Replay

Replay

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Chapter Thirty-Nine

When I'm Sixty-Four

Parvati had started to go into the shop to talk to Ginny, to try to offer some sort of comfort to her, but Harry had put his hand on her arm to stop her.

"She's gone. She Disapparated."

Parvati frowned at him; he had the idea that she found his white hair rather disconcerting, in addition to finding the entire situation disconcerting. "Where did she--?"

"Probably back home. Here." He put on his Invisibility Cloak and raised his wand. "I'll just pop over there. Won't take but a minute. I'll be right back to let you know she's all right, yeah?"

Parvati didn't have a chance to respond before he disappeared silently. Once his eyes slid into focus again he saw his home standing before him, surrounded by the old overgrown graveyard as usual. He started to walk forward, still under the Invisibility Cloak, but then decided that if he changed his appearance he could come and go with impunity; no one would be shocked to see an apparently thirty-two-year-old Harry Potter entering his own house.

He took off the Cloak and closed his eyes, concentrating; when he felt the change take place he waved his wand, changing it into a small hand-mirror. He was able to judge his success by the light of the moon and saw that he had adequately darkened his hair again as well as returning it to roughly the same length it had been on his thirty-second birthday. He also managed to reduce the appearance of the lines around his eyes somewhat, something he usually neither minimized nor maximized; his naturally-occurring small wrinkles, along with the white hair, served him well in his daily duties as Minister. He didn't need to appear as if he were on the brink of death or as if he had been alive for a millennium; just the white hair was surprisingly effective when it came to convincing people to take him seriously as the Minister for Magic.

Being Harry Potter didn't hurt, either.

He waved the mirror, changing it into a wand again, and set about Transfiguring his clothing so that he was wearing the same sort of shirt and trousers he'd worn to go to Parvati's shop with Ginny. Conjuring up a bag in which to carry the Invisibility Cloak, he put the Cloak and his wand away and approached the house, feeling much less conspicuous. When he reached the old chapel he placed his hand on the door in the same place as always; there was a slight indentation there from years of use of the lock-spell and when the door had recognised his hand it opened for him with a soft creak.

He crossed the drawing room and crept up the stairs leading to his and Ginny's bedroom very carefully, surprised when a voice called out, "Dad!" from the other stair.

He turned to find Teddy standing at the open door to his room, shared this evening with Nate. "When did you get back, Dad? And where's Ginny? I thought you were going to be gone until your birthday was over? Ginny said we had to postpone the party."

"Erm, well, did she tell you why I had to go?"

He shrugged and frowned. "No, she was pretty mysterious about it all..."

"Well, the good news is that I worked out a solution to a problem the Ministry was having and got to come home early. The bad news is--I can't tell you all about it. Top secret, that sort of thing. You know how it is. Just go back to bed, Teddy. We'll have the party tomorrow as scheduled." He wasn't sure why he said this, remembering what Ginny had told him about this day, while he'd been with Tilda in the summer of nineteen-ninety-six, but some strange impulse had governed his mouth before his brain could intervene.

"Okay. Happy birthday, Dad!"

Harry looked at him, at his fifteen-year-old son, still so innocent despite what he'd gone through with Zabini... He had no idea of what lay ahead of him...

"Thank you, Teddy. Good night!" he added, his voice catching for a moment. Teddy didn't notice but returned to his bedroom and closed the door. Harry looked around the cavernous drawing room that had once been the sanctuary of St Clare's. The copper hood on the fireplace gleamed in the moonlight streaming through the amber-coloured diamond-leaded windows and the clock ticked the minutes with a casual carelessness, as if each moment he was in this time, seeing his son at this age, before Teddy had shouldered so many very heavy burdens, wasn't as precious as gold...

Shaking himself, Harry turned and continued to climb the stairs to his and Ginny's room. When he opened the heavy carved door he found that the lights were out and the bed didn't look slept-in. Where was Ginny? he wondered. He opened the door to the en suite bath but that was empty as well. "Ginny?" he called softly into the empty rooms. The only answer was the wind brushing the fir tree outside against the window over their bed, over and over, the sound of their marriage bed, the sound that lulled them to sleep whenever they were here, in their home, instead of at Hogwarts.

When she Disapparated from the shop, where did she go? He put his Cloak on again and was about to raise his wand to Disapparate back to Parvati's when he remembered that he couldn't do that, due to the Anti-Apparition jinxes on the house. Sighing, he kept the Cloak on as he carefully opened and closed the bedroom door and crept out of the house again, walking as lightly as he could to the closest spot in the graveyard from which he could safely Apparate. When he returned he found Parvati sitting at her Reading table doing a Tarot spread and frowning deeply; pulling off the Cloak rather startled her.

"Oh, Harry! Don't do that! And--what did you do to your hair? And clothes?" She squinted at him. "Erm, as weird as this may sound, how old are you?"

"Sixty-four. I made myself look like Younger Me in case the kids saw me. And Teddy did, so it was a good thing." He bit his lip. "But Ginny wasn't there. At the house. I have no idea where she is."

"And she never told you where she went?"

He shook his head, his brow deeply furrowed. "Don't worry about it, Parvati. I'm trying not to." She raised one brow, clearly unconvinced that he wasn't worrying about this. "Ginny never told me that she went anywhere before the morning. She told me that she went back to the house to wake the kids up once the morning came, and she did some sort of complicated magic to make the kids think I was there for my birthday after all, even though I wasn't, so they didn't assume anything was wrong. But I assumed she stayed here during the night. She was here when I got back from Tilda's, sleeping on the couch in the shop...."

Parvati shook her head in confusion. "It's very disconcerting, Harry, that you speak of things that haven't yet happened as though they happened a very long time ago..."

He shrugged. "For me, they did. Thirty-two years ago. Half my life. And the entire life of the Harry Potter you just helped go back to the night of his sixteenth birthday."

She sat down wearily, drumming her fingers on the skirted table, next to the crystal ball. "All right, then, if she was here when you got back I won't worry about it. Perhaps she just went home to check on the kids?"

Harry shrugged. "I told you. She said that she went back in the morning. It's after midnight, but hardly morning right now."

Parvati yawned, attempting to cover her mouth for the sake of manners. "Speaking of which, I say, Harry, have you ever noticed how inconvenient it is for midnight to come, oh, in the middle of the night?"

Harry smiled at her. "You do get out-of-sorts when you miss sleep, don't you? Always have done... Why don't you go back to bed? I'll take care of myself; don't worry about me..."

Parvati started to go toward the stairs to her flat, but stopped short. "What do you mean, 'always have done'? You act like you--" She stopped, examining him shrewdly. "You didn't have a memory charm put on you, like he did? Did you? You remember absolutely everything about the rest of your life, don't you? About the future?"

He sighed. "All thirty-two years of it, since this night. There's one little patchy spot in the past that I don't remember, but that's my choice. That's for the sake of two marriages. And several friendships."

"What?"

He smiled at her, a clear affection shining in his brilliant green eyes. "Don't worry about it, love..."

She started when he called her this and stood in his path, trying to get up the nerve to tell off the Minister for Magic. Future.

"Listen, Harry, I need to know. Have I completely and permanently screwed up your marriage by sending you back in time? If you don't tell me, I'll--I'll use some form of Divination to figure it out myself, but somehow I'll find out..."

