Time for Me

Seventh year had been a hard year for Harry so far, and it was little over a month into the term. His schoolwork was suffering, his spellwork was suffering, and, as much as he tried to hide it, Ron and Hermione's newfound love left him feeling even more isolated. He had known for a while that it had to happen - after all, only a total idiot could miss the significant way the two had looked at each other for years - but it had still come as a bit of a shock the first time he'd seen them kiss.

Dumbledore was giving every appearance of trying to include Harry in the workings of the Order, but he was the only one. Well, he and Remus. Everyone else treated Harry like either something fragile or, in the case of Professor Snape, something disgusting. At least the latter he was familiar with after years with the Dursleys. But it just wasn't working, even the Order couldn't distract Harry.

He was obsessed with the idea of the prophecy. According to some words of fate, he, Harry, could only be killed by Voldemort's hand. But why? What would happen if he tried to kill himself?

It was this latter question that he was pondering in the middle of the night on top of the astronomy tower. He was standing on the ledge, looking down at the ground, an inky blackness far below. What would happen if he did it; if he jumped? Would some miracle keep him from dying?

There was a sudden sound from behind and Harry whipped around. Draco Malfoy had just burst through the door.

"Potter! I've got...you..." the Slytherin hesitated. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing that's any of your business, Malfoy!" Harry shot back furiously, storming out and running at top speed through the castle and outside. He could hear his pursuer's footsteps all the way.

"Potter!" Malfoy called after him. "Potter, stop, now!"

Harry ignored him, walking faster across the grounds. He had to get away. Originally, he had been trying to get away from all the concerned looks and the way Dumbledore had hidden something from him during their last meeting, but thankfully the appearance of Draco Malfoy narrowed his purpose to simply escaping the presence of the annoying Slytherin.

Unfortunately, said escape was proving to be much more difficult than he'd previously thought. Now Harry was all but running toward the Forbidden Forest in an effort to get the other boy to turn back. It almost seemed like a game of chicken; who would turn back first, Harry from the forest or Malfoy from Harry? Because Harry certainly wasn't going to let Malfoy catch up.

Finally, he reached the edge of the trees. With barely a pause for breath, he plunged in to the shadows that were darker, even, than the moonless night around them. Unable to stop a tremor of fear running through him at the thought of going further into the forest at night, Harry changed tactics and hid behind a tree, waiting for Malfoy to run past so that he could leave his rival out in the forest.

Sure enough, no more than a few seconds had passed when Malfoy came barreling by. However, Malfoy seemed to have some sixth sense that told him where Harry was, because he promptly stopped, spun on his heel, and marched back to Harry, who was still leaning against the tree.

"Potter," Malfoy said, slightly breathless, "what the hell were you doing back there?"

"What did it look like, Malfoy?" Harry snapped.

"It looked like you were about to jump off the bloody tower!" Malfoy looked absolutely confused, and almost seemed to be sulking, as though some favorite toy had just been taken from him.

"Well...what business is it of yours, anyway?" Harry sneered, attempting to ignore the hot twinge of shame in his gut. "I figured you'd just be dancing for joy if I offed myself."

Malfoy looked like he was about to respond when suddenly Harry froze and, slowly, raised one hand to his scar, which had just begun to burn terribly. On some impulse, Harry grabbed Malfoy and swung the Slytherin behind him, hiding him.

"Well, well, well," said a serpentine voice from the shadows deeper in the forest, "what have we here? A young Gryffindor wandering out of bounds on a night like this?"

"Stuff it, Riddle," Harry snapped, "I'm hardly in the mood tonight."

"Ah, but Harry, it hardly maters what mood you are in now," Voldemort hissed languidly, "for you will have a very long time to change." Before Harry had a chance to think what that might mean, Voldemort had raised his wand.

"Tempus expugno!" The Dark Lord cried, and watched as the seventeen-year-old was whipped away in a burst of light. Quite spontaneously, one of the Death Eaters hiding in the trees burst into enthusiastic applause.

"Well done! Well done!" he exclaimed, splitting apart from his fellows to stand just a few feet from Voldemort. "Of course, it was my spell, but you executed it perfectly! Although, I must apologize, as I didn't make it to your exact specifications. It won't send the boy back two hundred years, instead it will send him back to the summer of 1977, but I'm certain this will work out best for the world."

"What are you blabbing about, Aries?" Voldemort asked, becoming irritated. "And what do you mean you didn't make it as I asked? Do you presume to know better than I what will work out for our plan?"

"Of course not," Aries went on without blinking. "After all, that's not what I said, is it? I said this would work out best for the world, your plans are hardly looking out for the betterment of the world. And really, this unhealthy obsession with conquering Europe can't be good for your blood pressure, either."

"Aries, what the devil are you doing?!" Severus cried, breaking ranks as well and rushing up to grab Aries' arm.

"Sorry about all this, Sev," Aries said lightly, making no attempt to pull away, "but I couldn't very well have told you, could I?"

