Chapter Text
“You can’t change time.” He’d known that rule, but he hadn’t listened. This particular rule, like the one that says, “You will not give a schoolgirl a device capable of ripping apart the fabric of reality,” exists for a reason. It is not because it is impossible to do. If it was, there would be no need for the rule. No, it is because you can change time, but it is very possible that the continuity of time to follow will not be able to cope.
Towards the end of Harry Potter’s third year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, his friend, Hermione Granger, took him back in time and while there, Harry created a paradox by saving himself (and Sirius Black) from the dementors.
It should not have happened.
It could not have happened.
It appeared to have happened for a little while, but the farther it got from that point, the more unstable time got... until, as 17-year-old Harry Potter was walking through the Forbidden Forest to sacrifice his life, time finally just fell apart around him.
One minute, his parents and Remus and Sirius were there and then abruptly, they weren’t. There was a pressure at his back, as if several enemies were lurking behind him. He spun fearfully, looking, listening, but no one was there, so he fumbled with the ring, trying to get his family back, and made himself ignore the feeling. Then the rushing sound started, quietly at first but growing quickly until it pressed in on his ears painfully. He clenched his fists harder, nails digging into his palms around the snitch and the ring, holding on as if to a lifeline. And then he felt a jerk as if someone had given the world a tug beneath him and sent him tumbling onto his arse. Only he was still upright, in so far as there was an upright anymore, and he was standing in a whirl of color and a riot of sound like someone hitting rewind on a playing cassette. Harry Potter stood wide-eyed and very, very still as everything moved around him.
*****
The snitch was gone, and the ring too. That was the first thing he noticed when the world stopped moving around him. He was holding his wand. He wasn’t in the forest anymore. He was on the school grounds and Hermione was frantically trying to get his attention. But it wasn’t the Hermione he knew. How old was she? She looked about 13, maybe 14. Third year. What did she want? Oh. There were two wounded. Ron and Snape? But... no time for the why. Growling. Snarling. His mind slowly assimilated that too. Then, sensing danger, the part of him that the last year of the war had honed took control.
“Get them inside the castle, Hermione!” he ordered.
The sounds of vicious animal combat had stopped and now there was just faint whimpering. He was already turning to head towards it when Hermione, little Hermione, stopped him.
“Where are you going?” she asked, taking a step to follow him.
He spun around and pinned her with a severe stare. His Hermione ought to know better than to second guess him in a situation like this... whatever this was. It felt real, so he was acting as if it was, just in case. But beyond that, he wasn’t sure yet.
“Get them to safety!” Harry snapped.
“But Harry, you can’t—” she protested, still moving to follow him.
Merlin save me from children! He thought, growling and he spat, “You will not leave two unconscious comrades out in the open! Do it! Go now!”
The tone worked. She went white but scurried off to take the levitating victims the last thirty meters to the castle where all three of them would be safe. As she fled, Harry could see a gold chain just peeking out from under her collar at the back of her neck, glowing unnaturally bright against the cold silver of moonlight and suddenly he recognized this. They’d changed history and now... had it un-changed?
Harry turned and ran. The whole exchange with Hermione had taken too long. Already he could hear that the whimpering had stopped. He tore across the grounds, heading in the direction the noise had come from. He crested the hill and saw, on the shore of the lake, the human form of Sirius Black falling to the ground, limp, as easily twenty or more dementors bore down on him. Harry shivered. He hated dementors. He’d grown good at the Patronus Charm — he’d had to — but the foul creatures were still his boggart. But Sirius was in trouble and if the world had just un-changed, Harry — the Harry right now — was his only chance because there would be no Harry of three hours from now waiting in the bushes to save him. He charged.
As Harry ran down the hill, the dementors turned — all but the one who now held Sirius by the front of his ragged shirt.
“Expecto Patronum!” Harry shouted. A thick, white, shapeless mist billowed out of the tip of his wand and he had a moment to reflect that perhaps simply assuming the spell would work when faced with so many foul beasts was not the best course of action mid-charge. And now he was surrounded by hungry dementors closing in.
