Swimming Upstream

It was quite a turnout, he reflected. That was good, and it was bad. Too many people had sent their kids overseas for his liking during the immediate aftermath of Voldemort's demise. As if any of the various Death Eater factions would be stupid enough to take another crack at Hogwarts!

Kings Cross, on the the hand... He shivered at the thought, and wished his sister had agreed to let him drive Lucy up there. Short of disobeying direct orders from the Minister himself and telling her about the threatening letter from Pettigrew's outfit, there had been nothing he could do to persuade her.

"Rick!" He started, turning towards the familiar voice. Draco Malfoy. What in Christ's name was he doing here? "Don't look so stunned; I'm seeing my niece off."

"That's not what surprises me, Draco," he admitted. "It's just that the last time we saw each other you called me rather a lot of very unpleasant names, and then tried to hex me."

"Oh, come on! It's not as if you didn't pummel seven kinds of crap out of me afterwards. Listen," he continued, his voice turning serious, "I know I spent quite a while perpetuating the previous generation's family feud, but I sort of re-evaluated my attitude after Dumbledore died."

"When you bottled out and made Snape do it to save your hide?" Rick snarled. "Do you have any idea what that cost him?"

"Rick, you know and I know that he was a dying man. That liquid was the ultimate booby-trap; I've seen what it does to a person. Severus was doing him a favour, and they both knew it. And as a matter of interest, Voldemort killed my mother in a fit of pique because his carefully worked-out plan to get at my father had gone tits-up. I found the body, and it wasn't pretty."

Rick swallowed. "I didn't know. I'm sorry, Draco. If the olive branch still has a few leaves on it..." They shook hands. "Seen Fran anywhere?"

"If I'd run across her, would I still be alive?"They laughed. "If she didn't kill me, Hermione would have; I don't think they've forgiven me for... well, any of it."

"Wouldn't surprise me; talk about militant lesbians..." Rick scanned the crowds, and Draco finally noticed the earpiece he was wearing. He nodded, not at all surprised his cousin was doing more than seeing off his sister's adopted daughter. "Was it also you who turned Luna's favourite sweater into a straitjacket?" Rick continued. "She told me all about that one, and then made me sleep on the sofa for a week because I suggested doing the same with her nightie one evening."

"Pervert! How is Luna these days, anyway?"

"Running the family business, a mother of three, and just as offbeat as she ever was. Takes some getting used to, but once you get past it..." he tailed off, staring intently at one man. Something about him made the young Auror's finely honed policeman's radar go bleep. "Don't go anywhere."

He walked over to the man. "Excuse me, sir? I need to see inside that bag," he said calmly, showing his identity card.

A backhand punch sent him staggering, and the man ran for Platform 9 ^3/4. Rick gave chase. "All units, this is Malone. In pursuit of suspicious character. Suspect is Caucasian male in red sweatshirt, carrying a large rucksack. Looks like he's heading for Gate Seventeen!" 'Gate Seventeen' was the codeword for the entrance to the Hogwarts platform.

Platforms 9 and 10 were deserted except for Hogwarts families, out of use while the trackbed was being repaired. That was one thing, Rick reflected. If he apparated out there'd be a hell of a lot of explaining to do...

Three more Aurors were already there, all carrying sidearms. "Halt! Armed police officers!" they yelled. The fugitive drew a pistol of his own, an old Stechkin. It was a long-obsolete Soviet Army design, popular with terrorists because it had the option of fully automatic fire. He emptied the entire clip, cutting down one Auror and a passer-by. If it was a Death Eater, it was one of the brighter ones, Rick thought to himself grimly. After the Aurors started carrying firearms they'd had to adapt fast or die out, ideology be damned...

"Shots fired, shots fired! One officer and one civilian down, request immediate paramedic response!" Rick yelled into his radio, staying in pursuit. The fugitive dived through the fake pillar. That settled it, Rick thought fleetingly. If he just had drugs or something in there he wouldn't have done that. He followed, drawing his own service automatic as he did so. Even without non-magical witnesses, a gun was more useful when your adversary was chucking Unforgivables around...

Somebody had left their trunk a couple of yards ahead of the exit, and Rick didn't see it in time. Just before he went sprawling, he saw the other man apparate. The rucksack was still there.

And then the whole world seemed to explode.

They reckoned afterwards that the fall had probably saved his life. That was the cruellest part of it. Rick had known he'd failed the moment he saw the man apparate, but being saved by his own clumsiness even as all the hundreds of ball-bearings packed in with the explosives had scythed through the crowd was too much to bear. It was his fucking fault! Why couldn't he have died there and then?

