Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.
Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. There is also some discussion of canon typical child abuse and period typical racism (1915 UK). Feel free to back out if need be.
Author's Note: I don't know if this warrants warning about, but because Harry is from 1915, he does use a term for Black which is now considered outdated & offensive ("Negro"). It was considered the polite term at the time (from everything I could find, at least), and he isn't using it like a slur, but it might be considered a bit shocking to see it without warning.
Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Hogwarts (Term 14); MC4A
Individual Challenges: Ethnic & Present (x2); Rian-Russo Inversion (x5); Neurodivergent; The 3rd Rule; Lovely Triangle; Ship Sails; Zed Era; Old Shoes (Y); Short Jog; Bucket Listing; Green Ribbon
House: Slytherin
Assignment No.: Term 14 – Assignment 03
Subject (Task No.): Veterinary Sciences (Task#8: Write a fic with the theme of Innocence or Youth.)
Other Hogwarts Challenges: Fantastic Beasts [202](Luna Lovegood); 365 Prompts [334](a park); Scavenger Hunt [06](5 Collected Same Character)[1]; Days of the Year [Mar 18th](Kid Fic); Penguin Awareness [10]("...time..."); Colours [02](Navy); Locations [13](Ottery St. Catchpole); But Can You Spell It? [Y](Young); Stop! Hamper Time (Cakes)[Red Velvet Cupcakes](Tremble); You Get My Love (Love Languages)[12]("...everything is fine."); Would You Rather (20)[Everyone Dies AU];Fantasy February (07)[Fairy Circle & Return]; Gwen's Candy Shop [Bowl 4](Poly)
Other MC4A Challenges: Set [4A](In a Car); WiB [1C](Jewelry); Vocab [1A](Yuck); Ship (Emeralds)[Sp Big](Earring); Fire [Hard](It Continues); Chim [Karma](Gender Bend; Copper);
TWT (NB Tracey Davis; Next Gen Era)[Task 3](Gray); Hangman [05](Queer Relationships); Hunt [Su Set](Park/Playground)/[Wi Set](In a Car);
Representation(s): Black Harry Potter; Black Tracey Davis/Daphne Greengrass/Luna Lovegood; NB Tracey Davis
Primary & Secondary Bonus Challenges: Fruit Fly; Sweetest Burn; Second Verse (Ladylike; Not a Lamp; Found Family; Nontraditional; Nightingale; Spinning Plates; Car in a Tutu; Clio's Conclusion; Three's Company; Lyre Liar; Under the Bridge; Bog Beast); Chorus (Odd Feathers; Wabi Sabi; Machismo; Peddling Pots; Mouth of Babes; Tomorrow's Shade; Larger than Life; Unicorn; Abandoned Ship; In the Trench; Suprise; Messing with Morlocks; Some Beach; Getting On; Hot Stuff; Mermaid)
Tertiary & Generic Bonus Challenges: LiCK(Poppy; Tansy); SS(Schooner); RoIL(Amelioration); SHoE(Sorority); AD(Association); Share(Ameliorate)
Word Count: 1835 words
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Circles Round
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Harry woke slowly. His mind rose out of the darkness of unconsciousness threatening to suck him back under the same way that he could feel his arms pulling him out of brackish muck to the damp moss along the edge of it. He could feel the thick plant give beneath his grasping fingers as he crawled away from the water. Gasping and still mostly unaware of his surroundings, he laid shivering in the patch of pale sunlight he had found.
He couldn't remember how he had came to be there.
It hurt to poke at that part of his memory, an ache that went beyond the stabbing behind his eyes and all the way down into the depths of his soul. He couldn't remember, and all of him knew that there was something important hidden within that blank expanse of time and space. He had to remember. He had to get back—
Back where exactly?
The last thing he remembered was the fight with his cousin and his gang. Harry had packed a bag with his few belongings and was heading out to London. He had heard that the Royal Flying Corps was accepting Negroes to the flight academy. Even if it hadn't been true, it would have been better than staying around the Dursleys, accepting whatever scraps they gave him despite how he kept their house and estate like a servant they refused to pay.
He had always understood his place in their household. His mother had been Aunt Petunia's half sister. Henry Evans had been kind enough to not make his mother a bastard. He had even provided for her education. It hadn't been the finishing school he had sent Aunt Petunia to, but it hadn't been a poorly disguised workhouse. It had been there that his mother had met his father. From all accounts, it had been a good match and a better marriage.
Right up until they had died in a train accident, leaving Harry to be raised by the Dursleys.
It had been a delicate situation. Fully acknowledging that they had a Negro as a nephew would have brought shame to them. Some of Uncle Vernon's business associates might have even refused to work with him. But they had taken him in, just the same. He shouldn't be so ungrateful as to complain about it or wish they had dumped him in an orphanage.
But he had still taken the first opportunity he had heard of to leave.
Dudley had chased him down along with what few friends of his that hadn't already volunteered for service. There had been a fight in the field near the lane leading to Privet Cottage. Harry remembered stumbling as they had pushed his scrawnier form between them. Harry remembered falling to the ground with a circle of brilliantly white mushrooms.
But after that was all a blank.
He certainly didn't remember how he come to be in some strange wood with moss and a bog. Maybe he had hit his head when he fell and Dudley had thought he had died, so had tried to hide his body? But their area of Surrey didn't have a bog and try as he might, Harry couldn't imagine Dudley putting in the effort to go very far to hide a murder.
Finally, the tremble in his limbs settled enough that he felt confident at being able to walk again. He was at the end of what looked like a deer path. Figuring it was as good a direction as possible, he started following it.