Harry put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her as if he weren't really hearing her. "Why don't you get some rest and we'll talk tomorrow?" he said, still gazing at her in a completely disarming way that was making Parvati's pulse race. And then suddenly, he put his hand against her cheek and said, shaking his head, "Were you ever this young? This innocent?"

She backed up from his hand and then turned around and moved toward the stairs. "I'm neither young nor innocent anymore, Harry. And I think you'd better stop behaving as if I'm Tilda and you're sixteen if we're going to get through the next twenty-four hours..."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ginny felt deeply ashamed; she knew what it was like to have feelings for someone who didn't return them, how painful it could be to discuss that person's "real" relationship with another person, but she'd blundered into Theo's room in the middle of the night anyway. She remembered, vividly, how her heart had clenched when she'd suggested to Harry that he talk to Cho Chang; she also remembered how light her heart felt when he'd told her that that wasn't what he was thinking about. Or who he was thinking about, even though it was Sirius and not her.

And now she'd put Theo in the same position, but intentionally so; Harry never asked for her to come to the library with his Easter egg. But in those days, she looked for any opportunity she could to be alone with him, as pathetic as it was, in the unlikely event that he would suddenly realise his feelings for her. She didn't admit to herself until much later that that was what she was doing, but when she and Harry started going out she saw her earlier behavior for what it was. Pathetic.

She confessed why she'd come: Harry had travelled back in time to be with Tilda. And get her pregnant. And she was feeling unloved and unwanted. He nodded while she spoke, not looking at her.

"I'm so terribly sorry, Theo… I should leave…"

He put his hand on her arm to stop her, then pulled his hand back abruptly, as though the contact had stung. "First, I should tell you, Ginny," he said in a rush, as if afraid he wouldn't get the words out if he didn't do it quickly; "I'm leaving."

She stared at him. "Did you not hear me? I said that I was leaving. You don't have to."

He shook his head impatiently. "That's not what I mean. I mean--I'm leaving Hogwarts. Well, actually, I'm not just leaving Hogwarts; I'm leaving Britain."

Frowning, Ginny grabbed the nearest chair and sat abruptly. "You're what? Why?"

Theo snorted and shook his head, looking at the floor; finally, he lifted his eyes to hers and said, "Do you really need to ask me that?"

Ginny opened her eyes wide in disbelief. "Evidently, I do. Why on earth--?"

"It's because of you, Ginny!" he shouted in a whisper. Her mouth worked soundlessly and he wanted to kiss her badly, but he went on talking so that he wouldn't. "Don't act like you don't know. You do! You know that I'm hopelessly in love with you, that's why you came here…"

Swallowing, she said, "You said that already, but all I know is--that you are my good friend. And Harry's. And--and, yes, I suspected that you--you cared about me and might--might make me feel like I'm not a complete troll that Harry would be mad to marry in the first place if I came to see you, but--"

"Yes, Theo's always good for an ego-boost, isn't he?" He sighed, running his fingers through his black hair so that it stood on end. "Listen, I'm not angry with you, not really. I'm angry with myself. This has gone on long enough. It's true enough, too, that until tonight you've never once done anything to make me think your intentions toward me included anything other than platonic friendship. And even tonight, it's so clear that the only reason you're here is that you're madly in love with your husband…" He sat down, shaking his head. "I've only myself to blame. I should never have stayed as long as I did. I've been preserved in amber, still at Hogwarts. It's like I never finished school. I need to finish with Hogwarts, Ginny. I need to grow up. So I'm leaving."

Tears filled her eyes; there was nothing she could do to stop it. Theo looked away, as though her moist eyes were the equivalent, for another woman, of taking off her clothes. "Where are you going?" she whispered.

"I've been offered a job at the Capetown Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The name is misleading; it's actually on an island off the coast near Capetown. It's Unplottable. The island's a bit of a wizarding colony, rather isolated from Muggle life on the mainland. That's where their Ministry for Magic is and where most wizards in South Africa live. There are three villages on the island, as it's rather large. Even though each village has a school for younger children--don't you wish we had schools like that here?--there's just one combined school on the northern headland for the older kids. So there are day students who continue to live with their parents in the villages, if their houses are reasonably close to the school, and boarders whose families live farther away, in the village at the south end of the island, mostly. There are also boarders from the mainland."

Ginny sniffed and blinked, trying not to let her tears fall. "Will you--will you be teaching Transfiguration still?" she said quietly.

"No, Charms, which is my second-best area, so I'm not worried. I'll also be the assistant headmaster. The previous Charms master was, you see; he took a job as the new head of one of the village schools because that headmaster is retiring. They start teaching kids there to control and use magic younger than we do here, and they're not forbidden to do magic at home because the day-students wouldn't be able to do their homework in their parents' houses if that were the law!

"The Transfiguration master is retiring himself in a few years, and then I can switch back to teaching that. Plus, as assistant headmaster, I'll be able to stop teaching eventually and take over as the head." He grimaced and looked somewhat chagrined. "I love Minerva, but I think she'll probably be headmistress for the next fifty years, at least. And Severus has been the assistant headmaster since she took over from Albus. Not much room for anyone who wants to move up…"

"Theo," Ginny said softly, unable, finally, to stop her tears from falling. "I'm so sorry that you feel like you have to leave because of me. You don't, not really…"

"Yes, Ginny, yes, I do." He cleared his throat and looked away from her. "Something else that's not going to happen if I stay at Hogwarts is meeting anyone who will make me forget how I feel about you, someone who will make me feel that way about her instead. Only the heads of house live at the Capetown school itself; they and their families live in these bungalows between the boys' and girls' dorms for each house, and the rest of the staff live in the village. I could live with other witches and wizards and see other people on a daily basis besides my own students, who I shouldn't even consider being with, and my--my--" He glanced at Ginny quickly and swallowed before looking away again. "--my colleagues, most of whom are either married or elderly or, well, people I don't even want to have a cup of tea with, let alone snog..."

Ginny thought of Professor Borodin, Binns's successor, and made a face. "Morris is just trying to fit in, asking the other teachers to tea in his rooms..."

Theo sighed. "I know, I know, but if he were any more pompous... If I wanted to listen to lectures about magical history I wouldn't have slept through Binns for five years!" he said, unable not to smile just a little. Ginny wiped her eyes and smiled as well.

"Yes, students know not to close their eyes in your classroom if they don't want you to transfigure their chairs from under them. How many sleepy first years have woken up to find that they're sitting on hedgehogs?"

Theo laughed now, although it seemed a little half-hearted. "Well, you know how Minerva feels about Transfiguring students as punishment... She didn't say we couldn't transfigure the furniture, though..."

Ginny looked at him for what felt like the first time; he really wasn't very much like the boy she'd first come to know in her fifth year, the boy who was so filled with remorse because he'd done exactly what she'd done in her first year: written in Tom Riddle's diary. He was taller and stronger and a little less pale; she'd seen him bounce Charlotte on his knee and play Exploding Snap with Ruby and Rory and throw sticks for Hades to chase... She knew that he'd be a good father and a good husband, that he deserved to have a normal life.

She smiled as bravely as she could, saying, "It sounds lovely, Theo. Much more conducive to family life than Hogwarts. It's just--"

"What?" he whispered, suddenly looking hopeful.

"Well, it's so far away. The other side of the equator! You'll be celebrating Christmas during the summer, and when we're going back to school in September you'll be having spring."

