Harry Potter and the Time Fluke

Muggle London

Harry Potter was lost. In muggle London.

Harry was standing in the middle of a bustling sidewalk looking exactly how he did when he was four. Even the clothes he'd been wearing the night before had miniaturized to fit his small body. And to top it all off this muggle London looked decades different than the one he was used to in 1997.

The Model T's driving by on the bustling street looked as if they'd been rolled out of a historical museum, and the people walking past must've gotten their outfits from the same building. Everything looked so... old. From another, more antique, time period.

This is by far the worst situation Harry had ever gotten himself into. Chewing at his lower lip, he looked around at the women in their knee-length skirts and the men in their tweed suits and sighed. True, his clothing had shrunk along with his body, but they now seemed even more out of place than they had when Aunt Petunia first threw them at him after dying the garments grey. So, not unused to the funny stares directed his way, he adjusted his rucksack and marched through the throng of people, searching for some piece of evidence that would inform him of when, exactly, he was.

Elbows jostled him and bumped his head as he pushed on through the crowd. He'd not forgotten the pains that came along with being small and out of most people's eyesight, but he didn't understand why no one was apologizing for knocking into his frail, four-year-old body. Their uncaring attitude was beginning to grate on his last nerve after he was nearly shoved into the path of an oncoming horse-drawn buggy.  He flailed his arms in circles, trying to keep his balance on the curb, he caught sight of a boy in his early pre-teens across the street waving newspapers about.

"American Depression quickly swims across Atlantic!" the young boy shouted at the top of his lungs. "Unemployment in England reaches new high!"

His efforts to sell the two large stacks of newspapers next to him was slowly paying off as every once in a while someone dropped a coin in his outstretched hand and picked up a paper as he pocketed the money in a small leather pouch hanging from his side. Harry had no money with him that would work in the muggle world so he decided, against his better judgment, that stealing a paper would be the best course of action. It was an emergency. Harry carefully crossed the street and waited until an extra large gathering of people passed the newspaper boy, expertly merging with the crowd and snagging a paper when his back was turned. He held it close to his chest and jogged another two blocks before deeming it safe to find out the date.

His jaw dropped. No way; no freaking way.

Saturday: 31 July 1932

"Why me?" Harry groaned as his brain quickly did the math. "Why is it always me?"

It was impossible, improbable, and most of all absurd to most of the sane wizarding community. He'd traveled over fifty years into the past! No one had ever done it before, according to Hermione. After third year, on the train ride back to platform nine and three-quarters, since they'd had an adventure together using it, Hermione had decided to regale him with all known facts about time turners and time travel. No one could go forward in time and no one could travel back more than a day or two with out serious consequences.

So how was he here? How was he supposed to get home to his own time?

Harry's breathing became quick and shallow as a panic attack hit him in full force. He couldn't stay here; he didn't belong here. What if he messed up some crucial event and he ended up not being born? Hermione had told him about unfortunate people who'd time traveled and accidentally gotten themselves killed or erased from time altogether. He couldn't be killed; he was the Boy-Who-Lived! Who would vanquish Voldemort if he wasn't around?