He met their gazes, with a weary one of his own. "To an extent that backfired too. The wizarding world slowly began to get complacent, and just expected me to always be there to save them."
"Why, were you the only one who fought?" asked Ahsoka, looking up at him, confusion easily shown on her face.
"There's a saying in part of my homeworld. Vigilance is the eternal price of freedom. The magical world though, never had true freedom. They were always ruled by the most powerful, the richest, or the loudest... in that order. Most were despots and tyrants. No one truly even knew what genuine 'vigilance' was in regards to their own liberties," Harry said, his tone slipping into that of an experienced teacher.
"So it wasn't worth fighting for others when they wouldn't even fight for themselves properly?" ventured Ahsoka after a few moments, which Harry nodded his agreement. Shaak Ti visibly didn't agree with this statement, while Aayla merely looked uncomfortable with the concept. Harry didn't stop to elaborate on this to convince either of the two elder Jedi.
"Anyway… I got tired of my only interactions with the rest of society being to beat down rising dark lords. First I started going incognito into the non-magical world. It was mostly to relieve boredom. I didn't really have anything I wanted to do. I just … sort of wandered," Harry reminisced as he chuckled a little bit. "I usually ended up doing whatever caught my interest. More often than not I fell into odd jobs that would keep me entertained for a few months. I once spent eighteen months on a deep sea fishing vessel."
"Being a bartender was always fun. Drunk people have the most interesting stories. And they tend to be entertaining, especially near big colleges. Also they'll drink anything with a funny name and alcohol in it," Harry smiled wistfully, "But even constantly moving changing identities and disappearing got old."
"When that bored me, I went through muggle school a few times. I even have a few doctorates stashed somewhere around here," Harry waved his hand carelessly towards the trunks Dobby had brought. "I did totally mundane jobs like worked in fuel stations or fast food places, just so I could force myself to keep abreast of modern cultures and not just turn into a complete hermit."
"So, I eventually started to take... leaves of absence I guess you could say," Harry frowned, the words weren't quite right but they were accurate enough for these purposes. "I turned back to my roots and just delved into magic itself. Research, experimentation, exploration. Anything so that I wouldn't be out in public, and watched with awe, or anger or fear wherever I went."
"Of course… I came out about once every twenty-five to thirty-five years. And usually they would have a dark lord starting to make trouble. After the inevitable fight, I'd take a year or so, immerse myself somewhere in popular culture or areas of non-magical research that interested me. I can say for certain that many fads are cyclical especially clothes and music. But otherwise, I had no contact with the world. My children had all passed, and so had their children, and their children as well. So I didn't really have anything keeping me engaged,"
"One time, because of an… accident... in my research, I actually went way more than my usual length of solitude," Harry grimaced at that admittance. "I lost at least two hundred years by my reckoning, though I'm a little fuzzy on exact dates."
"How do you just… lose two hundred years?" Ahsoka blurted with wide eyes. Harry looked sheepish and looked down and mumbled something unintelligible.
"What was that?" Ahsoka leaned closer instinctively, with her montrals she had heard him mumble something that sounded like, "Bacon."
"I had an accident in my potions lab. I was attempting to see if a potion could be made to send a person back in time," Harry started to explain.
"Travel in time? That's… impossible…" Aayla blurted out looking stunned.
"Huh? No, not really. I used to have time turners; necklaces that could be used to take a person back about a day," Harry's tone was still embarrassed so he wasn't taking stock of the astonished looks once more directed his way.
"But after going back more than a day or so they get titchy and super unreliable. Apparently they have a nasty habit of exploding with… bad effects. Besides, I was trying to come up with a way that replicated the effect but rendered a person sorta out of phase with reality until they synced up back with their time," Harry ignored the disbelieving expressions on their faces. He realized how far out it would sound to them. "My goal was to observe big events in history without any danger of stepping on a butterfly and accidently sending history spiraling off course."
"Anyway Dobby brought me some bacon sandwiches that I attempted to eat while I continued working, only to accidentally have some bacon fall out of the sandwich, with still a bit of hot grease on the pieces, and one landed on a time turner I had sitting out on the desk. The extreme temperature change from the grease cracked the glass on it open, spilled the dust everywhere, including into the potion I was trying to make, and the entire thing exploded," Harry ran a hand through his hair in embarrassment.
"Miss Daphy always warned Master Harry Potter that eating and potions was bad mix. But did Master Harry Potter listen? Nooooo." Dobby's voice floated up, though he didn't seem to appear anywhere.
"Yes… thank you, Dobby," Harry said loudly with a resigned sigh. "It caused some sort of time dilation effect over everything under my wards. It also completely drained the power of all the time turners I had within the wards at the time, rendering them inert. Dunno why. For me it seemed to only last an instant. But when I left to clean up I noticed it was not only daytime, but also the middle of winter outside."
"I just hadn't realized how much time had passed. So I went to look … and when I ventured out into the world, I found among other things they were using this entirely new dating system based on stars and such, so I had no clue what the actual date was. Of course it didn't help that the planet was engulfed in a true World War either."
"I never did figure out what exactly happened in the explosion. But I figured the first time I meddled with time, I almost died but saved my godfather. The second time there was an explosion and froze me for centuries. I decided that it was just best I not meddle with time anymore. I'd hate to think what would happen if I did it for a third time," Harry smiled mirthlessly.
"Your planet was at war?" Ahsoka interjected, her voice stretched a little bit as she tried to focus Harry since she knew any discussion they would have on what he had just said about time travel would likely consume a large amount of conversation, preventing them from the answers they really were after.
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