Time for Me

There was a bright flash of light and Harry felt something grip his arm tightly as he began to spin. It was like traveling by floo, except instead of fireplaces whirling by, there were flashes that lasted just long enough for him to make out semi-familiar faces and places, but not long enough for him to properly identify them. He tucked his elbows in anyway, drawing the person next to him closer. Relatively soon, the spinning slowed and stopped, and the brightness merged into sunlight.

He was by the lake on the grounds of Hogwarts, just after noon in the middle of the summer, if the shadows and the heat were anything to judge by. And he wasn't alone.

"Get off me, Malfoy," Harry growled, ripping his arm out of the Slytherin's grasp. He started stalking back toward Hogwarts, but Malfoy stopped him, grabbing onto the back of his cloak.

"Potter, do you have any idea what you just did?!" Malfoy practically shrieked.

"Well, I know very well what I didn't do," Harry sneered. "I didn't force you to follow me, I didn't invite Voldemort into the forbidden forest, and I certainly didn't perform whatever curse he threw at us!"

"Tempus Expugno," Malfoy ground out. "Latin for time capture. You just got us sent back in time, you moronic Gryffindor!"

Harry paused a moment to digest this, but it didn't really seem that bad.

"Well, we know we're at Hogwarts, so let's go talk to the current headmaster and have him send us back," he suggested.

"Don't be so optimistic," Malfoy snapped. "There is no way to send us 'back'. We're stuck here."

"Stuck here?" Harry repeated dumbly. "But, wait, why? If we can go back in time, why can't we go forward?"

"Because there is no such thing as forward, Potter! You can only go back in time, because that merely involves retracing the present until you get back to the past, but that consequently means that the present becomes the future, which doesn't exist until it becomes the present again."

Harry blinked, twice.

"What?"

Malfoy rolled his eyes, muttered about the stupidity of Gryffindors in general and stalked off. Harry very deliberately did not follow him, but walked toward the castle, where Malfoy also seemed to be heading. Unfortunately, Malfoy stopped suddenly in front of the main doors and whirled around.

"Let's get one thing straight, Potter," he said firmly. Harry raised an eyebrow at the commanding tone, but said nothing. "I don't fancy mucking up the past here and accidentally preventing my own birth, so no matter what, don't you dare try to change anything."

Harry wanted to protest, there were so many reasons to - the future/present was horrible, so many people's lives could be better if certain truths were known, certain actions prevented; besides, Malfoy was ordering him around - but he knew, though it galled him to admit it even to himself, that Malfoy was right, and that a slip of the tongue could cause disaster.

"Fine," he snarled, then continued as Malfoy started to turn back, "but you know, if we're anywhere near our own time, we'll be recognized on sight. Obviously, we can't tell our names to anyone, but really, we look quite a bit like our parents. We can't just waltz in there and tell the headmaster we're Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy; that would change history all by itself."

Malfoy glared at him and a muscle in his left eyebrow twitched; he looked like he was physically preventing himself from throttling Harry.

"So what are you suggesting, Potter?" he ground out. "That we hide out in complete isolation for however long it takes to get back?"

"I'm suggesting that we create fake identities," Harry said, enunciating clearly. "We can still tell the headmaster that we're from the future, so that he can help us out, but this way he won't know who we are on sight."

Malfoy sat down heavily.

"Jeez, Potter, doesn't take long for you to mess up someone's life, does it?" he muttered.

"Hey, took almost seven years for you," Harry retorted angrily, "my parents only lasted a little over one year."

The Slytherin seemed to come back to himself at that, which made Harry even more disgruntled, but he swallowed it and distracted himself by trying to come up with a fake persona.

"I'm Charles Higgins III," Malfoy announced a few minutes later. "I'm from a wealthy, pureblood, American family who originally came from Britain. After deeming my curriculum at the Salem Institute insufficient, I was sent here to go to Hogwarts. Family ties to the school and whatnot."

Harry thought this over, then shook his head. "You can't be pureblood, too easy to verify," he thought for a moment while Malfoy gaped in outrage. "Your great grandfather, Charles Higgins I, was a squib who moved to America and started the company that has brought your family so much money; but he always stayed faithful to his roots and maintained the family tradition that the next wizard in the family be a Charles Higgins."

"I will NOT pose myself as a mudblood, Potter!" Malfoy shrieked, having found his voice at last.

