A/N: This is the sequel to Harry Potter and the Time-Turner, and is intended to be read as a series of vignettes. The first ten chapters will cover years four to six; the following thirteen chapters will cover Harry's would-be seventh year.

They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Even though he'd never promised Professor Dumbledore he would, Harry had fully intended to destroy the second Time-Turner as requested. Hermione had already handed the original in to Professor McGonagall, saying only that it had had some minor malfunction. Harry delayed it until the day before they were due to leave Hogwarts, whereupon he looked for it very slowly in the boys' dormitory, feeling incredibly down about the whole affair. Sure, he had his dad's Cloak and his mother's letter, but a Time-Turner was the only way in which he could ever see his parents in life again, and he wasn't sure he was ready to give that up.

'Get a grip,' he told himself sternly, even though he felt like he was going to be sick. 'Just one spell ... it looks pretty fragile ...'

However, things didn't quite work out that way.

He found the Time-Turner exactly where he'd forgotten he'd put it - in the back of the never-used bottom drawer of his bedside cabinet. However, when he pulled his hand out, he brushed against something that rustled. A crumpled piece of parchment that he had never seen before had been balled up and stuffed in the drawer's rear, had been there for who knew how long. Bewildered, Harry sat down on his bed and smoothed the parchment out on the covers, discovering as he did so that it was a note of some kind.

It read, in a hastily-written scribble:

Harry, don't destroy the Time-Turner. Souvenirs are good to keep, so here's another one for you. So are promises, but you didn't promise Dumbledore. And secrets, so don't tell anyone else about this note, not even Ron and Hermione. Keep the Time-Turner hidden in a safe place, but don't put it on until the Snitch opens at the close.

Until the Snitch opens at the close? What Snitch? What did 'open at the close' mean? What was 'the close'? He didn't even know Snitches could open. Maybe it was a metaphor?

The note was unsigned, but the handwriting was familiar. Harry read it again, this time searching for clues to the author's identity. Only he, Hermione, Snape, Dumbledore, his mother and Ron knew, or had known, about the second Time-Turner. His mother was dead, and anyway, it wasn't her handwriting, nor Dumbledore's, or Hermione's, or Ron's ...

But it couldn't be from Snape. Snape didn't know that Harry hadn't promised Dumbledore he'd destroy the Time-Turner. And if the letter had been dropped off from the future, as Harry suspected, the possibilities were even wider.

Some of the wording, Harry found, he'd read before. He took the letter his mother had left for him in the Room of Hidden Things and read through its contents quickly, pausing at the second postscript:

P. P. S. You don't have to destroy this letter if you don't want to. I recommend you don't. Souvenirs are good to keep. So are promises. And secrets. L. E.

It couldn't be a coincidence. It had to be from someone who not only knew about his mother's letter, but had read it, too. With a jolt, Harry realised who it was. He'd assumed it had been somebody else who had written the note, but he'd been wrong. The handwriting was definitely familiar - too familiar. It was his own.

Abruptly, Dumbledore's words broke into his mind, twisting his conscience.

'I want both of you to promise me that you will destroy it as soon as you can.'

'Sorry, not going to happen,' Harry muttered. But what was the harm, really? The note hadn't asked him to use it - in fact, it had specifically asked him not to - and who knew when this Snitch would show up? Until then ... he tucked his mother's letter, the note and the Time-Turner into a corner of his trunk along with his father's Invisibility Cloak and the Marauder's Map, underneath a pile of clothes. No one else had to know. Nobody at all. As long as this road didn't lead to Hell, he had nothing to worry about.

'Harry, you will be all right, won't you?' Hermione said anxiously, peering into Harry's face.

'Huh?' Shaking guilty thoughts of the Time-Turner out of his head, Harry realised he'd been staring blankly at the letter Sirius had sent him for the last ten minutes. There was less than an hour until the Hogwarts Express arrived at King's Cross, and he was determined to savour every moment of it.

'I know you're disappointed,' said Hermione, with a sideways glance at Ron, 'but it'll only be for a few weeks, and then you can leave. The important thing is that Sirius and Buckbeak are free.'

Harry tried to agree with her, but the truth was that his disappointment had nothing to do with Sirius and everything to do with what he'd learnt over the past few weeks. Snape and his mother had been friends; meanwhile, his dad had been a bully, no better than Dudley and his gang. There was an empathy link, of all things, connecting him and Snape. The strange note he received had been written by none other than himself, and he, Harry, carried a part of Voldemort's soul inside him, a part that would have to be destroyed in order to wipe out the Dark Lord once and for all ...

Back at Privet Drive, however, there was no Hermione to distract Harry from his own thoughts. The Dursleys more or less left him alone after he couldn't resist informing them that the escaped murderer they'd heard so much about on the news was, in fact, his godfather, who might pop up at any moment (he'd neglected to mention that Sirius was actually innocent).

He awoke from the dream two weeks after his fourteenth birthday. His scar was aching for the first time in over a year, and he had to fight the urge to let out a string of swear words. Pressing his hands to his forehead, he tried to recall the dream. It had certainly been very vivid. Wormtail had been there ... Harry's stomach clenched ... and another man he didn't know ... and ... and ... Lord Voldemort ... and they'd been plotting to kill ... him?

He wondered what to do. Should he write to Dumbledore? Ron and Hermione? He thought of Snape, very, very briefly, then dismissed the idea. So what if they shared an empathy link? Talking to Snape about his dream seemed a sure-fire way to get sneered at ('You're nothing but an attention-seeker, Potter; just like your father'). He scowled. Was there nobody he could talk to, nobody who wouldn't make him feel stupid or paranoid?

Professor Lupin ... well, Harry tried, but writing to someone who, until recently, had been able to give him detention just felt weird. In the end, he wrote to Sirius, even though he'd barely known him over a month. Best make it seem like he wasn't worried, or he'd come off as paranoid. He gave Hedwig some instructions and sent her off, wishing he could leave the Dursleys as easily as she could. He wouldn't even mind being on the run with Sirius and Buckbeak, as long as it meant that Dudley didn't constantly swipe Harry's breakfast from under his own nose. Why did Dudley have to go on a diet this summer, anyway? It meant that Harry had to live off the four birthday cakes sent by his friends - which sounded like a ridiculous thing to complain about, until you remembered that they were fast becoming stale. Oh well, he'd only be here for a short time, anyway - Ron had written about the Quidditch World Cup, and Harry was going to get picked up sooner or later (how, he didn't know).

He couldn't stop thinking about the dream, even though he couldn't really remember much of it anymore. Uncle Vernon was at work and Aunt Petunia had taken Dudley out to the cinema. Before he could stop himself, words were again echoing through his mind, words that he couldn't forget:

'The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than ever he was ...'

'And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives ...'

'A tiny piece of his soul was blasted away from the rest and latched itself onto the only living thing left in that room – you.'

'It's not over, is it, Professor? Not by a long shot.'

'No, it isn't. Because, really, we've only just begun.'