Well, here’s another one. This one there’s no Sirius only Shadow and Harry. Well and a few guest appearances.
I hope you like it. All I ask is that you leave a review. It’s the only pay I get.
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Harry Potter was sitting on the swing set near his house at Privet Drive. He was going into his fourth year at Hogwarts. His godfather had flown away on the hippogriff a few weeks ago and had not written to him yet. He was hoping to hear from him soon, so that he could come and get him and take him away from the Dursleys. While the Dursleys were not overly abusive, they were still not somebody who he wanted to live with. They were cruel people, with their mouths and tongues. They made him do all the housework, all the cooking, all the repair work and generally were just mean people. Harry hated them.
He sat and watched Dudley pick on the neighborhood kids as he always did, just glad that he wasn't picking on him for once. As Dudley turned his way, he was getting ready to get up and go hide. A voice next to him said, “Don't worry, I won't let him pick on you.”
“Who the hell are you?” Harry said. He turned and looked to see a man with a mustache dressed in dark clothes swinging next to him. The man had not been there the moment before. It was like magic. This man’s attitude just screamed ‘don’t fuck with me’.
“You may call me Shadow,” the man said, looking over at Dudley and making the younger teen move away with just a glance.
Dudley looked cowed and scared, and Harry hoped he wet himself over that look. Then again, Harry might get in trouble for being near the man who scared the Little Duddekins.
“Why do you look like me?” Harry asked, looking at the man with fascination. It was weird looking at the man. It was like looking at a picture of his dad, but with green eyes and facial hair.
“I am you from the future, and I've come to rescue you. Well, that is if you need to be rescued,” the man named Shadow said, tilting his head to the side, like he was unsure if the boy needed help. It was a peculiar look on him.
“Of course I need to be rescued. If you're me, you should know that,” the teen exclaimed, like he was accusing Shadow of lying about being him from the future.
“Every reality is different,” the reality hopper stated, shaking his head. “Some Harrys actually have it quite well with the Dursleys. Some Harrys have it much worse than I did. I need to know how your life is.” He made a vague gesture towards Harry’s house.
“I'm much like a house elf,” Harry stated in a bland voice. He hoped that got the point across.
“So your life was much like mine then? Do the Dursleys hurt you?” Shadow asked, thinking that there were many different types of house elves. The Hogwarts house elves, or the Malfoy elves. Each worked, but only one was punished. Well, he was sure many of the pureblood elves were punished, but that was just his point. Not all house elves were.
“Not so much, but I still don't want to be here,” the teen confessed, sure the Dursleys smacked him upside the head or swatted him on the shoulders, but they didn’t hurt him, per se.
“I can see that. Let's get you out of here then,” Shadow said, thinking the emotional abuse was just as bad as the physical abuse. The Dursleys were cruel people. If Harry wanted gone, they were going to get.
“Great. Where will we go?” Harry asked, jumping up off the swing ready to get going right the fuck now.
“Well, first of all, we’ll get you out of England and get you to your godfather,” Shadow said, standing also and heading towards the house.
“How will we get me out of England? You're not my guardian,” the teen asked, looking at him like he was crazy. He had heard on the telly that that was hard to do.
“It's easy enough to buy an airplane ticket. I look enough like you to be your father. Nobody's going to ask questions,” the older teen stated. He had heard it too, but he thought they could work around it. He could do magic after all.
“Why not just get Sirius back here?” Harry asked, wanting to have his godfather back, but wasn’t sure about leaving the country. It was a huge step after all.
“I've tried that in a bunch of realities and it's just easier for us to go to him?” Shadow said, knowing how hard it was for Sirius to sneak back into Britain. It took a lot of Confundus charms and Obliviates.
“OK, if you say so. But what about my friends? And Hogwarts? What about Hogwarts?” the younger teen asked, suddenly worried about his schooling and his friends. What if he never saw them again? What about his grades and his lessons?
“Do you really want to stay at Hogwarts?” Shadow asked as they stopped on the walkway. They were a block away from the house. They wouldn’t want the Dursleys to hear this conversation, and they were too far from other people to be overheard. “After everything you've gone through. The Basilisk. The Dark Lord. The life-threatening situations; everything you've gone through, you want to go back?” He looked around to make sure they were still alone and cast the Muffliato Charm to confuse their voices.
