Time is of the Essence

Author's Notes: In case you haven't noticed, the first four paragraphs are shamelessly stolen, word for word, out of the Order of the Pheonix, (which I do not own.) Neither do I own any other part of that pure, undiluted brilliance otherwise known as the Harry Potter universe – a fact which is self-evident, I would think, since unlike some people, I am not richer than the Queen of England. : ) Thank God and JK Rowling that this is only Fanfiction.

Chapter 1

"SHE KILLED SIRIUS!" bellowed Harry. "SHE KILLED HIM – I'LL KILL HER!"

And he was off, scrambling up the stone benches. People were shouting behind him but he did not care. The hem of Bellatrix's robes whipped out of sight ahead and they were back in the room where the brains were swimming….

She aimed a curse over her shoulder. The tank rose into the air and tipped. Harry was deluged in the foul-smelling potion within. The brains slipped and slid over him and began spinning their long, colored tentacles, but he shouted, "Wingardium Leviosa!" and they flew into the air away from him. Slipping and sliding he ran on toward the door. He leapt over Luna, who was groaning on the floor, past Ginny, who said, "Harry – what - ?" past Ron, who giggled feebly, and Hermione, who was still unconscious. He wrenched open the door into the circular black hall and saw Bellatrix disappearing through a door on the other side of the room – beyond her was the corridor leading back to the lifts.

He ran, but she had slammed the door behind her and the walls had begun to rotate again. Once more he was surrounded by streaks of blue light from the whirling candelabra.

Harry let out a roar of frustration as the wall rumbled to a halt. He sprinted across to the door directly in front of him and pushed it open. The familiar spots of sparkling light flitted across the walls; it was the bell jar room. Harry was just about to try another door when a sparkle of movement caught his eye. It was the glass-fronted cabinet that the Death Eater had knocked down earlier, still crashing to the floor, spilling and shattering its contents, bouncing back up and reassembling itself, then shattering again, over and over.

Time-Turners. The cabinet was full of Time-Turners. If Harry could get one he could go back to the past and stop Bellatrix. He could stop Sirius from dieing. He could save Sirius, just like before, just like in third year, with Hermione…

Harry was across the room and two feet away from the cabinet when it smashed again, sending shards of glass flying, and he was forced to jump back. None of the tiny fragile hourglasses survived the fall. Harry would have to time it just right and grab one when the cabinet reassembled. He stuffed his wand in his pocked as he waited for the right moment. Then he dodged the fragments of wood and glass as they flew back to rearrange themselves, pulled open the newly mended glass front of the display, grabbed one of the Time-Turners, and quickly backed up a good five feet in case the whole thing fell down again.

Heart pounding painfully in his chest, Harry surveyed the miniscule, intricate object that was resting in the moist palm of his clutched hand, unnaturally cool and heavy. It was no more than an inch in height, made entirely out of glass, with an inlaid golden design on either end, and a swirling silver substance that reminded Harry of Dumbledore's pensieve where the sand should have been. It had no string.

Not quite sure what to do, Harry flipped the hourglass over and watched the silvery stuff spill from top to bottom, clutching the Time-Turner as tightly as he dared all the while.

For a second nothing happened. Then, just as in front of him the cabinet smashed to the floor, the glass timepiece in Harry's hand exploded. Harry's vision swam as he staggered against a nearby bookshelf in shock, hardly registering the pain. Blood ran over the glass fragments embedded in his palm and down his arm, mixing with the cloud of silver dust that had erupted from within the hourglass. The dust clouded his vision and made his eyes water. Suddenly nauseous, Harry sank to his knees. It was all he could do to tilt his hand and let the shattered remains of the Time-Turner fall to the floor in a dribble of his own blood. He stared at it for a few moments, fascinated with the way it sparkled bright scarlet as it mingled with the silver dust.

Someone screamed. Startled, Harry fumbled for his wand with his left hand. The Death Eaters. Bellatrix. His brain didn't seem to be working properly. He couldn't find his wand. The screaming continued, mixed with new shouts, yells…. people were moving outside of Harry's range of vision.

