The Return of the Prodigal

3 The Problem

Harry groaned as his abused body dropped to the floor of the Headmaster's office from a height of a few feet. The impact exacerbated those bruises obtained when he'd been knocked off his broom. Considering the general nausea caused by the Portkey and the overall soreness he thought might be the effect from the closeness of the Killing Curse, he was not a happy, or comfortable, young man.

He groaned again, forcing himself into a standing position. He was slightly startled when he looked up to find Dumbledore staring at him with a curious expression from his desk chair. Last he'd saw, the Headmaster was in front of the castle defending against the attack.

"Did we get them all?"

His question was met with confusion. "All whom, young man?"

Harry looked at Dumbledore and then over to Fawkes on his perch. "The Death Eaters, Sir."

Dumbledore frowned. "I think you need to explain why you're in my office, young man. Along with who exactly you are."

Harry's eyes appeared to bulge slightly in his shocked expression. "Are you feeling okay, Headmaster?"

"I'm feeling rather fine today, though you appear a tad peaked."

The young man shrugged. "Doesn't hurt as bad as Cruciatus, I'll make it."

At this, the Headmaster looked a little shocked. "Perhaps you should sit down, I believe this explanation may take awhile."

Harry sat, still not knowing what was going on. Fawkes, sensing his distress, took flight and settled on his shoulder. Harry reached a hand across his body to lightly pet the phoenix's scarlet plumage.

"Always good to see you, Fawkes."

Dumbledore watched carefully, more comfortable with his decision not to pull his wand. "Have you met my phoenix before?"

Harry looked at his Headmaster with blatant confusion. "Sir... Maybe you should go to Madame Pomfrey."

The Headmaster chuckled. "We will both go, as soon as you've answered my questions."

"Headmaster, I'm Harry Potter."

Dumbledore tilted his head slightly. "Yes, I can see a resemblance to the Potter line... Are you a cousin? We have a James Potter in seventh year."

Harry shook slightly, an overall trembling, something was very wrong. "Headmaster, you know my father's been dead for sixteen years."

The headmasters eyebrows rose, and Harry had the isolated pleasure of truly surprising the older man. "What year is it for you, young man?"

"1997."

Dumbledore wrote a note on a scrap of paper and turned to Fawkes. "Take this to Poppy, please Fawkes."

The phoenix took the paper carefully and then disappeared from the room. The older wizard turned to Harry. "I think you should tell me how you came to be here, in what is presumably your past."

Harry didn't even want to think about the connotations of being present in his own past. "The school was attacked. You had made an emergency Portkey, keyed to your office and an activation phrase, at the end of my last school year. In the attack, a Death Eater cast the Killing Curse at me as I Portkeyed away."

Dumbledore nodded. "Yes, that would cause an unpredictable reaction. It is not safe to use any magic in the vortex of a Portkey. I imagine a lesser spell would cause a lesser effect."

Harry managed to control the slight trembling in his body. "What am I supposed to do? This could cause more paradox problems than that Time Turner almost did."

"You've used a Time Turner?" The question was stopped before it could be answered. "No, don't reply. It's best we limit the information you give me only to what I absolutely must know. I will research a way to send you home... For now, it may be best if you become a student here."

The younger man's eyebrows rose in incredulity. "A seventh year student in the same class with my parents and half the people I know as adults?"

Dumbledore smiled slightly. "Yes. It may be difficult, but it would be the safest thing. An attack has recently destroyed a small wizarding school in Wales; we will claim you survived and have been transferred here. Enough of our students have lost family that no one will question you if you claim to be orphaned. What is your full name?"

"Harry James Potter, Sir."

"Then we will announce you as Harold James. The name should be close enough that you would be comfortable with it, yet not quite obvious enough to cause a problem."

Harry smiled, the opportunities involved were unreal. He could get to know his parents, have more time with his godfather, torment some of his own enemies on their own school boy level. Be sorted again... Wait, that was a concern.

"Will I be sorted? Won't the hat see that I've already been placed?"

"I will speak with the Sorting Hat before dinner tonight."

There was a knock on the door and Madame Pomfrey entered. The woman was the same to Harry, but twenty years younger.

"You needed me here, Albus?"

"Yes, Poppy, young Harold here is joining Hogwarts. I'd like you to take him to the hospital wing and give him a check over. He is the last of the students from the Welsh school."

Pomfrey nodded soberly. "Of course, Albus. Come along, Harold."

As Harry was handed off to her, he decided to make the best of this time. It might be the closest he ever came to a vacation in his young life. After all, here Voldemort was not explicitly trying to kill him.

Harry watched the faces in the halls as Madame Pomfrey escorted him to the hospital wing. Most he did not recognize, some he did even in their younger versions.

Once ensconced in a bed, Pomfrey began to exclaim over her examination of him. "Dear lord, child, what have you been up to?"

Harry raised a questioning eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"You've had bones broken and regrown, been hexed, and you're showing signs of Unforgivable curses," the nurse appeared indignant at these facts in a seventh year student.

Harry tried to think of an acceptable response. "Quidditch?" His answer was obviously not satisfying enough, so he added on. "And the attack on the school was fairly bad."

Madame Pomfrey continued to fret about him as she healed the bruising and other injuries. "Now you just lay there and relax until dinner. Dumbledore will come fetch you when he's ready."

***

A few hours later, while Harry was dozing in his bed, the noise of the doors being thrown open awoke him. He looked to the end of the hall and noted with some shock who had entered.

It was Professor McGonagall, younger of course, and she had a Gryffindor student's ear twisted in her hand. It was the identity of that student which shocked him so... Sirius Black. Harry sat still for a moment, caught in the sight of his godfather who'd been dead for two years. It was only when the young man spoke that Harry noticed another student.

"He hexed me, why aren't you ripping his ear off?"

McGonagall twisted her hand slightly, causing Sirius to rise onto his toes. "Because I expect better of a Gryffindor than the behavior you exhibit, Mr. Black." She left her charge on a hospital bed, the unnamed hex to be treated by Madame Pomfrey and turned to the other student who had followed quietly.

Harry almost didn't recognize a young Severus Snape. After all, he'd seen Snape under the effects of curses, but never with two black eyes and blood on his face. McGonagall gestured him to a bed and stood, looking fierce. "Will either of you be telling me what happened?"

The young men stared back with blank faces, Sirius looking mulish, Severus having perfected his inscrutable expression long ago. Harry managed to restrain his laughter and lay back on the bed, quietly listening.

"Since neither of you wishes to speak up, you will both serve detention. Mr. Black, you will come straight to my office after being released. Mr. Snape, you will see Professor Archanum. I will inform him of the circumstances so that your Head of House will provide suitable discipline."

Still facing silence, McGonagall left the room and the two in Pomfrey's care.

When she sent them off a short while later, separately and their departures staggered, Harry still lay quietly on that bed. He had things to think about... What he was doing here... How he'd keep his true identity hidden... When he would get home... And, whether in the process he would accidentally cause a paradox so severe that it might give Tom Riddle the advantage.