2017

"All right, so what do we do now?" Harry asked in a slight daze, still a bit confused over what exactly was going on.

"We've got to find help," Rose said breathlessly, "an adult -- someone who will listen to us and believe us."

"Your mum?" James suggested.

"No, we don't have time for an owl," Rose replied. "It's got to be someone at Hogwarts. Ah, I think I've got it! There's only one former D.A. member that's in this school right now."

"Me?" Harry asked without thinking, recalling Albus had mentioned the D.A. earlier.

"No!" Rose said immediately. "And how do you know about the D.A.?" she added rather accusingly, turning in James and Albus' direction.

"I, uh, mentioned it to him," Albus explained timidly. "I'm sorry -- I - I didn't know I wasn't supposed to... say anything." Rose's expression softened a little.

"It's okay," she assured him, "you can't turn back the clock."

"You better bloody well hope you can if you want to send Dad back," James interjected.

"Oh, right!" Rose said quickly, picking up the alarm clock. "We'll take this to Nev-- I mean, Professor Longbottom --"

"Neville's a professor?!" Harry asked in amazement. "Of what?"

"Don't tell him anything!" Rose shouted less than a nanosecond after Harry had finished speaking.

"I wasn't going to!" James answered indignantly. "Honestly!" Harry grinned, reminded of Ron and Hermione.

"What're you smiling about, uh... Dad?" said James, finishing his query in a rather hesitant voice.

"Uh, you can call me 'Harry'," Harry said automatically. It was a bit weird to have a boy older than him calling him "Dad".

"No one's going to have time to call anyone anything!" said Rose, cutting in. "We're going to go to Professor Longbottom, get Uncle Harry back to 1991 and that'll be the end of it, okay?"

"All right, whatever," James said, rather taken aback.

"If Neville's a professor, will he be happy with us walking around at night?" Harry asked as they headed down a corridor, again hidden by the invisibility cloak.

"I think he'll understand given the circumstances," Rose said calmly. "Besides, he didn't seem to mind the way you, Mum and Dad snuck around at night in your day. Well, except for that one time he tried to stop you..."

"Neville tried to stop us?" Harry asked in surprise. "How?"

"Oh, never mind!" Rose said quickly. "I shouldn't have said anything in the first place."

They reached the door that presumably led to Neville's office and Rose knocked on it. Harry turned to Rose.

"Would he be awake at this hour?" he asked her. Rose shrugged.

A second later, however, the door flew opened and Harry saw a thirty-seven-year-old Neville Longbottom standing on the other side. He was still recognizable as the slightly buffoonish eleven-year-old Harry knew in 1991, though he nevertheless looked quite different. His face was still a bit roundish, but not as much as it used to be.

"All right, I know you're there," he said to them. Harry had briefly forgotten they were invisible. "You're wearing your father old cloak, aren't you?"

"Yes," Rose replied quickly. "Professor, we need your help. We have a really big problem."

"You can't go sneaking around at night," Neville told them strictly. "That's how your Mum, Harry and I once lost Gryffindor a hundred and fifty points."

"A hundred and fifty!" Harry said under his breath. The others hushed him.

"Professor, seriously, we need your help," Rose told him. "It's very urgent."

"You can see me in the morning," Neville replied in a harsh voice Harry would not have expected him to possess. "I know Harry and your parents' sneaking around at night ultimately helped defeat Voldemort, but, as a teacher, I cannot condone it. Besides, there's no Voldemort around now. If you don't go back to your dormitories, I'll be forced to take points from Gryffindor. Besides, doesn't James -- I know he's there too -- have to practice incantations for his Transfiguration exam tomorrow?"

"Why do we have to use incantations anyway?" James asked in annoyance. "Couldn't we just use self-spelling wands for the rest of our lives?"

"Yeah, you kids have it real tough," Neville told them. "Everything is self-doing these days; I expect they'll come out with self-eating sweets next."