“Expecto Patronum! Expecto Patronum! Expecto Patronum!” he cast frantically, but there were too many of them sucking at all his happiness and he was struggling to grab hold of a good memory. The sounds of war echoed in his ears, someone was screaming and crying, there was snarling and screeching and thrashing, and his mother pleading for his life. He fell to his knees but defiantly kept his wand arm outstretched. “Expecto Patronum,” he whispered weakly to no effect. He slumped to the ground in slow motion as his vision tunneled. His last thought as the fog of horrible memories and cold despair closed in was that at least he would be unconscious when it happened.
*****
Thwack! The back of Harry’s head impacted on the hard rock of the lake shore. The hood-less dementor dropped him and straightened looking quite satisfied. And then his prey moved and it did so rather faster and more coherently than the recently-Kissed were usually capable of.
“Unnghh!” Harry moaned.
Three dementors leapt back from where they had floated as they’d watched their leader feast. Several at the back of the crowd drifted away at speed, bumping into and scrabbling at each other in the kind of frantic retreat that might have put Harry in mind of humans in a zombie flick, if he’d ever been allowed to watch zombie movies, that is.
“Arrgh!” Harry screeched. His mouth tasted like death, his lips were throbbing painfully, his muscles felt all mushy, and his head was bleeding where the dementor had dropped him.
The dementor saw him move and came in close again, hesitantly, uncertain what had happened. It reached for him again and Harry feared he was really in for it this time. But at the last moment, two Patroni, a cat and a fox, charged in among the remaining dementors. Hermione must have got help! He was dropped again as the rest of the dementors dispersed and fled.
The sources of the patroni, Madam Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall, both wearing their dressing gowns, reached Harry as he crawled to Sirius’s side. They didn’t understand. Professor McGonagall needlessly Stunned Sirius and Madam Pomfrey took Harry bodily around the shoulders and tried to pull him away.
“No!” Harry fought to get to his godfather to do something.
“Mr Potter, that’s Sirius Black,” Madam Pomfrey hissed.
“He’s innocent! Pettigrew framed him!”
“Merlin, Mordred, and Arthur!” Madam Pomfrey swore. She’d finally seen Harry’s lips.
Professor McGonagall looked up from hurriedly conjuring a levitating stretcher under Sirius’ body and binding him to it securely, saw Harry’s lips and gasped.
Before Harry knew what was happening, a stretcher had been conjured beneath him and was slowly rising, lifting him off the ground.
“You just lay down, Mr Potter. We’ve got to get inside quickly now,” Madam Pomfrey told him.
The pain of his head wound rammed him punishingly, breaking through the fading adrenaline high. He laid down on his side and tried hard not to sick up. The women didn’t waste any time after that in getting back to the safety of the castle. Harry watched the corridors pass by through half-lidded eyes, trying unsuccessfully to block out the pain again as they went. In the hospital wing, Madam Pomfrey set him down on a clean bed, caused the stretcher to disappear, and hurried around the ward collecting the supplies she would need to deal with his wounds.
Professor McGonagall had taken Sirius elsewhere. It wasn’t surprising really — Sirius was beyond help now. Ron’s freckled foot was just sticking out of a cast in one of the beds halfway down the ward, mostly hidden behind a screen. Madam Pomfrey must have splinted it to give her potion time to heal the bad break. Two beds closer, the sheets were mussed and the pillow was out of place. It seemed that Snape had already regained consciousness and left. The rest of the ward was empty.
Madam Pomfrey returned and quickly magically cleaned and healed the cut on his head, tested him for concussion then treated him for one, and at last passed him a pain potion. She passed him a bar of chocolate, once the potions had taken effect and he felt a bit better. He was allowed to carefully sit up and take off his bloody robe and shirt and cast a charm to clean his mouth of the absolutely horrid taste that had been tormenting him since the Kiss.
