AN: To those who have been asking for longer chapters: I know my chapters are rather short compared to what you're used from other fanfiction writers. It's just that I am at work for about 11-13 hours a day and it's difficult for me to write anything at all, to speak nothing about 5-6k words chapters. Not trying to complain, this is just life with its ups and downs. Currently, it's the 'downs' phase for me haha. Anyway. I'm sorry to say but the length of the chapters will likely not change in the immediate future. It is what it is.

With that being said, here's the new chapter, enjoy!

Chapter 21 - Hope

"I don't need to see a mind Healer, I'm perfectly fine!"

"The very fact that you're saying you're fine after killing 7 people is proof enough that you're not fine!" Bellatrix retorted.

"People? When and where? That's not what I remember. What I killed was a bunch of rabid dogs. I just put them out of their misery." he said.

The day after the assassination attempt on their persons in Diagon Alley, despite that it was Christmas Eve, Bellatrix woke Harry up at the first hour in the morning. She wanted to take him to Saint Mungo's Hospital to see a mind healer. He had been too cold and too indifferent about the fact that he had killed someone. Normal people had rather strong reactions to such acts, especially children. In comparison, he seemed completely unaffected so she was worried about his mental health.

Harry sighed and took her hand and led (dragged) her to sit on the sofa with him.

"I wanted to speak to you about this yesterday but I was unsure of your mental state-"

"You're worried about MY mental state?!" she cut in incredulously.

"Please, Bella, just listen...It's very important!" he said and waited for her to agree before continuing. "Harry Potter of this world died in the summer of last year. He fell from a balcony at the orphanage and cracked his head. He never got to see Hogwarts at all."

She looked at him bewildered. "What do you mean...?"

Harry wasn't sure how to break it to her. With Fleur, it had been much easier because she was a time-traveller herself. She had been more open to accepting his circumstances and believe him - she had even been the one to open the subject.

"Have you never wondered how do I know so many spells? Why am I so unnaturally calm? Unnaturally mature? Why I don't act like a normal 12-year-old boy and why I don't mingle with other children my age?"

Bellatrix could not deny it. She had been thinking about those questions every day.

"Or how have I easily killed 7 Death Eaters yesterday? Why I don't seem to care about it?"

Seeing that she did not have an answer, he continued: "Because I am used to it. I've been doing that for the biggest part of the last decade, back in my own world."

Bellatrix removed her hand from his and leaned back a little. It was an involuntary action on her part, she had not meant to do that. However, his words had startled her too much. The worst part was that she found herself leaning towards believing his outrageous claims because his behaviour and demeanour over the past year and a half suddenly made a whole lot more sense. His spectacular performance the previous day became easier to accept too.

"Then...who are you? The real you?" she said with difficulty.

"I am still Harry Potter. Just much older and from a different world."

"Another world?" she asked.

"A parallel universe. A world where Harry Potter was the Boy Who Lived, not Neville Longbottom."

After a few moments, she raised another question:

"How are you here?"

"I died. Or better said, I committed suicide by stepping into the Veil of Death at the Department of Mysteries. The next thing I know, I woke up in this body. The body of an 11-year-old boy."

She immediately became alarmed.

"How do you know about that?"

The Veil of Death was supposed to be a tightly kept secret of the Department of Mysteries. The public at large had no idea about its existence, to say nothing about a child like Harry.

"So it exists here as well..." Harry mused before answering: "I told you, I'm from a parallel universe."

It was then that his words finally sank in. A thoughtful look appeared on her face but then it was quickly replaced by curiosity.

"How old were you when you stepped into the Veil? And why did you do that?"

Harry thought for a few seconds to what extent he should tell her about his past before saying:

"Things weren't nice back in my world...and that's putting it lightly. There were three wizarding wars in the span of 20 years, with the last one being large enough to rival the war of Grindelwald from 50 years ago. All of it was caused by Voldemort who had somehow managed to become immortal."

She was listening to his words with rapt attention.

"I killed him 3 times... 4 times if also you count the time when I was a baby. The bastard kept resurrecting and I didn't find out how he was doing it until I was in my 40s."

He let out a mirthless laugh. "You can imagine my feelings when I found out that the archenemy that I've been fighting against my entire life could keep coming back to life exactly because of me. I was his Horcrux. The scar on my forehead was housing a piece of his soul."

Bellatrix looked at him wide-eyed. As a master of the Dark Arts, she knew what Horcruxes were. She was almost bursting with curiosity. She wanted to know how did that piece of Voldemort's soul not take over his mind while he had been a child? How had he even managed to make it to adulthood at all? She wanted to know more. Everything. But she restrained herself. She could see how difficult it was for Harry to tell her about his past.