He shrugged. "I'm rather looking forward to that, actually. Their first term starts in mid-January, there's a two-week holiday after that, during the last two weeks of April, but sometimes sooner, depending on when Easter falls. After the break a new term starts on the first of May, then there's a winter break for about three weeks, in August, and then our third term starts in September, the students sit their exams at the end of November, and we have all of December and about half of January for our summer hols and Christmas hols all rolled into one. It makes a lot of sense, in my opinion.

"I'm not going to start teaching there until January. Minerva knows; she's looking for a replacement for me, but in case she doesn't find one she'll teach the winter and spring terms herself."

"You already told Minerva?" she said very softly. "When were you going to tell, erm, the rest of the staff?"

He looked abashed. "Erm, Severus and Tilda already know. They were in the staff room one day when a great tropical bird flew in with my letter from the headmaster, asking me to come down to an interview. I was able to do it on a weekend, didn't miss any lessons at all."

She felt a little miffed now. "Who else knows?" she asked, trying not to sound like she owned him.

"Well--everyone else," he said weakly, not looking at her. "On the staff, I mean. Other than you and Harry. I somehow didn't feel like getting into the matter of my leaving for South Africa so that I could stop mooning over his wife, and the kids will find out soon enough. You know how the students are; if they sense that someone is on the way out, it's like blood in the water to them."

Ginny snorted. "Oh, Theo. You're a good friend and a good teacher. What will we do without you?"

"There are other teachers to be had... You could always hire, oh... Rita Skeeter," he said mischievously. "She wanted the job when I was applying."

Ginny guffawed. "I think Minerva would hire Gilderoy Lockhart to teach again, even in his addled state, before she'd hire Rita."

Theo did his best to smile at her, but he felt more than a little sad, so he suspected that it probably came off as more of a grimace. "You're probably right. But I'm sure she'll find someone. She could go looking in other countries, if it comes to that."

"Hm... I think that would definitely be a last resort for Minerva." Reducing her voice to a whisper, she said, "She doesn't think much of the magical education in other countries."

Theo nodded. "I know. I got an earful about being careful, just in case the Dutch influence is still very strong in Capetown... But since the official language of the wizarding colony and school is English, she didn't criticize too sharply. I've heard her say a lot worse about Durmstrang, for instance, as well as some American schools...."

Ginny sighed. "I should probably just go home and wait it out there, so the children have me at hand in the morning. I just--I hate standing about waiting. And waiting for this to be over will seem like waiting a lifetime..."

Theo gazed sadly at her. "Try to focus on the big picture, Ginny. You love Harry and he loves you. Teddy is a good boy, a good stepson, and you love him and his sisters and father love him." He paused for a moment, as if unsure about what he was about to say. "If I'm not being indelicate--had you and Harry thought about trying to have another baby?"

"You mean trying to have a boy?" she said tonelessly, staring out the window at the moon hanging over the motley tiles of the businesses on Diagon Alley.

"Yes. You wanted a boy so badly..."

She shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. "Boy, girl, it doesn't really matter. We love all of our children, Theo."

"I know you do. But I also know that you had this idea that you wanted to have a son with Harry..."

She looked him in the eye. "I got over that years ago. We love our daughters and are content. Harry has a son. I just don't happen to be his mother." Her voice shook at the end, betraying her emotions, and he was sorry he'd pried; it wasn't any of his business whether she'd got over the need to give her husband a son. He was treading into an area he didn't really care to think about, when he could help it: the fact that Harry and Ginny, as a normal married couple, had a sex life and had procreated. And might procreate again. They would almost definitely have a sex life when he returned, even if it suffered slightly from Harry's trip to see Tilda on his thirty-second birthday. But Theo doubted that their marriage would self-destruct from this; he'd seen how strong they were over the years. It was part of the reason he'd decided to leave, to get on with his life.

Ginny turned and put her hand on his arm. "You know, you're doing the right thing. I made the same decision, years ago, and it was also the right thing to do. Of course, for me it didn't involve moving to South Africa..."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I decided that I could never make Harry feel a certain way about me, and I started focussing on other boys. Michael Corner. Dean Thomas. And no, those relationships didn't work out, for different reasons, and Harry did decide he fancied me... But what if he hadn't? What point would there have been for me to sit about all of my life waiting for him? And if he had never decided that I was anything other than a friend I'd have had a life, I'd have had people I cared about and could have a life with." She took both of his hands in hers. "You deserve a life, Theo. I'm so glad you're reaching out and taking one, I really am."

He knew that he should be paying attention to what she was saying, and, more importantly, heeding what she was saying, but the feel of her soft hands in his was somewhat distracting, almost as much as the look in her large brown eyes as she looked up at him. He pulled his hands from hers as gently as he could, turning away from her so that he could close his eyes and steel himself, silently tell himself not to take her in his arms and kiss her hard, so that he would forever alienate her and betray his friendship with Harry. He was not going to do that. Not now, not when he'd got the strength and the resolve to leave her, to reach out and take a life for himself, as she'd said.

"Thank you, Ginny," he said, looking up and realising that because he could see her in the mirror hanging over the mantle, she could see him, too, and knew what his face looked like after he turned away from her. She seemed unnerved as she looked back at him through the medium of the mirror.

"Um, I--I should go. Like I said. I'll just Apparate to the grounds around the house... Please don't leave without saying good-bye, Theo..."

She didn't wait for him to answer but immediately pulled out her wand and disappeared silently. Ginny usually at least squeezed his hand before leaving him and most of the time this was also accompanied by a peck on the cheek. She didn't seem to want to touch him this time, though; she could see how thin his resolve was. She had seen him without his mask.

Theo swallowed, continuing to stare at the mirror's reflection of the empty space where she'd been.

"Do you think she bought that? I don't," the mirror said suddenly in a shrill, opinionated voice. Theo jumped in surprise.

"Erm..."

"You know, before you turn away from someone and stop pretending, you should probably make sure you're not both facing a mirror," it continued in a snide, know-it-all voice.

"Oh, bugger off," he snapped at it, throwing his dressing gown over the mirror.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Harry gazed up at the stairs; Parvati was moving around in her flat, preparing to return to bed. He swallowed, fighting the urge to go up to her, thinking of her face when he'd left her earlier that evening, her hair still as black as the woman to whom he'd just been talking but the creases around her eyes slightly deeper, her hands less youthful, having seen twice as many years as the young woman climbing back into her empty bed upstairs...

"I suppose I deserve this, since I helped you to go back and see Tilda..."

"No, no, love, don't think of it like that... If I don't go--"

"I know, I know. You already went, so... It's not that I'm not trying to stop you. Don't you think I know this is how it has to be? It's just--it's karma, it really is... It's no more than I deserve..."

"No, no, sssh! Don't do this to yourself..."

He shook himself, tempted yet again to go up the stairs... But she didn't think of him that way. Not yet. He pictured his bedroom at St Clare's as he'd just seen it, empty and dark. Perhaps he should just spend the night there and then come back to the shop in the morning... less temptation that way...

Of course, he thought while walking to the house through the gravestones, after he'd Apparated, this way I have ample opportunity to obsess about where Ginny is spending the night instead. He let himself into the house again, wondering where she had gone, what she was doing, and with whom...

This time he didn't encounter any of his children as he made his way to the bedroom. He was glad, though, that he'd maintained the appearance he'd assumed, so that if any of them had a bad dream in the night and came running into the bedroom, they'd find a Harry Potter who appeared to be thirty-two years old, rather than sixty-four. He could try to get some sleep and then consider what to do with the rest of his sixty-fourth birthday when morning came.

