2017

"Oh, is that what this is about?" Hermione asked incredulously.

"Yes, that," 1991 Harry replied hotly. "I think me naming my son after the worst teacher I've ever had -- maybe the worst person I've ever met -- and then refusing to tell him why is a bit... strange." Ginny looked furious, but not at the younger Harry.

"I knew it!" she shouted. "I knew this would happen! Why'd you have to insist that we keep that a secret anyway? They were bound to come across it on their own. I still can't believe we sent them off to school without telling them. Do you realize there are a thousand people there that could've told them?!"

"Yes," 2017 Harry said heavily, "and, if you recall, I told everyone we know to keep quiet about that. How was I to know a time-traveling me would turn up out of nowhere? Besides, I was going to tell them when they got old enough."

"And when was that going to be?" Ginny snapped.

"Look," replied the adult Harry, "Severus Snape is a hero for what he did. I haven't spent the last nineteen years trying to clear Snape's name only to trash him because of a petty grudge he held against me. Besides, why do we have to remember the worst that he was? When my father saved Snape's life, Snape went on hating my father anyway. I was hoping to be a little bigger than that!"

"Whoa, whoa," said Ron, holding up his hands yet again. "You're fighting like an old married couple."

"We are an old --" Ginny began, but broke off. "I - I mean, we are a married couple," she quickly corrected. "I don't think we're that old though." Ron grinned. "You did that on purpose!" she shouted at him.

"So -- so Snape does hate me?" 1991 Harry asked a bit timidly. Ginny sighed.

"Yes," she told him. "You see, he --"

"I think I should explain," interrupted 2017 Harry. "I want them to hear it from me." Ginny didn't look too pleased with that arrangement, but nodded anyway.

"Well, Severus Snape did hate me, er, us, I guess," said 2017 Harry, glancing at 1991 Harry. "In fact, he hated all the Gryffindors, but he hated me especially. He was a dirty rotten bully who made my life at Hogwarts absolutely miserable. However, while all that is true, he is still a hero. He worked for the good side as a double agent against Voldemort and continued to even after the Death Eaters took over the Ministry. Now, we all thought that he was really on Voldemort's side at the time because he killed Dumbledore --"

"He killed Dumbledore?" Albus repeated in shock, sounding like he might cry. "The other headmaster I'm named after?"

"Yes," 2017 Harry replied gently, "but it turned out that Dumbledore was going to die anyway and that he and Snape had planed the whole thing in advance. On the night of the Final Battle, Snape showed me who he truly was and I didn't think the rest mattered anymore. Now, he may have spent twenty years wallowing in a grudge he had against my father and taking it out on me, but I didn't want to be like that. I thought it'd be better to forgive and forget. Can you respect that?" Albus nodded.

"That's beautiful," Hermione said softly. Ginny, who had been looking cross, softening her expression.

"I guess it is," she agreed. Apparently anything that got the Hermione stamp of approval was good enough for her. There was silence for a moment.

"You realize we'll have to erase the other Harry's memory now, don't you?" Hermione said suddenly. "He can't know back then that Snape will turn out all right. He has to suspect that he's trying to steal the Stone or else everything that's meant to happen in 1991 and early '92 will fall apart." 1991 Harry considered this and then nodded.

"You're right," he said.

Harry wasn't sure why he was suddenly agreeing with her. After all, he now knew that he would turn out all right. In twenty-six years, he would be a happy, fully-trained wizard surrounded by loving family and friends. That was more than he could have ever hoped for just a few months prior -- relatively speaking -- when he had still been living with the Dursleys. However, he felt -- perhaps sensed somehow -- that it was absolutely necessary that his future remain blank so that he could slowly discover it -- and create it -- over the nature course of time.

"That's very mature of you," Hermione said approvingly. "Not that it means much since we still don't have a way to send you back."

"No, but we have this," a voice said suddenly.

The younger Harry turned to see James, who had apparently just left the room, holding Harry's Nimbus Two Thousand. It was not the one from downstairs, but the brand-new one Harry had brought with him from 1991. The golden words "Nimbus 2000" gleamed brightly in the sunlight.

"You left this in the Leaky Cauldron," James explained redundantly. Harry took it in awe, almost as though he were seeing for the first time. You could almost say that this broomstick was the last tie he had to the year 1991. He then realized that he was, in fact, still wearing his Gryffindor Quidditch robes, although he had almost completely forgotten that.

"You're lucky I didn't try to sell it," James added half-jokingly. "You should've seen Mr. Creevey's eyes when I --" He was interrupted when Dennis ran into the room, looking somewhat like an overgrown four-year-old who had just discovered that the circus was coming to town.

"There are a couple of wizards from the Ministry down there," he told them excitedly. "They want to see you."

