Chapter 13

Harry wiped his sweating hands on his jeans as they touched back down onto solid ground.

He wished it came as easy to him as learning to fly a broom.

Sadly not, this needed study, practise and time. Shutting the door to the Cessna which he'd been informed by his instructor was as old as him, if not a little older, he grinned to himself. There was still something exciting about it, something that flying a broom didn't give him.

Maybe it was the fact that a broom didn't have a canopy, an engine and controls.

Not that there wasn't something amazing about gripping a broom and using touch, sensation, control, to manoeuvre it around.

According to Jack it was "kinda sexy".

Flashback…Mid-March 2000

Harry sat on the bench looking around Roald Dahl Plass, waiting, it was a sort of nice day.

If you defined nice as rain, wind and a general impression of fog hanging over the bay area, then yes it was a very nice day.

"Harry Potter," greeted a voice behind him that was distinctly American, in a way that a man couldn't be an American because of where and more importantly when he was from.

"Captain Jack Harkness," he drawled in a tone that probably would have rivalled someone who once claimed to be his 'rival' albeit schoolyard rival.

Jack came around and sat next to him, he was in his what Harry was beginning to think of as his trademark outfit of a long coat, shirt, army boots, it was he consisted rather fitting. Though odd that he had practically the same outfit on now as the first time he'd met him.

"How'd your meeting go, feel like telling me why you needed the bug?" Jack asked looking out across the plaza.

Harry shrugged. "Not yet, but thank you. Where do you want him?"

"You hang on to 'him'," he turned and smiled at Harry.

Harry sighed. "So what do you want? You said you'd think up a suitable trade for use of him, even if I did help bump off most of them."

"All on your own when you should have been with your lady friend, new year's eve," he recalled and smirked at him.

Harry didn't say anything, he didn't want to think about his 'lady friend' at the moment, he was enjoying the rain, wind and cold he didn't want the thought of his 'lady friend' to spoil the mood.

"I could just owe you a favour?" Harry offered, taking a breath of the air in, he could smell the water particles in the air, it was, oddly invigorating. Probably aliens. Or a dragon flying overhead and pissing into the clouds knowing his luck.

"Hmm a favour from the great Harry Potter." Harry looked over at Jack who grinned and winked at him.

"Something I'm sure someone of your position would value," Harry said seriously.

"I think we're beyond favours Harry Potter. How about dinner?" Jack asked.

"Dinner?" Harry repeated. The proposition had come, not quite out of left field, but somewhere around the middle, of the cricket pitch.

"Start of a friendship," Jack grinned.

Harry shrugged. "One traveller to another."

"The Doctor never said you travelled," Jack raised his eyebrows querying him.

"Time, life, death it's the stops in between that make a person," Harry shrugged.

"When'd you become so philosophical about this Harry Potter?" Jack asked, Harry had noticed he had been fixated on him since he'd mentioned death.

"Since I died, tell you about it over dinner? Meet you here, 8 tonight?" He asked in quick succession.

Jack nodded as they both stood.

Harry grinned and gave him a mock salute and disapparated.

-/

Present…

It had been interesting having dinner with Captain Jack Harkness, he'd had lunch with him one time after that as well.

It was like talking with Sarah, someone who knew the Doctor in all his weirdness and oddness. Jack had plenty more 'wild' stories than Sarah did though.

Jack also seemed to want to know about the Doctor, about the Doctor's future. Though future Harry reflected was a relative term, but from what he'd been able to gather from Jack he hadn't met the Doctor whom he'd met after the Triwizard, after the Doctor had rescued him after the Triwizard, or any of the other Doctors for that matter.

Which gave him pause for thought, and ultimately he'd decided not to tell Jack about the Doctor's future.

It was the 'Web of Time' as the Doctor used to say, or perhaps it was about foreknowledge and everything. In the end he'd just told Jack 'He'll find you, or you'll find him when the time's right'. He'd known it was a bit of a cop out but some things just needed to happen as they happened, Harry wasn't going to interfere with events in his own past concerning the Doctor, but the Doctor's future, which was also his future.

Knowing a time traveller was confusing.

