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Timeless Echoes of a Lost Soul	By : Ninny Category: Harry Potter > FemSlash - Female/Female Views: 3265 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Echoes of the Past, Whispers of the Future
- 2-Meet the... err... Family?
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- 2
Chapter 1: Echoes of the Past, Whispers of the Future
On a room of a hospital located in Edinburgh a seven years old girl in full body-cast attached to several machines opened her eyes for the first time in a month. The only visible part of her body were her honey eyes and a small fleck of brown wavy hair that was stubbornly poking at one them.
'Well, shite.' Were the first thoughts her mind could process after trying (and failing) to move her body.
Actually, she couldn't even feel her body at all, except for the stupidly annoying feeling of having a hair in her eye, attempts to escape her torture by furiously blinking her hairs away were mildly successful if only because the hairs in question were now held back by her eyelashes.
So long as she didn't blink too much or too fast, her hair would be kept well away from her honey orbs.
Now she only had to deal with the feeling of something pressing down on her eyelashes.
And not feeling her body.
And the slight sensation claustrophobia that was slowly creeping through her mind.
...
At least her eyes were safe now, dammit!
One glaring issue resolved for the moment, she retreated to her thoughts (not that she could do much else, really. Staring at the ceiling, thinking on nothing wasn't as appealing an idea as some would think), thinking back to the series of events that led to her current condition.
'Well, Harry, you messed up badly, didn't you?...
It's only a fetching job. You told them.
What's the worst that could happen? You jokingly asked.
Of course I don't need backup. They will only slow me down, don't you trust me? You assured them...
Although... to be fair, no one expected that bloody volcano to erupt so suddenly...
Actually... How in the name of Merlin's favorite fluffy bathrobe did I survive that?!'
She(?) could still remember it as clear as if it had just happened a second ago.
After the impressive activity displayed by the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai submarine volcano at the end of 2021 and it's reclassification to 'dormant' on January 11th of the next year, 41 y/o Harry Potter, adventurous curse-breaker, world-renowned treasure hunter, Merlin's second coming (according to an ever-increasing group of magicals, anyway), famous philanthropist and eternal bachelor was asked (politely and with no desperation whatsoever) by the ICW to lead an expedition to the site of the volcano.
Apparently, the ash plume expelled by the dormant beast had... curious effects on magical beings. So far the research turned inconclusive. In most of the cases, magicals exposed to it saw their magical prowess diminished, ranging from negligible to extreme with no discernible pattern.
Only a few beings experienced beneficial effects, including: An increase on their ability to use and 'feel' magic, slight alteration of their body-structure that made them healthier, stronger and even smarter, episodes of prescience, triggered at random but lasting no more than a couple of days, that lead to a never-seen-before 'creation' of new prophecies, totaling 208 in the span of one week.
(The British Department of Mysteries and their counterparts all around the world declared a global emergency, panicking to the point that they were ready to implement and enforce the dreaded protocol Phi/Upsilon-Beta-Alpha/Rho)
If only that was it, maybe it wouldn't have caused such a panic on the general populace but, perhaps the most concerning effects of the ashes (or the particulates that conformed it), however, was that they inhibited the magic of non-naturally magical constructs without failure, be it enchanted objects, rune-works, wards, etc. (for example, an object charmed with a feather-light charm would see it's charm removed in the matter of milliseconds, reverting to its original weight, whereas an object conjured with that same property would eventually banish as 'normal', since it was created by and it was entirely made out of magic).
Basically, in the ashes presence, magic couldn't stick no more.
Places like Hogwarts were in a tricky situation. As far as the researchers knew, all the wards on the castle would fail without a doubt on the ashes' presence, the charm-work and enchantments on its very stones had a chance to remain, however. Being a castle that had spent more than a millennia soaked and bathed in high-concentration magic, some theorized that the very magic of the castle had gained sentience at some point, making the whole castle technically 'alive'.
If that was the case (and it was as many a Hogwarts alumni could attest), then other magical structures that shared similarly long existence times could plausibly survive the effects of the magic-nullifying ashes.
On the other hand, as long as the source of magic was not natural, the a high-enough concentration of ashes' particulates in the atmosphere would, eventually, lead to an abrupt and catastrophic breach of the Statute of Secrecy, revealing any and all magical enclaves to the non-magical world.
Harry, being one of the few magicals that saw his abilities benefited by the volcano, became the obvious choice to recover samples directly from the source and to look for ways to minimize the fallout of subsequent eruptions. He was no volcanologist… or geologist… or a scientist of any kind, but he was one of the most willful individuals, possessed an incredible amount of dumb luck and was lauded as one of the most powerful wizards ever since Merlin himself.