When he'd finally pulled himself up and looked around him, uncaring of the dozens of puncture wounds from the glass shards from the concession booth, he'd broken down in tears of grief and impotent rage. Staggering between knots of dead and wounded, trying to help despite being badly torn up and all but deaf, he'd come upon the three of them.

Francis Malone, Hermione Granger and their adopted daughter, all dead. They'd been mere feet from the bomb, and were barely recognisable. Aurors and paramedics from St Mungo's who'd apparated in as soon as the blast had been reported had seen him place the pistol in his mouth and wrestled it away from him, then eventually had to flexicuff and sedate him to stop him grabbing for it again.

The final toll stood at fifty-two dead, and over a hundred and thirty badly wounded. It hadn't made the mainstream papers; the Ministry had made sure of that. The gunfire was reported as a Flying Squad operation against a heroin deal that had turned sour. Rick's description was sufficient for an identity-kit photo to be issued, for all the good it would do.

He had a few visitors. Luna and the kids, a few other members of the squad. All found him deeply withdrawn, nearly catatonic.

The final visitor was something of a surprise. "Malone," Snape said coolly.

"Professor."

"Lying there glaring at the ceiling like it was personally responsible for this atrocity will not bring her back, young man, and taking your own life would have achieved even less."

"You know of anything that can help?" Rick snarled back. "What the fuck am I supposed to do, shake it off and get on with my life? After all you've been through you ought to know better than that. Now unless you have some clever plan to go back in time and change the course of history, I would very much appreciate it if you would leave me in peace."

"Funny you should say that," Snape said with a thin smile, "because that is precisely why I'm here."

Rick was very still for a few moments. "I don't suppose that even my dear-departed Uncle Lucius would be enough of a bastard to joke about something like that," he said at last. "What have you got in mind?"

"I propose that we use Flitwick's Patent Reversing Charm to dispose of Voldemort at an early stage. The salient facts are as follows. Until the incident at the Potter family home, he kept all six Horcruxes in one location; the plan to disperse them was only implemented when he was vanquished for the first time. His innermost circle of associates -which did not include myself at that time- evidently knew of their existence, and put the plan into effect as soon as they became aware that the seventh Horcruxation had backfired so spectacularly. The trouble is, there are so many wards in there that using magic will be nearly impossible. Even a 'Lumos' is liable to blow your hand off."

Rick gave the former double-agent a thin smile. "Who needs magic?"

"The Horcruxes are concealed somewhere in a building belonging to the British Pepper and Spice company, one of the Malfoy estate's holdings in the muggle world. It's a huge building, and there's no quick and easy way to find them; the anti-scrying wards are rigged to make the spell blow up in your face. It will take no little while to search that place," Snape remarked.

"Then we'll blow up the whole damn building," Malone replied. "The atmosphere's going to have a pretty high dust content already, right? We can set a few charges to blow up straight away and stick them in a load of sacks, then have the rest go maybe five seconds later. The technical term for it is a fuel-air explosion, and what doesn't blow up should burn nicely. He might as well have hidden the damn things on Piper Alpha!"

"And the place is only three miles from Godric's Hollow," Flitwick added. "Radio detonators can transmit that far, I assume?"

"Easily, but if that place is built the usual way then we'll need a booster transmitter. These places are usually just prefabricted sheet metal bolted to a framework. A strong enough booster on the warehouse roof should do, though."

"Make a list of what you require, and we'll get it," Snape replied.

"Most of it's fairly easy; a map of the area, a copy of these plans, some surreptitious entry gear. Some night vision goggles wouldn't hurt either. Weapons I'll see to myself; I can sign some kit out of the armoury at headquarters."

Snape and Flitwick were just setting up in the old master bedroom of Number 12 Grimmauld Place when Mrs Black started her usual spiel. This continued for about thirty seconds, and they caught a reference to 'that mudblood dyke.' Then there was a tremendous crashing, tearing blast of noise that sent both men running downstairs.

Rick ejected the empty magazine from the blocky, compact automatic weapon he was carrying and offered an apologetic shrug, then examined the tattered remains of the painting. "Sorry I startled you, but she was really getting on my tits."

* * *

For the third time that day, Rick went carefully over his equipment.

BXP 9mm sub machine-gun, loaded and cocked, suppressor on securely. Walther P88 sidearm, same. Stun grenades. Night-vision goggles. Lock picks. Rope and grapnel. Map. Plans of the target building. Radio. Satchel charges. Booster transmitter. Detonator. Wand. Funny how he always checked that last, a product of being taught magic at home after he got home from school... Shit! You can't afford to think about that now, you bloody fool. You can save them all, but only if you fucking well CONCENTRATE! he yelled at himself inside his head.