“When you put it that way…” Harry said, his voice trailing off, still unsure. He really didn’t want to leave, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to stay either. Everything Shadow said was true after all.
“You forget, I'm you and I know I would have wanted to leave to be with my godfather at this point in time in my life,” Shadow said, smiling fondly at him. It looked weird on his face. Like the man had little to smile about in his life. “And I know what happens after, and I don't want you to have to go through that, which is why I'm here to rescue you now.” He lifted the spell and started walking again. He jammed his hands in his pockets like the smile had made him uncomfortable. He wasn’t used to being this soft. It was getting easier with each jump, but it made him uneasy still.
“What happens in the future?” Harry asked, walking beside him and keeping his tone low.
“More of the Dark Lord, more life-threatening situations, more things like that. This year coming up, there's a tournament that puts the whole school against you. And Dumbledore doesn’t do Jack all about it,” the time traveler explained, his face going dark at the memory. He hated his fourth year at that damned school. Well, truth be told it was from then on that he hated that school, for all he called it home. It was still better than the Dursleys.
“Don't say things like that about Dumbledore,” Harry said, making Shadow stop walking again.
“He is the reason half the things happen to you,” the older teen stated, throwing his hands in the air. There was a bite in his tone. “He could have Sirius’s name clear tonight if he wanted to, but no, he has him running off in fear for his life. That’s some bullshit right there. It’s a powerplay and he knows it.”
“How could he have Sirius’s name cleared?” Harry asked, confusion laced his voice.
“He's the Chief Warlock,” was the explanation.
“What does that even mean?”
“He's in charge of the Wizengamot,” Shadow said, like that explained everything, forgetting that Harry didn’t know what that was until he was given his trial.
“And they are?” was the exasperated question.
“The governing body of the magical world,” Shadow explained, a bit apologetically. He had to remember that he was so ignorant of the wizarding world until he grew up and studied it all when he was the ‘Dark Lord’.
“Why don't they teach us this at school?” a frustrated Harry asked, getting angry at Hogwarts for keeping him ignorant.
“You're asking the wrong person. I'm you, remember?” Shadow said, knowing just how the other teen felt.
“Oh yeah, right,” Harry said, sheepishly. It was easy to forget this dark man was him. He was just so… formidable.
“Let's go get your stuff,” Shadow said, setting off again. They were almost there. He couldn’t wait to meet these Dursleys.
“What about the Dursleys?” Harry asked, getting worried that Vernon might pitch a fit. If Dudley got home first and told him about the scary man, there might be a fight waiting for them.
“Don't worry about them, I'll take care of them,” Shadow said, pulling his wand. He wasn’t going to take any chances. Vernon Dursley was a coward and a fool.
“Alright then,” Harry said with a grin.
They went to the house and Harry ran up the stairs and got his things while Shadow stood guard. Vernon tried to intimidate Shadow, but he was turned into a teacup for his trouble. He was left that way for the entire visit. Petunia yelled and screamed, but she was too scared to do anything else. When Shadow left, he reversed the transfiguration, and they left Privet Drive for good.
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“I thought you said it was going to be easy to get me a plane ticket,” a laughing Harry said, as they sat in a café in the airport. Shadow found out it wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought it would be. There were too many people around for him to just confound everyone into letting him purchase a ticket for Harry.
“We have to get your passport first,” the older teen said with a sigh. He could get that from the goblins. It was an easy thing. He could get the Horcrux out of the kid’s head while he was there. He was going to wait until he got to the Island, but they might as well get it done here since they had to go there anyway.
“Well, how long is that going to take?” Harry asked, worried they would be here forever. Like any other impatient teenager. He wanted to be gone now.
“A few minutes. But the next flight to the island isn’t for a few days. We just missed the last one going that way,” Shadow said, seeing the boarding list. The island wasn’t a popular location. It was off the mainland, and you had to take many roundabout trips to get there, or one one-way trip once every few days.
“Can't we just magic our way there? I mean, Sirius didn't have any problem getting his way out of the country,” Harry whinged, he was bored. He wanted to leave now. Now that he had gotten it into his head that he was leaving he just wanted to go.
“Sirius is also on the run from the law. How he left wasn’t quite legal,” Shadow pointed out. He could do it the illegal way, but he really wanted it to be above the board, that way it didn’t come back to bite the boy in the arse later.