Sluggishly, he staggered to his feet and found himself not two feet away from the point of a wand. It was being held by a blond-haired witch wearing pale blue robes that matched her eyes perfectly. Her lack of the black attire combined with the fact that she hadn't cursed him yet seemed to suggest she wasn't a Death Eater, but then how would Harry really know? Either way, he couldn't get himself worked up over it. He was too tired, too much had happened. Nothing seemed very important at the moment… everything was fuzzy… Sirius was dead… Harry couldn't think.

The witch's eyes went wide as she surveyed Harry's face, and for a moment she reminded him of someone, but he couldn't think who…

"Emma," the blond-haired woman said after a moment, her voice and wand arm steady, and Harry noticed a pale, round-eyed witch who was shaking slightly a few desks over. She must have been the one who screamed, Harry thought vaguely. There were other people standing behind her, some of them with their wands out, all wearing the same pale blue robes… "Go get Lily."

Lily groaned at the stack of paperwork still piled up on her desk. Nobody ever told her, when she applied for the job, that she would be doing so much tedious paperwork. Already it felt like she had been in her office for hours. Not that there was anything wrong with her office. It wasn't the biggest office in the world, true, but it was cozy, and tastefully decorated in dark reds and blues… Plus, she had a window, which was more than anyone else in the department could say.

She glanced at it now; the sun was still high up in the sky. Of course, that didn't really mean anything; the weather wizards had taken to extending the daylight hours little by little each week as the number of people regularly working overtime increased. It was a grim sort of inside joke for ministry personnel to equate how well the war was going to how early the sun set.

Lily sighed and pulled the top sheet of parchment towards her. "Summation of Potential Applications of Time-Related Magics in Dark Arts Activity…" she read off the top of the parchment, frowning and rubbing her nose with the fluffy end of her quill. The Minister wanted to know the worst Voldemort could do. That's what it always was, what their research had been confined to since the start of the war, since long before Lily ever thought of becoming an Unspeakable. Lily suppressed the urge to doodle on the corner of the document. She hardly even knew what they would be doing if it wasn't for Voldemort. There was no department in the Ministry of Magic that was unaffected by the war….

How did they expect her to concentrate with that racket going on? It was almost worse than the time the Thought Division had supposedly investigated the impact of honeybees on the workings of the human mind, and that had been a spectacular disaster. She was just contemplating the risks of going out to see what the trouble was when the door of her office flew open and banged into the front of her desk. Lily winced.

It was one of the new aides, her nervous brown eyes wide, her hair rumpled, and her round face unusually pale.

"What is it?" Lily asked, startled at the witch's disheveled appearance and nervous manner, all thoughts of paperwork long gone.

"They – " the witch said shakily, but she seemed to be regaining her composure. "Helen wants you in the main room."

"Why? What happened?" asked Lily, but she dropped her quill immediately and squeezed around her desk to follow the aide out of the office, grabbing her wand out of her robe pocket as she went. "What does Helen want me for?"

"I don't really know…" said the witch as they wound their way through the labyrinth of corridors and offices that made up the bulk of the Department of Mysteries. "Somebody Apparted into the Time room and they had blood all over their robes."

"Oh?" said Lily as she sped up. People weren't supposed to be able to Apparate into the Ministry of Magic.

"Uh-uh," the aide continued breathlessly as they reached their destination. "I was the first one to see him." Lily pulled open the door and encountered a solid wall of blue-robed Unspeakables crowded between the shelves. Undeterred, she pushed her way through to the front of the group, and saw immediately what the problem was. Surrounded by all the blue-robed ministry officials, the small black-robed figure stuck out like a sore thumb. Helen, as intimidating as ever, was covering the figure with her wand, although he didn't look especially threatening. Blood was indeed dripping down his right arm, but he was holding it in front of him as if it was injured, not as if he had just finished murdering someone. Helen was asking him for his name, but the wizard only stared around the room dazedly. The Hogwarts Gryffindor house crest was visible on the front of his robes. And he was soaked from head to foot in a slimy greenish substance that smelled suspiciously like the suspension potion they used in the Thought Division.

It wasn't until she was level with Helen and had her wand held firmly in her fist that Lily realized why Helen had sent for her specifically. Despite his hair being soaking wet and plastered down against his skull, the wizard looked exactly like James.

Well, not exactly like James, thought Lily as startled green eyes locked onto her own. Those were her eyes… Harry's eyes?