Madam Pomfrey cast a strong cleaning spell over his skin that got rid of the worst of the blood but did nothing for the cold, slimy feeling that remained from the dementors. Then she left him to dispose of the bloody clothing and fetch a hospital robe for Harry. She only had to cross the ward but before she’d even returned, Harry, body exhausted from what he’d been through and further taxed by the healing, fell asleep, chocolate barely half finished. She used a Switching Spell to trade his trousers for the gown and then manually slipped each of his arms into the sleeves and tied the strings at the back of the neck. He didn’t seem to notice.
It wasn’t much later that he woke up, perhaps no more than half an hour. He was still tired, but his subconscious mind had been working fervently trying to make sense of all this and when it finally did, it roused him to inform him of its findings. It had recalled everything he knew about time and time travel, his memories from the moments before the un-changing, and even large parts of the battle in the Department of Mysteries where he’d seen all sorts of time and Sight artifacts. He’d awoken convinced that his interpretation of events was correct. He’d created a paradox that had strained the continuity of time, it had broken and time had unraveled around him.
But that wasn’t what worried him. That problem had a fairly simple answer: don’t use Hermione’s Time Turner. What did worry him was that those memories that were examined while he’d slept were fading quickly, fleeting like a dream. In their place, he could now remember with clarity Remus, Sirius, and Peter in the Shrieking Shack convincing him of Sirius’ innocence, Peter’s escape, and the prophecy that warned that Peter would bring Voldemort back. These were the kinds of details he’d long forgotten. His mind was rearranging itself so the memories that ought to be recent in this time became so again and to do that, others had to move out of the way. Harry sat bolt upright, frantic with the need to commit his most important information about what he’d been through to paper before they faded away. Harry cast his eyes all through the still, silent ward looking for ink, quill, and parchment but spotted none.
“Bugger!” he cursed under his breath. He considered and discarded trying to go back to his dorm. He knew Madam Pomfrey had spells to tell her if anyone passed through those doors. He’d never make a clean getaway. Then he had an idea. “Dobby!” he called softly. You didn’t need to speak very loudly for a house elf to know it was needed no matter where it was.
A tiny pop sounded just to Harry’s left and he turned to see familiar big eyes peering at him from a friendly green face. “Mr Harry Potter, sir, is needing Dobby?” the elf cheeped loudly in his own elfish version of a whisper.
Harry grinned broadly. It was so good to see Dobby alive. But there would be time for getting reacquainted later. Right now, he needed to write. “I need you to go to my trunk and get some money, then go to Diagon Alley and buy me a diary with protective spells... and a Self-Inking Quill while you’re there. I need them right away,” Harry explained. Then he realized that it was the middle of the night and groaned. “No, forget that. I think I have a Self-Inking Quill in my trunk. If I don’t, borrow one from Hermione. Then go to the seventh floor. There’s a room that doesn’t appear unless you walk by it three times thinking of what you need. Look for the paintings of... a castle under siege and... a ship in a storm; it’s between those. Check in there and see if you can find me an empty diary, or one with lots of blank pages.”
“Dobby is happily doing this, Mr Harry Potter, sir,” Dobby said squeakily, still trying to whisper even as he bounced excitedly from foot to foot. He disappeared with a small pop leaving Harry to try not to think about anything in case it displaced important memories.
Just then, noise began to filter in from the corridor outside, providing a useful distraction. The doors opened and a crowd of people bustled noisily into the Hospital Wing. Minister Fudge was there with an auror bodyguard and an additional arrest detail to pick up Sirius’ body. Dumbledore was keeping pace beside the Minister while Snape and Hermione trailed behind. Hermione separated from the group as soon as they were in the ward, forced a tiny smile through her worry for Harry as she passed, and then slipped behind the screen around Ron’s bed with a last nervous glance at the Minister and his entourage.
“Mr Potter, awake, I see,” Minister Fudge proclaimed loudly.
