Chapter II:
Briefly, the world seemed to catch its breath. Sharpness tingled Harry as red darkness folded around him. The smooth finish of his wand became rigid in the palm of his hand.
She's a mage, he thought to himself, how interesting.
Despite his many years of living, Harry had never encountered a true mage. Few witches and wizards, himself included, could do small feats of magic without the aid of a wand, but nothing like that. Nothing like those scarlet tendrils that glowed like the rays of a dying sun. Whoever this Wanda was, he would have to be careful.
He blinked, and the wizard found himself planted back in reality; face first in a pile of sodden mulch.
"Well, this is nothing new." He grumbled, shaking off the crud as he stood up.
Charming himself clean, he took in a row of houses and lawns that resembled those of Privet Drive. Looking around further, it was clear that he was still in whatever this place was. The lone positive was that time was moving normally again, no longer in a frozen state. Other than that, his reality appeared rather bleak.
With Halloween still brewing, Harry took to the streets. No sign was there of Wanda or her friend, but that fact did not grant him solace whatsoever.
For a second the thought of using the time-turner approached him. However, that second quickly ticked past. He never once heard of one that could move forward in time. Plus, after its one usage saw him end up here, he shivered at the thought of what using it again might induce.
No sooner had the thought left his mind did he hear a loud bang coming from around the street corner. If Harry were wise, he would have run in the opposite direction, but that was just not his style. He turned to find the woman, Wanda, hovering not far away above the ground, looking disinclined to hear him out any further.
Harry drew his wand.
"Who are you!" Wanda again threatened, bearing down on him with her scarlet energy. "Where did you come from?"
No longer taken by surprise, Harry refused to oblige,
"What does it matter to you?"
He was met with a burst of scarlet in response, which he reduced with a flick of his wrist. Thankfully, his aptitude for magic had survived his reversion.
Wanda was vibrating now, whether it was because of rage or the sadness he knew so well, he was not sure. Perceptive was he, to see the reason behind people's hatred. Very rarely did it manifest itself without reason. His decades spent in woe taught him so.
Harry kept his stance defensive as Wanda encroached.
From her hands, more tendrils shot out and latched onto a nearby car, lifting it from the asphalt and sending it flying in his direction.
"Reducto!"
The blue light of the curse shot out of Harry's wand, transforming the car into a million shiny pieces on the ground.
Wanda, unperturbed, took hold of the car remnants, willing them to reform in the shape of a dragon, from which its mouth also shot scarlet red.
A quick shield charm allowed him to dodge the attack, before unleashing a spell created by an old friend,
"Sectumsempra!"
Brilliantly, the scarlet-breathing poltergeist dissolved as burning lacerations consumed it from within.
"Okay, can you just give me a moment!" Harry pleaded while he steadied himself. "This is all just some big misunderstanding!"
Was this how magic was used in America? He had heard strange things about the MACUSA, but did they allow magic like this to go unchecked in muggle presence? Harry chanced a glance, worried that passersby were in danger of being harmed. To his astonishment though, it seemed like the town had cleared itself completely.
"I don't believe you." Wanda muttered almost sadly as she attacked again.
Harry spun, and wandlessly accioed object after object in effort to block her searing strikes. Each collision gave the illusion that the world was shaking. But he soon realized that it was no illusion at all.
The ground was quaking, buildings collapsing inconceivably into nothing, disappearing into thin air. The sky had shifted to an impossible shade of green, then yellow, then purple, throwing every prior conception of Harry's off-kilter. It was as if reality itself was breaking apart.
Wanda remained uncaring, growing increasingly unstable as she wavered before him. A radiant diadem was now on her head, with a hypnotizing outfit giving her the appearance of a goddess. Her presence drew what little light was left from the world, dimming their arena in an eerie gloom.
"Gah!" She cried as she lashed out in another frenzy.
Harry, keen on his survival, countered with an equally frenetic defense: Fiendfyre.
With a roar, his dragon appeared, its fire raging as it consumed the scarlet with glee. Wanda's face showed surprise for a moment before she slammed her hands together, destroying the beast from within.
Harry summoned more energy, his tendrils attacking hers as they moved down the street, carnage following behind them.
Clear was it that they were locked in a magical stalemate, neither of them possessing a distinct advantage over the other. Despite this however, Harry almost found himself grinning. It had been so long since he experienced thrill like this, filling him with a budding sense of nostalgia.
Accordingly, instinctively and by accident, Harry countered her latest with an,
"Expelliarmus!"
And watched as his noble streak of red met hers in the middle. Like ballet, the two strands danced around each other before becoming one unified blinding light. Similar was it to his battle with Voldemort years ago, their spells locking in tandem, neither willing to budge.
