Roses of Yesterday

Chapter 1

An Old Life Started Anew

Blinking his eyes slowly, Harry found himself in a most peculiar setting. Sitting up gingerly, he looked around - at the cupboard under the stairs of the Dursley household.

"What the bloody hell is going on here?" he swore to himself softly, rubbing his head.

"Harry! Get up!"

Harry jumped at the sound of Aunt Petunia's voice and instantaneously, a dozen obscenities ran through his brain, all expressing his confusion. Cautiously, he opened the door and stepped out.

"About time you were up," snarled his aunt as he walked into the kitchen, the expression on his face displaying his astonishment. "Now come here, I need you to cook the bacon. Don't just stand there gaping!"

"But...Aunt Petunia..." he said weakly, not believing what he was seeing.

"No 'buts', Harry. Now, cook the blasted bacon."

Numbly, he walked over to the stove and took the spatula from his aunt, who immediately went up the stairs. Dimly, he heard her cooing to Dudley, "Duddykins, it's time to wake up..."

Harry looked around at the kitchen, so familiar in it's sparkling cleanliness. There was the table (which was in surprisingly good shape considering the amount of abuse it suffered from Dudley), the nondescript clock on the wall, the dish rack next to the sink, the refrigerator with various pictures and notes on it, the dishwasher... "Wait a second..." he murmured to himself. The dishwasher was the old one - the Dursley's had gotten a new one right before his fourth year, one which he had never been allowed to touch. Harry turned slowly toward the fridge again, looking at the small calendar in particular which Aunt Petunia used for recording appointments and dates. It was set to July, and more than half the days had already been crossed off, a little "X" marked across the little box in the corner of each with the date in it. It said today was the 24^th. Harry had the distinct feeling of deja-vu. He stared at it for a while, wondering why it was tugging at his memory. It wasn't the new one, the one he remembered - or, remembered gagging at anyway. That year, Aunt Petunia had had a custom calendar made, one with pictures of Dudley on each page. There had been no pictures of him put in it, of course. Then he realized what it was that was bothering him.

He ran over to the fridge and took the small day calendar in his hands, flipping to the cover. There they were, the teddy bears that he remembered, and underneath them, the legend, 1994.

Harry sunk to the floor, calendar still in hand. He didn't understand, his mind simply was not comprehending what was happening. The day was July 24^th, 1994, even though that wasn't possible. That had been the day his first letter from Hogwarts had come, he didn't think he would ever forget that day. What was going on?

Harry sat there for a few moments, and then sniffed the air. Something was burning. He immediately raced to the stove, where the bacon lay frying in the pan, him having forgotten it even existed.

"Bloody hell," he swore softly.

"Harry Potter, I do not want you using that kind of language in this house!" the voice of Aunt Petunia screeched from behind him.

"Oh, sorry," he mumbled, taking the bacon off the stove. It was definitely done.

"Go wash up for breakfast. Dudley and Uncle Vernon will be down in a moment." Harry looked at her resentfully and slouched off towards the loo. So things hadn't changed, not really. He was still taken for granted and not really wanted, except for doing housework. He had been beginning to wonder if he'd been brought back for a reason, maybe things would be different this time with the Dursley's, but he had obviously been wrong.

Harry reached for the soap and turned the faucet on, mind spinning. Why was he here? What brought him here? He had been in some bad positions before, but this took the cake. He realized he had no way of getting to Hogwarts, that he had no way of getting back to the present, he had no clue even how to contact anyone for help. He looked into the small mirror, wondering how he looked, and dropped the soap. He looked eleven years old. "This is just too weird," he said aloud. He touched his face. Gone were the new glasses he'd gotten over the summer, gone was the extra foot and a half he'd grown since his first year. Gone was the sixteen-year-old he was used to seeing every morning. He was scrawny again. He'd always been thin, but he'd acquired a lean, wiry look in the past years due to Quidditch. Now he was small and skinny. Again.

Harry swore colourfully, not for the first time that morning, leaning on the sink and bowing his head. "Now what?" he murmured.

*

"Dudley, go get the mail," Uncle Vernon said from behind his newspaper.

"Make Harry go get it."

"Harry, go get the mail." Harry had that distinct sense of deja-vu again, not for the first time that day.

"Make Dudley go get it," he said succinctly, deciding to play along.

"Hit Harry over the head with your Smeltings stick, Dudley."

Harry ducked it, for the second time in his life and walked over to the mail, knowing that this time, this time he would get a chance to open up his letter in the hall, and he would do it too, no matter how many idiotic letter bomb jokes Uncle Vernon made. Not that it would come as quite the shock it had the first time, but on the other hand, as Harry reminded himself, he really shouldn't be opening it for a second time, either.