After a long time walking, he heard noise filtering through the thinning amount of trees. They were noises that he associated with people, even if he had never been beyond the small village near the Dursley estate. He picked up his pace.
The trees ended abruptly at the edge of some place full of strange sculptures. Children ran around the area. Some were climbing the sculptures even with adults present. In fact, now that he was looking more closely, the sculptures seemed to have been made for that purpose. He couldn't wrap his mind around the idea that there was an entire place dedicated to children playing.
Still reeling from that realization, he didn't notice the small blonde in a navy dress approaching him.
"You're dirty," the girl announced. Harry blinked at her. "Oh, and your eyes are pretty. I haven't seen a black person with green eyes before. My rennie's eyes are copper, though. But you are dirty. My mummy doesn't like it when I get dirty. Are you lost? Because your mummy might forgive you if you were lost."
"I…" Harry started, only to trail off as he looked around the area. He had no clue what to say. "Yes, I think I am lost."
"Oh," the girl breathed. She grabbed his hand and began tugging him through the crowd of kids. "Mama will know what to do. She knows everything."
"Beatrice," called a woman with a paleness that matched the girl beside him. She was wearing a dress that matched the little girl's, and her earrings looked like they were little radishes on delicate copper chains. Her gaze found the girl easily before moving on to take in Harry. Unsurprisingly, her eyes widened at the sight of him. Harry instinctively hunched in on himself, trying to make himself a smaller target. The woman didn't seem inclined to yell at him for existing, however. "Beatrice, it's time to go home. Rennie and Mummy have taken things to the car. Who is your friend?"
"I don't know his name," Beatrice announced, "but he needs help. He's lost. That's why he's dirty."
"Really?" the woman asked. She turned towards Harry, not making direct eye contact as she smiled at him. She also didn't reach out to shake his hand, but it didn't have the same feeling as when everyone back in Little Whinging would snub him. "What are you called, sir?"
Something inside him loosened at the way she had phrased the question.
"Harry," he answered. He swallowed, glancing back at the playing children. "Is this… this isn't Surrey, is it?"
"Devon," the woman confirmed with only a bit of concern in her expression. "Ottery St. Catchpole, to be specific. You really are lost." She began herd both Harry and Beatrice towards what looked to be an entrance to the area. Harry didn't have the energy to resist her. "I'm Luna. You should meet my partners. Tracey works with the local crisis center. Xe may have some idea of where to go from here. Daphne is a doctor. Maybe she can look you over once we get back to our home."
"Xe?" Harry questioned, focusing on the strangest bit of that spiel. He knew that women could be doctors, even if it was harder for them to accepted into university. Three women raising a child together wasn't unheard of either. It allowed for a certain amount of social protection against any of them being sent into a workhouse. But that word was gibberish to him.
"Rennie uses xe/xyr pronouns," Beatrice chirped happily as she skipped along.
She gave a delighted squeal and broke into a run as soon as they arrived in a flat lot made up of asphalt. It was filled with what looked like what might be automobiles, if only because Harry had no idea of what else to call them. He could only stare as Beatrice ran straight up to a couple of women standing next to the boot of one of the contraptions. The Negro woman scooped up the girl without even thinking about it.
Harry's heart ached at the sight. He couldn't help but wonder if his mother might have done that with him if she had lived. Aunt Petunia could never had done it with Dudley, and she certainly wouldn't have with Harry.
Something nagged at him about the whole situation as well as the conclusions he was drawing, something that should be possible. It made only a bit more sense if the whispered tales about fairy circles were true. He hesitated to ask, but in the end, he had to know.
"What year is it?" he asked Luna as they approached the other group.
"It's 2015," she answered neutral tone, as if she was aware of just how he was going to take the answer. He felt faint as he realized just how much time he had lost between being pushed into the fairy circle and pulling himself out of that bog. Hands gripped his arms as the world went gray, and they guided him to some kind of seat.
"Easy now, kid," a voice ordered from a slightly darker gray patch in his blurry vision. Harry wanted to laugh, because he was a hundred and seventeen years old. That wasn't a kid, was it? "Just breathe. Tracey, get him one of the juice boxes out of the cooler. Sugar is good for shock."
"He can use my hugging blanket," Beatrice offered. Harry barely kept back the hysterical laughter threatening to erupt. Maybe blankets really did hug in the future. "I don't mind if he's covered in yuck."
"That's very kind of you, button," Luna said, "but I think Harry will be fine without it."
"Because we're going to take care of him?" she asked her mother—oh, the three women were probably actually raising the little girl together instead of putting on a masquerade for protection against gossipy neighbors. They all clearly adored Beatrice, at least.
"I was going to join the Royal Flying Corps," Harry muttered through numb lips. "I was going to fly. Everything is ruined now."
"Hey, now," Daphne chided as she accepted the box with a straw sticking out of it that Tracey was handing her, "as long as you're here, everything is fine. It's going to take time, but it can be done. We just muddle through in the meantime."
"Right," Harry agreed, more because he didn't want to argue than because he believed it. "Right. We can muddle. I'm only somehow a hundred years in the future with no clue how I got here or what happened to automobiles to make them so ugly." He looked up from where he was sitting in their car. "This is a automobile, right?"
"Yes," Tracey confirmed in the same chirpy voice that Beatrice used. "Oh, this is going to be fun. So much has changed since the First World War."
Harry felt like he could cry. Of all the things that he might have expected Tracey to say if he had thought about it, that was the one that hit him like one of Uncle Vernon's blows. It had already been so horrible when he had headed towards London, and it hadn't shown any sign of ending.
"The First?"
The three women shared a look between them. Harry closed his eyes. Their silence spoke loud enough to be considered a scream. He wished that he had never tried to leave the Dursleys.