SUMMARY: A Death Eater is sent back in time to off Harry's parents. How far will Harry have to go to protect them? I can assure you that keeping a marauder out of trouble won't be easy...WARNING: This story was written with the assumption that you have read at least part of book 6, and contains minor spoilers. It takes place shortly after the beginning of the school year. If you have not read part of book 6, you will probably find this story a load of very interesting quibble.
I know, i know, this has all been done before blah blah blah, but you know you're just a time travel junkie, or you wouldn't be reading this! ;P
DISCLAIMER: I neither look, sound, nor smell like JK Rowling. Okay, so it's possible I might smell like her if she used American brand shampoo, which I highly doubt, and of course I've never been near enough to her actual person to know exactly what shade of red her hair is, but other than that, well…you get the picture.
PLEASE REVIEW, BUT NO FLAMES.
Whatever It TakesPrologue: Into the Portal
The Chosen One's Chocolate Choices: how does Harry stay so thin and fit without giving up his chocolate frog fettish? Exclusive interview with fellow classmate Fiona Flatulate reveals all!
"Frog fettish? Why Harry, I didn't know." Ron snickered at the latest headline of Witch Weekly as he sat down at the Griffindor breakfast table beside his friends. To his right, Hermione humphed and reached for the sausages.
"Really, Luna, why do you read that rubbish?" she asked the pop-eyed Ravenclaw across from her.
Harry just rolled his eyes and filled his plate with bacon. He'd gotten used to seeing his name in the wizard papers this year, in conjunction with some far-fetched rumor or another. After the last article detailing his tragic love affair with a banshee declared him tone-deaf and heartbroken, he'd stopped reading them.
"Harry," said Luna dreamily, "where do you get all the broccoli from?"
Ron choked, causing Hermione to pat him roughly on the back until a piece of sausage flew out of his mouth and bounce off of the magazine's black-and-white version of Harry, who promptly raised his fists and appeared to be shouting in indignation. "Uh…sorry, mate," he muttered.
When Luna picked up the paper to brush it off, Harry saw something on the cover that immediately caught his eye. "Luna, could I see that for a moment?" he asked. She nodded and handed the magazine over, saying, "you really should know your own diet, though" in an offhand sort of way, and Harry flipped through the pages to find the story he was after. The title read:
Mystery in the Department of Mysteries: Three Unspeakables Unspoken For"What's it about, mate?" Ron asked, looking curiously over Harry's shoulder. Hermione shushed him until Harry had finished reading and passed the paper over.
Before answering, though, Harry unrolled this morning's Daily Prophet from where it sat by his elbow. The stories had gotten so depressing that he usually lost his appetite after reading it, which didn't do much for his health—last week he finally had a dizzy spell while trying to transfigure a spoon into a dust broom and accidentally turned Hermione's hair into bristles instead. Since then, if Harry so much as peaked at the Daily Prophet before eating his breakfast, Hermione threatened to turn his glasses into a mongoose and make him chase it all over the Great Hall.
With one hand holding his glasses firmly in place, Harry scanned over an article that confirmed much of what Witch Weekly had reported—minus the dancing veela— and frowned in consternation.
"Harry, is it true?" Hermione asked, looking worried. Ron was still puzzling through the magazine article, but he looked up at the question.
"The Prophet says it too," Harry told them. "Three Unspeakables went missing from the Department of Mysteries last night. They were seen leaving the ministry, but their families said that they never went home, and they didn't report back for work this morning."
"Did it say what they were working on? This article's a bit sketchy, not surprising of course…"
Harry felt a prickle of dread climb down his back and settle in his stomach. "Well, they don't say for certain, since it is the Department of Mysteries and all, but it does say that they were all working on the same project together…" he scanned the article again. "The reporter thinks that whatever they were working on had something to do with the making of clocks."
Hermione gasped. "Harry, do you remember that room, the one with all the hourglasses?"
"You mean the one where you said that death eater turned into a giant baby?" Ron asked.
"No, Ronald, it was only his head that…regressed…because that was the only part that fell through the hourglass."
"Err…oh."
"So you think they were working with time turners, then?" said Harry.
"Could be…oh, this could be very, very bad."
"But time turners can only take you back a few hours or so, right? What do you
think Voldemort's after?" Harry quickly moved his pumpkin juice out of the way of Ron's jerking hand.