He didn't expect to be able to stop thinking about where Ginny was but ended up falling asleep almost as soon as he'd undressed and put his head on the pillow. He was very, very deeply asleep and firmly enmeshed in a dream about the first time he'd invited Ginny over to the house, about a month before their wedding, which also happened to be the occasion on which the twins were conceived, when he was very suddenly jolted awake by someone screaming his name:

"Harry! What are you doing here?"

Ginny stood in the doorway to the bedroom, her eyes wide with shock; Harry could see that it was still dark out. It took him a moment to work out where and when he was, but once he'd done so he still had only a vague idea of how to explain himself.

"Ssssh, Ginny! Do you want to wake the kids?" he whispered. She twisted around, looking across the expanse of the drawing room to the stair on the other side of the space, but Harry didn't hear the other bedroom doors opening or feet pounding on the steps.

"It's okay, they didn't hear me," she said in a more normal tone of voice, carefully closing the door behind her and Imperturbing it, so that even if the children pressed their ears against it--or some of Fred's and George's Extendable Ears--nothing could be heard that was said or done inside their bedroom. "It's just--I wasn't expecting to see you! I mean, if you didn't go through with it..." She sat on the bed and took his hand; the moonlight showed him that her eyes were shining with tears. "Won't--won't Teddy disappear? And other people? Won't you be changing the timeline? You don't have to do this for me; I'm working on it, handling it. I wish I were more graceful about it, but please don't think that I'm so selfish that I don't want Teddy to exist..."

He wasn't pay a great deal of attention to what she was saying because it was Ginny who was saying it, Ginny whom he had loved and lived with for so many years, Ginny who had been so suddenly taken away from him, leaving him a mere shell of his former self... He felt like he might cry himself as he sat up and put his hand on her cheek. "Don't worry, love. It's all right. You see... I'm here and I'm there. The spell not only takes me back half my lifetime, it sort of, erm, divides me he half," he said quickly, improvising madly. "Well, not divides... it's not like I'm only half-here or half-there... I'm really me, and I'm really both places. It's hard to explain..."

She shrugged when she heard that. "It's magic. That's all you really needed to say. I just--I wasn't expecting to get to see you at all on your birthday, and here you are!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms around him. "This just, well, it makes it a bit easier to forget that there's another you sixteen years ago, doing something I'd rather not be thinking about your doing with another woman..."

Her touch had inflamed his senses, as it always had; her chest was pressed again his, cloth against skin, and he had felt an immediate physical response to her presence the moment he'd opened his eyes and seen her. That response was quickly growing even more--responsive. His hand shook as he laced his hand into the hair at the back of her head and pulled her mouth to his. Even as he kissed her he could barely believe that she was in his arms again, young and whole, warm and real. He had never again thought to hold her like this, to be with her like this. It was a gift, a gift he didn't dare refuse...

When she broke the kiss she looked at him wonderingly, as though uncertain who he was, and he thought for a second that she was going to guess his secret, that he wasn't really her thirty-two-year-old husband. He spoke quickly, to forestall any more scrutiny. "Do you know what I was just thinking about, before you woke me up? What I was dreaming about?"

She looked affectionately at him now and ran her fingers lightly up and down his spine, making him even more aroused. "What were you dreaming about?" she asked, a knowing smile playing around the corners of her mouth.

"I was dreaming about the first time we made love, here, down on the hearthrug before the fire," he breathed into her ear before nipping the lobe very lightly. She let out a soft moan and he continued, "You're the only woman I want to be with, Ginny. The only woman I ever..." He stopped, thinking about what had happened when he returned from the day with Tilda, and realised why he'd done what he'd done. "Ginny," he said suddenly, changing direction slightly. "I just thought of something: when I get back from--well, when the spell ends, the birthday wish spell, I'll have Parvati put a memory charm on me so that I won't remember it, not really. That way I'll never even be able to recall being with any other woman." He thought of something else and said, "Which will probably also make Tilda and Severus more comfortable, as well. I'll be able to look both of them in the eye again because I will have absolutely no idea of anything Tilda and I did together, sixteen years ago. It will be a blank to me."

She stared at him. "You would do that? For--for me?"

He stared back at her, wishing he'd simply spent more time gazing at Ginny while he had had the chance, all of those years... She gave a small gasp, perhaps from recognising how very much he loved her and he kissed her again, deeply, then pressed his lips to her brow, her chin, her nose. "Of course I would, Ginny. You have no idea how much I love you, how much I don't want to hurt you... I don't need to remember being with Tilda. I'll know that it produced Teddy, and that's all I really need to know. What else matters?"

He caught a tear running down her face and she smiled wistfully at him. "I love you so much," she whispered. "Thank you."

She kissed him again, and he could feel all of her heart in that kiss, all of her love and longing. He knew that she would never again doubt his love for her nor feel threatened by Tilda, and now he knew why. Any doubts he had had about whether he should do this, be with her when she thought he was half the age he was dropped away as he held her and they kissed and cried together. Then she stood and slowly removed her clothes, staring at him with a look that burned, before coming to him again, wrapping her arms around him, her legs, her soul...

It was as though his dream of the night the twins had been conceived had become reality, the only reality that mattered. I'm here, I'm now, and that's all that matters, he thought before wrapping his arms around her afterward, hugging her to him tightly as he dropped again into sleep, but this time a dreamless, peaceful sleep with the woman he had loved for almost forty-eight years by his side.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When he awoke, he felt slightly guilty about Parvati, but brushed it quickly aside. I warned her, years ago, he thought. She knew this would happen, and it was one of the reasons that we never married, never even made a public declaration or commitment of any kind... we're just playing it by ear, it's not the same as being married at all...

He brushed the back of his hand gently down Ginny's cheek, wondering whether the other Harry had created Teddy yet. He was glad that he hadn't had his Parvati put a memory charm on him, so that he could still remember everything that happened after his thirty-second birthday; he didn't recall what actually happened on the day that he went to visit Tilda, through his own choice, but Tilda later told him that the other memory charm had worn off, that it was not only temporary, as designed, but far more short-lived than planned. Somehow he thought that that would be even more difficult to pull off with a charm designed to make a person temporarily forget thirty-two years, rather than just sixteen, and he didn't want the odd sensation of not-remembering and then suddenly randomly remembering. It was far better this way. And in nine months, in the earlier time, Tilda would have a son she loved dearly, a son who would change her life and lead to her meeting the man she would marry...

He sat bolt upright in the bed and did the calculations in his head. Nine months. Nine months! He looked at Ginny, languid and seemingly-boneless after making love to him more than once before falling asleep. He'd forgotten how--energetic--she could be, how insatiable she seemed, especially when she was particularly keyed-up with emotion. However, it was growing lighter while they were making love the last time, so she was able to see him better and had noticed that his body looked--different. He was still in reasonably good shape, as a sixty-four-year-old man, but his body didn't look exactly as it had when he was thirty-two. She worried about this at first, wondering whether the spell that had "split" him had also damaged him in some way, but he assured her that he felt fine and would probably go back to looking more like himself after his two halves were reunited. And she had put the worry aside and responded to his touch once more...