"So, in the end, I needed to die in order for Voldemort to be killed for good. I wasn't really sad if I'm being honest. There was nothing left for me over there... no family, no friends, nothing. I was in my 40s, all alone, and looking no different than Mad-Eye Moody after more than a decade of war. Missing an arm and with more scars on my body than I could count. I won't lie and say I was happy to die either... I was just bitter. If only I had known that information 20 years earlier, how many lives would have been saved? How much suffering would have been avoided?"

The bitterness in his voice was impossible to fake. At that moment, despite his young and seemingly innocent face, he gave off a weary impression, as if he was an old and tired man, fed up with everything.

"So Dumbledore was right all along, Voldemort is not truly dead...did he make Horcruxes in this world too?" Bellatrix wondered.

"He will be back, that's for sure," Harry agreed. "But don't make the mistake of thinking that what happened back in my world would happen here as well. This world is quite different. At the very least, if he had made the same Horcruxes in this world too, they are not hidden in the same places, I checked one of them. I couldn't find it."

"But the Longbottom boy... must he die too, like you did?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know what steps Voldemort had taken in this world to keep himself alive. But it won't do any good to act based on speculations. I told you, this world is quite different from my own. You, yourself, are the living proof of it."

"How so?" she asked, once again very curious.

"Back in my world, Bellatrix never accepted that internship at the Department of Mysteries after graduating from Hogwarts. She married Rodolphus Lestrange and joined the Dark Lord. She became his most trusted and most dangerous Death Eater. I probably hated that woman even more than Voldemort himself... okay, maybe not, but she was up there."

Bellatrix was tempted to think that he was joking but he wasn't smiling. He was dead serious. She swallowed a thick node in her neck.

"You hated me?"

"Not you. As for your other self? Very much, yes. But that's a long time ago, in the past... more than 20 years ago. Time dulls everything."

Her violet eyes peered into his emerald green ones searchingly.

"Do you... ...do you feel any resentment toward me?" she asked in a quiet voice.

"Would I have saved your life yesterday if I had had any ill thoughts against you? I don't hate you, Bella... You're the one person I care about the most in this life."

He felt his face warming up as he flushed in slight embarrassment at his confession but he continued to speak.

"In my mind, I can't compare you with that psychotic woman from my past. The two of you are simply too different. She was cruel, violent, sadistic, murderous, insane, and ugly and gaunt from spending 15 years in Azkaban. You are caring, warm, loving, smart, and beautiful..." he said sincerely while looking her in the eyes. Despite being a confident person, well-aware of her self-worth, Bellatrix became slightly shy at his blunt honesty as he praised her. She could see it in his eyes that he meant every word he said.

"...You had nothing to gain from taking me in. I was just an additional responsibility that had been thrust onto you due to Dumbledore's paranoia. Yet you cared for me as if I were your own child. You made me experience again what it feels like to have a family, or even a parent...despite that we are of the same age."

As he said that, he chuckled a bit at the last part. But he soon became quiet. The living room of Blackthorn descended into silence for a time.

"Where does that leave us now?" Harry asked after a while.

At her inquisitive expression, he continued: "Knowing that you have a 40-year-old man in your home posing as a child is most likely not a reassuring thought...if you want me to leave, I could pack my things even today. There would be no hard feelings on my side at all."

"What are you talking about? Did you hit your head or something?" she snapped at him.

"Eh?"

"Don't 'eh' me! Didn't I tell you yesterday? You saved my life and I don't take my life lightly!" she said in indignation.

"I've been lying to you for over a year-" he began to say but Bellatrix cut him off:

"Do you think that I would have believed your words if you had told me these things before? I wouldn't believe you now either if I didn't see you with my own eyes how effortlessly you killed 7 grown-up wizards yesterday. No matter how much of a genius a child is, doing something like that is too exaggerated. That you know about a secret like the Veil is also proof that you're not a normal child too."

She took his hand in hers and squeezed it a bit while saying, this time in a gentler voice:

"Besides, I promised, didn't I? I'll never give you up. Whether you're 12 or my age...that doesn't change anything. I still only see you as Harry. I still love you as if you were my boy."

Harry cleared his throat uncomfortably and blinked a few times very fast, trying to quickly clear away the wetness that suddenly appeared in his eyes. How would it have appeared if he started crying after just saying that he was mentally in his 40s? Just the thought of doing that embarrassed him to no end.

"You can cry if you want," Bella suddenly said teasingly. "I promise I won't laugh~"

"Shut up!" he bit back grumpily, making her start giggling.

