It took Harry two of his precious remaining hours to confirm his suspicions; as far as the Muggles were aware, the Stargate had never been used.

Which was obviously bollocks – except it wasn't. A cunning wizard who had known it was coming and prepared extensively could sidestep the absoluteness of Veritaserum – but a muggle?

Yeah, no.

So it was real and true fact that the Stargate was not completed. The Americans hadn't managed to connect it to a viable power source. They hadn't translated the writings. They had no idea how to use it. They didn't even have more than two dozen active military personnel on site, and the ones they did have made up a guard and a small research team, not the sort of exploratory team or strike force that had fought (and defeated) Ra on Abydos.

For Ra's sake the Air Force were still lobbying for funding.

Which meant his memory was wrong – or Harry wasn't thinking creatively enough.

He went for a walk and to have a good sulk. At least if he looked busy, no well-meaning Muggle would ask where his mummy was.

He'd been on Abydos. He'd seen American Muggles, spoken to them and killed them. The Stargate had definitely been active. He'd sent a bomb through – or tried to. Maybe it had been some sort of illegal mission? Some lower ranking man had authorised it on the sly? Or it was all so confidential that even the men who thought they were working on it knew nothing?

A clock bell chimed the hour, reminding him that it was time to go – and stars above he was an idiot.

Time travel.

The Stargate was a superconductor of energy made by a race known only as the 'Ancients.' Any scavenge that came from that era was worth a thousand times more than any other. Ra had enough legends and folk stories about them that Harry supposed it was not impossible that these Ancients had managed time travel.

The Stargate itself also tended to be the centre of a lot of strange events – not that Ra had believed his Jaffa's reports.

(My Lord! A Jaffa prostrated himself before the throne. We did not know what to do! One moment they were there, the next they were gone and the gate was glowing. The artefact vanished before my eyes! I could do nothing, I swear it!)

Ra had thought it lies to cover up failure, but Harry saw those memories with different eyes now. He could recall at least two-dozen different abnormalities centred on the ring.

His theory was becoming more solid by the second, and more importantly, wizards considered it old hat.

Easy enough, but terribly fiddly. Why bother? The time turner was well known, and it wasn't the beginning of such research. There had been the Hour-Reversal charm, and before that rituals and dances, secret ways and paths between worlds.

So he knew it could be done. It wasn't as outlandish an explanation as it could have been.

An older race would have had plenty of time to experiment, even if they were Muggles. Two paths could reach the same destination, he supposed, even if the ways were very different. Magic and science.

Ra's ship had been entering hyperspace when the Naquadah-enhanced nuclear missile had detonated from the inside. Ra had had his own Stargate on board. That made for a lot of energy, a lot of potentially weird and wonderful reactions.

Time travel was the least of the possibilities, when he put it like that.

Harry grinned, startling a passer-by. Oh yes, when he had luck, he really had it. If Ra had accidently time travelled, then Harry had scored the jackpot.

#

Harry landed right back in the TerrorTours office, feeling only mildly queasy from the mind-bending trip, and the feeling passed as he walked back up Diagon Alley, Ra's body pumping healing chemicals through him with every step.

Without Hagrid's loose tongue to consider, Harry went immediately to Diagon Alley's public library for a good rummage. He had maybe an hour before he had to be on the train back to Surrey and it was an hour he'd put to use.

'Waste not the unforgiving minute' was going to become Harry's mantra – he could just tell.

The magical world's public libraries were nothing special. Most wizards had private collections of books and really didn't like to share the power contained within. 'Knowledge is power' was basically a law when it came to wizards. One could not defend against a spell if they had no idea it existed. It was disturbingly literal too – magic was life after all, and write enough magic down into pages – pour enough life into them… and they could become very particular.

Being a librarian in a wizarding library was not for the faint of heart. There was a reason that purebloods warded their houses – and it wasn't always to keep people out.

Public libraries were seen as a charitable effort towards muggleborns and as such, their funding waxed and waned depending on the current fashion. It also rather limited their content and kept the unsuspecting muggleborns safe enough from the deeper mysteries.

The books were always a mishmash and mostly of poor quality, but Voldemort had found them useful places. He'd been very poor indeed in the beginning, and he needed somewhere safe – and free - to go in the long summers. There would never be any real power here, but there was occasionally something useful.