Bound in this way, he met Wanda's glare, feeling the pain her eyes emitted as she allowed her powers to consume her. Seeing this, it became apparent to Harry that her violence was a product of her need to protect. However, the realization proved to be short-lived as darkness ensconced him yet again.
In an instant, Harry found his mind assaulted by memories. Not of his own, but hers. And through these lenses, he experienced death and family, destruction and happiness. Everything she lived through, all that she had suffered and enjoyed, was now his to view.
Though he could not see his body, he felt his shoulders sag underneath her burden.
To Harry, it now made sense.
With a jolt, the world came crashing back to him, and Harry found himself flattened against the hard road. Each next inhalation of his came shallow, the freezing sting in his chest making it a struggle to feel anything other than cold. Raising his throbbing head, his eyes landed on Wanda, who too was splayed on the ground.
Breathless, Harry bit his tongue, stopping himself from lashing out with another spell.
"Please," he breathed. "Let's have a chat. I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot."
-Ω-
Harry had never frequented a muggle bar before, but if there was any night in his life were such a stopover seemed appropriate, this was the one.
The first hurdle he overcame was that he somehow managed to fumble his way into a completely different universe. His time-turner, the cursed thing, had single-handedly managed to create a rift in the Space-Time Continuum, leaving Harry, not the first time in his life, to become a trailblazer, and for all the wrong reasons.
Of course, that was not all, nothing could ever be that simple for one Harry James Potter. He also had to come to grips with the fact that this reality he now existed in was not even a reality at all, but rather a figment of the imagination. The imagination of the woman sitting across from him. The only other patron in the bar they were now seated in. The bar that she created with the snap of her fingers.
"What the bloody hell is going on here?"
The woman stared emotionlessly back at him. "You tell me."
Harry fought the urge to laugh. Wary as he was curious, he shifted in his seat,
"Well, we can start with our names first."
"I already know your name."
"Well, okay, back to my first question then."
"I already told you."
Harry just sighed, "You're not making things easy, are you?"
"Sorry," Wanda offered with no hint of remorse, "I don't usually treat intruders too kindly."
"Wasn't on purpose, mind you. It was my time-turner."
They both glanced at the putrid little trinket between them.
"Then use it to go back to wherever you came from." Wanda's words languished in the air.
"If only it were that easy," Harry laughed. "That's not how they work. They can't go forward in time, you have to wait for them to send you back in time."
"So you're stuck here?"
"For now. I'm afraid I'm not sure if it'll ever send me back."
Wanda watched him for long seconds.
"No, this won't do." She concluded, eyes narrowing to a vicious glare. "You must leave. Now."
Harry raised his voice, "We've been over this already, I can't! Believe me, I wish I could!"
"And what are you, exactly?" Wanda asked.
"A wizard. You?"
"A woman that wants to be left alone."
Harry's brow creased at the challenge that Wanda was. "Trust, I've met plenty of women that want to be left alone as well, but none of them can do the things you do. Care to explain?"
"You wouldn't believe me," she snorted.
"Try me."
For a second, red flashed in her eyes.
"It would be a waste of our time," she argued.
"Wanda," he sighed, "I'm just trying to help."
"I don't want your help!"
"You don't want to help me try and get back?"
"You just told me there's nothing to do!"
Harry paused,
"A drink would help."
The silence that followed was heavy and thick with tension. Harry bit his lip, worried if he overstepped and wondering if their truce would devolve back into war. But a flurry of hand motions later, they each had an ice-cold vodka tonic sitting in front of them.
Wanda toyed with her straw, stabbing at limes and ice cubes as they swirled around. Harry found it surreal how this was the same woman that tried to kill him not even an hour before. He was no Legilimen, but he did not need that art to know she was a force of nature. A hurricane with devastating power. An earthquake made of a thousand tremors. Impulsiveness and chaos ruled her. There was a certain look in a killer's eyes, and hers were no different from the rest, no different from his. Though he did see something more behind her paling greens, an all too familiar pain that he had lived many times over.
"Okay, explain to me again, please." He carefully spoke, "In this… place we're in, you can create anything?"
"Yes."
"Like this town, or this bar that you planted in the middle of the street."
Wanda blinked.
"Alright so why did you create this to begin with? Why not live in your real-world self?" Harry asked. "I'm trying to understand."
Wanda's mouth opened slightly, words dancing at the tip of her tongue.
The gears spinning inside his head connected dot with dot, relating the visions he saw back to the present moment,
"The things I saw in my head. The images, the people, the voices."
Another paused presided over them, though this one felt heavy with import. It felt momentous, so it needed time to unfold.
"You saw inside my head?" Wanda uttered, before alighting herself again in scarlet,
"YOU SAW INSIDE MY HEAD?"