"Fine," Harry said, shrugging, "then you set yourself up to be found out. Besides, it's not like you wouldn't have any wizarding roots, and you can be just as snobby about the Higgins family business as you could about being a Pureblood Malfoy."

Malfoy sulked and glared, but didn't protest again.

"Well, what about you then? Who're you going to be?" he demanded.

"I don't know, I'm no good at just making stuff up," Harry snorted, "well, unless it's Divinations homework, that is."

"Tell you what, I'll go by your version of the Higgins story, if you be Aries Hesuchazo," Malfoy sneered.

"Why, what's it mean?" asked Harry warily.

"Well, Aries is the Greek god of war, but Hesuchazo means 'to lead a quiet life'. Seems perfect to me. After all, everyone sees you as the High-and-Mighty, Savior of the World, but you're just a big doof with nothing special about him."

"You're right," Harry said with a laugh, startling Malfoy, "that does suit me. All right, I'm Aries Hesuchazo, son of a Greek wizard who left the home country when he was 11, during the second Muggle World War after his parents were killed - doesn't speak hardly a word of the language now - and a muggle-born English witch. Both were educated at Hogwarts - a Slytherin and a Ravenclaw respectively - and my father, after experiencing heavy prejudice because of his house, became paranoid and overprotective, convincing my mother to home-school me until this year, when I convinced them that, since I'm of age, they couldn't really stop me anyway."

Malfoy blinked, seemingly completely stunned by what Harry had come up with. Despite the boy's claims to the contrary, Draco privately thought Harry must be quite good at such things as alibis, once he was given something to work with. It also quite stunned him that Harry would even consider setting his parents up as anything other than tried and true Gryffindors.

"Ah, but how do you know we're even in a time where the second world war would be applicable?" Malfoy asked deviously.

"I don't, but I can change the story as need be," Harry said with a shrug. "Now we just need glamour charms. I want brown hair and I want it long, plus a nice tan for once, and blue eyes. What about you?"

"Why should I have to change anything?" Malfoy growled. "I'm perfect as I am."

Harry's mouth opened and closed like a fish for a moment. "There are just...so many things wrong with that statement," he finally stammered out. "I'll start with strategy first, though. You look like a Malfoy, plain and simple. If we don't change how you look, people will wonder, and that's dangerous. I say strawberry blonde, very short; and no gel, and perhaps change your eyes and skin, too."

"I'll get you for this someday, Potter," Malfoy growled, but he raised his wand and made the appropriate changes.

"Ah ah ah," Harry corrected him, "that's Hesuchazo."

************

With their fake identities firmly in mind, the two time travelers made their way - Malfoy grumbling and Harry strolling pleasantly - to the headmaster's office. There was a brief incident when Harry realized he didn't know the password, but Malfoy just looked down his nose at the Gryffindor and knocked. The gargoyle stepped aside moments later and they both looked up at a hardly-changed Dumbledore.

"Oh, my; and who might you be?" the headmaster asked.

Malfoy stayed sullenly silent through the entire explanation, which was actually quite short, as Harry had to leave out their names and anything that might give away their identities. In the end he settled on saying: "We're victims of time travel from October 26, 1997. Can you tell us when we are?"

Dumbledore's eyebrows lifted clear into his hairline, but he replied, "August 26, 1977." Then, after a significant pause wherein he seemed to be speechless, "Oh dear. We'll have to get you two set up right away, term begins in less than a week. You're already wearing glamour, so I trust you had the foresight to make up false histories?"

Harry and Malfoy nodded, and the three of them set about getting Aries Hesuchazo and Charles Higgins III registered at Hogwarts for the 1977-1978 term. Both had been to Hogsmead the day of their transport - it being a Hogsmead weekend - and so they were lucky enough to have funds for books and robes and such in their pockets, and Dumbledore promised to take care of 'everything else'. Just what 'everything else' might be, neither thought to ask.

After a rather loud and insult-filled argument, it was decided that Charles would be put in Gryffindor with Aries, since muggle-born witches and wizards - even those with squib ancestors - were not welcomed in Slytherin under the present climate, and Dumbledore thought it best to keep his two temporally abnormal students together. Harry hoped that Dumbledore wouldn't have to change his mind the hard way after they killed each other off.