How stupid he was! He should have realised, years ago... Of course this was how it happened! Ginny had gone into labour on Teddy's birthday, during his sixteenth birthday party, nine months after Harry's birthday... What is it with me? he wondered. He remembered Remus telling him once that he'd been born exactly nine months after a particularly raucous Hallowe'en party that his parents had hosted at their home in Godric's Hollow, hinting broadly about this while Harry blushed furiously. Was it something in the Potter genes? As far as he could tell, Ruby and Rory were also born exactly nine months after the first time he and Ginny were together. Teddy was born nine months after Harry's sixteenth birthday. And nine months after his thirty-second birthday, right on schedule...

Harry started laughing as he understood, which woke Ginny, although she didn't open her eyes. Instead she reached blindly for him, running her hand down his chest and wrapping it around him in a very direct manner that immediately caused him to gasp. "What's so funny?" she asked, her eyes still closed while her hand moved more quickly.

Harry could barely get the words out. "I--bloody hell--I've completely forgotten, somehow. Something--guh--seems to have distracted me..." And soon they were attacking each other again and he'd forgotten about calculations and gestation periods and everything else in the world except making love to Ginny.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When he awoke again he heard the shower running in their en suite bath. Grinning, he joined Ginny in the shower after Imperturbing the walls and floor of the room, so that the children wouldn't hear the noises they were making.

While they were preparing breakfast, Harry noticed that she was definitely walking "funny". He came up behind her while she was standing at the cooker, pushing eggs around a pan with a fork, and whispered in her ear, "You're walking a bit differently this morning, Mrs. Potter. Why is that?"

"I think," she answered him, "that it is called Shagging in the Shower. And on the bathroom floor. And the bedroom floor. And while you're sitting in your favorite chair..."

He laughed and pulled her away from the cooker, fork still in her hand, starting to dance with her around the kitchen table. "When I get older, losing my hair," he sang softly, off-key; "many years from now..."

"Planning on going bald now, are we?" Ginny said, laughing as he dipped and twirled her.

"Will you still be sending me a Valentine, birthday greeting, bottle of wine?" he continued. She went along in an ungainly two-step; they bumped into each other and trod on each other's feet as Harry sang and ended up leaning against the counter, clutching their sides, unable to do anything but laugh at their own dancing incompetence until Ginny noticed that the eggs were smoking a bit. Harry let her go back to the cooker after giving her a smacking kiss.

"What is that song?" she wanted to know as she resumed pushing the eggs around. Harry started to answer by way of standing behind her and kissing her but was interrupted.

"Dad! I almost forgot you were here after all. Happy birthday!" Teddy said suddenly as he came round the corner and saw Harry starting to nuzzle Ginny's neck. "Was that you singing?" Harry leapt back as Ruby and Rory followed Teddy to the table and sat down. Ruby rolled her eyes.

"Are you two going to be mushy together all day?" she whinged loudly. Ginny turned as red as her hair but the children couldn't see this, as she was still facing the cooker.

It was so strange for Harry to see Ruby and Rory and Charlotte, who was carried in by Donna, followed by Nate, as little girls again; he pictured them as he'd last seen them, handsome women with husbands and children, accomplished careers... It was very odd to think of what their lives would become as they sat before him now as children, young and innocent, ignorant of what lay before them.

"Teddy told me you were back," Nate said upon seeing Harry, "but not why. Oh, and Happy birthday, by the way. Not that you're not welcome in your own house on your birthday..."

Harry clapped his hands. "Change of plans! Everything's fine and I'm here after all. Oh, try not to look so happy about it..."

Charlotte laughed and ran to him; he scooped her up. "We're happy about it, Daddy. Of course we are!"

Harry laughed and hugged her thin little body to him, remembering, remembering this time of his life, and feeling that he was unlikely to ever forget again.

"Then let's have a party!" he exclaimed, before resuming dancing, this time with Charlotte in his arms as his partner.

"Will you still need me, will you still feed me..." he sang, twirling his daughter around the kitchen and feeling happier than he remembered being for a very long time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Stop that man!" the cop cried to bystanders as she continued to pursue Harry. He looked around wildly, just in case someone heeded her request, and to his shock a quite diminutive old woman was rearing back with her handbag, preparing to hit him with it as he went past. He veered to the left to avoid her, ducking behind a kiosk selling souvenir Brighton tee shirts. As quickly as he could he pulled out his Cloak and put it on. After he was hidden from view he quickly ran around the kiosk and back in the direction of the cop, who was running toward him at break-neck speed, looking impressively like an advert for joining the police.

"He went behind it!" the old woman screamed shrilly, pointing with her handbag, evidently quite upset that she hadn't been able to attack Harry.

It was unavoidable; the Cloak brushed the cop as she went past. Harry clutched at the Cloak with both hands, making certain that it didn't slip off him. He saw the cop hesitate for a moment, looking puzzled, before continuing on toward the kiosk.

Harry left the pier as quickly as he could, walking back in the direction of the café, but he froze when he heard the cop's voice behind him; she and the old woman were walking together as the two of them attempted to agree on a description of Harry.

Bloody hell. I'm either going to have to keep the Cloak on or change my appearance again. There was nothing for it; he had to change his hair once more. It wouldn't hurt to find other clothes, either. That would mean stealing something to wear, if he was going to avoid doing magic. But as Harry leaned against a phone box and reflected on the things that had occurred on his sixteenth birthday, he realised that there were even more indicators of his presence in this time than he'd originally thought.

He stopped worrying about it all and just breathed deeply, trying to catch his breath after the running. He thought about the young man who'd been eating with him and changed his hair to look like that, but hanging over his brow. He still kept some facial hair but reduced it to a trim moustache.

While waiting for Tilda and young Harry to emerge from the café he carefully avoiding coming into contact with anyone who couldn't see him, due to the Cloak. When they finally appeared he followed them back behind the café, as he'd forgotten they would go there. From a distance he heard his younger self talking while evidently peering in the back window of the car.

"Are you sure it was safe to put the car back here? It looks like someone's gone through our things. Look at it."

Tilda shrugged. "It shifted while we were driving. Don't worry about it. Everything seems to be here, right?"

The boy nodded grudgingly while removing the picnic hamper from the car. Harry followed them to the beach, staying about ten feet behind and trying very hard to avoid bumping into anyone. He did his best to walk in footsteps that someone else had already made, not wanting to walk in bare feet on the hot sand, but his shoes created a very different shape than a bare feet that had gone before him, and he worried that soon someone would look down and notice that his shoe-shaped prints were overwriting the bare foot-shaped prints. Luckily, everyone who might have noticed this was busily lying on their backs, worshipping the sun. Tilda found a spot to her liking and threw everything she'd been carrying down onto the sand, relief on her perspiring face. Going to a nearby cabana, she called through the fabric, "Hello? Is this one being used?" When no reply came she retrieved her bag and told young Harry that she'd be back in a few minutes. Harry took this opportunity to slip into the small striped tent before her, hoping she wouldn't notice the flap moving.

He waited in the small, eerie space; he'd forgotten how strange it felt and he wondered momentarily how Tilda managed using these things, given her problem with claustrophobia. He soon found out how; she worked to change her clothes very quickly. She was moving so fast, in fact (she was already wearing her one-piece bathing outfit under her clothes) that she was nearly done before Harry managed to get her attention by discreetly clearing his throat. She froze in the act of taking off her shorts.

"It's me, Tilda. I didn't want to startle you into screaming again." He took the Cloak off and she frowned at him.

"Harry! What were you thinking back there?" she whispered. "I've been a nervous wreck, trying to work out how I could act normally all day when you'd been arrested for--for counterfeiting?" she said in disbelief.

