping off small pieces. The beast flinched away, then stood back to its full height when it became clear that the bullets couldn't pierce its hide. However, Harry was shocked when Lissandra didn't take a single step backwards. Instead, her hand glowed with the same blue light as before, before she moved as if throwing a baseball towards it. A tiny black bead flew from her hand and came to a stop just above the animal's back.
Harry gaped as the creature was bodily pulled from the ground, its appendages flailing desperately to find purchase and finding none. With another motion of her hand, a blue orb the size of Harry's head smashed into the animal's underbelly, causing it to screech in pain as its flesh began to vanish before Harry's eyes. A few seconds later, the animal dropped back to the floor and beat a hasty retreat on weak legs back into the depths of the forest.
A tap on her wrist caused an orange screen to appear there, which was quickly changed to Cassiud's face. The two traded a few words, before Lissandra made the screen vanish once more as she turned to Harry. He still couldn't understand her soft words, but that didn't matter at the moment. He threw himself into her arms, tears falling from his face.
Later that night, the trio had a quiet meal seated at a small table in their dwelling. Harry had been practically inseparable from Lissandra after the incident in the woods, though he'd still shied away from Cassiud when he arrived. Realizing that Harry could speak, just not in a language recognized by Council translators, she began speaking to him as much as she could, helping him to try to learn the words for various objects in Thessian.
"I'm telling you, Cass, it wasn't biotics," she said as they ate. Cassiud's meal was distinct from the other two, since he needed dextro-based food. Fortunately, the planet was able to support both, despite being naturally dextro. "It wasn't blue at all, it was green, and it wasn't a mass effect barrier at all. It was as if there was a wall there."
"So, what do you think it was?" the Turian asked. His mate had told him how, somehow, Harry had managed to deflect a head-on blow from a fully grown gaforre, an animal that could tear a hovercar apart in seconds.
"I have no idea. I just know it wasn't biotics," she responded, deep in thought. "Did you find anything in the archives?"
"Not a thing," he answered. "There isn't even another sentient species in the galaxy besides Quarians who have hair, and everything but his skin and hair is completely wrong for them."
"I just don't understand how he could have gotten here without anyone knowing," she mused. "Should we take him to the colonial government?"
"Definitely not," Cassiud answered. "As much respect as I have for the Hierarchy, their response to unknowns is most extreme, and I'm honestly not sure if he would survive that encounter."
"Cass… this could be a blessing in disguise," Lissandra said quietly. "You know I've wanted children for a while now, even if that would have been impossible. Perhaps the Goddess has answered my prayers."
"You want to raise him as our own?" Cassiud asked, surprised. "Lissandra, we don't even know if he still has family somewhere, we can't just keep him here. Not to mention, it'll be impossible to hide that he's not Turian or Asari if an official ever comes by to inspect the farm, and I know they will."
"We can't just send him back into the forest, Cass," she argued, "that would be a death sentence. Why don't we just let him stay here for now and try to teach him Thessian. Once he can talk with us, we can try to figure out what to do."
Cassiud sighed. He knew he would never win this argument with his mate, and if he was honest with himself, he didn't see a better option.
"Okay, okay, he can stay for now," he relented, "but if there's even a chance of bringing him back to his family, we have to take it. For his sake."
Over the next few months, Lissandra and Cassiud did their best to educate Harry on the world he now found himself in. They were able to have stilted conversations now, and they were both extremely concerned with the few details Harry had let slip about his life until now. They had been just as bewildered as he was when he'd described how he'd arrived in the forest, and they weren't any closer to finding out where he'd come from.
Harry was incredibly shocked when his caretakers had described the galactic nature of the civilization he now inhabited. Initially, he hadn't even believed them, but a copious number of videos displaying various planets and the Citadel had gone a long way towards convincing him. As Cassiud spent the majority of his time planting crops and getting the farm up and running, Harry spent much of his time with Lissandra.
"Why do you and Cassiud move here?" Harry asked her his uniquely accented Thessian one morning while the two of them were pouring feed for the livestock.
"It's, 'why did you and Cassiud move here,'" she corrected gently. "Well, we were both in the military before this. We actually met in a hospital when we were both injured."
"Hospital?" Harry asked, confusion on his face.
"Hospital, it's where you would go if you're very sick or injured," she explained, and Harry nodded. "Cassiud was an admiral, an important man, in the Turian Navy. He was injured in combat against a fleet of pirate vessels and had to go back to the Citadel for treatment." She cut open another bag of feed with her omnitool and passed it to Harry. "A few other Asari soldiers and I were travelling with his fleet on the way to one of the outermost Asari colonies, and I was injured in the same attack. We ended up in adjacent rooms in the hospital during our recoveries, and after a while, we decided to move here to Galatana."
Harry nodded, continuing to distribute the grain. "When will I go home?" he asked quietly. Lissandra sighed.
"Harry," she said gently, pulling the bag from his hands and kneeling in front of him, "do you want to go home?" Harry didn't respond, instead just looking at his shoes. "If you do, I'll do everything I can to get you back." She paused, taking a deep breath. "If you don't, though, you can stay here, with Cass and I."
If the moment hadn't been so serious, she would have laughed at how large his eyes got when she said that. "Do you mean that?" he said, hope creeping into his voice.
"I do," she answered. "I've really enjoyed having you here, and we would both be beyond happy if you wanted to stay here."
Harry launched himself into her arms, tears streaming from his face. Lissandra gently stroked his back as he cried, overjoyed at his response. She'd truly grown to love the child over the past few months, and tears of her own slipped from her eyes. When Cassiud found them nearly fifteen minutes later, they were still locked in their embrace.
Author's Note: If anyone who follows Time and Again is reading this, I promise I haven't abandoned it! This is just an idea that got stuck in my head last week and I couldn't get rid of it. Now that summer is here, I'm hoping I'll be able to update both stories at a decent pace. I hope everyone enjoys this teaser, and I appreciate any feedback!