"I can get you there to within a radius of four or five miles, but I can promise the right date." Flitwick promised. "When I'm trying to control it from within it's rather less precise."

"Is that horizontally or vertically?" Rick enquired drily.

"You return at the same elevation you leave, hence the fact that we're in an upstairs room." Rick was momentarily startled, then reminded himself that the area he was aiming for was a good bit higher above sea level than Greater London. He stood carefully on the Kwik-Step that Flitwick had borrowed from the pantry and waited. Flitwick scattered what appeared to be Floo Powder mixed with something else in a rough circle around Rick, then muttered something in Latin and hurled a time turner into the air above him. It hovered there, and began to glow. "Wish me luck, little sister," Rick muttered. Then, with a flash of blue light, he was gone.

He emerged about three feet above the ground, landing in a crouch on the tarmac... Tarmac? Flitwick, you're a tit! He retreated to the hard shoulder of the A45, thanking his lucky stars that it was empty at this hour, and tried to work out where he was from the map and a handy road sign. The warehouse he was looking for was in the very industrial estate he was standing in front of! Okay, so maybe you weren't so far off after all. Rick unslung his SMG and headed into the large industrial estate, searching for the British Pepper and Spice Company's main plant.

He lowered his night-vision goggles as he approached the main entrance, then raised them again. The streetlights made them worse than useless. Alarm box on the wall, ordinary mortice locks on the office door. No obvious guards. Plant should be closed at 2AM on a Sunday... Christ, am I ever going to be jet-lagged when I get back! He permitted himself a smile at the thought, the first since the bomb, then raised his pistol and took out the alarm box. The soft thwap was no louder than somebody slapping their palm against a wooden surface, and shouldn't carry far. Then he attacked the locks. Within three minutes he was through.

A cautious sweep of the office revealed no sign of additional security. He deposited a single satchel charge beside what the plans called a load bearing wall, then headed into the factory building proper. One charge he left in the canteen kitchen, turning all the gas on as an afterthought, and another he placed in the locker room.

The problem with this place was that it was absolutely enormous. I should have brought a sodding Lancaster, Rick groused, placing a charge in the lower reaches of the bottling room. The warehouse was the worst; it was roughly the size of a football pitch, and stacked quite literally to the rafters with palletised sacks on metal racking. If the place ever goes bust it ought to make a nice rave venue, he thought to himself. Shame it smells like a tandoori takeaway's Hoover bag in here.

He placed the remaining charges next to the support beams, and found himself with one spare. After wandering about for a few minutes looking for somewhere to put it, he came upon an otherwise unremarkable cupboard with a padlock bearing the insignia of Greville and Nuggan, the magical world's premiere locksmiths. Jackpot! He knelt down and peered at the padlock. The problem with Greville and Nuggan's earlier models, his Surreptitious Entry instructor had impressed upon the trainees, was that the makers thought wizards only ever got burgled by other wizards. They were near as dammit spellproof, but any halfway competent housebreaker could get one open with a couple of cocktail sticks.

Without taking too much trouble checking the interior of the cupboard, he placed his last block of plastic explosive at the bottom and hid it behind two boxes of shrink-wrap rolls and made for the roof.

It was a fairly simple job; all he really needed to do was set up the booster unit, and bore a fairly small hole through the roof with the drill function on the little multi-purpose electric whatsit that formed a key component of his lockpicking kit; it looked like it had come out of an Anne Summers catalogue and was advertised by a man with an annoying voice on a VCR loop in DIY superstores, but it did the job. Once the hole was bored, all he need do was drop about eighteen inches of wire through and form a servicable microwave antenna. Once he'd done that, all that stood between him and victory was another walk through this foul-smelling place and a brisk stroll to the village, then a brief and probably rather one-sided confrontation with the Dark Lord...

"Oi! You!" Rick spun around, and beheld a man in a white coat and one of those trilby-like hats that are usually the mark of a warehouse manager. The wand told an entirely different story, though. Probably a Death Eater working under cover, Rick surmised, bringing the BXP to his shoulder. It was just about the fastest-firing SMG on the market, and the unfortunate man barely had time to open his mouth before a three-round burst of nine-millimetre hollowpoints tore through his chest cavity. The unlucky Death Eater tottered backwards a few steps, and finally tried to step past where the roof ended. The step lasted him the rest of his life, and he plunged eighty feet towards the car park.

