#I know thou shalt not support by buying the books/movies/new game etc

[quietpagan]

Whose Child Is This?

In which fourteen-year-old Harry Potter sees his time-travelling five-year-old self accidentally appear in the middle of the fucking Great Hall, asks ‘is anybody going to adopt this kid?’, and does not wait for an answer.

AO3

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The Great Hall was, in the aftermath of the rather exciting First Task, quite louder than usual. The visiting schools had been thrilled at the display, and while Hogwarts students were somewhat accustomed to having a weirdly stimulated school year, dragons had not yet been a part of the entertainment (for most).

The Hall was also brighter than usual, even excluding the Wreasley twin’s occasional breakfast-time antics, with the flashing of the very original and creative ‘Potter Stinks’ badges that everyone loved. Potter himself wasn’t wearing one, if only because he couldn’t figure out how to get it to stay stuck on the ‘Support Cedric Diggory’ setting, but it didn’t matter. Flashing badge or no, after such a rousing scene during his tussle with his chosen dragon Harry was as much a topic of craned-neck looks and too-loud whispers as the rest of the Champions. Even if you hated the kid, most people had to admit that anything ‘Potter’ tended to be interesting, honestly.

But yet absolutely none of it compared to the three carelessly-cast spells that had just rebounded onto Harry Potter; the bright, wobbly circle of light that temporarily blinded everybody near the ends of the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables; and the extremely tiny boy that had just fallen through it.

Harry Potter was a skinny, speccy teenager with a few bandaged burns and bruises and an increasing headache, and he was also the itty-bitty five-year-old groaning from where he’d landed in the mashed potato tureen, bleeding all over the tablecloth.

The Hall went silent, after a perfunctory scream or two.

The little boy lay in place for a moment and then turned over, sitting up as best he could. There was an enormous t-shirt hanging off one shoulder that was slowly becoming speckled with dark stains, and it was difficult to determine his expression under the myriad of bruises across his face. One thousand magical students watched as he swiveled his head back and forth, taking in the entire Hall with a rather myopic squint.

“Is this Heaven,” he asked the bushy-haired girl in front of him.

Hermione Granger knew exactly everything except how to answer that question.

The ginger boy next to her was running marathons with his eyes, trying to look at Hermione, the little boy, and his utterly shellshocked friend sitting across from him all at the same time.

“Er…”

“If it’s Heaven then that’s alright,” the child continued, still squinting. “Only I hope the angels are nice.”

Harry Potter the Elder was frozen in place, listening to the child speak. His back was throbbing from whatever spells had just hit him and so was his head and so was everything, honestly, dragon-fighting sucked. This was unreal. This could not, absolutely could not be happening.

Hermione seemed to gather herself then, after an unsuccessful effort to get Harry to react.

“Oh, um. Well, I’m not an angel but my, my name is Hermione. And – and – what’s yours?” She asked, visibly stiffening at a flurry of movement from the high table.

“Boy.”

Across from her, behind the child, Harry Potter’s face completely drained of blood. He didn’t move an inch, as if hoping that if he didn’t make a sound, the disaster happening on top of the table wouldn’t see him.

The child shook his hair out of his eyes, and the sweat-damp strands parted over the angry scar beneath them.

Across the Hall, Draco Malfoy looked as if he were trying quite desperately to telepathically make his father hear of this. Rita Skeeter, damn her to hell, was absolutely going to hearing of this.

“Um, it’s not Heaven, I’m terribly sorry, but – did you know that you’re bleeding? We really ought to get you to the hospital wing, Ronald, grab my bag, what on Earth happened to you?”

The boy watched as the redheaded teenager struggled to fit two schoolbags over one shoulder while simultaneously attempting to kick the black-hair kid across from him in the shins.

“Uncle Vernon was very mad at me.”

Harry Potter unfroze in a swoop of black robes, grabbing the tiny child and hauling him off of the table. The boy shrieked in pain before hastily covering his mouth and Harry belatedly took his hand off the kid’s back, instead crouching to pick him up from the front. There really wasn’t an extremely dramatic change in size in ten years and it wasn’t that difficult; the boy weighed hardly anything. Shouts emerged from the high table as he swung his legs over the bench and booked it for the door.

“Mr. Potter! Mr. Potter, come back here – “

Harry, Ron, and Hermione legged it out the Hall, shoving the door shut behind them; Hermione took an extra moment to do a complicated little spell that she’d been using to keep secret her personal diary, since her roommates had a nasty habit of believing that anything that held possibly juicy gossip was theirs by default.

She caught up to the boys with difficulty, since Harry, even when weighed down by a two-stone kid, was stupid fast.

The boy unceremoniously slung over his shoulder watched the corridor go by with pained bemusement, occasionally waving to a straggling student who was late for lunch.

