Chapter Text
For those that don’t know, The Tomorrow War was a Chris Pratt vehicle that was released in 2021. It depicts Earth suffering under an alien invasion in around 2051.
Unfortunately I don’t own either Harry Potter or The Tomorrow War
Chapter 1
17th October 2008
Harry Potter crouched behind the corner of the building and looked down at where the Mediwitch was tending to his partner Jessica Hightower. Jess was the latest rookie to be assigned to him. A nice girl, but a little naïve.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, as he leaned around the corner to aim a Stupefy at Mathias Schmidt and his men, who retaliated with a volley of Bone Breakers. Harry ducked back around the corner as the curses impacted around where he’d been. “Shit!” he exclaimed as he was hit by several chunks of the building,
“I’m gonna portkey her as soon as the wards are down!” the mediwitch said, frantically running her wand over Jess’s wounds, which were bleeding heavily.
“John! How’re you going on the wards?” Harry called into his mirror to the senior Unspeakable.
“Five minutes, Potter!” The American called, clearly hassled. Harry looked questioningly at the mediwitch, who grimaced. That wasn’t reassuring.
“If I cover you, can you go and grab one of those cabs?” Harry asked, pointing at where a yellow New York taxi cab had smashed into another one on the street. Both drivers had run off when the spells started flying.
Harry didn’t even want to think what a job this was going to be for the obliviators! Besides the hundred or so people on the street when this blew up, Merlin knew how many people would have seen what was going on from the upper floors of the buildings in the area.
And, given that this was Downtown Manhattan, there were quite a lot of those floors! Harry knew he was going to get a bottle from MACUSA when this was all over, but it hadn’t been his fault. Jess and he had responded to an emergency call out from some local aurors and been caught in an ambush. It seemed that Schmidt and his merry men had plotted this ambush specially to trap the ICW’s Head of North American operations, and they’d succeeded.
And Harry hadn’t been quick enough to push Jess out of the way in the first volley of spells. Luckily the mediwitch had arrived at the same time that they had to treat the aurors trapped in the original attack, which meant she’d been trapped herself when Schmidt had raised his wards. And she hadn’t had anything to do to help the aurors who were already dead by the time the ICW agents had arrived.
Jess would probably already be dead if it wasn’t for her, but it still looked touch and go.
“I could?” the mediwitch said, frowning. “But won’t that expose you?”
“You let me worry about that!” Harry responded. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if he pegged it after all. There was no one waiting for him. He’d thought there would be. Hoped there would be. After all, what had he been prepared to sacrifice his life for, if not for the happily ever after?
Sure, it had started as he’d envisaged. He and Ginny had got back together, had been deliriously happy for nearly three years. And then, the weekend Harry had planned to propose, Ginny had been killed in a freak Quidditch accident. The chances of anyone taking a bludger to the head like that were minute, the chances of doing it while they were in a crash dive practically incalculable. She’d been going too fast for arresto momentum to work, and she’d died instantly according to the Mediwitch.
Harry had been completely destroyed. So many had died in the war, but they’d survived the war hadn’t they? And besides, it was his job that was dangerous. He was an auror, a dark wizard catcher. Ginny was simply playing the sport that they both loved; living the dream. Until it had become a nightmare.
In the blink of an eye all of Harry’s hopes and dreams had gone out the window. He was bereft. Sure, Ron and Hermione and all his friends had rallied around him, trying to help. But there simply was nothing to repair the huge Ginny-shaped hole in his heart. He’d gone back to work. But he couldn’t settle. It didn’t help that most of his friends had paired up. Ron was with Hermione, Neville was on and off with Hannah. Susan Bones was unexpectedly with Daphne Greengrass, Dennis Creevey with Parvati Patil and Padma Patil with Terry Boot. Even George Weasley had moved on and was with Angelina Johnson. And, while Harry and Ginny had got close to Bill and Fleur after the war, it was even painful for Harry to spend time with them now as well.
Harry was happy for his friends, he really was. But every time he spent time with them, he came out feeling even more alone. And, as time went on, it just became too painful to see them. So he stopped. It was the same problem with Mr and Mrs Weasley. Sure, two of their kids had died and if anyone could understand his grief, it was them, but at least they still had each other. And that was something that Harry would never have. Not now.
In fact, the only people that he could bear to spend time with were Andromeda and Teddy and they had been his lifeline. He had told Kingsley he needed a change and the former auror had suggested a posting to the International Confederation of Wizards. Harry had jumped at the chance. And in ICW Special Operations he’d found something that could mean something to him again.
