Title: Becoming Harry Rosier
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Evan Rosier
Content Notes: Time travel, angst, violence, character death, present tense
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1900
Summary: Harry didn't even realize he'd time traveled at first. He just assisted a desperate single man against a group who seemed determined to kill him. And by the time that he realized he was assisting Evan Rosier and the man he'd just killed was Mad-Eye Moody, the damage was done.
Author's Notes: This is one of my "Solstitial Shorts," shorter fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. Note that I have changed things so that Mad-Eye Moody had none of the defining injuries by which Harry knew him when he faced Evan Rosier in battle.

Becoming Harry Rosier

Harry leaps to avoid what looks like a flying silver hourglass filled with glittering shards of glass and lands in the middle of a battle.

There are curses flying everywhere, and there's a single man desperately shielding in the middle of it, now and then casting curses around the shield. A body sprawls on the ground next to him. There are at least four dark-cloaked wizards and witches facing him.

Harry feels his lip curl. He despises the idea of four-on-one odds.

He aims carefully for the nearest figure, striking her with a modified form of the Stunner that will ensure she doesn't wake up for at least four hours. As she crashes to the ground, the central fighter of the group of four, the one casting the heaviest curses at their victim's shield, spins around to face him.

Harry has the feeling that there's something familiar about him, but he doesn't know what. He tries to speak, tries to defuse the situation, but the man throws a brilliant yellow curse straight at him, and Harry has to duck and roll, not knowing what it does.

The next spell that comes at him is green.

Harry lunges to his feet and begins to duel, holding nothing back. As far as he's concerned, anyone who tries to use the Killing Curse on him is his enemy, and they deserve to die or be arrested.

It's the first, this time. The battle is too fierce for anything else, and the man keeps using Killing Curses. In the end, Harry strikes him with a Quick-Bleeding Curse that wouldn't have been fatal if it had hit the man's wand arm, as Harry intended, but the man ducks, and it slices him across the throat instead.

His two comrades lose their nerve and run. Harry shakes his head, wipes blood from his eyes, and turns to examine the man they were cornering. "Are you all right?" he asks, then coughs. He went straight from one battle to another, and the first one was full of smoke. The hourglass that struck him must have forcibly Apparated him.

The man leans forwards and stares at Harry. He has shaggy dark hair, liquid dark eyes that strike Harry as strangely familiar, and a jugging chin. And, on his arm, a Dark Mark.

"That was some fighting," the man says, with a liquid accent, while Harry stares at the Mark in horrified silence. "Thanks for seeing off the Aurors."

Harry stares between him and the figure slumped on the ground, then casts a Lumos from his wand to light the battlefield better. They're in the middle of a trampled, blood-soaked meadow, and lying on the ground is a man who still doesn't look familiar, until Harry mentally takes a chip out of his nose, replaces the healthy leg with a wooden one, and adds a magical blue eye to his face.

He just killed Mad-Eye Moody.

"What," Harry says weakly, "the fuck."


"Harry."

Harry startles and rolls over, blinking a little. The light of the fire crackles next to him. They're—in a meadow, under layers of Muggle-Repelling spells and other charms designed not to allow anyone to notice them or their fire. Right.

"You were grunting and casting magic in your sleep."

That's happened before, crackles and snarls of spells that dash out of his fists in sparks and sometimes burn whoever happens to be nearby. It's the reason Harry broke up with Ginny. Harry sighs. "Right." He accepts the mug of tea that Evan holds out to him, not bothering to check it for poisons or potions.

They moved past that long ago.

Evan is scanning the darkness around the meadow as Harry sips from the mug. His profile is harsh, and he doesn't look as much like Bellatrix as Harry once thought. He's something like Bellatrix's second cousin once removed. Or something like that.

They've discussed just about everything under the sun as they move on and away from Britain, only entering magical villages long enough to pick up supplies, always under a glamour. The Aurors who fled from the battle Harry had with Moody knew Evan, and they have Harry's description. With Voldemort somehow vanquished by an infant Neville Longbottom, the British Ministry has time to devote to hunting Death Eaters who got away and killers who showed up out of nowhere. And their Apparitions can be tracked, one reason they've made the majority of the journey on foot.

According to Evan, their journey is almost done. They're somewhere in the wilds of Germany, the Black Forest, Harry thinks, and there's a Rosier safehouse nearby.

And there's some kind of condition for entering it.

Harry shakes his head when Evan keeps staring at him. "You can tell me the condition for entering the house. I'm not going to bite your nose off."

Evan blinks and mouths "bite your nose off" to himself before he visibly shakes his confusion away. "The only people who can enter the house are Rosiers," he says abruptly. "That means either blood or…"

"Marriage," Harry finishes, and sighs a little to himself. Well, it wouldn't even be the craziest thing he's done since he came back in time. Killing Moody would be that. Or traveling in time in the first place. Or accepting that his first commitment to tending Evan's injuries and then leaving has turned into an ongoing alliance. "All right."

