lomonaaeren

Chapter Twenty-Four.

Chapter One.

Title: Kairos Amid the Ruins (25/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Orion Black, Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, mentions of various canon pairings
Content Notes: Time travel, heavy angst, Harry mentoring Severus, violence, gore, minor character deaths, AU
Rating: R
Summary: Harry’s attempt to time travel and fix the past went badly awry. Time shattered, and the various pieces of the universe clung to each other as best they could. Harry finds himself in 1961, with Albus Dumbledore the Minister for Magic, Gellert Grindelwald his loving husband, Voldemort newly defeated…and Severus Snape being proclaimed the Boy-Who-Lived
Author’s Note: This is going to be a long story, focusing on Harry mentoring Severus as the Boy-Who-Lived, with flashbacks to an alternate World War II. The Harry-Severus mentorship will remain gen. However, the romantic pairings are a prominent part of the story. The word “Kairos” comes from the Greek, meaning a lucky moment, or the right moment, to act.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty-Five—Time in the Sun

“Do you know what’s wrong with Harry?”

Normally, Orion would have avoided asking such a blunt question of Mariana Prince. He preferred to keep his own counsel about everything concerning Harry, including the long, delicate courting process he wanted to initiate.

But Harry hadn’t responded to any of his last three owls, and refused the Floo call that Orion had tried to make. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he knew the gossip would have spread like Fiendfyre if the Hogwarts Defense professor had been injured in a duel or the like, Orion would have thought that was what had happened.

Mariana sighed and pushed her hair behind her ear. Orion could only see her head in the fireplace, but he could hear the chatter of a discontented child behind her. He supposed that he might have called at a bad time.

But he didn’t apologize or retract it. The need to know what was happening with Harry had spread through his chest.

“I think something happened,” Mariana said quietly. “He’s been withdrawn the last three times I spoke with him, and he would only talk about Severus. The minute I tried to ask him how he was, he pretended to have something else he needed to do, and ended the Floo call. And he won’t respond to my owls, either.”

“The children miss him.”

“Ah. The children.”

Orion hoped the green film that would also obscure Mariana’s sight would keep her from noticing the way his ears reddened. But he stared her down and said, “They do. I’m sure your own Severus must, as well.”

“Yes, he does,” said Mariana after a moment. “But I have told him that we can’t bother Harry into tutoring him. Harry used an excuse during the last meeting that he had a lot of preparations to make for the upcoming autumn term. And as I said, he hasn’t answered my owls. It may be that that’s true.”

“You’re wiser than that,” Orion said shortly. “And it disturbs me far more that he did not come to you for help, if he is troubled. Yes, he has reason to be wary of me, but to avoid you says how deep his fear, or anger, or sorrow, has gone.”

Mariana’s eyes widened. “He has reason to be wary of you?”

“Of course,” Orion said, irritated. Had Mariana taken a brain-altering potion since they’d last spoken? “You know that I want to marry him, and he doesn’t want to be courted by me. He might avoid my owls and Flooing him for that reason. But he doesn’t have any reason to hide himself away from you.”

Mariana paused. Then she said, “If you know that he doesn’t want you to court him, why do you persist?”

“Because I hope that he will grant me permission.” Orion shrugged. “He hasn’t so far, but neither has he simply told me that he wants to teach Regulus and Sirius and never interact with me again.”

Mariana appeared to be struggling to say something. Orion waited patiently to hear what it was. She finally gasped out, sounding a little choked, “And have you considered that he’s too polite to do so?”

“No,” Orion said. “Why would I? He is honest and blunt to a fault, if anything.”

“He might fear losing contact with Sirius and Regulus if he opposes you.”

Orion considered that. That was true enough. But he still felt that Harry’s silence on this matter was different. If nothing else, he hadn’t even owled to ask about Sirius and Regulus, and had avoided coming to the house to give them lessons even as he had with the Prince boy. If he was afraid of losing Regulus and Sirius, Orion didn’t think he would have acted this way.