But it was dangerous work. And it was all encompassing. And Andromeda had got upset with the number of times he’d had to cancel visits with Teddy and she’d given him an ultimatum. His job or them. It had given Harry pause for thought. It really had. But in the end he’d decided to stick with the job. He wasn’t really a catch for Teddy – he drunk too much and he was shite at interpersonal skills and there were loads of better role models than him. So, with regret, he’d let them go. He still sent Teddy birthday and Christmas gifts, he still tried to write to him when he could, but that was increasingly less often. He didn’t know if they wrote back because he had an owl redirect ward on him and hadn’t checked his mailbox in many months. What was the point?
So, Harry just got on with the business of catching nefarious types and the occasional dark wizard in training and waiting until one got a lucky shot and put him out of his misery. So far none had, although many had got close. Sometimes he wondered if he should just do it himself, but he couldn’t ever bring himself to. So many people had fought and died so that he could live, and even though this half life wasn’t really what either he or they had probably had in mind, he felt he couldn’t end it himself. It would be a betrayal of what the others had given their lives for.
But, if he fell in the line of duty, so be it. And, if it was saving someone else’s life, so much the better.
He looked now at the Mediwitch. “On three?” he asked and she nodded.
“One, two, three!” Harry said and stepped out in front of where the Mediwitch was crouched behind a low wall with Jess, silently raising the largest Scutum shield he could. The Scutum was like an over-powered Protego. Not many people could actually cast it, but it was strong enough to repel most spells and even physical objects. Those that could cast it could generally manage a shield large enough for a buckler, but Harry’s one was four feet wide and six feet tall. And it was a kind of translucent silver.
“Go!” he ordered, seeing the Mediwitch’s eyes widen in shock, even as she levitated Jess towards one of the cabs. Spells shot around the shield and Harry decided to cut down on the angle, walking towards where Schmidt and his men had taken cover behind several parked cars. Spells were bouncing off Harry’s shield and each one took a little power out of it, but it would take hundreds of hits like that before his shield would collapse.
“John, clear the civilians!” he shouted.
“Confirmed!” the Unspeakable replied tersely. He was always like that, but Harry knew the man was damn good at his job and would take care of getting the civilians who’d been trapped on the street to safety now that Harry was taking care of the threat.
“You won’t get me Potter!” screamed Schmidt, and Harry saw him pull away and move to run down an alley, even as his men kept firing spells at Harry’s overpowered shield. Harry noted that the Mediwitch and Jess were safe and dove to the right and down, cutting his shield and almost immediately firing a wide-angled stunner. It successfully took out two of Schmidt’s men but left four. Harry fired a single stunner after the running man and managed to nail him in the arse.
He spun and collapsed. Seeing this, a horse-faced man broke cover. “You won’t take us alive!” he screamed, pulling what looked like a grenade from where it was clipped on his belt.
“No!” another of the men shouted, running away from the horse-faced man and toward Harry. That was worrying. Harry clipped him with a stunner. But then several things happened almost at once.
The horse-faced man threw the grenade-looking thing at the ground, where it smashed, exploding into a swirling torrent.
“Shit!” Harry had seen something like this before. It was a timetrap. A portal through time itself. But it was an experimental technology which had been stolen from the Spanish Department of Mysteries. And there was a reason it was still experimental; it needed to be contained, otherwise it would just grow outwards, trapping all in its path.
“John!” Harry shouted in warning.
“Harry!” the anguished scream from the Unspeakable could be heard despite the roaring of the explosion. The portal was already expanding. It had consumed Schmidt, the three of his men still firing and the horse-faced man.
There was only one thing for it.
“John, tell Teddy I love him,” Harry said sadly. This was it for him. Maybe he’d die. Maybe he’d be forced backward in time. Maybe forward. He didn’t know. He just knew he had to contain the huge time bubble before it became so big it consumed half of Manhattan. If it collapsed when it was that big, the resulting explosion could take out half of the East Coast.
“Harry!” the Unspeakable shouted again, but Harry ignored him, concentrating hard and then imagining the spell in his head.
“TESTUDO!” He roared, putting as much into the spell as he could. The spell only worked when the caster was inside the bubble but it was the strongest shield Harry knew, able to protect against physical objects and all spells up to the level of the Unforgivables. But it was energy-intensive and only Mage-level wizards could cast it, let alone hold it. Luckily Harry was one-such wizard.