The door to the hospital wing loomed wide as Harry rushed right past it, scrambling up a staircase to the exclamations of his friends.

“Harry-“

He turned a corner and booked it to the grand staircase, thundering up the next flight two at a time.

“Harry, please! You need to take him back to the hospital wing!”

“Look at him, mate, he’s bleeding all over!”

“It’ll be fine,” Harry finally said, not pausing even as his arms and legs burned like fire under the exertion. “He’ll heal okay.”

“You can’t just know that - !”

Harry could, because he remembered this day. Harry had once asked very, very foolishly, why he was called ‘Boy’ at home and ‘Harry’ at school, and if his relatives had known his name was actually ‘Harry’.

Vernon beat him so hard he’d thought he was dying. It was the first time he’d ever used the belt, and Harry had spent the afternoon and the whole night in his cupboard praying, wishing that the angels would be nicer to him if he went to Heaven.

He remembered dreaming of a great, big room full of floating lights and black-clothed people, he remembered watching a woman speak, though he couldn’t understand her. Nobody had picked him up and ran off with him then; he’d fallen asleep, or passed out, or something, and when he woke up he was sore and stiff and achy, but alive, in the furthest place from heaven that his five-year-old mind could think of.

It wasn’t happening again. He couldn’t let it. The kid just looked so small.

The seventh-floor corridor flew past until the trio halted in front of a rather hideous tapestry, and Harry began to pace.

I need some place to hide a kid.

I need somewhere to keep a kid safe.

I need somewhere to hide a kid.

He reached for the doorknob before it even materialized and fell through with his friends on his heels, slamming the door behind him.

“Harry, what – ?”

“How did you know this was here, what is this, mate?”

“I asked Dobby if he knew of a place to get away,” Harry muttered, conveniently solving a problem that the author didn’t want to dig into. 

No one in, he ordered. Steel bars emerged from the wooden door and embedded themselves in the stone around it. The room was small and dark, lit by a tiny fireplace that made soft light dance across the ceiling. Harry set the kid down on a plush sofa, pushing him a little when he tried to get away.

“Mm’not – “

“You’re allowed on the furniture,” Harry whispered, bent over him so that Ron and Hermione wouldn’t hear. Hermione looked like she had anyway.

A table appeared by the couch just as he was thinking of healing supplies, sporting bandages and rags, bowls of water, and a rather dusty bottle of murtlap essence.

Now that the running away was done Harry honestly felt rather empty. He didn’t want to do this with his friends watching, he truly didn’t, but he needed to think and he just couldn’t think right now, so his friends would have to reach for him.

“Er. Would you guys mind, I mean. Turning around? Please?”

Ron swiveled instantly, while Hermione looked like she wanted to argue. But at Harry’s insistent look she sighed and turned, leaning on the back of the couch beside Ron.

The kid was looking at him with wide eyes, bright green. Harry had never noticed how vivid they really were.

He wished he could think of something nice, but all he could think of in his moment was how accurate ‘green as a fresh-pickled toad’ actually had been.

“You look like me,” the kid said. Harry took a deep breath and held it for a moment.

Nodding, he grabbed a rag and the bowl of water.

“I want to get your back fixed up. Can you get your shirt off?”

Kid looked like he wanted to say more –

- ‘Don’t ask questions, you little freak’, Petunia would shriek –

But he set about pulling his arms out of the sleeves. Harry helped him get it over his head and scooted around to sit on the couch.

Harry had honestly never really seen anybody else extremely injured, or at least, not in a truly messy way. Quirrell turning to dust had happened rather quickly; they had knocked Snape out last year, but only a thin trickle of blood was evident there. The other Champions after the First Task had a few small cuts and bruises but that was it. Harry had had multiple grotesque, bloody injuries, and although they’d hurt like shite the sight of them didn’t really do much to him.

It was different, seeing it on somebody else.

The t-shirt had smeared the blood around rather gruesomely but the welts were worse than the cuts. Most of the blood was clogged and sticky; Harry wrung out the rag and gently tried to wash it away. The more he got off the worse the bruising looked; thick, dark lines welling up adjacent to the raised welts. The water in the bowl was reddish in no time, and he used the second bowl to finish up cleaning.

It would probably have been easier, he thought, if he could work on a smooth surface, but everything about the kid’s back was craggy; spine poking out like a mountain range, ribs showing more than could ever be healthy, the crests of his hipbones showing over the top of an overlarge pair of underpants held up with an old hair tie. Harry didn’t remember looking this nastily thin but he knew it was accurate, it was just…different. Seeing it on somebody else.

The same person. Somebody else who was the same person that he just snatched out of time and oh shit, he couldn’t take care of a kid!

“Sirius!”

