Chapter Text
The auror wing of the Ministry of Magic was a hive of controlled chaos. Dust motes floated lazily in the shafts of sunlight that managed to pierce the high, grimy windows, and the air smelled faintly of scorched parchment and brimstone—a scent Harry had learned to associate with the aftermath of Dark magic. Around him, unspeakables in their long robes moved with silent precision, cataloguing, boxing, and securing artifacts salvaged from the recently raided Death Eater homes.
Harry’s wand was tucked at his side as he carefully lifted a small obsidian box from the table. It vibrated faintly, like a purr of some creature he couldn’t see, and Harry’s stomach clenched at the thought of what might be inside. There were curses and wards embedded into these objects, left to trap anyone foolish enough to touch them. He glanced around at the other aurors, their faces set in grim determination, and then at the unspeakables—shadowy figures who moved almost like ghosts, their robes trailing and their eyes constantly scanning, cataloging, measuring, noting.
“Careful with that one, Lord Potter,” a voice said, dry and clipped. One of the unspeakables, a tall man with thin spectacles and pale skin stretched tight over sharp bones, gestured toward the box. “It isn’t just cursed; it’s… stubborn.”
Harry nodded, crouching slightly as he lifted it. The room around him seemed to hum. It wasn’t just the magic; it was the air itself, thick with tension, the residue of Dark enchantments, and the raw energy of forbidden spells.
He was moving the box toward a containment chest when a faint shimmer caught his eye. A second too late, a small, jagged statuette fell from a nearby shelf, spinning end over end, and struck him squarely in the shoulder.
“Potter! Watch—” someone started, but their voice was drowned out by a crackling noise, sharp and unnatural.
Pain, light, and motion blended together. The world seemed to stretch like taffy, colors twisting, walls elongating and bending. Harry’s stomach dropped, his head spun, and he found himself staring at… nothing.
And then, a room. The same architecture, the same tables, the same faint scent of burnt parchment—but the air felt different. There were candles flickering in sconces where modern lighting had been, parchment stacked in haphazard piles instead of neatly labeled boxes. Shadows danced in corners where they hadn’t existed a moment before.
Harry blinked, his mind racing. Time travel? He staggered slightly, trying to recalibrate, the box he’d been holding clattering to the floor harmlessly.
A voice cut through the haze. “Hold him.”
Before Harry could even react, strong, practiced hands grasped his arms and steadied him. He could smell the faint tang of potion on one of them, the scent of parchment and candle smoke on another, and something… metallic? Sharp, commanding, and… strange.
He was dragged into a small room.
“You’re… not from here,” a third voice said, and Harry turned to see her.
She stood just beyond the table, arms crossed. Her black hair was pinned neatly at the back of her head, a few loose strands curling around her sharp cheekbones. Her grey eyes were piercing, assessing, and utterly unyielding. She looked every inch the authority figure Harry felt he should be wary of, yet there was elegance to her posture, the faintest curve of a smile held back, and a sense of command that made his stomach tense.
Pureblood, Harry thought automatically. He didn’t know why, it just… clicked. Something about her posture, the confidence, the subtle refinement. But then he noticed the faint glimmer of a ring at her hand, simple and elegant, not something from a family of immense wealth. She must have married a muggle. That explained… something, though Harry wasn’t yet sure what.
She stepped closer. “State your name and your… purpose. Clearly. Now.”
Harry swallowed, feeling the tension coil inside him. He tried to remember his training, his manners, the countless interviews he’d endured as an auror trainee. “Harry Potter,” he said carefully. “Auror. Ministry of Magic. I… I was handling dangerous magical objects and… I think one of them transported me… here. To… this time, I think... I time travelled?”
Her gaze narrowed slightly, and Harry felt a flicker of doubt. Then, just as quickly, her expression softened. “You’re… not harmed, then. Good. That is… fortunate.” She paused, then drew a small vial from her robe. A shimmer of gold-tinted liquid inside caught the candlelight. “This is Veritaserum. Drink it. We need the truth. Who are you? What brought you here? Every detail.”