“HARRY!” he heard again but he was totally focused in the shield.
The blast front of the explosion hit Harry like a hammer-blow but he held the shield as long as he could, putting every last ounce of energy he had into. It felt like his body was being torn apart, but still Harry fought to maintain the shield. He needed to. Millions of lives depended on him now.
Agony washed over him and he saw flashes of light, even as his vision broke up and New York vanished, replaced by flashing colours all around him. The pain was becoming intense and Harry gritted his teeth, fighting to keep the shield in place. Finally the pain became too much and he fainted away.
Harry was conscious that he was lying on something hard. He frowned. There was a smell of burning in the air. Not the pungent, woody smell of Autumn bonfires, but a sharp smell that stuck at the back of one’s throat. The smell of burning buildings.
Harry twitched alert, immediately remembering what had happened. Had he been unsuccessful? He looked around him. He was lying on the same street where the explosion had happened, but it was somehow different. For starters, it was totally empty. Not a person or a car in sight. Even the newsstand at the end of the street was gone.
The frontage of the building which he could see ahead of him was also different. A different stone colour, and a slightly different design, even if the side of the building that he could see was the same as it had been.
He managed to drag himself to his feet, checking his wand automatically. His Holly and Phoenix feather wand was warm in his hand and he smiled as the wand seemed to reach out to him as though to tell him that it was OK. The wand seemed to have absorbed power since he had fixed it with the Elder wand. But it carried none of the feelings of that wand, and he was pleased that he’d snapped the Elder wand and handed the pieces over to the Ministry. Now everyone knew that the Deathstick was dead. But Harry had an inkling that some of its power had been transferred to his wand, as though the Deathstick had sensed that Harry didn’t like it. He wouldn’t be surprised.
Harry was stiff and sore and he checked himself over, finding a myriad of cuts and bruises, though nothing important. He checked a full three hundred and sixty degrees around himself, but he truly was alone on the street. He was definitely in Manhattan but it was Manhattan as he’d never known it before.
The streets around him were silent although there was a distance noise, almost like a thunderstorm. There was that terrible stench of burning buildings in the air and he didn’t understand what it was. He guessed he’d have to go up to see over the buildings. As he turned his head to look at the other end of the street, he noticed a small statue in an alcove that he hadn’t noticed before. The alcove was next to where he’d been sheltering before he’d gone out to cover the Mediwitch.
He crossed to the statue and saw that it was of him. He frowned. He really didn’t like statues of him. In fact he’d nixed Kingsley’s plan to put one at Hogwarts, threatening the Minister with all sorts if he persisted. But he’d not been able to avoid the statue that had been put in Diagon Alley. Luckily it wasn’t just of him, but also included Ron and Hermione. Nevertheless, he avoided Diagon Alley like the plague these days, so he didn’t have to see the heroic bronze that looked nothing like what he remembered.
As it happened, this statue wasn’t actually too bad. Just showing him in what he assumed was his auror’s robe, holding up a hand. It was only as he got close that the statue changed and he understood it was a magical statue. Now he was pictured in his auror robes in full colour with an expression of focus and concentration on his face, and his wand on his hand. Words rose on the building next to the statue.
“On this spot in 2008, Auror Harry Potter gave up his life to protect the people of New York City. Potter, the vanquisher of the British Dark Wizard Voldemort and Head of Operations for the ICW, was pursuing the notorious mass muggle-baiter Mathias Schmidt.
He risked his life to allow civilians to get to safety and even seemed to be holding his own against ten to one odds when one of Schmidt’s followers deployed a Timetrap device.
Knowing the danger to the people of this City, Potter immediately moved within the device’s envelope and cast a Testudo shield. He sacrificed his own life so that others could live.
Thank you, Harry Potter.
Harry Potter, Order of Merlin First Class and Two Bars, International Wizarding Order of Merit, MACUSA Order of Freedom
1981-2008”
Wow, thought Harry, they’d given him an extra bar to his Order of Merlin. He was already only the second person in history to even get one bar, according to Hermione. So two bars must have been a big thing. He wondered if they’d take it back now that he had the temerity not to be dead?
Harry flinched as a strange, otherworldly screaming noise echoed around this part of the city. He wondered what it was? It made the hairs on his arms stand up and it sounded bad, if a noise he’d never heard before could sound bad.