“But aren't we leaving a paper trail for them to find?” Harry said, tilting his head to the side. “I thought we didn’t want them to find me?”
“The magicals don't care about paper trail,” the time traveler stated, waving a dismissive hand in the air. They didn’t look things up like plane schedules or transportation the muggle way. There were too many people in the magical world that didn’t even know what a phone was, let alone a computer.
“I mean the muggles,” Harry said, still tilting his head, like he was still confused at their actions.
“I don't care if the muggles know where you are,” Shadow said, furrowing his brow, wondering about this line of questioning.
“But I mean if a muggleborn were to do that and tell Dumbledore where I am,” Harry said, finally telling him what he was getting at.
“You might have a point there. Hermione would be able to find you,” the older teen said, getting the gist. Hermione would do that too. She, for all she loved Harry, would do that to protect him.
“Huh. So, what are we going to do?” the younger teen asked, thinking the same thing about Hermione.
“We're still gonna get your passport, we're still gonna get a plane ticket, but we'll go someplace else and then magic our way to Sirius,” Shadow said after giving it some thought. This might lead anyone who thought to look for them on a merry goose chase.
“That sounds like a plan,” Harry said with a sadistic grin.
“Until then, do you want to see the sights?” his older self asked.
“You mean actually see the historical monuments in Britain?” Harry asked, confused. Why would he want to see that. He got to see them on the telly all the time.
“Yeah, I know. It's something I always wanted to do. Is this something you want to do?” Shadow asked, knowing sometimes the Harrys differed. There was one Harry who hated London with a burning passion thanks to Petunia.
“Not really,” Harry said, though he wasn’t bitter about it, just dismissive.
“All right then what do you want to do?” Shadow asked, kindly. “We can do that then go and see the goblins.” There wasn’t a hurry. The bank was open 24/7, and they could get it done any time within the next few days. It wouldn’t hurt to do something the boy always wanted to do.
“I've always wanted to eat at a 5-star restaurant,” Harry said, with bright eyes. He was a good cook and wanted to compare his food to that of a chef’s. Not that he thought he was that good, but…
“I think we can do that. Do you think you have the manners for it?” the older teen asked, knowing he didn’t, but he could care less about that. He could confound his way in, and they would eat well that afternoon.
“I'm not sure, but we can fake it,” Harry said with a wicked grin. He had manners, and they could magic their clothes to something presentable. It would work out okay, he was sure of it.
“Uncle Shadow!” came the yell from three people off to the side of their table. How anyone found them in this crowded café, he didn’t know, but there they were.
They looked like Potters, but that was impossible. There were no Potters in England at this time in history.
“Who the hell are you?” Shadow asked, keeping his voice flat.
“We’re the Potters,” the only female said. She was about eighteen, while her companions were nineteen and twenty.
“The Potters who?” was the next question.
“We’re the Potters from one of the realities where you rescued our grandfather?” the nineteen-year-old male said, taking a chair from the neighboring table and straddling it.
“We’re reality hopping too. We’re just glad we ran into you,” the twenty-year-old male said, doing the same with another chair.
“Which grandfather?” Shadow asked, rather interested now. If there were Potters jumping about realities, that made things more fascinating.
“Well, how would we know? All we know is he is one of the grandfathers that you rescued,” the female stated, gently shoving Harry over so she could sit in the booth he was in.
“Well, tell me the back story. We're going out to eat at a 5-star restaurant. You can join us and tell me which grandfather,” Shadow said, compelled to hearing this story.
“OK,” the three Potters said, getting up and dragging Harry and Shadow out of the café. Well, after Shadow paid his bill.
They found a 5-star restaurant, magicked their clothes, and one of the Potters did the confounding. Serenity, which was the female’s name, told the story of the Harry that was rescued as a baby from the evil clutches of Dumbledore and the Dursleys before he even met them. Evan and Drake, the males, regaled them of their lives growing up on Black Isle, which is where Harry and Shadow were heading.
The Potters strongly encouraged Harry to go there. They said he would not regret it.
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“Well, that was fun,” Shadow said as they were coming out of the restaurant. It had been a fun filled lunch with a lot of laughter and smiles. The Potters were a loving family that hadn’t grown up with the horrors of England’s magical community.