Lily's jaw dropped as realization hit her. They were in the Time room. Apparation was impossible here, but Time-Travel wasn't. Was this Harry?

The green eyes in front of her never left her face. He was younger than James, his nose was shorter, his glasses different… "Harry?" she croaked finally, her throat dry. Mutely, the boy nodded. Lily found herself being helped into a chair behind one of the nearby desks.

Helen took charge of the situation immediately. Identification, Dark-Detection, and cleaning spells were cast, desks and shelves in danger of falling were straightened, the fragmented remains of a Time-Turner were carefully retrieved from within the bloody puddle on the floor and various cuts on the boy's palm, which were then promptly disinfected and sealed, and the boy's wand was confiscated as an added precaution. All of this was meticulously documented and categorized by three independently working aides, and through all of it Lily could do noting more than stare dumbly at the boy who's first birthday she had celebrated only three months previously. Harry, his identity now confirmed, seemed to be having a similar reaction. He didn't object as Helen pushed him into the seat across from Lily, but didn't drink the bright pink truth potion she pressed into his hand

Helen herself remained standing imperiously. "So," she said. The boy looked up at her. "Drink the potion. It's a truth serum," she prodded impatiently. Harry looked from Helen to the glass of pink liquid in his hand, nonplussed, then up at Lily, who nodded slightly. He looked away from her quickly, a nauseous expression on his face, (whether from the prospect of drinking the potion or from something else, Lily didn't know), and gulped down a few mouthfuls of serum.

"So," Helen repeated, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "State your name, age, and date of birth."

He hesitated for a moment, as if testing whether the potion would compel him to speak, before replying, "Harry James Potter, 15, July 31, 1980."

As always, Helen was unimpressed, "What are you doing in this time period?"

"What am I…?"

"Why are you here, in 1981?"

"I – I didn't mean - "

"How did you come to be here?"

"I – The Time-Turner – "

"How did you get to the Department of Mysteries?"

"How did I – uh, by thestral." There was a ringing silence for a few seconds, broken only by the incessant ticking noise of the various clocks that were scattered throughout the room.

"Helen, maybe you should let me…?" asked Lily tentatively.

"You realize how much extra paperwork this is going to cause?" burst out Helen, and the crowd of Unspeakables in the room shifted uncomfortably, backing slowly away from her. "We'll be spending months cleaning this up! Months that could have been spent on actual research! I didn't cut short my maternity leave for this! You don't see my daughter running wild in the Department of Mysteries!" she shot at Lily accusingly, and as her eyes bulged out of her head a flash of recognition lit up in Harry's eyes.

"You're Luna's mom! Yeah, she was with me but she didn't…" he trailed off suddenly, lost in thought, and spent a few moments staring at the table. Helen's jaw shut audibly.

"Don't record that," she snapped at the three aides who were now documenting the conversation, and sat down at the desk besides Lily. "Go ahead, Lily."

"Er, right," said Lily, perfectly aware that she would have found the expression on Helen's face hilarious if she wasn't feeling so numb herself at the moment. "Maybe – Harry – maybe you should explain how you came to be here, in the present - uh, past, I mean - and what you were doing in the Department of Mysteries?"

He glanced up at her, then back down at the desk, his hands twisting in his lap. "I, um, I didn't mean to go back so far…" he finished lamely.

"Why were you trying to go back at all?" asked Lily gently, but Harry just shook his head, not looking at any of them.

"Okay, that's not important," said Helen decisively after a moment, quickly regaining her composure but sounding much calmer and much more sane now that her manic frustration was all spent. "What happened to the Time-Turner? Why was it broken? And what is it that you're soaked in?" she added after a second.

"The Time-Turner?" Harry repeated weakly. "I don't really know why it broke. The De – Someone knocked the cabinet over and it kept on crashing and falling back together again… I grabbed a Time-Turner when it fell back together, but it exploded after I turned it over. And this is the stuff from the tank in the brain room."

Helen didn't even ask about the potion. "You grabbed a magical artifact form a field of dimensional discontinuity? So you had absolutely no idea what you were doing."

"Right." More silence.

"Maybe somebody should get Edward," a male voice suggested from between two bookshelves to Lily's left.

