Harry James Potter (swordofgryffin) wrote in fourteenshades, @ 2014-06-08 12:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | !ageplot, harry potter, remus lupin, x-ginny weasley |
Age Plot: Harry/Ginny
Who: Ginny & Young!Harry - and Remus
Where: Their bedroom
When: Early Sunday morning (Age Plot Day 2)
What: A bit of a disturbing surprise for all concerned.
Status: WIP - almost finished
Harry woke very slowly in a cocoon of warmth and comfort. As he lay half-in and half-out of sleep, he realised with a terrible sinking feeling that he was no longer lying on the floor, but in bed, which meant that the wonderful dream he had been having about giants and magic had to be just that - a dream. If the bed was much more comfortable than usual, and the sensation of space around him much larger, then his sleep-addled mind merely dismissed these small anomalies as part of the dream. He kept his eyes closed. Any minute now, he realised miserably, Aunt Petunia was going to bang on the door to insist that he got up to make breakfast.
And it had been such a good dream, too.
Fighting wakefulness with every ounce of will, he burrowed down into the unusually squishy mattress, pulling the strangely heavy covers over his head, hoping that if he fell properly asleep again, he might go back to the dream. He would settle for just a few more minutes, it had all seemed so very real...
Then something shifted in the bed beside him.
Suddenly he was very much awake. He froze, curled up in the stuffy, heavy space under the duvet. Increasingly he was aware that this was not in fact his bed in the cupboard under the stairs, or the bed in Dudley’s second bedroom - it was much too big and too soft for either, and, much more importantly, there was someone in there with him.
---
Ginny had been having a surprisingly restful sleep. Surprising in that she hadn’t woken up once during the night which was unusual for her these days. Becoming a mother had turned her into a much lighter sleeper than she’ been growing up in a house with six brothers. Even the few months she’d been in the village away from the late night catastrophes that were usually the cause of her being awake at odd hours in the night, hadn’t broken her of waking at the slightest sound. Anything could be her kids calling out for a parent in the middle of the night for one reason or another. Granted, working the late shift at the club had been its own adjustment, but she was dealing rather well. It was, probably, the least strange thing that this village had to offer after all.
It was early still. She could tell by the amount of sun coming through the curtains. No one would judge her for drifting back off to sleep, she was sure, but the nagging voice in the back of her mind that there was Quidditch training to be done if she was going to keep from making a fool of herself in front of people in the next few weeks. It had been years since her last official match and while she hardly was completely grounded, she planned on helping to teach people the ropes and so she ought to have at least brushed the dust off her own skills.
She stretched from her fingertips to her toes, reaching up towards the headboard and letting out a small sigh, before glancing over at the lump beside her to see if her husband was awake. “Morning, love.” She said, her voice scratchy with sleep still as she wiped a little clumsily at her face.
---
Harry stayed very still, frozen with panic, as the movement beside him became more pronounced. Perhaps if he shut his eyes very tight and curled up very small, whoever was in his bed wouldn’t notice he was there. With a thrill of horror, he wondered if it was Dudley. Could he have sleepwalked into his cousin’s bed in the middle of the night? If he had, he was dead for sure.
But then someone spoke, and it was a woman’s voice. What on earth was going on? At least it was definitely not his Aunt Petunia - he would know that voice anywhere. Well, his cover was blown. But what could he do? Did he answer? He decided no, he would stay very still and pretend to be asleep, or dead, or whatever it was you were supposed to do when big dogs attacked you. Not that that had ever worked with Aunt Marge’s dogs. If you played dead with them they would probably eat you. He tensed, trying to not even breathe, but it was very stuffy by now under the covers and he would surely suffocate if he stayed there much longer.
---
Ginny tossed the duvet from herself, revealing the somewhat ratty Weird Sister’s shirt she loved--holes and tears and all--and a pair of shorts that had certainly seen better days that she used as pyjamas. Her brow furrowed slightly as she glanced again at the lump that hardly seemed to be moving. And was smaller than it ought to have been. Was it just blankets? Maybe Harry had gotten up already and was starting breakfast? But she couldn’t hear him about the house. She pulled the comforter back, off of the lump and was even more confused by what she thought was Albus at first, but then she remembered that her Albus was practically a fully-grown man and not a 9 year old boy any more and that was when she screamed and jumped back, effectively sliding right off the bed and onto the floor with a loud THUD.