"You accept?" Evan's eyes widen a little.

"You're the one who's been telling me since the first day that you're practical," Harry says. "And you must have planned this or you wouldn't have aimed for this safehouse in the first place, knowing what I'd have to do." Evan also wouldn't have at least appeared to abandon his support of Voldemort for the present, but that's something they haven't really discussed. Harry's own pragmatism is ignoring Evan's Dark Mark.

Evan settles back and studies Harry. Harry stares back. He's tired. He's alone in this world if not for Evan, and a fugitive for a murder that no one in this timeline would believe was self-defense. He's not a Voldemort supporter, he never will be, but he's also not one to turn his back on a man he traveled for miles and months with.

"All right," Evan says quietly. "I thought—from some of the things you hinted at, I thought you had someone you were loyal to."

"I'm never going to see them again," Harry says. And he's thinking of Ron and Hermione. There's been no one he could date or trust in that romantic way since his wild magic drove Ginny off. "You're all I have."

That might sound pathetic, but it's true, and Evan only tilts his head. "And you're all I have."

This time, Harry can't help it. His eyes flick to Evan's Mark.

Evan simply shakes his head, eyes even darker than usual. "My Lord may return," he says quietly. "He hinted at his immortality. But until and if he does, I am best served by staying free and alive and building my strength to give to him then. And I am—reconsidering whether I want to serve someone who was vanquished by a toddler."

Bold words, Harry thinks, but it's true that Evan seems to have died the first time around before Voldemort was defeated and wouldn't have had that consideration. He nods.

"What do we have to do get married?" he asks.

Evan glances at the fire. "It requires flame."

"All right."

"You haven't even asked about the other details."

"I don't have to. I trust you."

Evan draws in a breath so loud and deep that it sounds painful. Harry waits. Then Evan says, almost in a whisper, "Few among the Rosiers can lay claim to the trust of someone who isn't a family member."

"You had every chance to kill me or turn me into the Ministry or just abandon me."

"I couldn't do that," Evan says. "I owe you something more profound than I can name." He reaches into a pocket of his robe, moving carefully and eyeing Harry like he's a rare and wonderful specimen that might disappear at any second, and takes out a set of heavy wooden bracelets. Harry accepts one and examines it. They're carved with runes, which look like they were burned into the wood.

"We have to put them on," Evan says, still as if he expects Harry to refuse any second. "And pass our joined hands through the fire. And bleed on them. Then we're married."

"All right."

"You are…"

Evan doesn't appear to have words for it. Harry smiles ruefully. "Yeah, I get that a lot."


It's a simple ceremony, just as Evan promised. Harry stares down at their joined hands as they pass through the fire, and the flames writhe and dance and part around their skin and bracelets, not burning either.

"The fire would burn us if we were not sincere," Evan whispers. He doesn't look at Harry, but his fingers writhe in Harry's, and then settle. Harry nods and leans a little closer as they pull their joined hands free and then turn to the grass on the other side of the fire where Evan's athame waits.

He's apparently carried it for all the time they've been together, but Harry only saw it tonight. It's a beautiful little blade, with an onyx set in the hilt and all of pure silver otherwise, the blade curved like a crescent moon. Evan picks it up and turns it over, making a shallow cut along his right palm. Harry watches the blood well up and fill it.

Evan turns and stares at him. Harry nods, accepts the knife, makes the corresponding cut on his own left palm, and reaches out.

They press their hands together, and for an instant, a whirling roar of magic seems to pass through Harry, as if he stands in the midst of a tornado but is too heavy for it to move him.

"Now," Evan whispers.

"Now," Harry whispers back. He doesn't know if it's what he's supposed to say, but then again, Evan didn't tell him about any ritual words.

And it seems to serve well enough. The tornado parts, and a golden glow radiates briefly from the wooden bracelets they're wearing. Then it's over.

Harry reaches down and tugs on the bracelet a little. As he thought would be the case, though Evan hasn't warned him, it's immovable.

"Regretting it?"

Evan is watching him with those dark eyes that once reminded Harry so much of Bellatrix's, and which he can only see as Evan's now. Harry shakes his head. "No."

Evan nods once, and then turns to lead him around the nearest tree. The safehouse is there, appearing from behind a complicated glamour, a one-floor house built of wood that sprawls along the ground.

"Of course we were this near it," Harry mutters.

Evan smiles a little at him, and walks towards the gate of the house. It swings open to meet him.

And Harry follows, and feels welcome pass over his skin like a whisper or a tickle of wind.

It makes him catch his breath sharply, and close his eyes. It feels like home.

And Evan, standing still to wait for him, does, too.

The End.