Chapter Text
Chapter 1
It started as one of those days. The type that starts with a broken alarm clock that didn't go off, a full cup of coffee that was put down and promptly forgotten, all of his work clothes in the laundry bin and of course, he forgot to buy floo powder yesterday so he couldn't even floo to the Ministry when he was already late. It was practically prophesized that it was going to be a bad day. But Harry, maybe naively, was expecting a bad day as in a fight-with-his-idiot-of-a-boss type of bad day. Maybe even finally getting that demotion that Mr. Fouchy had been threatening him with. So Harry was understandably surprised that the day ended with an area-wide spell that transported him, Auror Pike, and Head Auror Martinez to a place that nightmares feared.
There were rows and rows of doors in pitch-black hallways that never ended, just branched off into other neverending hallways. At first, they weren't too worried. Confident that between them, they would be able to leave this place. But the first door they were able to open led to a horrifying realization. Each door was to a place similar to Earth, but not. The hallways were not a place in their world or even their dimension and those doors did not lead to rooms but goddamned worlds.
With time and practice, they discovered the 'rules' as much as this place could have any rules. It was only possible to open the door if your doppelganger in that dimension had just died. The door wouldn't open if they were alive or had died years ago.
They knew from opening countless doors and finding themselves in a pool of still-warm blood and other bodily fluids from the doppelganger's recent death. They never stayed for more time than necessary. The moment they assessed that the world wasn't their world, they left, which was as easy as wanting to leave closing their eyes and opening them again to hallways of doors.
Harry was secretly glad they weren't forced to crawl out of a grave every time. Waking up to his murder scene was traumatic enough. Harry and Pike were young enough that their deaths were a variation of homicide, accident, or suicide with sometimes a sprinkling of serious illness. Martinez had, more often than not, heart attacks as the cause of death; he had already vowed to watch his diet more and run every day.
"We are never going to find our door again," Pike whispered, sounding resigned and heartbroken. Harry looked at him and silently agreed. He tried another door that did not open and moved to the next. It was difficult to stay positive after the number of doors they had opened reached triple digits. Between the ones that did not open they had probably tried thousands of doors. They have been at this for what felt like months.
"Have you noticed that we are finding fewer doors that open?" the question bubbled out of Harry like fizz on champagne. He had kept that thought bottled for a week now.
"None have opened for me in this hallway," Martinez agreed.
Head Auror Martinez was the oldest of the three by far and all the doors on this hallway he had died years prior. They tried going back to other doors that had previously opened for Martinez, but none of them opened for him now. The window of opportunity had closed.
"I think... I think I should stay in the next door that opens for me," Martinez said quietly. Harry and Pike stared at him, unable to respond to that. "I don't want to get trapped here," Martinez explained, looking around with a visible shudder. The only thing that kept them from absolute darkness was their wand light. It was like nothing existed outside of their small ring of light.
Harry looked down to his hands and thought of his world, of his friends, and what they would suffer if he never returned.
"I'll stay with you," Harry said looking at Martinez in the eyes and squaring his shoulders. His friends would mourn him, but the infinitely small possibility of finding their original dimension was not worth the very real horror of never leaving this place. They have been at this long enough. He had no family and his friends will understand.
They looked at Pike, who had a wife, a dog, and a house to get back to. In part, they had not stopped looking for Pike, who had the most to lose.
"I don't want to stay here alone," Pike said with desperation and started sobbing. Harry put one hand on Pike's shoulder and Martinez crushed Pike to his chest making shushing sounds.
"It's ok, it's ok," Martinez whispered. "I'm sorry. We'll keep looking," Martinez promised.
Pike was nervously moving his wedding band around his finger. "No...no...We will never find our way back." No one had wanted to be the first one to say it, but they have all thought it. This place had no end. They could search for their door their entire lifetime and never find it. Or it could be one of the thousands that never opened.
"Cyndie would kill me if I get trapped here," Pike said, pushing Martinez and cleaning his face with his sleeves. Harry took the chance to hug him too because Pike sounded as if he was burying Cyndie with this decision. And maybe he was.
He has been in this dimension for three years.
That first day he woke up to neck pain, a rope around his neck, and soiled pants. He received the Patronus from Pike and Martinez confirming that they had all entered and sent his back. He didn't recognize the apartment, but by the photos on the wall, it was his. It was smaller than anything he had ever owned and with almost no furniture. The bed was only a mattress on the floor and there was no kitchen to speak of, only a kettle for boiling water and a magical cooler that was used in camping.
After a quick shower, he went to St Mungo's hospital and made an emergency appointment with a Mind-Healer. Three hours later, he was seen by Healer Bates and led to an office. When prompted Harry explained how he woke up after a failed suicide with memory loss. He did not remember why he committed suicide, what happened to him earlier that day, and did not recognize the apartment he woke up in.
