The time that is given us   von Gepo
                          (How love can change lives)
================================================================================
                           Kapitel 9: Ninth chapter
                           ------------------------


Edgar came back crying with Tom held at his waist. He put the boy down in
Harry´s study before leaving without even looking at Harry once. So his
questioning gaze found Tom.
“What is it?” Well, the boy seemed to grasp that it implied a question, but
not which one.
“Why was Edgar crying?”
“Oh.” Tom sat down in his usual spot on the couch. “He said that it was
happy tears. He very much wants to be my godfather.”
He hadn´t looked happy though. He had looked conflicted. Harry´s actions to
bind him to life certainly weren´t met with enthusiasm. On the other hand, he
loved Tom dearly and having Harry´s blessing to be a father to Tom officially
must mean a lot to him.
“You don´t think he´s happy?” Tom scrutinized him.
“I think it is complicated.” Harry came over and sat down in his chair.
“As a child, a lot of things are easy. People are either good or bad. You are
happy or angry or afraid or sad or disgusted. Growing older, you gain more
complex emotions like pride or guilt or shame. You begin to see people in shades
of grey, rather than thinking in black or white. Does that make sense?”
Tom scrunched his nose before asking: “Like how Oliver stole to survive but
later stole to get rich before stopping to steal because he realized that
stealing was bad? Because that means he was good and bad at the same time?”
“Well, it wasn´t at the same time though. First he was good, then bad, then
good again. But sometimes people are good and bad at the same time.” Was that
too complex for such a small boy? On the other hand, Tom was highly intelligent.
Maybe he would grasp this.
“Like … like how my mom loved me but still left me at that horrible
orphanage?”
“That´s a bit more like it, yes. Though I think she might not have known how
bad they would treat you there. Or even if she did, she might not have had a
choice.”
“Huh … then maybe like how I really wish I could have met her but are angry
at her for leaving me?” Tom looked miserable saying that.
“That´s exactly what I mean.” Harry stood and went to over to sit down next
to Tom and pull him into his lap. “It´s completely normal to feel that way.
There´s no one to blame for her death, no one to pin your anger on. It´s a
miserable feeling.” He knew. Gods he knew. He had been told that his parents
had died in a drunken car accident for ten years after all.
“Or how I am so angry at my dad for not helping mom with me?” Tom squeezed
Harry´s jacket. “I don´t want a dad like that!”
“I know.” Harry stroked his back. “I wish I could tell you some more good
things about your parents, I just don´t know more about them.” And somehow he
doubted that he would hear any more good things. Maybe Tom´s father was
actually a nice bloke but he had basically been imprisoned, raped and
mind-controlled. That wasn´t something he ever wanted to tell Tom though.
“I want you and Edgar.” The anger drained out of Tom´s voice, leaving him
sad and desolated.
“You have us.” Harry kissed the soft black tresses. “Edgar will sort out
his feelings. Give him a bit of time. He is conflicted too. Not about you, but
about me. We´ll sort it out, okay?”
“Promise?” Tom´s voice was small.
“I wish I could. I can promise to do my very best, okay?” He wouldn´t
promise to be able to sort out Edgar´s feelings. The man had too much on his
plate for Harry to be sure it would work out.
The boy just squeezed his hug and remained half-lying on Harry with his face
buried into one broad shoulder. Harry continued to stroke his back, wishing he
could take some of that anger and confusion from those tiny shoulders.
“Can we play some ball outside?”
“Sure, Tom.” Harry stood with the boy in his arms. “How hot is it outside?
Do you think I need to change?”
The good thing about owning a sewing factory was that he could ask the kids for
a short-sleeved shirt. It seemed like you could only dress in an undershirt and
a long-sleeved formal shirt as a gentleman, even in the blazing sun of August.
He didn´t know how people could stand it. The townsfolk ran around shirtless
but any kind of comfort was denied for the upper class. In this day and age, not
only women had to suffer for fashion. He wished he had a way to find out when
and where polo-shirts were invented. Maybe he should just invent them and make
them popular. God knew he was invited to enough events already to show them
off.
So his son advised him on what to wear and they were off to the gardens.

Edgar joined them half an hour later. It was the first interaction he had with
Harry since yesterday evening and he still wouldn´t look at him. Tom seemed to
feel the tension but was also relieved that both men at least interacted in some
way, even if it was silently tossing a ball around. Margret brought out some
refreshments and a few other kids joined them after coming back from work. They
went from playing ball to practicing boxing where Edgar´s level of interaction
upped to correcting Harry´s pose and technique.
