So much more than time has been taken.
Disclaimer: In case it wasn't obvious enough, I do not own the Harry Potter franchise, nor do I make any profit from writing this piece of fan fiction. The series and its characters belong solely to J.K Rowling and Warner Brothers.
"I walked. I could do nothing but walk. And then I saw me walking in front of myself. But it wasn't really me. Watch out. The gap in the door... it's a separate reality. The only me is me. Are you sure the only you is you?"
In a more grim Wizarding world, Harry Potter drinks to forget the horrors of the war and escape his reality. Trouble though, always seems to find him. Throw in enemies rising from the dead, as well as parallel universes, and it's not long before he's at the centre of things once again.
Chapter 1: Bodysnatchers
"It wasn't me."
The woman before him stared back blankly, unconvinced.
"Mister... er, Potter, you were found covered in blood at the scene of the crime."
He resisted the urge to snap at her, to lash out. Instead, Harry did his very best to level out his breathing.
"I understand what it may look like, but I didn't do any of it."
The police officer looked back down at her notepad, eyes roving over the writing.
They were in some sort of muggle lock up, the walls were a gross grey and the lights were a bit too bright for his eyes. Harry would have been out of there in seconds if he had his bloody wand on him.
Must've dropped it somewhere in the pub He thought darkly to himself.
There was a sigh, and the woman was once again looking at him. "Let's start with what we know then. You were at a pub on Bishiopsgate, Dirty Dicks?"
If the situation wasn't so serious, Harry might've laughed at such a crude word coming out of a no-nonsense looking woman like that. He opted to nod instead.
"And what of the man you were spotted with? This David King?"
At this, Harry did laugh a little, but it came out more as a strangled chuckle. David was good fun.
"We were walkin' through t'ginnel one night when a beer bottle flew past me, then another, and another. I thought to myself "Gonna 'ave some fun 'ere lads, let's get stuck in!". It were a right dust up, I swear down!"
Raucous laughter greeted this story from nearly all of the pub's inhabitants, even the surly bar keeper was wiping away a stray tear of laughter.
David King was a big fellow, wide chest and muscular arms with a buzz cut for the ages. A fat lip from all the fights he'd been in lately and a few ugly bruises here and there over his face. He looked like he just left a boxing match.
"'Arry," He said jovially, sloshing a bit of his drink as he turned quickly to address his drinking buddy. "Yer always so quiet mate, lettin' me talk yer ears off every night. How was your day today?"
Harry smiled weakly, while he adored David's simplemindedness, the man picked up on more than one would think upon first meeting him.
He waved him off, "Same as always, David."
"The missus treatin' you well then?"
There was a knowing smile at Harry's red cheeks. It made him want to roll his eyes, he was drinking after all, hard not to be rosy cheeked.
"Hermione is still as caring as ever, and we're not dating Davey."
David scoffed quite noisily into his drink, "Whatever you say, what about the little guy?"
Now that was a bit of a sadder topic, Teddy wasn't a handful like most kids typically were at his age, but he'd changed so much over the years. At first, he resembled his late mother in nature, loud and abrasive and not a care in the world. After the death of his aunt Andromeda two years prior though, Harry now found himself comparing the young boy to his late father instead. Always downcast and quiet, reserved even. The only person who could get Teddy to really talk at length these days was Hermione, and on occasion Ron and George. Course, if Harry was around more that could change. Being sober during that time wouldn't hurt either.
He doubted David really wanted to hear about all that though, so Harry just settled on "He's good." It seemed to be enough for him.
Just then, the door to the pub opened, and a large blonde man that Harry thought he vaguely recognized waltzed in. He moved people aside, quite rudely, and ordered a drink as he sat down nearby.
"Could be trouble." Harry heard David mutter.
"And this is when it happened?" The woman asked, writing what he said down quickly.
"Not right away," He said. "Y'see, me and David are regulars there, we know all the other lads. So this guy was strange, showed up out of nowhere, didn't talk to no-one, just sat there and drank."
"You found this suspicious behaviour?" She asked curiously.
"Only in hindsight," He assured her. "At the time, I was just trying to stop David from starting any unnecessary fights."
She jotted down more notes, "I see, and-"
The doorknob to the room rattling interrupted her, a much younger woman stepped in dressed in robes.
Auror robes.
"Hi there," She began cheerfully. "This is over."
The officer looked incredulous, "Excuse me? Just who are you? And how did you get in here?"
"Obliviate."
Quick as a wink, the newcomer had her wand out and already casted the memory charm on the woman in front of him.
Her cerulean blue eyes locked on his own, and she said, "Get up Potter, you belong to us, not these muggle officers."
He got up warily, eyeing the brown haired woman with trepidation. "I-I don't understand, am I still under arrest?"
A smile tugged at the woman's lips, "For now, yes, we've gotten a whole squad of Obliviator's down here and at the pub you wrecked."
Harry gulped as he followed her out the building. "You mean, I did do it?"