Harry’s stomach twisted. Veritaserum was no small thing, but he’d faced interrogation before. He nodded, swallowing nervously. “Yes, I… I understand.”
She handed him a sheet of parchment and a quill. “Write it down as you speak, in full. We must document everything, most of your life, in fact. Your method of travel… it is dangerous, yes. But it is accepted. We have had… incidents before, and we understand the mechanisms. You will not be punished for arriving here, nor cast back into the void randomly. You may stay, temporarily, until we can determine the full ramifications. You will follow instructions, and you will be precise. Welcome to 1917."
Harry’s hands shook slightly as he took the quill, dipping it into the ink. Every word he wrote felt heavy, a thread pulling him further into a world centuries before the one he knew. His mind spun at the implications—unspeakables of 1917 handling him as carefully as he had once handled dangerous Dark artifacts, yet the weight of history pressed down. He could feel the difference in the air: the magic was older, richer, somehow… wilder.
She leaned back slightly, observing him, her eyes unflinching. “Do not waste time with hesitation. Record the exact sequence. If you leave anything out, it will… complicate matters.”
Harry nodded again, quill trembling, and began to write, describing the Ministry, the auror wing, the dangerous objects, the statuette, the shimmer, the sensation of being pulled across time. With each stroke, he felt more grounded, more tethered to this place—even if he didn’t yet understand it fully.
The room smelled of ink, candle smoke, and authority. And through it all, Harry felt something strange—like a pull at the back of his mind.
When he finally set the quill down, the unspeakable woman’s sharp gaze softened just fractionally. “Good. You may remain. For now. But know this, Mr. Potter—time is not merely a river. It is a cage, a storm, and a path. Tread carefully.”
Harry swallowed. He had no idea what this meant, nor how long he would be allowed to remain. Or if he could even go back.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat in that first room before they decided what to do with him. The candles had burned lower by the time the elegant woman—Isla Hitchens née Black, she’d introduced herself curtly—rose from behind her desk and gestured for him to follow. Her heels clicked neatly against the stone floor as she led him through a maze of corridors, past rooms humming faintly with enchantments and doors sealed with sigils he didn’t recognise.
Finally, she stopped before a heavy oak door carved with runes. She flicked her wand, and the locks unlatched with a deep, resonant click.
“Inside, Mr. Potter.”
Harry obeyed, stepping into a smaller, dimly lit chamber. A round table sat in the middle, covered in parchment, quills, and thin glass vials of shimmering ink. The walls were lined with books bound in dragonhide and thin shelves of crystal orbs that pulsed faintly. There were no windows—only a soft, golden light emanating from the ceiling that seemed to breathe in time with the magic in the room.
“Sit.”
Harry sat. His palms were clammy, his heart still racing from everything that had happened. It was only now that he realized his hands were trembling—whether from nerves or the residual pull of time magic, he didn’t know. He tried to keep his breathing steady as Isla moved efficiently around the room, pulling things from drawers, muttering under her breath.
He opened his mouth to speak, to ask what was happening—but before he could, she reached across the table, took his right hand, and pricked the pad of his finger with a slender silver needle.
He startled. “What—?”
“Hush now,” she said, almost gently, though her tone was brisk. “I didn’t tell you what I was doing so you wouldn’t make a fuss of it. Hold still.”
She pressed his hand over a sheet of parchment. A few drops of his blood fell, bright and red against the creamy surface. At once, the paper absorbed the color, veins of gold light spreading out like roots through the parchment. Names began to bloom across it, written in elegant old script, intertwining and branching.
Harry’s breath caught.
“What is that?” he whispered.
“Your family tree,” Isla said, her tone as calm as if she were discussing the weather. “We’re going to forge your identity.”
Harry blinked. “I’m sorry, what do you mean by that?”