Still laughing, she took him by surprise when she wrapped her arms around his smaller body. Harry did not fight against her embrace.

Confessing that he was from another world had been rather emotionally trying for him. The warmth and comfort of Bellatrix's embrace coupled with the fact that it was still very early in the morning unknowingly lulled him to sleep.

She gently moved his body to lie down, with his head in her lap. There were still so many things she wanted to talk with Harry about, specifically about the parallel universe in which he had been born. When she had been silent (before Harry suggested he packed his things and leave) she had been quiet because her mind as a researcher had been overwhelmed by a torrent of new possibilities and theories related to alternate universes, the Veil of Death, reincarnation, afterlife, and others. She could barely wait to go to the Department of Mysteries and start a research project on the Veil. She was even tempted to just ditch her job as a professor at Hogwarts and return to the Department of Mysteries right away.

After summoning a blanket from the bedroom to cover Harry's sleeping form with it, she started to absent-mindedly run her fingers through his messy hair and caress him. In the light of the current events, she knew that their relationship would suffer some changes in the following weeks. She did not know what the future had in store for the two of them but she had been honest in what she told him earlier: whether he was 12 or 40, she did not care. Aside from her curiosity regarding a parallel universe, Bellatrix did not care about what he had done in his past either.

'It's impossible for him to one day call me mum...' Bellatrix thought wistfully. She had always wanted to have a child. 'But that doesn't mean we can't continue to be a family. Instead of auntie, I'll make him call me big sis.'

At that thought, she sniffed with subdued laughter as to not wake him up.

From his words, she gathered that he had been some sort of war hero, a battle-hardened man in his past life. However, in her eyes, he did not look anything like that. To her, he was just a scrawny and cute little boy, one that she felt compelled to care for and protect.

'Though it's him who protected me yesterday. He saved my life from a Killing Curse... and he easily killed 7 Death Eaters too. Merlin, I thought I was teaching him useful spells for duelling in our practice lessons! But he can probably teach me a thing or two.'

A wave of embarrassment washed over her as she recalled various instances from their time spent together and realized how her behaviour must've looked in the eyes of a man who was of the same age as her. Her pale white cheeks became red, she was mortified with shame.

'Argh! I'll pay him back for this or my name isn't Black!'

⁂

For the world at large, this year's Christmas was very different from the previous one. The brazen assassination attempt of Bellatrix Black and her protege by the 10 wizards dressed in Death Eaters robes had thrown the country into panic. The situation had already been extremely unstable after the research of Bellatrix regarding Magic Ancestry was published. After this assassination attempt, many people became anxious about the future because the current circumstances seemed perfect for a new civil war to break out.

However, not all was dark and bleak. The fact that Bellatrix Black had not only survived the assassination but even killed every single one of her 10 attackers had elevated her fame to incredible proportions. She was no longer just a respected and controversial witch; her status had been elevated to that of a massive star. If she were to come to Diagon Alley in the present, she would be mobbed in an instant, no different than the Boy Who Lived and his family.

Furthermore, there were several eyewitnesses on Diagon Alley that evening that had come forth and sworn that they had seen the young boy, Harry Potter, taking out at least half of their attackers. Most people did not believe their claims...but the truth was that reporters from all kinds of newspapers, even from outside of Great Britain, felt like pulling their hair out of frustration because they did not know how to get a hold of Harry and Bella to interview them.

But Harry and Bella had no interest to entertain them. Instead, they were having a beautiful moment together with their family. Andromeda, Ted, and Nymphadora Tonks were together with Harry and Bellatrix and a sober Sirius Black in the spacious kitchen of Grimmauld Place, feasting.

Sober Sirius turned out to be as frivolous, charismatic, and amusing as Harry's godfather from his past life. As for the young Auror who was sporting long and wavy green hair that day, she was just as vivacious as Harry remembered her.

"I'm telling you, Sirius, as small and scrawny as he looks, he managed to woo a French Veela 3 years older than him!" Tonks said teasingly.

"And how would you know that? You're working on the night shift, after the curfew!" Harry retorted. "Besides, there's nothing of that sort between us. We're just friends."

"Mhm, keep telling yourself that. I saw the way she looks at you~" Tonks said with a grin.

"I'm 12 for god's sake! You said it yourself, I'm small and scrawny, and three years younger. Her type of girls doesn't go for those like me."

"Well, don't be so sure, Harry," Sirius said with a shit-eating grin on his face. "Some women like them younger. You know, so they can raise them the way they like them. There was this 6th-year Ravenclaw girl when I was in my first year at Hogwarts that-"

"Merlin, he's only 12! One more word, Sirius, and you'll puke snails for the rest of the year. Are we understood?" Andromeda suddenly butted in their conversation sternly.