Harry was exposed down here, so he resolved to move to higher ground to find out what was going on. He looked up the side of the building that he was standing next to. He couldn’t see to the roof, but if he looked down the street, he could see a lower tower (probably only thirty stories high) with a roof. He apparated there.
Into a nightmare.
Now Harry could see where the smell of burning buildings was coming from. It was coming from practically everywhere. Because around him New York City was on fire. It was practically a miracle that he hadn’t seen any smoke from where he was. The wind was obviously blowing hard from the southwest and any smoke coming from the New Jersey side seemed to have dispersed by the time it got to where he was standing. But practically everything else was ablaze. Or ruined. There were a number of buildings that looked like they’d been attacked, missing tops or burnt out.
What was going on?
Suddenly there was a loud scream that sounded like a Muggle jet and a string of explosions further uptown. Then another of the strange otherworldly screams.
Almost in a daze, Harry reached for his mirror. “John?” he tried, just on the off chance. But there was no reply.
He tried the MACUSA auror department but again there was no reply. And then the central contact. Nothing. What the fuck?
There was another screaming sound and two muggle jets flew over Harry’s head from south to north. There was a string of huge explosions near what Harry guessed was Central Park. He frowned.
He guessed he could head there, but something was clearly very wrong. He didn’t want to blunder into a situation he knew nothing about.
Harry twisted and apparated to MACUSA’s auror office. The receiving room at the auror office was surrounded by heavily warded doors so that the aurors could protect against unauthorised intruders. But it wasn’t today. All of the doors were open. This was damn peculiar. Harry’s wand jumped into his hand even as he registered that all the wards in this area were down. He carefully picked his way into the receiving area.
There were bodies here. Aurors by the look of them. Partially decomposed. So they’d been here for some time, and no one had come to clean them up. Harry deployed a bubblehead charm. He knelt to examine the two bodies. They were facing outward in defensive positions, guarding the door into the rest of the building. The door was locked. Harry knelt to examine the bodies. They had both been pierced by some sort of white spikes. Two or three each, which had pierced the body armour that the two were wearing.
Harry frowned. Aurors wearing body armour? Both were wearing what looked like muggle-style body armour. They were definitely aurors though. Both had wands and both were wearing auror tags around their necks. Harry placed his wand on both: Senior Auror Peter Bond and Auror Captain Juan Stewart. Harry reached up and gently closed Stewart’s eyes and conjured cloaks to lay across the both of them.
Harry looked around the auror office quizzically. It looked very different from the last time he had been here. For starters it had screens on the walls. All of the screens showed the same message. “Emergency Evacuation”. Harry pursed his lips. Had Stewart and Bond been protecting other aurors as they left or had they been protecting civilians? He guessed he’d never know. He saluted the bodies of his fallen comrades however. Whoever they’d been protecting, they’d still sacrificed their lives.
He started looking at some of the desks in the office. To his surprise there was no parchment anywhere. The desks had what looked like muggle computer screens on them. Next to every screen and keyboard was an alcove like a holster and Harry realised it was for a wand.
He looked at his own wand but then worried that something may go wrong. He grabbed Bond’s wand from the floor and pushed it into the alcove. The adjacent screen flicked on. Suddenly the lights in the room brightened and a voice said “Welcome Auror Bond.”
What looked like a muggle video started playing on the screen. A tense-looking woman was in front, a whole bunch of people behind her seemed to be packing up boxes.
“MACUSA update on May 15th 2050. The White Spikes have broken through the Boston defensive perimeter and have overwhelmed the Salem safe zone. The Mundanes have pulled back from the city and are regrouping north of New York, but the new line is not expected to be able to hold out for long. This will be the last transmission from MACUSA. We instruct all surviving aurors and employees to evacuate civilians and head south to the new ICW holding site at El Castillo. Do not attempt to apparate directly to the site, as the ICW teams have raised the war wards. Effective this date, the statute of secrecy is no longer in effect. If you receive an order from an officer of the Mundane military you should obey it as though it came from your own chain of command. Good luck to you all.”
Harry gasped as the unknown woman disappeared as the screen faded to black. The statute of secrecy was no longer in effect? WTF?!
What were these “White Spikes”? Who were they? He frowned at the bodies of the two aurors on the floor. They both appeared to have been killed by white spikes. Could it be that simple? But what fired the white spikes?
“Ur, hello?” Harry said, feeling a little stupid to be speaking to an empty room.
“Unknown voice print,” an officious voice came from nowhere. “You are in the Auror office. Do you need assistance?”