---
Harry gasped when the covers were pulled off him, and opened his eyes just in time to see a person-shaped blur go flying off the edge of the bed with a shriek. Disoriented, he scrambled out of the bed onto the other side, blinking furiously against the light and the utter lack of comprehension. He had no idea where he was, what was happening, or who this strange woman was who was doing all the screaming. At the same time, he realised with a jolt that he was wearing all his clothes - just as he had been when he’d fallen asleep in the dream - scruffy-ended jeans, worn-out trainers and all. He fumbled blindly around for his glasses, and, seeing a glasses-shaped blur on the bedside table next to a long brown blurry thing that looked like nothing so much as a stick, grabbed them and put them on.
He took them off again almost immediately and stared at them. They were not his glasses. They were much too big - a man’s glasses - and they were not held together with sellotape in the middle, like his had been. Slowly, his hands shaking a little, he reached up and held them up to his eyes. At least they did seem to let him see properly. That was a coincidence. He held them there with one hand, staring around with wide eyes. The room was completely foreign - definitely not Privet Drive. He recognised nothing in it, including the strange woman who was staring at him with almost as much shock and horror as he was staring at her. He couldn’t help but feel a strange sort of kinship with her all of a sudden. At least she almost certainly probably hadn’t kidnapped him.
“I - I’m - really sorry -” he said, his voice coming out very high and panicky. “I’ve got no idea how I got here.”
Suddenly and without warning, part of the dream he had had came into sharp focus in his memory. Have you never done anything, Hagrid had said, When you were upset, or scared, or angry?
What if it hadn’t been a dream? What if he’d somehow brought himself here - wherever here was - by magic? Like he’d done when he’d tried to jump the bins and ended up on the roof? And if he had done that… how on earth would he explain? And how was he going to get home? It was all a bit much to expect a person to handle.
----
Ginny had scrambled to grab the sheet off the bed to cover herself up a bit. Not that her makeshift pyjamas were particularly revealing, but as she had thought she was sharing her bed with her husband, she couldn't help but feel a little exposed.
Her mind was racing as she watched the boy fumbling with Harry's glasses. She had the slight advantage of knowing that this village was mental so her pieces fell together a bit more quickly than his. Because now that she was looking at him with wide awake eyes, she knew why she'd mistaken him for Albus. Their middle child had always most closely resembled Harry.
"Errrm. Sorry. Er...You just..." How did one explain to one's husband--who looked about 10--that he was in a village outside of time and space. And married. And had 3 kids. And that his dead parents were alive. And every other jarring and ridiculous thing that came with this mental place. And how to tell him while wearing ratty old pyjamas and maintaining credibility.
"...I wasn't.... Expecting..." A ten year old Harry. She was still too tired to think properly. "Erm. Sorry. This is just...Are you alright? I mean...obviously not. Er..."
---
Harry listened non-plussed to the stammering non-explanation. He blinked. He blinked again. He shut his eyes tight and made a fervent if somewhat less-than-optimistic wish to be somewhere - anywhere - other than here. When he opened his eyes again, he was still standing in the strange foreign bedroom.
He stared at the woman clutching the bedsheets. She was about his Aunt Petunia’s age, he thought, but that was about all that they had in common. She had shortish, fiery-red hair, a perfectly normal length neck, and a friendly sort of face, even if the expression on it was all kinds of confusion. At least she seemed to be wearing clothes suitable for bed. He was sure he must have left muck and dust and things on the sheets she was now holding.
“Sorry - “ he said again, ever polite in moments of uncertainty - “ummm… is this your house?”
---
"Erm, yeah. Kind of." Ginny allowed with a slow nod. She knew that was possibly more confusing, but she was still trying to figure out how to handle this. "Er...now might be a good time to reassure yourself that you're awake. Because you're not going to like what happens next."
She ran a hand through her short hair and let out a sigh. "How old are you? Can't be more than a first year, can you? I...we need tea. We definitely need tea."
---
Harry hadn’t had time to think about what would happen next. He didn’t much like what was happening now. Just in case though, he reached up with the hand that wasn’t holding his glasses on, and pinched the inside of his elbow, hard. It hurt quite a lot, which probably meant that, right now at least, he wasn’t dreaming.
“I’m te - eleven,” he corrected himself just in time. “I think,” he added. The more he thought about it, the more he was certain that at least most of last night had actually happened. He remembered, quite vividly, watching Dudley’s watch count down the minutes to his birthday. He definitely remembered the dreadful journey to the island. And the crisp packets not burning in the fire. And all the letters. Oh, the letters. But if everything else that had come after midnight, if that hadn’t been real and he had just fallen asleep and dreamed it all - where had the letters come from?
