KEYnote: This has no beta and I'm still dyslexic. Water remains wet.

I finally watched the movie and it was very entertaining, I'm not actually going to use any of its plots, but I am going to use the characters. *Mads Mikkelsen!* as Grindelwald, because he's the reason I love Hanniable.

WARNING!: Buckle up, bought to show ya why the F Newt Scamander is teaching Magical Creatures in this Alternate Dimension ;D

Act II: Chapter 16 - The Paradox

The first week back from winter break they got a Hogsmeade trip.

Luna all but dragged him to a tiny coffee shop that clearly sold more supplies to make coffee; beans, strainers, mugs, and the like as opposed to serving freshly made coffee or tea to anyone.

Which is why Harry had never heard of it and why Luna's friends were the only ones in the shop. Luna snagged his hand, pulling them over to the table by the window.

"Harry, this is Genie Weller and Geralt Rivers. Genie, Geralt, this is Harry Potter."

Harry smiled at the two old people, Genie had white hair closely cropped to her head and Geralt, who also had white hair along with a fuzzy white beard. Genie's eyes were blue and he had the strange sense that she was seeing through him. Geralt had mismatched eyes that watched Harry with an uncomfortable amount of interest.

"Sit, sit," Genie welcomed.

Luna sat at once, but Harry's instincts were ringing.

He looked to the counter, "Where is the storekeeper?"

"We are regulars," Genie said easily. "The store isn't even open yet."

Harry raised a brow, "A coffee shop isn't open in the morning?"

"Harry," Luna coaxed.

Geralt leaned back in his seat, "You are a smart one, aren't you?"

Harry reached for Luna's hand as he pulled his wand.

"A shame you won't remember this," Geralt continued. "You might have been able to learn from your mistake."

Geralt tossed something golden and shining at Harry's face as Luna's fingers entwined with Harry's.

Unfortunately, it was Harry's seeker instincts that damned them. With his wand hand, he caught the golden ball.

He looked down at the ball of gold and saw it was made of glass, something golden spun inside. It took his mind a moment to spot the tiny hourglass in the centre.

No!

The two old people raised their wands at them as the little hourglass spun within its golden skeleton within its glass ball.

He saw silver whisps of light, as delicate and unreal as unicorn hair. More whisps were drawn from Luna than him, but as he watched the whisps fade, he lost sight of where he was, what he was doing here, and their attackers slipped from knowing.

For a half-a moment, he realized that this was a memory charm, but even that thought faded from reach.

From knowing.

Harry felt a hook at his naval and he tightened his hand around Luna's as the world turned violently around them, spinning and twisting as they were pulled through space and time.

They landed on cold cobblestones, but the buildings were… strange, as were the cars.

Old.

Luna sat up, pulling him up with her so that they were leaning against each other.

Harry felt sick like he was going to lose his lunch if he stood.

Luna asked, "Where are we? What were we doing? I can't remember…" She shook her head, then froze, her face going pale as if the motion had made her ill.

Harry opened his hand, still holding his wand, he found in his palm a blackened glass ball with a bit of gold shimming inside.

"Lumous," he cast and was able to peer into the glass.

His breath caught.

"Harry?" Luna asked, voice worried.

"Accio paper," he said, and a newspaper from a bin flew to his hand.

A muggle newspaper.

With American spelling.

And the date?

More importantly, the year?

1926.

"Luna?" Harry asked.

"Harry?"

"Do you remember how we got here?"

"No," she said almost in a whisper. "I don't remember where we were."

"The last thing I remember is getting on the train after the winter holidays."

"Same," she said softly.

"We're in trouble," he said, thinking of all the people they could go to for help.

The problem was, the only American he knew wasn't an American and they had no way to know when or where Professor Scamander had been in the States.

"Did you see that?" Luna asked suddenly.

"See what?" he asked.

"I think I just saw a Demiguise," she said.

"Should those be running around in a city?" he asked, New York City as the paper in his hand read.

"No," she said. "It shouldn't."

