There were days Harry wished very much not to work where he did. Being an Auror had been fine. It had been straightforward. Find Dark wizards, bring them in, duck an Unforgivable every once in a while and laugh it off at the pub after.
If he'd stayed with the Aurors, he'd never have learned how much more there was to the Department of Mysteries. Specifically, time magic and how it was quite a lot more variable than anyone let on to the public. How traveling far into the past and actually changing things was actually possible, so long as you didn't mind continuing on in a newly split reality thereafter. Or how it was mostly Dark wizards that managed it, and that what most of them were after was killing a younger version of...
Well, of him.
They managed it sometimes, too. They'd managed it tonight, blowing up the Dursley's house within ten minutes of Harry's basket being left on the doorstep.
Harry'd always hated being the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One; turned out what he hated even more than that was knowing there were other realities out there where he was a boy who'd died after all.
He'd never know what had gone on to happen, in that other new reality. He didn't want to know. He didn't want to so much as wonder about it. Didn't want to be asked about it, whether he was alright or would need a leave of absence, or...anything else. He didn't want sympathetic looks, definitely not anyone trying to remind him of all the Dark Lord defeating he'd once done. None of that, whatsoever.
No, what he really wanted, now the debrief was over, was to go and have a good not think about it. As athletically as possible. With someone who would never ask if he was alright, or give him a sympathetic look, or try to reassure him that he'd done all he could and it wasn't anyone's fault, and if it was anyone's fault then it definitely wasn't his. Ideally, this not think would happen on top of Malfoy's desk, because he had less fucking stuff on his desk to have to pick up off the floor afterward, but to be honest Harry was edgy enough not to mind if they went for his desk instead, this time. Really, anything behind a door that locked would do.
By the time he got to their office, he was looking forward to it. Malfoy would say something like, 'Well, that was a cockup. Hope you're proud of yourself.' And then Harry would say, 'Fuck off, Malfoy,' that old standby. Then they'd say a few more nasty things to each other, all the same old bullshit, you don't have parents and you were a Death Eater and you cut me to ribbons in the girl's bathroom and you were trying to Crucio me at the time you enormous fucking dickhead. And then they'd fight it out, there'd be pushing and tugging and biting, and it would be exactly what he needed--
"Fuck," Malfoy groaned lowly, from behind the office door. "Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh--"
It didn't sound like the way he groaned when Harry was--it didn't sound like that, it sounded like something awful was happening, and the only thing that kept Harry from blasting the door down was knowing Malfoy's locking charms would usually let him through. So he put his wand to the doorknob, and the door opened, and there was Malfoy, at his desk, and what he was doing was...
Packing? Everything of his from around the office into a giant suitcase? For some reason?
"Er, what's going on?" Harry asked.
"You don't want to know," Malfoy said, in a panicked sort of voice that recalled the teenage boy he'd once been way more than it did the seasoned Unspeakable Harry had been partnered with for going on five years. He glanced over his shoulder at Harry for the briefest moment, then continued throwing stuff into his suitcase. "Fuck. Oh, fuck."
"Are you alright?" Harry asked.
"No! They don't even send people to Azkaban for this kind of thing! They just disappear them. I'm going to be disappeared. Oh, god. Oh, fuck."
"You're not going to be disappeared," Harry said, reasonably enough he thought, having cottoned on that this was just some sort of Malfoy freakout, which meant he could be talked down just like he had been for all the other Malfoy freakouts. Shagging might even still be on the table in a bit, though probably less athletically. Either way, it was still better than thinking about what was going on in that alternate universe right now. "What's happening?"
"I--" Malfoy looked back at him again, eyes wide and full of white. "It's better you don't know."
An uneasiness seemed to drape over Harry. Suitcase. There'd never been a suitcase before, had there?
"What happened?" he asked again. "You know I'm not going to run to anyone with it, right? Whatever it is, we'll handle it together."
"Yes, well, I'd prefer you not be disappeared too," Malfoy said, and the uneasiness might have grown then, at the complete lack of any synonym for 'you fucking idiot' in that statement, or even any sneering, only that was when Harry noticed something poking out from behind Malfoy's desk...
He went around, to get a better look at it...
"Oh, fuck," Harry said.
"I told you," Malfoy said.
"What did you do?"
"I know," Malfoy said, as Harry looked down into the basket, at the baby who was sleeping there. "I know. Believe me, I fucking know, I don't need to be told by you about it."
"We can," Harry said, as Malfoy's suitcase began zipping itself closed. "We can take it back? Before anyone finds out--"
Then there was a wand pointed at his face. Malfoy's wand.
"No," Malfoy said. "We're not doing that. I didn't--I shouldn't have. I know. I know. But he's here now, and I am not taking him back to be killed. Or having you do it for me, like a--no."
"...Alright," Harry said, but for the next second or two what he was thinking was that if he could get Malfoy to lower his wand, he could disarm him, and then...if it had been anyone else, it would have been different, but it was him, Harry, and he didn't...it wasn't worth the risks, was it, when it was just him...
There came a sound from inside the basket. Harry looked down at it again, and found his own green eyes looking back up at him. The lightning-shaped scar was a livid, raised red on baby Harry's forehead. Funny, he'd never thought about what his scar had looked like when it was new before...
Baby Harry grinned at him, reached out a hand as he sat up, laughing a second time, as if there were nothing at all worrying about having woken up to find himself with strangers...as if no one here could possibly be talking about whether he ought to exist at all...
"Fuck," Harry said. "Fuck. Fuck."
"I told you," said Malfoy again.
Harry took in a breath, perhaps the deepest of his life. He reached down, wrapped his hand around the handle of the basket, lifted it. It couldn't have been heavier than Malfoy's suitcase. It felt like the weight of the world, once more.
"Right," he said. "So. Where are are we headed, then?"