Oh, Harry realized, there was so much more he could do the second time around. He could probably manage to bring Malfoy over to their side, without losing Ron, and he could stop Quirrell right at the beginning, before he ever managed to set foot in Hogwarts, which meant he would be able to play in the Quidditch Final at the end of the year, and probably win it... The possibilities raced through Harry's mind at lightening speed, as he walked toward the front door, which was taking far longer to get to than he remembered. What an odd sensation, losing several inches off the length of your leg, and walking slower because of it.

The mail was in the exact position he remembered it: slightly underneath the corner of the entryway carpet. He picked them up, rather excited now, and nearly fainted when he realized there were only two items there, not the three he remembered. There was the postcard from Aunt Marge, and the bill that, to him, had been paid years ago. There was no letter from Hogwarts.

"This isn't happening," he whispered faintly, face ashen. He leaned up against the door for support.

"Hurry up boy. What're you doing in there, checking for letter bombs?" he heard Uncle Vernon say, chuckling to himself at his own joke.

Harry walked back into the kitchen numbly, not believing what was happening. I'll wake up in the infirmary tomorrow morning. I must have just had another accident and this is some warped, medicine induced dream, he thought firmly to himself. Madam Pomfrey must not have given him the potion for dreamless slumber, that was all. Simple, really.

He handed the two letters to Uncle and sat down to eat the rest of his bacon and toast. Just a dream, that's all it was. It would be over soon. He hoped.

*

By the next morning though, things had not changed, and he did not wake up to the stark white walls of the hospital wing. Quite the opposite, he woke up in the complete darkness of the cupboard under the stairs, much to his immense disappointment.

"Bugger," he said to himself, running his hands through his hair, making it stand on end even more. "Alright, now what do I do?"

He decided to answer that question by looking for socks. How he remembered hating this, having to look in among the cobwebs for a pair of socks, and how he had thought he had escaped it forever. It's a funny thing, re-facing something you thought you had left behind forever.

He stepped outside his cupboard, and saw Aunt Petunia looking through a phonebook at the kitchen table.

"What are you looking for?" he asked, getting a glass from the cabinet.

Her shoulders stiffened, as they always had done when he'd dared ask a question, but she answered anyway, much to his surprise. Usually, she'd just brush the question off. "I'm looking for a second hand store that sells school uniforms. The gray dye I used for your uniform didn't work, so we're actually going to have to break down and buy you a uniform it looks like." She fixed him a look that suggested he had been the one to make the dye ineffectual, but he was too surprised to notice. The Dursley's had never actually bought him clothes, used or otherwise. He had always just worn Dudley's old things.

"Then I really am going to Stonewall?" he asked, sitting down across from her, water in hand.

"Of course! Where did you think you were going? Eton?" She laughed sharply and humorlessly. "Yes, you're going to Stonewall High, Harry Potter, and you'll be grateful for it too." She stood up and picked up the phone.

Harry walked away, toward the back door. So the Dursley's really do have a sense of humor, he thought to himself. A cruel, sarcastic one.

He stepped outside, into the back garden, so pristine in it's neat, orderliness. What was he going to do? He was supposed to go to Hogwarts, not Stonewall High. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia just assumed he didn't know of it yet, because the trip to the coast and the stay in the house on the rock had never happened. The letter had never come, and neither had Hagrid. Suddenly, Harry felt completely and horribly lonely.

In this time - this world - he would never met Ron or Hermione, never play Quidditch, never learn to wave a wand and perform spells, changing matches into needles, or banishing boggarts. He was more alone than he had ever been - mostly because he now knew what it was like to have friends and a family that cared about him, even if it was a little unorthodox. Maybe Hogwarts didn't exist here, now. Maybe this was some parallel universe where Hogwarts had just been a pipe dream of the founders' and nothing more, he imagined wildly. No, he reckoned, that probably wasn't true. If it was, his parents would probably never have met and he wouldn't be here. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would have no reason for hating him the way they did, either, since their reason before had been what his parents were.

What would Hermione do if she were in this situation? Harry wondered. She always had been the sensible one, the person who kept her cool in tough situations. Even at eleven she'd been able to figure out the bottles when they had gone after the Stone. Dumbledore had called it cool logic. Hermione would probably not freak out, he told himself. She'd go along with everything until she figured out a plan to get herself out. Obviously, Harry was not going to go to Hogwarts this time around, so he'd better just get over it and make things as good as they can be.

What would regular school be like, after so long? Suddenly, Harry felt a slight undercurrent of panic. He didn't remember anything he'd been taught in Muggle school - not the math, or the science. He could remember a bit of the Languages courses he'd taken. You don't forget Dickens quite so quickly as you do algebra. History wasn't so bad, he might be able to fake his way through that... Harry's mind raced as he realized what starting Muggle school over again entailed.