He said as much to Mariana, who gave a frowning glance over her shoulder. “In truth, I have been wondering how much longer I can placate Severus,” she muttered. “If you wish to force the matter, then read up on wards first.”

“That wouldn’t work with Harry. I shall go to him defenseless, and ask him to explain to me. Even if he kicks me out right away, I might get some idea of what’s wrong by simply seeing him.”

Mariana studied him in silence for a long moment before she asked, “How are you going to convince him that you’re defenseless?”

“I’ll give him my wand,” Orion said simply, and closed the Floo down on her gaping mouth.

*

Harry looked up sharply. Someone had knocked at his office door, and that was odd, given that it wasn’t during the term and he had told the other professors he preferred to be left alone until the beginning of classes. “Go away,” he said with irritation, and leaned back in his chair to stare at the ceiling again.

Another knock. Harry just glared at the door this time, but the knock repeated, and again after a wait of five seconds, and again.

Harry stood up and stalked towards the door. He had underestimated how annoying it would be for someone to disturb him after three weeks of being left alone. He hadn’t even answered owls, and he’d blocked the Floo. It had seemed the best course of action to him. If he didn’t interact with people in this timeline, he couldn’t damage them the way he knew that he had hurt them already.

Granted, this policy would have to undergo some changes when his students returned, but still. For now, he could be alone.

He flung the door open and snarled, “What?”, only to take a step back when he saw Orion Black gazing calmly at him from the corridor. Harry recoiled and tried to slam the door.

Black cast some kind of spell that held the door open a crack or so, and then tossed his wand into the room. Harry immediately drew the Elder Wand and leaped back, ready for some kind of trap—a net, a ward, a curse—to spread out from Black’s wand.

Nothing happened, except that Black slipped through the door and shut it behind him, staying next to it. Harry narrowed his eyes and waited some more. Black studied him with a rapidly-changing expression, but didn’t say anything.

“What do you want?” Harry finally demanded in a voice that he knew was too tight, but, well, fuck it.

“I wanted to see you,” Black said. “You haven’t tried to visit the children in three weeks. Refusing some owls and Floo calls is your prerogative if you want it, but I didn’t think you would vanish out of Prince’s life, or the lives of my own children.”

Harry exhaled and ran a hand through his hair. “And why did you throw your wand at me?”

“I’m disarming myself,” Black said, and spread his hands. “I know that you won’t hurt someone who can’t fight back.”

“You’re mental,” Harry said flatly. “There’s no way that you can actually know me that well.”

Black smiled a little. “But it’s true. So. Please do tell me what’s wrong, Harry.” His voice was soft and warm, and Harry could have thought it was Sirius speaking if he’d closed his eyes. “You look awful. What happened?”

“As if I’d tell you,” Harry snapped. “I might tell Mariana, but I wouldn’t tell you.”

“You haven’t owled her, either. Or responded to the Floo call that I know she made at least once.” Black kept talking as if everything was normal, as if he had a bloody right to stand here and scold Harry about how worried they’d all been, and Harry felt resentment boil up in him. No one here had the right to feel that way about him. They would hate him so much if they knew the full truth of what he’d done.

“Tell me, Harry. What is it?”

Harry turned around and stalked over to his desk without answering. He hated Black for making confession a temptation. If he stayed away from other people, he couldn’t hurt them or tell them the truth.

When he sat down behind the desk, he saw that Black had taken one of the student chairs in front of him and was studying the office with a detached air of appreciation. It made Harry furious. His hands clenched down on either side of the desk, and he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear something bend and break.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Harry didn’t recognize his own voice.

“Waiting for you to decide if you want to speak to me.”

“Why would I want—”

“Because you haven’t thrown me out yet.”

Harry took a long, slow breath. He had to push away the temptation to just tell everything and make Black back off that way. He would never want to associate with Harry again if Harry told him what kind of timeline he’d come from, how much he’d changed the fate of the Blacks.

But if I never see him again, then I’ll never see Sirius and Regulus again, either.

Harry’s fingers scrambled at the sides of his desk once more. He hated himself for being weak and wanting to see the boys when he could potentially hurt them so badly. He hated himself for potentially hurting them by turning away.

