Time Unwound

Chapter 1 – History

August 10, 2007

Harry's chest rose and fell in quick repetition. He closed his eyes tightly as he drew in a deep breath, doing everything in his power to steady himself in an attempt to calm himself. He stretched one brief moment in time out long enough to clear his senses and regain his composure. When he opened his eyes again his senses exploded with his current predicament. Blue fire surrounded him, the smell of burning flesh filled his nostrils and shrieks of pain… of death rang in his ears. He clutched his wand tightly in his hand as he slowly raised his head from the safety of the embankment. His eyes surveyed the latest battlefield, the newest casualties in the Second War, or as it was coming to be known, the Decade. Harry spotted a tuft of silvery blond hair flowing out from beneath a broken body. Harry's eyes stung with tears, with the reality of who that must be; the last of his direct relatives, Fleur Weasley. She'd saved his life more times than he could count and now she had finally laid it down for him.

Not able to look at the sight of her any longer he moved his eyes again this time towards the source of the blue flames. Gabrielle Delacour hovered several feet off of the ground not far from where her sister had fallen. Her Veela wings fanned to their great expanse, fluttering as if she was going to take flight and in each hand she held a ball of fire. Even with her face contorted to the scaly Veela features Harry could see the rage etched upon her, he could feel it in the heat of the fire she was producing.

The fire had obviously been successful in backing the Death Eaters away from she and Harry but now Harry could see them apprehensively advancing again. While his heart wanted to grieve his mind knew it would have to wait. He ran towards Gabrielle duplicating himself five times over as he did this. When his five doppelgangers were running in a perfectly straight line behind him, Harry cast a disillusionment charm on himself. With that process complete he focused his energy on his duplicates, sending them in five different directions hexing anything that moved.

"Gabrielle," he hissed as he grabbed her foot. "We are all that's left. Come."

"Non, je ne laisserai pas ma soeur," she told him in her native tongue.

"I don't want leave Fleur either but she's gone and we stand no chance," he pled. "Please Gabrielle, I can't lose you too."

Gabrielle finally lowered herself to the ground and the moment she looked it the direction of Harry's face her head immediately jerked to one side and her wings became massive, encircling both of them in their protective embrace. Several spells bounced off of her but Harry knew she could only take so many hits. He circled an arm around her waist and muttered an incantation under his breath. The air around them began to swirl at an alarming rate and a sound as if all of the air were being sucked from the earth filled their ears. Pressure began building around them and within seconds a hole opened up in the ground and appeared to swallow the wizard and Veela whole.

The rushing of wind and a sudden loud bang delivered Harry and Gabrielle back to a villa in the South of France. The home was scant with only one other inhabitant, Mireya Tollmache, a French Unspeakable and the only of Harry's raiding party that did not go out with him that evening.

"Damn it!" he cursed as he stepped away from Gabrielle. "That's it! We're finished."

"Everyone?" Mireya asked as she looked from Harry to Gabrielle.

"Oui," Gabrielle answered with a nod. "Chacun."

"Perhaps now we shall speak of my plan, Harry?"

Harry didn't answer as he kicked the chair nearest him causing it to fly across the room and collided with the portrait of Albus Dumbledore. Though not needed, Dumbledore ducked appropriately as the offending chair splintered against the canvas.

"I daresay I've been through enough, Harry," he told his young prodigy calmly.

"Bugger off, Dumbledore!" he shouted at the old man. "I don't even know why I risked my arse to save your portrait from Hogwarts. Fat lot of good you've done me over the years!"

"Harry," Mireya tried again in a much calmer voice.

"No," Harry said as he turned away. "We're done, Mireya. Nothing can be salvaged."

He didn't give either woman an opportunity to say another word. He turned on his heels and disappeared into the back of the house. The enlarged villa was hardly necessary now. The ten bedrooms wouldn't be filled tonight. Harry slammed his bedroom door behind him causing a gasp to fill the room.

"Sorry Gin," he apologized as he sat on the bed and stared at her.

"How bad was it?" she asked gingerly as to not to upset him worse.

"It's just me, Gabrielle and Mireya now," he answered as he rubbed his face then looked again at the portrait hanging on the wall.

He stood and slowly approached, stretching a hand out as he did so. Ginny too reached out but they both knew it would make no difference, they'd never actually feel each other this way but it didn't stop Harry from pressing his hand against the canvas. Ginny too tried her best to hold his hand.