"Never bring a wand to a gunfight, dickhead," Rick observed drily, wondering idly what spell he'd been planning to use. Some of the stupider ones tried to use Shield Charms when confronted with firearms, either against Aurors in his own time or on their occasional muggle-baiting jaunts. If there were any Death Eaters out there who could put up a shield in time they might find out if it would stop a bullet, but to Rick's knowledge none of them had brought it off yet.

It's quite a hike from Brackmills to Godric's Hollow (known to what everybody calls 'non-practitioners of magic' these days as Great Houghton), especially if you miss the bridleway and have to go cross-country. It was nearly dawn before he finally found the rather picturesque little village, and the utterly unremarkable house in which the newly-wed Potters and their young son Harry resided. (Something not often mentioned by the Potters is that Harry had been born mere weeks after they married, which they did in quite some haste; as the best man -Sirius- is alleged to have said during his speech, "Once a Marauder, always a Marauder!")

He bought a copy of the morning paper as soon as the newsagent's opened, making sure all his currency had been transfigured to the appropriate date and the firepower was well-hidden in a canvas holdall. Crouching behind a parked Allegro, he laid the BXP beside him and settled in to wait.

Snape landed just outside chez Potter a couple of hours later. He gave Rick a curt nod and rang the bell. A very startled Lily Potter admitted him. A few minutes later, James Potter appeared at the window nursing a rapidly blackening eye. Rick tried hard not to laugh.

Snape perched precariously on the roof, sighting along a bolt-action rifle with telescopic sight he'd acquired from somewhere, and threw an invisibility cloak over himself. Wonder where he got that... Holy fucking shit! Harry Potter, in what was probably his sixth year, appeared from the other end of the road with a sub-machine gun in his hands. Cho Chang was close behind, carrying an AK47. Rick banged his head against the side of the Allegro, and switched on his radio.

"Snape! I don't remember anything about this in the plan! What the hell have you done, you maniac?"

"I ran into Potter and friends in Romania when Flitwick got us lost. I thought they might be of some assistance. Incidentally, I believe that we have already altered the time-line in some way. I don't pretend to fully understand it myself, but Flitwick seems to think it's not dangerous."

"Altered how...? Oh." Francis Malone appeared from behind some dustbins, followed by Luna Lovegood and... was that really Draco Malfoy? In what looked suspiciously like a Weasley Sweater? "Lord, give me strength," Rick muttered to himself. Then he saw himself aged seventeen and carrying an Uzi, with a Desert Eagle tucked into the waistband of a pair of jeans he still owned, accompanied by Hermione Granger with a twelve-gauge shotgun in her hands. At this point Rick decided he was having an acid flashback and settled in to make the best of it. Putting the safety catch on the BXP, he made himself comfortable and sat back to watch the show.

Voldemort apparated in right on schedule. Snape fired, but he dodged like somebody in a Wachowski Brothers film and summoned a horde of Death Eaters. A solid wall of gunfire and a number of Molotov Cocktails forced them to take cover until Voldemort rallied the troops and ordered a human-wave attack. Four or five Death Eaters actually made it through the front door, but judging by the noises they didn't get terribly far.

At length, Voldemort stood alone. He pointed a wand at himself, muttering something Rick couldn't hear, and created a dozen copies on each side of himself. Agent Smith did it better, sunshine. Rick stood up, and caught the nearest Voldemort's eye. He held up the detonator, and mouthed the words "Yippe-ki-yay, mother fucker!" and jabbed his thumb down on the button. He later avowed that he'd distinctly heard the Dark Lord say "Oh, bollocks," in a slightly strangled voice just before he and his various imitations were cut down by a hail of lead.

Nobody ever did figure out why somebody should go to so much trouble to obliterate the United Kingdom's premier importers of curry powder, a large quantity of which was spread across a good bit of Northampton in a dense, choking cloud by the huge explosion. A bullet was pulled out of the alarm box, but it was too mangled to be of any use to forensic scientists (and just as well; the Walther P88 wouldn't enter production for another two years, and that might have led to awkward questions), and if there was a cartridge case it had been crushed flat by the rubble. The warehouse manager was reported missing, but only when he defaulted on his child support, and the eventual discovery of his body in the wreckage might have merited more questions if anybody had really liked him all that much.

The site was cleared, but production did not resume and the plot was eventually acquired at a knock-down price by the Alexon Group -owners of Dolcis and one or two other big high-street clothing retailers- to replace the hopelessly overcrowded warehouse facilities in nearby Sywell and combine their storage and distribution facilities in a single site, as well as their main headquarters. The overall effect on the local economy was fairly positive; unpleasant working conditions and the strong aroma of curry that had pervaded everywhere within a three mile radius had not endeared British Pepper to local residents or its employees, but Alexon paid a good bit better and didn't perpetrate vile smells.

