AN: Is it bad to say that I wrote this primarily because I wanted to know what would happen?
The morning came far too soon for Harry as jetlagged as he was, but he knew that the only way for it to get better was simply for him to work through it. Thankfully Harry had grown to enjoy coffee while working for MI5 because tea simply wasn't strong enough to wake him up that morning.
As he drank his coffee, Harry paced back and forth in his rental's small kitchen, attempting to psyche himself up for the meeting that he hoped would happen later that day. As much as Sirius had tried, Gibbs was still the closest thing that Harry had to a father figure considering the amount of nights that Harry spent at the Gibbs house in an effort to get away from the Dursleys.
Reaching down into his backpack, Harry pulled out an old, faded set of note cards and Gibbs's old KA-BAR that had seen Harry through the war. Flipping through the note cards, Harry saw the rules that Gibbs had tried to instill into him and the rules that Harry had, subsequently, tried to live his life by.
"Rule #1: Never screw over your partner," Harry muttered to himself, "Sorry about that one, Kelly. I kinda dropped off the grid for a few years, but, now that I'm back, I hope I manage to do better."
Harry knew that they would never let him onto the Navy Yard if he carried his knife with him, so he decided, for the first time in over a decade, that it was okay to break Rule #9, never go anywhere without a knife.
Unshrinking Sirius's motorcycle was a simple task, but navigating the D.C. area to figure out where the Navy Yard is located was a far harder task, especially as Harry had to get used to driving on the right side of the road instead of the left. It did not help matters when a red and black Mini flew past him at one point, blasting their music and weaving through traffic.
"Bloody Americans," Harry said as he shook his head, "Think they can do whatever they bloody well please. Bah!"
Harry eventually managed to find the Navy Yard, even if it took him a few hours as he learned to navigate the city with frequent stops to consult his map. While he got some funny looks by the security officers for presenting a UK passport when asked for identification, the simple response that he was there to meet with Agent Gibbs was enough for them to shuffle him along his way and through security.
Now faced with the bright orange walls and even brighter windows that made up the main section of the NCIS building, Harry's hand started to shake. Overwhelmed by the idea of facing Gibbs after so long, he tried to take deep breaths like his therapist often told him to do when he started to panic, but it did not seem to work as Harry slipped further into his panic attack. Suddenly overwhelmed by the amount of light and noise in the office, Harry slid down the wall until he resembled a ball as much as he resembled a body, all the while hyperventilating, trying frantically to get the much-needed oxygen into his lungs.
"Hey, are you okay?"
Harry jerked his head towards the sudden voice and desperately tried to get his breathing under control for long enough to answer the woman that had appeared. She appeared to be in her late twenties, but her gothic style threw off Harry for a second before he managed to respond.
"Sorry about that. I'm afraid I took more back with me from the war than I intended to, if you know what I mean. I'm actually here to meet with an old friend of mine. Do you happen to know a Leroy Jethro Gibbs?" Harry was very careful to not explicitly state which war he had been in, but he knew better than most that his panic attacks were more easily dismissed when he stated that he had PTSD from being a solider. In Harry's eyes, it was a bit silly to be more sympathetic about panic attacks from PTSD than from mental illnesses, but he would be damned if he wouldn't take every chance he got to get the attention off of his "moment of weakness".
"Oh! You're friends with Gibbs? How do you know him? How long have you known him? Did you tell him that you were coming? He didn't tell me that you were coming. Maybe he wanted to surprise me? Oh, I'm sorry! I never introduced myself. I'm Abby Sciuto, but everyone just calls me Abby."
The goth woman in front of Harry seemed to let all of this out in one breath, and it was only Harry's experience with Hermione that allowed him to keep up with the questions that she had rattled off.
"In order, I am friends with him, yes. He lived close by to where I grew up. Around 15 years or so, and no I didn't tell him. And it is very nice to meet you Abby. My name is Harry Potter."
The conversation helped Harry's state, giving him something to focus on rather then the roar of voices that seemed to be coming from the cubicles.
"Very nice to meet you too, Harry! Let me guide you over to his desk. The team is out right now, but they should be back pretty soon if you want to wait for him." Abby replied with a far more steady voice than the excitable nature that she displayed before.
"Thank you so much for the help, Abby. I really appreciate it."
As Abby drifted off towards her lab, Harry decided to take a seat at Gibbs desk knowing that if he had to leave and come back, he might not ever have this conversation at all. As he sat back in Gibbs's chair, the panic attack that he had just undergone combined with the jetlag proved to be too much for Harry as he drifted off to sleep.
"I'm telling you, McGoo, the wife did it!"
"You always claim that the wife did it, Tony. Wait is there some kid sleeping at Gibbs's desk?"
"Who would be stupid enough to do that?"
Harry was suddenly aware of his surroundings, as the arguing voices got closer to him. Deciding to give up sleeping anymore as a lost cause, Harry sat up and stretched his arms outwards in an effort to return blood flow to his poor arms.
"Well there was someone sleeping at Gibbs's desk," Harry shot back at them, "and then some gits decided to come along and wake me up. And don't call me kid."
