Hey! This is just an intro, really—well, clearly, as it's the first chapter. It usually takes me about a page to get into any sort of rhythm, so if the first bit seems a little choppy please still push on regardless. Also (this is a pity plea) this is my first fic here, so, first of all, REVIEW, and also try not to utterly destroy it. Though I do love suggestions…to a point. Haha.

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Chapter 1: Proceed With Caution

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Act as if it were impossible to fail.

- Dorothea Brande

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Harry James Potter was pacing up and down, up and down on the thick carpets of the Headmistress's office at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Minerva McGonagall, the acting Headmistress of the ancient institution, was absent, respectfully allowing the boy hero to be alone with the imprint of the man he wished to speak with.

"Professor," said Harry abruptly, halting his passage across the floor to, apparently, begin a conversation, for the sixth time in the last twenty-five minutes.

The large, golden-framed, brightly painted portrait of Albus Dumbledore peered back at him. "Yes?" he said kindly, a he had five times before to Harry that evening.

Harry paced some more for a minute or two, then stopped suddenly once more, running a long-fingered hand through his unruly dark fringe. He was a tall, thin, oddly graceful man with emerald eyes and a closed face that bore too many lines for one so young—only nineteen years of age.

"For Merlin's sake—" growled Phineas Nigellus from somewhere off to the left, but he was utterly ignored.

"Professor," he said again, but this time did not wait for the portrait's response before plowing on, his words swift and jumbled, his hands and features uncharacteristically animated, displaying a passion that had been fought down over the past year and a half. "I have an—idea. A wish. I—I think, given your views on the Resurrection Stone, that you might not approve, but I've not reached this decision, er, lightly. I think—I know—Professor, I want…to see my parents."

Albus Dumbledore blinked.

"Harry—"

"Listen to me," said Harry, vehement and slightly unreasonable, beginning to pace again. "The war is over, great—and I actually mean that, really, but it's just…all this happiness and—and euphoria, people cheering for me and wanting to touch me all the time, like I'm some sort of god—it's maddening. They all have people they love, a family…parents. Oh, I know I have foster parents of a sort in the Weasleys," he added hurriedly, as though Dumbledore might find him ungrateful, "but it's not the same. I want…more…no, that's not it." Harry was struggling now to articulate the burning desires within him. "I just want to see, to know…I want," said Harry abruptly, after a pause and drawing a deep breath, "to travel back in time, and meet my parents."

Harsh, heavy silence filled the magnificent room. Harry felt an abrupt yearning for Fawkes, who had always broken prolonged uncomfortable gaps in conversation with his soft, soothing warbles.

"Harry." The painted features of Hogwart's former headmaster were very still. "Please sit."

Harry, after a moment or two, took his old seat on the far side of the desk from the portrait.

"I, of all people, can understand you yearning," said Dumbledore slowly. "I can see why you want…what you want. But time travel is…a very, ah, risky business. The potential for disaster is enormous."

"I know that."

"Do you? Altering the past even a tiny bit could spell eternal enslavement for wizardkind. I won't presume to question your motives, but say, for example, you gave a young Sirius Black a hint of a hint about the horror that his future will become. Without his death, Harry, you could never have forced Kreacher to tell you his stories, never gained his confidence, never found Mundungus Fletcher, never located and destroyed the locket Horcrux."

"I know all this," said Harry tightly; he was impatient, and strangely, oddly angry, as he had been for months upon months. "What if I swear, right now, not to change things?"

The portrait was frowning.

"If anybody deserved something like this, Harry, it's you. But equally, if anybody, even with the purest intentions, has the most likelihood to, ah, shift the balance, so to speak, it's also you."

"I've lived without parents for eighteen years," said Harry coldly. "I think I've adjusted by now to the balance my life has."

"Clearly," muttered the portrait of Phineas Nigellus.

"I'm not saying you shouldn't do it—at least," amended Dumbledore, his eyes twinkling, "I'm not saying so outright. I'm simply cautioning you. Strongly."

"What are you saying?" growled Harry, not amused.

"Proceed—or fall back, whichever—with utmost caution and wisdom. Your instincts are nearly impeccable, Harry. Your temper, however, is not. I fear for the effect that your impulsiveness will have on the future."

"Thank you." His fingers were gripping the chair's arms rather tightly, and he was staring out the window, not at his former headmaster.

Albus Dumbledore sighed very deeply. There was a long silence. Then— "Are you aware of how to time travel?"

Harry looked up. "I was actually kind of hoping for some assistance on that…"

"Are you asking me to enable you to put an entire world in grave danger?" said Dumbledore sternly, but Harry caught the telltale signs of humor in his thin face.

"No," he said seriously. "I'm asking for your help. I know there is a spell, and I've prepared for it, but I don't know what it is. Yet," he added hopefully.

"There is, indeed, a spell. It takes a great deal of power, concentration, skill and discipline—do you believe that you are lacking in any of these?" He waited for Harry to shake his head. "Good, because this is one of those spells that is either all the way or none of the way—if the time period that is your preferred destination is unclear in your own mind, the spell will backfire, but without returning you to anywhere. The consequences of this are unclear; whether you die or simply exist for the remainder of eternity as a bodiless soul flitting through the ages is unknown. And I would sincerely hate for that to be your fate."

Harry nodded his solemn understanding.

"The wand movement is very important. You must do the first four strokes as if you are drawing a five-pointed star, but you must not draw the fifth. You must not close the star. If you do, the spell with trap you in your chosen time, binding you there as if you truly belong. You will be alive, but caged."

"I read about this."

"Show me the wand movement."

Harry performed is faultlessly, adding a jab at the completion of the fourth stroke.

"Excellent, you have done your research well. Yes, that is it. Do you have a memory?"

"Professor McGonagall gave me one," said Harry. The performer of the spell had to have a precise memory of the time to which he or she wished to travel. His would take him to two days before the beginning of the final year at Hogwarts for Lily Evans, his mother, and James Potter, his father.

"I take it she is ignorant of your planned escapade?" mused Dumbledore, smiling a little.

There was, for the third time, a long pause.

"Er…what's the spell?" said Harry, his grip on his wand slightly sweaty. His heart was beginning to beat faster; it was hitting him now, in a rush, precisely what he was about to do. He was going to see his parents…his parents…

Dumbledore seemed to be making a case study of Harry as he sat before him, nineteen and a hero, a world-weary man who should still be carrying the boyish exuberance of his youth.

"The spell," he said finally, "is Preteritus Adveho."

Harry nodded, oddly calm in the face of all that lay before him—or behind him.

"Preteritus Adveho," he muttered once, to be sure.

He stood, gripping his wand firmly, and squared off before the portrait of Albus Dumbledore. He raised his hand.

"Harry? Good luck. And…I hope you find some peace."

But Harry was barely listening. His own heartbeat thundering magnificently in his ears, he made the incomplete star with lightning assurance as he yelled, with all his anger and hope and power and desperation, "PRETERITUS ADVEHO!"

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