Well, he could worry about that later. It wasn’t really relevant to the immediate problem. He was pretty sure that at some point he had turned eleven, anyway. “Eleven today,” he decided finally.
He shifted the glasses a little and peered at the woman. It was funny, but he wasn’t as afraid as he thought maybe he ought to be. Harry was not well versed in stranger danger, mainly because his Aunt and Uncle would probably consider it a blessing if someone made off with him, and anyway he didn’t think there was anything to be afraid of, particularly. This lady did not look at all like a kidnapper or a child murderer. She looked just like, well, like someone’s mum. He started to feel a bit guilty that he had frightened her.
“My name’s Harry,” he offered after a brief silence. “What’s yours?”
---
It had taken three children and many many years of practice, but Ginny had learned to control the impulse to swear. Kind of. When he mentioned his age, her jaw dropped and the definite start of a foul word formed on her lips, but she quickly took it back and shook her head, keeping the panic inside for the moment.
“Hhhaaappy Birthday.” She finally managed, a bit strained, because in her mind all she could think was Shite, shite, shite, fecking hell he is only just eleven right now. When did he even find out about Hogwarts and Hagrid and everything or was that supposed to happen today and oh bloody hell, he might still think he’s a muggle shite shite shite. Which was not at all child appropriate and definitely not the right thing to say to a boy who had no idea what was going on.
“Pleased to meet you, Harry.” She said, swallowing hard and giving him a bit of a forced smile. “I’m Ginny.” First names only were the best course of action. For the moment anyway. Not that he’d know her maiden name. Not yet. Not if it was July 31st for him. He wouldn’t meet Ron for another month. But she definitely couldn’t tell him her surname right now. Because that line of questioning was for after she’d already explained the rest of it. “This is going to be a really bizarre question...Have you met Hagrid yet?” Better to find out exactly what he knew, she figured. Because having to explain that he was a wizard was a whole other bag of kneazles.
---
Harry’s eyes widened. “So it was real!” he exclaimed, full of excitement, and questions began to fall out of his mouth like rain. “Am I really a wizard then? Are you a wi - a witch? Is this the wizard school? Are you a teacher? Did I magic myself here by accident? I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to but I just went to sleep and then I woke up here. Why am I in your bedroom?”
He beamed up at her through the oversized glasses, radiating trust and pure boyish enthusiasm.
---
Ginny breathed a small sigh of relief. Well. At least there was that. His questions made her laugh a little though and she shook her head, unable to stop thinking of her own sons who, now she saw how much like their father they really were. James was at least as eager as the boy in front of her and Albus was just as curious about everything. Even some of their mannerisms were the same and she couldn’t help but grin at that.
“Slow down.’ She chuckled, holding up her hands. “Yes. That was real. You’re a wizard and yes, I’m a witch. This is...not Hogwarts. But, there is a school here. I’m not a teacher. I have no idea how you got here, but we don’t know how anyone gets here so…” she shrugged “And as for why you’re in my bedroom…” Well, he’d been there when she crept in, only fifteen years older than he was now. “These things tend to happen in this place, so who knows. Better than how I arrived anyway.” Middle of the Quidditch pitch wearing the World’s Most Ridiculous Dress. Not her finest hour.
“So. Erm. This place is a village. It’s magic and sort of just...pulls people in whenever it feels like. And spits them back out again too. And no one really knows how or why. But it’s safe. Mostly. I think. I mean, no one here kidnapped you or anything. But the village...well it has a mind of its own so.” She frowned and looked at him. “Am I confusing you more?”
---
Harry’s enthusiasm waned a little as his desire for more knowledge of the magical world he suddenly found himself in was dampened by further confusion. “Er…” he said, doing his best to take this in. A village that could think for itself? That didn’t make any sense. But then neither did much of anything else that he’d been told in the last few hours, so there was that.
“Is that normal?” he asked eventually, thinking that perhaps this was just something that Hagrid had failed to mention in his brief summary of the wizarding world. Maybe this happened to everyone on their eleventh birthday. “Is it a sort of test?” he added, suddenly very nervous. “Only I don’t actually know any magic yet.”
---
“Erm, no. Not exactly.” She said with another small laugh. “And this isn’t a test. Though, you’re doing better than some I’ve seen hear all of this, so cheers.” He really was very cute. It was no wonder she’d had such a ridiculous crush on him when he was eleven. He was sweet and had that weird naivety about him that he lost so quickly during school. He’d been forced to grow up so fast that she’d almost forgotten what he was like at this age. Besides that he’d always been the older one so her perspective was always a little skewed.