Rick watched the mop-up operation with interest, noting with satisfaction that Pettigrew was dragged away with the few Death Eaters who hadn't either died or fled. The enthusiastic crowd of teenagers returned to their own time, leaving Snape and Flitwick behind. Wordlessly, the three of them descended on a nearby pub.

"Nice bit of improvisation, I must say," Rick allowed. "But what I can't understand is how us going back in time gets me in with the Golden Trio."

Flitwick shrugged. "Who knows? A butterfly can flap its wings and-"

"Rot!" Snape cut in. "You dropped us both right into Fudge's office and blew the gaffe on Alex's home tutoring programme while I was in the middle of explaining just what the hell was going on!"

Rick burst out laughing for the first time since he'd found his sister's mangled corpse on Platform 9 ^3/4. "Nice try, Professor Flitwick. No big deal; I always did want to go to Hogwarts, even if A-Levels got me a lot further than NEWTS."

They set up the return portal in a nearby field, away from prying eyes. "I should warn you that the Department of Mysteries has no empirical data upon the effects of returning to an altered time stream," Flitwick cautioned. "You might find it... odd."

"Can't be any worse, though, now can it?"

Rick took a long time to work out where he was. He seemed to be in a hospital bed, probably St Mungo's. What had happened? A broom accident? No, they'd been investigating the Malfoy family's Gothic pile for a connection between Lucius and the self-styled Heir of Voldemort when he'd taken a Crucio and... No, that can't be bloody well right! Rick's thoughts knotted themselves horribly. He seemed to have memories of more than one past life. Over the course of an hour, he pieced it together in his mind. In Version 1, he had grown up to join the Aurors full-time and been at King's Cross for the bomb blast. Then he, Snape and Flitwick had journeyed back through the mists of time to blow up Voldemort's diabolical insurance policy and do him right over before he could cause too much more death and destruction, and then he'd wound up here. In Version 2 he had been packed off to Hogwarts by Fudge, got to know the Golden Trio and gone on a camping trip to Romania with them and several others, only to bump into Snape and Flitwick and go with them to... Oh, yeah, I watched that in Version 1. Then he'd moved into what you might call Version 2a; no Voldemort, Harry's parents and Sirius Black still alive, but an even worse explosion at King's Cross... But they pulled Lucy out of there with scarcely a scratch, he remind himself.

Harry stuck his head around the door. "Morning, Rick. Feel any better?" Rick was mildly startled to notice A: the complete lack of a scar and B: the rather strong Northamptonshire accent that Harry had acquired. (Author's Note: I'm told it's somewhere between Fenlands and Brummie.)

"It hurt like this when I last fell off my Silver Comet at speed, and when I did that I broke my collarbone in three places. What did I miss?"

"Quite a bit, mate. Poor old Draco took four Crucios. It got pretty hairy before we got some slightly unexpected backup. Picture, if you can, Professor Flitwick flying a broom with Professor Snape riding pillion and wielding an RPG-7 rocket launcher!" They both laughed. "This Heir of Voldemort character's probably gone to ground for the time being, but if nothing else came out of the mission, Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange are very dead."

"Good enough for me. Everybody okay?"

"Draco's still out, but the medics say he'll be alright in a couple of days. Everybody else is just a little bruised. The biggest worry is living down being rescued in the very nick of time by our least favourite teacher in the entire school!"

Harry, old pal, you don't know the half of it! Rick lay back, suddenly feeling terribly weary. Might be a good idea not to mention this to anybody. They'd think that Crucio has fried a few brain cells... He was asleep before he could finish the thought. After all, it had been one hell of a long day.

Meanwhile, Snape peered carefully over a sand dune, and gazed upon the rapidly approaching British 7th Armoured Division as the lead elements crossed the Saudi border into Iraq. Straight towards them.

"Filius, I don't wish to unduly alarm you, but you've got something under five minutes to get the spell ready or we are going to die."

"If you don't want to alarm me, why the bloody hell did you tell me that?"

"I said unduly alarm you. Now shut up and get us out of here!"

Private Thomas Harris, gunner aboard the lead Scimitar tracked recconaissance vehicle, took his eyes away from his gunsights for a moment and rubbed them with the back of his hand. Concluding that he could not possibly have witnessed what his eyes swore blind they'd seen, he buried the incident deep in the box-room of his memory and got on with the war.