200This is being written as a part of the Harmony & Co's Facebook group Prompt Bank Garage Sale.
Prompt: Harry lives in a world where Hermione either died or has never existed. He's lived his entire life by himself. He finds a magical object that transports him to a dimension where Hermione does exist.
(If you're out there, prompter, let me know!)
"At the risk of sounding sentimental, I've always felt there are people who can leave an indelible mark on your soul, an imprint that can never be erased."
Chapter 1
Harry Potter sipped at his shot of limoncello. Experience had taught him to avoid anything harder, though he was sorely tempted. But he traded in dangerous artefacts rather than dangerous drugs these days. If he hadn't fought so hard to keep his life, he might be a little more reckless with it, but despite his months of binging post-war, he was doing his best to honor his mother by staying alive.
Well, maybe not his best, but he'd seen what addiction could do to a person and he refused to go out that way.
He'd never really known Lily Potter, nothing beyond the stories that his father and godfather fed him. She was more myth than woman. So, he really didn't know what she would think of his current state of affairs, but his own opinion was that it was probably better to die tracking down interesting artefacts than with an empty potion vial at his side. And he was on the trail of something truly groundbreaking.
Interdemisional travel. Time travel was one thing, but this was on another level. It had a whole other connotation. Harry told himself that he was just doing his job, investigating for the Department of Mysteries, that this wasn't simply about his own curiosity; that he didn't wonder what a different version of himself might have looked like if something had perhaps gone differently on that fateful Halloween night. That he didn't want to meet his mother, even knowing it would be a different iteration of her.
He pushed his worries to the back of his mind. The little voices that were screaming at him that he didn't have a right to dabble in such things
What he'd found was simple enough. As simple as it was beautifully ornate: a Faberge egg. All he had to do was open it. The secrets to the universe- the ones he'd been chasing, were supposed to be contained inside. And if he was truly honest he'd say that if he opened the egg and a black hole opened up, then he might not have necessarily been opposed to the idea of falling into it.
He was conscientious enough to return to Britain and then ensconce himself in his lab at the DoM which was heavily warded and might protect the rest of the Ministry, the rest of the world, from possible magical backlash. Then he opened the egg.
It was not a black hole.
It was a rabbit hole.
But it wasn't a white rabbit who greeted him. It was a younger, skinny, version of himself, who was terribly in need of a haircut, and corrective eye surgery. That Harry beckoned him forward, stating: "come with me, she needs you," and he couldn't stop himself from following.
Suddenly he was back in his lab, except it wasn't exactly his lab. There was a woman standing in the middle of the room looking shocked, which he supposed was an understandable reaction to somebody appearing unexpectedly in front of you, even in the magical world. But then her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed.
Harry was too far away to catch her before she hit the ground but he did rush over to check on her. He was kneeling beside her, hovering, when she came to. Her eyes went wide and she reached for him, touching his face, tracing his cheek up to his scar. He flinched.
"Harry?"
"Um, hello?'
She blinked once, twice, and burst into tears. Harry sighed. He was not starting things on good footing with this woman. He tried to soothe her but, well, that wasn't really his forte. Seduce yes, soothe no.
"Harry," she repeated, shaking her head violently back and forth, "but not my Harry."
Oh. Well that complicated things.
He backed off to give her some space as she visibly tried to pull herself together, and he got his first good look at her. She was wearing fitted olive green pants tucked into dragon hide boots and a tight black tee-shirt. It was very utilitarian, bordering on military. It certainly wasn't business attire, but then again his Department of Mysteries didn't have a dress code either. The neat outfit was in direct contrast to her hair which was piled haphazardly up on top of her head and looked to be ready to escape at any moment. A brunette, petite and curvy, she was exactly his type. And if he was interpreting her words correctly, some other version of himself felt the same way.
Eventually she began to struggle to her feet. He offered her a hand but she just shook her head.
"Where did you come from?" She asked.
"Well," he considered prevaricating or making something up completely, but in the end he didn't really see the point. He would probably need her help in the immediate future and it seemed like a bad idea to start things off with a lie. "In another dimension this is my lab."
She simply nodded, like he'd just told her the time.
He felt his eyebrows shoot up his forehead. "You're taking this remarkably well."
"I've seen more unbelievable things," she murmured, releasing her hair from its clasp and shaking it out. He watched in fascination as it sprung out, creating a halo of curls surrounding her face. "How did you get here?" She asked, all business.
He barked out a laugh. "Excuse me, but you seem to know me but I don't know you. Do you think I could at least get your name before we start discussing the technical details of my interdimensional travel?"