"C'mon, Professor, can't you swing with the times?" James asked him hopefully. "Besides, there must be something you like about wizarding technology nowadays?"

"Well, I admit it's nice that they've finally made Remembralls that tell you what you've forgotten," Neville replied, "but that's not the point. The point is that you have ten seconds before I --"

Before he could finish, Rose threw the clock off of them and Neville, at the sight of Harry, broke off. He stared at them for a long time, before stepping backwards into his office and collapsing into his chair. Harry nervously stepped forward.

"N -- Neville," he said nervously. "It's me -- Harry."

"I know," Neville replied, "But what the bloody hell happened to you?"

Neville was turning over the alarm clock in his hands as Harry explained his story for the third time that night.

"So -- so, you time-traveled here?" Neville asked.

"Yeah, that's right," Harry repeated. "From the year 1991. Specifically, the twenty-sixth of October, 1991 at around... er, not long before midnight. Wood was keeping us in practice forever."

"Oliver Wood," Neville said wistfully. "I remember those days. We had such a great sense of camaraderie -- remember when you convinced me to stand up to Malfoy and I took him on at a Quidditch game?"

"Uh, that hasn't happened yet," Harry explained. "We haven't even played our first game yet."

"Professor, you must see that you can't tell him anything about the past," Rose insisted, using considerably more restraint than when she had explained this to James. "If he has knowledge of his future, it could seriously disrupt the proper flow of time."

"That's probably true," Neville said, clearly still reminiscing over the time Harry had been in less than an hour ago. "Especially since it's coming from the daughter of Hermione Granger." Rose beamed, but Neville sighed.

"It's so weird seeing you this young again," he told Harry. "Well, I guess I'd better alert the rest of the D.A.... or at least its main members; Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Luna... you know, the old crowd."

"Professor, I think I'd be best to not invite Uncle Harry's other self," Rose suggested.

"'Other self?'" Neville asked. "But isn't -- oh, right, there would be an older Harry, wouldn't there?"

"Exactly!" Rose told him. "And we have no way of knowing what might happen if the two of them were brought into the proximity of each other. It could potentially bring about any number of time paradoxes."

"Right, I'll have it explain that when it stops at the Potters' to alert Ginny," Neville replied.

"When 'it' stops?" Harry asked curiously. "What is 'it', exactly?"

Harry got his answer to what "it" was when Neville raised his wand and shouted "expecto patronum!" A large silvery toad flew out of Neville's wand and leapt out the window and out of sight. Harry stared after it in awe.

"What, haven't you ever seen a Patronus before?" James asked him.

"Of course he hasn't!" Rose snapped. "He's still in his first year and he was raised by Muggles, remember?"

"Oh, right," James replied. Neville turned away from the window.

"All right, you three go back to your dormitories," Neville told James, Rose and Albus. "I'll take Harry with me and meet up with the others down in the Hog's Head."

"What?!" James asked angrily "Why can't we come? We found him."

"You sound so much like your father and your mother," said Neville, shaking his head. "Look, just go back to bed and don't worry yourselves over this. I promise I'll let you know what's happened in the morning. Besides, you're all too young to go into Hogmeade anyway -- you have to be at least third year."

"Well, he's too young, too!" James insisted, pointing at Harry. Neville turned to Harry.

"When were you born?" he asked him.

"31 July, 1980," Harry replied.

"Well, it's 2017 now, so that makes you thirty-seven," Neville concluded proudly, "and therefore well over the age requirement. Now, get to bed!" James did not look happy with this arrangement, but Rose nodded understandingly.

"Of course, Professor," she agreed. "I think that would be best." With that, she threw the invisibility clock over herself and her cousins. Neville turned to Harry.

"Well, we best get going now," Neville explained. "The rest of the D.A.'ll be Apparating in the Hog's Head any minute now."

Knowing better than to ask what "Apparating" was, Harry followed Neville out of his office and down the dark corridor.