Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Dislocation	By : LinguaMagus Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female Views: 2823 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not own Harry Potter or the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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- 2
Chapter 1:

Although it was a clear Summer night, a chill like a Winter wind crept into Harry’s bones as Albus Dumbledore tumbled over the battlements and raced interminably toward the yawning darkness below. There was no time to think, no time to feel. There was barely time to act, and no useful action was springing to mind. Without knowing why, or even what he wanted to do, Harry went inside himself. He reached deep into his heart, or soul, or whatever thing lives inside us that is separate from our physical self.
Inside, he found the touch of Dumbledore’s magic, still holding him rooted in place. Even though it was fading, it was incredibly strong. He may as well have tried to pull open steel manacles with his bare hands. No, breaking it would be impossible. So, without any sort of aim in mind, Harry just pulled. Like grabbing a thread from an old sweater, he pulled and pulled on this stream of magic that wouldn’t splinter or fray.
He gathered it into himself and tried to travel down the other end. It was… wrong, though. Pieces fed back on themselves. Time seemed to go somewhere else while he investigated further. The thread that had begun as a single, silken strand now felt inconsistent. Like a saltwater river flowing up the middle of a freshwater stream. Gathering more and more, it started to feel like he was becoming tangled in the strand. It wrapped around him, and around itself, the end disappearing like a bundle of last year’s fairy lights.
Then, suddenly, he was being pressed between a vise. Crushed into paste with his ears running out his nose and his ribs folding over his knees. He tried to look around, but he couldn’t find his eyes. Everything was just oppressive blackness. At first, he thought he felt cold, but there wasn’t a him to feel cold anymore. It just felt empty. Open and vast, but rushing onward. He careened backwards through the nothing without knowing if there was a when at either end.
His eyes snapped open. There was a soft ticking of bicycle wheels being walked along, and a boy was singing a rude song.
“-but the hedgehog can never be…”
Dudley’s gang. Dudley’s gang… from two years ago. Dudley. And Dudley’s gang. And Harry. Right before the dementor attack. Two years ago. Not two years ago. Now.
“…squealed like a pig, didn’t he?” Malcolm. Then a round of big, dumb laughs.
Then Piers, “Nice right hook, Big D.”
A buzzing filled Harry’s ears, and his eyes unfocused. His heart dropped into his stomach, and he sank from the swing onto the ground. He grabbed a handful of mulch, and tried to anchor himself to the moment. This moment that he had lived before. This moment that preceded some of the worst months of his life. Was he dreaming? Had he been dreaming and now he was awake? No, it was all too clear. This was something else.
Dudley was alone now. Without thinking, Harry called out.
“Dudley!”
Dudley looked over, shocked and confused at hearing his name from someone other than the handful of friends he was watching walk away. Seeing Harry, a grimace of resentment welled up from somewhere unexamined. He balled up his fists and trudged onto the playground, ready for confrontation.
“Dudley, I need you to trust me. I know this doesn’t make any sense, but I need you to run home. Something bad is about to happen, and I really want you to not be here when it does.”
Now he looked completely bewildered. This is not how he expected this encounter to go. Ever since becoming a magician or whatever he was, Harry was the only kid in the neighborhood who wasn’t afraid of him. Dudley wasn’t sure why, but this felt unfair. He thought maybe he was being bullied by Harry, somehow. He definitely wasn’t about to trust the first reason Harry gave for not wanting him around, though.
“Like you care what happens to me… freak.” It was his mother’s word, but he saw how Harry flinched when she said it. Something about the skinny boy just made him want to hit something until everything went quiet.
This was going to be complicated, and Harry didn’t have any time to sort it out. He needed Dudley to go away right now before everything got complicated.
“If you don’t believe that I want to keep you safe, then believe this. I don’t want to get in trouble with Vernon and Petunia if something happens to you while I’m casting spells to protect myself. I wouldn’t want you to, you know, turn into something.”
This might have been going too far, but Harry really needed Dudley gone quickly. There was only one way to fend off dementors, and it wasn’t subtle. Fortunately, the gamble seemed to have worked.