“Exactly what I said.” Isla folded her arms, her expression unreadable. “We can’t have you wandering about with the name Harry Potter. Too many questions. Certain old magics will always be able to tell the truth of your bloodline—your ancestry, your lineage. If we created a completely false identity, the old wards, the family grimoires, even the genealogical charms that track magical blood would all still acknowledge you and that may bring questions why you can go to Potter manor and not get burnt at the stake by accidentally walking through. So…”
She gestured to the parchment, where glowing branches still twisted and shimmered. “We move you around the tree. We create a cousin that never existed. A branch where none was before. You’ll remain within your own family, Mr. Potter, only… slightly rearranged. Magic will accept it. The world will accept it. And you’ll... remain safe.”
Harry stared at the glowing tree, his pulse echoing in his ears. The names of his ancestors danced across the parchment—Potters, Evanses, and older names he barely recognized. Some branches pulsed faintly with gold, others with a muted silver light, as though marking generations steeped in magic or diluted by time.
“And this… works?” he asked quietly.
“It has to,” Isla replied, her tone softening for the first time. “Otherwise, you’d either vanish the next time you touched a blood ward—or you’d trigger every magical family registry in Britain and have half the Ministry down here within the hour.”
Harry swallowed hard. “So I’m… being rewritten.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Her wand moved gracefully through the air, tapping the parchment. A small portion of the tree shimmered and unfurled, highlighting a line that stretched back to an ancestor named Ignotus Peverell.
“Of course,” Isla murmured, as if the choice pleased her. “A strong line. Ancient, respected. We can nest you here. A Peverell, displaced by family tragedy. It’s clean. No one will question it.”
Harry’s throat tightened. Peverell. He’d known the name since the Deathly Hallows. The thought of hiding beneath that branch, even symbolically, felt… eerie. Yet something in him recognized the inevitability of it. He had always belonged to that legacy, even if only in whispers.
Isla must have noticed his hesitation because she paused, studying him with those sharp grey eyes. “You’ll still be you, Mr. Potter. The blood doesn’t lie. We’re only changing the surface of things. This world—our world—is old, rooted in bloodlines and magic deeper than time itself. The past is less forgiving than your present, and I’d rather you not be torn apart by it.”
He let out a shaky breath. “You make it sound like I’ve gone and stepped into a nest of dragons.”
That earned him the faintest flicker of amusement. “In 1917, Mr. Potter, that would be an accurate description of polite society.”
She turned back to the parchment, her wand hovering above the faintly glowing branches. “The Peverells have just died out,” she said quietly, eyes tracing the golden veins. “Officially, at least. The last of the line was declared gone a few years ago. Their estate sits empty, their records sealed. No one will question a surviving cousin returning. Even muggle war makes ghosts of us all, and families are rarely inclined to look too closely when a familiar crest appears again.”
Harry swallowed, his throat dry. “So… I’m a ghost now?”
“In a sense.” Isla’s grey eyes lifted to meet his. “But a useful one. The Ministry doesn’t like anomalies. We prefer to tidy the edges where time frays. You’ll need a place, a name, a past that can breathe without drawing attention. This—” she tapped the parchment with her wand “—is the cleanest way.”
“What name do you suggest?” Harry asked after a moment, watching her wand hover over the still-glowing parchment.
“It’ll probably be best to keep close to your own,” Isla said, eyes narrowing in thought. “Otherwise you’ll forget yourself and answer incorrectly when someone calls. Something you can claim ‘Harry’ as a nickname from.”
Harry frowned. “I can’t keep Harry?”
She looked up at him with a faint, incredulous tilt of her head. “Harry is hardly suitable for the time period you’ve landed in, Mr. Potter. It sounds… unrefined. Like a stable hand’s moniker. You could be—” she paused, lips twitching faintly “—Hades?”
Harry choked on a startled laugh that came out as a cough. “You’re joking.”
“I am not.” Her tone was prim, though her eyes glittered with amusement. “Hades is a strong, ancient name. Regal, even. But perhaps a bit dramatic for daily use.”
He couldn’t help a small grin. “A bit.”
Isla tapped her wand against the table, the tip humming faintly. “Hmm. Hector? Hadrian? Humphrey?”
Harry ducked his head, biting the inside of his cheek to hide a laugh.