Harry, of course - or Aries, as he was now to be known - led the way to Gryffindor tower, giving Malfoy - Higgins - a tour of the basic facilities, including the hazard that was the girls' dormitory stairs. He privately thought it would be far more amusing just to let Higgins find out on his own, but Dumbledore wouldn't have approved, and the former Slytherin would have murdered him for it. Aries figured it would be best to keep the peace for as long as possible.

Unfortunately, that didn't prove to be long as, upon entering the Seventh Year Boys' dorms and noticing the initials monogrammed into the footboards, Harry had to sit down rather suddenly.

"What in the name of Salazar's Staff is wrong now?!" Malfoy snapped, hauling Harry back to his feet.

"We are in so much trouble," Harry muttered. He pointed to each bed in order. "RL - Remus Lupin, SB - Sirius Black, JP - James Potter, and PP - Peter Pettigrew."

There was a long pause, then Malfoy turned around, dragging Harry with him. "That is it," he declared. "I'm having us transferred to Hufflepuff. There is no way I'm sharing a dorm with a mass murderer, a werewolf, and your dead father."

Harry shoved him away and stood, glaring. "Remus Lupin went to extreme measures to ensure he was safe while he was at school. And Sirius Black," he swallowed, "didn't turn traitor until he was 20." I'm sorry, Sirius, but he can't know. "I'm not leaving."

"Fine," Malfoy sneered, "but you owe me big."

"'Gryffindor Drools' T-shirt big?" Harry asked warily.

Malfoy shook his head, a cruel smirk playing on his lips. "Throw a Quidditch game big, Potter."

Harry waited two seconds, then responded, "We both play for Gryffindor now, though." He bolted down the rest of the stairs, dodging Malfoy's swinging fist, then yelled over his shoulder, "And it's Hesuchazo!"

************

The next few days were spent in diligent study for both boys. Not of their new schoolbooks, because those covered the same material as Harry and Malfoy's sixth year. No, they were studying the last three months of Daily Prophet issues. They were surprised to realize that they shared a great appreciation for the dry, factual reporting, quite different from the embellished, ministry-controlled fiction of the present/future. Whenever the news became just too depressing (or dull, to Malfoy) they would challenge each other to expound on their fake pasts. These sparring matches would end when one or the other contradicted himself or fail to answer promptly. The winner then posed either a question or a dare that the loser had to answer or perform.

Harry found himself admitting that he'd almost been a Slytherin and speaking for an entire hour in Parseltongue.

Malfoy found himself telling about his stuffed bear Ponpon and singing 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' to the staff at breakfast.

Malfoy relaxed a little more around Harry and stopped being so pushy, apparently thinking anyone worthy of Slytherin couldn't be all bad. Harry went along, comfortable so long as Malfoy wasn't insulting his friends or his parents; and, to tell the truth, he just couldn't reconcile a stuffed-bear-named-Ponpon wielding Malfoy with his image of stuck-up-Avoid-at-all-costs Malfoy. Rather than try to reconcile the two, Harry simply declared the new Malfoy 'Charles Higgins III' in his mind and was done with it. Malfoy did the same and, each with his own new image and name for the other, there were no more near-misses of almost calling the other by their old/future names.

************

Aries shut his journal after carefully signing his new name at the bottom of the day's entry and activated the locking charm. There were actually two on the book; the main one to prevent just anyone *cough*Charles*cough* from reading it, and a second on the first page where Harry had recorded his life-story-in-miniature, just in case the past/present became too much and he had to be obliviated to keep from meddling.

On their fourth day there, Charles had expounded on his explanation as to why they couldn't go forward, back to their own time.

"See, time is like this, okay?" Charles had said in his magicked American accent, spreading out a sheet of parchment. "It's straight and flat and one-dimensional. What happens in time travel is you take a piece of the present," he lifted the edge of the parchment, "and dragged it back to the past," he curled the edge back so it touched the parchment in the middle. "Now, our personal timeline is curled up like this, but the full timeline is still spread out, like this," he slipped a second sheet under the first. "if our timeline were to diverge from the main timeline again - in going forward or in meddling with past events..." he ripped the curled part of the parchment completely away. "It just doesn't work, see? We would be caught in a never-ending loop, because we would cease to exist, which means we never would have meddled, which means time never would have ripped. Of course, things like that don't happen because time can't rip, so we can't change the past and we can't go back to our time. Got it?"

Aries did, at least in general: time was best left alone and Voldemort was a complete and utter prat for messing with it in the first place.

