Only Time Will Tell

Chapter 1

Vicus Eo

James Potter was sitting lazily in the common room one Saturday afternoon, staring out of one of the many windows overlooking the grounds. Had the weather been a little nicer (torrents of rain were pouring down outside, amid thunder and lightning), he would have enjoyed a ride on his Silver Arrow broomstick, but as it were, he was quietly staring off into space.

Sitting quietly was an unusual activity for James, who usually liked to be in the center of things, drawing attention and causing commotion. The absence of his three best friends had something to do with his subdue. The four of them made up the notorious Marauders, infamous for the trouble they caused, havoc they reeked, and pranks they pulled, and although one group each Marauder was very unique.

Sirius Black was James's best friend, and was very good looking. He could keep a straight face no matter what lie they were telling, and it had come in handy many times. He was the star chaser for the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and was highly obsessed over by many of the girls in the school. Sirius was usually the scheme maker, coming up with mundane pranks mainly involving the total humiliation of Severus Snape, the group's most deeply loathed Slytherin (and this was saying something, as there were many Slytherins the Marauders deeply loathed!) Although Sirius was highly idolized by the opposite sex, he was very hard to impress in that department in terms of a steady girlfriend. He had his occasional flames, but he usually broke their hearts soon after. He even seemed bored with some of the antics of James, who never missed a chance to show off for girls, and that was the main difference between the two.

The moral voice and most mature of the four was Remus Lupin. He was not a Quidditch player like Sirius or James, and was neither as boisterous nor as "humorously creative" as them, but he was a school prefect. Remus was more on the quiet side, usually choosing to pore over books in the library rather than plan some of the lesser pranks that were to be pulled (although he did help pull them when it was time to put the plans into action.) He was also a werewolf, but rather than this changing the friendship of the boys, it had inspired them to attempt their greatest feat yet. James and Sirius, brilliant at transfiguration, hatched the scheme to become animagi (illegally, of course!) and roam the wizarding village of Hogsmeade when it was a full moon with Remus. Last year, their fifth year, they had finally managed it, although getting Peter up to speed with James and Sirius had proven extremely difficult.

Peter Pettigrew was the fourth part of the Marauder group, and seemed the most unlikely of companions for Sirius and James. Peter was on the portly side, and rather stubby in the department of height, contrasting with the tall, blasé, handsome stature of Sirius, the slightly shorter, muscular, charismatic James, and even the skinny but not unattractive Remus. Peter was very shy, and almost hero worshipped James and Sirius, or rather worshipped James and was almost frightful of Sirius. Despite this, he got along rather well with the other boys, though was usually designated the lookout for execution of the pranks, as his clumsiness was usually more of a hindrance.

His magical abilities were also almost puny when compared to the others. Remus was a bookworm and in the top portion of all his classes, Sirius had natural talent but once again mainly used it for the sole purpose of mortifying Snape and rarely felt the need to apply them to something as trivial as classes (though he was near the top of the class anyways), and James not only possessed this natural ability without the work (he was a natural at transfiguration) but also curiosity to put the material learned in class into action in creative ways causing utter chaos at Hogwarts. In their fourth year, Professor Flitwick had actually been hesitant to teach the class summoning charms when he considered how James would use it to disrupt the normal flow of school life, but it hadn't mattered, for the Marauders had looked the spell up in the library and had carried out the plan of summoning a couple hundred flocks of flamingos to swarm the Great Hall one morning at breakfast. But it had all been worth it when the flamingos flew in formation directly at Snape, toppling him from his seat at the Slytherin table, and giving him an alarming fear of the birds.

Yes, had his friends been here, James Potter certainly wouldn't have been sitting quietly looking out of a window, but he knew they would be returning soon. Sirius was serving detention from their last prank in which one of the normal vanishing stairs at Hogwarts had been slightly altered so that it vanished the person who stepped on it (the teachers were able to locate Snape after a few days). Remus was attending a Prefect's meeting, probably discussing the problem with the Marauders and their pranks, as Remus laughingly told his friends that the other prefects were very intimidated by them and begged him to "set them straight". And Peter was taking remedial potions in the dungeon, as he had always struggled with that class. No sooner had he thought of this did he hear the portrait hole open behind him. Sure enough, his friends entered.

"Relaxing, Prongs?" Sirius said jovially to him as he approached, and he ran his hand through his long dark hair when he saw several of the girls watching him dreamily.