But, on the other hand, he reminded himself, he wouldn't be going to school with Dudley either, even if he wasn't going to Hogwarts. He might even be able to make something of himself... Harry had always wondered what might have happened if he'd never gone off to Hogwarts, and now he was getting a chance to find out. It would be horribly confusing, he was sure, especially after six years in the Wizarding world, and Hermione and Ron wouldn't be with him this time. But making friends wouldn't be so hard this time - he wouldn't have the threat of Dudley and his gang overshadowing him anymore. He'd just have to remember not to compare everyone he befriended to Ron or Hermione, which, though he didn't want to admit it to himself, would be very hard.

In the meantime, what would he do? He would start by contriving some way to get to London, he must do that. He must never become complacent in this chance world. It wasn't right, he wasn't supposed to be there and he had to do everything he could to rectify things. He wouldn't be able to get any money out of his Gringott's account, to buy anything, but he might be able to discipline himself towards learning wandless magic. It was possible, he knew, otherwise the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad wouldn't be in operation at the Ministry. They had been learning the theory behind it in Charms before...well, before whatever had happened had happened, and maybe if he really worked at it, he might be able to do a little. Of course, he'd never been Hermione at performing magic, but he could always try. From the look of things, he had more than a month to waste before school started anyway.

Harry started to laugh - not a laugh formed out of genuine amusement, but a slightly hysterical, sardonic one. "Oh, the irony," he said quietly, looking up at the clouds and sighing.

*

"Aunt Petunia, when does school start?" Harry asked, coming back into the kitchen.

"The 3^rd of September," she replied crisply. "You need to get ready to go, by the way. We're going to look for your uniform. I've found five shops that say they carry Stonewall uniforms." She tore a page out of the phonebook and folded it neatly, tucking it into her purse.

"Alright, well, I guess I'm ready," he said, wondering why she was being so...civil.

"Then don't just stand there, go out to the car. I'll be out when I've found the keys."

Harry wandered out to the driveway, slightly bewildered. This was strange.

They drove all over Surrey it seemed like. Harry had no idea why, but Aunt Petunia was being extremely picky. "If we're going to actually spend money on this endeavor, we might as well make sure the blasted thing fits," she explained curtly, after they had been all the way through two of the three stores. "You're just so scrawny," she said critically, as if she were annoyed he wasn't the whale Dudley was.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, they seemed to find one that met Aunt Petunia's standards. "The trousers are a bit long, but at least that means we won't have to buy you another one as soon as you get a growth spurt," she muttered, pursing her lips and looking him up and down.

Harry felt odd. He had gotten so used to Wizard robes for uniforms, being able to wear whatever suited him underneath. Now, he had to wear gray slacks and a button up shirt with a tie, underneath a sweater vest with the school emblem over the breast. A sweater vest. He was just glad the jackets were not required.

'You look almost respectable," she muttered, straightening the tie.

Harry looked into the mirror and was amazed. Aunt Petunia was spending money on clothes for him. Not Dudley, not Uncle Vernon, him. That in itself was almost worth the sweater vest. "Thanks, Aunt Petunia," he said sincerely, smiling slightly.

She grunted and motioned for him to get changed back, stepping out of the dressing room.

When Harry finished tying his shoes, Aunt Petunia was just finishing at the register.

"Well, hurry up boy, I'll be wanting something to eat before we head home." She walked towards the door, giving him an impatient look.

They stopped for cheeseburgers on the way home, and as could be predicted, Aunt petunia ordered him the cheapest thing on the menu before he had a chance to speak. Harry didn't mind too terribly, whether a cheeseburger had one or two patties on it and lettuce and tomato he didn't really care, but he still felt slightly irritated. As they sat down to eat, Harry looked curiously at Aunt Petunia's meal: a small garden salad not big enough to feed a house elf and a cup of water. She saw him looking and immediately sent him the "don't ask questions" glare.

Harry pondered for a moment that he knew the woman well and long enough to be able to tell her glares apart, slightly amazed at the notion.

"Hurry up, I have yet to pick up the dry cleaning," she snapped, seeing him take his time with the hamburger.

"It's not healthy to eat quickly, bad for the digestion," Harry said, mimicking something he'd once heard Ron say in response to Hermione's mad dash for the Library after dinner during their third year. Immediately, he felt a surge of sadness crash over him like a wave at the thought of Ron and Hermione. Just don't think about them, he told himself fiercely, fighting back the panic that was once again fighting for control. Would he ever see them again? Would he ever see Hogwarts again? And what would he do in the meantime?