"I'm sorry, Harry," she whispered as a tear raced down her cheek. "I wish I was still with you."

"So do I, Gin," he admitted quietly.

They pressed their foreheads together and Harry stood like that for a long while. It was never the same as touching his wife but her portrait was all he had left of her. He wasn't even given the peace of burying her body. Voldemort made sure he destroyed Ginevra Potter completely. All that was left of her when he was through was her wedding band, which Voldemort now wore on a chain around his neck. Harry had seen it dangled before him several times in the past three years and he wanted nothing more than to strangle the monster with it. Ginny's ring had become Voldemort's final Horcrux, and the very thought sickened him. Voldemort made the rings a Horcrux for two reasons; the first being that he was a sick monster and the perversion of it appealed to him, and the second being that if Harry did ever get a hold of it to destroy it he would have to destroy his marriage bond as well.

In the eleven years since the war had broken out in full force Harry had endured a number of atrocities. His body and soul bore the scars of a war that had gone badly for all who had fought against Voldemort. And looking back Harry knew it all had begun at the end of his fifth year. That night in the Ministry had set the tone for what the war was bound to turn into. It had seemed heroic and valiant at the time but now Harry realized the very best thing he could have done that day was stay put. He'd learned that lesson over and over but still he fought on even after his wife was killed.

Hours of solitude passed before Harry finally dragged himself away from Ginny's portrait and lay down on the bed they had once shared. He gazed at her and she studied the pain on his face. Nothing was going to make this right for him. She may be just a portrait now but she knew that man inside and out and she knew that his spirit and resolve were hanging on by a very thin thread. And she imagined that the idea of taking a wand to himself was looking quite prosperous at this point.

"Harry, Mireya came in while you were gone," she spoke softly to him.

"What has Dumbledore always said about time travel, Ginny?"

"I know, I know," she conceded. "But Harry, what's left? I know you're ready to give up I can see it on your face, but can you really leave this world to Voldemort? First it was England then France, next it will be Germany and the rest of Europe. How long will it take him to get control of the entire planet?"

"Do you think it will come to that?"

Sadly, she nodded at him. "Harry, you're the one prophesied to defeat him, no one else."

"And I'm doing a bang up job of it."

"I didn't say it to blame you," she said sharply in order to curtail his self bashing tendencies. "Just to make my point; you're the only one who can do it so what do you imagine will happen if you don't?"

Harry turned his head away staring up at the ceiling instead of at Ginny. "I just don't understand how the sand from a time turner is going to help us."

"It's not for you to understand," Ginny said quickly. "That is Mireya's job. She is the Unspeakable with a specialty in time turning. You let her get you to the past and then you stop this before it starts."

"Ginny, if I thought it would work I'd do it in a heartbeat, but I just don't have faith that it will."

"And you know you're defeated now so what's the difference, Harry?"

Harry just smiled at that. She was right. "You know me too well."

Ginny returned his smile. "Get some sleep, Harry. We'll talk more in the morning."

Ginny waited in her portrait, watching over Harry until he finally dozed off. Once she was certain he was asleep she exited the canvas of her own portrait and walked what she liked to refer to as the corridor of abyss until she reached the portrait of Hermione Granger, which was hanging in the potions lab in the basement of the house. Before her death Hermione had not consented easily to having a portrait made and had only done so when Ginny promised her that she would be destroyed once the war was over.

Hermione looked up from her desk as Ginny entered the portrait. She pressed her finger to her mouth in gesture from Ginny to say nothing as she picked her wand up from the desk and cast it at each border of the painting preventing any other portrait inhabitants from wandering in. When it was done she looked back at Ginny.

"Albus is suspicious."

"He's still dead set against this?"

Hermione just shrugged. "No, I don't think so to be honest, but old habits die hard."

"Indeed," Mireya agreed as she entered the room and sealed the door behind her. "I have given Gabrielle a dreamless sleeping draught. She is quite distraught."

"What happened?" Hermione asked having not been filled in on the events of the evening.

"Only she and Harry made it back," Mireya replied. "Everyone is dead."

Hermione look flabbergasted for a moment but then said nothing of the loss of that last of the resistance. Instead her face set in a serious expression. "Well we've nothing to lose now. If Harry won't go back it will have to be you, Mireya."

"Oui," she nodded at Hermione. "I've realized that too, Hermione."