“It gets weirder, if you reckon you can handle that?” She remembered how overwhelmed she’d been when Lilu and then Harry had been telling her all about the village. And she was a grown woman who’d been around magic her entire life. Here was a boy who’d only just found out about their world. She was a little nervous that she might break his brain or something. After all, timelines and copies of people were a bit more than anyone should have to be able to handle.
---
Harry frowned. “I don’t see how,” he said hesitantly. It was not much of a comfort to know that his reaction was any better than other people’s. Maybe that just meant that he didn’t know enough to be the proper amount of worried or scared or whatever. Still, anything was better than being stuck on that awful rock with the Dursleys, or locked in his cupboard, or hiding from Dudley’s gang. He’d been in a lot worse places. And this lady - Ginny - was being very kind.
Harry was not used to people being kind to him. Hagrid had been friendly, but he’d been so overwhelmed at the time that he hadn’t been able to appreciate it properly.
His stomach rumbled. It seemed like a very long time since the sausages. And his arm was starting to ache from holding the glasses onto his face. He took them off, reducing Ginny to a greyish-reddish person-shaped blur. “Are these yours?” he asked, rubbing his tired eyes and holding the glasses out to her, his oversized sleeve drooping over his fingers. It seemed unlikely but there was no one else here, after all.
---
Ginny was still trying to figure out the best course of action for how to begin telling him when she heard his stomach grumbling. Well, at least there was one thing she could take care of. When he took off the ridiculous seeming glasses from his face she fully appreciated just how small he was. "Those are my husband's." She said truthfully. "It seems the village...misplaced him." Again, still technically true. "Here, lemme see." She reached across the bed, still mostly covered by the sheet. Locating her wand on the nightstand, she gave them a quick tap,causing the specs to shrink to a more appropriate size. "Try those." She handed them back with a smile. Two things she could solve.
"Okay. Here's what we'll do. You go into the kitchen--it's just down the hall you really can't miss it--and just give me a mo' to change and I'll get us some breakfast. Eggs? Or pancakes? Or both? And then we'll talk. No one should have to have their world upended on an empty stomach."
---
Harry watched wide-eyed, albeit squinting a little, at what to him was an amazing display of magic. It was no pig's tail, but still...
He put the glasses on, and this time they stayed on. "Wow," he said breathlessly, gazing up at her in awe. He stood there awkwardly for a minute, half hoping there might be more magic, until her expression made him realise she really wanted him out so she could change, and he took the hint.
It said a lot about Harry that he was perfectly willing to wander down to the kitchen in someone else's house, looking around with interest but without looking particularly for a way out. If he had felt at all in danger he would certainly have performed a heroic escape, no doubt complete with feats of derring-do, but he couldn't help instinctively trusting Ginny, in the same way he trusted Hagrid. At this point he would have quite happily gone along with anyone who spoke to him as though he wasn’t a mere stain on the crisp white tablecloth of life.
He found the kitchen and stood there for a moment looking around. Well, since he was here...
He found flour and milk and eggs and started putting things together to make pancakes. Since they had been mentioned he had a real craving. The stove was a bit different than what he was used to, but eventually he managed to get it started.
It was nice to do things in the kitchen without Aunt Petunia snapping over his shoulder. By the time the first blob of batter was in the pan, he was warm, and he tugged off his jacket and the jumper underneath to reveal a T-shirt which, no longer tucked into his jeans, hung almost to his knobbly knees. Dudley had outgrown it fairly recently; it had a playstation logo on it. He flipped the pancake, wondering vaguely what would happen next. Perhaps popping in and out of strange places was just part of being a wizard.
---
Ginny let out a breath when he finally left the room and ran her hands through her messy, red hair. She couldn’t believe this was happening. How had the village gone and reversed the clock on her husband? In the middle of the bloody night! He’d just been there all peaceful and Harry-like, and now he was an an eleven year old boy without a clue as to how ridiculous his reality was about to become. And she had the good fortune to be the one to explain it all.
Bugger.
She found an old jumper and pulled it on quick along with a pair of denims. Before she left the room to join him in the kitchen, she scribbled a quick note in her journal to let her friends and family know what had happened in the night and to maybe gardner some advice...or assistance. When she finally did make her way out to meet him, she was a bit surprised at the sight she found.
“Oh. I’d have done that for you, duck.” She said, unable to keep the affectionate petname she’d used for the kids for years from slipping out of her mouth. Albus really was the spitting image of his father at that age. She got a good look at him and forced herself not to frown. He looked a bit like a ragamuffin. His clothes entirely too big for him and his hair a complete disaster. Not that the latter ever improved, even twenty years later, but that was besides the point. He was just so…little.