Shadow took them to an out of the way alley and unspelled their clothes. They didn’t need to walk down the street in dress clothes. Now they looked like normal blokes out for a walk.
“What happened to the other Potters?” Harry asked, feeling weird calling them that.
“They went off to rescue other Harrys,” Shadow said, shrugging his shoulder. That was confusing to say for him. He thought it was just him, now he knew it wasn’t. However, he knew there were countless universes out there.
“Why didn't they stay with us?” Harry asked, a bit hurt. He had wanted family all his life, now he found some and they were off rescuing other hims. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
“They wanted to go out and rescue other Harrys,” Shadow said, looking at Harry like he should know that.
“Well, they've convinced me that you're real. They also convinced me that going to Sirius was the right thing to do. Maybe I'll go out and rescue other Harrys when I get older,” Harry said, thinking hard on that. He was thinking much older than Shadow though. Shadow was only nineteen. He didn’t get to live his life.
“That's completely up to you, but until then, we'll let's get you to your godfather,” Shadow said, ruffling his hair. That actually made him quite proud to think about.
“That sounds like fun. Tell me more about your life and why you wanted to go back in time to rescue Harrys.”
“I told you about the tournament, and I told you how it turned out. That was the turning point in our life where it made everything… darker,” Shadow said, knowing that was when he started getting angry. It seemed like he was always angry from that point. Like nothing made him happy. “The only person that stood next to us during that time was Hermione. She was the light in our life. She was never a romantic interest, though she could have been. She fell in love with somebody else. Unfortunately, that somebody was not a good person for her, but it was not our place to say anything, so we never did.”
He would regret that to his dying day. Now it was too late. His Hermione was no more. She was a shadow of herself.
“Oh, who was it?” Harry asked, wondering if he could stop it.
“Ronald Weasley,” Shadow spat the name.
“But, he's our best mate,” Harry said, confused as to why Shadow seemed to hate Ron.
“Yes, I know, but he's not a good person for Hermione,” the older teen stated with a great deal of conviction. There was never anyone worse than Ron Weasley for Hermione Granger.
“But, he's her friend,” Harry said, still confused. Shouldn’t they get along great? Sure, they seemed to fight a bit, but they were friends.
“But he's not a good person for Hermione,” Shadow reiterated with some force. He was poking a finger into Harry’s chest now.
“I'm going to have to take your word for it,” Harry said, if only to save his chest from more abuse. “Are we going to rescue Hermione and take her with us? Or at least leave her a note to tell her why we’re leaving?” He hated the thought of leaving her in the dark. Especially if she was going to marry Ron Weasley and have a bad marriage.
“You're more than welcome to do anything you wish,” Shadow said, making a grand gesture.
“Do you think she'll listen?” Harry asked, worried the girl would have more questions than listen to his advice. He would not be there to answer the questions. She might not listen then.
“I think that she'll listen to anything you have to say,” Shadow said, thinking that Hermione thought more highly of Harry now than she does when they get older.
“Alright, I'll leave her a note in the morning,” the doubtful teen said. He was still concerned, but he’d give it a go. He’d rather he tried then learn later that she went and did what Shadow said without being warned.
“Anyway, back to what I was saying. After fourth year, fifth year wasn't much better. People thought I was an attention seeking crazy person. Because I kept telling them that the Dark Lord was back, and the government kept telling them that he wasn't. There was a government official who came to the school telling everyone that I was a liar and a cheater. She tortured us, she tortured the whole school. She kept laying down rules and regulations and was just cruel and mean. And then during the sixth year, war broke out and everybody knew he was back. And then people thought I was the chosen one and suddenly believed me, putting me on a pedestal. It was unbelievable, the turn of events. I didn't like it.” He threw his hands in the air in frustration and disbelief.
“I don't blame you. I don't like it when they do that either,” Harry said, thinking about his second year and the whole Heir of Slytherin thing. It was unbelievable how the whole school changed their tune when he saved the school.
“And then seventh year, the war got worse. I was on the run with Hermione and Ron. We were looking for Horcruxes. Which reminds me, you have to get the one out of your head,” Shadow said, only to stop when Harry stopped and stared at him.
“Wait, what?” the teen shouted. “I have a horcrux in my head. What's a horcrux?” He didn’t need to know what a horcrux was to be horrified, there was something in his head. It wasn’t his, and it was in his head. That and his older self had been hunting them. That could only be bad.
