AN: Sorry all for huge the delay in this chapter. Writing this chapter made me tear my hair out several times, I still don't really like it but what the hey. I think I need a beta, so let me know if your keen for the job

P.S. characters all borrowed from Jo, and written just for fun, no copyright infringement intended.

CHAPTER 3 – THE MYSTERY OF HISTORY

Al had grown up hearing endless stories about Albus Dumbledore. In fact he was a little disappointed to meet this 17 year old version, who appeared to talk quite normally, and although he had bright blue eyes, they didn't really sparkle all that much. It short this person appeared to be a normal teenager.

The stories his family told of his namesake had made him seem mythical, more that human. It was hard to imagine the old man in the fantastic stories could possibly be this normal looking 17 year old.

Realistically, even at 17, Albus Dumbledore's appearance could not be described as normal. His red hair fell to just above his shoulders and was matched with a long bright red beard, well on its' way to reaching his belt. However, Al Potter had grown up surrounded by excentric red heads and his perception of normal was fairly wide.

As Al shook hands with the stranger, who claimed to be Dumbledore, it occurred to him that his father would strongly disapprove of greeting strangers who appear where they shouldn't be in mysterious circumstances.

Whenever Al complained about his fathers paranoia, his mum always told him that what appeared to be paranoia in times of peace had been normal practice for a long time during the war. The War. Two words which had a big impact on Al growing up.

Growing up in a family of war veterans was a strange experience. He had once heard one of his Aunts describe the war as the elephant in the room that everyone ignores. And it often felt like that, there was this huge thing in the living room of the Burrow that effected the way adults acted and what they talked about, even though it was rarely mentioned directly.

When she was about 15 Rose Granger-Weasley had gotten interested in muggle psychology, and had spent the whole summer diagnosing her parents and family with post-traumatic stress disorder. Al knew both his parents still suffered from nightmares occasionally, and it was never a good idea to wake his Uncle Bill if he fell asleep on the couch, unless you wanted a wand in your face.

When staying at the Burrow, everyone had to leave notes telling Grandma Molly if they were going further that the garden, she had been known to panic when she didn't know where her grandchildren were, even if they had only gone as far as the Quidditch Pitch behind the garden.

Then, of course, there was Holey Uncle George; who when he got going telling a good story would slip back into saying "we" rather than "I".

Rose claimed that her mothers tendency to make complicated flow charts and schedules for everything, even family holidays, was "a symptom of the need to feel in control of her life after the chaos of war" a phrase she had found in one of her text books; however Uncle Ron had laughed and claimed that plans and flow charts were just Hermione's way.

"Are you really Albus Dumbledore?" Al was suddenly suspicious remembering all his father's warnings.

"I am, but having already distrusted my word once, is there a question I can answer which will reassure you."

Security questions. Al remembered his parents' stories about having to ask security questions, usually embarrassing personal knowledge, which few people would know. At first Al could not think of a single question he could ask a teenage Dumbledore, but then he remembered Alberforth. Before he had died, aged 146, Alberforth used to occasionally come to Weasley family gatherings.

Al remembered one time Alberforth had gone swimming in the pond behind the Burrow and when he had taken off his shirt it had revealed a strange, almost green scar on his back. When questioned, he had launched into a long story about being gored by a vicious goat, which his brother had accidentally managed to enrage. Albus had been researching healing charms at school, but could not use his wand outside of Hogwarts without activating the Trace. Alberfoth had encouraged his brother to attempt to heal the wound wandlessly rather than explain the injury and the mischief that had caused it to their mother. Remarkably, Albus had managed to heal the would but something had gone wrong, leaving pale green scaring, which no one had ever been able to fix.

"Why does Alberforth have a green scar on his back?"

HP.HP.HP.HP.HP.HP.HP.HP.HP

Albus was slightly put out to hear his namesake ask about Alberforth. He had been sure that finding a child named after him was a sign that he had become a powerful and famous wizard. But if this Albus knew his brother it was more likely he was a descendant or a family friend.

Albus did not think he could be content with a future where he was just another wizard. He wanted to change the world.

Albus Dumbledore was born into the wizarding world at a time of great change, perhaps the biggest changes since the founding of Hogwarts.