"I don't know, but if Voldemort's messing with time—oh, honestly Ron—if he messes with time, who knows what he might do. Nothing good can come from this."
Harry nodded gloomily. Just because Voldemort didn't get the weapon he wanted before—the knowledge of how to defeat Harry, according to Dumbledore—that didn't mean he wouldn't try to get his hands on other weapons he could use against the wizarding world. But why now? What had the Unspeakables been working on that made Voldemort kidnap them? What was he planning this time?
Harry was interrupted from his thoughts when a barrage of mongoose feathers suddenly appeared before his eyes and took off down the table in a blur. "Hey!" he cried.
The red-headed blur beside him slapped his back in laughter. "Sorry, mate," Ron said, "but she did warn you."
Two weeks later, Harry and the Daily Prophet reporters had come no closer to solving Voldemort's latest plot. Harry badly wanted to ask Dumbledore about it, but the headmaster had been away and McGonagall refused to pinpoint a time when he'd be back. "Soon," she would say, and redirect him to his croaking pocketwatch.
Finally, one evening Harry and his friends were sitting by the fire doing their Potions homework when a quivering first-year shuffled up to Harry and nearly poked him in the eye with a small scroll. "H-Harry Potter?" the boy asked, glancing half fearfully, half in awe at Harry's forehead.
Harry tried not to roll his eyes.
"Th-this is f-for you." Once Harry took the scroll, the boy just stood there dumbly until Ron snuck up beside him and cried "BOO!" right in his ear. The first year screamed and tumbled over the chair behind him.
"Oh Ron, you didn't have to give him a heart attack," Hermione said, and helped the boy to his feet, after which he promptly ran of toward a group of first years at the other end of the common room and whispered excitedly with them.
Ron chortled. "Come on, it's a sixth-year's job to hassle the first-years. Besides, he was bothering Harry."
"You still—"
"Guys," Harry interrupted in a fierce whisper, "it's a letter from Dumbledore!" With a quick look around for eavesdroppers, Harry scooted closer to his friends and unraveled the note so they could read it as well.
Dear Harry,
Meet me in my office at precisely 8:30 tonight. The password is "canary creams." Wear muggle clothing but bring only your wand and your father's cloak. Nothing else.
Ps. No one must see you.
Albus Dumbledore
"Wow," Ron breathed, "This must be your first lesson with him. Wonder what he'll teach you?"
"Why does he want you to wear muggle clothes?" Hermione muttered.
"Maybe he's going to teach Harry how to through fireballs and stuff and he doesn't want to ruin his robes," Ron said excitedly.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Do you really think Dumbledore has to worry about mending robes?"
"Well, it was a thought…"
"I wonder if he's taking you somewhere else, Harry," she said.
"I dunno…" At that point, a fourth-year dove onto the table in front of them and nearly slid off into the fireplace before Harry and Ron grabbed him.
"Sorry," he said, flushing with embarrassment and trying not to let the rubber quaffle he had just caught fall into the fire. "Just practicing, you know…" He scrambled up and quickly rejoined his friends.
"Honestly, do they really think they'll get on the quiddich team by showing off for you in the common room?" Ron said in disgust. "They're not even on brooms."
Hermione clucked worriedly and gathered their homework together with a summoning charm. "Come on, we might as well get some work done. Harry still has another hour before he has to go."
When 8:30 came around, Harry told the others that he was going upstairs to get some sleep. Once in his dorm, he cast an illusion charm over his bed so that anyone who peeked through the curtains would think he was lying under the covers. Then he changed into his oversized jeans and sweater, pulled his invisibility cloak over his head, tiptoed back through the students in the common room (dodging a fake bludger that was causing quite a bit of mayhem) and made his way to Dumbledore's office.
When he arrived, he was surprised to find the headmaster pacing in front of his fireplace. "Ah, Harry," he said, watching as the boy shut the door behind him. "Good, very good. You have your wand, of course? Well then, off we go."
Before Harry could even ask what was happening, Dumbledore stepped into the fireplace with a "follow me, please," threw down some flue powder and said, "Ministry of Magic."
Harry, perplexed, did as he was told and arrived in a cloud of soot beside his teacher. "Headmaster, what—"
He was cut off by a raised hand. "Shh, don't speak until I tell you. And keep your cloak on. All right?" Harry nodded.
As he followed the professor toward the elevators, Harry felt the ground tremble beneath his feet. He stopped, holding his breath, but Dumbledore waved him on impatiently. Harry gulped. What was going on?