Ron and Hermione jumped, spinning around reflexively. Harry tried to hold the t-shirt up like a curtain but it didn’t work one-handed.

“Oh, Harry – “

“We need to write to Sirius,” Harry said firmly, doing his best to ignore how watery Ron’s eyes were looking and, oh, god, it was all falling apart, he could not fucking handle this.

“Mate, I know he’s cool and all but the man’s living in a cave eating rats.”

“He offered to take me last year. SO. He probably had a house or something in mind, right? Just. Can you just write him really quickly, please?”

“Harry, we really should be going to Professor Dumbledore with this, shouldn’t we? He’ll be able to figure all of…this out, surely.”

Harry’s hands gripped the t-shirt tighter. Something in his throat squeezed shut, and he had to fight to open it again.

“Dumbledore will send him back. He’ll say it’s for our own protection and maybe he’ll talk to the Dursleys and he’ll promise that this won’t happen again and I’m not doing that, he, I. We’ll figure this out without Dumbledore, so please, please can you just go and write Sirius?”

Hermione had already given up on not crying but she nodded and wiped her face, shoving Ron across the room to the door, which opened just barely long enough to allow them through.

Harry turned back to the task at hand, dabbing at the cuts with a little bit of paste. The kid was starting to shiver. Harry gently pushed him forward just as the fire enlarged a little.

“Sirius is our – he’s my – he’s, shit.”

There were two Harry Potters, why was this his life.

“He’s our godfather,” Harry said, answering a question he knew had to be running around the kid’s head. “He was supposed to take us when our parents died but he was framed for murder and put in jail. He broke out of jail last year. I don’t know how he can help but he’d better have something.”

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That something turned out to be giving both Harrys a heart attack by showing up at the door fifty minutes later, scrambling at the wood like a bear trying to break into a storehouse. Small Harry jumped onto the arm of the couch as only-slightly-taller Harry opened the door for the enormous dog, who bounded in and changed into a man in one smooth motion, grabbing the older Harry in a bone-crushing hug as the door slammed shut.

The hug must have been too tight, because Harry suddenly was having a really, really hard time keeping from crying. Hugs from Sirius felt as safe and homey and achy as Mrs. Weasley’s embraces, but there was an element of mine that was added as well that kind of crushed something in his heart.

When Sirius let go he didn’t let go all the way; his hands stayed on Harry’s shoulders as he peered over his godson’s hair to look at…his? Other?? Godson??

Who was still standing upright on the couch, utterly agog at seeing a dog turn into a man. 

Sirius took in the bloodied kid, the scarred forehead, the glaring ribcage, and the cringing teen all in one wide glance, and stepped forward and knelt, bringing him just below the kid’s height.

“So you must be young Harry Potter,” he said softly, giving the child a gentle smile. The boy shook his head, looking up at his counterpart with wide eyes.

“S’m’name’s Boy,” he mumbled. Sirius’s face told Harry that they were definitely going to be having A Discussion sometime soon, but he just cracked a smile and pulled a blanket over the kid’s skinny shoulders.

“Well, my name is Sirius, and I’m actually your godfather, so I’m going to be taking care of you now, alright?”

The boy – Harry, his name is HARRY, it’s HARRY, it’s not Boy, it’s not Freak, it’s HARRY – clenched the blanket in his little fists.

“What’s – “

“You got your dad’s cloak with you?” Harry, who hadn’t until the author needed him to, nodded.

“Good. Toss it over the kid and let’s go. I’m taking you to my house.”

Harry scrambled to fish his cloak out of his pocket while Sirius shoved the Room’s medical supplies into his own pockets, grabbing another blanket and tucking it securely around Harry-the-younger and picking him up. The boy looked terrified but didn’t say a word.

“We need to get to either your Common Room or McGonagall’s office,” Sirius said, waving his wand at his face and murmuring urgently. “Is there a mirror – ah.” At Harry’s thought, a claw-footed mirror appeared on the wall. Sirius trudged over and continued to spell his face, until he looked like a passable copy of Professor McGonagall.

“Can’t do much for the robes, I’m afraid, but it’ll do if we have to run for it. Sorry, Minne,” Sirius added in afterthought.

Harry walked them over to the door and thought very hard about Professor McGonagall’s office, which portraits and tapestries hung near it, what the hallway looked from the staircase at the end. The Room shuddered, and then the door shivered a bit and opened to look directly at McGonagall’s door.

Harry and Sirius shimmied out and nearly brained themselves on the wood when the door refused to open.

“Shit! I mean, shite.”

Sirius kicked the wood and started off to the stairs that led to Gryffindor Tower.

“She’s not in, I left the door jammed but she must have seen it, dammit.”