"The murder? I dunno, but you sure did a number on poor ole Dirty Dicks." She made a face at the name of the bar. "Weird name that, anyway, you're wanted for questioning by the Auror office. Nothing too serious of course, you're Harry bloody Potter after all. You don't remember me do you? Don't s'pose I can blame you really, different houses and all, doubt I ever said two words to you."
Harry blinked at the pace of which she spoke, he was still a little drunk, and her motormouth wasn't helping.
"What's your name?" He asked after a moment.
"It's Tracey Davis, now let's go, dad'll kill me if he knew I was dawdling out here with you in plain view of the muggles."
The name was vaguely familiar to him, and he could somewhat recall someone with the same name in his year in Slytherin.
He looked around as men and women in white robes wandered around, pointing their wands at passerby's. When he turned back, Tracey was suddenly very close to him. She grabbed his hands, and the familiar sensation of being shoved through a tight tube overtook him as they twisted on the spot and dissapparated.
"When's Harry coming home?"
Hermione sighed, she hated nights like this.
Granted, this meant that she hated most nights in general.
"I don't know, Teddy. Hopefully soon."
The young boy's hair shifted through multiple depressing colours, before settling on a flat jet black. He was like his mother in that respect, his morphing reflecting his mood, especially at this young age when he didn't have a handle on it fully.
Harry spent almost all his nights out drinking at various pubs in London. Sometimes wizarding, sometimes muggle. Mostly the latter, as she knew he liked spending time with his friend David King. Hermione had met the man once before, he was nice enough, though she suspected he was drunk at the time.
Hermione knew, better than anyone else that Harry was hurting. The war may have ended four years ago, but to him it must've felt like it was still going on.
But she was determined to be there for him, for Teddy too, like she always had been in school. Even if he was being a git by drowning his sorrows in alcohol. Out of the three of them, she expected Ron to crack, but her redhead friend recovered relatively fast, now working with George at the shop and dating Luna Lovegood. Their brief relationship after the war ended rather quickly, both of them mature enough to realize they weren't fit for each other like that.
It was late, later than he'd ever been out before. She worried incessantly, it was uncomfortably familiar from their days at Hogwarts. What Teddy needed was a father figure, one who was sober at the very least eighty percent of the time.
Teddy moved to sit down closer to the front door now, as if being nearer would magically make Harry appear.
"He'll come," He said firmly, with so much conviction it surprised her. "He has to."
Harry was seated in an uncomfortable chair inside of the head auror office. Tiberius Davis was an imposing man, even broader chested than David, with harsh dark eyes unlike his daughter's, and a neatly trimmed beard. He sat behind an ornate wooden desk that was cluttered with documents and miscellaneous trinkets. Harry was briefly reminded of Dumbledore's old office, with the dozens of oddities all over the room collected by the old wizard over the years. Harry had only met Tiberius once, and it was in the short time he trained to be an Auror before quitting. Oddly enough, he never saw Tracey at training, but he supposed she could've joined later, it had been almost three years after all.
He was snapped out of his reverie by the clearing of Davis' throat - the older one, as Tracey stood diagonal behind her father, watching Harry intently.
"Mr. Potter, before I say anything else, I will let you know right off the bat that you are not in any trouble. And that we have your wand here with us." Tiberius began, handing Harry back his familiar holly wand.
Harry must have visibly relaxed at these words, because Tracey smirked at him. He responded in kind by shooting her a dark look before nodding at her father.
"We do however, would like to hear your version of the events that took place tonight."
He went into as much detail of the night as he could. Harry remembered most of the night leading up to the incident, but weirdly enough he struggled to recall precisely what happened. It wasn't how alcohol worked, he didn't just forget things, especially something as serious as what occurred at the bar.
Tiberius was in deep thought after Harry finished, while Tracey had no real discernible look.
"This is quite serious, Mr. Potter." He stated after a while. "Before we wiped their memories, several muggle witnesses described what looked like someone with a stick of wood firing jets of light in all directions, and you were the only wizard we knew of to be there." The head Auror raised his hand quickly to placate Harry's incoming outburst, that died out immediately. "However, these same muggle witnesses claimed they saw a dark haired man with glasses return fire. The trouble is your lack of memory. Whoever you fought against must have performed a memory charm on you, or perhaps the alcohol muddled your mind. In either case, we must ask that you remain available for questioning if we deem it appropriate to speak to you again. And... I have a proposal."
Harry raised his eyebrow at the older man, "I'm listening."
"Good," He stated brusquely. "When you first trained to become an Auror, you were top of the class by a landslide. Yet, you dropped out. Now, I know you have your own demons, but your help here could prove invaluable."
"But why me? Surely you have other capable Auror's on hand?" Harry interrupted.
Tracey snorted and her father shook his head.
"I'm afraid not. Reports of Death Eaters running amok across the country have surfaced, people we once thought deadhave returned to disrupt our daily lives. I won't lie, a decent number of muggles died tonight, and in the last few days, we think it's , I've dispatched almost every one I can to take care of it all as quickly as possible. We can't have Britain thinking the Death Eaters are a credible threat again."
Harry was shocked, "Back from the dead? What do you mean?"