“Harry? Are you all right?”

Maybe the dam wouldn’t have broken if Black had asked that damn question in another tone, or if Harry hadn’t gone so many weeks without regular human contact. But it splintered his self-control the way the sight of the vial of Veritaserum in Dumbledore’s hands had done.

Harry jerked to his feet and slid his way around the desk, staring at Black with eyes that he knew were wild. Black’s own eyes widened a little, and he leaned back in his chair. But he didn’t stand or walk away or go for his wand, all things he ought to have done. And that contradiction of who Harry had been certain Orion Black was was the last straw.

“You have no idea what I did in my first timeline,” Harry snapped at him. Black only sat there with his eyes wide and attentive, which made Harry want to crack him open and force him to show some reaction. “None at all. I was this stupid world’s savior. And Sirius was my godfather. And I was a Potter whose parents died for him.”

Black blinked rapidly, but still didn’t say a word, which meant Harry had to go on, the words twisting out of him like ripples of poisoned water.

“A half-blood, with a Muggleborn mother. Who died for me. And Regulus had died before I was born. And Sirius died in my fifth year at Hogwarts, which was my fault, because it was a trap and if I hadn’t fallen for it—”

The image of Sirius tumbling through the veil overlaid the laughing child Harry had last seen at Regulus’s birthday party. He turned his head away, shaking it, clamping his hands on either side of it to try and get control of himself.

“You never met me, then. Or Walburga?”

“You died before I was born. She died a few years later, but no, I never met her.” Harry glanced at him, and found Black only appearing curious, not appalled or upset. Why not? “Aren’t you even going to ask why?”

“I thought I would let you tell me. But I have to admit, it wasn’t what I expected. If Sirius was your godfather and you were a celebrity, I can imagine Walburga trying to, ah, forcibly introduce herself, however much Sirius might hate it.”

Harry laughed coldly. “After my parents died, I grew up with my mother’s Muggle family. I had no idea there was such a thing as magic or the magical world until I was eleven and received my Hogwarts letter.”

Black blinked some more. His silence was almost a weapon now, pressing against Harry’s throat, forcing the words out.

“That’s not what you thought, is it? You thought I grew up here. You had no idea I was so filthy.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Harry shook his head. “Because you didn’t know. Now you do. What are you going to do about it?”

“Why couldn’t Sirius raise you?”

Clever tactic, changing the subject, Harry acknowledged, but he let it work. Maybe Black would walk away forever once he realized how much havoc Harry’s life had wrought among his family. “He was accused of betraying my parents and leading their enemy straight to them, even though it wasn’t him. He got thrown in Azkaban for twelve years. And then he escaped, and—and I barely knew him two years before he died.” Harry shut his eyes and bowed his head into his hands. Again the twin images of Sirius flashed through his mind.

How could he regret that Sirius would live here? But how could he escape the fear that something else he did would hurt Sirius without him even planning on it?

Black’s fingers reached out and entwined with his. Harry hated himself for doing it, but he clung to them anyway. No one else was here to hold on to.

“What kind of enemy killed your parents?” Black asked quietly. “What kind of celebrity did you have?”

Harry studied Black for a second, opening his eyes. He could read nothing from the man right now but intensity. Harry certainly didn’t seem to be driving him away, as he’d intended, but perhaps that would come later, when Black had the chance to fully confront the fact that Harry was a Muggle-raised half-blood and had caused the death of his son, even if in another world.

“I need your word that what I tell you now you will reveal to no one else,” Harry said. “Including your sons and Mariana.”

Black closed his eyes and tightened his fingers for a second on Harry’s. “I do so swear.”

The twist of magic in the air, which coiled around them and then snapped like a breaking branch, was unexpected. On the other hand, Harry supposed it might be the only way a wizard could swear an oath without using a wand, and Black’s still lay on the other side of his office.

Harry swallowed and reached back onto his desk for the Elder Wand. When he traced it above his forehead, he cast no spell but simply trusted the wand to respond to his will. He knew from Black’s hiss of shock that he’d succeeded, and the lightning bolt scar shone there in bright green before it faded.