Even if Harry was used to having to wake up at all hours in order to take care of Teddy, that didn't mean that he actually liked it when people other than his godson woke him up without warning. Hell, the only reason that he put up with it for Teddy was the fact that he knew Andromeda needed the sleep more than he did.
The man on the left, McGoo apparently, though Harry doubted that was his real name, at least had the decency to look sheepish at the fact that they woke him up, but the man on the right had no such problems.
"You do know that Gibbs kills anyone that sits at his desk right?" Tony said, managing to sound both concerned and amused at the same time.
"I like to think that I'll be something of an exception," Harry replied easily, leaning back in the chair, "I've known Gibbs for a long time, so I like to think that he'll ask questions before shooting. Or at the very least aim at something non-vital."
The man called Tony looked at Harry incredulously, but, seeming to decide that it was Harry's life at stake, shrugged his shoulders and slumped back down at his desk.
"What's your name anyways, kid?" Tony said, crumpling up a ball of paper and pulling back to throw it at the other man.
"Harry Potter. Who are you guys? And do you know when Gibbs will be getting back?" Harry had interacted with enough government agents in his life to know when someone is forcing themselves to appear more relaxed, and Tony was setting off all of the alarms in his head right now.
"I am very Special Agent Anthony Dinozzo, and that over there is our Probie, McGee," Tony replied, "And he's chasing down a lead right now, so there's no knowing when he'll get back."
Just as Tony said that the elevator door opened and out walked a man that Harry instantly recognized as Gibbs. He may have gotten more gray over the years, but besides that he looked near identical to his younger self. Near identical except for one thing…
"Gibbs, what the bloody hell is that thing on you lip and why on earth would you force it upon the rest of us?" All thoughts of planned out conversations slipped out of Harry's mind the second that he saw the mustache that Gibbs had decided to grow.
Gibbs, meanwhile, seemed just as startled to see Harry present and at his desk as Harry was to see the mustache that adorned Gibbs face. It had been nearly 10 years since he had last seen Harry, and with the distance between his posting in Surrey and his next posting in Virginia it had been hard to keep in contact with the boy who had been over at his house nearly every single day.
"Harry! What are you doing here? Did you need any help?" Gibbs may have been startled to see Harry, but startled did not mean disappointed. He always had been concerned about the boy, and both he and Shannon had had many sleepless nights worrying over how Harry was doing after they had moved away. While they never had any proof that Harry's uncle was physically abusive, Vernon was still all too clear that he did not want Harry in that house.
"I was actually mostly wondering where Kelly is. I'm taking a vacation right now, and I decided that the first thing I wanted to do now that I was able to was come and see her. I miss my best friend, you know?" Harry smiled at the thought of finally being able to reconnect with Kelly once again, not seeming to notice the growing grimace on Gibbs's face.
"I think we need to have a talk, Harry. You see there was an accident back when Kelly was 11. Kelly is dead, Harry. Shannon too."
Harry's entire world seemed to shatter all at once. All that had kept him alive throughout the war was the idea that one day he could reconnect with his best friend again and introduce her to magic. He knew that Kelly would love magic more than anyone he had ever met, but that goal was failed before it even started. He was suddenly back in the war again, his friends dying while he could do nothing but watch, but instead of Fred and Moony and Tonks, all Harry could see were Kelly's dead eyes staring back into his, cutting through him.
Before he even knew it, Harry was sobbing into Gibbs's shoulder, mourning not only the best friend that he had ever had, but also the loss of what could have been. He would never get to reconnect with Kelly. Never get to apologize for dropping off the map and not replying to letters after he went off to Hogwarts. Never get to tell her about all of the adventures that he went on and all of the good that he had managed to do for the world, or at least his corner of it.
"It's okay, Harry," Gibbs whispered softly in his ear, "I'm so sorry that you had to find out like this."
The words of comfort did little to help Harry, but eventually he had to stop sobbing if only to take in more air. Looking up, Harry noticed that both Tony and McGee had thankfully decided to walk away at some point in the conversation. It was bad enough losing it in front of Gibbs like that; he did not want to think about how embarrassing it would have been to do it in front of two people he barley knew as well.
Gibbs handed Harry a tissue, concern all over his face, as Harry tried desperately to not start sobbing all over again. He had lost too much in too little time to lose Kelly too, but yet he had lost her. And he would need to march on anyways. 'Sometimes,' Harry thought, 'being the Boy-Who-Won't-Bloody-Die is the worst thing that ever happened to me. All I want is to see my family, and they keep dying around me.'
"Can I ask what you're planning on doing now then?" Gibbs seemed to be able to tell that Harry was feeling better, even if only marginally, and wanted to see how long he would have Harry around for. Family should stick together through hardships, and Harry was most certainly family.
"Well I have a flat rented for the month, so I'm staying around DC until then I guess," Harry replied, sounding somber as he tried to avoid thinking of the fact that his best friend outside of Ron and Hermione was dead and buried.
"Well we can manage to get together plenty of times while you're here then. Here, let me give you my address. I have some photos of Kelly that I think you might like to have. Some ones of the two of you together."
All the sudden there was a commotion as the elevator doors opened up to reveal a very familiar woman of Israeli descent.
"Harry? What are you doing here?"