“Uh, where is everybody?” Harry asked.
“As far as this unit is aware, there are no remaining wizards in the Continental United States,” came the officious voice.
“What about…” Harry tried to wrack his memory. “El Castillo?”
“El Castillo was overrun by the White Spikes two months ago,” replied the computer and Harry gasped in shock.
“Are there any remaining strongholds?” Harry asked, feeling sick.
“Not that this unit has been informed of,” the voice replied.
“What about abroad?” Harry managed.
“All of Russia, Europe and Northern Asia had been over-run before MACUSA was evacuated,” the voice announced.
“Merlin!” Harry exclaimed. “What about the UK?” he asked hopefully.
“This unit has no information beyond the fact that the UK Ministry of Magic was evacuated in January 2050.”
“Evacuated?” Harry asked sharply. “To where?”
“This unit has no information,” the voice replied.
“What about the ICW?” Harry asked.
“Most of the ICW’s auror and special operations forces were killed at the battle of Vilnius in March 2049,” the voice replied expressionlessly. “The ICW was officially disbanded and its forces sent back to their own countries in September 2049.”
“Oh Merlin!” Harry gasped, as all the strength left his limbs and he collapsed on a desk. He swallowed. “Did anyone from MACUSA leave a way to get in touch with them?” he asked.
“The email network collapsed three months ago,” the unit replied tonelessly. “Mirror command fell in the early days of the invasion. Only personal communication methods work currently.”
“Expecto patronum!” Harry commanded, his stag forming in front of him and lifting his spirits slightly. “Find John Windham,” he commanded but the stag just looked at him. Shit! That meant John was dead. “Jessica Hightower?” he asked about his former partner hopefully. Again the stag made no move. “Rick Reid?” The head of the auror office at the time of his mission. Again, no move.
Harry swallowed. “Joshua Klein?” he asked and again the stag made no move. Joshua Klein had been the magical President. Harry took a deep breath. He didn’t want to, but he kind of had to know.
“Kingsley Shacklebolt?” He tried to control the wave of anguish that swept over him as the stag again didn’t move.
“Arthur W-Weasley?” Again, there was no movement. Harry took a deep breath. “R- Ronald W- Weasley?” The stag didn’t move again, but then faded from view as Harry tried to control his tears. To have beaten Voldemort only to succumb to whatever the fuck this was? Merlin. Harry was almost pleased that his emotional state precluded casting the spell again. He had no wish to find out spell by spell that all of his friends were dead.
Harry struggled with his tears for long moments, but eventually managed to get them under control. If the magic world was gone, he knew from what he'd seen that the Mundane world was still fighting. Maybe he’d be able to help them and find out what the Hell had happened?
Harry looked around the room, trying to see if there was anything that would help him. Along one wall was a shelf containing medical potions packs, magical binoculars and muggle body armour. He headed over there and started loading up on supplies, slipping the muggle body armour over his head. A poster stuck to the wall proclaimed “Aim for Center of Gravity. Fire works too!” It had a picture of an alien-looking creature with an elongated chalk-white, sinewy body with bony plates; gaping jaws full of needles; long forelimbs tipped with whip-like tendrils. In short, they looked like a nightmare.
Harry cracked open the door of the Auror Office. What awaited him almost beggared belief. Blood-covered walls and ceilings. Chunks missing where spells had obviously hit. Spikes as well. There were bodies too. Skeletal remains, stripped of their skin and organs, hung from walls and ceilings. Harry swallowed down bile, backing up to the Auror office and closing the door. He leaned up against it and took several deep breaths. He wouldn’t be heading out that way.
When he had himself under control again he headed back to the apparition area. He’d apparate from there back to the roof he’d seen the muggle warplanes from. He’d have line of sight closer to the action from there and, if necessary, he’d be able to apparate from rooftop to rooftop.
A/N This story is completed and only needs tidying up. I'm thinking I'll post about once a week. Of course, if I get lots of kudos and/or comments I might be persuaded to post more often... hint, hint!
I've never posted a Harry Potter fanfiction before but I've been reading them for over 15 years! The first fic I ever wrote was a HP one but it was abysmal and I never posted it. Since then I've written in Our Girl, the Last Ship and the Chuck universes. I got the idea for this story about a year ago and it just would not go away and eventually I had some time to put it down on paper. I'm posting on AO3 rather than FFnet because FFnet doesn't seem to have a Tomorrow War fandom.
Please let me know what you thought.