-/

Harry stepped down into his McLaren F1 parked in the Land's End Airport car parking.

It had been something he had been thinking about even prior to his first meeting with the Shacklebolt. But now that he had some time to wait before he could get his 'idea' engaged he had some time to kill.

Flying had always seemed so easy, jump on his broom and fly, it had almost been instinctual. In contrast his learning to fly a plane and his preparations to learn to fly a helicopter were anything but instinctual, it was taxing, complicated and difficult.

Though still exciting when the little Cessna lifted off the ground of the grassy runway.

Driving down the driveway and parking outside his house he smiled. He'd chosen this property with it's nicely proportioned buildings and land, some of it he was leasing to his neighbours allowing them to farm it at a very low price at that. They'd been happy, he was happy it was in use, but the rest of the buildings would be of use.

"This is the site of the League…" He trailed off. He'd been forced to call his organisation a League.

In his subsequent (and last according to Shacklebolt) meeting with the Minister he'd been given a contract to sign and to nominate a bank account which had to be a muggle bank account oddly.

Both the name and the bank account were according to the minister, a tax requirement.

So he'd been forced to call it a league.

Harry Potter was the creator and leader of; League of Paranormal Investigations.

It sounded official enough, and didn't have the word 'alien' in the title, which had seemed to pacify Shacklebolt somewhat.

Plus it was a name he could register in the normal world without any issues.

When he got the money from the Ministry then he could officially begin.

Something else that had involved a normal bank account was his parents money.

It had, according to the Goblins been accumulating a sizeable interest for the amount that was there.

Though, they were none too pleased when he'd decided to withdraw a sizeable amount of that sizeable amount to deposit in a 'muggle' bank account. His reasoning had been simple enough, the wizarding world was smaller, therefore the system to invest in was smaller, he hadn't seen any evidence (aside form money conversion, of an interoperation between them). Which he'd made a mental note of that raised some perplexing questions.

It was when he was opening a bank account for himself and his new organisation that he'd got a surprise.

A curious one at that.

At least he'd reflected later it wasn't a nasty surprise, one with fangs, spikes or semi-automatic weapons. Though considering the surprise came in the form of two envelopes he would have been surprised if it had contained all of those things.

I note when they'd searched his name or something, there were two letters awaiting him at the Bank of England, they'd been there for an indeterminate amount of time. Certainly longer than the dates on the letters would suggest.

The first letter related to a provision for funds made shortly after the Intrusion Counter Measures Group was formed in the 1960s, the name on the provision was one Doctor John Smith, it mentioned a 'League' headed by one Harry James Potter. Harry wasn't sure what to think of the Doctor knowing he formed the League before he did, though it was possible that the Doctor found out after he'd formed it, in the future and then went back and made sure that he had access to said funds to make sure it happened.

How the Doctor kept track of all his plots and subplots he didn't know.

The second letter pertained to military support for (a Mr Harry James Potter) the provision was signed and initiated by Air Chief Marshal M. Merit Sagamster. It had made him quirk a smile, Magister obviously didn't credit the people looking over and approving these things with much intelligence or imagination.

-/ - \\-

Finally, a month into the financial year (for muggles and wizards) he got a letter from the Minister. Informing him that the League of Paranormal Investigations could begin 'operating'.

Except according to their agreement it didn't exist, Harry Potter wasn't receiving and money from the legally elected Magical government and they certainly weren't paying money for a delusional organisation to investigate things that didn't exist.

Yet he still had to wait until a month into the financial year to begin, a tax and legal requirement. It was odd, he'd never thought about the complexities of the wizarding world until now, Harry supposed as he drove along the roads leading out of greater London that there had to be some way a government was funded and tax was the way it was done, more or less in the muggle world. The wizarding government could just be run on bribes and favours, though despite Kingsley's reforms he guessed the wheels of government were still very liberally greased with the money of the older families.

-/

Harry leaned over grabbing the map off the floor next to him and looked around out the window.

He was, he hoped somewhere close to Dallington in East Sussex, looking for a house, in which he hoped lived a man, whom he hoped was at least as mad and delusional as the Prophet claimed him to be.