“Have a seat, I’ll take care of all this.” She gestured to the table and pulled out her wand again, tapping the pan and spatula which promptly began cooking the pancakes themselves. “It’s quicker this way anyhow.” She set the kettle on as well with another flick of her wrist and began rummaging for mugs and tea bags. “So, you’re eleven today. You’ve met Hagrid, but I expect you haven’t done much else.” She said, as the spatula flipped the pancake on its own. “Which only makes this slightly more complicated to explain.”
---
Harry dropped the spatula guiltily. “Sorry,” he said, backing away from the stove, realising belatedly that it might be rude to start cooking in someone else’s home. He forgot his embarrassment almost immediately however when things began moving by themselves, as though an invisible person was holding them. He watched from the table with his mouth hanging open, perching on the very edge of the chair and leaning forward to get a better view. It was like a scene out of The Sword in the Stone. Not that he had ever seen it, since Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia did not hold with that ‘sort of thing’, but he’d seen the adverts on television - pots and pans flying around, washing themselves. It was fascinating.
“Do all wizards cook with magic?” he asked, only half hearing what she was saying. “Is it difficult? Hagrid made a fire but I dunno how - he cooked sausages on it. He had them in his pockets! He had all this stuff in his coat pockets, even an owl, and he yelled at my uncle like you wouldn’t believe, and he told me all this stuff about my parents and this Dark Wizard called Voldemort and then he did magic on my cousin and suddenly he had a pigs tail growing out of his bottom! My cousin that is, not Hagrid. He said I was going to wizard school and I was going to be famous.” He sagged a little. “That was the bit I didn’t really understand.” Not to mention it was incredibly disconcerting to know that what he had believed his whole life about his parents’ deaths had been completely untrue. There had been no accident, they had been murdered. And then he, Harry, had somehow made him vanish. He wasn’t sure how anyone actually knew that, although it seemed to have something to do with his scar. He rubbed at it thoughtfully. He’d always sort of liked the scar - the only thing in fact that he liked about his own appearance - but now he wasn’t quite so sure.
---
Ginny smiled, holding in the small chuckle that was threatening to bubble up. He certainly seemed excited. Which was better than some of the alternatives, she supposed. Figuring he'd enjoy a bit more magic, she summoned the plates down and had the flatware perform a bit of a show before settling down in its spot.
"Most do. Some I reckon use the muggle way, but this is how my mum cooks so it's how I learned too." She gave a small shrug, loading his plate with pancakes and grabbing the syrup from the cupboard. "Sounds like you had an eventful night." She said with a small laugh.
"There isn't a witch or wizard in our world who doesn't know your name, Harry. Which...can be more trouble than it's worth." She admitted. "But you'll be alright." She hesitated for a moment trying to figure out where to start. "Hagrid told you about the important bits. Being a wizard is part of who you are. It isn't all of who you are, but it is a piece. Your parents..." She hesitated on the verb tense because she knew Lily and James were here, but he didn't know that yet. "Fought hard for something they truly believed in. They died heroes and their sacrifice and the events of that night saved countless lives." There. That would have to do. "Now, while all of that is important to know, I reckon we should move on to the slightly more pressing predicament of where you are and what's about to happen."
The kettle whistled and Ginny flicked her wand again. The kettle poured the water and the milk and sugar set about preparing their drinks according to their individual tastes.
"This place isn't like anywhere you've ever been." Or at least not anywhere he'd remember being. "And I promise you I am telling you the truth and that I'm not taking the mickey or anything and I know it's a lot to take in, but you get used to it...kind of."
---
Harry forced his eyes away from the dancing kitchen appliances to take another curious look around the room. It looked just like a normal kitchen - other than all the magic, of course. He smiled wistfully, thinking of what Aunt Petunia would do if she came home to Privet Drive to find all her pots and pans zooming around. She'd faint, probably. Out of the window he could just see the start of a row of other normal-looking houses.
He looked back at Ginny a little doubtfully. "Where is it?" he asked hesitantly. So far he understood that it was a magical place that people apparently appeared in at random. This seemed entirely strange enough.
---
“Not entirely sure.” Ginny admitted. “Not in England, though sometimes it still feels like it with the weather, though…” She paused trying to figure out a way to phrase it delicately. “Sometimes that has its ups and downs as well.” She took a deep breath and placed her hands on the table. Better to just rip the bandage off, yeah? Lay all the cards on the table and then answer his questions.
