Disclaimer:

I don't own anything related to the rights of Harry Potter or anything else you might see here.

Author's Note:

No, none of my stories are abandoned, but between real life hammering me and writer's block, not much is getting done, and any progress I do make is rather slow.

The beginning of this was actually the Epilogue/Prologue for one of my current stories and it's sequel, but I scrapped it early on because it simply wouldn't fit. Unfortunately, I liked it so much that I decided to store it and use it later for something else, and now it's the beginning of a brand new crossover. Huzzah.

No idea where it came from, but hey, here it is.

Publish Date: Oct. 08th, 2015

Update Date: N/A

Chapter One

In the Beginning...

For as long as Harry could remember, he had a routine to his day.

Get up.

As soon as he awoke at 6 AM, Harry rolled out of bed and began doing his morning workout. After that, he showered, shaved, ate, applied his glamors and other disguises, and walked out the door at 6:57 AM.

Go to work.

Arrive at work at 7:18 AM, sit at his desk by 7:25AM. Work consists of reading what amounts to the same basic reports from the same teams that reported yesterday. There weren't many deviations from his schedule, and most days had none. He left work at 5 PM every day.

Come home.

He walks through the door at precisely 5:23 PM and relaxes for a while. Sometimes he reads, sometimes he catches up on television, occasionally he'll even go back out for a drink or two if the mood strikes him, but he's always back by 7:45 PM.

Train.

Training lasts three hours, from 8 PM to 11 PM, and it was an extensive collaboration of quite a few charms masters, warders, enchanters, and goblin architects to construct the room that Harry trained in. It was designed to push him and push him so he was always getting better. The only reason he hadn't slacked off was because it had been an ingrained part of his routine before and he didn't want to ever be taken by surprise.

Constant Vigilance and all that.

After training was finished, he cleaned up, ate, and went to bed by midnight.

Repeat.

The next morning, Harry did the same thing all over again.

He did this every day, without fail, for more years than he cared to sit and count.

Countless days in a row. One after another after another after yet another to infinity and back again.

Until one day, he didn't.

Harry couldn't take the monotony any more. Every day was the same. Was today Wednesday or Thursday? If there weren't small clues to give away the fact that the date had changed, Harry was about ready to believe that the entire world was experiencing one loooooooooong day.

Harry sighed. He was going mad. Mad as a Hatter. He felt the exact moment his mind had snapped and demanded to be released from such a tedious, tiresome, repetitive existence. He had been looking at a form that he sees more than two hundred times in a day, filled out by two hundred different people (sometimes more and sometimes less with some of these idiots), And his mind just rebelled. It refused to be a part of anything related to such dullness. It wanted adventure.

But he had sworn off adventure. It was why he had the nice cushy chair behind the big desk at work, instead of being out who-knows-where doing who-knows-what instead. He should be dead. He knows that. He was shot in the chest four times. He knows he died. Then he had a wonderful little chat with Death, and the next thing he knew, he was waking up in a ditch on the side of the road. He decided then and there to say 'Fuck the adventuring, I'm done,' and accepted the promotion to Director of the Department of Mysteries.

But now...

Adventure!

But who knows what could happen?

Isn't that the entire point?

And what will I do about the mob that will undoubtedly try to follow me?

Well, Hermione was always fascinated by Alternate Reality theory, and we both know magic can make anything possible, and you are the Director for one of the world's largest repositories for magical knowledge... I assume you're perfectly capable of basic math?

… I'll need supples... Something like that could take a long time to plan out... Not to mention how long I'd be gone...

Are you going to die of old age?

… Not really. Not going to die at all actually... Well, not for a long time at least.

Then let's get to it!

… Meh, why not?

"Are you sure that's what you want, Harry?" Hermione asked cautiously. The very idea almost sounded ludicrous, but if anyone could pull such a thing off, it was likely the two of them.