They exchanged a look.

They had no idea how they were here or why or what they were going to do to fix it to get back to their time and world.

Or with Harris Black as an example, if it was possible at all.

But they were Professor Scamander's top students, and they were also Hagrid's friends, they could do no less than help these creatures as lost as they were in this big city.

The Family of Harris Magnolia Black

Teddy Shacklebolt sighed as he rocked his baby in his arms, he never thought he would have to go through this without his dad.

Without his grandmother.

And he never would have believed it would be because of his grandmother.

The only thing that didn't surprise him, was his ex-step-mother's reaction.

Rose was glaring down at her tea and James was looking off into the distance.

To put it simply; things were fucked.

Rose was the first to speak after Sonya had delivered the Auror Office's findings and left the room to take a nap, leaving Teddy with a sleeping Magnolia in his arms.

"We don't release this information. The truth never stopped the rumours and it will only make things worse…" Rose trailed off.

James rubbed his face, James who looked just like their father and seemed to bear the most weight of public opinion. "Mother was insufferable before this. How could Grandmama do this to us, to him?"

"Papa's right, he does have the worst luck," Rose said, spinning her spoon in her teacup.

Grandmama's body had been found dead on the sofa of their home while Papa's body hadn't been found at all.

And had never shown back up. No tracking charm had been able to locate him, and for months, the papers had been printing; Harry Potter Murders His Mistress; Reason? Read below for experts' speculations…

Only Papa would never have done that, something Teddy's wife, Auror Sonya Shaklebolt, had thankfully proven.

So what was the problem?

Well, not only had Grandmama killed herself, but she had either probably killed Harry Potter, or damned him to what was possibly a fate worse than death, depending on which alternate reality he had landed in.

One that he couldn't return from which as far as anyone knew, which was the way that Andromeda Tonks had discovered.

A way that required the same cost as a freaking Horcrux.

A death of a soul.

Which meant, Harry Potter of this universe would never willingly return to them; which meant, at least to them, he was dead.

Andromeda Tonks had murdered Harry Potter and herself.

Teddy was not at all pleased to be orphaned, again.

"What are we going to do?" James asked.

Rose hugged him.

"We have to get a message to him somehow," Teddy stated.

"How do you mean?" James asked.

"If it's an alternate universe if he's alive —if he doesn't realize… if he thinks it's time travel and he goes backwards in time… It won't be like a time turner, it won't be a paradox he can remember so he will think—"

Aunt Hermoine walked into the house, and picked up immediately on the conversation, "He will think we were erased from reality."

"And he will never be happy," James concluded, hugging his twin sister, tightly to himself.

"What is our story going to be? For their deaths?" Rose asked, hugging James tighter.

"They tried pushing the magic, they tried improving the Belladonna Cure and it went wrong," Teddy said.

He knew their father wouldn't want it any other way, knew that it was okay for the truth and the betrayal to die with them.

Teddy shut his eyes and failed to keep the tears at bay. When he opened his eyes, he found his daughter looking up at him, quietly observing him.

Teddy gasped, he wouldn't let this ruin him, he was a father now and he could do no less for his own daughter than the man who had raised him had.

"Your grandfather loved you," Teddy told her, letting her grab onto her finger. "Your grandfather loved you more than anything and he is going to be so proud of the woman you grow up to be. You will never doubt that you are loved."

Because that was Harry Potter's legacy, not that he had saved the Wizarding World, or escaped dragons and defeated dark lords, no. If there was one thing that defined their father's legacy it was that his children would never doubt that they were loved.

Back in the Verse

Harris Magnolia Black slammed his fist on Dumbledore's desk, "Where are they!?"

"New York City, 1926."

"How—" Harris swore, before restarting, "Why didn't you tell me Grindelwald was after them?"

"Because it's already happened," Dumbledore said calmly.

"Yes, because you didn't tell me!" Harris yelled.