The house was rather unassuming and completely normal, if not for the things he noticed. The larger than normal satellite dish he caught sight of through the trees as he approached the house and the what looked like a half size Quidditch pitch in a paddock near the property, then there was the large power transformer box on the side of their property, he only recognised that because he had one at his house.

It was odd Harry thought as he unbuckled his seat belt, that he now had a house, of his own, he'd never really considered his apartment his, especially now that the lease was up on it, his house was definitely in Porthcurno.

This place was definitely a home though, lived in, homely, in an odd way reminiscent of the Burrow, Harry smiled to himself, pained slightly at the thought of it.

"Yes?" Asked a man in his late 30s, a light brown pony tail tied back behind his head. "Who are you?"

"It's been a while since anyone who was remotely connected to the wizarding world asked me that," Harry mused with a smile. "Harry Potter."

"Ioan Hrycek?" Harry asked, watching the man's eyes dart around past him and down the garden path, he couldn't quite tell but it seemed like he was staring at his car.

"What do you want?" The man asked.

"To talk about aliens. And the wizarding world." The man was looking at him suspiciously and then looking around carefully. Harry turned around, looking at his car.

"Is it okay to leave it out there, or is there a logistics company that transports pianos that's likely to drop one on top of it?" Harry asked casually.

"What?" He stared back at him.

Harry grinned. "Aliens, wizards, they exist." Harry removed his wand from his pocket twisting it between his fingers. "People pointing sticks, potions…you know…"

"You'd better come in Potter, it's been a while since anyone spoke to me seriously about the wizarding world."

-/

Ioan Hrycek's kitchen was homely and practical, out the window he could see several large vegetable patches, off to the side of the room was a pot belly stove, a medium sized cauldron resting on it.

Ioan Hrycek's name was one of the names that he'd found mentioned in some old issues of the Prophet. A Hufflepuff who'd also been an avid Quidditch player for the team, though the paper hadn't said what position, he'd completed his NEWTS in that year of Hogwarts when he'd tried to publish an article to the Vision supposedly a high brow magazine that used to be published by the Prophet's publishers.

It had supposedly suggested that several wizarding deaths during the 1970s had been the cause of alien invasions of London and in one case a family of wizards who'd been killed by a dinosaur.

Harry hadn't been able to find the original article anywhere, though he knew that Ioan had been right, it was a dinosaur, in London, a bit of a mad scheme, more than mad actually considering the planning and everything that went into that…

They'd been having a friendly enough conversation in his sitting room, when Ioan had looked at the clock on the wall sworn under his breath and said;

"I'll be back in a few minutes." Then with a slight displacement of air he'd disaparated. "Make yourself at home."

Which is why Harry was looking through the music collection on one of the shelves of the room, an odd mix of records like John Smith and the Commonmen, cassettes and CDs one of which by a group interestingly in his opinion called 'The Sugar Quills' he was perusing when he hear a pop from outside the room.

"And you left him in the house?" Said a female voice, Harry guessed it was his partner or wife.

"He isn't a Ministry spy, when have they ever been bothered as long as I don't try to publish anything, and what was I supposed to do? You get snitchy if I leave you too long, waiting around." There was a pause "Akilina, he knows things, about aliens, the real events." Ioan's voice said.

"And he doesn't think you're mad?" Asked the woman's voice.

"No. You don't think I'm mad do you?" Ioan asked.

Harry put down the CD, deciding to ask them about The Sugar Quills later and wondered across the room.

"You know I don't I've seen them remember?"

Harry knocked gently on the ajar door between the rooms. "Thought me being the centre of your conversation I should say hello, so you know whether or not to throw me out, shoot at me or engage me in theoretical conversation on the nature of time travel and predestination," he paused and then he held out his hand. "Harry Potter."

"Akilina. Now Mr Potter, Ioan says you believe in aliens. Come on you can help with dinner and explain everything." She shook his hand and led him back to the kitchen, her tone of voice made it clear that he didn't have any room to argue.