Harry sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "Look at me, Hermione," he gestured at himself. "I still look like I'm in my mid twenties, and we're in our sixties." He sighed tiredly again and continued, "I'm tired of the glamors just to leave the house, I'm tired of the constant mobs hounding me for my attention, I'm tired of the fangirls that still throw themselves at me." He seemed to wilt in his chair across from her. "I'll be blunt. After you're gone, I won't really have anything tying me here at all, and at this point, it's likely I'll outlive you by a wide margin." He suddenly got nervous and mumbled, "I don't really want to be here after that point."

Hermione softened considerably and sighed. "You do realize I'll want to make sure you're properly prepared and outfitted for this, as well as making sure it's safe." She shook her head. "That will take quite a bit of time. Decades, in fact."

Harry grinned and nodded, replying, "I'm aware, Hermione."

In the last few years or so, everyone in the department had begun whispering. The Director had taken to staying late, making quite a few unscheduled trips abroad, spending quite a bit of time in the library and the vaults. Some claimed madness had finally gotten him, others that he was fighting some new threat that only he knew about, others that he was working on some secret project for personal gain.

None of them knew that they were all partially right, in their own small ways.

Harry Potter apparated to a small cabin in the middle of nowhere, wearing a plain black suit and sighing heavily. He had just left Hermione's funeral, and with the death of his last, closest friend, Harry's last tie to the world faded away. He walked up to front door and unlocked it, pushing it open and immediately walking in and going straight to the fridge to get a drink. He didn't bother closing the door, he wouldn't be here long enough to worry about weather or wildlife, anyway.

He knew that Hermione wouldn't approve, but at the moment, that thought amused him, and he needed the cheering up.

In the years since he had proposed this insane plan, Harry and Hermione had worked tirelessly toward their goal, and in the last few years preceding Hermione's death, consolidated everything Harry owned into the suit in the basement and the contents of the bag around his neck. Hermione called the suit and his bag of trunks her greatest achievements, true works of art, her personal Parthenon that almost no one would ever see, let alone know the details of, the culmination of their entire one hundred and forty-eight years of study woven into the two most intricate projects ever conceived.

Survival and storage.

Harry stared at the armored suit in front of him. It was a matte black with gray trimming, basic neutral colors, which was fine with Harry. He had no idea how Hermione got it to work exactly, but he was sure of what it was supposed to do. Hermione had assured him repeatedly that it was his ticket to adventure, which was exactly what he wanted. There wasn't actually a point to sticking around anymore, anyway. Taking the suit off it's mannequin and putting it on, Harry's mind began to wander. He was going to be the first and likely only person to ever use this thing, and he honestly couldn't wait. Parts of him he had long forgotten were there were practically vibrating in anticipation. He had a duplicate of Hermione's bottomless beaded bag, sans beads, around his neck loaded with his Field Kit, so he was ready to go whenever he pleased.

Alternate realities and whatnot had to have something new and interesting to entertain him, right?

Double checking that all the seals on his armored suit were locked and making sure everything was in working order, Harry went through the checks to ensure everything was operating at peak efficiency and to finish calibrating the suit to him specifically. The suit traveled what Hermione had called 'the multiverse', and was, to be quite honest, tailored specifically to Harry and his rather dangerous lifestyle. At just over five hundred billion dollars to create, the suit was likely the most advanced piece of magic or technology individually on the entire planet, and was the culmination of the combination of magic and technology all in one piece. The suit itself could stand at ground zero of a one hundred kiloton nuclear detonation without getting a scratch, as well as keeping the wearer safe from the ensuing radiation, had enough regenerating built-in firepower to level a city or twelve at a time, could function in space for a length of time that Harry truly didn't want to think about, and was fully capable of flight in atmosphere and theoretically capable of intergalactic travel as well.

They had poured so much magic into the suit and its expanded computer capabilities that the suit had unexpectedly developed a sentient artificial life form, startling them when it began to question it's existence and adopt a more feminine manner with a combination of personality traits from them both, as well as display both the understanding and use of emotion, and well as a fear of termination. After a long conversation, Harry was adamant that 'she' would not be tampered with in any way and would remain a part of the suit throughout his travels, something the newly named Artemis agreed with completely.