“Actually, this place seems to be a bit...apart from everything. It has magic running through it and controlling it and some of the people here have begun to learn a bit more about how it all works, but I’ll be honest--I’m not entirely sure. It draws people in. Pulls them from their own reality and brings them to this new one. Oh what are those muggle films called? The ones with space travel and dimensions and all that rubbish?” She furrowed her brow trying to remember. “Sky-fi? Sky-fly?” She shook her head. “Whatever. It is kind of like that. Only without the spaceships and all that. Now, here’s where it gets odd. Well...odder.” She gave a small laugh. “People can be pulled in from any point in their life. So you’re eleven and I’m thirty-two and there are people here who are seven or seventeen or whatever age. But that point in time doesn’t always line up with other people’s. So. Me, being thirty-two makes my daughter five in my timeline. Except here she’s twenty. Because that’s the point in her life that she was pulled. Does that make sense?” She knew it wouldn’t but she couldn’t explain about his parents until he grasped the timeline thing.
---
“Er...” Harry really wanted to say yes, because it was obvious that she wanted him to understand, but it all sounded like as much gobbledegook. And he had thought Hagrid's conversation was confusing.
“Sort… of…” he said eventually, not wanting her to think he was stupid. “Um… so it’s sort of like time travel?” his brow furrowed as he tried to work it out. He didn’t know a lot about time travel. He felt that all this would make a lot more sense if his relatives had ever let him watch a film or read a book that had even the tiniest mention of the supernatural. “What year is it then? Is it the past or the future?”
---
"Neither?...Both?" Ginny answered with a shrug. "I honestly don't know. I dunno if anyone does, actually. Most things are relatively normal? As far as like how they work and all. Though, the founders and Vogg did struggle a bit with things..." She trailed off. Shaking her head, she refocused. "The village is its own time and place. You can't wander too far in any direction and there are people here from all sorts of whens. You, for example are from 1991, right? I'm from 2013. One of my older brothers is from 1998. My daughter is from 2028...I think." Ginny quickly double checked her maths in her head and gave a noncommittal nod.
---
Harry’s head started to hurt. he wasn’t sure if he was more or less confused than he had been five minutes ago. He certainly didn’t know who these founder people were. “2013?” he repeated, trying to do the calculation in his head. That was at least twenty something years! And 2028 didn’t even bear thinking about. A pancake fipped on the stove and distracted him for a moment; by the time he’d dragged himself back to the conversation he’d quite lost his train of thought. “Are there lots of people here?” he asked instead, nervously. “Are they all… “ he hesitated, realising he didn’t know if there was a word that meant wizards and witches, “magic?” he settled on eventually, hoping he wouldn’t give offence.
---
She could tell he was already getting overwhelmed and wondered how much more information he could take. Because there was quite a bit more. But he’d only just found out about being a wizard. And magic and all sorts of things. Eleven years old was a bit young to have your entire reality flipped on its head.
“Quite a few. I’d say ‘round a hundred or so? And yeah, I think they’re all magic. Oh. Except Luna’s son is a squib. But there’ve been Muggles here in the past too. Like Vogg---He was a Viking, but he’s gone now.” Ginny said, figuring he’d find that interesting at least. “How overwhelmed are you? Cause I know it’s a lot.”
---
Harry blinked. Vikings? Lunas? Squibs? Mugg - oh no wait, Muggles were non-magic people, weren’t they, like his aunt and uncle. Hagrid had said. But a hundred magic people? “I dunno,” he said honestly. “It’s all very… er…” it started to strike him that he was all alone here in this weird place - not that he wanted anyone he knew here, it wasn’t as though he had any friends or relatives who might have missed him - and didn’t know even one bit of magic. What if they all thought he was stupid? Hagrid had said he was supposed to be this hero, that everyone knew his name. What would they say when they found out he hadn’t even heard of the wizarding world or Hogwarts or anything until he read his letter? He wished he still had the letter. It was all starting to feel a bit unreal. He pinched himself again, just in case. “Ow,” he muttered.
A plate of pancakes landed on the table in front of him, but he suddenly wasn’t that hungry anymore. “What… what am I meant… what do I do?” he asked, a little desperately. “Do I try and find a way back home? Hagrid’s probably going to wake up and wonder where I am. My aunt and uncle won’t care,” he added, in case she had been wondering. “They’ll probably be glad. But I’m meant to be going to the - to Hogwarts, right? How can I do that if I’m here?”
