Archive of Our Own ^beta

Harry Potter And The Time Variance Authority (Who Won't Allow Her To Take A Vacation)

Harry Potter had never had a normal life. 

First, she is orphaned as a baby and sent to live with family that hated her mere existence.

Then at eleven, she gets told by a half-giant of a man that she was a witch.

With the years that followed with one near death experience after another, you would have thought that Harry had gotten used to strange and peculiar things by now. 
Yet somehow, she never would have guessed that her decision to take a holiday from work would have led to a weird orange door opening in front of her. And then followed by a bunch of muggles in black outfits with strange weapons like out of a sci-fi movie.

“Harriet James Rosalie Potter. You are under arrest for crimes against the sacred timeline”, a Scottish woman with a stern demeanour and a tight bun told her coldly.

“I’m what now?!” Harry gaped and quickly whipped out her wand. 

“Expelliarmous!” yelled one of the guards that she had wrongly assumed to be muggle. Her wand zipped out of her grip and into the guard’s outstretched hand. 

“Wait, you have wizards?!”

“Of course,”, the Scottish woman drawled. “We could hardly catch magical variants without one of our own”.

“Variants?!” Harry frowned, confused. She had no idea what she was on about or why this woman seemed to think she was such a criminal.

“Put your hands up. Now!” the woman warned her and since they had her wand and Harry did not think she would get away with using her wandless magic right now, what with the guy with the stick poking into her back warningly. It was switched off, but she had a feeling she did not want to experience what it really did.

Harry obeyed the woman, however reluctantly. “Get ready to prune this timeline”, the woman ordered the others and Harry’s stomach flipped. What the hell did that mean? Her friends…her family…her godson…what did pruning a timeline do exactly?

“You, go through the door, now”, she barked at Harry.

“What does pruning mean? What are you doing?!” she inquired desperately, her heart telling her that this was not good. Something horrible was about to happen to the people she cared about if she did not stop them.

“It means this timeline will no longer exist”, the woman answered flatly before shoving Harry threw the orange doorway. She fell through, limbs flailing through the air as she tried to stop herself. Unfortunately, the moment that she fell to the ground the orange doorway closed behind her and the others had already returned. 

“The timeline has been pruned successfully”, her captor smirked victoriously. Harry paled and felt her heart sink to the floor. What had she just let them do to her family and friends? Why was she allowed to live? 

“Variant HP678 will be taken for processing and ticketing and then put on trial”, the stern looking woman commanded one of her subordinates. “Hunter C-34, you can take her”.

“Of course, ma’am”, the young man agreed and began dragging Harry away from the hallway they were standing in. She looked around at the orange and beige décor and felt like she had suddenly been tossed into a muggle science fiction film.  It seemed even less real than when she found out she was a witch and was going to go to a magic school to learn magic.

“In there”, Harry yelped as she was unceremoniously shoved into a small room and forcibly stripped from her robes and into an ugly grey jumpsuit with orange words stamped on. She was then given a whole script of her life to sign and confirm her identity before being taken to a room with a standard looking, muggle ticket office and rope to queue between.

“Here’s your ticket”, her escort grunted, handing her an actual ticket which she thought was sort of pointless since she was the only one in there. Nevertheless, Harry handed the ticket in and was directed to wait to be called forwards by the judges.

When it was Harry’s turn, she found herself standing before a group of important looking people dressed in sharp military uniforms, different to the entirely black attire of the other agents. The stern woman who had taken Harry in was part of the panel along with a dark-skinned woman and a shorter lady with a dark bob. She caught their name plates, memorising them. Judges Renslayer and Gamble but Dox was a general. Interesting.

“Variant HP678, you are charged with violating the timeline and creating a nexus event. How do you plead?”, Renslayer glowered down at her.

Harry merely blinked in response. “I honestly have no bloody clue what you are talking about right now, so how would I know how I am meant to plead? Do I even get a lawyer?”

“Are you guilty or not?” the young woman glared.

“How the fuck would I know?”

“Before your arrest, what were you doing?”

“I was about to go on the first holiday I’d ever go on”, Harry answered. “Between being left behind by uncaring relatives as a child and being forced to chase after dark wizards the rest of the time, I’ve not had much chance to getaway”.

“I see. So, you made a decision that would lead to a nexus event and endanger the entire multiverse all because you wanted a vacation?” Renslayer gave her a look of contempt. As if Harry had committed a grievous crime on purpose. As if she had anyway of knowing that her decision to take a holiday for once would lead to epically bad consequences.

Renslayer shared a look with the other women and nodded. “It seems the court finds HP678 guilty of her crimes. You will be sentenced to be reset but until then, men please escort her to a cell”.
Two agents grabbed Harry’s arms and began dragging her away from the court room. She wanted to scream, protest, fight but she was numb as the events of the day began to sink in.  From what she could understand from the TVA videos that played in the ticket room and from what others had said in front of her, the world she had known was gone. All her loved ones were erased as if they never existed. But of course, Harry survived. She always did somehow.

