Fractured Time

Summary: Continuation of Birth of a Nightmare Man chapter thirteen, where we left Rabastan and Draco wondering about Harry Potter's fate. But now time has become a strange thing, and their world is dying. How can they escape? Will they ever see Harry Potter again?

Pairing/s: None.

Warnings: Time-travelling and dimension-travelling, some violence and gore. People acting OOC.

Disclaimers: I don't own Harry Potter nor do I make any money on fanfiction.

-o-

Writer's block struck me, like it often has the last few years. But finally, here's the new chapter! Enjoy, everyone.

Fractured Time takes place around five years before The Nightmare Man's Journey.

-o-

Chapter Four

Rabastan woke up to a bang. A literal bang, and without thinking he rushed out of bed. He opened the door just in time to see a Weasley twin sprint past his door. Severus wasn't far behind him, wand out and yelling. At a more sedate pace, Harrison came walking. He discovered Rabastan and waved, hair a mess and sleep-crusted eyes squinting at him.

"What's going on?" Rabastan asked.

"Fred… or George, couldn't quite see which one, had a bit of a mishap with a potion. Hence the explosion. Severus wasn't very pleased. Why must they do it in any other room except for the room meant for potion-making?"

"Oh. Yes, I did see Severus' look. Fred and George?"

"This dimension's Fred and George," Harrison clarified. "I might have… laid a claim on them. But they were eaten by a Dementor first. Their souls."

"What?"

"I had it spit them out. Terrible parent, I am, but I had plans."

Parent. He didn't see himself as much of a parent to Lucy and Angel, that much was clear the day before. Perhaps a deranged uncle, if Rabastan had to hazard a guess. But he considered the Dementors his children? Why wasn't Rabastan more surprised about that?

"Right, plans," Rabastan just said. "Well, now I'm wide awake. Unlike you."

"Hmm?"

Harrison had his eyes closed, arms crossed and hunching over a bit. Like he was trying to sleep while standing up. Rabastan took his arm and said:

"Let's walk a bit."

"I've only slept for an hour. I need more, but that explosion woke me up."

"Let's walk and find a quiet corner then. If that exists in this manor."

Harrison's home had several corridors, and small corner spaces everywhere. There were some hidden corridors behind the walls, and rooms closed off to everyone but Harrison himself. He chose one of them, pulling Rabastan behind him, and Rabastan found himself looking at four portraits. All four people within were sleeping.

"Rabastan, this is Salazar Slytherin, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw and Godric Gryffindor. Lovely children, really, they are. Also, Salazar and Rowena fancied me a bit, isn't that adorable?"

Rabastan's brain took a while to process all this, and by that point Harrison had found a blanket and was falling asleep in an armchair. Well, he was trying his best at least. Rabastan looked around, found an ottoman and pulled it up to in front of Harrison. He grabbed a hold of Harrison's legs and put the feet up, pulling the blanket over them.

"Comfy?" he then asked.

"I'm an old man, you know. I'm not the child you knew, Rabastan."

"Had you been that child, I would've treated you like this because you would've been a kid. Now I can use the excuse that you are an old man, to spoil you."

"Oh. So no matter what age, you're not going to change how you act?"

"Precisely. Also, you've still got traits of the crazy kid I knew."

"Crazy, huh?" Harrison smiled at that. "Some things don't change. Now, let me sleep for a bit."

It didn't take that long for Harrison to fall asleep, and Rabastan settled back in his own armchair, eyes on the man. When looking outwardly, he could hardly find a trace of Harry Potter. The scar was gone, his face had changed into something thinner and sharper, and whatever had made him look like his father was gone now that he had longer hair.

Yet Rabastan had known. He had known it was his friend. The eyes remained the same. Just older. A lot older. It was scary to think that this man before him was nearing two thousand years old, and that it was Harry Potter.

"I haven't seen you before."

The voice came from one of the paintings, and Rabastan turned to look. Rowena Ravenclaw gazed down at him, hands clasped in her lap. She smiled.

"Who might you be?"

"I'm… Rabastan. Rabastan Lestrange."

The other founders were waking up as well, Salazar stretching and Helga covering a yawn. But soon enough, all four were looking at him. Rabastan wondered if he should wake Harrison up.

"He doesn't invite a lot of people in here," Rowena continued.

"I knew him, when he was young?" Rabastan said. "When he was… Harry Potter."

"So you're from lord's past?" Salazar said.

"Lord?"

"Back when we knew him, he had no other name," Rowena said. "So you knew him by his old name?"