"No, it's all real money. But it has the wrong dates. From the future. I didn't think. And--and it's not pound notes. It's all a mess. I thought I'd planned ahead for so many things, but I completely forgot about the money. At any rate, I don't have anything to wear on the beach. And that includes something to protect my skin. Could I--?"

She sighed, then started searching her bag for something that would help. "Well, I brought an extra pair of shorts for Harry. Not you. You know what I mean. You can wear those. But they're not for swimming, so don't go in the water."

"I wasn't planning to. But remember that when he wants to go in you have to go with him."

She gave him a withering look and he clamped his mouth shut. "I know that, Harry. I'm getting just a little tired of both of you treating me as dim. I do understand some things, I do remember things, and I understand what it is I need to do to keep him safe. Why do you think I'm trying to move as quickly as I can?" She wriggled out of her tee shirt and stuffed it into her bag, then handed Harry a tube of lotion. "Here; this'll protect that fair skin of yours. I've got another for us to use. I usually pack extras of everything, just in case, so it's no problem. But do try not to make a scene here at the beach! It was all I could do to distract him from what you were doing in the café!"

He felt properly chastised but at the same time she looked so lovely with the pale blue spandex clinging to her body that he mostly wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her again. He restrained himself, however, and nodded gratefully to her, putting the shorts and bottle into his rucksack before donning the Cloak again.

"What are you doing?" she wanted to know, frowning.

"I need to leave with you but I'll have to come back in when no one is using it, take off the Cloak, change into the shorts and leave without the Cloak on. I can't just take the Cloak off in the middle of the beach and I certainly can't come out of here right after you do."

She grimaced, nodding. "All right. I'll try to hold the flap open long enough for you to go through after me."

They managed this manoeuver without too much awkwardness and Harry watched his teenaged self go to the cabana to change his clothes. When he finally emerged, his chest deathly white in the summer sunshine, Harry looked around furtively, waiting for everyone in the vicinity (especially his younger self) to be looking away before discreetly lifting the flap and re-entering the cabana.

He immediately took off the Cloak and was stuffing it into the bag when he heard a slightly shrill voice outside saying, "It's all right, Paul. No one's in there now." Harry froze.

"Are you sure, Beryl?"

"Yes, I'm sure! Go on!"

Perhaps they're discussing a different cabana? Harry thought. But no; a moment later, while Harry's arms were still in his shirtsleeves an old man's balding head thrust through the flap, startled to see Harry smiling feebly at him.

He immediately retreated, muttering, "Sorry!" As Harry continued to remove his shirt he heard the two bickering.

"But I didn't see anyone go in..."

"Yeah, only ya never see what's really going on, do ya?"

"Oh, and you do, I suppose?"

Harry emerged from the cabana with his rucksack slung over his bare shoulder, wearing the shorts Tilda had given him and nothing else but his underwear, feeling very strange. His bare feet sank into the burning hot soft sand with each step and the rucksack was heavy from his shoes. He nodded to the arguing couple, who continued, despite the cabana now being available.

He settled on the sand about ten feet behind Tilda and his younger self; young Harry was clearly trying not to ogle Tilda. With a small smile he indulged in looking at her without his younger self noticing. He felt momentarily guilty again for what they'd done that morning, but pushed this feeling down, trying not to think about it.

He watched his younger self lie on the sand near Tilda, swim in the ocean with Tilda, and have conversations with Tilda, all the while wishing that he could spend an entire day with her now, like this, in the open, without having to hide that he was in Brighton because of her. Although he was really here because of him, young Harry. He frowned at his younger self, irrationally jealous of the simple act of talking openly to Tilda. He didn't dare. And he had to continually cover his hot, sweating forehead with his hair to hide his scar when what he most wanted to do was push it all off his brow and feel a cool breeze on his skin. The one thing he'd never been able to alter about his face with his Metamorphmagus abilities was his scar.

Harry wasn't sure how long he'd been idly watching them when he heard his younger self cry, "It's all his bloody fault!" Young Harry wiped his face on his arm angrily. He couldn't hear what Tilda said to him, putting her hand on his arm. The boy stood impatiently. Harry didn't have to strain at all to hear now.

"No! I'm tired of it all. Someone dies and that makes him a saint? You can't just mistreat someone for seven years and not expect there to be consequences! And how stupid was it for Sirius to sit there and listen to me go on and on and not say a bloody word about the mirror and how I should have used that instead? Would it have killed him to--" Harry's heart constricted, his younger self's face freezing as he thought about the words he'd just said. During the tirade Harry had managed to inch closer to them.

"Harry, I know you're angry with them both," Tilda said, trying to placate him. "With your dad and godfather. And maybe that's good; maybe that will help you as you grieve. I know that I'm still working through some of the things my dad did that--"

"Oh, you don't know the half of it when it comes to your dad."

Harry bit his tongue, wishing that his younger self had done the same, instead of being so spiteful and cruel. Watching the two of them, he felt deeply ashamed of how he had behaved. He hadn't counted on this at all, that one of the most painful parts of his time-travelling trip would not be remembering how sick with love he'd been or how fresh his grief over Sirius was; he hadn't counted on the sheer pain of seeing himself as a selfish teenager, saying and doing things he desperately wished he could take back sixteen years later. So many things he wished he'd done differently....

Tilda looked up at the boy, frowning. "What do you mean?"

Harry's heart ached, knowing what was coming. Even though he knew that Tilda's reconciliation with her mother would come of it, his shame deepened with every second that he had to witness his own recklessness, his own cruelty in telling Tilda about finding the silver. He followed them to the phone box as discreetly as he could, trying to appear to be looking for something in the sand as he drew nearer and nearer to the pier. He stood at a rail, looking out to sea, while out of the corner of his eye he was really watching her, collapsing in the phone box, crying as she learned the truth about her parents, about her childhood.

And how will we explain all of this to Teddy someday? he wondered. He would want the truth, eventually. The real, unvarnished truth. He was fifteen; Harry remembered fifteen, the rage that ruled him, the injustices he felt were looming at him from every turn. Teddy was as famous as, or possibly more famous than Harry had been at the same age, due to what had happened when Zabini had unintentionally given him his power. He was no longer gawped at because he was Harry Potter's son; he was the center of attention now because he was himself, but that was now in addition to Harry being his dad, not instead of... He didn't want his son to experience the same uncertainty that he had, the eerie not knowing, the feeling that everyone else in the world knew something about him that he did not.

With a gasp, Harry realised that the memory charm he'd had Parvati put on him was collapsing. He wasn't sure why, but it was.

He remembered....

Tilda finally emerged from the phone box and threw her arms around young Harry, hugging him tightly. As he watched the boy brush the hair out of her tear-streaked face, Harry's stomach clenched painfully. He thought, I've cheated on my wife. I've created an illegitimate son, a son I won't even know about until he shows up at Hogwarts...

He saw Tilda kiss his young self on the cheek and take the boy's hand in hers; he wished he could turn back the clock yet again, go back to that morning and not sleep with her, or go back to the previous night and not spend it in her room. He knew that that would be changing time, that Teddy wouldn't exist, but he couldn't stop the pain tearing through him as the memories cascaded back into his consciousness.

In stark contrast to the way Harry felt, Tilda looked very peaceful as they turned to walk back to the beach.

I'm so sorry, Ginny, so sorry...

