2017

"Snape?!" Harry repeated incredulously. "I named you after Snape?" Harry could tell this explosion had deeply upset Albus, but he couldn't help himself. What had possessed his adult self to name his own son after Snape?

"Y-y-yeah," Albus said timidly. "You said he was really brave and noble and --"

"He's a slimy git!" Harry shouted. "He favors Malfoy and takes points from Gryffindor for no reason! In fact, he seems to hate me especially." Albus was shaking now, prompting Rose to give Harry a harsh look.

"What?" Harry asked in exasperation. "It's the truth!"

"Well, maybe Snape did something brave and noble that hasn't happened yet for you," Rose suggested helpfully. "He could change, couldn't he?"

"I don't think so," Harry said darkly. "And why don't you know about whatever he did? You seem to know everything else about my life?"

"Well..." Rose said carefully, "you, Mum, Dad and Aunt Ginny never told us anything about... that. You always said that we were too young and that you'd tell us when we got older..."

Harry angrily looked away. Why, why, why had he named his son after Snape? Had he turned to the Dark Side? He remembered Hagrid saying that Voldemort had "gone bad", implying he was once good. Harry felt rather scared as he realized how little control he had over his own future. He could control what he did in the present, but in ten or twenty years he would be a completely different person and there was no way he could prevent that from happening. Furthermore, the way Hermione and Rose were talking seemed to indicate the future was fixed, meaning he had no control over his destiny.

"James," Rose said suddenly, "take Uncle Harry for a walk in Diagon Alley."

"But Aunt Hermione said --" James began.

"I know what she said!" Rose snapped. "D'you think I'd be disobeying my mum without good reason? Now, take Uncle Harry into the alley while I'll stay here with Albus." James sighed.

"All right," he replied, "but if we get in trouble, I'm telling her this was all your idea."

A few moments later, Harry followed James out into the Diagon Alley of 2017. It was daybreak by now and the alley looked, if possible, even more extraordinary than it had in 1991. Neville was right -- everything was self-doing now. A sign above Madam Malkin's Robes For All Occasions read "New Self-Dressing Robes" and Harry noticed a small dingy shop advertising, among other things, self-balancing scales, self-hanging portraits and self-lighting candles.

"Dragon liver, eight Galleons an ounce, they're mad... " said a skinny woman shaking her head as Harry past Slug & Jiggers Apothecary.

A sign above the bookstore read "Flourish & Blotts proudly uses new self-turning pages in our entire collection. Watch as our books instantly open to any page you desire!" The nearby cauldron shop was selling self-collapsing cauldrons while Quality Quidditch Supplies had a poster reading "The NEW Self-Flying Cleansweep 26". However, a group of three boys and one girl were looking at something else.

"Wow, look at it!" one of the boys shouted, pointing in the window. "The new Nimbus Four Thousand and One! I hear it outdoes the old Four Thousand series a considerable amount."

"It'll be the best broom in the world for a century!" another boy added excitedly.

"I don't know about that," the girl replied. "Just wait 'till next month when the new Firebolt 9 comes out."

Another shop up ahead was selling old-fashioned, black-and-white television sets.

"What's this?" Harry asked in surprise. "I didn't know wizards had television."

"Oh, we didn't," James explained. "You see, it's always taken them awhile to adapt Muggle technologies. They've only just come out with wizarding television and now it's all the rage."

However, the awe of being an alley filled with wizards and wizarding products now felt superficial -- overplayed by the question of what happened to Harry in the future. Before, it seemed that the answer to that question would be innocent enough, but now he wasn't so sure. What if he didn't like where he was going or what he would become? How would he change and why? Maybe Rose and Hermione were right -- maybe knowing your own future was inherently bad. But the little he knew was making him feel sick, so knowing the full story couldn't hurt, could it?

"Look, uh, Dad," James said carefully. "I'm sure if you named Albus after Snape, you must have had a good reason."

"Or maybe I just went crazy," Harry replied miserably.

"Maybe Rose is right," James suggested. "Maybe he changed."

"That's not possible," Harry said heavily. "He's a git -- plain and simple."

"Wait," James said suddenly, "I'm sure Uncle George will have the answer," He was pointing ahead at a shop with a sign that read "Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, established 1994". Harry could, of course, only presume that "Uncle George" was George Weasley, although Harry would have thought Fred would still be with him.

"We'll tell Uncle George that you're Albus," said James as they walked towards Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, "and that, for fun, we decided to try and make up you to look your father."

"What?" Harry asked in surprise. "Why?"