It had nothing to do with the fact that Artemis kept referring to them as 'Mother' and 'Father'.

She did manage to kill just a bit of his enthusiasm when she mentioned she added an entire section to his library that contained the user's manual and troubleshooting guide to his gear. An entire personally expanded section that was completely and utterly filled with stacks and shelves packed with books and notes detailing the intricacies of his suit, and trunk system, from the basic suit maintenance procedures to the most absolutely far-fetched of occurrences.

And her expansions were gods-damned massive.

His bag had been filled with what he had come to call 'The Hermione Granger Long-Term Field Kit'. It was a set of intricately made and interconnected trunks, all expanded as far as they could possibly make them. The whole setup could be entered from any one of the trunks, which lead to a shared receiving room reminiscent of the stone circle chamber in the Department of Mysteries, just with far more doors. He had recently liquidated all of his holdings, closed out every account he had in any bank in the world, and consolidated everything into the massive storage areas that were completely dedicated to supplies and artifacts from both Potter and Black family lines and what they had purchased to fill in any holes. Countless ingots of various metals, mountains of gems and stones of varying sizes, from the minuscule to the outrageously massive, magical items like invisibility cloaks, pensieves, foe-glasses, pocket sneak-o-scopes, even a few dozen rememberalls!

He had a system of libraries that contained at least one copy of every book they could find in existence, how-to manuals and information guides for damned near everything, magical and non-magical reference books, a complete fiction library, a truly awe-inspiring armory to house the various weapons and armors he had or would find in the future, full living quarters for the entire population of a small moon, enormous stores of food, various drinks, potion ingredients and prepared potions in storage and stasis, a series of bio-areas for various livestock and greenhouses to continually replenish his stock, even more insanely large areas set up to hold the variety of things he might find of interest in his travels from art and artifacts to flora and fauna samples, even a complete movie and music collection, all staffed and sorted and cataloged by an admittedly large and intrepid group of house elves.

And he was the only person alive that could access it.

Now standing outside, Harry took one last look around at quite possibly his last look at the Earth he was born on, and sighed. This was the closing of a chapter, the end of an era, the final day of his old life.

"Are you having second thoughts, Father?" Artemis asked softly, her voice filtering through the speakers in his helmet.

Harry smiled at the term and replied quietly, "Just saying goodbye, Artemis." He sighed heavily and activated a countdown for the jump feature, quickly looking back up and memorizing the view before taking a deep breath and grinning widely.

It was time to start a brand new adventure!

Harry slowly turned around, the ominous clicking invoking a morbid sense of curiosity in the man. Upon turning and fully comprehending what he was seeing and yes, they were actually making that ominous clicking sound, he couldn't help yelping and nearly pissing himself.

"What the hell?!" Harry exclaimed reflexively, and quite loudly in fact. Loud enough to gain the entire pack of creatures' complete and undivided attention. Harry's eye's widened as he muttered, "Oh, bugger," and briefly wondered if he could, in reality, outrun an entire pack of velociraptors.

"What the hell is a Jedi?" Harry asked, only to receive a look of shock from the light-sword wielding, blue-skinned woman with tentacles coming from her head.

After a second she shook off the shock and countered, "What rock have you been living under?" She shook her head, nearly unable to comprehend that the man in front of her had never heard of her order. "Everyone has at least heard of the Jedi Order, especially these days."

The man sighed heavily and retorted, "Well I haven't, so fill me in before I go off and do whatever willy-nilly." he looked over the top of the primitive corrective lenses at her and said blandly, "I'm sure I can find something that will entertain me out there."

"Seriously?!" Harry questioned incredulously, eying the man standing in front of him. "An honest-to-God, no name tag, no identification whatsoever, absolutely average-looking, fucking redshirt."

Harry shook his head in disbelief and stated loudly and with complete seriousness, "I am never going to be in this guy's unit, no matter what anyone else says." He snorted and added, "Even I'm not stupid enough to tempt fate that much."