"Because I didn't know that we could trust you, and I hadn't realized Luna had been in communication with anyone—"

"But I did!" Harris exclaimed. "Harry has been writing to me all year, I knew Luna had a friend in Hogsmeade, I never imagined that Genie Weller was working for Grindelwald."

"Queenie Goldstein," Newt corrected.

Harris spun on him, "How are you so calm?"

Newt smiled softly, "Because I lived it, and I was the one who sent them home. They will return to the present in two years."

"Two years?" Harris demanded.

"We needed to ensure we had time to defeat Grindelwald before we brought them back," Dumbledore said, stroking Fawkes who had settled on his lap.

Newt expounded on that, "You see, how we sent them forward in time… it was an extremely rare Magical Creature, and we can't be sure that's not what Grindelwald was after."

"What was it and aside from the time travel, what can it do for Grindelwald?" Harris asked.

Newt sighed, "An Amalthea, that's the English word for it at any rate. It's a type of unicorn that's not really a unicorn at all, they are more magic and dream than horse. The time turner dust was invented was based on the substance found in an ancient emperor's tomb. It is said that by killing and burning an Amalthea, one can use their ashes to regain their youth. Completely, though you age normally afterwards, it's a physical reset."

He bloody well hated dark lords.

"What's the cost?" Harris asked.

Newt exchanged a look with Dumbledore.

"The Amalthea they said was born from the dust of stars, they existed before creation, and to kill it is to submit to its power."

"What does that mean?" Harris asked.

Newt sighed, "As far as I was able to discover, no one knows. The emperor in question was beloved by his people. Some of the texts make it sound as if you can't actually kill them, like the phoenix, it will simply be reborn. Some say the person who uses the ash of Amalthea will be reborn as an Amalthea themselves."

"How did you get it to take Luna and Harry through time?" Harris asked.

"My wife," Newt said. "She's rather brilliant really, helped us find the Amalthea and then Luna asked it to help her and Harry, and it did."

If it was anyone except Luna Lovegood and Harry Potter, Harris wouldn't have believed it, but he did.

"How do you know it will be two years?"

"Because that's what they asked for," Newt said. "They spent two years out of time and they would prefer having the story be they ran off together to look for magical creatures than explain why they aged two years, well, two years and a few months, they graduated from Hogwarts you see."

Harris blinked, "And no one realized this?"

"People knew them as two exchange students from America, they didn't attend classes year round, so it's mostly the staff who remember them now."

"Most everyone who knew them has passed on," Dumbledore said. "Tom Riddle didn't even attend Hogwarts until a decade after them." Then he pulled something out from his desk and handed it to Harris.

Harris took the picture frame in his hands and found several faces smiling up at him.

Two beautiful women with dark hair, one having their arm looped in a much younger Newt, Albus Dumbledore smiling with a genuineness that had been seen in the man when he first came to Hogwarts, and then Harry and Luna. Their smiles were brilliant, tinged with no sorrow or fear.

Maybe because there was a horde of nifflers surrounding them all. One was trying to steal Dumbledore's watch, a few babies were in Luna's arms and Harry's arms.

They looked… happy and safe and whole.

Something in Harris exhaled, they were safe. Well, not anymore, but there was nothing he could do for the next two years but ensure the world they returned to was safe for them.

Something else though…

"This is a paradox," he said a bit numbly. "But I… I do not remember Harris Black, I do not remember things as this world has unfolded. It is impossible that things can be as they were for me."

Dumbledore was quiet for a long moment, "It is why I never trusted you. I mean, you were hostile toward me, and intrusive into Harry's life with the power to hold off Voldemort… But learning you were, had once been, Harry Potter, I could not trust you. You are not a time traveler, Professor Harris Magnolia Black."

"Then what am I?" Harris demanded.

"You're from an alternate universe, and therefore, Harry Potter or no, Boy-Who-Lived or no, I had no guarantees that you weren't lying, that your past truly matched this universe's Harry. No one knew you, there was no evidence you ever existed and such people, in my experience, are running from trouble. Trouble they often caused. Though I admit, I let my pride get the best of me a time or two."