After a blood test to confirm that yes, he was Harry Potter, the healer started a fairly standard questioning to assess memory loss that began with his name, age, date, location, and progressed to more complicated details of his life. He was not sure of his age. 23, the Healer said. Harry's eyes widened, he was decades younger. His family was alive and well; that was surprising. He had been a Gryffindor but had never graduated from Hogwarts. He had dropped out after OWLS and for the last seven years had been working on an entry-level position at the Ministry.
With his permission, the Healer did a test that consisted of giving him a prompt like his mother making breakfast and read his mind for the automatic memories he should have associated with the prompt. The Healer did this a few times with what was supposed to be big life events like the birth of his siblings and more mundane things like his father teaching him to ride a broom. There was, of course, no memories of any of this.
The Healer told Harry that he noticed what he called 'false memories' and assured him this was the brain's normal reaction to finding blanks; It was trying to fill the gaps. Confabulation, the Healer called it.
Next came the blood tests and imaging to ascertain his physical health. Finally, the healer had strongly suggested to floo his family and break the news with him as a mediator, but Harry had declined. He had no intention of telling anyone he had 'amnesia'. He only needed the paper trail of amnesia.
There had been mandatory visits every week and then every month until finally, only when Harry needed them. Harry hadn't minded; while not knowing the specifics, Healer Bates had still helped him work out a lot of feelings of anger and abandonment. Not surprisingly, Harry had developed a lot of coping mechanisms that were not exactly healthy.
In the three years he has been here, not once has he talked to 'his' parents. He had seen them from afar, of course, the Wizarding World was small. They had two other children, a girl that was around fifteen when he appeared in this world and a boy that had been starting Hogwarts.
He saw Sirius at the Ministry almost every day. Harry's work started at nine but he liked going earlier to have breakfast at the cafeteria and Sirius started at eight but was almost always late. Every time they saw each other coming out of the floo he would give Harry a tight smile and walk faster.
In the few times they shared the same elevator there was a painfully awkward pat in the shoulder and a 'how you been?' that begged for an easy 'fine and you?'. James Potter was also an Auror, but got on time every morning, took his lunch in his office, and got out of work later than Harry so they rarely crossed paths.
From what Harry gathered from passing comments, photos and asking here and there, he had a great childhood, but when he had decided to leave Hogwarts his parents had made an ultimatum: Leave Hogwarts and we will disown you. They had probably thought the gamble would work and that this-Harry would finish Hogwarts even by the skin of his teeth. And if he did leave Hogwarts and the safety net of family and comfort, he would come running back, begging them to sign him up to finish his schooling.
It did not work, of course. If there was a common thread to all Harry Potter's of the universe it was that they were stubborn mules with iron cores that planted their feet in front of a dragon and refused to move. It was his best and worst quality. This-Harry had survived. Not thrived, but survived. Until he hadn't.
Martinez, who was also a Head Auror in this world, said that Sirius told him that when Harry had been eighteen the family tried to reconnect but it all went south when Harry had wanted them to meet with his then-boyfriend. Lily had not accepted that. They had cut all contact. Harry was sure there had been an ultimatum there as well. If it was about it being a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend or the identity of the boyfriend there was no way to know. Having no memory of it and with no one to ask he could only speculate.
Harry had no idea who the boyfriend had been. There were no photos, no letters, and in the three years he has been here, no one has contacted him. It made his lack of knowledge a depressing non-issue. The body would have gone unnoticed until his landlord came knocking for the missed rent payments. At first, Harry had wondered why this-Harry never left a letter; now he knew it was because there was no one to read it.
He left his cramped office to wash his hands. The shock of seeing his face in the mirror had lessened over the years and now it was just a fleeting thought. It was his face, but not. The most obvious difference being that he was younger, but there were other small changes in the structure of his face, the shape of his eyes, his nose, and more moles than he was used to. Small changes by themselves, but together they were enough to drastically change his appearance. He dried his hands and left for the cafeteria.
As always, it was busy with the lunch rush. The line was annoyingly long and he was too late for the chicken. After taking a plate of fish he found Martinez and Pike at a table in the back. During the last four years (he was counting the time in the hallways as a year, even if it had felt both like an eternity and a moment) the three of them had gotten impossibly close.
They had gone through horrible moments together. The depression of losing everything, Pike's grief during that first year, Martinez's phobia for doors that left him shaking and crying and almost cost him the Head Auror position during its worse. Even after three years Harry still woke up drenched in sweat from nightmares of wandering alone over endless hallways with no door opening. Only two people in the world understood the terror of believing he was still trapped there and this was just a hallucination of his mind.
"It's weird isn't it?" Pike asked immediately. Harry looked at where Pike was looking to see Tom Riddle sitting at another table with his usual crowd. He looked as handsome as ever, with silver hair starting to creep at the temple and sharply dressed in black.
"What's weird?" Harry asked, taking his fork. For Harry, the weirdness of a world without Voldemort and with a sane-ish Tom Riddle had left after the first year. It was now the new normal.
"That he's here, at the cafeteria, for lunch," Pike explained. And yeah, now that Harry thought about it he had never seen Riddle at the cafeteria for lunch.