---
Ginny took a deep breath because this was only going to confuse this poor boy more. “Well. There’s a school here that is almost as good as Hogwarts. In fact...Well, we’ll get there in a minute.” Telling him about the Founders being here could wait a tick until she settled the other pressing thing he needed to know. “The other good news is, you’ll still go to Hogwarts. Hagrid will take you to Diagon Ally to buy all of your school supplies and you’ll catch the train to school with very little trouble...well a little bit of trouble, but don’t worry, you’ll get help.” She thought back to that day and couldn’t help but smile. She, of course, had only been 10 at the time and hadn’t been on her way to Hogwarts, but she still remembered seeing the boy with the ridiculously messy dark hair and glasses who looked like he hadn’t a bloody clue of what he was doing. “You’re still there. You’re just…also here. We’re pretty sure. Either that, or when you get sent back, you arrive at precisely the moment you left so no one knows you were ever gone and you’ve got no memory of having been here.” She took a sip of her tea which had gotten a little cold and made a face before performing a warming charm on it. “I’m completely doing your head in, I know. Sorry. Don’t mean to, really.”
---
Harry sat back in his seat, ignoring his breakfast entirely, and started at her. “Okay,” he said, in a voice that said I’m fed up and I don’t care who knows about it. “Now you’re having me on. People can’t be in two places at the same time.”
People can’t almost turn other people into pigs, either, said a logical voice in his head, but he ignored it. There was magic, like you read about in books, and then there was real magic, like the letters and what Hagrid had done to Dudley, and then there was just silliness.
---
“I promise I’m not.” Ginny said, holding her hands up as if to show him there was nothing up her sleeves. “Believe me. There are people here who I would’ve noticed missing from home, but they’re right here. I told you, I don’t really know how this place works, but that seems to be the general theory.” She was honestly more surprised by the fact that it took him this long to be skeptical of what was going on. Usually people got uppity about the time-travel thing.
“This is a kind of elaborate joke to play on someone, don’t you think? I mean, you haven’t even met me yet back home.” She pointed out with a bit of a shrug.
---
“Oh.” Harry tried to make this idea fit into whatever available space was left in the part of his mind that was trying to figure all this out. You haven’t met me yet was a bit of a struggle, but then she did seem to know all about Hagrid and what was going to happen. It occurred to him belatedly that if she really was from twenty years in the future, she probably knew a lot about what was going to happen.
“So when I grow up,” he said, slowly, “I’m going to meet you and tell you about meeting Hagrid and getting on a train and stuff, and then you’re going to come here and then tell me about it, now?” This seemed like quite a neat little explanation, in the scheme of things. He was quite proud of it.
Still there was a nagging something or other at the back of his mind that, through all the confusion, was starting to make itself known. He knew Ginny in the future. He was here now, in her house. He had woken up in her bed. There was something not entirely coincidental about it, but whatever it was was just a little out of reach.
---
“Well. No.” Ginny admitted with a smile. “In a month you’re going to meet my brother and get on that train and you’re going to tell him about Hagrid and then you’ll meet me properly next summer. Sort of. But that’s getting a little ahead of ourselves.” She figured the whole ‘you’re married to me and we have three children together’ thing was getting way ahead of themselves so she hoped that they could cleverly avoid that topic. At least for the next little while.
---
“Oh,” Harry said again. He made a face. “Every time I think I’ve got this figured out, something changes,” he sighed. He picked up a fork - carefully in case it moved - and stabbed a chunk out of his pancakes. They were delicious, and with the first bite his appetite quite returned. He took another mouthful, chewing thoughtfully. There were a lot more questions he wanted to ask, but it was difficult to settle on one. Anyway he didn’t want her to think he was slow.
----
"It's alright. It's a bit confusing. When I got here it took a bit to wrap my head around it all. I'd say it gets less confusing, but it's more that you just get used to the feeling of not really understanding anything." She gave him a small supportive smile. "Most everyone here is friendly enough. We're all in the same boat--stuck here til the village spits us back out--so we help each other out."
She paused for a minute. Hesitating as she held her mug in both hands and thought about what she had to say next.
"There's one more thing, Harry." She said softly. "Like I said there are people here from all sorts of times. And so some of those people might not be...around in 1991 when you're from, but they are around before 1991." She was hoping he'd connect these dots because it'd make it easier. She wasn't exactly sure how to phrase 'your parents aren't dead here' gently.
---
“Okay,” Harry said. Realising he’d just spoken with his mouth full, he swallowed hastily. “You mean like, people from the past?” That would seem to make sense, he thought, if there were people from the future as well. “Like, er…” he tried to think of people from history, but all the focus of his last term in History at school had been about Ancient Egypt. Somehow he didn’t think that was what she meant. “Er, Queen Victoria?” he ventured finally.