"Told him what?!" Voldemort snapped angrily. Ordinarily he would have already punished one of his other Death Eaters for such mouthy behavior, but Aries was dear to him. He didn't want to damage such an adept mind with potentially unnecessary torture.

"For Merlin's sake, have none of you figured it out yet? I thought it would be pretty obvious after I told you when he was sent. Perhaps I've overestimated you all," Aries sighed exasperatedly and raised his wand, tapping it on his forehead. "Finite Incantatum."

Immediately, his light brown hair, caught up in a queue that reached down to his shoulder-blades, deepened into jet black, his skin turned from luxuriously tanned to a slightly lighter shade, his eyes shifted dramatically from blue to brilliant green and thick, black glasses appeared in front of them.

"Harry Potter?!" about twenty Death Eaters gasped.

"The one and only." He spared a glance at the tree where his younger self had just been standing. "Well, now that you've sent away my double, that is."

There was a pause as the Death Eaters looked to Voldemort to see how he would react. The Dark Lord took a few seconds to regain his composure after a moment of crushing disappointment and, though he would never admit it, fear.

"So you're saying that my most faithful follower, my most devout servant, the only person I trusted with access to my personal library, is Harry Potter?" Voldemort laughed. "What would your dear parents think of you now, my jinx-smith?"

"They would be proud as all get out, Riddle," Harry sneered. "You forget, thanks to you, I got the chance to know them. Oh, and it might be worth mentioning that I'm not the only one you sent back. I'm afraid that both a Slytherin and a Gryffindor were out of bounds tonight. Lucius, say hello to your son."

Lucius Malfoy dropped to his knees in shock as Harry's words hit him. If there was one thing in all the world that Lucius had ever cared about, it was his son. While the Death Eater tried to wrap his mind around a fact he didn't want to be true, Harry waved over a person who had gone unnoticed standing in the shadow of Hagrid's hut.

"Hello," said the figure, a tall, thin man with strawberry-blonde hair in a crew cut above his slightly freckled face. "My name is Charles Higgins III. Though, I suppose most of you know me better by a different name and face." He, too, performed the counter-spell on himself and shimmered into an ethereally pale platinum blonde. "Hello father. Wish I could say it's good to see you again, but quite frankly I got bored of you when I was back in school."

"Draco?" Lucius gasped, falling to his knees. "You...you were that horrible Higgins brat? What about the American family at your graduation? The generations of accurate background information at the ministry?"

"Well, thanks to Harry here we were able to slip some phony documents into your hands whenever you went looking where you shouldn't have," Draco said, walking calmly to stand by Harry's side. Severus was by now gawking in open shock. "As a matter of fact, Harry was a right chap, while you were nothing but some lazy, pride-less worm. Didn't even stand up for poor Sev here when he'd bite off more than he could chew with Potter and Black. The two of you could have easily matched the two of them. Have you no sense of Slytherin solidarity, father?"

"Draco here has been helping me hone my dueling skills in secret," Harry added, "so that I would be fully prepared when this day came around again. Oh, and you might want to rethink the whole frontal attack strategy. I've kept in close contact with Dumbledore and his group, and at any time I can call for back up, though I would be surprised if Dumbledore isn't already on his way. After all, we gave him a detailed account of where and when we were sent back from, so he's well aware you're here."

"Blasted menace!" Voldemort shouted, raising his wand. "Flagellatus!"

"Inlaedus," Harry countered lazily. "You forget, I've specially designed most of your curses, and I alone know each and every counter-curse by heart and wand."

With one last glare, Voldemort and his Death-Eaters, including Snape, disapparated with a series of loud bangs.

"Think Sev'll be alright?" Harry asked worriedly. Draco rolled his eyes and clapped him on the shoulder.

"If we weren't already sure of that, we would have changed the plan, Harry," Draco said with confidence.

"I know, I just feel bad about shocking him like that," Harry shrugged. "It sure does feel odd to be back in my own skin. At least you look less like a spitting-image of Lucius than we'd feared."

"Indeed," Draco smirked at him. "You, as well, look nothing like Potter." They both now understood the surname to apply to James, and not to Harry. "Though that could be because you're an age he never reached."

The formerly tender subject of his parents' deaths had cooled quite a bit over the years, and Harry took the comment in good humor.

"You do realize that, to their reckoning, we were children just minutes ago?" he asked somberly.

"Well, let them worry about that. Come on, we'd better get up to the castle. I prepared some tea before I left, and it should still be nice and hot."

Harry took a deep breath, smiled, and let himself be led up the steps to the castle. As soon as they opened the giant double-doors, they realized that they were quite correct in their assumption that Dumbledore had figured it out.

"Harry! And Draco!" the headmaster exclaimed, striding quickly forward from a side passage and checking them out with his wand. "Or perhaps you are more used to being called Aries and Charles?"

"Either would work fine, headmaster," Harry said shrugging. He was about to congratulate the wry old man on figuring them out when two other voices squeaked out of the darkness.

"Harry?"