"Must be someone he's courting; you know how he gets when he sets his sights on someone," Martinez responded. Harry did know and he pitied whoever his new victim was. Tom Riddle was no less obsessive than he was in their world, he was just more legal about it. Legal-ish? Well, not genocidal about it at least.
It was interesting, in the ways crime scenes and blood spatters are interesting, to see Voldemort in Tom Riddle. To see the paranoia, the obsessiveness, the greed, the need for control and for others to submit but forced into the neat confines of a corrupt politician. It was...dare he say it, charming that his 'only' crimes were money laundering, blackmail, embezzlement, extortion, and bribery. There was maybe the odd political opponent that died in questionable circumstances but foul play was never proven.
It was the Golden Retriever of Voldemort's. Harry was sure this was the limit on how 'good' Tom Riddle could turn out and it was completely by chance that they ended here. This was the first world that accepted the three of them after they decided to leave the search.
"So, Harry, when are you leaving that dusty office and come back to work with me?" Martinez asked, rehashing an old argument.
Harry snorted. "Never," he responded with passion."Being an Auror was a pain in the ass. Besides, I don't have the NEWTs for it."
"I could pull some strings," Martinez insisted.
Pike laughed, "You'd need a shovel to enter Harry Potter to the force. Potter Senior and Black would fight you, you know."
"The sad truth," Harry agreed. It turned out that Lily was Petunia's sister in more than blood and that James Potter never completely grew out from being a bully.
"Those two don't make half the Auror you were Harry," Martinez defended. Martinez held more anger with the Potter family than Harry could scrounge up. As Healer Bates told him, there was a limit to how much a person can feel before they start going numb to less important concerns. Or as Harry interpreted it, he had zero fucks left to give.
"Some days I'm embarrassed they are senior Aurors in the force," Martinez grouched.
Harry gave him a few chips off his plate as consolation. "You know," Harry said, "I'd always help you if you needed, but the Aurors are pure bureaucracy with only a drop of actual excitement. I prefer my job."
"Yeah, and what's that again? Paper pusher number 127?" Pike joked.
"I'd have you know, I'm the Communications Dispatcher Trainee," Harry said haughtily. It had taken an embarrassing amount of time to figure out where he worked and what he was supposed to do in his cramped office. No one noticed he hadn't been going to work the first few days and no one missed his job while he figured out his responsibilities. Harry only found out his official title 2 weeks ago.
After he got over the depression of the dead-end job this-Harry had, he started to ... not enjoy it per se, but see the advantages. It was an easy job; stable, with normal hours, and gave him plenty of time for extracurriculars. The pay was exactly the amount he needed to not be destitute and not a Knut more.
He had been working on his Curse-Breaker Master's for the last two years to be able to change jobs. It was a mail program from America that only needed his presence for practical exams. Martinez had pulled some strings to get him to take the graduating tests from Ilvermorny in order to be eligible for a Master's. His current job left him with plenty of time to study while still providing the bare necessities.
"There's this case I'd like to have your opinion on it. I'd never seen anything like it. There have been four deaths already and we have no more leads."
Pike nodded in agreement, "Weird case. Just your alley, Potter."
"No problem," Harry responded because if there was anything he enjoyed about being an Auror it was solving crimes.
"Are we still going to watch the game tonight?" Harry asked after swallowing another bite of food.
Pike groaned, "Potter if you try to weasel out ONE MORE TIME, I swear to God..."
"I'm going, I'm going, yeesh."
Harry left to dump his plate and leave the cafeteria. He only had fifteen minutes left of his lunch hour and he wanted a coffee from the bakery across the street from the Ministry. He saw Riddle on his way out of the main level of the Ministry. Something made him look longer than he would usually dare.
The longer Harry looked the more he knew something was wrong. He stopped walking and shamelessly stared, taking every detail of Riddle and trying to piece what exactly was wrong with what he was seeing. Riddle inevitably noticed him, their eyes met and at that moment he knew. This was not Tom Riddle.
Getting this Tom Riddle imposter to follow him was strangely easy. He just walked confidently and said, "Mr. Riddle, I've been looking for you. You are late for your meeting."
"Ah yes, yes, of course. The meeting," the imposter turned to his group and made his apologies, promising to continue what they were doing in another moment and then turned towards Harry and asked, "Where is it now?"
"I'll show you there, sir," Harry said with a smile and turned to the floo.
"Outside the Ministry?" the imposter asked.
"Yes, sir," And turned towards the imposter with a suspicious frown, "St. Mungus, remember? We had this meeting planned months ago."
"Of course, of course, I remember now. Must have slipped my mind."
The moment the green flames took them, Harry used the distraction to stun the man. Riddle was heavier than Harry expected and they both toppled out of the fireplace and onto the entrance of St. Mungus.
It was a bit of a hassle to explain why he was dragging an unconscious Tom Riddle around, but finally, a reluctant healer did a screening test and with a serious face called a team to take Riddle away. Harry left shortly after. His lunch hour was over, he had no coffee and a few hours of work to do before he had to leave.