---
“Who’s Queen Victor--” She paused and shook her head. “Never mind. Yes, people from the past.” She said patiently. She still didn’t have the slightest clue who this Queen was, but she figured it was something muggle-related. “Less royal and more...familiar.” She prodded, hopefully.
---
“Oh,” Harry said again. He thought it was a bit weird that she didn’t know who Queen Victoria was. He was eleven and even he knew that. Maybe wizards had their own Kings and Queens. He got the impression that she was nudging him towards something, and he fumbled blindly in the dark for some kind of answer to this riddle. Familiar people from the past? Familiar witches and wizards from the past, probably, since they all seemed to be magical here. But he didn’t know any magical people except Hagrid, and…
“You mean… dead people?” he said, very low, pancakes once again forgotten. A feeling that was half hope and half horror began prickling the hairs on the back of his neck. “My… my mum and dad aren’t here, are they?”
---
Ginny watched the gears working in Harry’s mind. She’d seen this look before. Many times, actually. Usually accompanied by Hermione’s exasperated sigh as she’d arrived to whatever conclusion Harry was looking for ages ago and was waiting for him to catch up. Ginny was at least trying to remain patient and calm.
When it seemed to have clicked into place, she gave him a small smile and a nod. “Yeah. Yeah, they are. A bit younger, but they know all about you.”
---
Harry swallowed hard. He could feel his heart pounding. But they’re dead! he wanted to say, while all logic railed against any other possibility. He bit his lip. His mum and dad. Here. Alive. He had always imagined what it would be like if they were alive, if for example it turned out they weren’t dead at all but on a super secret spy mission for the government, and perhaps one day they would come and take him to live with them. That would have been great. But that was different to knowing they were still dead, but he could meet them, talk to them…
There were goosebumps on his arms.
“I don’t even know what they look like,” he said after a while. “I’ve never seen pictures or anything…” This might have been the wrong thing to focus on, but it seemed terribly important for some reason. “What if I walk past them and I don’t even know?” he said, a little panicky. “Or what if… what if…. only Hagrid said they were heroes and they fought dark wizards and stuff, and I’m…” he looked down at himself. He was skinny and scruffy and he didn’t even know any magic. What if they didn’t want him? No one ever had before.
---
Ginny hadn’t really known what to expect, but panic wouldn’t have been on her short list. She scrambled to try and calm him down and ease his mind. “Hey. Hey. It’s alright.” She assured him, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “First of all, you are brilliant. Trust me. I know everything. Which is something you’ll understand a lot better in about twenty years. But you are brilliant and even if you weren’t, your parents are going to love you no matter what.” She squeezed his arm softly and gave him a smile. “Second of all, if you’ve ever looked in a mirror you’ve pretty much seen your dad. Same ridiculously messy black hair. Specs. Everything. ‘Cept you’ve got your mum’s eyes. She’s ginger like me, only longer. And she’s got those fantastic green eyes. She’s gorgeous, really. And I promise I won’t let you walk right past either one of them without knowing it. Not that you’d get too far because I suspect they’d both stop you within steps and give you the biggest hug you’ve ever imagined.”
---
Harry stared up at her. He felt tears prickle at the corner of his eyes, and fought to hold them back. He never cried, not even when Dudley’s gang caught up with him or when his uncle locked him in his cupboard without food, and he wasn't about to start now just because someone was being nice to him.
"I'm not brilliant," he insisted instead. "I get ok marks and stuff, but..." He was certainly not, as both she and Hagrid seemed to think, some sort of prodigy. "I'm just not," he said, distracted by thoughts of his mum and dad. He felt like he could almost see their faces, if he just tried hard enough to remember. It was like having something hovering on the very tip of his tongue
---, only worse.
---
Ginny felt a lump in her throat forming as he put himself down. She had forgotten about how he used to do that. Not that he was Mr. Confidence, but he'd stopped thinking he was worthless. She hoped anyway. This, however was heartbreaking to see. And maybe part of it was that Albus looked so much like him and the idea of one of her kids thinking that way tore her up.
"Sweetheart..." She breathed, shaking her head. She forced a smile and let out a small sigh. "I know the future, remember? And you're brilliant."
---
Harry shrugged. He couldn’t help but feel like she was just trying to make him feel better. “F’you say so,” he murmured. He looked down at his plate, only half finished, but he really wasn’t hungry anymore. “What happens now?” he asked, swinging his legs idly under the chair. His mum and dad. Here. Somewhere. And people who knew him in the future. He wondered if they were all as friendly as Ginny and Hagrid.
---