Madam Pomfrey hurried out of her office looking outraged and tried to send them all away but the Minister waved a hand at her dismissively and took the seat beside Harry’s bed and Professor Dumbledore took Madam Pomfrey aside for a quick whispered word that made her bristle but apparently left her no choice but to allow the visit.
Harry chose to accept the distraction with only minor irritation and greeted the Minister only a bit curtly. “Minister.”
“You’ve had a very trying night, from what I hear,” Fudge began. “This whole nasty business with Black... I’m afraid the Ministry owes you a very sincere apology, Mr Potter.”
Harry bit back a snarky remark about Fudge’s questionable ability to be sincere. In this moment, it served his purposes to apply himself to a difficult task like thinking politically. So instead, he replied, “I appreciate that, Minister, but I’ve had a horrible night. Do you think we could discuss this another time? It could be good for me to be seen getting along with the Ministry.” He knew Scrimgeour, the only Minister he had any real political experience with, would have appreciated that and he assumed that this Fudge, before Harry’s public image had taken a beating under Rita Skeeter’s quill, would appreciate it too.
He realized too late, when Fudge’s face flashed surprise, then calculation, then resignation, that the simple remark could be taken another way. It might seem, to someone who dealt in bribes and favors as much as Fudge, that Harry was suggesting that he’d be looking for reasons that lambasting the Ministry over, well, whatever story Fudge chose to believe about what had happened, would be unnecessary.
Well, maybe I am, Harry thought. Maybe if I’m careful, this time I’ll avoid having the Ministry out to ruin me.
“Indeed, well, I shall look forward to it,” the Minister said stiffly, no doubt already beginning a running tab in his head of what Harry might require to play nicely with his administration over this nasty business. Then he forced a jovial look and he turned back to Dumbledore. “Well, Mr Potter does seem well. And now I do believe we should see to the transfer of the prisoner. It is quite late, after all, and I’m sure we all have beds to return to. I know I do. Dawlish, Williamson.”
The two aurors looked to Professor Snape who seemed eager to show them the way to Sirius’ soulless body. The whole group from the Ministry marched out of the ward, the Minister merely nodding a farewell to Dumbledore who lingered, clearly with other business on his mind.
The Headmaster closed the doors behind them and then turned back to Harry.
Hermione reappeared from behind the screen. Knowing Madam Pomfrey’s method of treating broken bones, Harry was fairly sure that Ron was sleeping soundly under the influence of a very strong Sleeping Potion to ensure he didn’t jostle the bones and cause them to heal crookedly. He’d probably be out for eight hours or more, and even the noise of Harry’s visitors wouldn’t have roused him.
Dumbledore took the seat the Minister had so recently vacated. “Ms Granger, do join us,” he said. Hermione hurried over to stand on the opposite side of Harry’s bed.
“At this very moment, the aurors and the Minister are on their way to the West Tower where Sirius Black is being kept. They will very likely execute him for his crimes,” Dumbledore said gravely.
Hermione gasped, “But he’s innocent!”
“He has not acted like an innocent man,” Dumbledore replied. “Going on the run, attacking Gryffindor’s guardian portrait, and attempting to kidnap Harry here which is what I’m sure Minister Fudge believes happened tonight.”
“But that’s not what happened! Isn’t there anything you can do?” Hermione pleaded.
Harry knew where this was going and it made him angry. Hermione was a third-year bookworm and Harry was in the hospital wing with a concussion. In what world were they just the people to send gallivanting off through time to steal the body of someone in Sirius’ condition?
“It doesn’t matter,” Harry said through gritted teeth, interrupting whatever choice words Dumbledore had been about to profess. “Sirius is gone. He was Kissed.”
“That may not be true. Clearly something wonderful was at work tonight since you, Harry, survived the same. There is nothing I can do to prevent the Ministry taking Sirius away but if there was a way the two of you could make it to the tower before the Minister and get Sirius out without anyone being the wiser, I can make sure that the very best healers see to him,” Dumbledore said.