Mireya and the echoes of Hermione Granger and Ginny Potter worked for the next three days straight. They went over every syllable in Mireya's notes, combed over inch text on time turners and travel, and poured all that they had into perfecting the theory behind tarring a soul from the body and applied it all to sending the soul back in time to an earlier version of its corporal self.

Finally with their theory completed Mireya pulled apart one of the three time turners she possessed. She carefully separated sixteen grains of sand into one pile and then thirteen into another pile and finally ten into her last pile. Once that was done she was careful to store the remaining sand safely away so it wouldn't interact with the charms she was about to apply to her three piles. She started with the smallest pile and waved her wand over them until she had engorged them from one minute of time into one hour. She checked each for stability and once she was satisfied she stretched the hour into a day then checked again. She repeated this process until her ten grains were no longer ten minutes but ten years worth of turning sand.

The grains could no longer be called grains though. They were rough and rugged and still looked like sand but they were the size of marbles now. Mireya had anticipated this though and had already assembled an appropriately sized turner to hold them. When the ten year turner was complete she repeated the process on the other two piles of sand. After the completion of the thirteen and sixteen year turners, Hermione and Ginny insisted that she take a break and get some much needed rest. In the grand scheme of their plan she had completed only the easiest part. The toughest challenge was still ahead of her and she needed all of the wits about her to complete it properly.

After a day of rest and checking after Harry and Gabrielle, whom were both still sulking, Mireya returned to her lab and took to the task of changing history. She took to layering the time turners with containment charms and protective wards in order to encase the soul and then she cast the curse that would certainly send chills up Harry's spine if he knew of it, the Horcrux creation curse; the curse needed to sever the soul. But onto that horror she heaped and extra helping of abuse. Her severe spell was meant to completely severe the soul from the body as the grains of sand pulled the individual's spirit through time. She knew full well the repercussions of this act; the body would immediately die. There was no coming back from this trip.

It seemed like it had been a year since she'd set to her task of creating the time turners, and while she had worked on the theory for most of her adult life, it had only taken her six days to assemble the three time turners. She looked at her work sitting on the table before her. It was both an amazing and desperate bit of work and in her joy of success she also felt the cool chill of the destruction she was capable of. Whoever attempted this, whether it be her or Harry, ran a very real risk of simply killing themselves.

"It is time to talk with Harry," she sighed, not really aiming her comment at either of the women hovering in Hermione's portrait. It wasn't hard to find him; he hadn't left his room in days. "Harry," she called as she wrapped gently on his door. "I must speak with you." She waited for several moments before knocking again. "Please Harry."

The door slowly opened and Harry stood there with it only half open. He was in full bread now and regardless of the fact that he'd been in bed it was obvious from his bloodshot eyes that he hadn't had much sleep.

"Have finished commandeering my wife?"

Mireya sighed heavily at this remark. "I have no wish to be cruel to you, Harry, but your wife died many years ago and if you wish to do anything about it you will come zee me in the lab this instant."

She gave him no chance to response just turned and opened he'd follow. She was pleasantly surprised to her his heavy footsteps behind her. It made her wonder how a man who stormed about could be so light footed in battle. But in all of her musings it did not matter why or how Harry had become the way he had. Her plan was to use his knowledge to change the past and that was all that matter at this point. If he would not consent to go himself she would need what was inside his head so that she could affect the future from the past.

Harry's eyes immediately fell on the table where the time turners sat, each larger then the first. From there he looked at the portrait on the wall only to find it empty. Though he suspected the inhabitant and a friend were indeed present but just not making themselves known.

"Just give it to me straight," he said to Mireya as he had a seat on a nearby stool.

Mireya nodded quickly as she picked up the first time turner. "If you'd like to know how they work I'd be happy to share it with you but I think what is most important is that this time turner will divide the soul from the body as it is activate, making only the spirit travel back in time."

"And how does the spirit inhabitant the body once it has arrived at its desired location?"

"I have charmed the devices with a type of encasement charm. It should reunite and hold the spirit and body together no matter what time they land in."

Harry picked up the turner nearest him and inspected it. His knowledge of time turners was limited. He'd only needed to know how to operate them, but he knew it always took you to the exact place you began turning the device at, only moving time backwards not location.

"And how will it carry me from France back to England?" he asked.

"It will not," she answered. "You will have to be in the location in which you wish to arrive before you begin turning."

Harry looked from the time turner to Mireya. "And how do you purpose I get back into England undetected?"

"Well, that will not be easy but I feel confident you will manage it."