"Just waiting for you, the idiot who couldn't manage to keep his own tail out of detention!" said James in a revved up mood, feeling excited that his friends were back and he didn't have to sit quietly anymore.

"Yes, many of the prefects were delighted that you were serving detention, Sirius, and called it 'a major victory in the battle against the Marauders!'" replied Remus to James's amusement and Sirius's disgust.

"Did they really say that, the whole thing about the battle against the Marauders?" James asked him, liking the idea that the prefects felt they were a major threat, as Peter took a seat next to Remus.

"Lily Evans did say that we were completely irresponsible jerks, immature and arrogant big heads following the most arrogant, big-headed, irresponsible, immature jerk-of-all-time James Potter." Remus answered, relishing those words.

"Yea, that girl has definitely got the hots for me." James said casually, stretching as he leaned back, letting her insult bounce off with out any concern.

"Who says James is the leader?" Sirius demanded in mock outrage, and the group laughed. Remus had taken out a book to read to James's dismay (reading wasn't the excitement he had hoped would come when his friends returned), titled Unusual Tricks of Our Time. Sirius, however, eyed the cover with interest.

"Any good pranks in there, Moony?" he asked genuinely curious, which shocked James as Sirius rarely had the patience to read books.

"None of the dangerous and sick-humored type that would interest you, Padfoot." Remus replied smugly, and Sirius immediately lost interest. "There is an odd one about time changing here that sounds cool, but it only worked once when some guy did it in…" Remus began to tell them in a long summary about the spell's history, but James jumped up so quickly that it knocked the book clear out of Remus's hands and whacked the side of Peter's face.

"What is it?" Remus asked in shock of the book flying out of his hands.

"Time travel!"

"Well, yes, it does happen to do with time travel." Remus said replacing his worried tone with a slightly more irked tone that James had just grasped that he was talking about time travel.

"How do you do that spell, Moony?" James demanded urgently. If they could do that spell and travel through time, they could find out all sorts of stuff…

"Well, it's really complex, and…" Remus began.

"Just tell me how to do it already!"

"Okay, okay! It has to be performed at exactly midnight, not a second before or after, and depending on the direction you want to move in time, you need to be facing exactly east or west. You need not only to be thinking of how far forward or backwards you want to travel, in hours of course, but also where in that time period you hope to land, adding or subtracting time zones and such. Then you have to say an incantation while still focusing on the number of hours you are traveling by. The incantation is "Vicus Eo", and needs to be shouted at midnight on the dot, but only once is necessary." Remus read to them, and even James was a little taken aback by the many conditions involved. He proceeded to read off a list of time travel rules imposed by the Ministry of Magic that were used for time turners and so were applied to this spell as well. "But again, this spell was only successful once, and is highly dangerous, and also very ILLEGAL!" he reminded them.

"Has that ever stopped us before?" James asked mischievously, bringing his voice lower so that others in the common room would not be able to hear.

"Very funny, James, I really thought you were serious about attempting the spell for a second there." Remus laughed, and even Peter gave a slight giggle. James was a little angry that he thought he had been joking.

"No joke. I say let's do it." Sirius nodded fervently as James said this, and Remus immediately stopped laughing. "We can do it, how hard can it be? Besides, we could find out all sorts of stuff about the future, like the results of Quidditch games and then we can make big bets and get rich!"

"You're not kidding? James, think about how dangerous time travel is! Even if we did manage the charm, which we won't, what would happen if we saw our future selves or they saw us? OR what if we find out something really bad, they say knowledge of the future could ruin the past, which would change the future, which would…" Remus rambled on in a frantic sort of way, but Sirius cut him off, now thoroughly liking the idea with the prospect of it being illegal and dangerous.

"Moony, you said it yourself. Those are all 'what ifs'. Besides, we're smart and won't disrupt the whole time-continuum-thingymobobwhatchamacallit. Think instead of what we could find out. Even better than getting rich, we could see what kind of lives we'll be living, our jobs we'll have, and all kinds of stuff! Don't you want to see who's going to be the future Mrs. Remus Lupin?" Sirius added with a grin, and James pondered the possibilities that had been brought up. This would be even cooler than he thought.

"If we get caught…" Remus started again, more forcefully in tone but James could see that even he wanted to do it too.

"That's why we won't get caught!" James said finally, and the matter was settled.