If there was anybody Harry could have thanked at that moment, it would have been Snape. Scarlet tendrils bored into the sides of Harry's temple, lifting him upward as Wanda again consumed herself with rage. However, her attempts at reaching his mind were thwarted by the teachings of his old potions professor. Harry may not have been a Legilimen, but by Merlin's beard, he was a damn good Occlumen.
"Stop. Please." Harry implored through gritted teeth, refusing to fight back. "It was an accident!"
Wanda yelled in frustration, tinting the edges of Harry's vision red as he fought to maintain consciousness. The words he was trying to string together refused to come out of his mouth, leaving him gasping like a fish out of water. Despite his past, he never imagined that he would find himself in a situation quite like this. Let alone, think about how he might react if the moment ever came.
"You lie!" Wanda screamed as her inferno grew.
Around them, matter crumbled. The walls of the bar melted into whiteness, the town of Westview becoming nothing more than an infinitesimal dot in an infinite plane. Particles floated past, winking in and out of the darkness like fireflies in the night. Sensations ebbed and flowed like the tide, the consequences of their continuance being the moon that pulled them to and fro.
Trapped he was in this reality, with possibly no way back home, but there still existed something worth saving. With a hand, he reached for the last few shreds of humanity left in the broken woman crying for help.
Her eyes cracked open. Just a sliver of green behind bleeding red. That green was everything there was at that moment. They told a story of inconceivable fear. Terror that permeated every fiber of her being. They moaned and screamed in agony as they were torn apart from within, thread by thread until she was nothing. Pain and suffering, anguish and torment, all wallowing away behind a burning veil.
A single tear formed and fell, and everything stilled.
As if guided by the cruelest turn of fate imaginable, Harry crashed back into his seat of the bar, his hind landing flush against the hardwood. His senses followed, roaring back all at once as the world returned to a corporeal dimension.
The scarlet fizzled from Wanda as she returned to the earth, her chest heaving as she took him in.
"It was an accident," he gasped through weighted breaths, "When we were fighting before, I saw things inside my head, which I guess were memories of you!"
Filled with sense of purpose, Harry exhaled, "You're protecting them here, aren't you? Your memories."
Regaining his bearings, he turned to the outside the bar window, where the picture-perfect houses of Westview sat perfectly. Where the perfectly kept lawns maintained by perfectly functioning families lay perfectly.
"This is the only place where you feel like you can be happy." He finished.
Wanda, still trembling, steeled her glower,
"How dare you believe you can understand me." She pronounced, each word its own sentence.
Harry struggled upright,
"I'm not saying I fully do."
"Then what are you saying?"
"I want to help you." He offered quietly.
"I don't need a savior." Wanda seethed. "I don't need anybody."
Scarlet came back to life inside of her.
"Look! I know I don't know you, but I know that feeling. I've lived through it, suffered through it enough to know when it's there."
Harry struggled to find the right words to say, the warps and bends clouding his judgment. Meeting her disbelief, he realized that he no longer had the appearance of somebody wizened. Physically he was younger than her, doing no help to his cause. Left with no other choice, he conceded,
"I'll prove it to you. Go on, read my mind."
With a wave of his wand, he allowed an opening to appear in the walls of his psyche.
Wanda was silent for a moment, not quite acceptance yet but willingness to consider. Her eyes caught his attention again, two hazy pearls that gave the impression that her consciousness was somewhere else. Faraway from where they were here, seated.
"Just… see for yourself."
There existed no more words that conveyed his understanding. No words could describe his familiarity with grief fueled anger and guilt.
Wanda's lips thinned as her eyes flared red.
For the fourth time that day, Harry disappeared into obscurity.
-Ω-
Wanda shuddered.
She had experienced the evilest of evils, seen things that could not be unseen, felt pain that branded her soul black in nature. She had faced beings from different planets, solar systems, galaxies. Killed more than she could have ever imagined, fought hand-to-hand with Thanos himself. Yet, she shuddered as she entered the mind of the man across from her.
In her head flashed blurred images of people she did not know, faces that could only belong to the ones he lost. Months upon years upon decades of experiences; more than what shone in his demeanor. The memories of a boy who would do anything to survive. The teenager who fought tirelessly because there was nothing but the fight. A man who would never accept death, forever protecting those he cared for, even if it meant eternal suffering. Loneliness, despair, it was all there. Painfully familiar in a never-ending spiral of flashing lights and crying voices.
A crack formed in the dam inside of her. It felt like a… connection, a nexus, or simply put, something she could relate to. An unusual pressure began to build up in her chest. Raising her head, she discovered his eyes were already pointed at her, eyes that were not so distant anymore.
On spur of moment, she reached a somber conclusion as she bore past his frontage: they were one of the same. Not literally, but only somebody that had been through the equivalent of what she had gone through, could look at her in this tenor. Here they were, each trapped in their own right, with the offers of clemency only an arm's length away.