Him being compared to Merlin was a sore spot for many a-Hogwarts classmates of his. Especially since his true potential only started showing up AFTER Voldie's defeat, during what became his 8th year at school. Many of the people he knew were either dead by then or remembered a scrawny, messy haired, slightly above average young wizard.
Not the worst Hogwarts had ever seen, certainly not the best.
How quickly the tables turned post-unintentional resurrection.
Turns out having a quasi-Horcrux stuck on one's head for the better part of two decades actually affected negatively both psyche and body. Most of the first term of his last year at Hogwarts had to be dedicated to his re-learning of all the spells in the curriculum, the necessity of which quickly became apparent when three of his DADA classmates ended up in the Hospital Wing, with injuries ranging from mild soreness to a couple of broken bones to 'quite frankly, it's a miracle you survived' after just one (overpowered) Expelliarmus casted by Harry.
Anyways, back to the volcano. Since charmed or rune-inscribed protective equipment was out of the question for such ordeal, clothing made out of the most resistant magical species were specially made for him.
The end result? A veritable set of nigh indestructible armor, resistant to all known magical attacks (no one tested it against the Killing Curse but, considering Harry felt nothing when cursed by the Cruciatus, an otherwise unblockable curse, everyone assumed it would also triumph against the emerald-colored curse), tested (in a rush) to surmount extreme amounts of pressure and heat.
Nothing could go wrong, they all thought.
And so, Harry embarked on the highly risky expedition. Just two days after the volcano was declared dormant again, Harry could be found swimming, well on his way to the crater of the volcano itself. His enhanced physique made the whole deal a breeze in the park. He spent hours recollecting significant amounts of samples from the caldera itself, stashing them on a metal box he himself conjured the previous day using as much magic as he could, ensuring it would remain in existence for, at least, a couple of decades.
His recollecting task done, he proceeded to think and try several ways to subdue the 'dormant' giant. Time flew by, never noticing its passing and that it was the next day already (the naturally diminished light because of the depth he was at plus the surrounding particulates made it impossible to correctly asses if it was day or night. Light-providing charms were still usable, thankfully, otherwise he would've been completely blind).
Unfortunately for him, he was in the caldera's vicinity on the eve of January 14th 2022.
With rumbling sounds as his only warning, he barely had time to cast the most powerful shielding spells he knew around him when the volcano violently erupted. His protective gear once more proved its worth, saving him from an otherwise toasty fate. It did not, however, prevented him from being tossed to and fro, nor from being hit by rapidly-cooled chunks of magma.
Only his metahuman physique ensured he wasn't turned to paste immediately.
Severely wounded and extremely disoriented, Harry did the only he could think of: getting the hell away from there.
There are reasons why the three D's of apparition exist. Missing one of those components usually led to unintended consequences: splinching at the best or a rather… graphic ending at the worst.
Well, Harry had Determination in spades, determination to get the hell out of his current situation. He also was pretty Deliberate on his apparition attempt, in fact, there was no other thought on his mind than escaping the hell he was currently in.
That left the most crucial component of Apparition, a component that he, sadly, lacked. Destination.
Many wizards and witches throughout history had asked themselves one question. Was it possible to Apparate to a random place?
Short answer: No.
Slightly more elaborate answer: People who had tried to do so fall into one of two categories:
People that apparate inside a solid object and, therefore, die a rather messy death.
People that just… vanish from the plane of existence. No trail left behind. They are just… Gone.
So, no. People don't just apparate without a destination, not unless one was actually trying to commit suicide by it (quite an elegant way to 'go out' during the 1700s).
But then again, Harry was just… Harry. Partly because he wasn't really knowledgeable about that bit of trivia, partly because even if he had been, he wouldn't have cared at that point, Harry did the only logical thing he could've done.
And so, with a will forged and tempered through several life-and-death situations and with the (unknown to him) magical ability that exceeded by several times the most accomplished wizard or witch in history, magnified by the nanoparticles that managed to penetrate his otherwise impregnable armored self, Harry poured every single iota of his being on an apparition attempt.
One second he was there, tossed around the rocks as a rag doll and in considerable pain, the next instant everything turned black for him.
Inadvertently the whole space-time continuum broke on that same moment.
He was blissfully unaware as he was tossed from his plane of existence, breaking through dimensions as if they were made out of the thinnest of papers, traveling through time as well, becoming a paradox in and of itself, existing and not existing at the same time, at all times and none at all.