“Don't worry about it, we'll go to the goblins and get it out. After we're done talking, let me finish my story,” Shadow said, pulling him along the walkway. They had been walking away from the restaurant and were heading towards Charing Cross Road. It was quite a ways away, and they might have to take the Underground for a bit, but for now they would just meander.
“Alright,” the still in shock teen said, letting himself be led.
“After seventh year, people were putting me on the pedestal again,” Shadow continued, putting an arm around the teen and leading the way to the Underground. He figured the sooner they got to Gringotts the better, “and then it got out that I could talk to snakes, which everybody knew anyway because that came out in our second year, but it came out again. And they started calling me a Dark Lord and I turned into a Dark Lord, and I sucked at it. Because I'm not an evil person. So I decided to come back and change that and the best way to change that is to get you out of England.”
“So where does Dumbledore come in and all this,” Harry asked, hoping to take his mind off the fact that there was something in his head.
“He's the one that sets everything up,” Shadow said, shrugging his shoulders. To him it was what happened. It might not be what happened in this reality, but it might have been worse here. If the Dursleys were worse, then Dumbles might have been too.
“I still don't understand that,” Harry said, scrunching his forehead in confusion. That didn’t make any sense to him. Shadow didn’t mention the headmaster once in his narration.
“He's the one that set up the traps in the first year. He's the one that let everything go on in the second year. He's the one that didn't get Sirius his trial in third year. He's the one that set up the tournament in the fourth year, which is the catalyst for the entire events from then on,” Shadow said, getting louder with each word, making people glace their way. Then he started cursing and lowered it again. “He kept his hands in my life until the day he died, and even after. The bastard.”
“Oh, I see,” said Harry, rubbing his nose. He thought about it and could see where the man was coming from. “I didn't realize that he was the one that set up everything in our first year, but now that I look back on it, I could see that those traps were rather easy to get through.” He had thought about that once or twice in the past. Just how easy it had been to get past those ‘traps’.
“Right,” Shadow said, nodding his head in agreement.
“So I go to Sirius, live my life on the island and everything works out from there on in. Easy-peasy,” Harry said, walking ahead a bit, turning around and walking backwards. He was trying for easygoing.
“Of course it's not gonna be easy-peasy. You're the Boy Who lived,” Shadow stated, he didn’t want to give the boy any false hope. There was always going to be someone somewhere giving him grief/worship/fangirling/or something over the fact that he lived against the Killing Curse.
“Well, I mean, it's going to be easier though, because I'm not going to be in England,” Harry tried again. He really wished the bloke would lighten up. He really hoped he didn’t get that gloomy.
“Right, as long as you stay away from England and from Dumbledore, you should be fine,” Shadow said in confirmation. He liked the fact that the kid was trying to stay bright and airy. He hated being angry all the time.
“Right then. Let's get my passport and get me out of England,” Harry said, moving to enter the Tube. They would be going to Diagon Alley and then Harry would be gone from Britain in a few hours. He only hoped it was the right decision.
“Right. Let’s go,” Shadow said, ready to get this over with.
They got on the Tube and headed out. Diagon Alley awaits.
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It was the correct decision. Harry and Sirius had a great reunion and relationship. They lived on the Black Isle for the rest of their lives. Sirius got his asylum in Brazil and in Peru. They found him innocent of all crimes and made him a free man. The two men never set foot in England again, though they got their riches from Gringotts.
Hermione did get the letter and she respected Harry enough to at least think about her relationship with Ron Weasley in an objective way, now that Harry Potter wasn’t there to be a buffer. He made her cry more than once and it broke their friendship. She did meet Viktor Krum when the tournament was brought to Hogwarts. She married him years later.
As for the tournament, when Harry’s name was called, they ignored it. Shadow told them to, and Sirius knew you can’t make a contract in absenteeism, especially with a minor. So, whoever signed the boy’s name would get the repercussions. Which turned out to be Barty Crouch Junior during the beginning of the first task.
The Horcruxes were hunted down by the goblins and were ‘killed’. So Voldy was never resurrected. No war ever broke out. The tournament was won by Krum. But there was no ritual in the end.
As for the time traveling Potters, well they ran into Shadow a time or two again, along with the other Potters and Lupins. But that’s a different story.