-/

It wasn't until later in the evening that they really got around to asking him what he wanted, Harry gave himself a pat on the back that he'd managed to deflect that particular question for quite some time.

"I want your help, currently my group."

"Your League." Harry nodded to Akilina, whom he'd found out was a chemist who worked for company that provided additional workforce for various areas, supposedly at the moment she was assisting a forensic chemist in something or other. He'd asked what, but she just shook her head, contracts, privacy and whatever else, which had ended that line of attempted discussion.

"You know about UNIT right?" Harry asked, trying to get into his pitch, Ioan had mentioned it about his researches. "They don't know about wizards, or if they do they seem to treat them the same way the British government does. So the League of Paranormal Investigations is all about investigating and defending against alien incursions, but also helping out aliens if they've crashed into Hogsmeade or whatever."

"Why not, if you don't mind me asking just let the wizarding world face it?" Ioan asked. "I see what you're saying but you said the minister wasn't happy to see you."

Harry smiled. "Hardly. But…" He trailed off. "You know about the Black Thursday when the dummies came to life in the 1970s and the Daffodil Scare in the 70s?"

"I remember reading something about it, I think my parents mentioned something about it," Akilina said.

Harry nodded. "Both those were aliens, the same aliens in fact. The Nestene they brought, these plastic dummies to life, killed a few people in the streets, but they also killed a few wizards who were out at the time, their bodies were recovered by muggles. But after it happened the Ministry tried to cover it up, all of it, and ran straight into UNIT and the army."

"Who shot the Ministry law enforcement and who ever else." Harry nodded to Ioan.

Ioan leaned back in realisation. "Thinking they were aliens. The Ministry didn't do anything about it because…"

"There's no such thing as aliens. See this is why being a 'squib' is good, no wasted life like this." Akilina poked Ioan gently on the arm with a smile.

"That's not the worst thing. These daffodils that were around, they were also plastic," Harry explained.

"These 'Nestene' used plastic?" She asked curiously.

"So I've been told." The question by who seemed to hang for a moment so he pressed on. "They were handed out everywhere, and some of them found their way back to potions suppliers. I don't know the specifics, but some were processed into potions ingredients others interacted with other things…supposedly there's still some of it out there."

"Is it poisonous?" She asked.

"From what I was told they were originally designed to spray a mask over the face, suffocating the people. But that's all past now, in theory they're just plastic flowers, but incredibly realistic and alien," Harry explained.

There was a relatively comfortable silence as they digested this information.

"How do you know this Harry, how did you manage not to be lynched," Ioan asked.

"Aside from my 'Boy-who-lived' 'guy-who-defeated-the-Dark-Lord' status you mean?" Harry asked.

Ioan chuckled. "I need to start reading the Prophet again."

"I wouldn't, it's still mostly rubbish. But to answer your question, I know an alien; a time traveller," there, he'd said it. Harry knew it would come up eventually if he started talking about all these things that had happened and more to the point his foreknowledge about things that were going to happen.

They actually accepted it more easily than he thought they would, and didn't press him for any information.

"I'm not mad," Harry felt he needed to add.

The pair in front of him shared a smile. "That's what we said the first time we talked about this stuff seriously Harry. I've heard of other people who've time travelled, not with time turners though."

"No, there are far more complicated ways of time travelling," Harry said.

-/

Harry settled into the car seat as he drove back to his house, Ioan and Akilina had offered him to stay, but he rather liked driving, even in the dead of night.

They had his phone number and they'd agreed to get the details sorted out of the hows of the League, Ioan had said he had continued to keep an eye on the fringes of wizarding society, on the 'delusional' elements. Though he and they had been so far on the fringes had been missed by Voldemort's brief reign.

-/ - \\-

"So this is it?" Hermione asked looking at the large double doors. There was a shocking face carved into it.

"The Doctor never said where it was. You're the one who asked me about it," Harry defended.

"I asked you what you knew about a rumour the Mona Lisa was a fake and you told me a wild story about aliens and time travel!" Hermione turned away from the door looking at a small notebook. "One might think you're obsessed," she teased with a smile.