Mercifully he would never find out that, just as he broke all the laws of physics (and even reality itself) on his home dimension, planet Earth, in all its magnificent glory, with a story of more than 4 billion years and housing astronomical amounts of living organisms, simply disappeared. Not with a bang, there was no cataclysmic explosion, no sudden tremors, no disruption, nothing.
One instant it was there, the next nanosecond it was gone.
In fact, a good chunk of the Milky Way vanished. Perplexing innumerable alien species (galaxies were not supposed to lose close to a quarter of their mass just because. Ever.) It would remain an unexplained mystery for the remaining of time.
Speaking about time. Harry's trip through the space-time roller-coaster could have very well lasted a second just as it could have lasted billions of years. Time was that much of a dicey bitch.
Eventually (or in no time at all) however, Harry's being (or what remained of him, mostly his ego, really) found itself anchored to one single dimension, at one particular time, on one particular body.
A 7 year old girl just moments after a gruesome traffic accident claimed the lives of all her immediate family; parents, siblings and pet turtle included.
She survived, if barely, by miracle. Maybe Harry's remaining sense of self and magic was enough to keep her from dying, maybe it merely was Fate being the bitch that she was, messing with Harry's live (regardless of dimension or temporal continuity) all over again, maybe it was something completely different.
No one would ever know.
Anyways, the little girl was immediately tended to, needing to be resuscitated two or three times whilst on the way to the nearest hospital and four times more whilst on the operating table.
Almost two days of operating later she was on a coma, her vitals carefully monitored, in full body cast on the comfiest bed (not that she would notice even if she was awake) at the intensive care ward of the Royal Hospital for Sick Children.
As a side note, the efforts and surgeries made to save her life would later be expanded upon, revolutionizing the field of emergency-care for children and saving an untold amount of kids in the following years.
Unknown to everyone, even her (him?), magic was working overtime to fix whatever was fixable on the body, hidden beneath the cast that covered all but the eyes of the child.
Were it any other patient, the coma the child was in would've probably lasted for years, if not forever. The weird mix of Harry and the child's selves, Fate's designs and the most powerful magic Harry's original dimension had ever witnessed worked in concert so that just a month after the accident the child became conscious once again.
All of that was obviously unknown to Harry(?). For him(?), he(?) had merely disapparated, lost consciousness and later woke up on a muggle hospital without any bodily feeling.
Unbeknownst to anyone, whilst his(?) body was already healed enough, the nervous system was currently adapting itself in order to sustain the bigger amount of magic he(?) was now capable of using.
Contrary to popular belief, magic did work as a kind of muscle or, more specifically, the ability to wield magic did.
Using magic was both a conscious and subconscious act, in much the same way that one could breathe. Consciously, one used magic by wanting a result in particular, using the adequate incantation for a spell that delivered said result and, finally, pushing magic through a medium in order to amplify it and then achieving a result. People with enough 'magical capacity' (magical affinity would be more adequate) could afford the luxury of not needing a 'focus' at all to achieve a similar result as those who did need them.
(No, usually wandless magic was NOT as strong as wanded magic, no matter what Uagadou had to say about it… They did produce an incredible amount of animagi every year, however).
Subconsciously… well, accidental magic was accidental for a reason, it required no conscious use of it, just a reaction, an instinctual use of magic by a magical being. Similarly to how one doesn't need to consciously will their hearth to pump, or their organs to do their job, magic was constantly flowing through the body, fixing small issues here and there, generally maintaining an adequate state of health.
Most intriguingly, however, Magic possessed a certain degree of sentience, primitive as it may have been. It was a phenomena that had been observed countless times on people that had been kissed by a Dementor. It was wildly accepted that, once kissed, the 'victim' was bereft of soul. The body was still alive but that was all there was.
How, then, was the magic of the kissed subjects gone?
Papers were written over that dilemma. Certainly magic was not tied to the physical body, there was no 'organ' or 'gene' that produced magic, it would have remained in the body after the kiss, otherwise.
Observation (usually carried out by Unspeakables) on people about to be Kissed showed that the magic of the soulless husks 'lingered' for a while around the body, before merely flying away to parts unknown. Attempts to follow said magic were always unsuccessful due to the speeds it flew at.
It made an amazing sight for anyone that could actually see magic. Either thanks to artifacts, like Mad-Eye's eye or through a natural talent.
The conclusion reached was that Magic was not inherent to wizard kind, or magical beings for that matter. Whilst they had the ability to make use of it, they were not the origin of it. It all pointed out towards a greater conscience behind it all.
Not that anyone would ever solve that puzzle… What with the sudden disappearance of Earth and all…
Back to the Hospital.