Her head shot up and her eyes filled with tears again. "You don't know me?"
He shook his head.
"You don't recognize me at all? You've never even met me?" She seemed to be growing a little hysterical.
"Sweetheart, I would definitely remember that."
It was as if he had slapped her. She froze, staring at him in shock, but then she shook herself. "I suppose, well it's obvious that you're different from him, so I guess it stands to reason that we might not have become friends. But we should have at least run into each other at Hogwarts. Did you not attend Hogwarts?"
"I did, Gryffindor."
She gave him a small sad smile. "Us too."
Us.
"I'm sorry, this seems to really be bothering you?" He phrased it as a question, hoping she might elaborate on her own. The news that he'd just jumped worlds hadn't phased her, but the idea that he'd never met his world's version of her had her looking to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
"It's just that, I know I'll never get him back but I think that it would have been nice to know that some other version of me has you. Comforting somehow," she shook her head. "Oh well."
He too wished that he had a witch waiting back home who was as desperate for him to come home as this woman was to get her Harry back. However, she'd just confirmed his theory.
"He died?" It wasn't the most tactful thing to say, especially given her obvious distress, but he was just so morbidly curious.
She nodded. "Three years ago now," she answered quietly.
"I'm sorry for your loss. He was your...husband?"
She let out a startled laugh. "No, he was my friend. My very best friend." She sniffled. "Look, this has all been very interesting, and I don't mean any offense, but it's actually painful to look at you. So do you think we can start working out how you got here, so that we can send you home?"
"Uh sure," he said, starting to feel guilty for his curiosity. "But do you think I could at least get your name?"
"Hermione," she twisted her hair back on top of her head as she spoke. "Hermione Granger."
Unusual, pretty, it suited. "Like, from 'A Winter's Tale?'"
She looked at him in shock. "You know it."
"Of course, my mother loved to read so my father made sure that my education in English Literature was very thorough, which I know is unusual for a wizard, but my mother was muggleborn. Oh, but I'm sure you already know that," he babbled. He would later try to figure out why he felt an almost desperate need to connect with this witch. "Hey, does that mean you're muggleborn too?"
She stared at him.
"Hermione? Is that a rude question here or something?"
"Your dad?" She finally squeaked.
"Yeah. Is he as big of a pain in the arse here as mine is?" He rolled his eyes. "Does he flirt with you?"
"It's just that you have the scar too," she whispered, "I assumed."
"Yes," he said carefully. "I saw you recognize it, that's why I assumed our circumstances were the same in that instance."
She shook her head and sighed, taking a step closer to him, she almost looked like she was going to reach for him, but refrained. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but both of the Potters were killed in Godric's Hollow on Halloween of 1981 by a wizard who called himself Lord Voldemort."
Harry sucked in a breath and clamped down on his occlumency shields, then he calmly shook his head. "Well it seems that in both dimensions Tom Riddle managed to twist himself into that monster, you'd think that would be one thing that could be different. But in my world Dad wasn't even home when he came, he'd gone out to celebrate Halloween with Sirius."
It was a mistake James Potter had nearly drowned himself in a bottle for commiting; leaving his wife and toddler son home alone just for a little relief from cabin fever. It seemed this James had made a different decision and paid for it with his life.
"Oh," she said, "well I am sorry."
He shook his head. "It was a long time ago. And the people in this world, I'm sorry to hear that they died, but they weren't my parents, Hermione."
He thought he said it with considerable composure, but the truth was that he sort of felt like he'd been stabbed in the gut.
0000000000
There was a long, awkward pause. This Harry was not her Harry, but he had some of the same tells and she could see that he was much more affected to hear the fate of her world's Potters than he was letting on.
"Shall we go to my office?" She eventually asked.
She was startled when he just nodded, spun on his heel and walked directly towards it; but then she realized that of course he knew where it was. She chose to sit next to him in the chairs in front of her desk, instead of behind it. As much as she wanted to put some space between them, she couldn't seem to actually do it.
She hated him a little bit for doing this to her, for making her think for even one second that she had her Harry back. She'd opened her eyes and seen those unmistakable green ones looking back at her and she thought he'd done it again, defied death and found a way to come back to her. But while the color was the same, they weren't Harry's eyes; they didn't sparkle the way his had, and while they'd been concerned, they held no affection for her in their depths.
Then there were the other differences. He wasn't wearing glasses, his hair was long and pulled back at the nape of his neck the way Sirius used to wear his. He was broader than Harry had been, and every inch of skin she could see of his arms was covered in tattoos. Harry, despite everything he'd been through, had managed to retain a boyish air about him; this man had a darkness to him, an air of danger, though, despite that, he didn't scare Hermione at all.
She turned to him, folding her hands in her lap. "So, I guess you should just tell me what happened. Whatever you think the beginning is."
He rubbed his scruffy jaw. "Right," he seemed to consider that. "Oh! I dropped the thing when you fainted. It must be on the floor in the lab."
"What thing?"
"The artefact that brought me here, I'll go get it." He jumped up and it occurred to her belatedly that maybe she should stop him from touching it lest it activate again and take him away. But he quickly returned carrying what appeared to be a ruby and gold faberge egg.
Gryffindor colors, how apropos.
He set it on the desk in front of them. "I heard rumors about an enchanted object with the capability to transport people between dimensions. I've been working on tracking this down for a couple of years. Three days ago a source contacted me and I went to Naples to pick it up."
"You just went and picked it up, just like that?"
He shrugged. "Well it's not like my source just handed it over in the middle of the street, but yeah."
She shook her head in disbelief.
"I brought it back to my lab and opened it. It was like this tunnel opened up and I followed it here"
"That's it?"
"That's it."
"Well what did your research tell you about how it was enchanted and how it operates?"
He shrugged again. "I didn't really do any. Like I said, I just heard the rumors about what it's capable of and started working on finding it."
"You used an object rumored to allow you to jump dimensions without knowing anything about it?"
He glared at her, obviously not liking her tone. Her Harry hadn't liked it when she scolded him like that either. "I have some experience with dangerous magical artefacts."
"Yes," she snapped, "I imagine you do, which is why you should know how reckless and irresponsible that was!" She honestly couldn't believe the nerve of him.
They just stared at each other for several long minutes before he sighed.
"Look, I'll just open it back up and see if it'll take me back and if it doesn't work, we can go from there." He started to reach for it.
"Are you crazy!" He froze. "Listen, you might not care about the repercussions of this brilliant plan to basically fiddle with it until it works," she said sarcastically, "but I do. And we have no idea what they might be! What it could do to this world, to yours? And I, personally, don't want to be accidentally sucked into another dimension. We are going to go about this properly."
"Okay," he agreed quickly. Too quickly, like he'd been hoping she'd say something like that, though she couldn't imagine why.
"Also, I don't think it's going to be as simple as just opening it again, I think there's got to be a more complicated triggering mechanism."
He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest defensively. "I wasn't leaving anything out, that's really all I did."
"Which doesn't mean that your source couldn't have done something to it before he gave it to you, or anybody who might have had it before him. It easily could have been a trap."
"What do you mean?"
She sighed, how had he not given this more consideration? "Is it safe to say that you're famous in your world?"
"Yes."
"That you have enemies who might want to get rid of you?"
"Yes."
"And perhaps you're even known for being a little reckless," she arched an eyebrow at him, but he didn't back down.
He shrugged casually. "I may have something of a reputation."
"So why not just toss you into another world? They didn't even have to be present for the event, you basically did it to yourself, and there's no crime scene or body to clean up."
"Okay, yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense," he agreed, beginning to look sheepish.
"Which brings us to another problem."
"Well, aren't you just a ray of sunshine." He snarked, an unattractive curl to his lip.
She glared at him.
"What is it?" He sighed.
"Normally I'd want to gather a whole team to look into this, but you're Harry Potter."
"I think we've established that."
She kind of wanted to slap him.
"Harry was famous in this world too, everybody knows what he looked like and that he's dead. So many strange, even inexplicable things happened to him during his life. Now all of the sudden we have this dimension traveling version of him. I can't guarantee they won't stick you in a cage and study you like a lab rat the moment you walk out of my office."
He stared at her for a minute, then nodded. "That sounds like something my DoM would do as well." He gave her a sly look and her heart lurched in her chest because she knew this look, it was the same look her Harry had given her any time he was about to try and convince her to do something she wasn't going to like. "I'd really appreciate it if you didn't allow them to do that to me."
Her heart clenched.
Merlin but this roller coaster of emotions was terrible.
She knew that she shouldn't do what she'd already made up her mind to do. It was reckless and irresponsible like she'd just accused him of being. But her Harry was gone, beyond her help. This one was here asking for it. She knew she'd never forgive herself if she didn't give it. Even if it destroyed her fragile psyche in the process.
"Well," she said, "I guess we have to find a way to sneak you out of here then."
This fic was heavily influenced by the TV show, "Fringe." Not so much the plot, but many of the references and if you're familiar, you'll know what I mean, and I want to give credit where credit is due. (Like the opening quote.) This is something different for me. I really hope you guys enjoy it. Thanks for reading!