“Hmph. Fine. I’m going home, but you should hurry back too. You know mum doesn’t want you out after I get back.”
With an uncertain little hopskip, Dudley ran home. Harry was alone again, and with only a few seconds to plan, he ran as fast as he could to Mrs. Figg’s house.
Knocking abruptly on the door, Harry put his back against the frame and waited for the dementors to emerge any second. Mrs. Figg came to the door, looking very puzzled, and Harry pushed his way inside. Muttering mild protests, Figg closed the door and tottered into her living room where Harry was standing. He cut her off before she could ask any foolish questions.
“Mrs. Figg, I need you to contact Dumbledore. Or Dung, or whoever. Just get somebody here right now.”
A dozen emotions fought for space on her face as she scrambled to catch up with what was happening.
“You- But how? I never -“
“Mrs. Figg, please. Focus. We need a wizard here who can cast spells legally, and we need them now.”
As if to emphasize this point, the room began to grow cold and colorless. Joy and happiness leeched from the air and left only despair. The total, heart-freezing numbness of an immediate dementor attack hadn’t yet set in, but they were close. Too close for Harry to have any plan other than fight them off if they broke through.
Come to that, he wasn’t even sure how dementors dealt with things like doors. Were they intelligent? Were they physically strong? He never thought of them that way. They were just sort of a natural force like storm clouds. It wasn’t yet sunset, but light seemed to get distracted before coming inside. By the time it filtered through the sheer curtains, it was a grey and weak sort of thing.
“Harry, I don’t… I’m a squib, Harry. I can’t talk to anyone quickly. That’s what that rotter Mundungus is supposed to be here for.”
It didn’t matter anymore in any case. The air had grown thick with remembered miseries. They weren’t coming through the doors, but they didn’t have to. They were close enough to just sit and wait, drinking from the souls trapped in the house until he didn’t have the strength to repel them. His only option was to open the door himself and fight them on his own terms.
“Mrs. Figg, stay close behind me. I’m going to -“
Finally, there it was. The crack of someone apparating nearby. The pressure eased slightly as the dementors sensed a new presence. Harry broke off what he was saying and cried out.
“Expecto Patronum!”
The great silvery stag erupted forth, and Harry threw the door open. It charged out and bulled down the two dementors waiting immediately outside, then swept through Mundungus Fletcher, knocking him on his bottom. Harry moved cautiously through the doorway with Mrs. Figg clinging tightly to the back of his shirt.
“Oof. Ruddy ‘ell. Wha’s all this magic for, Figgy? Thought we was keepin’ a low profile style of fing.”
Harry sagged with relief. He couldn’t even be angry with Dung for abandoning his post. Somehow, against all logic, he had changed the past. Or the present. He had… changed his future? Thinking about it was making his head buzz and ache again. Gently disconnecting Mrs. Figg’s hand from his clothes, he walked over and held out an arm to Dung to help him to his feet.
“Hello Dung. Just in time to catch the action. Did you get a good deal on the cauldrons?”
Harry laughed in a slightly manic way, but neither of the Order members seemed to take any notice. Mrs. Figg was too busy rambling about what she was going to tell Dumbledore, and Dung just kept asking what dementors wanted Figgy for and why Harry had knocked him down. Without saying anything further, Harry just left. There was nothing else useful that he could learn by staying.
Jogging up to Number Four, Privet Drive, Harry went inside without preamble. He trotted up the stairs and began to load his things into his trunk. Whatever was happening, there was no chance Harry was going to spend his second chance laying around in the Dursleys’ garden waiting for catastrophe.
“BOY! YOU’RE LATE! GET DOWN HERE!”
Vernon bellowed from the kitchen, but Harry ignored him. With a few final considerations, he finished packing and closed the trunk. He walked over to Hedwig’s cage and opened it up, lifting her gently over to the window.
“Come find me in a day or two, okay? I have to travel and I don’t want to leave you stuck in your cage the whole time.”