Still, Wanda refused to step down from her altar. Trust did not come so easily as that. Not when betrayal was so often right around the corner.
"You think it'll just pass, right? That time will heal all wounds, and everything will be perfect again?" She snapped. "Tomorrow will be a new day. Everything will work out. Is that what you want me to believe?"
Harry sighed, "That's not my point."
"There's no point!" Wanda insisted, the hitch in her voice betraying her resoluteness.
There was a pregnant pause after she spoke, darkening energy emanating from her. Years of mind-numbing pain had taken their toll, and Wanda trained her eyes on her tonic glass, tracing her finger around the smoothened edge. She hardly recognized herself in the distorted reflection. Her once stoic, confident mask now crumbled to pieces, with exhaustion and defeat breaking through and taking their place.
Breathe, but not too heavy. Look, but do not appear guilty. Speak, but never answer back. These were the constant reminders of being a hero in the world she had left. Being raised a villain before then. In a world she planned on never returning to.
To her surprise, still waiting to receive her was Harry. His features had a careworn coolness to them as if he had seen more than he should, and stopped caring to save what was left of his soul. But then he smiled, and it was warm. Genuine.
In a new way, silence fell and sat heavily between her and the green-eyed man.
Wanda swallowed the rock that was stuck in her throat,
"Thanos, he took everything away from me." She found herself blurting out loud, to her surprise as well as the man's.
It seemed to take a second for Harry to register that she had spoken, and his eyes flickered before he responded with a nod of the head. The response, while only a gesture, was enough to give Wanda the courage to continue. She knew not why she felt the need, but perhaps this was her mind's way of coping, by doing what Vision would have done. He would have wanted her to try, even if by all marks it seemed pointless.
"Thanos… he took the only person I've ever loved." She ventured to say, again shocking herself with her forthcomingness. "The only person other than family… I ever cared for. The only person that ever cared for me."
As the words continued to flow out of her mouth, she started to feel the heavy weight slip off her shoulders,
"And I tried to bring him back. And I did. A family too. My kids. But it… wasn't the same."
Thoughts of their kids sent warm tears running down her face,
"I dream about them every night. And every morning I wake up in the same nightmare. So I guess that… things were meant to be this way." She paused to look at the man again,
"I sound crazy talking out loud, don't I."
"No, you don't."
Harry's composure maintained steady, encouraging her to continue.
"That scar on your forehead," she said.
"Given to me by the man that killed my parents," he answered. He spoke slowly. Like he was pained. Like the memories were laced with poison.
They both stayed silent for what felt like forever after that, across from each other, neither of them willing to make eye contact with the other. And just then there was a tiny moment, the smallest breath in between seconds, where it seemed like all was fine.
"I understand." Harry started quietly, "You want to end your pain, the pain you're feeling right now, that pain that I'm sure you wake up with and go to bed at night with. Maybe no one around you understands that, but I do. Trust me, I do."
"I can't change things now," Wanda stopped to catch her breath and wipe her tears. "Not in the real world. It's too late. You don't know what I've done. I can never go back."
"It's never too late. Your life can change. You can do it. I can help you," Harry insisted.
He looked her in the eyes again, and she could not make herself look away. He was searching for something deep inside of her, looking for something she could not provide.
"How could you possibly help me?" She whispered.
Suddenly gravity felt stronger, the air seemed colder and Wanda became aware of a burgeoning force appearing in the Hex.
From nothing, an orange portal came to life beside them.
Immediately Wanda rekindled her flame, Harry drawing his wand as soldiers appeared from the magical gateway.
"Sequence violation located, variants identified." The first one to step through muttered, eyes glued to a small tablet. "Wanda Maximoff and Harry Potter."
"Who are you?!" Wanda demanded, not for the first time this night.
"On behalf of the Time Variance Authority, we've been ordered to bring the two of you in."
The soldier stared at them indifferently,
"Please don't resist."
Author's Note:
Well, I never thought I'd be revisiting this story, but here I am. Not entirely sure how long this is going to end up being (probably a short story), but it's been super fun to write. This is still going to be in the MCU/Wandavision universe with lots of creative liberties taken. Really excited to be writing about Marvel Phase Four material, definitely a breath of fresh air for me personally. And hopefully, for you guys as well. If you were unaware, the TVA is an aspect from the Loki TV Show.
Feedback/critiques are always appreciated :) Thanks so much for all the positive feedback so far! It's very humbling, makes me super motivated to keep cranking out this story. And who knows, might have to put more of an emphasis on this fandom. If you're interested in PJO, HTTYD, and SW, I write that too!
5/12/2022: I combined chapters II and III.