Summary:

"We- we did it? We travelled forward in time? By..." James quickly added it up in his head "20 years?"
"Prongs... think about it. It's not possible for our future selves to be here if we left the past. We never got a chance to grow up, remember?" Remus said quietly.

A spell gone wrong sends the Marauders forward in time, and the threads of destiny start to intertwine when time goes onto a Collision Course.

I used a slightly edited version of this plot on a forum a while ago, but it died. I thought that it shouldn't go to waste.

A/N: Hi, everyone! This is my first fanfic, so constructive criticism is much appreciated. This chapter may be familiar to a few of you, as it was the plot on an old forum of mine, which went by the same name. I didn't want it to go to waste, and the forum is too dead to revive, so I thought I'd write the rest myself! I'll let you read it for yourself
Suzi

Chapter 1

James gave a sigh of boredom and ran a hand through his messy, raven-black hair, glancing around the Common Room, which was beginning to feel like a tub of sardines. Who would have ever thought that a day in Hogwarts could be boring, especially in the shoes of a Marauder? The Head-Boy and Quidditch Captain who had been copped up in those size 10s all day, of course. "Don't you guys have any ideas of stuff we can do?" He asked in an exasperated tone.

A thoughtful look replaced the previously bored one on Sirius's face. Winking charismatically at a pretty Sixth-Year across the room (who practically swooned - she was a well-known member of Mr Black's fan club) he turned back to the Marauders, all of whom were rolling their eyes. "Well, there is one, and it would involve going out in this," He tilted his head at the window, gesturing the torrents of rain outside, "But if we do it right, we can spend the rest of the day flying." James looked interested and listened while Sirius explained his theory about a spell he had come across in a book: more specifically a weather reversal spell. "...So, if we just tweak it a little, we should be able to fast-forward the weather to when the storm is done." Sirius concluded, looking proud of himself. He had a right too, since it was rather well thought-out, in James's opinion.

"What were you doing in the Library?" Peter asked, before holding his hand up, "Wait, don't tell me." He gestured over his shoulder at the girl Sirius had winked at just minutes ago. He began to laugh, and James soon joined in. Remus, however, looked a little worried.

"I dunno, Padfoot, it sounds awfully like a time spell, which have been illegal since 1754, when that guy almost caused the fall of the

Wizarding World, remember?"

"We are Padfoot, Prongs and Wormtail ," Sirius stressed the nicknames. There were nods of approval from Peter and James, who were no longer laughing. This sounded like too interesting a plan to miss the finer points - certainly one they could reuse. "You think we care?"

Remus sighed, though there was a faint trace of a smile on his face. He loved the Marauders as much as any of his friends. "Fine, but my Latin's a little rusty. We're going to have to go to the Library, 'cause if we mess this one up, there could be horrible consequences."

The quartet spent another hour in the Library poring over Latin dictionaries, while Peter tried to divert the curious and suspicious looks they were receiving, occasionally with James or Sirius's assistance. Remus stayed where he was, however, which helped in it's own way: he was always in the library, it was just the fact that he was accompanied by his friends.

After a full hour of Sirius's, "I think I found something!", James's, "Hurry up, Moony!" and Peter's, "Aren't you done yet?", Remus emerged from the book, a triumphant look upon his face. "There we are." He placed a small piece of paper in the middle of the table, "No thanks to you lot, of course." He smirked. "Quick, memorize the words so I can get rid of it. If anyone finds out we've done this, we'll be booted out for sure."

"Sorry, Moony, we were bored." They chorused, before leaning over the piece of paper and constantly repeating the words inside their heads. It wasn't a long spell - two words merely. All Remus had done was change 'Retrorsum Tempestas' to 'Defugio Vicis'. Not hard to memorize at all. "It took you all that time to do that?" Sirius eyed the piece of paper as though it had done him a personal wrong. "We wasted all that time inside for you to write down two words?"