“Here you need to concentrate more on this point rather than this point. An
uppercut is meant to aim for the chin or nose, not above the head.” Edgar had
even touched him for this part of the explanation. He murmured: “Now I finally
know why you are suddenly so bad at this. One doesn´t forget motor-skills.”
“Sorry.” Harry sent him and apologetic smile. “Thanks for teaching me. It
helps to keep this body in shape.”
“Then don´t slack off.” Edgar huffed and looked into his eyes for the first
time this day. “Can we talk … tonight?”
“Let´s put Tom to bed together, yeah?”
The other man just nodded, a pained smile on his face. He moved to one of the
girls to correct her pose. Harry just continued his exercise and tried not to
think too much. Had that been too much? Had he gone too far? Should he try not
to include Tom as much? Maybe Edgar had wanted to tell him that he was leaving.
Harry sighed. No crying over spilled beans.
Even after all these years, planning wasn´t his forte. Following his guts was
much more like him. He would just continue and try not to think too deeply.

After dinner, they read Tom a story about a rabbit and a hedgehog before kissing
him good-night. Or at least Harry did, Edgar squeezed Tom´s hand. They silently
left for the study and closed the door.
“Think he´ll try to listen in on us?” Harry asked with a smirk. Albus had
sometimes done that until Ginny had finally caught him. They never knew why
their son had done it but he had been highly sensitive whenever his parents had
a spat.
“Might be.” Edgar pulled out his handkerchief. “It´s a bit nostalgic to
block the key-hole.” He did just that before coming over to the sitting area.
“Not that you would remember.”
“How are you right now?”
“Just … don´t.” Edgar had closed his eyes and took some deep breaths.
“I´m barely hanging on, don´t ask about my feelings.”
“Okay. No feelings, just facts. I guess you have questions?”
“Will you answer them?” A hard gaze was turned on Harry.
“Will you promise to listen with an open mind and not storm out of here to
have me burned at a stake?” Or hospitalized or whatever people would do in
this day an age.
“Are you human?” Edgar seemed about as mistrustful as Harry felt.
“Of course I am.”
“Hm … then I guess I´ll hear you out.”
“So you wouldn´t hear me out if I were a magical creature?” Harry raised a
brow.
Edgar just blinked before shaking his head. He was silent for a moment and
finally said: “Magic, burning at the stake … are we talking witchcraft?”
“And wizardry. This is the country of Merlin, so I hope you won´t judge me as
a lunatic.”
“Your soul has taken control of my partner, it´s pretty hard to discuss that
away with science or religion. If you aren´t God himself, being a wizard does
not sound too unbelievable. Can you show me some magic?”
Harry had to look away for a moment, surprised how much the question hurt. “No
… Gren wasn´t a wizard, I am stuck in his body, I won´t ever be able to do
magic again.”
“This … wasn´t by choice, I gather?” Edgar suddenly looked a whole less
passive-aggressive than before. No wonder that he had blamed Harry for taking
Gren away. “How did this happen?”
“Problem is, we have no clue. And by we, I mean all wizards and witches in
this country. There is a ministry and a government and police and schools and
hospitals and a jail and whatever else you have in a secret society. No one
knows what happened. This is neither common nor planned. You don´t just take
over someone´s body, especially not decades away from your own timeline.”
“So … are you from the future or the past?”
“Future.” He could say that much, could he?
“So you know the future?”
“Again, I am not sure.” This was heavy stuff to explain. “Wizards can
travel through time but they stay in the same timeline. If a normal wizard went
to the past, it would not change the present because it already happened. This
is not what happened to me though. I changed timelines. This is not my own
past.”
“How is it different?” Edgar furrowed his brow.
“I adopted Tom. That did not happen in my own timeline.”
“But then … you destroyed your future, I mean, your chance at returning to
your present, yourself?”
“In my timeline, no one ever came for Tom. He became a horrible man, someone
like Hitler.”
“Hitler? That Austrian guy running for Germany right now?”
Oh, right, shit, Hitler hadn´t done bad things yet. That was dumb. “He´ll
win … we´ll fight him in the next war.”
“You know that man will start a war?” Edgar stared at him for a long moment.
“Shouldn´t we kill him then?”
“No.” Harry sighed. “This is so hard to explain … when you know what´s
coming, you need to think on what to change and what not. The war will be
horrible. Lots of people will be killed, buildings destroyed, Europe will be in
ruins for years to come. But it will also greatly change people´s thinking.
Right now, a lot of people are hated and discriminated against and persecuted.