Dumbledore led him into the elevator and pressed the number nine button.
Harry's heartbeat quickened. He knew what was on level nine; how could he ever forget? "Department of Mysteries," said the witch's voice, and the doors opened. Harry clutched his wand tightly as they walked through the corridors, remembering the last time he was here. The last time, when his rashness and 'weakness for heroics' had led him—and his friends—straight into Voldemort's trap. When he had come to save Sirius, only to get his godfather killed…
"Here we are," Dumbledore said, and a door closed behind Harry. "You may speak now. But I am afraid we do not have much time." The ground rumbled beneath their feet again, stronger this time, and Harry grabbed onto a nearby desk to keep his balance. Something glass fell to the floor and shattered at the other end of the room. It was the hourglass room, Harry saw: the place where the Unspeakables studied time itself. Where the Unspeakables who had disappeared once worked…
"Professor…exactly what are we doing here?"
"Technically, we have broken into the Ministry and are now about to make illegal use of their property," Dumbledore said with that familiar twinkle in his eyes. He waved his hand and must have performed a disillusionment charm, because a new door suddenly appeared in the middle of what looked like a bookcase full of spiderwebbed equipment. Broken glass littered the floor around it. Harry thought that Dumbledore would take him through it, but instead he turned to Harry with a calm, serious face. "This door," he said, "is a time portal."
"I-I don't…understand…"
The ground shook again, and this time Harry fell against the desk beside him, bruising his side. He watched, horrified, as the door shivered in its frame and seemed to flicker. "The portal has become unstable," Dumbledore said, "because the fabric of time itself is being altered. Someone has crossed through time and is now attempting to change history."
Harry held onto the desk with two hands, trying to keep his feet. Slowly the shaking subsided. "What—how—"
Dumbledore seemed unnervingly calm, but Harry saw the pucker in his mouth that betrayed his anxiety. "Tom has made a very foolish mistake. He thought he could send a death eater back in time to change the past, but what he has done could very well destroy all that we know. He has sent someone, Harry, to kill your parents before you were born."
"And that caused…all this!"
"Yes. He doesn't realize just how much of an impact your life has on our world. Too many changes to the past could unravel time itself."
Harry's grip on the desk had slackened and he fell to the floor with the next quake, banging his head sharply along the way. Dumbledore seemed hardly affected at all. "What can we do!" Harry yelled over the noise.
"You must go through the portal," Dumbledore said. He pulled Harry up and pushed a photograph into his hand, along with a sealed scroll. "Focus on the picture as you walk through. Only on the picture. Visualize it, and will yourself into this time and place. Believe that you are there, and you will be."
"But professor—" Harry's mind swirled as he tried to grasp what Dumbldore was telling him to do. "How –what—"
"Find the death eater and stop him before he does any more damage. He must not be allowed to kill anyone. Minds can be charmed to forget, but death is, as you know, irreversible. Stop him, and then bring him back here—in whatever way you can. Whatever it takes. Do you understand, Harry?"
Dumbledore's eyes looked weary and sad as he said this, and Harry's heart skipped a bit as he nodded. Whatever it takes.
"Good. I am sorry that I cannot come with you, Harry," the old man said. "For a wizard to come into contact with his own past or future self, the results could be disastrous…and we cannot take that chance." He held Harry's shoulders tightly as the ground shook again, and this time an entire cabinet fell to the floor in a loud crash. Harry looked wildly at his headmaster. How was he supposed to save his parents? What was he supposed to do?
What if he failed?
"I trust you, Harry," Dumbledore said, as if reading his thoughts. "You can do this. I know you can." He steered his shaking charge toward the portal. "Remember, focus only on the picture. Will yourself there."
Harry took a deep breath and steeled himself. I can't fail, he thought. I won't fail my parents. With a straight back and a steady hand, he reached for the door handle. I won't fail, he thought, over and over again, as he slowly opened the portal to a blinding white light. He looked at the picture.
It was an old, slightly wrinkled photo of the shrieking shack in Hogsmeade. Standing proudly in the forefront, poking each other and smiling mischievously, were Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, and Harry's father, James Potter. Harry focused on the picture as he was told. It wasn't hard to will himself to be there, with the people whom he longed so badly to see again, to speak with, to hear their voices…
Holding his breath, Harry stepped through.
Dumbledore's words followed him like a soft breeze: "I am so proud of you, my boy…"