If this had happened at any point earlier in their journey, the crew of the Enterprise would have questioned this, but after months of dealing with the man's eccentricities that somehow managed to turn things in their favor or provide just the right piece of equipment or information at just the right time or any one of the countless things that Harry just seemed to know, they just shrugged and moved on.

No one wanted to try and have that conversation, and the ensuing headache, anyway.

"I am Iron Man," Tony Stark stated boldly, his arrogance coming back in full force and fine form, at exactly the wrong moment.

Harry just face-palmed in the background.

He had no idea why he thought this cover thing would work. It was a pipe dream, a complete false hope that Tony Stark, the egotistical twit, could not be in the spotlight. He didn't know why he believed for a minute that this whole thing wouldn't go fantastically wrong in truly spectacular fashion.

And he was right.

The press was going insane, clamoring over each other to have their question heard and answered. In one sentence, the infuriating Tony Stark had sent everything spiraling sideways and so far off course it was very nearly hilarious.

He was going to shoot Tony for this.

"Huh," Harry said succinctly. "You know, in all the jumps I've been through, this has never happened." Harry cocked his head to the side in curiosity as he continued, "But I suppose it was statistically inevitable."

Harry stared blankly at himself. An alternate him.

Or was he the alternate here?

"Nope. Not doing this one," Harry said quickly, activating his jumping device as quickly as he possibly could. "There has to be some kind of law against this kind of thing."

Several jumps previously, during a rather severe bout of homesickness, Harry had a random thought, and began researching ways to bring his new project to fruition. It took several more jumps and five centuries of seeing various designs, but eventually he had mapped out what he wanted and began drawing up firm blueprints and plans for everything.

His very own dimension-hopping space ship.

Designing the ward schemes for additional protection and the dimension-hopping aspect of his suit, on top of the basic armor and shields and getting everything ready for production was a chore, and took another three centuries of research and reality-hopping to design and manufacture all the parts for the ship that would become his home. When he was ready for assembly, he found a large, empty area on an uninhabited planet to began constructing his ship, which took a further two decades. When it was finally finished, the outside was about the size of a typical cruiser-class ship, but with careful use of space expansion and cooling charms, the cruiser boasted a full compliment of five hundred fighters, ten separate exploration and defense frigates, and had the sheer firepower of several dreadnoughts.

The interior of the cruiser was also expanded to its limits, and Harry took full advantage of the space. Two entire floors were expanded and connected and turned into the library, containing copies of everything he had gathered in his travels, another two floors were dedicated to art and artifacts he wanted on display for various reasons. There were five entire floors for plants and livestock, another two floors had labs and areas set up for research, two floors devoted to medical care, yet another two floors dedicated to production facilities, and six entire floors of living quarters with enough life-pods to evacuate the entire ship if necessary. The relatively small area directly in the center of the ship he was simply calling 'The Brain'. It was basically his immediate living area and the main control center of the ship. Between him and Artemis, the entire ship and all it's contents, including the fighters and frigates, could be controlled from this room. It was only accessible through apparition and acted as a last resort life-pod in the event his cruiser was somehow destroyed, and the elves knew to pop to the trunkspace in such an event. Considering everything on the cruiser itself was just duplicates of the items stored in his Field Kit, which he kept on his person at all times, he could afford the loss, as damaging as it may be.

The frigates were all expanded to the nines as well, basically smaller versions of the cruiser, and set up as long-term exploration and discovery vessels as well as a defense screen for the cruiser itself. Each frigate had a bio-floor for food production and keeping flora and fauna samples, a floor that had labs in one half and the other half for medical care, two floors of living quarters, an armory floor, a cargo floor, and all boasted similar firepower as the cruiser that housed them. While the cruiser was painted the same matte black as his suit, the frigates were all painted different colors, with corresponding groups of colored fighters. If Harry deployed all of his frigates and filled every one of his ships to capacity, he could house more than twenty million people and not strain his resources much, if at all. Thirty million would be pushing it, but possible if several things were rationed carefully, but for now it was just Artemis, the hundreds of house-elf staff, and himself. Harry believed his new ship was the epitome of awesomeness and a perfect traveling home city.

Now he just needed a damned name for it.