When Harry opened his eyes he was met with the familiar sight of the hospital wing ceiling. He decided the instant recognition of the room from his view of the ceiling was proof that he had been here too often. When Harry tried to recall how he had been injured, he panicked.

He was in Hogwarts. The weight of the realization hit him like a bludger to the stomach.How had that happened? The last thing he remembered was running from the snatchers. Harry struggled to remember what had happened after he, Ron, and Hermione had taken off through the forest. His mind came up with nothing. He had no idea how he got here. Maybe the snatchers had captured him and taken him to Snape. The theory didn't explain why he was in the hospital wing. Or where Ron and Hermione were.

Harry sat up. Although he could not discern any injury every muscle seemed to ache. Looking around, Harry noticed the blackthorn wand and the pouch Hagrid had given him sitting on the bedside table. It was odd, Harry reflected, that they would leave him with his possessions. As he reached for the wand, Harry heard the door to the hospital wing open and glanced up just as he closed his fingers around his wand. This was a mistake as it caused Harry to loose his balance and fall off the bed.

Harry straightened up and pointed the wand at the person who had just walked through the door, who looked just like the late Albus Dumbledore. The wizard in question raised his eyebrows. The two stared at one another for several seconds.

"You're dead." Harry blurted out. The Albus Dumbledore look-alike only appeared mildly surprised.

"I'm fairly certain I'm alive, but I don't claim to be an expert on the subject." Several more seconds passed in silence. "Perhaps you've mistaken me for someone else, my name is Albus-" The wizard began, but Harry interrupted him

"Dumbledore, or so you claim." Harry finished. The maybe-Dumbledore nodded. Silence descended once again. Harry's eyebrows furrowed. Was it him, or was the man's hair still mostly auburn... A horrible realization struck him.

"Wh-what year is it?" Harry stuttered.

"1945." Answered Dumbledore. Harry dropped the blackthorn wand.

"I take it that was not the answer were expecting?" Dumbledore asked kindly. Harry merely shook his head. "What year were you expecting?"

"1998." Harry replied as he sat back down on the bed.

"Oh, that is a bit of a difference, isn't it? The furthest back any time turner has been able to go in two weeks..." Dumbledore mused, taking a seat in the chair next to the bed. A numbness settled over Harry. A nagging voice in the back of his head mused that he really shouldn't be so surprised, if this was going to happen to anyone of course it would happen to him.

"What's your name, if you don't mind me asking?" Harry looked up to see, as he had so many times before, Dumbledore's blue eyes twinkling. It made him feel marginally better.

"Harry Potter. Do you have any idea what happened?"

"I found you just outside the Hogwarts grounds. Are you a student here?"

"Sort of, I mean I should be in my seventh year, but there were some special circumstances..." Harry trailed off. Wasn't that the understatement of the year.

"I see," Dumbledore replied, "I think the best thing for you to do is to enroll in your seventh year here and then you'll have the year to figure out your next step. I assure you I will do all in my power to restore you to your original time." Harry nodded.

"Alright, since you need to enroll and I am several hours late for a meeting with the headmaster, I suggest we head to his office together." Dumbledore stood up, waiting for Harry to do the same. After grabbing the pouch, his wand, and the robes sitting at the foot of his bed, Harry followed.

When he and Dumbledore arrived at the headmaster's office, Harry bit back a gasp at its occupants. Headmaster Dippet he had expected, but the young Tom Riddle he had not.

"Ah, Albus, there you are, I was worried when you didn't show up for our chess game." Dippet said as soon as Dumbledore walked in. "May I present our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher." He gestured at Riddle. For the second time within the hour, Harry felt as though he was going into shock. Thankfully he was able to restrain himself from shouting out, but not the horrified expression judging from the way Riddle was glaring at Harry.

"Yes, I was getting to know Harry here. He seems to have had an unfortunate accident with time." Dumbledore explained. This peaked both Dippet's and Riddle's interest.

"You mean he's a time traveler?" Dippet asked, looking at Harry for the first time.

"What year are you from?" asked Riddle softly.

"1998," Harry replied. The look of greed that glinted in the future dark lord's eyes terrified him more than Nagini disguised as Bathilda Bagshot had. He could tell Dumbledore had also noticed Riddle's expression.

"He's finished his sixth year-" Dumbledore began, but the headmaster interrupted him.

"And so he'll need to start his seventh year next month." Dippet finished, still regarding Harry with interest. Harry looked up.

"It's August?" He asked. Dumbledore was the only one who didn't appear phased.

"Was it not where you were?" Dumbledore asked kindly. Harry shook his head.

"Well..." began the headmaster, "I suppose we should sort you."

"Now?" Harry asked.

"Well, since you have no where else to stay and since it is so close to the start of term, you can stay in the dormitories, but you'll need to be sorted before you can access them." Dippet explained. Harry nodded, dazed, as both the headmaster and Dumbledore rushed around finding the stool and hat and putting together all the necessary paperwork. Riddle, meanwhile, just stared at Harry, either oblivious or indifferent to how uncomfortable it was making Harry.