There were shelves full of old school texts, their bindings falling apart, boxes full of old Daily Prophets used as chairs and stacked three high for a desk. There was damaged stock from the bookshops (a copy of Favell's Famous Fires was still smouldering slightly), a complete set of Gilderoy Lockhart's adventures that glittered ominously, and a dozen editions of the first Mad Muggle series. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry was sure he saw the book wiggle.

He went immediately for the newspapers. He'd get no answers about time travel, but he could answers his questions about the Boy Who Lived, the Order of the Phoenix and what had happened after Voldemort fell.

The results were, well, typical of the wizards.

Wizards were a passive lot. The only thing they'd ever really argued about was blood. There'd never been a racial divide, no prejudice against gender or class and given Ra's experience with multiple cultures, Harry could understand why where Voldemort had not.

Competition.

Unlike the primitive cultures Ra created and preferred, the wizarding world had no need to squabble over basic resources like water, food or warmth. Even an unskilled wizard could conjure or locate water with a flick of his wand, if he had not already stored a lake inside a bottle. Food production was a non-issue. As for warmth, well, it may very well be that the first spell ever invented by their Neanderthal ancestors was to call forth light and fire from the night.

The only thing they actually competed over was magic itself.

So Harry couldn't say he was surprised that everything had been swept under the rug when Voldemort fell, but he did feel bemused.

The status quo was all well and good, but surely even basic common sense said that if you did not address the issues that gave rise to Voldemort in the First War, then the Second War was only a matter of time. Treat the symptoms not the disease and the patient dies.

Harry closed the Daily Prophet and returned his pile to the box. He hadn't gotten every answer he was looking for, but he had enough, and it was time to go home.

His former followers had either gone to Azkaban – and would have to stay there until he found a way to break them out – or had claimed the Imperious curse and had bribed their way out.

It was smart enough. Voldemort would have been insulted by it, but Harry saw no reason for offense. Languishing in Azkaban for him was a nice gesture, but empty. It was far more useful for followers of the Old Ways to be sane, healthy, rich, respectable and still following the Old Ways with each turn of the season, setting an example for the rest.

He moved mechanically through the streets of London, and soon he was back on the train to Surrey, sitting on the chair behind the luggage rack to avoid as much notice as possible.

His Death Eaters – Marked and unmarked – were a resource he was desperately going to need but they would bite the hand that fed them if handled wrong.

Malfoy and Karkaroff had done the best for themselves and Harry would have to approach them both carefully for different reasons. Malfoy had become more powerful without Voldemort than with him and indeed would probably see returning to the yoke as a demotion. Which it was, if Harry was being honest with himself. Lord Malfoy was the big fish right now; he wouldn't want to play second fiddle.

Tough luck. If he'd wanted independence, he shouldn't have taken the Mark.

Still, there would be real, dangerous, resentment there that Harry would have to account for, whereas Karkaroff would be terrified of Voldemort's return - traitor that he was. Still, his position as Highmaster of Durmstrang made him useful, and he would know that too, hopefully enough not to run when Harry started playing around with the Dark Mark.

The Carrows had avoided Azkaban and attention both, so they were probably holed up in the Rock – the family's famous stronghold. Harry had found an announcement for the birth of twins, Flora and Hestia so presumably the family was doing well, and he'd keep an eye out for those two at Hogwarts. He had no doubt that they would answer his call.

Avery had similarly vanished from the public eye as had Jugson, Mulciber, the Notts, the Selwyns, Rowle, Gibbon, Macnair, Wilkes and Yaxley.

Rosier was dead – but Harry wouldn't believe it until he saw the body. He'd trained Evan personally. The wizard had been too good to die. Crouch was also dead, a real pity that. He'd been young, but as Crouch had well known what would happen if he were caught, his father had shown no mercy. Harry would repay the favour. Pettigrew had fallen to Black, which was irritating; he was the only other witness of the events of That Night, and Harry had questions. Still, what was done was done.

In Azkaban lay Dolohov, Travers, Rookwood, Bellatrix, and the Lestranges. They would have to be rescued of course; nothing would inspire fear like a mass breakout from Azkaban – once Harry had worked out how to do it.

Of his Marked Death Eaters that left only Snape to brood about as the train sped on and the buildings became poorer and poorer.