"As did I…" Harris said absently as he tried to process what Dumbledore had just said. "Do you mean… other worlds? Other universes? A multiverse of different visions of us and others that might have nothing to do with us?"

Dumbledore nodded, "Yes, and I have to tell you that no one has ever travelled intentionally between two worlds."

Harris sighed, "Another first?"

"No, I found the ritual Andromeda Tonks used, she is incredibly powerful to pull off what she did and for intention to lead you both to a world so like your own. But it required the death of a soul per traveller."

Harris stared at him, "Like a Horcrux?"

"Worse actually," Dumbledore said with a sigh. "So much worse in fact I simply destroyed the single copy of it I found, something she no doubt got from the Black Family vault at some point in her youth."

"How is it worse than a Horcrux?" Harris asked.

"It requires not just the murder of a person, but the true death of their soul, for it is the soul that allows one the magic and energy it takes to travel between existence. Andromeda used her first death to take you across with her, and she traded her counterpart's soul in this universe for the opportunity to see this universe before her soul… faded from existence."

"Are you saying she won't have an afterlife, not at all?" Newt asked, visibly appalled.

Dumbledore nodded and said to Harris, "I'm afraid the only known way to bring you back home to your universe would require a similar sacrifice of either your own soul."

"But you destroyed it," Harris said flatly.

"I remember every horrific detail, if you wished to… to end your own life in your own universe, it is a choice you can make but I would beg that you don't. You may never see your family in this life, but in the next— Harris?"

Harris's heart felt as if his heart had stopped, as if the world itself had stopped spinning. He backed away from them, dropping the picture in his hands of the Harry Potter who escaped to the past but who paradoxically would return.

"She didn't erase them," Harris said, numbly. His broken heart stuttered as if —as if hope was electricity that would either restart his life or end it.

"They're still out there? They're alive? My Teddy, Rose, and James? My little Magnolia? They're alive?"

Please, by all the stars, let them be alive.

Dumbledore stood, with that same sad expression he had worn when he had warned him away from the Mirror of Erised, "There is no reason to believe otherwise. The spell Andromeda used would have harmed no one but yourselves, and she traded her own soul twice over so that you might have a life here. But your family, your past, they are still real, Harris. They live."

Harris stepped back, shaking his head, surely there was a limit to how many times his life and perspective could be altered before it killed him.

But none of it mattered, because his family, his babies, his dearest ones were without him but they lived.

They were real.

Harris disapparated back to his apartment to tell Bella, to tell her the good news, but somewhere along the lines, this little apartment had become home.

Become safe.

All the grief he had been enduring, all the pain, and madness, and betrayal, no less real, not unfelt, but where there had been nothing but darkness in his heart, nothing but sorrow and fruitless longing, his dearest wish had been granted.

He wished for his family, for his sons, and daughter, and granddaughter to live. He would have traded anything, done anything —anything— for even a glimmer of a chance for them.

But his wish had been granted without his having to do anything at all. He could remain in this world, he could go on, he could survive and truly live, knowing that his family would live on.

He might never get to see Magnolia again, but he had raised his boys right, he had raised his daughter to be kind and strong, and Harris would be eternally proud of the people they had become, of the lives they had created for themselves.

Harris crumbled on the floor as a sob, painful and ugly, tore through him.

Bella was there, pulling him into her arms just as he had done for her. Harris let himself be held, let himself be comforted as he cried the emotions he had been fighting for so long as hope and salvation tore him apart to remake him, not into the person he had been, but into someone entirely unknown as he clung to two simple truths.

His children were alive and they knew —without doubt— that they had been loved.

That he had loved them and neither time nor death would ever change that, could ever take that from them.

KEYnote: I realise this new direction might turn people, but Harris deserves his happiness and sanity. I will continue to build on his romance with Bella as well as the arrangement he and Narcissa come to, however, Luna and Harry get to run around in a timeline I'm eagerly looking forward to hijacking ;D

AN: Thoughts, unicorns, or feedback, pretty, pretty please?