Tiberius sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Last week, one of my Auror's reported seeing Evan Rosier destroying a house in Leeds. I'm sure you know as well as I do that Rosier died after the first war to Alastor Moody.
How could this be possible? Surely Voldemort didn't share his secret of making horcrux's with his followers? No, definitely not, Tom would never tell anyone his darkest secret, it was one more thing that made him unique, and the dark lord worked very hard to be unique.
"It doesn't end there, we've also seen several other Death Eater's back in action despite previously being thought dead like Gibbon and Wilkes. So you see, we're spread pretty thin."
Tracey muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "that's an overstatement", but her father ignored it.
"We need you, Mr. Potter, to fight them once again. We have nobody else."
This was bad, it all felt too real. The people he fought so hard to put away were back? All those years, wasted. He threw his bloody life away to fight the good fight, and it was all for nothing. Harry couldn't, wouldn't, go back to it. Flashes of faces went by in his mind, faces of dead people. Fred, Remus, Tonks, Snape, Dumbledore, his parents, Ginny, Neville, Mad-Eye, Andromeda, and Sirius.
Not all of these deaths happened during the war, in his first year as a fully fledged Auror, Neville Longbottom got his head blown off by a stray blasting curse in what was meant to be a simple raid. Andromeda Tonks died of cancer not too long after, it was why Teddy lived with him now. And then there was Ginny.
Sweet, amazing Ginny. He thought after the war that they could finally be together, but it wasn't meant to be. She was one of many that died at Hogwarts, and she died duelling Bellatrix Lestrange before her mother took over.
He'd left the Weasley's to grieve, as Harry felt out of place in their home. He still kept in contact of course, on more than one occasion Ron had gotten him to leave the house for something other than cheap booze, and Harry tried to visit George at the shop.
It was never enough to fill the gaping hole in his heart. No, that was reserved for the alcohol. It pained him to do it to Teddy, but especially to Hermione, the woman who stuck by him for almost eleven years now. When he'd first gone down the drinking rabbit hole, she had been the first one to succeed in having him ease up. Hermione has been living with him for nearly a year now, and it was a constant uphill battle for her. But he couldn't stop. Stopping meant remembering like he was now, the cold grasp of sobriety was too painful for him.
"No." He said after a while.
Tiberius looked incredibly surprised, "No?" He whispered, a hint of anger in his voice, even Tracey seemed shocked.
"No. I'm sorry, I wish I could help you, but I'm incredibly busy."
Liar Liar Liar
Tracey scoffed, "Bollocks you're busy - doing what exactly? Getting pissed overnight with your muggle mates?"
A brief flare of fury overcame him, before he collected himself and refused to rise to the taunt.
"Thanks for my wand but if you'll excuse me," He said while rising from his seat. "I have to get home and receive an earful from my friend."
And then he left.
"I can't believe he said that."
Tiberius shook his head grimly, "I can, our tact was beyond abysmal. To give him that request after dropping quite the bombshell." A glance at his daughter showed she didn't fully understand. "Harry Potter is a broken man who's just lost too much in his life. We've just showed him that the people he spent his life fighting are back from the dead, it doesn't take a genius to realize that his immediate reaction would be a negative one."
Tracey had a frown on her face while she contemplated it.
"Give him time," He told her. "He'll be back."
"Harry James Potter!"
That's how you know she's mad, the use of his full name. It was filled with such vehemence that he couldn't help but fear for his life. He stood there in the doorway, awaiting the inevitable smack, but it never came. What he received instead was much worse.
Hermione stood there in the main hall of Grimmauld Place looking absolutely murderous, but that wasn't the bad part, Harry was used to that at this point. No, it was the look of utter disappointment on the face of Teddy that killed him on the inside.
"You said you'd try to be better," He said in a quivering voice. "For me, and for her."
Harry opened his mouth, but no words came out. He dropped his head in shame, and he vaguely registered Hermione stomping up the stairs to her bedroom, leaving him and Teddy alone. Not even the disgruntled "Well excuse me" from Phineas Nigellus Black's portrait could alleviate the tension.
"I don't like it when you go out."
He sighed, "I know, Ted."
"So then why do you do it?"
The way he said it so simply momentarily stunned Harry, "I- Well, I guess it's because I'm sad, mate."
"But it makes me sad. And Hermione."
Tears welled in his eyes, but he would not cry in front of Teddy.
"I'm sorry."
Teddy shook his head, "That's what you always say."
Merlin, the kid knew just what to say to make Harry depressed. A long and melancholic silence followed.
"What happened?" Teddy asked after awhile.
Grateful for the semi change of topic, Harry answered quickly. "There was an attack at the bar today, another wizard."
"Is that why you're covered in blood?" He asked, and Harry nodded.
Teddy seemed to ponder this for a moment, "You should tell Hermione." He said eventually.
"I was going to," Harry told him. "The Auror's also offered me a job."
There was a pause.
"Are you gonna take it?"
Harry shook his head.
"She'll make you." Teddy said pointedly. Bloody hell since when were four year olds this smart?
"I just won't tell her then, Ted." He said, smiling and ruffling the boy's hair that matched his own.
"Good luck with that."