Women, Jews, black people, homosexuals, a lot of people do not have the same
rights. Hitler will not only kill, he will burn people alive, he will starve
them and kill them with gas. It will be so horrible that afterwards, a lot of
people won´t even think about taking away someone´s rights. Fifty years from
now, homosexuals will openly march the streets for their rights. When I left my
time, the first male couples married each other. One of the first was someone
knighted by the Queen herself.”
Edgar just looked at him like he had gone crazy.
“I know that it sounds unbelievable. But some things have to happen for that
to be possible. A lot of people have to die for it to be possible.”
“Like about 95% of our population or what?”
“No, not that many … I think it was six million? Or seven million?” He saw
Edgar´s face before adding: “In total! Not in Britain.”
“And you let that happen? Even though you know how to prevent it?” His eyes
were wide with disbelief.
“Because I have an educated guess how many would die if it didn´t happen. I
have seen societies in which it didn´t happen. Officially, slavery is
abolished, but have you been to America? It will take another forty years for
them to stop treating black people like slaves. Even though they will fight this
war too and see what will happen.”
“Okay, okay, I … actually, I am not sure I get it but for now, I see your
point.” Edgar shook his head. “Blimey, the future sounds bleak. Think we´ll
die in this war?”
Well … yes. They were soldiers. They would be drafted. They might be
high-ranking but there was a pretty good chance of dying. “It is a
possibility.”
“Damn … Gren would have stayed if he had known. Another world-war was his
greatest wish.”
“I don´t think I understand my host.” Harry sighed. “No offense but I´d
be happy to never fight another war again.”
“So there will be more afterwards? Will there ever be an end?” At least
Edgar did not look so keen on killing more people.
“It will be the last in Britain for many years to come. The next two will be
magical wars … and those are what I´ll try to stop.”
“By adopting the guy who´ll bring about two magical wars?” Edgar looked at
him for a long moment. “So … you stop a future terrorist and dictator by
giving him a good childhood? Did I understood that correctly?”
“In a nutshell.” It sounded a bit crazy, right?
“But didn´t his wars bring about change for the better too?” Damn, the man
was sharp. How about he became the general and Harry tried to be his right-hand
man? Edgar was obviously sharper and a lot better at keeping the whole situation
in mind.
“In some cases, yes. But mostly it nearly wiped us out and revealed us.” How
much could he say? “The magical world went through a war some years ago about
the very same matter. Magical folk that grew up without ever seeing something of
non-magical life and then developed a superiority complex as well as a
paralyzing fear of non-magical people. So the slogans were along the lines of
“Wipe out most non-magical life”. The two wars that Tom would have brought
on us would have been even worse – all non-magicals, all magical folk from
non-magicals, a lot of magical creatures dead.”
“That´s … brutal.” Edgar sharply drew in his breath. “I gather you
fought against those people?”
“I personally killed Tom´s body or host body four times and destroyed some
more containers to which his soul was anchored. So … let´s just say I killed
him a few times until he was permanently dead.”
“But … don´t get me wrong but the person who led the last war and Tom –
they must have found a lot of people supporting them. Those magical folk with a
superiority complex, those are the problem, not Tom … right?”
“Correct.” Urgh, that was a bitter pill. He really needed Hermione for this.
“Of those three wizarding wars, all were won by mostly pure-blooded wizards,
so those that never saw non-magical life either. The last war though, I wasn´t
the only one that won it. With me were my two best friends and one of them was a
witch from non-magical parents. A very bright person just like you. She went
into politics and changed a lot of views. I need someone changing the system
from the inside in this era. Because with our society, it wasn´t the wars that
brought the change, it was the shift in power to allow more people with a
non-magical background into our government.”
“So … as you aren´t magical anymore … who is the lucky one now?”
“Tom.” Harry blinked in surprise. He hadn´t known this would come out as an
answer until he said the name. “He is powerful, he is charismatic, he comes
from a non-magical background. In my timeline, he tried taking the right path
but he was too crooked from his childhood. He gave into hatred and madness. With
the right upbringing … well, he might be what the wizarding world direly
needs.”
“How?” Edgar just furrowed his eyebrows. “I thought only those
pure-blooded people have power, how should he … oh. You know who his parents
are, right?”
“I do.” Harry smiled. “He is the last heir of the man all those
pure-bloods adore as their one true ancestor.”
“Merlin?”
“Close.”
“Then … wasn´t it a bad idea to change his name?”
“It´s not the name in this case. He has an ability non one else in this world
still has.” Not even Harry. He lost it with killing the soul piece inside of
him.
Edgar sat at the edge of the couch, obviously waiting for him to continue.
“He can talk to snakes.”
His face fell. Disappointment and confusion warred in it.