What would have otherwise been a painful-as-all-hell experience was mercifully dampened subconsciously by magic. Harry's body movements were limited to his (?) eyes, eyelids and… that was it.
With nothing left to do for the time being, and not knowing just how much longer he(?) would have to remain encased inside the medical bindings. Harry did the only other thing, besides sleeping, that he could do in that situation.
Meditating.
Now, he would never come out and admit it publicly, perhaps because of the reprehensiveness of the act itself, but having Ol' Snapey Snape violently violate his mind, without so much as a by-your-leave, all under the guise of Occlumency lessons helped him in a way no one would have expected.
Oh, it didn't help him with Occlumency at all, in fact his remained open to any and all decent Legilimens for the longest time.
No. What most people got wrong about Legilimency was that, when used forcefully against someone without training in Occlumency (just like Snape and Harry) was extremely painful for the victim. The pain was, in fact, comparable to that of the Cruciatus curse, maybe even more so as the Cruciatus targeted the nervous system, overstimulating the nerves of the body to the point of tortuous pain.
On the other hand, an unwarranted assault to one's mind via active Legilimency was plain and simply torture, it didn't contain any physical aspect to it. It was just the mental equivalent of shoving a red-hot steel rod down someone's throat.
Whilst there were potions regiments destined to lessen the pain that could be taken after being exposed to the effects of the Cruciatus, numbing the nerves and whatnot, there was no real treatment for someone who underwent mental torture.
For a time it was thought that inducing sleep was a solution, either by spell or by potion.
It wasn't.
Patients would vividly recall the pain even during their dreams. Surely a dreamless sleep potion would help, then?
Nope.
It was, in fact, even worse. Once the patient woke up, the accumulated pain equivalent to all the time they spent without dreams would hit all at once. It was only tried a couple of times and banned as a possible treatment from then on.
The only way to treat mental pain of that degree was to simply… roll with it.
In that regard, Harry would forever be reluctantly grateful to the dreaded dungeon bat.
During his fifth year at Hogwarts, being not only tortured via Blood Quill, but also having regular torture sessions conveniently named 'remedial potions', Harry's pain threshold soared to unknown heights. It saved his metaphorical bacon more than once when he was able to endure and fight through more than one Crucio thrown at him.
But what did all that had to do with meditation?
Well, not much and quite a lot, actually.
By his 30s, Harry was well into what most people would call his 'Bounty Hunter' phase. Having no real need for money, he saw his chosen hobby as more of a 'public service' to society in general.
He tried politics after Hogwarts, he left utterly devastated at the ploys played on the Wizengamot, there were few members there that truly sought to benefit the populace in general, with the vast majority only selfishly thinking on furthering their own agendas.
He left Britain to travel the world, meeting different people, doing a variety of things for a living and partaking on different cultures for varying lengths of time. No matter where he went, however, he faced one common denominator between them all.
Sociopaths, as it turned out, were not exclusive to Britain or Europe.
Maybe it was the magic, the exhilarating feeling one could get when abusing it, maybe it was something else entirely. Point was, most magical societies produced one or two truly dangerous-borderly sociopaths criminals a year.
Well, Harry did as Harry does and, finding himself with the opportunity of saving someone else from grievous injury at the risk of personal harm, he ended up jumping in front of a Cruciatus-like spell that was flying towards a little girl. Not expecting someone to jump straight into a curse designed to torture people and shocked at the little to no reaction Harry showed, the deranged witch was quickly dispatched by the British wonder.
Long story short, the girl's family insisted on hosting Harry during his stay in India, however long it may be (coincidentally, they were acquainted with the Patils and had a business relationship with the Indian part of the family). Knowing better than to reject such a grateful offer, Harry did just that, spending close to three years with the Sachdevs
He wasn't much of a 'spiritual' kind of guy before, having died once before and having met his parents and relatives ghosts, he knew for certain that there was an afterlife, and he was okay with leaving it at that.
At least until his host-family convinced him to join them in practicing yoga.
Reluctantly he listened as they taught him how to breathe, how to relax and, finally, how to meditate.
It was mind-blowing that something as simple as the act of breathing was something that most of the people did wrong on a daily basis.
Not only was he as relaxed during those three years as he had ever been before, he also found, to his delight, that his mental faculties strengthened a lot. Occlumency, the art of 'occluding' one's mind with the help of magic, was finally achievable.
Meditating also helped him to be more 'in tune' with himself. He quickly found out that, had he known meditation techniques back during his Hogwarts years, he could have easily noticed the presence of the quasi-Horcrux lodged in his head. Maybe then he would've found out a way to extricate it from himself without dying in the process.