"Yes. And now by his new name."

"Were you two friends?"

"I think we were. Not sure if either of us really knew how to be friends with people anymore. He lost his, and I never really grew up having any," Rabastan admitted. "We just made it up as we went along."

He did consider Harrison his friend. He just wasn't sure if Harrison had done the same. Back when he was Potter, it was difficult to get a read on his true intentions. He was crazy alright, but there were many things Rabastan didn't know about him. Maybe he didn't consider Rabastan a friend, considering what Potter's real friends had done. Perhaps Potter had thought friends turned their back on each other.

"How did you end up here?" Helga wondered.

Rabastan found himself spilling the entire story, from start to finish, probably telling the four founders a lot more about Harrison than they had heard before. Especially considering their gasps and quest to find out more and more.

"He never told you any of this?" Rabastan asked at last.

"Not in great detail," Godric said. "Never really got a straight answer out of him about his past, not easily anyway."

"He felt a lot of pain about his past," Rowena said. "About losing his friend for no reason. Killing all those people didn't help making him feel better. I do believe at one point that the lord just kept killing to not be bored."

"After George died, he came to the prison where I was," Rabastan said, a detail he hadn't told them yet. "I am a bad man, but then again, so is Harrison. And I did come to like the brat when he was imprisoned; I suppose he felt some sort of attachment to me. Or maybe I was the only person he could stand at the time. He freed me, and released Dementors upon a city."

Rabastan didn't know how many had died that night, their souls stolen right out of their bodies. But it had been thousands.

"I don't know why exactly he did that," Rabastan confessed as he looked at Harrison's peaceful face. "Probably working out his anger and grief. After that, he never really stopped doing that."

"So he's always been a handful?" Helga said. "Elise and Lucian had their work cut out, making sure he was happy whilst ensuring he remained in one piece."

"I don't envy them. He was fine with me, I could argue and all that, but from what I've heard about the old him, the one who didn't remember George dying… he sounds like a right arsehole to take care of."

"Who's the arsehole?" Harrison muttered, shifting in his seat.

"You," Rabastan said.

"That's old news, Rabastan. Are you lot gossiping about me?"

"Well, you never tell us anything," Salazar said. "Thankfully you came here with a person who was more than happy to share details."

"Ugh, details," Harrison replied as he opened his eyes to slits. "I'm still tired."

"So go back to sleep, it ain't that hard," Rabastan said.

"Then shush."

"Don't tell me to shush. You shush."

"Yeah, you shush," Godric said.

"Children…" Harrison groaned and pulled the blanket over his head. "I'm surrounded by children."

"You started it," Rowena pointed out.

"Yes, I know. Sleeping again."

Rabastan relaxed into his seat. The blanket dropped down soon enough, with Harrison asleep once more. He didn't look very evil now, but then again, few did in their sleep.

"This is rather strange," Rabastan said. "I still feel like I'm dreaming. That I'm going to wake up and realize I didn't find him again. That we're trapped in a dying world, me and Draco and his parents."

"It must have been quite a depressing place to live in," Rowena said.

"We managed, somehow. I'll get used to not being there."

The conversation tapered on and off as Harrison slept soundly next to Rabastan. At one point, Lucian found them and brought Rabastan something to eat. When he tried to say he could get it himself next time, Lucian stared him down until he resigned to the fact he would most likely not be able to get food himself without one of Harrison's servants interfering. Apparently, the sandwiches the day before weren't a one-time occurrence.

A while later, when Rabastan had gotten a book to read, Elise came and told them Voldemort had arrived.

"Should we wake him?" Rabastan said.

"Might as well, or he won't sleep tonight," she replied and moved to stand in front of Harrison.

He noted she didn't touch Harrison.

"Master, time to wake up."

Harrison opened one eye, then the other. He yawned and stretched out.

"What?" he said to Elise.

"Voldemort is here."

"Oh. Fine." Harrison got up from the chair. "Let's go then."

"Maybe you should dress, master?"

Harrison tapped himself and transformed his clothes to something more of a daywear. Rabastan did the same with his own clothes, not wanting to appear in his sleeping clothes in front of the Dark Lord.

Voldemort was waiting in the hall, with Lucius. Lucian must have gone to get Draco, because they came down the stairs shortly afterwards.

"Joanne and Christian are preparing tea and something to eat to it," Elise said. "Are you going to be in the same room?"

"I was thinking of going through a few things with Harrison," Voldemort said. "But I see no reason to not being in the same room."