Lost in despair, she did not even notice when the agents tossed her into an orange cell with a gooey sort of substance. She just sat and stared into space wondering how much more she could possibly lose in her lifetime.

Time passed but how much, Harry had no clue. They had yet to carry out their sentence but what did reset even mean? And for all she knew, only a minute had passed since they tossed her in here. And from what she could tell, she could not access her magic in the TVA because of some sort of fail safe put in place to keep prisoners from escaping.
In her cell, Harry had all the time in the world to think of all the people she had lost in a single moment. All because she had decided to take a holiday. How stupid of her to think that the saviour of the wizarding world could ever catch a break. Literally.

Eventually, Harry was snapped out of her bleak thoughts when the door to the room her cell was in was abruptly opened. In came two men in clothes of differing shades of but equally dull beige and brown. One was on the older side with greying hair and a moustache, though the look suited him. The other was tall and lean with long black locks.

“Why are we in here?” The younger looking one questioned, baffled.

“I don’t know, I followed you!”

“I was following you!”, the first retorted. 

Harry cleared her throat. The two slowly turned and glanced at her in surprise.

“Hello!” she waved. Maybe these two were here to carry out her sentence but she didn’t think so considering it seemed like they hadn’t entered this room with a purpose.

“Err, hello”, the taller man said dumbly.

“Who are you?!” the older one questioned, confused. “I wasn’t aware they were keeping anymore prisoners around this place”.

“I was tossed in here and scheduled to be reset, whatever that means, but I fear I’ve been forgotten entirely”, Harry gave the pair a wry smile. “You wouldn’t happen to be able to help me out of this cell by any chance? I’ve gotten quite bored staring at the same four walls”.

“Not until you answer my question”, the greying man said coolly as he approached her gooey prison. “Who are you?”

“Harriet James Potter”, she answered, half expecting them to gap at her and stare at her scar, though it was carefully hidden beneath of a veil of a silky black side fringe.

“Never heard of you”, the older man answered.

“You don’t seem like a Kang variant”, the dark-haired man eyed her up and down. “His variants all appear to be similar in looks anyway. Still, why did you end up in locked up in here?”

“No idea. They were going to reset me, whatever that means but no one came back since I was brought here”, Harry shrugged before her expression darkened. “I do know that whoever runs this place ordered the deaths of all my friends and family, what was left of them anyway”.

“Long story short but I fear you may have been in here a while”, the dark-haired man explained hesitantly. “The one who created this place is dead. He was killed a while ago and since then his partner-in-crime Renslayer has been trying to take over and replace him with his more dangerous variant with the help of his AI”.

AI was vaguely familiar to Harry, but she was too engulfed in the magical world to fully know what it was. She did remember that little clock on the TVA screens called herself artificial intelligence so that was probably what it meant.  “Alright, so are you gents ever gonna tell me who you are?”

“Oh right, yes, sorry, how rude of me. I’m Loki”, the dark-haired man said, and Harry’s eyebrows flew up.

“Like the Norse god of mischief?”

“The very same”, the grey-haired man confirmed as Loki puffed up with pride.

“Bloody hell, I know some people who would be very jealous of me right now”, Harry exclaimed, her heart sinking in memory of Fred, George, Sirius, Lupin and her father. Her timeline was gone as if they had never existed at all. 

“Long story short but my dad and his friends worshipped you”, she continued, Loki’s face preening. It wasn’t often that anyone had looked to him as their deity, not when his brother Thor was vastly more popular. “I used to pray to you after I learnt of you from my dad’s old journals. I ‘m a witch, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that your real and not just a concept created by humans”.

“A witch?!” The older man exclaimed, startled. “Really? Name’s Mobius by the way”.

“Cool name”, Harry smiled.

“I thought all human magic users had become extinct?” Loki questioned, confused.

“Maybe in your timeline. In mine, we were an entirely secret part of society”, she answered kindly. “Though my magic doesn’t seem to work in this place”.

“Well, we’re leaving this place as soon as we find our other friends. We want to go find some help from the multiverse that might be able to stop an impending multiversal war”, Mobius said. “Want to come with us?”

“Well, it’s not like I have anything better to do right now”, Harry agreed. “And my home is gone. I’ve got no one left to worry about”.

“I understand”, Loki said quietly. “My timeline was pruned. My brother…my mother, I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again. I won’t see my versions at least”.

“Versions? So, you think there could be other versions of the people I lost out there?!” Harry felt a sudden ray of hope begin to bloom within her. Maybe…just maybe, there was still a chance…

“Possibly but they might be very different to the ones you know”, Mobius warned her as the three of them left the room. Harry felt the first rush of relief at seeing new walls, even if they were the same boring beige. 

“Then perhaps I’ll look for ones that I can recognise”, Harry said, a flicker of determination ignited inside of her soul.

With these two men beside her, she might just recover what she had lost to the TVA.