He stroked her head and she nipped his finger affectionately and hooted. Then she took flight, and he strapped her cage to the top of his trunk and headed downstairs. At the foot of the stairs, Vernon’s large purple face glowered up at him.
“Didn’t I tell you to come down here? What on earth are you doing, boy? You aren’t going anywhere except into the kitchen to clean up the dinner you missed while you were out being a delinquent.”
Harry kept his head down and wrestled his trunk down the stairs until his choices were going over Vernon or through him. He stopped, but he didn’t speak. He didn’t even look at Vernon, just stared across the hall like he was waiting for his train to arrive.
“Don’t you dare ignore me, you little miscreant. Get in there and do the dishes, or so help me you won’t eat for a week.”
Vernon shook his fat, balled-up fists like a demagogue, but he stopped short of actually making contact. Still, Harry just stood and stared. As angry as he was, Harry knew Vernon wouldn’t actually hit him. Not anymore. He was too afraid of what might happen. For all his bluster and threats, the man was a coward and a bully. Like any bully, without a reaction he was quickly running out of steam. Finally, he relented. Ranting and fist-shaking his way down the hall, he let out a stream of empty threats about what he was going to do to Harry for this act of rebellion.
Taking a deep sigh, Harry continued out the door with his trunk in tow. At the curb, he stuck out his wand hand and took a quick step back as an enormous purple bus skidded to a halt in front of him. At this time of day, there were a dozen or more passengers aboard the Knight Bus, and the warm smell of butterbeer wafted through the windows. The door slid open, and the familiar face of Stan Shunpike poked out.
“Welcome to the Knight Bus, emerge- Oi, it’s you. ‘Ey Ern, guess who it is! Only bleedin’ Harry Potter, innit?”
Putting the handle of his trunk in Stan’s hand, Harry reached into his pouch and counted out thirteen sickles.
“I’d like the hot chocolate, please.”
“S’only for night time, innit? Mornin’ is tea, nights is hot choc’late. Right now, we’re doing butterbeer, ain’t we? You still wanting one, then?”
Harry nodded an affirmative and climbed aboard. A few rows back, he found an empty seat near a sturdy looking witch with tight black curls and big, hairy nostrils. She smiled at him absentmindedly as he sat down, then went back to thumbing through the Prophet. Falling heavily into his seat, he looked up and thanked Stan as he brought him an overflowing mug of butterbeer.
“So where you going, then?”
“Umm… Actually, I’m not sure of the address. Can you take me to the dentist’s office in Reading?”
“Wha’s a dennis, then? Some sort of muggle repair shop?”
Harry rubbed his forehead in frustration.
“Just — Can you take me to Palmer Park in Reading, please?”
“READING, ERN. ‘EAR THAT?”
Stan trundled back to the front while Harry relaxed into his seat with his mug of butterbeer and waited through a few more stops until the bus’s erratic path took it through Reading. Half an hour later, he thanked Stan and stepped out into the park with his trunk which felt suddenly very conspicuous.
Spotting a phone booth only a few meters away, he dragged the trunk over and started leafing through the pages of the phone book to the G’s. Finding what he was looking for, he glanced around the booth for a taxi sticker and placed a quick call for a pickup.
When the taxi arrived, he climbed in, dragged his trunk in after him, and gave the driver the address where he was heading. Apart from some jangling music of a style Harry didn’t know, the ride happened in silence and lasted only a few minutes. He handed over a five pound note and levered himself out of the battered bucket seat. As the taxi puttered off, Harry looked up at a beautiful brick Edwardian home. Ivy crept to the corner of every gable, and the garden was dense with dahlias that looked like a tiny fireworks show. Splashes of palest pink with hearts of gold, deep crimson petals striped with white. It was more perfect than he had ever imagined it.
Shaking off his nerves, Harry walked up to the door and knocked twice, then once more a bit louder just in case. Inside, he heard shuffling as someone approached the door, then a clatter and muffled swearing. When the door opened, there was a pleasant looking man with an ugly ginger cat in one hand, and with the other he was rubbing his knee. He looked up at Harry, and waited expectantly. Harry was struck by how familiar the man was. Mr. Granger was the spitting image of his daughter. Or rather, she him.