“It might not sound like much but it is a hereditary ability that only heirs
of this important person have. I am not sure Tom even knows that he can do it
and I have not told him his whole history. He doesn´t even know that I am more
than a non-magical, even though I have told him about magic and sworn him to
secrecy.”
“A six-year-old?”
“I know he can keep a secret.”
Edgar sighed and sank back into the couch. “That … is a lot of weight on
tiny shoulders.”
“I told him his mother´s name, got him a memento and a photography. I tried
to give him a child-appropriate version of how he ended up in an orphanage. The
rest can come later. Right now, his character and his ethics are the important
thing.”
“I am beginning to see why you are so strict with him. It´s like raising the
future prime minister.”
“That is exactly what I am planning on. Just not the non-magical one.” He
had never really thought about this but yes – Edgar made him see clearly what
path he had to take.
“This … is so much more than I expected.” Edgar had leaned back, so he
looked at the ceiling. “You are literally changing world history right now.
You fought in wars, wake up in a new timeline, losing everything you held dear
and just say “Hey, let´s make it better over here”? What kind of superhero
are you?”
“I am not prone to give into depression.” Hopefully, Edgar would not take
that as an insult. He had lost his partner to depression, as far as they could
put history together.
“It´s like meeting Gren Deluxe version.” The other man just groaned. “I
am hopeless. I have lost Gren, I get that. He won´t be coming back. Instead I
get a man with the same looks and a personality a hundred times better. Ten
minutes of conversation, I am falling for you as hard as I did for Gren. Bloody
hell. Why am I into powerful men with unshakable determination?”
Oh.
Oh!
Oh … how should he react to that?
“I … really am heterosexual. I am sorry. My wife is the only one for me.”
Was that okay?
“Don´t worry, I won´t try to rape you in your sleep.” Edgar scoffed. “I
guess you know that. Are you friends with homosexual men? It was possible in
your time, right?”
“One of them is someone I admire as much as you seem to worship Gren. He was
the most powerful wizard alive.” Harry contemplated that for a moment,
deciding on elaborating. “The man who let the last war in this timeline …
was his lover. They fought and Dumbledore took everything from him, even though
he loved him more than anything. It´s the saddest and also most heroic tale I
know.”
Edgar studied him for a moment, both of them lost in thought. He asked after a
moment: “So … why doesn´t this Dumbledore change society?”
“Because Dumbledore shares his lover´s view in a lot of things except for
killing millions of people. Just like you don´t want another war while Gren
would have relished in it … but still are very similar to him in most other
ways.”
“That makes a lot of sense.” Edgar tentatively smiled at him. “I wish I
could have met your wife. She must have been amazing.”
“She was.” Harry grinned, love and unbearable sorrow battling in his chest.
“She is … the best. She and the kids were my life.” His eyes closed for a
moment. “I learned my whole life to look ahead and never look back. I left a
path of loss and devastation. Too  many wars, too many deaths. I try to remember
her and at the same time, remembering hurts so much.”
“I look at you and it fills me with joy and love and bitterness and hatred at
the same time,” Edgar admitted.
“It´s not as strong for me but it is not dissimilar.” Harry met Edgar´s
eyes. “She was my rock. She had been possessed and exploited, same as me. She
fought and got tortured and she killed, same as me. She knew me inside out, my
best and my worst. Without question, she was one of the most amazing people I
ever met.”
“Do … I remind you of her?”
“You are intelligent, resourceful, supportive. I wouldn´t even do half as
well without you. You know darkness as well as light. You can see the bad
without losing sight of the good.” Harry took a trembling breath. “I told
you all of this because I trust you. Anyone finds out, we are both dead men. I
have a mission here … and I want you to help me.”
Edgar just stood, saluting to him and proclaiming: “You lead, I follow.”
Harry smiled shakily.
“That´s my life. Always been, always will be.”
“Even if I am not Gren?” Because a body wasn´t enough. Ginny´s body would
never be enough. It was her fiery spirit that he loved.
“I-” Edgar shook, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “I
wish I could kiss you to undermine my words. The only hard thing is that you
don´t want me that way.”
“I am sorry … I wish I could. I don´t like disappointing people. But my
wife is … I would never do that to her, even if I never see her again.”
“You know I´ll just keep hoping that will change over the years?” Edgar
smiled at him ruefully.
Harry just sighed but still put a hand on Edgar´s shoulder and said: “Thank
you. Not for that but … everything else. I´m no good on my own.”
“Successful people need strong support. Let´s raise a great son.”
“Let´s.” Harry just nodded.

Hosted by Animexx e.V. (http://www.animexx.de)