It also granted him a better-than-average memory, not quite eidetic but close enough that made no difference in a practical sense.
There also were some aspects of meditation that he saw an immediate benefit in learning. Astral walking/projecting was chief amongst them. The ability to move unimpeded was oddly attractive to him. Was it practical? Maybe not as he couldn't move too far from where his body was resting and it actually took a while for him to enter into the required meditative trance, did he cared? Nope.
He reckoned it would've been better if he had a flying animagus form, but he had learned to live with the hand he was dealt.
His stay in India ended with many grateful tears on both sides. For a while he toyed with the idea of finally settling down and starting a family, there was an annoying feeling on the back of his head that prevented him from fully commiting, however.
He would never forget the days spent with the Sachdevs, and he hoped they would never forget him either.
… Yeah…
Lying down on his(?) hospital bedroom, he started the process of falling into a meditative trance. Soon enough he(?) found a concerning number of oddities.
Firstly, being familiar with his body in a physical and spiritual sense, he almost immediately noticed that the body he was currently inhabiting was decidedly not his original body.
Not by a long shot.
It wasn't the correct height, the correct weight or the correct age!
Bloody hell, it wasn't even the correct gender!
Abruptly shocked out of the trance, Harry started taking deep breaths. His(?) mind going a mile an hour, trying to figure out just what the hell had happened.
'Alright!… alright' he(?) somehow calmed himself(?) down enough to start dissecting the current dilemma, 'last thing I remember was apparating away from the eruption, and I definitely felt the tug of apparition before everything went black…
So, I did apparate away from there, right?'
Try as he(?) might, there was no answer that could completely satisfy him(?)
Fortunately, and before depression completely enveloped him(?) a pair of nurses entered the room.
"And finally this poor dear" Harry heard one of the nurses approaching the bed and taking something from the footboard, a medical chart most likely "Eloise Mackenzie, born on April 7th, 1980…"
"So 7 years old", the other nurse helpfully provided. Harry blanched as the reality of the situation started sinking in.
"Mmmh" the first nurse hummed in agreement "rushed into emergency surgery due to her injuries" he could hear the sound of pages flipping "resuscitated seven times, three on the ambulance, four more on the operating table. A miracle, actually, that she managed to survive given her state when she first came in…"
"Let's see here… entered a coma after surgery, has remained in that state for the past 35 days. Vitals have remained stable so far, cast should be removed… In three days, so Tuesday next week…"
"What about her family?" The other nurse inquired.
"Oh… All four members, parents and both siblings, died on the same accident… We've already contacted her closest relative, an aunt on her father's side. She'll go with her when… If she wakes up from the coma. In the meantime, she'll be moved to the long-term care wing."
Harry barely paid attention to the remaining talk between the two nurses, the news were just that shocking.
Not only was he back in time, making some quick calculations he knew the current year would have to be 1987 or early 1988 at most. So he traveled back in time some 34 years…
Alright, not the best, not the absolute worst scenario.
More upsetting was the fact that he (or was it she?) not only traveled back in time but also ended up on a completely different body. A body who's consciousness was apparently obliterated as his took control… A child who would never grow up, all thanks to him.
Even more upsetting was the fact that, assuming he hijacked another poor soul's body in order to continue living, not only was the innocent child's life snuffed, her whole family died in a tragic accident as well.
Now that he/she thought about it, it may prove to be a blessing disguised as a curse… Had her/his family lived, they would've noticed the abrupt change in behavior in their child pre and post accident. No way Harry would have been capable of passing off as a child for any measure of time, his own childhood had been so out of the norm for a 'normal' child that it was a borderline miracle that he was able to adequately function in society as an adult.
Thinking about the impossibility of time traveling such great periods of time, another intrusive thought drilled into his mind.
'Alternate realities…'
It was a known theory back home, in fact Luna Lovegood, as ironic as it may have sound, proposed the idea that not only were there an infinite number of realities out there, they were also connected to one another through some sort of 'door'. While all realities were infinitely different between them, said 'anchor' would remain a constant, the only invariable construct between every single reality.
Obviously Luna had theorized that said construct was, in fact, the famed Veil of Death, around which the whole British Department of Mysteries was built (to add credibility to her theory, it was documented that said Veil was beyond ancient, even more ancient than Humanity as a species).
So he either just traveled back in time…
Or he traveled back in time and into another completely different dimension…
Whatever the case it may be, he just hoped the current dimension had magic.
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Timeless Echoes of a Lost Soul