"I am, maybe not obsessed. But it's something to do. I've got a good memory for these things." Harry looked up at the building. "So shall we break in and have a look around?"

"Harry!" Hermione hissed at him.

Harry mouthed a 'What?' At her. There was no one around them. It was oddly quiet in this area of Paris. "Well, or is looking at the door enough for your project?"

"This isn't a project I asked you about it and…oh never mind," Hermione said after a moment. "What did you have in mind?" She said with a tone of resignation. "I'm going to regret this aren't I?"

"We could always go back the Louvre and look at the fake Mona Lisa," Harry offered.

Hermione shook her head. "I've had enough of that for one day Harry Potter, it's real, the paint is real, it is the age it should be."

"Doesn't change that it's a fake, a real fake, not the original," he challenged playfully.

"Do we apparate in?" Hermione asked, stopping Harry in one of his moments of musing to himself.

"Wasn't it you who went on at us about apparition and knowing where you're going to turn up? Who knows what's in that building?" Harry looked around, removing a pair of binoculars from his bag and looked around at the roofs before pointing. "Up there, we should be able to find an entrance and break in."

"Into an alien's lair," Hermione commented.

"Former, dead alien. Lair?" He wrinkled his nose "When did you become so dramatic Ms Granger?" Harry wondered.

"I've got to be dramatic Harry Potter, to stop you from doing something even more dramatic to get your adrenaline up," she chastised.

"I never…" Harry began. "come on let's go."

-/

Breaking in hadn't been so hard. The place looked empty and un-lived in, things seemed to have been left mostly as they were, but there was evidence of fingerprint dust around and tracks left by wheels, probably from a gurney he thought to himself looking around, he saw Hermione moving towards the open documents by the bookshelf.

"Hermione. Stop," Harry warned.

"What Harry?" She turned around and looked at him.

"Here," he handed her a pair of latex gloves.

She glared at him. "How did you know to bring those?"

Harry shrugged. But Hermione grabbed the gloves out of offered hand.

"I wonder why this place hasn't been cleared out, it's been empty since…the late 70s." Harry mused looking around. He smiled to himself, he could just imagine the Doctor lounging in this chair, being threatened…by the beast that lived in the cellar. He grinned.

"Have you got your amazing bag handy?" Hermione asked.

"'Harry Potter and his amazing bag', not really the tag line I was looking for myself and the LPI," Harry mused to himself.

"Just open the bag Harry and stop blathering." Hermione shivered.

"Something the matter?" Harry asked.

"Other than the fact we're wondering around in a dead alien's house?" Hermione asked.

"Well I've been standing here and you're going through his documents, I assume since we're pilfering what look like priceless documents there's something useful," Harry mused.

"For you and me both, I'll need to look at it closer when we get back to England." Hermione was busy carefully sliding old tomes, papyrus and other things she'd glanced over into his open bag.

"What are we doing down here Harry?" Hermione asked, they'd both just apparated to the cellar, a lot of it had been gutted by fire, including the stairs.

"Not sure, I wanted to have a look around, just in case," Harry said looking around with his wand illuminating them.

Hermione removed her own wand from her pocket as she glanced around. "Lumos." She whispered.

"Any reason you're whispering?" Harry asked, not whispering.

"Do you feel it?" She asked.

"Feel what?" Harry said in a low tone, he was standing with her looking at what was probably the beginning of the fire.

"A weird sort of…" Hermione started.

"Sort of tingling, just near the base of the spine." He asked in a curious slightly foreboding tone.

"Yes except, it's more of an itch," Hermione wrinkled her nose.

"Yes…I had a theory about that," he said in a level tone looking around.

"You did?" Hermione asked surprised.

"Come on, let's have a look in the back." Harry led the way through.

Harry pointed his wand around the room, it like much of the cellar had been practically destroyed by fire.

"What were you expecting to find in here?" Hermione asked, a step behind him.

"My own Mona Lisa?" He asked kicking the ashes aside. At the very back of the room were the remains of a cabinet. "Doesn't this look like a cupboard that could have held pictures?"

"Hmm," Hermione said joining him looking at the charred remains. "Could be anything Harry."