Snape had been easy to recruit, persecuted for following the Old Ways, for being poor, for being a half-blood, for being alone – he'd been vulnerable to care and attention. His Mastery of potions made him very useful – but on Snape's information had he – Voldemort – gone to the Potters. By Snape's word had Lily Potter killed him. Voldemort. Snape who had begged on bended knee for her life. Coincidence? Unlikely. Vexingly, that did not change the fact that he remained useful. A professor at Hogwarts with all that that entailed…

Harry's stop arrived before his decision did. He got off the train with his backpack, bullied a taxi driver into taking a brat home and found himself face to face with Petunia.

#

"Back are you?" She asked coldly, blocking the doorway with her body.

"Yes Aunt Petunia," Harry replied obediently, hating hating hating her. Who did she think she was to treat him this way?

She glared at him, but now that he was a new man, Harry could see the fear behind the hate. It made him smile inside instead of cringe. He straightened his back and looked steadily at her, waiting.

Never again would he cower before her in fear.

She stood aside.

"Well don't just stand there and let the neighbours gawk at you," she snapped. "Go to your room at once."

#

When it became clear that Vernon would not be storming into Harry's room for his revenge, Harry sat at his lopsided desk, and began to make notes on what he'd learned about the Order of the Phoenix. Then he ripped it up, realising it was too much of a risk.

Besides, the Prophet had made it clear the Order was basically in retirement. If Dumbledore was still using them, it was more akin to friends doing favours for each other than anything more sinister against the Boy Who Lived. The Prophet had no subtle hint of organised vigilante movement that suggested they were still active, and without Voldemort, they had no reason to be. Dumbledore would still have his political friends, but that was different.

Harry barricaded his door with his new trunk and took out a fresh sheet of parchment.

Time travel. He underlined it neatly in his new colour changing ink, wasting three minutes in watching it shift through thirty shades of colour. Magic was so fun. He shook his glee off and focused.

Outside of the Department of Mysteries or private collections there was not going to be any useful information. If he was going to work out once and for all if he'd time travelled – and more importantly how far – he was going to have to use good old fashioned parchment and ink.

Ra had died in the 19th Rise of Ra. Harry knew that for certain because Ra had been on his way to Aten via Abydos and a few other minor planets for what amounted to his birthday celebration – even if it was like no celebration Harry knew.

Feasts, gladiator games, religious rituals, passing judgement, granting a few rare pardons, handing out promotions and executions in equal measure – and that was only during the day. During the nights there was dancing, displays of talent for Ra's pleasure verging from the acrobatic to the erotic and – Harry blushed.

Harems. He had harems now.

He coughed. Right. Well. Moving on.

He carefully translated 19 Rises into Atoks. Space-time being based upon the Goa'uld home planets cycle mixed in with the adopted Egyptian calendar with exceptions made for the individual circumstances of each planet or moon. There was no point saying night fell at the 16th hour if it would still be daylight because of the slower orbit caused by a second moon or whatnot.

The calculations covered three pages before Harry moved on to Voldemort's knowledge of star movements to project forward and finally came to answer he was fairly confident of.

He was three years and two months in the past. The galactic date was 18.997RR.

Harry sat back in his chair, numb with shock even as Ra's presence meant he felt none of the ache in his back that he really ought to after being hunched over for so long.

Relief was bliss.

He revelled in it until Hedwig ( a proper wizarding name) barked from her perch, forcing him to get up and give her some treats and attention.

"Three years Hedwig!" Harry murmured to her – Petunia had the sharpest ears in Surrey, "Three whole years before I have to actually be Ra. It solves everything!"

When his luck was good it was good.

"I'll be fourteen," Harry said dazed. A tiny part of him remembered that fourteen was an excellent age to discover a harem, but the rest of him swiftly moved on to far more pressing concerns than the fact that every priestess was technically his bride whose vows to their Order did double duty.

"That's enough time to enchant something that can get me to Abydos, or to sneak through the Muggle base to the Stargate. Hedwig, how do you feel about becoming a sacred animal? I'll make them build you an entire temple! And there's this mouse species the size of a pig you might want to see."

Hedwig swivelled her head to look at him, and her big yellow eyes somehow managed to convey disapproval.

"I'm not lying."

"Preck!"

"I promise!"

"Preck."

"Oh fine, but you'll change your tune when you see them. I'm going to bed, go hunt some tiny half-starved field mouse, see if I care."

"Preck."

A/N: - I'm always happy to debate HP if you have any questions :)