Harry almost snorted in response to that but he too knew he could get back in Voldemort's territory and use the time turner before the dark forces descended upon his location.

"How precise is the timing? I will have to know exactly where I was in the past to connect with my body."

"Yes, that is true," she agreed as she set down the ten year turner. "And I have measured the grains as precisely as possible. The one you are holding sixteen years, four months, one week, six days, thirteen hours and seven minutes."

Harry peered at her with one raised eyebrow. "I'm not sure who is more anal, you or Hermione."

"I will take that as a compliment!" she snapped at him.

"Sixteen years," he said aloud as he rubbed his chin. "That means you can't get me back further than eleven."

"I could try if it were necessary. I have two more time turners, but it would hardly do you any good. I'm sorry but there is nothing we can do about your parents. You can't go back further than your own life and you will have little effect as an infant hunting Horcruxes. You may also be bound by your own abilities at the time of your arrival until your body and spirit mend fully."

"It will be my soul though right? I mean not the one my eleven year old self had with the Ministry's trace on it and Voldemort's Horcrux attached to it."

"In theory it will be the soul you posses now and all of your memories," she tried to sound reassuring but there was no way she could guarantee it to Harry. "There will be one way to test it though."

"What's that?"

"I believe you were a Parseltongue when the Horcrux was with you?"

Harry nodded. "You're right and if I'm not then we can assume my trace gone as well." He studied the object in his hands for several minutes before looking at Mireya again. "What if it doesn't work?"

"Well I have thought that perhaps we should both go," she told him. "You use the one in your hand in hopes that you will destroy all of the Horcruxes and Voldemort long before he can do any damage, and I shall go back ten years to be available to you once you come of age again if you should need me."

"And what of Gabrielle?"

"She has suffered enough," Mireya said quietly. "She is a strong witch and wonderful Auror but you are aware as well as I that she would be better off outside of this plan. If history were to remain unchanged we would be sending her back to years of captivity with those monsters. You know perfectly well what they did to her."

Harry could hardly forget. He was the one who had found her in the wizarding camp. She'd never once turned on her Veela charm but the Death Eaters had spent years pretending they were helpless under their effects and were always spared an inch when they took their indulgences in her, and they'd taken liberties so fiercely with her that not only had she become incapable of having children but the sight of a man frightened her for years to come afterwards, and if one dared reach out to touch her they certainly incurred her other Veela charms. It was Harry and Harry alone that could touch her in any way but even that had taken years to get to. She'd let him hold on only long enough to transport then departed his company immediately.

"We must see to her safety here and now, in this time in case we both fail," Harry insisted.

Mireya couldn't agree more. "I will take her to the colony in Cape Town. We know witches hiding there that she can hide with."

That seemed acceptable to Harry. To their best knowledge the colony in South Africa was still unknown to Voldemort and the last person who'd been sent to it was two years ago. Harry clinched his eyes shut remembering the look on little Thomas's face when Harry left him behind. But the danger was much too great to keep a four year old around and Harry could not be his savior. He had not been able to save anyone and children were never allowed to stay in England or France. He'd left Neville's son with the same family that had taken in little Teddy Lupin. His godson promised to treat Thomas as a brother and look out for him. That had been the last time he'd seen a child's face… a child that was alive that is.

Harry shook his head vigorously to wash the thought away. It did not do to dwell on what he could not change. But in that very same thought another streaked; Mireya was giving him the chance not to dwell but to repair. Could he truly mend the past? Could he rewrite history with no one the wiser of it?

August 18, 2007

Harry took one last look across the pristine waters of Mediterranean Sea. He took comfort in the calmness of the sight, taking in deep breaths of the salty air, letting it cleanse him before he embarked on a journey that would correct history or lead him to his death. Either way he needed the gentle sight of the sea before he began his expedition.

Finally content with what he must do, Harry turned his back on the morning waters and Apparated with a pop so soft the lapping waves easily covered any noise that he made. He arrived on the edge of the small village boarding DePanne in Belgium. With his time turner secured around his neck, his wand in his right hand and a small leather bound book in his left hand, he made his way north by east, towards another body of water: the English Channel.

These waters were not welcoming in any way. They'd been filled with blood shed as the Death Eaters had driven what was left of the Aurors and the Order from England a year prior. Seeing Harry's forces in retreat had given Voldemort great pleasure but Harry knew he'd done right by those witches and wizards. He'd bought them another year. Though now standing at the bank he wasn't sure that meant much of anything. Their retreat into France only gave invitation to Voldemort to advance his forces in search of Harry.