The whole Potter-Weasley family followed Dennis back downstairs. The door to the cupboard under the stairs was ajar, indicating Umbridge had been taken back to the place she called "Azkaban", which, Harry presumed, was probably not somewhere fun to be -- in fact, he thought it sounded like some kind of prison or something. In the middle of the living room, there were two wizards of radically different heights. The taller one stepped forward importantly.

"Julian Page Boitard reporting for the Department of Mysteries!" he said rather pompously. "This is my companion Leander Madden and we are here at the Muggle home located at the address of 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. The time is Friday, 27 October, 2017 AD at precisely 8:46 a.m. and thirteen seconds... fourteen seconds... fifteen... sixteen..."

"We get the picture, Julian!" Leander Madden shouted in annoyance. "You'll have to excuse Boitard -- he's big on precision."

"So, do you have any news about the clock?" Hermione asked hopefully.

"News? We've got more than news!" Boitard informed her. "We've actually gotten the clock to work."

"R-really?" Hermione asked in surprise.

"Yeah," Boitard said enthusiastically, "we managed to send me one year into the future and then back again."

"I wished he'd just stayed there," Madden added acerbically.

"So, what was wrong with it?" Hermione asked curiously. "The clock, I mean."

"Well..." Madden said carefully, "I know you'll hate to hear this, but... Luna was right."

"Luna Lovegood?" Hermione asked in surprise.

"Of course, Luna Lovegood!" Ginny said in exasperation. "How many other Lunas do we know?"

"Oh, okay," Hermione said, clearly still reeling from the revelation that Luna was actually right about something. "What was her theory again?"

"That it was out of fuel," Madden explained. "You see, the clock runs on... well, there's a very technical term for it, but we Unspeakables like to call it the 'sands of time' -- that sounds kind of mystical, doesn't it? It's the same kind of sand we use in Time-Turners." He held up an hourglass attached to a string necklace.

"So, that's a Time-Turner?" Harry asked. Madden nodded.

"The clock is operated by turning the knob until the letters on the front form the Roman numeral representation of the year you want to travel to," said Boitard. "Once you stop turning it, the clock will begin ticking and you'll have exactly ten seconds to turn it to another year or else it will send you to the one you've selected. If you turn it back to the present year, the ticking will stop and the clock will be deactivated. Now, we've filled the clock with enough sand to travel fifty-two years through time. That's precisely enough for a round trip to 1991."

"I'm -- I'm going back," Harry stammered. "Now?"

"Well, not right now," Hermione replied. "If you went back in here, you'd end up in this house while the Dursleys were still living in it. We'll have to go somewhere else before you can go back."

Harry might have been amused by the image of how the Dursleys would react if he materialized in their living room while he was supposed to be off at wizard school, but his mind was spinning. He was going back -- he was going to go back to the year 1991. That was what he had wanted to do since he came to the future, but it had just happened so fast. When he agreed that they could erase his memory of being in 2017, he didn't realize it would be happening so soon.

"Okay," Hermione continued, "I've talked with Harry, um... adult Harry and I think I know how we sent -- or will send -- the younger him back in time. First, I'll go back to 1991 with him using the clock."

"Why you?" Ron asked curiously.

"Because I'm the only who fully understands the mechanics of time travel," Hermione explained briskly. "Well, except Rose, but she's not old enough to use magic outside of school."

"Fair enough," said Ron, shrugging.

"Now, is that Time-Turner the kind that goes back an hour for every turn?" Hermione asked Madden. He nodded.

"Good," she said. "Now, once we're in 1991, Harry and I will use that Time-Turner to go back another ten hours -- that'll take us to approximately the time when he first found the clock. After the other him leaves for the future, I'll obliviate his memory and use the clock to go back to the future. Harry will think he just blanked out for a couple moments and history will progress as it was always meant to."

"That's... pretty elaborate," Ron said slowly.

"Well, it's the only way to make sure that this has the absolute minimum impact on the timeline, isn't it?" Hermione continued, almost as though she had expected that comment was coming. "Besides, I think it's pretty obvious from adult Harry's recollection that that's what we ended up doing."

"What recollection?" Ron asked disbelievingly. "If he doesn't remember anything, what could he possibly recollect?" Hermione shook her head.

"Never mind, I'll explain later," she said quickly. "Oh, and we'll also need the invisibility cloak -- fortunately, I still have it with me."

"But we can have it back when you're done with it, right?" James asked hopefully. Hermione gritted her teeth.

"Yes," she said heavily. It seemed to torture her to say that.

"So, are you going take him back now?" asked Boitard.

"Yes, I think that would be best," Hermione replied. "It'd be best for us to get it out of the way as quickly as possible."

"Wait!" 1991 Harry said suddenly.

Everyone turned questioningly towards him, but he didn't know what to say. He didn't even know what he wanted them to wait for. After all, he did want to go back to his own time, but it just seemed like everything was going so fast all of a sudden. Were they forgetting something? Harry's mind had gone blank.