“…Yes? Can I help you?”
Harry realized he was still just staring and shook himself.
“Oh. Um. Sorry. I’m Harry, Harry Potter. I’m a friend of Hermione’s from school. Is she here?”
“Oh! Harry, yes. She’s told us all about you and that other boy, Ronald, with the big family. The way she tells it, you’re all inseparable while you're at school. Please, come in, come in.”
Harry lugged his trunk in while Mr. Granger tossed Crookshanks onto a chair in the sitting room. The foyer was brightly lit and well appointed. It felt like the waiting room to an upmarket law office. Just slightly too tidy to be a place where people really lived. Mr. Granger was wearing an untucked white guayabera and no shoes. In his own element, he seemed much different from the nervous, quiet man he had seen years before in Diagon Alley.
“It’s uh — it’s nice to meet you, sir. Hermione told me that you and Mrs. Granger are dentists?”
“Yes! That’s right. Well, to be more particular, Helen is an oral surgeon. My daughter says you’re pretty famous in your world. How did you end up friends with our little Hermione?”
“Actually, it, uh, just sort of happened. Our first year, there was a thing with a troll, and we ended up… well, fighting it.”
Mr. Granger froze with his arm halfway out, hanging a dust pan back on its nail.
“Sorry. A troll, you said? Is that a — does that mean something different to, um, wizards and witches?”
Harry felt very guilty. He thought that Hermione would have explained more about what happened at school. Thankfully he hadn’t brought up anything worse. Fluffy likely would have given him a heart attack.
“Um, no. A troll is pretty much just a troll. Big clubs, small brains.”
Feeling a bit dumb, Harry jutted out his lower jaw and made a sort of clubbing motion with his hand. Mr. Granger just stared at him in bemusement. He rallied and seemed to put the whole conversation aside.
“Well, it sounds like you kids get into some pretty crazy adventures.” He hesitated briefly, then continued, “You may not have guessed it, but we were really glad to hear she had made some friends. Our Hermione is such a sweet girl, but I think some of the local kids were bullying her at the VC primary.”
Memories of St. Grogory’s flooded back to Harry. Having his glasses stolen and stepped on, getting chased around the schoolyard, eating off of abandoned trays in the lunchroom when his own lunch was stolen. His heart sank and he wished very much that he and Hermione could have been friends sooner. He blinked away a few tears and he nodded at Mr. Granger. There was a beat of silence, and Mr. Granger cleared his throat.
“Anyway, it’s nice to meet you. My daughter is in her room, upstairs to the left. I would knock before entering. She doesn’t like being interrupted while she’s reading,” he finished with chagrin.
Harry took the stairs two at a time, stopping at the top to look at a picture of Hermione with her parents at St. Edward’s Church in Stow-on-the-Wold. She looked so young, but the picture couldn’t have been more than a few years old. He was struck by just how much they had both grown since coming to Hogwarts. He also got his first up-close look at Helen Granger. Even in a knitted jumper and gingham skirts, she was an amazingly beautiful woman. She had Hermione’s honey-brown eyes, but they twinkled with mischief. Instead of a cinnamon mane, she had sleek, chestnut hair. For just a heartbeat, Harry caught himself hoping that Hermione would age like her mother.
Shaking his head, he turned down the hall to the other end of the landing where what was undeniably Hermione’s door stood emblazoned with a large and curly ‘H’ in violet glass that seemed to shift and eddy as you watched it. Harry smiled at the slight boast suggested by the decoration. He would bet the contents of his coin pouch that a muggle would see only a plain wooden door.
Distracted by admiration, he reached out and turned the knob, remembering at the last second that he was supposed to have knocked. As it swung open, his eyes went as wide as dinner plates, and his mouth hung stupidly agape.
“Daddy! I told you to kn— OH!”
Hermione was sitting cross-legged on her bed with half a dozen open books spread out around her and a pen and notepad laying next to her. She was wearing an enormous red t-shirt with the words ‘Reading Knights’ across a logo of a knight’s helm. And very little else. Her bare legs were ivory white and as Harry’s eyes followed them in, he saw a pair of cotton panties in sky blue with little white embroidered teeth on them.