And it all hardly matter any longer, there was only one thing he could do to truly right his situation and the deaths of the countless wizards who had fought for him. He raised his left hand and looked at the book. Tales of Beedle the Bard. He'd still never come to read the infernal book and was certain Snape had made it a portkey only to rib Harry further about those damn hallows. But he was glad he'd kept it. He needed direct transport to Hogwarts. He had to get to Gryffindor Tower before the Death Eaters caught him. They couldn't bring down the castle's wards but they could get through them with some effort. And Harry knew that Voldemort would send his Death Eaters once the trespass alarm indicated that it was none other than Harry Potter who had entered the country. According to his own calculations in crossing Voldemort's boundaries before he had two minutes for a response, add to it the five or so minutes that the curse breakers needed to gap the wards and Harry figured he had ten minutes at best to get from the Headmaster's office to the room that held the first year Gryffindor boys in 1991. Then he would need to situate what was likely a badly damaged room so that he could turn his time turner on the area where his bed sat and hope upon hope that little Harry Potter was in his dorm room as he was supposed to be after curfew on December 31, 1991.

Harry glanced down at his watch. "7:32," he said to himself as he began to pace in the fresh morning light. "A few more minutes, Potter."

He was doing his best to get himself to 8:45 pm on Near Year's Eve. He wasn't certain of it but he could have sworn he and Ron had been getting ready for a game of exploding snap about that time.

Ron.

His thoughts lingered for a moment on his best mate. The boy he'd grown up with and the man he watched die. They'd all died of course but Ron had been the first death to truly rip Harry's heart out. It wasn't long after Harry's eighteenth birthday.

"No use in reliving it now," Harry hissed to himself to keep his thoughts on track.

He glanced at his watch again, 7:35. Close enough. Harry opened the book to his desired page, the first page of the tale of The Warlock's Hairy Heart; somehow very befitting of both Snape and the moment.

Harry tapped his wand against the page and whispered, "Porti," and the unfriendly hook of the portkey activated, yanking him by his navel back to the castle Harry had considered his home. The spinning stopped almost as abruptly as it began and Harry, being much more seasoned with portkey travel, landed on his feet running. His paid no mind to the few portraits that remain hanging in the Headmaster's office as he bolted from it at lightening speed. The staircases no longer move in the castle and Harry's grateful for it as he makes his speedy ascent to the seventh floor. He's surprised to find the fat lady sitting in her portrait when he arrives at the entrance to the Gryffindor Common Room.

"Harry!" the fat lady gasped at him. "Oh I knew you'd be back."

"I haven't the time," he pants out between deep breaths and counting the seconds in his head. "I've only minutes, Prudence, please let me pass and stall all others to all ends."

"Harry, you're asking that I lay—"

"I know what I ask," he insisted. "But this is our one and only last chance. Please Prudence?"

"Yes, yes of course," she agreed quickly upon realizing his urgency and swung open for him. "They will have to forcibly remove me to get through my sheltered halls."

Harry climbed through the portrait hole without knowledge of the audience he had. Several of the ghosts had followed his flight and upon hearing his conversation with the fat lady knew the importance of the moment. He wasn't back for memories or to lie down and die, but to fight anew and they were going to do all they could to help him.

Harry continued up the spell damaged stairs to the dormitory he once shared with four boys. He had to jump several missing steps to get there and threw open the door to find that a wall was missing. Harry quickly erected a concealment charm against the exposed morning light so that anyone on broom would not immediately see him. Then he set about reconstructing his four post bed in its proper place. He had just finished when he heard an explosion followed by shouting. Harry fired a locking charm and a stone shield against the door as he climbed up on the bed. Clutching his wand in one hand, Harry immediately went for the chain dangling from his neck. He turned it over quickly, counting each turn aloud.

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…"

Another loud bang vibrated the walls to the dorm room.

"Eight, nine, ten, eleven…" he must finish.

"Harry Potter!" Voldemort's voice rang out closer than Harry expected.

"Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen," he continued.

His hastily cast charm failed and the entrance to the dorm broke open. Three Death Eaters stood there with Voldemort just behind them looking at Harry.

"Sixteen," he said with a silly smirk on his face, looking directly at Voldemort. "Time's up, Tom!" he shrieked before a brilliant flash of light imploded on him.