"Adventurous aren't you?" Harry said.

"Something about being down here, don't you feel it?" She asked again.

"Yes, it's the after affect of localised concentrated time field experiments that were done here," he said offhandedly.

"Are you just spouting rubbish Harry or…" Hermione wondered.

"Is that what you used to do at Hogwarts?" He mused in the middle of her sentence.

Hermione continued unchallenged. "Do you actually know what you're talking about?"

"Mostly I know, time travel's still an interest, the Doctor said some bloke managed under guidance to build a temporal experiment here. I was curious," he explained.

"You were curious. What about the Mona Lisas?" She walked around into his field of vision.

"There is a blank wall at my house where a genuine replica of a painting would sit really nicely," he sighed. "I guess I'll just have to paint it." He kicked aside some fallen debris, pointing his wand around at the ground, just ash and bits of wood. "Fine, let's do one last check of the château before we leave, we don't want to come back here I would imagine."

"Breaking and entering once is enough Harry," Hermione said as they apparated back to the corridor that lead down to the stairs.

-/

Harry smiled as Hermione ordered their meal and what sounded like a nice red in fluent French."I see all those trips overseas with your parents taught you something."

Hermione blushed slightly. "I'm not all books you know Harry."

"I know. So does Ron know you're wining and dining with me, and of course the breaking and entering," he asked playfully.

"Harry!" She looked around, no one was paying them the slightest interest. "I didn't know we were going to be looking around like we did."

Harry shrugged and sipped his mineral water. "And Ron? I haven't spoken with him since Ginny," he looked to her "well you know."

Hermione shifted, slightly uncomfortably. "We've…" She paused. "We've decided that during this time of…" She sighed. "He said I was spending all my time at school, and I said he was spending all of his time at the shop and…" She shook her head sighing and taking a sip of her drink. "We're seeing how we can manage without the expectation of being together." She looked over at Harry's concerned expression. "We both had…things to do, with Ron working with George and me at university we both wanted to see each other but it was as though we were meeting because it was expected…or something," she sighed again.

"Relationships are tricky things," he said then muttered. "A bit like gelignite."

"What would you know about explosives Harry?" Hermione asked, a slightly worried tone in her voice.

"You're the one who was chucking around the Nitro-9!" Harry exclaimed.

"That you left me!" She countered.

"I just thought it might be useful to work out how to make my own, just in case, though reverse engineering explosives are not as easy as you might think." He admitted.

"You…"

"Theory only Hermione," he held up his hands. "Isn't that the best way?"

"Until the theory becomes reality Harry that's when it becomes dangerous," Hermione said looking around the restaurant as she finished her drink.

"We live dangerous lives Hermione, in dangerous times," he mused.

"A bit ominous Harry," Hermione said.

"I was going for dramatic."

-/ - \\-

A/N:

Minor edit March 2020.

Another 'world building' chapter. There's a bit of setup to this story to allow me to do what I want with this and I need to set a few things in motion to do so, hence some info dumping. This will (I think) be the last of the slow introductions of people, everything following this I can introduce on the fly, but I needed to start off with one person.

I have, over the course of writing this chapter and planning the next couple been considering, just…well writing Ginny out, so she doesn't actually come back, maybe a space ship lands on top of her and she is turned into the consistency of a fine chutney, maybe she gets exterminated by a Dalek, maybe while flying a kite with a man who has a fascination with cheese and a rocket in the cellar she falls off a cliff where her remains are picked at by polar bears.

But that would be easy, I could write those incredibly easily (I think I could also do a convincing 'distraught Harry' scene to go along with whichever variation. But that's really the point, it would be easy enough for me to kill off and write out Ginny, but it's much more of a challenge to re-build her character as a complex character who isn't all the things that some see as annoying.

I'm not a fan of the Ginny / Harry pairing, that's why I wanted to try and write it, as a challenge to see how I could make it work. But as I've had some reviews who've commented on their dislike of the pairing I've been inspired to take things on a different path.

Hermione and Ron…they haven't broken up, but they're going to have a rocky relationship for a while. It can't be all smooth sailing.

Thanks for reading.