“HARRY!”
He slammed the door and leaned against it. His heart was pounding in his chest and his face felt warm enough to grill meat. He felt like his clothes had shrunk three sizes and steam was pouring off his head. He had seen girls before in less, but for some reason seeing Hermione like that was short-circuiting his brain. Awkwardly, he tugged on the seam of his jeans and took a deep breath. A few seconds later, after some hurried movement from the other side, the door opened again, and Hermione blushed out at him in a pair of jeans and a blouse.
Harry stuttered out, “I-I’m so sorry. I didn’t— I just wanted to— Umm. Hi.”
“It’s nothing. I was just surprised,” Hermione managed.
Then she rushed forward and hugged him.
“How are you, Harry? What on earth are you doing here? Is everything okay?”
She eyed him up and down. Apparently satisfied that he wasn’t mortally wounded, she put her hands on her hips and waited for an explanation.
With the tension defused, Harry focused on why he had come.
“Can we talk about it in your room? It’s just, it’s a bit complicated.”
Sitting on Hermione’s bed, Harry spent the next half hour doing his best to try and explain the situation. Except that he didn’t really understand it himself, so she kept getting confused and asking him to clarify. Eventually, she grasped the basics. Harry had lived through the next two years, he had watched Dumbledore die (Hermione gasped when he told her how it happened), and now he was back and changing things. It wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be happening, but here he was.
“Oh, Harry. Why do things like this always happen to you? I just don’t understand. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Scooting close, Hermione leaned her head on Harry’s shoulder and rested her hand on his arm. Unable to shake the image of before, Harry flushed again and mumbled something. Then he placed his hand on hers and settled his cheek on top of her head. Her thick cinnamon curls tickled his ears and he squirmed a bit in place.
“Hermione, I don’t know what to do. I’m really scared, and I’m really confused, and please, I need your help. You’re the cleverest witch I know. If you can’t help me, I don’t know who can.”
She pressed her face more firmly into him, and her hand came up to wrap around his chest and pull him tight.
“Of course I’m going to help, Harry. I don’t know what to do yet either,” She frowned at this admission. “But I’m going to start looking, and we’re going to find out what happened and how to fix things. I think it’s best if you just keep doing what you’ve been doing for the time being. If there’s something that went wrong before, you may have a chance to start making it right.”
Hermione was warm and comfortable, pressed against him. So close, he was becoming aware of how much larger than her he had grown. He felt like he could scoop her up in one arm and she wouldn’t even touch the ground. He was so grateful for her strength, and wondered at how someone so small and soft could be so tough. He breathed in the smell of her hair, and in an instant of recklessness, pressed his lips against the top of her head.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Hermione. Honestly. I’m so glad I didn’t end up, I don’t know, when I was seven years old or something.”
She guffawed and snuggled into him for just a moment before springing up.
“Honestly, Harry. Why didn’t I think of it already? This started with Dumbledore, why don’t we go talk to him?”
“Umm, I mean, I’d love to Hermione, but I don’t have any idea where he lives when he’s not at Hogwarts.”
“Oh,” She sank for a moment, then brightened. “Well, there’s bound to be some record at the —“
“At the library,” Harry intoned, smiling.
She blushed, but still looked confident in her idea. He hugged her again, then hopped off the bed. Putting his trainers on, Harry stuffed his wand in his back pocket and looked over at her.
“Will your mum and dad mind if I leave my trunk here a bit while we go out?”
Hermione rolled her eyes, “Daddy won’t mind, and mum won’t even notice until she trips over it. Don’t worry, it will be fine.”
She pulled on her own socks and shoes and stopped right next to the door. She stopped, and without looking at him, went up on her tip-toes and kissed Harry on the cheek. Flushing scarlet, she ran out of the room and downstairs. Harry touched his finger to his cheek and stared unfocused at the wall for a second, then followed her with a wide grin.
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Dislocation

Chapter 1: