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Chapter One

Given long enough, everything had the possibility to lose much of its meaning. Harry could remember a time passed, when he had been bored out of his mind and with nothing to do, laying on his back he had spoken a word. The word he had said had been forgotten, but the feeling behind it remained. After twenty iterations Harry remembered losing all meaning to the word, every time after that it was spoken from his lips it felt foreign and he often dwelled thereafter on who would think about such a stupid word and how it could become mainstream.

The same could be said for the current predicament.

Sleep.

The word no long felt the same. Before it had an intermission, some time for the brain to slow down, resting just enough that there wasn't a chance that it might crash. It was supposed to feel brief, hours spent doing nothing but the moment one woke they felt as though they could go back and sleep for an eternity.

A mental snort rang through the confines of his mind at the thought. The wizard felt that he would be happy to not have to sleep for another eternity if this was what it felt like.

At first there hadn't been much to it. Harry had slept and dreamt. The confusing sort of dreams were you found yourself driving a car underwater and thought it made perfect sense, the sort of dreams were the rules of physics and magic were broken but you didn't pay the phenomena any mind. Time had passed with such dreams before Harry had become aware.

With awareness that he was dreaming there had come control. It had been subconscious at first, his mind knew the rules and it had enforced them even in this mental realm. The dreams from then on hadn't been confusing, instead they had turned to memories.

The memories had come with a clarity to them, a crispness he had noticed only in three previous occasions: the real world, a pensieve and a mental intrusion.

Harry had realised that this couldn't be real life. If it were, then he would not have had the degree of control, able to shift between memories of his children, to his friends to his schooling days. The wizard had then surmised that the experience was either because of a pensieve or a mental intrusion.

He had taken time and searched, clearing his mind and pushing back all emotion. Harry had never been a master of Occlumency, but there were some aspects of the technique he had a grasp of, and detecting mental intrusion was one of them. The search had come back empty. There was no one trying to enter his mind.

This had left the last option: a pensieve. But Harry couldn't remember a situation in which he had gotten his hands on one of those. They were rare magical devices, hard to make and worth the entirety of his bank vault to buy. Had he asked the Headmaster of Hogwarts to lend hers to him?

Searching for such an occurrence, Harry had found nothing.

Which had left him in something of a state of confusion.

Where am I? Why am I here?

He had no sooner asked that the memories filled into place. The wizard could remember himself participating in a raid; a gang of dark wizards who had killed a few muggle families. He remembered the fight breaking out, spells flying to and fro, and he remembered the jet of orange light which had shrieked as it passed through the air, headed towards Johnson. Harry had pushed the man out of the way without much thought and the curse had hit him.

Am I dad? he had asked himself then and after an indefinite amount of time here, he was sure he had died.

But why was it different?

Harry was not a stranger to death—in the personal sense too. When he had died before the world had been stripped away and he had been transported to a sort of Limbo. Of course there had been exceptions to why this had happened, mixes of old, good and dark magic which had twisted and turned, forming something the world would likely never see again.

This time though, that hadn't happened. Instead he had been transported into his own mind, dwelling in the memories of his past and yearning for what could have been; both his sons had started at Hogwarts and in a few years the same would have been said for Lily.

Harry felt a pang of hurt and guilt as he thought about her, thought about all of them. He had been told many a time that perhaps retiring was the thing to do. Harry had lived a hard life even from a young age, chases by the darkest wizard England had ever known and surviving by the skin of his teeth. You deserve to rest, his friends had told him but Harry had found it hard to listen.

And now, without the option to go or move forward, he was left to regret his decision.

888

It happen suddenly. Harry had been dwelling in one of his memories only a time before only to be jerked away from it all and into something else.

He felt for the first in what seemed like a long time; there had been something in his nose, another stuck to his wrist and something else pegged at his finger. All things he tried to look towards but found he couldn't see, his terrible sight stalling him. Harry hissed as he felt his eyes throbbing, lights were around him and it seemed that they hadn't been used for a long time.

He didn't have time to relish this emotions however.

"I need you to stand, mate," said a voice, a familiar lilt to it though the voice itself was unfamiliar. It wasn't a moment later, as he tried to move, that he felt an arm helping him stand and pin rushing up and down as his feet hit the ground.

He noticed, amongst other things, that he was barefoot and that the floor beneath him was a cold slab of cement.

"Do you think you can stand on your own?" the voice asked again.

Harry nodded, still looking around even though he rationally knew that he wouldn't see anything. "Where am I?" he asked and he coughed, his voice coming out raspy from disuse. "What's going on?"

"We don't have time for this," it was another voice that said this, starkly different from the first. Harry focused enough to see them, two men—judging their voices. One had a fair head while the other's was dark, they both stood roughly the same height. Further than that, Harry couldn't tell much about them.

"The more time we spend here, the more time they have to discover we're gone," said the second voice. American.

"Too true," said the first, his tone of apprehension. "Unfortunately we don't have time to explain," the man said, voice soft and gentle. "Right now we have to move."

Harry nodded and took a step. Only for his legs to give out. The men were quick, both grabbing his arms and keeping him from hitting the floor.

"Sorry," he muttered with a sign of embarrassment.

"Not a problem," said the fair headed man. "This will make things easier at any rate." He didn't explain as they continued forward and indeed as the object they were walking towards came closer Harry noticed they were walking towards a wall.

He said this out loud but received no answer from either of the men, instead they continued forward with purpose. A spell? Harry thought but he just as quickly dismissed the thought. He wasn't sure how it had happened but the wizard had found himself able to sense magic. The sense wasn't in depth. He could stretch out his sense and feel the objects, creatures or people around him that had or were magic, but he couldn't tell magic strength or dark or light magic.

Hermione had hypothesised that with a degree of work he might be able to fine tune this sense, but Harry had found no time to work on this.

As he stretched out his sense, he could feel that the men at either side of him were muggle and indeed the wall they were walking towards was not enchanted.

But the purpose with which the men walked was infectious, not mentioning the fact that Harry was still trying to wrap his mind around everything that was going one. His best estimate so far was that, since he was still alive, he must have been knocked unconscious and given the Draught of Living Death. He wasn't sure why anyone would want to do this but it would explain the sleep-like place he had been in before being awaken.

Even if this was true, however, it didn't explain how muggle had been able to wake him up. He was one of the most powerful wizards in the world—this wasn't true in fact, there were many more powerful than him but defeated a dark wizard made people think otherwise—and yet he hadn't the slightest idea what the cure for the Draught was.

Mystery upon mystery and it got worse still as they passed through a wall. It was a strange feeling, akin to walking through a deep tide but being unable to see even a few centimetres from your face. The walls were on the thicker side, which made Harry think of a prison. He had time to think that maybe he had been imprisoned before something more confounding filtered into his mind.

How had they passed through a wall?

Throwing out his sense there still wasn't the slightest sign of magic, and yet what they had just done would take a master wizard to enchant and spells of that power would be hard to hide.

Yet this men were doing it. They passed through a myriad of other walls. Pausing at times before moving again in a quick trot that tired Harry a little. He didn't say anything though. If this indeed was a prison then it was in his best interest to escape, even with magic-but-not-quite strangers leading the way. They walked on and even climbed a few sets of stairs.

"Be quiet," was murmured to Harry before he felt something sliding over his skin. The feeling was akin to the trickled of a Disillusionment Charm but it kept on clinging against his skin.

There was talking. New voices that were discussion minutia and joking about the other's last girlfriend before Harry guessed that these two were guards and that they most likely couldn't see them.

They were invisible?

Harry threw out his sense again and felt nothing. Not even a whisper of magic.

Joining the fatigue was a throb against his head as the confusion started to fully set. He needed to get home and figure all of this out. Figure out who had imprisoned him, if indeed he had been, who these men were, and how they could be magic but not radiate it.

Was perhaps his sense failing him? Harry turned it inward and he could feel himself. He threw it out further and could have sworn he felt a glimmer of something before it was beyond his range.

They parted with the guards and moved up a flight of stairs before moving past a series of walls.

Then it hit.

The moment they were out Harry stopped, his legs not budging. He took a greedy gulp of air and relished the crispness of it, the cold against his skin and the nippy air that brushed past him, starring the hairs all over his body. He had yet to see anything of worth but this he had missed.

"We've got to keep moving," the words were said by the dark haired man, though at this point it was almost impossible to tell. It was night and the place they had chosen to stop was dark to the point where Harry could see nothing.

"Let him enjoy himself, Peter," said the fair haired man. "He's been denied this longer than I have."

Harry's mind snapped back. He held onto those words. "You said you would explain," he said, looking in the rough direction of the fair haired man. He sounded as though he had answers.

"It's something of a long story, mate," said the fair haired man.

"And one we shouldn't be telling here," said the other man, Peter. "Too many people around me and I don't think I'll be able to hold back."

Ominous, Harry thought but without context there words didn't merit thought. Right now he needed explanations. Then he needed to go home. He didn't know how long he'd been under but it had felt like a long time.

These men had answers after a fashion and it was important that he first found out as much as he could before going back home. There was the chance that he might not run into these men again.

"Where are we?" Harry asked. "That's not a story."

"Odessa, Texas," said the fair haired man. "It won't mean nothing and it will probably cause more question, but you were in one of the Company's holding cells."

Indeed the words caused more questions to pop into Harry's mind. What was the Company? Why was he being held? What was his family doing in all this? And a whole host of others that the wizard pushed back. He chose to focus on the most pertinent of aspects.

He was in America and likely still on hostile ground. They had been keeping him, which meant they would most likely try and recapture him the moment they found out he had escaped.

"We need to get out of here," he said. As quickly and as far as possible. He sent out a pulse and within his range there were no Ant-Disapparition wards.

"There lies the problem," said the fair haired man. "I was hoping Peter would fly me out of here but with you along for the ride I doubt he'd be able to carry us. Not mentioning that if we head for the sky we might be at a disadvantage. It's not outside the realm of possibility for the Company to have their own fliers."

Flight too? Whatever these men were they had abilities that were not magic. Harry could hope that they wouldn't think too much if he too had an ability, not mentioning that this was a time which he feared for his life. Screw the Statute of Secrecy.

He was in America and there was only one place he knew enough that he was confident he would be able to side-along two people.

"I can take care of that," said Harry.

"Can you?" asked the fair haired man with a tone of interest.

Harry held out both his hands. "Take my hands and when we're moving, don't fight me."

Harry felt as they both took his hands and with some thought of the location. He turned on the spot and the three of them were in an alley in New York.