He knew that Teddy had to be born, but now he wished again, as he had when he was sixteen, that he had actually slept with Tilda that night as a sixteen-year-old, but not for the same reason he wanted to when he was sixteen. If he'd done it then he could have told Ginny what had happened when they were still just friends and she wouldn't have called him a liar when Teddy showed up at Hogwarts twelve years later. He wouldn't look like an idiot, denying repeatedly that he'd slept with Tilda even while the magical genetic test proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was Teddy's father.... And his son wouldn't have doubted his willingness to be a real father to him, to come forward and do the right thing.

Then he remembered Snape. It had taken so many years to cultivate a tentative detente with him, he was stepfather to his son, and now he'd betrayed Severus Snape by sleeping with his wife. It was years before she would be his wife, technically, but in the world Harry had come from she was off-limits, married to his colleague.

He didn't follow them back to the beach. Instead he walked to the car again, covering himself with the Invisibility Cloak when he'd determined that no one was about, then leaning against the searing hot metal to weep for what he'd done.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Harry had gone to sleep in the back seat of the car but was jolted awake when young Harry and Tilda returned with the beach gear. Luckily, Tilda opened the rear door on the driver's side first, so he was able to slip past her, although her gasp told him that she felt the Cloak brush her legs.

"I need to go do something," he whispered. She opened her eyes wide, but he could see that she didn't dare say anything in response. His younger self didn't notice anything; he was making a great racket putting things in the back seat of the car and commenting on how much more room there seemed to be than there was earlier.

"I won't be riding back with you. I'll meet you at your house later," he said very quietly before striding away in his Cloak. Then something made him stop to observe the two of them again. They were walking away from the car; when they reached the beach once more they removed their shoes and carried them. It looked like what it was: a teacher walking on the beach with her former pupil. She was an adult and he was not. There was no doubt that they were not equals. Harry sighed; it was no good to wish that he'd slept with Tilda when he was sixteen. That wouldn't have made anyone's life any easier. He might as well wish that he hadn't taken the bus to New Stokington. He might have performed some accidental magic at number four, Privet Drive that could have sparked a different sort of disaster, such as his being expelled and having his wand broken...

He strode in the opposite direction, well away from the beach and the pier. Wandering the streets of Brighton, carefully avoiding people, he waited until he felt he had put enough distance between himself and young Harry to do magic. Finally, he took a deep breath and removed his wand from his rucksack under the Cloak. When he opened his eyes he was in the scrubby park at Grimmauld Place. He held his wand against his leg and walked purposefully to where he knew number twelve would appear, which it finally did when he drew close enough. He tapped the door lightly with his wand, hearing the myriad locks and bolts securing the door give way.

He opened the door slowly and tried to shut it very carefully, but the summer humidity was making it stick and he had to push his shoulder against it, plus the racket of the bolts locking again was unbelievably noisy. Noisy enough to--

"Harry!"

He froze, hoping that the Cloak was still covering him completely. Ron had flung open the door of the drawing room, Hermione at his side, breathless and wide-eyed. However, the two of them stopped short, seeing immediately that the front hall of the house was completely empty, lit only dimly by the flickering serpent-shaped gas lamps high on the walls. Although the hall was uninhabited it was not silent, however. Ron's shouting--and probably also Harry forcing the door closed--had not gone unnoticed by Mrs Black.

"But--but--" Ron sputtered, looking around in confusion.

"THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS, DEFILED..."

Under the Cloak, Harry covered his ears as Mrs Black launched into her tirade. All of the other portraits in the front hall started complaining loudly of the noise, putting their hands over their painted ears. He'd forgotten about her, as he and Ginny had finally found a way to remove the portrait from the house, even though they seldom went there. Remus and Tonks lived there, paying Harry a nominal rent of a Galleon per year. Getting the portrait of Mrs Black out of the place--because Tonks found her complaining about her half-breed great-niece marrying another sort of half-breed more than a little tiresome--had involved removing the portion of wall to which the portrait was attached, unfortunately. However, Remus and Tonks had eventually decided that having two entrances to the drawing room wasn't such a bad idea.

It was strange to think that all of that wouldn't occur for over ten years... The single existing door to the drawing room opened quite suddenly and Harry carefully backed up against the wall, seeing his two best friends as teenagers again. Hermione looked around, frowning, clearly trying very hard to ignore the various anti-Muggle-born epithets Mrs Black was screeching. "Are you sure you heard--?" Ron eyed everything around him suspiciously.

"Yes! The front door opened and closed again and then the locks were clicking--" Ron's face was turning quite red. Suddenly he stopped, as if he'd had a revelation. He looked at Hermione in horror; the same horror showed on her face.

"Maybe it wasn't someone coming in," Hermione whispered. "Maybe--maybe it was someone--"

"--someone going out," Ron said, nodding. He lunged at the handle to the front door, but it was magically locked again and he didn't know how to reverse it. Hermione shook her head in exasperation.

"Don't be rash. We should check the house first. Then if we think she's run off we'll tell someone. Kitchen first, I think."

Mrs Black's voice continued to echo through the entrance hall, setting off the other portraits, who were also screaming now and holding their hands over their painted ears. Harry's head was pounding along with his heart so loudly that he started to fear that Ron would hear both under the Invisibility Cloak as he pressed himself into the corner behind the door as thoroughly as he could. However, Ron seemed able to ignore both this and the racket coming from the artwork as he turned and ran down the hall toward the kitchen.

"Ginny! Ginny!" As he passed Mrs Black she stopped shouting and the other portraits settled down as well. He parted the curtains briefly, saying to Sirius's mother, "What's the matter?" he asked her snidely. "Worried that I'll kiss you again?"

Harry fought the urge to laugh, not having the foggiest idea what Ron was talking about. Ron left the portrait and started to open the door to the kitchen stairs when Ginny flung it open, her hair in a wild cloud around her head. Harry's heart turned over when he saw her; she was so beautiful and unaffected at fifteen, no idea how pretty she was. He wished he'd noticed her sooner, he wished he'd seen her. But years had passed without his even thinking of her at all. It was so strange to be able to see her now, so young, through eyes of love. Her eyes narrowed when she saw Ron.

"What? What is it? Is there some news?" she said quickly. Ron suddenly flung his arms around her, but Ginny shook him off impatiently. "What's the matter with you?" she grumbled.

Ron let her push him away. "It's just--we thought--"

Ginny looked at Hermione now. "We thought you'd left the house, Ginny. To--to go to Surrey," Hermione said quietly.

"I knew you weren't really over Harry, Ginny. Dean Thomas! I ask you!" Ron said indignantly.

Ginny looked daggers at him. "Stop trying to throw Harry at me, Ron. I came running up here because I'm concerned about him as a friend. Not to mention I'm concerned about everyone in the Order who went, and Professor Dumbledore as well. And while you're at it, stop talking about Dean that way!"

"You were very anxious there for a minute, asking for news of someone you think of as only a friend..." Ron said, raising his eyebrows meaningfully, ignoring what she'd said about the Order and Dumbledore. "Not to mention I think you would have gone to Surrey if you thought you could help."

Ginny crossed her arms and glared at him. "And just how stupid do you think I am, exactly? Not to mention--it would be like the Ministry of Magic all over again, wouldn't it? As it is the Order has Harry's safety to worry about. They don't need the likes of me running around Surrey attracting trouble. And how would I get there, anyway, without doing magic or risking being seen flying a broom?"

"The Knight Bus," Hermione and Ron said automatically, in unison; they both coloured immediately. Ginny didn't look so stern when she heard that.