With a sigh, Aries stored the leather-bound book - a gift from Dumbledore - in a hidden compartment in his trunk, a la Moody. He was actually rather proud of his trunk. Instead of using different actual keys, he'd keyed the different compartments to different trunk sizes, using the magnitude of a shrinking spell as the indicator. When it was shrunk down to 1 foot by 1 foot by 1 foot, it opened to reveal a locked Gringotts safe-box with all his remaining money - a grand total of 20 galleons - a letter from Remus he'd received the day before the transportation, a picture of himself, Ron and Hermione, and, of course, the journal.

A part of him sneered that he was being paranoid - A locked page inside a locked journal inside a locked Gringotts box inside a secret compartment inside a locked trunk? - but after having three years of Auror training crammed into his sixth year at Hogwarts and the summers before and after, Harry figured a little paranoia never hurt anybody, while being careless often did.

"Hey!" Charles' voice came through the door, accompanied by several sharp knocks. "Lunch time, Aries. You coming?"

"Yeah, I'll be right there!" Aries called back, quickly restoring his trunk to its proper size.

He walked out to find Charles slouching against the stairway wall, glaring at an apparently offensive stone opposite him.

"What's got your knickers in a twist?" Aries asked as they started off to the Great Hall. Charles often had fits of peak, and they always tended to be about the situation in general, but this anger seemed more...currently-based.

"This potions professor," Charles grumbled. "Professor Velveson. I was working on the pathetically-easy summer potions assignment when she comes strolling in and decides to 'help'. As if I need help from her; she isn't even a Potions Master."

"I see what you mean," Aries agreed. "I don't know how I'm going to survive this year without dying of boredom. Everything they'll be learning, we learned last year." He took a breath and let it out again as they sat. "Anyway, up for another sparring match?"

"I'm always ready, goose-brain. Who's turn was it last?"

"Well, I finished off with that question about your aunt, so yours I guess." Aries smirked at the memory; he had asked what sort of hair Aunt Jill had and Charles had told him 'Red. First redhead in the family in fact, spread it around to the rest of us.' Aries had then been forced to point out that, unless Aunt Jill slept around a lot, she couldn't possibly have given Charles his red hair.

"All right, why doesn't your father speak Greek anymore? Wouldn't his aunt and uncle have spoken it when he went to live with them?" Charles asked slyly.

"No, not very much," Aires answered after barely a moment's hesitation. "Uncle Silas moved to England in his early-thirties where he met Auntie Nadia. She, of course, didn't speak Greek at all, so Father had to learn English right off if he wanted to communicate with anyone other than Uncle Silas - who was actually rather a bore. Once out of the habit, it never really came back to him."

The game went back and forth across the Gryffindor table until long after they had cleared their plates. Finally, Aries messed up, accidentally calling 'Auntie Nadia' 'Aunt Nadine'. Aries protested that they were practically the same name, but Charles was correct in stating that it could still make people suspicious, and that was the point of the game - to catch suspicious things before they happened.

"All right, you win," Aries admitted with a sigh. "What's my penalty?"

Charles drank the last of his pumpkin juice and stared at Aries grimly for a while before speaking.

"Why are you so happy here when you were miserable enough to try to commit suicide back home?"

Harry sighed. He had wondered when this would be asked, but after five days he had hoped Malfoy wouldn't bring it up. At least he had seemed sincere in his question, and not as if he was just waiting for something with which to humiliate him.

"Back home," Harry answered with full honesty, deciding for some obscure reason to trust Malfoy - or rather, Charles, "there's a prophecy that states either I will kill Voldemort...or he will kill me. I was just barely of age and the war was already in full swing - I knew it would have to be that year it happened, and it just seemed like too little time. I wasn't prepared, and I didn't want to die by his hand at only 17 years old."

"Wait," Charles interrupted. "You didn't want to die by Voldemort's hand, so you decided to kill yourself? I don't get it; you'd still be dying at only 17."

Harry shook his head and sighed. "I know it wasn't the best logic; but I was trying to prove the prophecy wrong - because if I could kill myself, then maybe Voldemort could be killed by someone other than me. I wanted to prove that I could exist as just myself, without the fancy titles and glory and all. I wanted time - even if it was just the few seconds until I hit the ground - to be whoever I wanted to be."

Charles was nodding, understanding dawning in his eyes. "And here you have that; twenty years," he said softly.

Aries nodded, then grinned. "So you don't have to worry about losing your sparring partner, Higgins, because I think I rather like life now."