"Ron! Hermione!" Harry cried. "Oh, it's so good to see you again!"

"Again? What do you mean, mate?" Ron asked quizzically, removing the invisibility cloak and stepping nearer after a wary glance at the headmaster. "Bloody hell! You're old!"

"I am not!" Harry sputtered indignantly. Draco swallowed a snigger and Harry shot him a dirty look that reminded him, quite clearly, that they were the same age. "I'll have you know I'm only 36; and I should be the one cursing - I've got twenty years on you and you're still taller than me!"

Ron gaped at him for a moment, then caught sight of Malfoy.

"And look at him! The Slytherin is all grown up, too! He did this to you, didn't he Harry? I'll get him for you!" He rolled up his sleeves as if to do just that, but Harry grasped his wrists in a surprisingly firm grip and held him off.

"Steady there, Ron," he said, an amused light in his eyes. "First of all, I'm quite capable of fighting my own battles. Second, Draco did not do this to me, I did this to us."

"What is it?" Hermione asked, looking him over from head to foot. "An aging potion? But you must have drunk a whole cauldron-full each to have aged twenty years."

"Nothing so simple, Hermione," Harry said, drawing himself up.

Draco sighed and conjured himself a chair. Harry wasn't very chatty, but get him on the subject of the intricacies of spells he had created and the Gryffindor could talk the ears off a brick wall.

"It's actually rather complicated. You see, I was asked to make a spell to send myself back in time two hundred years, but I was already aware it wouldn't send me back near that far. So what I did was I created a spell that would send a person back in time ten years and one month for each wave of the wand, but told Voldemort it was a century to a wand wave. I had to convince him not to practice on anything, though, because he would have easily sensed the lack of power in the spell, and that was difficult, but it was all worth it. I've been working on that spell for over a year now, and I finally got to see it pay off."

"Wait, wait, wait," Hermione held up her hands. Draco was grateful; he knew Harry was just getting warmed up. "You 'told Voldemort'? He was the one who asked you to make the spell?"

Harry nodded, pleased that his brilliant friend had picked up on this detail.

"And why were you working for Voldemort?" Hermione asked faintly, she had gone a little green.

"Maybe I ought to start from the beginning," said Harry a little sheepishly.

"Good idea, genius boy," Draco said with a slight smirk. "Now if we could only get you to decide where the beginning of the story is..."

Ron's face turned red and he opened his mouth angrily to reply, but Harry beat him to it by laughing out loud.

"Ha, got you there, mate," Harry said triumphantly. "The story quite obviously begins in the Astronomy tower."

"Wrong again, Slythindor," Draco countered. "Of course, you wouldn't know it, but the story actually begins with Professor Higgins telling me you were up there."

"You told..." Harry stammered, then laughed again. "You little sneak! All right, if you know so much, you tell it."

"Fine, I will," Draco stood up and took on the air of lecturer that Hermione found distinctly familiar. "The story begins with me doing my normal prefect rounds around the castle. I was on the fifth floor when Professor Higgins came along and asked me how I was doing. He kept glancing at his watch, then he told me it might be a good idea if I hurried up to the Astronomy Tower. He said it in such a Slytherin way that I just couldn't resist. And what did I find up in the tower but this git about to commit suicide." He jerked his thumb at Harry.

"WHAT?" Hermione, Ron, and Dumbledore exclaimed at once. Harry backed away in mock-alarm.

"Whoa, calm down. I was a troubled teen, what can I say?" he said. "Believe me, the urge is completely gone."

"Besides, my bursting in on him ruined his whole melodramatic mood," Draco added. "Although I did have to chase him out into the forbidden forest to get any answers out of him. Of course, we were interrupted in the middle of our discussion by the arrival of one T. M. Riddle, who subsequently transported the both of us back to the summer before term started."

"That's not so bad," Ron remarked obliviously.

"The 1977-78 term," Harry amended.

He was about to continue when the doors opened up again a man in a long black robe limped in.

"Severus! Are you all right?" Harry cried, starting to rush over.

Professor Snape stopped him with a baleful glare. He shifted his hateful gaze over each of them in turn, then silently limped out down a passageway to the dungeons. Draco drew Harry back with a hand on his shoulder.

"He'll be fine," he assured the other man. "We knew it wouldn't be easy when we had to tell him the truth."

Harry nodded and shot the rest of their little group a shaky smile.

"I'm not entirely convinced he won't hate me forever for this," he admitted, "but if I tried to go explain it to him now, I know he'd curse me on sight. So while we let him cool off, how about I finish the story."

"I can't wait to hear this," said Hermione. "You, Malfoy, and Snape friends? I wouldn't think even time travel could do that."

Harry and Draco laughed, Dumbledore's eyes twinkled, and Hermione smiled, but Ron just glared at them all. Harry suddenly knew that this was going to be a very long night. With a sigh, he conjured chairs for the rest of them and a table for him to lean against - he had long ago lost the ability to feel safe while sitting - and began a very long tale.