Over the past 100 years, since what the muggles referred to as the 'industrial revolution' the muggle world had been transformed. Suddenly muggles were able to do much more than they had been able to a generation ago. The most significant of these changes for the wizarding world, was travel.

In generations past, many muggle-borns who had received a letter had been unable to travel to Hogwarts and therefore, unable to attend. Those that from families that could afford the cost of the week long trip by horse and carriage to one of the remotest parts of Scotland, were rarely able to return home and usually lost all contact with the muggle world.

But now with the invention of the steam engine, the journey could easily be made in a day. Which had lead to a huge increase in the number of muggle born children accepting their places at Hogwarts.

Given that most of them now could return to their families over Holidays, there were all far more likely to talk about muggle culture and technology.

When he was younger Albus had never thought much about how muggles lives were different to his, then after what happened to his sister and his father he had made it a policy to avoid muggles as much as possible.

However this year, as Head Boy, he had had to deal with many of the questions of the muggle born first years, and he was astonished to learn how much he didn't know. A Gramophone for instance, he knew it was a musical instrument of some kind, but he had been astonished to learn that it didn't require anyone to play it. Like a charmed harp, once you set it going it would play until the song ended.

Albus snapped himself out of his throughs about the relationship between the muggle and wizarding world. After all, he had gone to all this effort so the wouldn't be sitting around in his own time period thinking these same thoughts over and over again.

"Alberforth came by the scar after enraging a goat, the scar is green because I healed the wound wandlessly and, at the time, I did not have quite enough power to heal over the scaring and had to stop halfway through the healing process. I believe the green colour is caused by miniscule particles of magic which did not knit to form new skin cells, trapped between fully formed layers of skin."

"Alberforth told me it was your fault the goat charged him, but that's probably him just being him" Al had not really understood Albus' explanation of healing spells but was seriously impressed at the casual way he spoke about doing such powerful spells wandlessly. He had also not missed the way Albus had stressed the "at the time" part of the story, clearly Dumbledore did not want to admit to not being capable of anything now.

"I was hoping you might be able to assist me with some homework I have been assigned" Dumbledore announced, interrupting Al's musings.

After hearing the explanation of why Albus Dumbledore had travelled through time Al was even more convinced this must be him, surely no one else would be so mad.

"You travelled trough time to fine someone to help you with your Divination homework. That seems a bit extreme, why don't you just make it up like everyone else does?"

"I was bored, I thought it might be fun to use something other that guess work and a morbid imaginings to predict how I will die."

"That's your assignment, predicting your own death, wow, divination was even more depressing in your time than in mine"

"Before I appeared to you I noticed you talking with your sister about how you were named after me, can you tell me how I died?

"Wow, straight to the point there…OK the short answer is you died from the AK curse."

"Tell me the long answer then! why was I murdered? What happened to me?!" Albus didn't yell but there was a tension in this voice that made Al Potter think maybe his namesake wasn't as ready to hear the full story of his death as this attitude earlier had suggested.

"For starters I don't think it was truly a murder… it's hard to explain and even I don't know everything, it's not the sort of story my parents really told me" Al really didn't want to explain the curse that had been slowly killing Albus Dumbledore or the terrible task Dumbledore had given Severus Snape.

Truthfully, Al Potter didn't really know the exact circumstances of Dumbledore's death. And how could he explain it to Dumbledore, who at this point in time had never even heard of a death eater. But before he had a chace to explain, Dumbledore snapped at him again.

"Well I want to find someone who can! I didn't do all this work to get some woolly second hand story!"

"Calm down, calm down, you know we probably could find Dad, I mean Ron's always making jokes about how Dad only went back to Hogwarts so he could explore broom closets with Mum. It's only a matter of waiting really"

"Who is it you wish me to wait for?"

"Harry Potter, my Dad" Al said this in a tone that clearly expressed how dim Dumbledore was for not realising that he was talking about 'the Harry Potter.' But his faced dropped when he realised that Dumbledore was from at time period decades before anyone had ever heard of 'the boy who lived.'

Maybe the feeling of embarrassment was why he didn't check as carefully as he should of, when a boy with hair like his stumbled into the cupboard, pulling a red haired witch in after him.