"That's not fair! I had to check it was the correct version, and sometimes to change it's tense and add a suffix... it was hard, OK?" Remus protested. "Let's just go." He snatched the piece of paper from the table and made his way out of the library, conjuring an umbrella with his wand as he went. Sirius looked a little shocked at the outburst, but quickly covered it up. He should be used to it by then, anyway, since whenever he didn't give Remus credit for hard work... well, he sometimes ended up worse off. Sometimes . But no one ever found out.

They ran across the grounds, through the gales and flooded lawns - it was as though the lake was expanding and trying to steal Hogwarts into its icy depths. The umbrella was wrenched away, straight out of Remus's hands, but they had long since forgotten it in their mad swim-dash towards the Quidditch Pitch. When they reached it, they ducked into the Gryffindor Changing Rooms, which James unlocked with his key. "We should've just transformed, shouldn't we?" James shook his head vigorously, soaking everyone and everything around him. He highly doubted, however, that 'everyone' noticed, since they couldn't get much wetter themselves, anyway.

"OK, everyone know the plan, right?" Remus looked around at his nodding friends, but decided to repeat it anyway, for safety's sake. "We have to be outside, or else it'll fast-forward events forever and we'll be stuck in a continuous time warp..." He sucked in his breath; sure it was dangerous, but he'd managed to pluck up the courage to do it, and trust his friends. That was what Gryffindor was all about, right? Right? "And no, we can't just fast-forward to the next match." He cut James off before his mouth was even fully open. "It would mean missing classes and prank opportunities." He added the latter merely to keep his companions happy and quiet. "Anyway, it will fast forward the whole of outside -and inside, within the magical boundary, that's why we've gotta be careful. It should only stretch to the Great Hall, but everyone will be having Lunch right now, so if we make a mistake, we might hurt other people, too - 'till whenever we say 'Stop.' That's all you have to do. But it's really powerful magic, so we have to do it together, or we could get a serious case of magical exhaustion."

"You remember the words, right?" At his friend's nods, he gave a sigh of anticipation - he always got caught up in the moment, when it came - and began to walk out towards the glass door, which sounded as though it was about to shatter from the force of the rain. Bracing themselves, the Marauders ran out into the freezing torrents of rain and, on Peter's signal, all shouted "'Defugio Vicis!" They remained in their huddle, though James was sure the rain had stopped... then it hadn't... then it had... what was going on?

He looked up hesitantly and almost fell over, feeling rather dizzy. It took his eyes several minutes to get used to the flashes of weather and various scenes that went on around him... sun, rain, snow, wind, every weather condition he could possibly imagine; he saw it happening in a matter of seconds. And the scenes... people were enjoying this weather, or braving the elements to practice flying. One minute, someone was rushing towards him on a broom, and he saw the young girl's eyes widen in fear, before the world flashed again and she was gone. She would only have seen him for the briefest nano-second. She'd probably think she had been hit too hard by a bludger.

"Too fast! It's going too fast! Stop! STOP!" Remus yelled loudly, but to no avail. The spell had gone drastically wrong, they would probably be stuck in this horrible time apocalypse until they died, or their power ran out, or the end of time. Possibly all three - that was, could you die if you were somewhere where time didn't pass properly? Would anything ever run out or grow old? Would time even pass? None of the Marauders wanted to know the answers to these questions. "Wait... Latin! The spell had to be converted in Latin, so why not say 'Stop' in Latin?" Remus wondered around.

All of the Marauders began to think - hard. So hard that it looked almost painful. After a few minutes, of course, they looked to Remus. He was the one who had been looking through a Latin dictionary only minutes – though it felt much longer, for some reason - before... wasn't it possible that he had noticed the word 'Stop'? Seeing this, he waved them all off with a, "I'm thinking, I'm thinking!" A few minutes went by... or rather, it felt like that. For all they knew, they were decades away from where they started. "Des- what was it... desist- no, it sounded like that... desiit, that was it, DESIIT!" Remus pointed his wand - no where in particular - and the Marauders fell into a muddled heap, unconscious and - when they awoke - sure to be slightly nauseous.