"What are we supposed to say?" James replied. "That you're a time-traveler? He'd think we were trying to pull a fast one on him."

"Well, all right," Harry said as they stepped into the shop. Like Ollivanders', it had shelves filled with boxes that went all the way up the ceiling. There were a few customers, but not many. Harry presumed that the middle of October probably wasn't their busiest time of the year -- not with all the school-aged children at Hogwarts.

"Well, if it isn't Jamie and Al," said a fully-grown adult George Weasley. "What're you doing out of school?"

"Long story," James said quickly. "Look, we've made Al up to look like our dad! We even used pictures from he was eleven as reference." George leaned forward to take a look and Harry noticed for the first time that the Weasley twin had a gaping hole where one of his ears should have been.

"George, what happened to your head?!" Harry asked without thinking.

"Oh, this," said George, laughing and pointing at where his left ear used to be. "I thought I told you that story. Well, I lost this ear courtesy of the Death Eaters on July the twenty-seventh of '97... and I've been 'hole-y' ever since!"

"Well... what d'you think of our 'Harry'?" James said impatiently. George gave Harry a good look.

"Needs work," he said eventually. "I mean, you've done a pretty good job, but I can still tell it's Albus. You'd never be able to fool anyone who actually knew Harry at that age." James gave Harry the thumbs-up as George turned to greet a customer.

"So, what'd you come here for, Jamie?" George asked, turning back to James and Harry.

"Could you please stop calling me 'Jamie'?" James asked in a tone that indicated he had requested this many times before. George smiled.

"Whatever you want, Jamie," he replied teasingly. Harry couldn't help but ask the second burning question that had hit him that day.

"So... where's Fred?" he asked in what he hoped was a casual voice.

"At school, of course," George answered. "What, you think I'd pull my own son out of school just so he could help run the joke shop? No, even I don't think that lowly of a proper education."

"No, your brother Fred," Harry corrected. "You know, your twin. Where is he?" George's whole manner suddenly changed.

"Albus... you know that Fred's been in the same place for the past nineteen years," George said, sounding more serious than Harry had ever heard.

"And where's that?" asked Harry.

"The Hogwarts cemetery," James quickly interjected, obviously trying to prevent Harry from making even more of a fool of himself. "That's where they buried everyone who died in the Final Battle."

"Oh," said Harry.

Harry thought of the Fred Weasley he knew in 1991 and became painfully aware that that Fred had seven years to live. If he were Fred, would Harry rather know he would die that soon or would he prefer to live out his last years blissfully unaware of his coming death? And who else had died in this "final battle"? What about the battles that had came before the "final" one? Well, at the very least, Harry knew that he, Ron and Hermione would still be alive by 2017. But was Harry still himself?

"George -- I - I mean, Uncle George," Harry stammered, "what can you tell me about Sn-- I mean, Severus -- I mean, the Slytherin headmaster I was named after?"

"I think that's the kind of question you should ask your father," George replied tonelessly. Harry's heart sank, but he wasn't giving up.

"Please," he said desperately. "Couldn't you just tell me what he did that was so brave and noble?" George shook his head.

"Sorry," he said, "you know that your dad's decided that he'll tell you about that when he thinks you're ready. If even your mum can resist telling you, than I certainly can."

"So, what're you selling these days?" James asked suddenly. He probably realized that Harry would have gone on begging for information even though he obviously wouldn't get anywhere.

"Well, we've jumped onto the 'self-doing' phase full force," George said with fake earnestness, "and we now proudly present a whole range of self-joking jokes."

From the look of it, it seemed that the "self-joking jokes" were meant to parody the "self-doing" fad that had completely permeated Diagon Alley. Harry thought some of them -- perhaps all of them -- went way overboard and he could tell they were intended to make the purchaser the victim rather than the jokester. George was shaking his head.

"People can be so gullible," he said amusedly. "These days they'll buy anything with 'self' and a hyphen in front of it. Lee and I made these as jokes to make fun of the 'self-whatevering' fad and they're selling like hotcakes. No matter how ridiculous we make them, there're still people who think they're real and will actually buy them. Imagine! Actually paying money for this."

Harry didn't care about "self-joking jokes" -- all he cared about was finding out why he had named his son after Snape and if George wouldn't give him the answer, he would find someone that would. With James busy examining a self-squirting flower, Harry slipped unnoticed out of the shop and sped back down Diagon Alley. He was going to find his answer. He would sneak through the Leaky Cauldron and into the Muggle streets to find the Dursleys -- if anyone had messed him up, it was probably them.