Helen scoffed. "Edward's not even here. And in his absence, as Deputy Head of Department, I am perfectly capable of handling the situation. So," she said decisively. "It is pointless to level accusations at this time. I'm sure whoever's responsible for this will be dealt with in the future, and for all we know the Department might not be so secure fifteen years from now. The boy really shouldn't be telling us anything. What we need to concern ourselves with now is damage control." She turned to one of the wizards behind Lily. "How long will it take to reassemble that Time-Turner?"

"A couple of months, at least - unless we stagger the schedule again? And even then that's assuming all of the pieces got here with him. There's a high probability that the force of - "

"So that's too long for him to be able to stay here." Helen cut him off. "I suggest we release him into Lily's custody; he is her son, after all. Does anyone have any objections? No? Good." Lily stared at her speechlessly. "Now that that's settled, I should remind you, boy, that you must reveal as little about the future as possible. Any changes you make will endanger your own existence and that of the world as you know it. If you have any questions, I'm sure Lily would be delighted to answer them. Lily, dear, perhaps you should take the rest of the day off, get things settled down, introduce your son to your husband, so on and so forth. I'm sure someone else can finish doing whatever it is that you were doing." And with that she pulled Lily and Harry to their feet and gave them a little push towards the door. "That Potion isn't toxic, but you probably still want to get it off," she said to Harry, before turning to the room at large. "I'm making this case top priority! Well? Why is everyone still standing around?" she yelled at the blue-robed crowd, and the Unspeakables bustled back to work as Lily lead the way to the exit through the circular hallway where the little bespectacled old witch who kept track off all the traffic in and out of the department held her office.

Lily signed herself and her son out in the register at the witch's desk, wondering numbly if the fact that that Harry wouldn't sign in for another 15 years would cause any problems. "Have a nice day, dears," called the old woman cheerfully as Lily said, "Exit," and led the way out to the stone corridor.

"All you have to do is ask?" said Harry incredulously.

"Yeah," Lily looked at him, still not really over the shock of what his presence entailed; the cleaning charms hadn't gotten off all the potion and he looked sticky. "I think Dumbledore came up with it when he worked here… some kind of security precaution… I don't really get it…" They passed the pair of Security Wizards guarding the entrance to the department.

To say that Lily felt awkward would be akin to saying that no, Voldemort wasn't the nicest person in the world. Their footsteps echoed down the stone corridor. She had worked with Time-Travel for some time now, and found it fascinating, but being confronted with the reality of it in such an abrupt and brutal fashion was disconcerting, to say the least. This was Harry, she mused. This was her baby. He looked just like him, just like James did when he was fifteen, but her baby was tiny. This Harry was only six years younger than she was! Lily liked to think of herself as a good mother, but that meant being a good mommy to a one-year-old toddler. She hadn't reckoned on having to deal with a teenager for ten years at least. She could change diapers and sing lullabies, but she had absolutely no idea what to say to this strange fifteen-year-old boy, who was just as tall as she was, she noticed suddenly. What the hell did Helen expect her to do?

And he was covered in goo. People stared at them in the elevator and all the way along the Atrium to the Floo exits. Harry seemed oblivious to all the strange looks he was getting, but it was a small comfort to Lily that he was apparently just as much at a loss in regards to dealing with her as she was in regards to him. In fact, he still seemed to be in shock. Lily didn't know how she felt. It was surreal.

They reached the right grate and Lily pointed out the Floo dispenser, "You go first, I'll Apparate."

"Where do I go?" he asked.

"349 Kneazel-Grass Road."

"349 Kneazel-what?

"Kneazel-Grass Road," answered Lily, slightly surprised. Did they no longer live there? She supposed it was foolish to think they would still live in the same house fifteen years from now, what with the war and all, but she liked living there, and would at least expect her son to know the address of his childhood home… Her son… This was too weird.

Lily strained to clear her head as Harry disappeared in a burst of emerald flames. She forced herself to visualize her beautiful little pale yellow house with the blue accents, the red roof, cobbled pathway, and exotic front garden… grabbed her wand and Apparated with a pop.

Seconds later she was jogging up said cobbled path and through the front door. Harry was standing in front of the fireplace in the living room, now covered in soot as well as goo. He really looked spectacular. She would have been laughing her head off if the circumstances had been any different. As it was, she only felt strangely queasy.