“Yes, yes, very funny,” Isla said, though there was a warmth beneath the mock irritation. “Huxley? Hansel? Hezekiah?”
Harry’s shoulders shook once.
She sighed, rolling her eyes skyward in the manner of a woman who’d had to endure far worse nonsense from Ministry clerks. “Harrison? Hudson? Any of these sound tolerable to you, Mr. Potter-who-will-cease-to-exist-by-morning?”
Harry rubbed the back of his neck. “Harrison’s… fine,” he said at last. “It’s close enough to Harry that I won’t forget it. And it sounds…” he hesitated, searching for a word. “Normal. For 1917, I guess.”
“Good,” Isla said crisply, satisfaction softening the corners of her mouth. “And your middle name can’t be James, as you very well know.”
Harry looked up, startled by how casually she’d said it—as if she already knew everything about him, down to the ghosts in his family. “Why not James?” he asked, even though he knew the answer before she gave it.
Isla raised one elegant brow. “Because the name James Potter doesn’t exist yet, Mr. Potter. Nor should it, if you’d prefer to keep breathing without attracting the attention of every genealogist, curse-breaker, and meddling historian from here to Edinburgh. We’ll need something from the Peverell line. It keeps the blood coherent, and it lends the right amount of credibility.”
She turned back to the parchment, the glow of it catching in her grey eyes. “Let’s see,” she murmured. “Cadmus, Ignotus, Antioch… no, those would sound too presumptuous. Perhaps a descendant’s name, something that’s carried quietly through the generations…”
Harry leaned forward despite himself, curiosity flickering through the haze of nerves. The names on the parchment rippled faintly, lines of blood and light shifting as Isla traced her wand along one of the branches.
“There was a Corvinus Peverell,” she said after a moment. “Distant, but well-documented. A scholar, eccentric but respected. His name faded from the records after his line dwindled, which gives us room to weave you in without notice.” She glanced up. “Harrison Corvinus Peverell. It has weight, doesn’t it?”
Harry mouthed it silently. The name rolled oddly on his tongue, formal, old-fashioned, but solid. The kind of name that could have been carved into a marble plaque in some forgotten hall.
“It sounds…” he hesitated, then gave a small, almost embarrassed smile. “Important.”
“Good,” Isla said, her tone softening for the first time. “You’ll need it. Names are more than words here—they’re currency. Your lineage will open doors that even magic might not.”
She flicked her wand again, and the name sealed itself onto the parchment with a soft golden flare. Harrison Corvinus Peverell.
For a moment, the air itself seemed to hum around it, threads of old enchantment weaving into place. Harry could almost feel the magic sink into his skin, faintly warm, like sunlight through glass.
Isla watched him closely, her expression unreadable. “There,” she said quietly. “Now you exist here as you were meant to—by magic, and by name... or you will be once I get this down to the goblics and archives. You’ll find that the world responds differently to you now. Wards will recognize you. Charms will bend in your favor. You are anchored.”
Harry looked down at his hands, still faintly trembling. “It feels strange,” he murmured. “Like something’s… humming under my skin.”
“That’s because it is,” Isla said, gathering the parchment and tucking it into a leather folio. “Time is adjusting to you, threading you into its pattern. You’re no longer a displaced fragment, it’s accepting you as one of its own.” She paused then, regarding him thoughtfully. “You’re adapting remarkably well, Mr. Potter. Most people panic when I rewrite their existence.”
Harry gave a faint, humorless laugh. “I’ve had worse days.”
“Mm.” Isla’s lips curved, just slightly. “I rather imagine you have.”
For a heartbeat, silence filled the room—the air heavy with old magic and quiet understanding.
“As I said, I’ll get the goblins to finalise it on their side, too,” Isla said, tucking the leather folio under her arm. “You’ll be the Peverell Lord, Harrison. That’s a lot of responsibility, but it means you’ll be set. You’ll have the estates, the money, the artifacts, the land.” Her grey eyes narrowed slightly, the faintest edge of warning in her voice. “But be warned. I, Isla Hitchens, née Black, and the head Auror, Theseus Scamander, will be keeping track of things you do to ensure you don’t abuse your advantage of being in the past to change things for the worse.”