“You were the Boy-Who-Lived.” Now Black’s voice held a recognizable emotion. It was wonder. “How—you defeated the Dark Lord?”

“When I was a baby, something my mother did defeated him,” Harry said, opening his eyes. Black just stared. “The same thing as happened to Severus. Both my parents died, but everyone assumed it was some unknown power on my part, not my mum’s sacrifice.”

“And later on?”

“Later on, Voldemort returned,” Harry said. “He’d made himself immortal—in a sense—and he had a way of regaining a body. Then everyone expected me to fight him to the death. Sirius died in one of the battles in that war.”

“And Regulus?”

“Was a Death Eater,” Harry said, and took some satisfaction in the way Black recoiled without ever letting go of his hand. At least he had the sense to be disgusted by the idea of serving Voldemort in this world. “However, he’d defected and tried to destroy Voldemort’s means of immortality. So he died a hero, although not many people ever knew.”

Black shook his head a little. “When did you first defeat the Dark Lord?”

“Twenty years after Severus did in this timeline. Halloween of 1981.”

“So.” Black shifted around, and Harry had the impression that he’d ask no more questions and the time had come for him to confront the information Harry had shared. He sat up, and his eyes pierced Harry. Harry squared his shoulders and awaited judgment.

“You spared us twenty years of war by changing the timeline as you did.”

“No!” He should have known Black would take the wrong impression from this. Harry jerked his hand free and slammed it down on the side of his desk. The pain tingled through his fingers, but not enough to ground him, and he slammed it again. Black captured it before he could hit it a third time. “Don’t you see? I didn’t know that things would work out like this. They could have been worse. You can’t say that I did a good thing when I didn’t know what would happen, when I was careless—”

“Perhaps you had no such intention, but this is the way that things worked out.” Black’s voice was calm and made it sound as if he was hammering reality into shape with his words. Harry twisted away, because he couldn’t listen, couldn’t be comforted or tempted to believe him. “Harry.”

The voice worked like a hammer on him, too. Harry turned reluctantly back to face Black.

“As far as I am concerned, you owe no debt to the Black family,” Black said, firmly. “My sons have every chance to live to be older than they did in your world. Regulus won’t be a Death Eater, even if Voldemort returns. They won’t be subjected to their mother as I know they must have been. I might even have a chance to live longer, myself.” He laughed shakily. “We owe you so much.”

“But you don’t know—”

“Yes, you said. It wasn’t intentional.” Black slid his hand gently over Harry’s arm, above his sleeve. “Do you think that matters to me? What matters is the people we are now. That world can’t come back.”

“It was home,” Harry whispered. “And now there are a few people here who know the truth, but no one I can depend on as I did there.”

“Let me be that person for you.” Black’s eyes burned as he leaned closer. “I know the truth. I won’t spill your secrets, but I can guard you, listen to you, help you. Support you. Be a friend, if not a husband.”

Harry just stared at him and said nothing. Then he broke free and said, “It’s too soon.”

“Very well. Do you want me to go?”

Harry stared at him again. “Why are you being this accommodating?”

“You’ve made it clear what debt we owe you and what kind of person you are. I want you more than before, but I’m also content to wait longer.” Black stood up, watching him. “Do you want me to go? If you do, then at least permit me to escort you to the hospital wing first. You should have that hand looked at.”

Harry stared blankly at his hand, which was mottled over with discolored spots. One of his fingers looked fractured, if not broken. It started to ache when he saw that. “I—yes, you can do that.”

Black didn’t touch him, but held the door open for him, and walked beside him all the way to the hospital wing. And he nodded to Harry and bade him farewell with a little smile, encouraging him to speak through the Floo with Sirius and Regulus soon.

Is just knowing my secrets capable of changing the man that much? Harry thought blankly as he sank down on a hospital bed and listened to the scoldings from the matron with half an ear. Why?

No, he didn’t think so. But perhaps being trusted with his secrets was capable of changing Black that much.

Harry closed his eyes and hoped he didn’t regret it.