"You thought I'd gone because you'd considered it yourselves, hadn't you?" She looked sympathetically at them. Harry stood against the wall still, watching the three of them, very glad that they hadn't done anything risky like going to Surrey. It was bad enough that he'd taken them and Neville and Luna to the Ministry and nearly got them all killed....

Hermione nodded. "Yes, but it was just talk. We needed to spout nonsense about what we'd do if we were going. The Knight Bus seemed like the most logical way...."

"Why did you think I'd gone out, again?" Ginny said, frowning. Harry shook with nerves when he saw all three of them look toward the front door, where he was now standing in his Cloak, trying to inch his way toward the stairs.

"Well, we thought we heard someone open and close it. And Mrs Black started to go off again. I suppose it could have been something else we were hearing. Could have been anything. We're a bit tense and jumpy right now," Hermione conceded. Ginny smiled wickedly at them.

"You need to relax. A little snogging might be in order," she said mischievously.

Hermione turned deep red; Harry found it very hard not to laugh when he saw Ron's hopeful face. He wished he could say to them, Yes, go ahead, do that and more, then you won't both wonder about it and be tempted to cheat on your spouses when you're married to other people some day...

But that reminded him of why he'd come. Cheating. I cheated on Ginny. He looked at the way the light fell on her beautiful hair, at the defiant sparkle in her dark eyes. He didn't deserve her. Perhaps he never had. He thought about writing a letter to himself to warn himself not to marry, ever, so that he would never have to cause a wife the pain of his infidelity. But then he thought of the years he and Ginny had shared and would share, he thought of Ruby and Rory and Charlotte, he thought of living at St Clare's, waking up with his beautiful wife in his arms and having the twins bounce into their bedroom on a summer morning, laughing and happy. They had a good life. A life he suddenly didn't feel he deserved. But a life he could not negate.

Instead of Ron and Hermione going off to snog, the three of them went down to the kitchen. Harry crept carefully up the stairs, glad they were gone. It was entirely too painful to see them so young and relatively untouched by the war. What had happened in the Department of Ministries was nothing compared to what they'd eventually go through.

Harry quickly reached the room Hermione and Ginny shared, with its portrait of the other Mrs Black and her sons hanging over the mantle. He knew that magical portraits couldn't see through Invisibility Cloaks, so there would be no danger of her giving away his presence. Fortunately, all three people in the portrait were sleeping.

He went to Ginny's dresser and opened the second drawer from the bottom; when he failed to find the portfolio of drawings there he checked the bottom drawer. He brought it under the Cloak with him, opening the ribbon carefully and leafing through the beautifully executed sketches, his heart aching again at the sight of his wife as a young girl, before he'd had the chance to betray her trust, before he'd made her a public laughingstock.

He found the drawing of her on the bed, the one that really set Ron off; he quickly turned the end of his wand into a pen and wrote, My dearest Ginny, on the back of the drawing. As he wrote he thought of their life together and their daughters. He thought of how much he loved her, of the years they'd worked side by side and the way she'd looked before she'd gone into Parvati's shop to wait for him to go back to his sixteenth birthday and cheat on her. I'm so sorry, Ginny. I can never say how much....

The words poured out of him and when he'd nearly reached the bottom of the page he wished he had ten more to fill and the time in which to do it. But a quick check of his watch told him that he should get to Little Whinging; it would only take Tilda and young Harry an hour, if that, to make the drive from Brighton (although making the drive to Brighton while on the floor in the back seat made it seem much longer).

He retied the ribbon on the portfolio and placed it carefully in the second drawer from the bottom, closing the drawer as quietly as he could. Mrs Black awoke and saw the drawer moving but no person in the room.

"Who is there?" she said suspiciously. Harry was glad that this Mrs Black's usual mode of speaking was not in anti-Muggle rants at the top of her lungs. He didn't answer but crept quietly to the door, ignoring Mrs Black again when he opened the door and she repeated, "Who is there?"

Who indeed? Harry thought. Only a man, a fallible, average man.

He managed to leave the house again without anyone being the wiser, since everyone who was home seemed to be down in the kitchen. Standing in the park across from the house again he lifted his wand and Apparated to Little Whinging.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Harry very purposefully did not Apparate to Tilda's house. He went instead to number four, Privet Drive. As he tucked the Cloak into his rucksack he saw his reflection in a window, surprised that he still had the thick moustache on his upper lip and the floppy brown hair hiding his scar; he'd forgotten that he'd imitated his lunch companion's appearance, his mental image of himself still being the Harry with unruly black hair. Ducking quickly behind some shrubbery, he Transfigured a small stone into a black puppy with a long lead.

When he emerged from the shrubbery he went to the pavement and walked along, strolling in the summer evening with his dog, for all the world like a typical resident of the quiet suburb of Little Whinging. He knew that Mad-Eye Moody was one of the members of the Order waiting at Mrs Figg's and that if someone happened to walk by in an Invisibility Cloak Moody would be on alert right away; his only option was to hide in plain sight. Moody's magical eye was good, but it couldn't detect the real form of a Metamorphmagus or a puppy that had been created through Transfiguration. The puppy would look like a puppy to Moody and Harry would look like a thirtyish man with a moustache and short, straight brown hair, walking his puppy.

He planned to put on the Cloak in order to help defend his younger self and make sure everyone else was all right as well, but at that point he hoped that Moody would be too distracted by everything else going on to notice him. And even if he did notice him, he hoped that Moody would realise quickly which side he was on.

The most difficult thing was to continue to walk along behind the puppy as if he hadn't a care in the world. He held his wand in the same hand as the lead, where it was easily camouflaged by the lead itself. He wanted to be able to use it at a moment's notice. When he was finally walking past the houses across from Tilda's and Mrs Figg's he stopped the puppy and stood behind him, facing the two houses while (supposedly) waiting for the dog to pee. The little thing yapped at him, however, and pulled at the lead, forcing him to turn away from his target and continue down the pavement, even as he continued to watch the houses out of the corner of his eye.

No one was in front of either house and Mrs Figg's looked just as uninhabited as Tilda's. His heart beat fitfully in his chest, waiting, waiting.... After standing with the puppy at the end of the street for a few minutes he slowly turned and started walking in the other direction, trying to concentrate on doing a better job of controlling the behavior of the Transfigured stone puppy this time.

After three circuits he couldn't help checking his watch every few moments; he wished he'd checked his watch when he was young so he knew exactly what time everything had happened. He probably could have used a Pensieve to check, if he'd thought of that first. Which he hadn't. He remembered what had happened when they'd arrived at Tilda's house, his shock at seeing her stunned, getting out of the car and whipping off his Invisibility Cloak...

Then he froze, remembering what happened when Voldemort saw a man across the street from Tilda's house walking his dog. He felt like he couldn't breathe for a moment.

No, no.... that can't be it....

He swallowed and looked down at the puppy; he hadn't really had much time to look at the man Voldemort had killed before he'd had to leap into the battle. If the man had straight brown hair and a moustache Harry didn't remember. This was, again, where looking at the events of this night in a Pensieve could have proven useful. He could have really examined some things in minute detail. Instead he had only his memories of this time, thrown into high relief when the other half of his life lay forgotten, thanks to Parvati's memory charm, but now that it had worn off the rest of his life, sixteen more years of events, was crowding his brain, making his memories of being sixteen recede into the distant past with the rest of his (thankfully) long-departed youth.

Bloody hell. I didn't just come back to father a son...

I came back to die.

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