"Yes, Andy," he said meekly, completely unbecoming of his position as the Head of the Black family.

Everyone at the table burst into laughter, Andromeda and Sirius included.

"I still can't believe that someone tried to kill you two days ago..." Ted Tonks suddenly said after the laughter subsided as he took a look at the edition of Daily Prophet in front of him on the table. "I don't want to imagine how this Christmas would've turned out if-"

At the disapproving look of his wife, Ted stopped speaking. He noticed the mood that he had created with those words.

"It was very close. I thought I was a goner too." Bellatrix admitted. "But Harry here," and she put her arm around him in a one-armed hug (they were sitting next to each other at the table) "had the presence of mind and calmness to actually cast a Bird Summoning Charm at the very last second!" she said and then planted a wet kiss on his cheek.

"Aww, look at him, he's blushing! Stop it, aunt Bella, you're embarrassing him!" Tonks cooed and giggled.

"Wait, wait a moment! You can stop the Killing Curse with somethings as banal as that?!" Ted Tonks asked, eyes wide in surprise. "I thought that, you know, it's the Killing Curse! I thought it was unblockable!"

"It's the Shielding Charm that can't stop it, that's why many people are under the impression that nothing can. But any physical object you throw in its way can stop it - be it a bird or a piece of furniture, or whatever." Andromeda explained to her husband.

Ted Tonks, despite being a wizard, had chosen to find a job in the Muggle world. It had been due to the persecution of the Black family after they cast Andromeda out for eloping with him. With their connections, the Blacks had made it impossible for Ted to find a wizarding job in the UK. Nevertheless, that had not put the young man down. He had persevered. Nowadays, Ted Tonks was working as a senior accountant, he had a rather decent job. That being said, unlike his wife and her side of the family - Andromeda, Bellatrix, and Sirius were all rather accomplished with a wand - Ted was not exactly the most adept duellist in the room.

"However, for a young boy to be so calm and lucid in front of mortal danger...you'll make a damn fine wizard one day, Harry." Sirius praised and raised his goblet of wine at him.

The other adults at the table also raised their glasses and cheered for him. The impromptu toast in his honour made Harry feel all warm and fuzzy inside. He could see and feel that everyone there had genuinely accepted him into their family. It looked like saving Bellatrix's life had made him a Black in all but blood in their eyes. He was part of their family now.

'I have a family...'

His fingers tightened around his glass of pumpkin juice.

'I won't lose them too. I will protect them. I will protect everyone here.'

"Excuse me, I need to use the loo," Harry said suddenly and stood up from his seat.

The rest of the people at the table did not look at him strangely, there was nothing unusual about someone needing to go to the restroom. But when the entrance door of the house was heard, Bellatrix quickly stood up and rushed after him. She arrived in the doorway just in time to hear Harry chanting:

"Expecto Patronum!"

A bright light exploded from his wand - so powerful that it blinded her! Though it was night outside - it was 9 pm, in December - there was so much light, one could be fooled to think it was noon. Sirius, Andromeda, Tonks, and Ted also rushed out too, attracted by the blinding light that had started shining through the windows of the kitchen.

A collective gasp of amazement was heard when they looked outside and saw what was the source of that blinding light. It was a pure white being of light, a four-legged beast with two bat-like wings, a bone-thin body, and a dragon-like face.

"A Thestral!" Bellatrix whispered.

Despite its scary appearance, they could only feel warmth and comfort radiating from the Thestral Patronus. Turning towards them, Harry's face was glowing with happiness and excitement.

Except for Bellatrix who knew who he truly was, everyone else was looking at him as if he had suddenly grown two heads. There were many grown-up wizards who could barely cast a mist-like Patronus Charm, yet he, a 12-year-old boy had cast such a powerful, corporeal Patronus. The form that his Patronus had taken was a little off-putting - Thestrals were seen as omens of death by most people - but that did not undermine his achievement in the least.

However, for Harry, it was not the success of casting the spell itself that had filled him with happiness but what it represented. He had not been able to cast this charm at all in the past 16 years after the Weasley family had been murdered. He had not been able to cast it the previous Christmas either. But now it was different. That illusory Thestral flying in the air was the embodiment of his hope. Hope for a brighter future, free from the shackles of his past. Hope for a future with his new family.

AN: I hadn't thought that 'monster' would give off a negative vibe when I wrote this chapter. It must be due to reading too many Chinese fantasy novels x_x. This word is often used to describe formidable people/geniuses (in a good way) in xianxia/xuanhuan novels. Anyway, thank you for the constructive criticism, I have changed 'monster' with a different expression.