Harry’s eyes flicked up sharply, and he frowned at the name. He whispered it under his breath, cautious and curious: “Scamander…”
“You know him?” Isla asked, arching one neat eyebrow.
He nodded. “Not personally. His brother became… famous.”
Isla let out a small, knowing hum. “With how obsessed he is with animals, I’m actually not that surprised.” She shifted, her tone brisk once more. “Our next topic… is, well… you’ll need to learn about today’s society if you’re to fit in. You’ll have to go shopping, mingle in public. Since I am your assigned Unspeakable, I will be spending time with you. And… keeping you safe as an omega.”
“As an omega,” Harry repeated softly, the weight of the words making his stomach twist.
“Have you had your first heat yet?” Isla asked without preamble, her voice smooth, even, clinical.
Harry sputtered. “W-what?”
“What is the matter, dear?” she asked, tilting her head slightly, her grey eyes sharp.
“Well… it’s just that… we’re in 1917. I did not expect you to ask that outright,” he admitted, cheeks heating as he looked down at his hands.
“I think you’ll find most Blacks are rather… straightforward in what they wish to ask and say,” she replied, almost gently, though there was no mistaking the firmness in her tone.
“I… haven’t had a heat,” Harry whispered, almost apologetically, his ears tingling as if the room itself had noticed his admission.
“But you’re eighteen?” Isla said, the barest note of surprise in her voice. “Average heats start from thirteen to sixteen years old. It being so far behind… is an issue—”
“Caused by stress,” Harry cut in. “There was… a war.”
“A wizarding war?” Isla asked, her sharp gaze unwavering.
“Multiple,” Harry added, his voice quieter this time, almost reluctant to speak.
“I must say,” Isla continued, tone clipped but careful, “you will have to keep your mouth shut about the future unless you want your memories wiped. But… to speak about it to me is acceptable, since I am an Unspeakable. But only to me. Only! Unless you get my approval.”
Harry nodded, the weight of the responsibility settling over him like a cloak.
“Back to your heat situation,” Isla said, drawing her wand again and lightly tracing it through the air. “Your house-elves will be able to keep you hydrated and… blaa blaa…” She made a dismissive motion with her hand, though Harry caught the faintest smile tugging at her lips. He laughed quietly, a short, almost nervous sound. “…During your heat,” Isla continued, unbothered by his laugh. “Having an alpha help you through it is acceptable in this time of society, provided no child is made out of wedlock, or it is not public knowledge they are assisting you.”
“Oh…” Harry said softly, uncertain.
“What is it?” Isla asked.
“Well… I’ve just never really been educated on heats,” he admitted, the blush creeping across his cheeks.
“I’ll give you a book on omegas,” Isla said briskly, her wand flicking toward a shelf where several tomes seemed to shimmer faintly. “So far, you’re getting eleven books.”
“Eleven?!” Harry echoed, eyebrows shooting up in disbelief.
“Eleven,” she confirmed simply, her tone precise, as though the number itself was immovable fact. A soft knock at the door interrupted them. Isla’s sharp eyes flicked toward it. “Ah,” she said, her lips curving faintly. “Your room..."
Harry’s gaze followed hers, his nerves tingling at the thought of stepping fully into this time period.
Isla gestured for him to follow, her movements smooth, confident. “Come. We’ll prepare you. You’ll need attire appropriate to your station, your new life, and… your place in society. And you’ll need to learn quickly, Mr. Peverell, because once you step outside, the world will have expectations of you—and time does not forgive mistakes lightly.”
Harry swallowed, heart hammering in his chest. He could feel the pulse of magic beneath his skin again—the old, resonant hum that whispered of responsibility, lineage, and the invisible threads of power weaving him into the past.
And as he moved toward the door, following Isla, he realized that every step he took would be more than just movement—it would be a step into a life decades away from everything he had known, and yet entirely tethered to him by blood, magic, and a name that was now his own: Harrison Corvinus Peverell.