"The first door on the left is a bathroom," she said mechanically. "I'll go get you some clean robes." Lily pointed Harry down the hall and went off to find James. He was reading in their bedroom, besides the crib that Lily had charmed to rock by itself, and in which the sleeping form of her baby boy now lay. James smiled brightly and stood when he saw Lily, and probably would have said something witty and charming if she hadn't jumped at him and pulled him into a fierce kiss.

"What's wrong, Lily?" he asked immediately as they broke apart, quite serious, concern evident in his eyes. "What happened?" Lily pushed away from him and flung open the closet doors.

"James, I need some of your old robes," she said as she searched frantically through the closet for something that would fit Harry. "Do you still have that blue set you got for Christmas that were too small for you?"

"What? Yeah, they're on the top shelf. Lily, why…?" he followed her back out of the bedroom and across the living room. Lily knocked on the door to the bathroom and passed the robes inside.

"Why are you home so early? Who's in there? Lily?" She smiled at him in a very strange, worrisome manner. "Honey?"

"Harry," she said.

"What?"

"It's Harry."

"What about Harry?"

"Harry's in there."

"Harry who?"

"Harry Potter."

"Our Harry? Harry's in there?"

"Yes."

"In the bathroom?"

"Yes, in the bathroom."

"No he's not. Harry's in the bedroom."

"Yes. He is. Harry's in there." James would have thought she was joking if it wasn't for the expression on her face; she still wore that strange, strained smile, but she looked like she was about to cry. He pulled her into a hug and made her sit down on the couch with him. "You really shouldn't be so surprised, James."

He put his arm around her and held her to him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean you shouldn't be surprised that Harry is in the bathroom."

James was quite worried now. He scrutinized her for a second, the possibility of everything from the Confundus Charm to the Imperius Curse already running through his mind. That smile was unnerving. "Harry's in there all by himself?" he said finally, tentatively, as if worried about her sanity, which, in fact, he was.

 "Yes."

"And what is he doing in there?" he said slowly and clearly.

"Well, I assume he's taking a shower."

"And why is he taking a shower?"

"He was all covered in soot and potion - Honestly, James! Why do people take showers?"

"Uh-uh. Are you feeling okay, Lily?"

"I'm fine, James." She tried to get up but James pulled her back down. "You don't believe me, do you?" she said accusingly.

"No. Of course I believe you. Sit down, Lily!" he yelled as she tried to pull free again. "I believe you! If you say that right now Harry's in the bathroom taking a shower then I believe you. But how do you explain that I know for a fact that Harry is sleeping in his crib, in the bedroom, right now?"

"Well, that's a funny story, really."

"Really?"

"No, not really. James," the odd smile fell off of her face and she turned in her seat to face him with a serious, intense expression. "You know how I work in the Department of Mysteries?"

"Yeah…?"

"And you know how I work in the Time Division?"

"Lily?"

"And you know how I occasionally work with Time-Travel?" She sounded quite hysterical.

"Lily, what happened?" James asked, though he thought he could see where this was going.

"Well, today one of the aides came into my office and said Helen wanted to see me, and so I went and Harry was there with a broken Time-Turner stuck in his hand and blood pouring all down his arm, completely covered in Thought suspension potion." The Muggle clock ticked on the mantelpiece as James tried to work though what she had just said.

"And?"

"And that's it."

"So our Harry just showed up in the Department of Mysteries?"

"Yes."

"Our Harry?"

"Yes, our Harry! Do we have to go through all this again? He was our Harry except fifteen years older!"

"Okay, okay… Calm down! So what was he doing there?"

"What do you mean, what was he doing? He just got done Time-Traveling!"

"Why was he Time-Traveling?" Lily shrugged. "You don't know why…." James ran his hand though his hair dazedly. "And he's in the bathroom now? And that's why you needed the robes?"

Lily nodded and sniffed self-pityingly, "Helen released him into my custody."

There was a moment's pause, then James leaned back on the couch and laughed. Lily frowned at him. "Is that all you've got to say?"

James couldn't stop himself from grinning at her. "Fifteen years from now, you're going to be really, really angry." He was rewarded with an elbow in the ribs.

"This is serious!"

"Of course it's serious!" But he couldn't wipe the smirk off his face. "Are you sure you're not joking?"

"James!"