Harry scoffed. Had that sort of thing really worked on him as a kid? He thought rather embarrassingly that it must have considering some of the trouble he’d got up to. Unicorns and a midnight detention, in particular, came to mind. Hmm. He’d forgotten that one as the years had passed.
“But we couldn’t get to him first. Surely, the Minister is nearly there already,” Hermione said, pulling Harry from his thoughts.
Harry wanted to roll his eyes at his young friend.
Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled. “Alas, I fear you are right. If only we had more time.”
Harry could almost see the cartoon light bulb pop into existence shining brightly over Hermione’s head. “Oh,” she said, grinning and reaching for the chain around her neck.
Dumbledore smiled at her and quickly began explaining his plan. “Now, pay attention,” said Dumbledore, speaking slowly and very clearly. “Sirius is locked on the seventh floor of the West Tower. If all goes well, you will be able to save more than one innocent life tonight. But remember this, both of you: you must not be seen. Ms Granger, you know the law... you know what is at stake.”
“No,” Harry interrupted.
Dumbledore and Hermione both turned to look at him with twin expressions of disappointment. “Harry, we have to save Sirius, and we can save Buckbeak too... that is what you meant, isn’t it, Headmaster?” Hermione pleaded.
“It is,” Dumbledore agreed, giving her an indulgent smile before turning back to Harry with a concerned look.
“We aren’t going,” Harry said firmly.
Hermione looked about to speak again but before she could, Dumbledore stood and frowned down at Harry.
“I can see your experience tonight has affected you, Harry. Perhaps, I was wrong to ask this of you so soon. I only thought that since time is of the essence... but no matter. I will leave you to recover, Harry. Ms Granger, I’ll see you back to your Tower.”
“I think I’ll stay with Harry,” she said, biting her lip nervously.
“Alright, but it’s very late, Ms Granger. Do not linger,” Dumbledore said, giving her a small smile.
No sooner had Dumbledore shut the door behind him than Hermione resumed her attempts to convince him. But slowly, the determined line of her mouth slipped and turned into a small, resigned pout.
“I just thought... Sirius said you could live with him,” Hermione said softly. She seemed sad for Harry’s loss of the future with his godfather that she imagined he could have had.
Harry recalled bitterly that even when Sirius had lived, his godfather had never taken him in. There’d been maybe four or six weeks spread over nearly two years when Harry had stayed in the same house as Sirius and for all of those, it had always seemed like it was the Weasley family he was staying with and Sirius was just hanging around like the family dog, even if it was his house and he only had paws some of the time.
“There’s nothing we can do, Hermione,” he said at last. “You can’t change time. What’s happened, happened. Sirius is worse than dead. Anything the Ministry can do now will only be a mercy.”
Hermione sighed and nodded, accepting the logic in Harry’s argument at last. Harry knew she wasn’t his 18-year-old Hermione, but he did have some memories of his third year back so he could now remember what she’d been like at this age. She was still rather too fond of rules and books and she didn’t think of herself as an adventurer. She was the brains, Ron was the muscle and he was the man who shouted “Charge!” He remembered, not really thinking those things, but simply knowing them in his third year.
But then, just for a fraction of a moment, Harry saw a look of defiance cross Hermione’s face and leapt to head that off at the start.
“You can’t change time, Hermione. Don’t even try. I know you don’t need me to go back, but I also know that you’re smart enough to realize that you shouldn’t go either. Promise me you won’t,” he said gravely.
Hermione blushed, caught in the act of plotting, looked ashamedly at the floor and nodded. “Okay.”
“Good,” Harry said, then added awkwardly, “I want you to be safe.” That was right, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that how you justified things to children?
Hermione gave him a very small smile, still looking at the floor and tucked her Time Turner back under her robe.
“It’s late,” Harry said. “You should get some sleep.”
Hermione nodded. She whispered goodbye and left Harry alone in the quiet ward.