The world... it's spinning... I can't see... flashes... James groaned as he came to. He opened his eyes too quickly, and the sudden light burned them, so he quickly snapped them shut again. As he did so, he could swear he heard a relieved sigh. He opened his eyes again as familiar voices began to buzz around him.

"Prongs! You're OK!" The Marauders were in beds near him, in what was unmistakably the Hospital Wing. Instantly, his expression was worried. Being in the school could only mean one thing.

"What happened? Did we get caught? Are we going to be expelled? Where's Dumbledore, he'll stop it, we haven't done anything." James babbled, before taking a deep breath. One at a time, Prongs, one at a time. "OK. What happened? I remember the spell, and stuff, but then everything's blank."

Remus answered. "I don't know, we've only just come around ourselves, but by the look of that calendar over there," He gestured to a calendar marked with many red 'X's, "It's Halloween. We've only been out for a day, so the spell must have been going much slower than we thought it was. So much for fast-forwarding."

Before he could continue his theories and explanations, a tall figure walked through the door. "Professor!" James jumped up as Minerva McGonagall walked through the door. There was something different about her, but James couldn't quite place it; perhaps it was the pure anger radiating off of her.

"Sit." She commanded. James obliged immediately. "I would never, in all my many years at Hogwarts, have thought of you boys as the type to break the law so seriously. I know better now... but a time spell, of all things! I hope you're proud of yourselves. Hogwarts will be closed, if people find out about this - because of you four. And for you to turn up now, of all times... what possessed you to try and time travel?"

"Professor... I don't understand-" Sirius began, but McGonagall cut him off almost immediately.

"Of course you don't! And you never will, because until I find a way to send you back, you are not to leave the Infirmary, understood!" It was not a question. She wasn't going to explain, and that was that. None of them dared answer; they had never seen her like this, not even when Sirius had come so close to killing Snape last year. McGonagall left the room in a silent rage, which terrified them all the more. As soon as he left, the four boys began to babble their question to each other.

"What does she mean, 'turn up now'?" "Try and time travel...?" "What's Dumbledore going to say?" "Why did she shout at Padfoot like that?" They all broke off when Remus stood up and made his way towards the calendar. He had been the only one up till then who realized the questions all involved time, bar the last one. As if in slow motion, he reached up and gently took it off the hook. He turned it over, where there were pictures of Hogwarts and the year of the calendar. "1997." He breathed, though everyone caught the words. There was a shocked silence.

"We- we did it? We travelled forward in time? By..." James quickly added it up in his head "21 years?" The prospect left them in a long, awkward, but excited silence. "Where do you think we'll all be now? We can go see ourselves, see how we grew up. We can get advice from our future selves about what to do... hey! Do you think anyone will remember all the NEWT questions?"

"Prongs... think about it. It's not possible for our future selves to be here if we left the past. We never got a chance to grow up, remember?" Remus said quietly. That really got them going. "Unless-" He cut them off, "We get back in the end. Oh, I hope we can speak to our future selves, just for reassurance... nothing makes sense… but if we're here, now, then how can we be here twenty years later?"

Harry Potter gripped his armchair tightly, his knuckles as white as his face had gone. "What?" He gazed down at Dobby, who had just delivered him some very disturbing news indeed. "Sirius? He's back? How? Are you sure? He can't be, he's dead ..." Dobby must have made a mistake. After all, even if it was Sirius, why would he be in the Infirmary? And how could he just walk into the school?

"No, Harry Potter, Sir. Dobby heard another boy call him 'Padfoot', and Dobby has heard Harry Potter call him Padfoot, so Dobby came straight to Harry Potter to tell him!" Dobby looked anxious. "Has Dobby done bad, Harry Potter, Sir?"

"No, Dobby, thanks." He turned to Hermione and Ron, who were listening to the conversation and looking almost as anxious as Harry felt. "We have to go to the Infirmary. Now."