So they ended up in the living room, Lucius and Draco soon engrossed in conversation that Rabastan kept being dragged into until he simply just let himself be with the two of them. Voldemort and Harrison was poring over papers, apparently planning on how to search for Bones' group with Death Eaters and Harrison's servants working together.

He wondered how long it would take for it to feel normal, being with Harrison. In one way, he felt it was normal already. In another way, he felt completely foreign to this home and all its inhabitants.

Angel and Lucy came in at one point, apparently Ywgraine baby-sitting them, and Angel climbed up in the armchair Harrison was sitting in. As he was focused on the papers, he didn't stiffen up as he did yesterday, not even when Angel clung to his back and put her little head on his shoulder. Lucy looked at Rabastan and Draco an extra time, but Ywgraine said:

"It's just master's friends."

"I know," the girl replied.

She was taking it rather well. Rabastan wondered how often new people came into the house, or if Lucy was just really good at adjusting to new things.

"You look like one of the Death Eaters," she told him.

"Me?" he said and she nodded. "I'm not surprised, considering I am a Death Eater from another dimension."

"You mean… there's two of you?" Lucy looked at him, and then at Draco. "He looks different."

"It's a different Draco," Rabastan said. "Harrison knew us."

Lucy dragged a chair over to him, and thus Rabastan ended up with a ten-year old girl asking him dozens of questions about him, Draco, Harrison and the world they had left behind. It didn't take long before Rabastan began to wonder if Lucy had always had this dismissive, easy-going nature or if she developed it after Harrison took her in.

Ywgraine was sitting near them, listening intently when Rabastan retold Lucy stories about Harrison when he was young. He left out any gory details, and instead told her how Harrison loved to get the Dementors to wake Rabastan up, knowing full well how Rabastan reacted. Screaming like there was no tomorrow.

"Oh, so Uncle Harrison has always been weird?" Lucy asked at last.

"Well, not when he was your age. He changed when he got older."

"There is a time when he was normal?" she wondered.

"Not really normal, no. Or, no, that's wrong. For the first year in his life, he was most likely normal. Most toddlers are."

"Uncle Harrison as a toddler," Lucy said and stared into space. "I can't imagine it."

"So adorable," Ywgraine muttered. "Master, as a toddler…"

Rabastan checked to see if Harrison had heard that, but he seemed absorbed in the papers even as Angel had started braiding his hair with the skill of a child. She even had her tongue sticking out in concentration.

This… this, Rabastan could get used to.

-o-

But no, he didn't settle in right away. Rabastan kept waking up, thinking he would be met by a townhouse's dusty rooms, old mattresses and a cracked reality outside the window. Waking up in a soft bed, in a dust-free room, and nothing but a garden outside his window was a bit confusing until he remembered.

What didn't take that long to figure out, merely a week, was that Harrison wasn't a morning person. Probably because he didn't seem to sleep often, and when he did, it wasn't long enough so he woke up still tired, which caused him to be in a cranky mood unless he could be persuaded to take a nap. Like a tired toddler.

(Draco's words, not Rabastan's but yes, it was satisfying to see the look on Harrison's face when Draco told him that.)

"Why doesn't he sleep longer?" Rabastan asked Elise one and a half week after they had arrived at Harrison's manor. "I mean, is he that busy?"

"No, it's just master is worried he'll oversleep."

"Oversleep? By how much can he oversleep?"

"By a year or so," she replied. "Master could sleep for months on end, before. But he also doesn't like to dream, so he stays up as long as possible to be assured his sleep is so deep he won't dream."

"Oh… well, I suppose that's one method."

Rabastan wondered what kind of dreams Harrison had, to make him want to avoid dreaming that much. Maybe he would work up the courage to ask the man one day.

However, as much as Rabastan kept thinking he had dreamed this all up only to realize it was reality, he and Draco soon enough settled into a rhythm in the Nightmare Lord's manor. There wasn't any routines on how things were done at the manor, except for the children; they had meal times and pretty much a set time when they went to bed. Additionally, Angel still got tired during the days and while she insisted she didn't need naps, she usually ended up sleeping an hour or so in the afternoon.

Her favourite place seemed to be resting against Harrison's chest as he sat reading a book. Rabastan hadn't taken Harrison as much of a reader back when he was Potter, and while he had vast amounts of knowledge now, much of it seemed to come from practical experience and just the years he had been alive.

"It's an attempt of a new hobby," Lucian explained to Rabastan. "Reading."

"Reading as a hobby?"

"It's better than the time he considered torture a hobby."