"Alright, have a seat," Dumbledore told Harry, gesturing to the three-legged stool. Harry sat, and the hat was dropped over his eyes.

"Well, this is something I've never done before," Harry heard the hat murmur. "You're clearly even more of a Gryffindor than the first time we met... but is that still the right house for you? Perhaps not... Better you go to SLYTHERIN" The hat shouted. Dippet smiled at Harry as the hat was removed. Riddle looked rather smug and Dumbledore appeared thoughtful. As for Harry, he was fairly certain his eyes were as round as they could go. Dumbledore was the first to notice.

"Were you expecting something else?" The future headmaster asked.

"I was in Gryffindor last time." Harry replied. Dumbledore, Riddle, and Dippet all looked faintly unsettled.

"Well, Tom, why don't you show Harry to the Slytherin common room, and Albus and I contact the ministry about the time travel issue." Dippet suggested. Tom smiled slightly. Harry found it unnerving.

"Certainly, headmaster." And with an uncertain glance toward Dumbledore, Harry followed his lifelong nemesis down the spiral staircase.

The silence that followed Harry and Riddle was extremely uncomfortable. As the pair passed the great hall, Riddle spoke up.

"So how did you wind up time traveling?" He asked. His hands were clasped behind his back, projecting what Harry thought was a false air of non-chalance.

"I, erm, don't know. I remember running through the forest and the next thing I know I was in the hospital wing." Harry answered honestly. They walked down a marble staircase. "So, you're going to teach DADA..." Harry trailed off, hoping to keep the conversation off of himself.

"Yes, I'm looking forward to it," Riddle replied politely.

"Why become a teacher so young, why not become an auror or curse breaker if you're interested in that subject?" Harry asked, even though he knew it was because Riddle was hoping to gather followers.

"I guess I wasn't ready to leave Hogwarts yet, and it will give me a chance to do a little research..." Riddle trailed off. They had arrived at the entrance to the common room.

HPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHP

Harry sat with his back to the wall in the room of requirement. He had paced back and forth in front of the tapestry depicting Barnabas the Barmy and the almost ballet trolls with the phrase I need a place to think running through his head. The room had replicated his old cupboard from Privet Drive.

Voldemort was a professor. The implications of this were making Harry's head spin. Most of all he kept thinking that this should not be possible.

Compared to the average witch or wizard, Harry felt he was extremely well versed on the subject of time travel. After using Hermione's time turner, his friend had been ecstatic to have someone to take to about time travel. Of the many topics Hermione had rambled on about was the topic of time lines. He remembered her explaining that after time turners had been invented in the 1600s, wizards believed the when traveling through time the only timeline possible was what Hermione referred to as a fixed timeline. Wizards were so convinced of this that other timeline theories only existed in the muggle world.

Harry smiled as he remembered how this discussion had taken place in the library right after the exams.

He had been sitting in an uncomfortable chair for hours and Hermione had been getting annoyed with him for not paying attention. To try to appease her he asked her what a fixed timeline what. Beaming she had responded.

"A fixed timeline means nothing can change when you go back in time. You know the classic muggle example of going back in time to kill your grandfather, and how this would create a paradox because you would prevent your own birth and thus never be able to go back in time? Well in a fixed timeline things would keep getting in your way to prevent you from killing your grandfather because since you would have already been born then no matter what you do, your grandfather will live long enough to create your father." Hermione explained, talking at full speed. Harry, to his own surprise, had been interested.

"Kind of like how I saw myself when I cast the patronus? The same events occurred both times we were in that time... if that makes sense," Harry pondered out loud. Hermione smiled widely. She was never happier than when she was engaged in an academic debate.

"Exactly. There was a set series of events."

"So, how many different kinds of timelines are there?" Harry asked, propping his elbows up on the table they were sitting at.

"Well, as I said, wizards only believe in fixed timelines, but the whole grandfather paradox is called a dynamic timeline... meaning if you go back in time and change something, then when you go back into the future it will be different. And then there is what's called an alternate timeline, where if you go back in time it create an alternate universe, so if you end up killing your grandfather and end up not being born, nothing would happen to you because you're from a different universe," Hermione had told him.

"Huh... But if time turners are the only kind of time travel there is, than maybe the other kinds of time travel are still possible, but it hasn't been invented yet..." Harry mused, staring out the window absent mindedly.

"Harry," Hermione said, suddenly very serious.

"What is it?" Harry asked, thinking she was about to correct him. She looked him squarely in the eye before she continued.

"Never let anyone tell you that you aren't smart." Harry blushed slightly.

So he was in an alternate timeline... or a dynamic timeline. Somehow the thought made him extremely homesick. Even though if he ever returned to his own timeline he wouldn't be returning to Hogwarts for his seventh year, and would be faced with the task of finding horcruxes. Still, the thought that he would never see Ron or Hermione again made him feel sick to his stomach. He was essentially alone in a brand new world he had created by somehow going back in time. Tears slid down his face and he hugged his knees to his chest in a replica of his cupboard under the stairs.