Harry trotted to keep up, listening to the horribly-accented mutters with pounding in his ears. Surely, surely somebody would notice them, they were going to get caught and this would be the end and –

“Mr…oh! Mr. Potter, stop right there!” The both of them whirled around to find Dumbledore, Ron, Hermione, and the actual Professor McGonagall turning the opposite corner. McGonagall looked a bit stunned for a moment, before indignation overtook her face and she marched right at them, proper robes and hat and all, like a tartan tiger having spotted its prey.

“Harry!”

“Mate!” “Sirius - ?”

“Book it.” “Black, don’t you dare – “

Sirius and Harry bolted up the stairs, screeching to a halt at the portrait before Harry gave the password and ducked through the entrance, startling a gaggle of second-years who were just stepping in.

“Muffliato!”

The few students hanging out in the Common Room immediately looked confused at the sudden buzzing in their ears, as Sirius dug a hand into the pocket of his robe and tossed an amount of floo powder into the fireplace.

Harry was suddenly burdened with thirty pounds of invisible child.

“You go through first, Harry,” Sirius said, as muffled yells echoed from outside the portrait hole. “It’s ‘Grimmauld Place,’ alright? Hurry.”

“Grimmauld Place, Grimmauld Place,” Harry muttered, remembering his last floo encounter. He stepped into the emerald flames just as the back of the portrait rocked. A few of the students around the Common Room began to look panicked and suspicious, realizing that ‘Professor McGonagall’ was looking somewhat different than usual.

Harry adjusted the kid, feeling him breathing quietly but quite heavily, and shouted “Grimmauld Place!” just as the portrait hole burst open.

The flames whisked him away before he saw more than Dumbledore’s wide eyes, and he and the kid tumbled out into a pitch-dark room.

There was a moment of alarm as he overbalanced and began to fall, then a strong hand grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him upright.

Sirius’s angular face was illuminated briefly by the flames, before he put a hand onto the lintel and said, “Nullus Introitus!” and the fire died immediately. The darkness fell with the ringing of iron bells, and despite the silence Harry’s labored breathing sounded strangely muffled. The hand on his shoulder was warm, though, and he held the kid tighter as his eyes began to adjust to the dark.

“Where are we?” he whispered. The darkness absorbed the sound like a sponge.

“We’re at my house,” Sirius murmured. His hand shifted on Harry’s shoulder as he moved forward, and suddenly there was light; with a gesture, Sirius had lit the wall sconces.

“Don’t move from that spot,” he said, “And don’t lose contact with me. This house isn’t very friendly, and I, uh. I haven’t been here for a while.”

The room they were in was coated in dust, but the green silk of the wallpaper was still able to be seen, and the sharp, lavish décor was no less harsh for its layers of neglect.

It wasn’t anything like Harry had seen before, and Sirius’s trepidation did nothing to assuage his nerves. But as the invisibly kid began to squirm, Harry-the-elder found himself enveloped in a pair of long, warm arms, the scratch of a beard tickling the top of his ear.

“We’re going to figure this out, Harry,” said Sirius, and finally the strings were cut. Harry sagged against his godfather’s chest and took a shaky breath, trying to control the burning in his eyes. A hand rubbed across his back, and if he had to wipe his eyes against Sirius’s velvet housecoat then nobody else was here to see it.

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A/N: Where did this come from? Why did I write this? Who fucking knows. I haven’t read the books since I was in high school so please forget inconsistencies in timeline and tidbits here and there. We’re taking 'fuck the source' as a writing style because fuck JKR. This wouldn't leave me alone until it was written so here it is. If there’s fourth wall breaks unusual to my writing style it’s because I’m mad.

Is there another Horcrux now that baby!Harry is present? Who fucking knows! Not me! This will not, not, NOT be continued upon, by golly!

I originally wrote this as happening in 5th year, mainly because that’s where the Angst ™ is and I kind of thought it would be hilarious to have Dumbledore just chilling at Grimmauld Place after he ditches Hogwarts in book five, like…where did he go? Boarding at the Hog’s Head with Aberforth just to annoy his brother? I feel like he would be an extremely pleasant and polite and tidy houseguest that absolutely every host wants to get rid of within half a day of his residence. Dumbledore can be stomached in small doses, not weeks living in the same house. And I want Sirius to get a little petty about it.

BUT Book Four has a lot more, uh, options. Of stuff. It’s past midnight, I don’t have a brain right now.

Also the books just kind of…sleep? On Harry’s horrendously abusive home life? Like it’s literally just there. I get that that’s kind of how it can feel at the time but uhhh that shit makes marks in weird and unexpected places. I know not much was actually touched upon but it’s canon that Harry’s been both choked and hit at with frying pans, and Vernon even smacks Dudley as well in the first book.

Anyway I’ve never read a fic of younger Harry time-travelling to the future, always book- or future-Harry travelling to the past, so here you go, bite me.