"Oh…"

"I liked it when he did things," Elise muttered. "Master is much calmer if he does things, instead of just sitting around."

"Reading isn't just sitting around," Lucian insisted.

"For master, it might as well be."

"He doesn't seem that bored yet."

"That's only because he's terrified of disturbing Angel's sleep."

"Why would he be scared of that?" Rabastan wondered quietly.

"Because Angel has a powerful set of lungs to cry with," Elise said. "And she knows by now how to use that to her advantage."

"You mean he isn't used to children crying around him."

"I mean, he can't kill this one because he likes her too much."

Hearing Harrison probably having killed children before should be horrifying, and it was to normal people. But Rabastan hadn't been good in a long, long time so he just nodded and carried on as usual.

As Rabastan started to learn more and more about Harrison, he also realized Harrison made no real effort to remain in the public eye. He aided Voldemort and Lucius whenever necessary, of course, but he didn't try to be a member of any society. He kept to the manor, or the grounds around the manor.

From time to time, he seemed to have a fit and disappeared for hours on end, only to return marginally calmer. Sometimes he travelled to another country. Other times he killed something. A few times he just went somewhere to observe other people.

"Here," Harrison said to Rabastan three weeks after they had come to live with the Nightmare Lord.

Rabastan took the wrapped object and unwrapped it. It was a glass orb, with a light faintly shining within.

"What does it do?" Rabastan asked.

"It's supposed to have a soothing aura."

"Don't you need it?"

"I hate being soothed," Harrison replied.

"You sure hate a lot of things."

"Of course I do; it's easy to hate things."

Rabastan laughed at that. Sometimes, Harrison said things that sounded so childish, yet completely true. Hate was indeed easy, and Harrison was a prime example of a person who hated a lot of things.

"Thank you," Rabastan said. "Unlike you, I can be persuaded to be soothed when I'm upset."

"I know. That's why I got it for you."

"… Thank you. Truly. It still feels unreal, some mornings. The fact that we don't need to fear falling through a crack of time, of disappearing entirely from our own timeline."

"Do you still feel sad about Lucius and Narcissa?"

"Yes. Draco might need something like this too."

"I already gave him one," Harrison said. "Before I came to find you. He seemed to appreciate it."

"I'm not surprised. But you know, there's something that I've wondered about."

"What is it?" Harrison asked as they began to walk to Rabastan's room.

"We felt your magic through one of the cracks," Rabastan explained. "This you already know. But how could we feel it? It was so powerful, like… like it washed over us."

Harrison seemed to think about it, eyes sliding over the walls and floor as they walked.

"I tried out a spell," he said. "That must have been it. It was supposed to do something with the ground, but it literally back-fired on me. I blacked out, but Elise said it left a crater behind."

The crater they had landed in as they fell through the crack.

"I thought about it, if it was your magic that had done it," Rabastan said. "But then I got a bit busy and I guess I lost track of that thought."

"So I guess the spell wasn't a total failure after all," Harrison said.

"You just said it back-fired on you, and you lost consciousness."

"Yes, yes, but it was that magic that enabled you to come here. To come to me."

"Oh…"

Rabastan nodded.

"But we brought trouble with us," he continued.

"We'll find them soon enough," Harrison said. "And then we'll kill them. Problem solved."

"Killing is really your answer to almost everything, isn't it?"

"I wouldn't be the Nightmare Lord if killing wasn't my answer to most things I encounter."

Rabastan smiled, and opened the door to his room. His room, not some random room in a random house that wasn't splintered into pieces with cracks of time. His own room, that was slowly getting filled with things he enjoyed. He placed the glass orb on the nightstand, and it hovered slightly over the surface. He poked it and it gently moved.

"Uncle Harrison!"

Lucy's yell came from below, and Harrison simply stuck his head out of the room to yell back:

"What, you little devil?"

"George blew something up again!"

"Oh dear, those twins are truly aiming for Severus' poor heart," Harrison muttered as he shook his head. "Good thing I can restart it if he ever gets a heart attack out of anger while chasing them down…"

Then he raised his voice and shouted:

"Severus, you are free to do what you want!"

Rabastan didn't hear what the spell was, but he certainly heard it hit the wall and George's shriek, followed by footsteps. Somewhere, Lucy was laughing.

It was chaos. A different kind of chaos, and one he preferred over the world he had left behind.

To be continued…

So they are adjusting to their new life.

Chapter five: The hunt for Bones' group continues. What are they up to?

See you guys later,

Tiro