Welcome Home

Harry woke up, rolling over to find a very unfamiliar face. It was Ron, though he was happy and excited to see Harry wake up. Harry instantly rolled over the other way, to find a wall in front of his face.

That's better, he thought.

Harry didn't want to see Ron. After all, he just awoke from a wonderful dream. He had just seen the Weasleys at Diagon Alley. At this thought, Harry realized that the wall he was facing seemed strangely familiar. He rolled back over to see Ron, still smiling. Ron was strangely happy about something, but Harry didn't ask what it was. It was probably just another scheme or something.

Harry sat up straight in his bed and asked, "What am I doing here?" abruptly. There was no time for small talk. Why was Ron sitting beside his bed? Why had Ron kidnapped him? Harry sure wasn't in his little apartment anymore. And why had Ron taken Harry to the one place Ron wasn't welcome? The Burrow.

"What do you mean? 'What am I doing here?' You always stay with us during the summer." Ron laughed as if Harry was just being plain silly. "Come on, get up. Breakfast's soon." With that, Ron left the room, leaving Harry speechless.

Harry tried to say something in return, but he couldn't. He just let Ron leave and left himself deep in his thoughts. He didn't have much more time for thinking, though, and he got dressed immediately and left the room.

He was definitely in the Burrow. But the question was: How did he get there? Well, it had to be Ron's doing. Spoiling a good dream like that - oh, Harry was mad at him. Harry finally saw the Weasleys again, and Hermione, and Ron had to go and spoil it all. It was so wonderful; he didn't want it to end.

Finally, Harry reached the bottom of the stairs and entered the kitchen. What he saw amazed him. It was the entire Weasley family, excluding Percy of course. Even Hermione was there. Harry instantly sat down next to her, realizing that the dream he had wasn't a dream at all. He also remembered that in his "dream," Hermione knew something about what was going on. If it wasn't a dream, then she really did know something. He had to talk to her later about it. Of course, at breakfast with about ten people surrounding them wasn't a good time so he greeted her and smiled, knowing that he would catch up with her later.

The entire time through breakfast, Harry smiled and nodded at all the things people talked to him about. He decided just to wait it out until he could talk to Hermione. Then everything would make sense. Well, he hoped it would. It was his only hope.

After breakfast, Ron said that he wanted to show something to Harry, so Harry followed him upstairs. He looked back at Hermione to see that she was still talking to Ginny about Ginny's upcoming O.W.L.'s. At least he figured out that he was supposed to be in his sixth year, but he knew that he could never get her attention to follow him upstairs. Harry decided that it was best just to follow Ron.

When Harry and Ron finally reached Ron's room again, Ron began to show Harry a new book he got from Fred and George on the Chudley Canons. It was pretty interesting, but Harry had lost his interest in Quidditch years ago. When he was Ron's age, though, he sure would have liked that book. Harry looked through some of the pages to see a few pictures of some of their most famous goals. He found that his interest in Quidditch was slowly coming back.

"This is great," he told Ron. He wasn't exactly talking about the book, but Ron thought that he was.

"I know! I don't know why they're buying me all this stuff, but I must have done something good for it."

Ron then showed Harry a couple of figurines of Quidditch players that the twins gave to him as well. It struck Harry as odd that they would buy all those things for Ron. Then again, things have changed. Harry didn't know what was going on in the world exactly. Where was Voldemort? He now realized that he was alive, if you could say "alive" for what he was, somewhere in the world. This angered Harry. He knew that he had to defeat him all over again. He had to go through the same hardships that followed his defeat. The boy in front of him would become a Death Eater behind his back. Harry smiled at Ron, hoping that day would never come.

Suddenly, Hermione and Ginny bounced into the room. Harry was beaming. Finally she was there! She could make sense of everything and may be even help him to get back home. But did Harry really want to go home? He sure didn't have anything in the future and the past was much more fun. No deaths or betrayal to upset Harry. But Harry knew that those days would come. He sighed at that thought, though no one saw him. Hermione and Ginny rushed towards him and gave him a hug in turn.

"Ron and Ginny, do you mind if I talk to Harry alone about something? It has something to do with school," Hermione asked them. Finally she was taking the step to talk to him. Harry was glad that she did because he knew that he wouldn't have been able to do that. He couldn't have kicked Ron out of his own room, though obviously Hermione could.

"Well, it is my room!" exclaimed Ron before leaving with a disgruntled Ginny.

Hermione sat on the edge of Harry's bed and motioned for him to do the same. He sat beside her and waited for her to say something. He needed all the explanation he could get.

Hermione began. "Harry, let me just say that I'm really, really sorry." Harry just stared back at her, lost for words. What could she possibly be sorry for? "I did it for a good reason. Believe me, Harry. I did."

At last, Harry needed to say something. "What did you do, Hermione?"

"You mean, you don't know?" Hermione started blushing, embarrassed for everything she said. If Harry didn't know what she was talking about, he would get very suspicious of what she did.

"Well, something weird happened yesterday. It's happening today too. I don't know what's going on." Harry was satisfied with his explanation. It was vague enough to explain if she had no idea what happened to him. However, Harry didn't want her to be clueless. He needed her help, and he knew that if anyone could help him, it would be Hermione.

Hermione took a breath before explaining. "I made this time-turner-"

"You what?" Harry interjected. Now he knew that it was Hermione's doing. "You always said not to mess with time. Why would you do that?"

"I made it last month. I figured that if anything ever went wrong in the future, you'd need to redo it. It looks like it didn't work out, did it?"

"Yes and no. I did defeat him, but I guess I'll have to try to do that all again. Of course, there were other repercussions. I probably shouldn't tell you what happened. It might happen again," Harry paused before continuing. "So you're saying that I need to do it all again? I don't know if I can handle that." Harry said no more, but he knew that he'd have to handle it. There was no other choice.

"It has to be done, Harry. You know that. It brought you to this specific time for a reason. May be there's something else that you need to do as well. Was there anything else that happened badly?"

Harry did not answer her, but he thought about it. There were many bad things that happened. There were countless deaths and people joined the wrong side at the wrong time. He just wished that he'd be able to fix the wrongs that were done. Even if it wasn't caused by him, Harry wanted to do as much as he could to rid the world of the bad things that plagued his life.