Parents These Days - A Tale of Time Travel

Vernon Dursley opened the newspaper. The usual. He looked as the stairs creaked under the weight of a blonde, rather fat, boy, who apparently had not gotten a good night's sleep, for his eyes drooped and he did not walk down the steps with his usual pep. The blonde boy was Vernon's son; Dudley Dursley. The wretched boy walked to the kitchen table, yelled rather loudly for his mother to give him the remote, and why didn't she know where it was, and finally, after half an hour of Aunt Petunia near tears, Vernon sighing and trying to keep his attention to the paper in front of him, Dudley Dursley returned, this time with the remote, and sat down, promptly turned on the television, and sat there. It continued on like this for about another hour.

Harry Potter also slowly went down the stairs, and this was also because of lack of sleep, but not because of staying up all night playing video games, far from it. He was up because he had gotten birthday cards from his friends: Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Sirius Black, and Rubeus Hagrid. And this raven-haired, emerald-eyed boy was not surprised to hear his usual morning greeting.

Silence.

Everything was as it had been a few minutes before.

Nothing had changed since this boy had entered the room. Instead of greeting, for example, "Good morning, Harry. How did you sleep?", there was a bitter silence. No hurt look spread across the boy's face, he merely sat down and grabbed a piece of apple, and chewed it solemnly.

~*~

Meanwhile, back at Ron Weasley's house, it was the total opposite. Everyone was shouting, simply trying to get a sentence in, but all at once.

"Mum, I want--"

"Those fried eggs are--"

"These scrambled eggs are--"

"--some orange--"

"disgusting--"

"--good--"

Miraculously, though, as Mrs. Weasley shrieked even louder than all of the boys and Ginny put together, everyone stopped and actually listened. "All right, everyone calm down. I am going to 'take your order' one at a time. Yes, Fred, dear?"

"C'I have some scrambled eggs and orange juice?" Fred asked, reaching over the table to pinch his twin.

"Fred!" Percy hollered, giving him a dirty look. You are putting your arm into my cereal!"

"Sorry, Percy, old chap," Fred grinned.

~*~

***AUGUST 18***

Somehow, Harry had managed living with the Dursleys, for another 13 days, and was glad of it, for now he was all alone in Diagon Alley, with only Hedwig (his owl), in her cage, on top of his trunk, that he was now dragging along with him. He wandered around the shops a bit, not buying anything: First Gringotts, then Madame Malkins Robes for All Occasions, Flourish and Blotts, and these other wizarding spots. He said hello to the friends he met there, but could not find either Ron or Hermione. After about another 10 minutes of wandering around, he found a rather plump woman with firey red hair standing outside Gringotts, tapping her foot, waiting rather impatiently. He ran up to her.

"Hello, Mrs. Weasley!" he gasped, trying to catch his breath, almost doubling over at the task.

"Oh, hello, Harry, dear," she said, and patted him absent-mindedly on the head, still tapping away on the coblestone. "Those five...I'm still waiting for them to come out...went in about 15 minutes ago..." Harry couldn't help but feel she was talking more to herself than to him.

"I have to go in anyway," he said, gesturing toward the towering building.

"Good luck," Mrs. Weasley sighed as he went in. She then muttered to herself, "Lord only knows what they're up to in there..."

Inside Gringotts, he found Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Fred, and George.

"Hey, Harry, where ya been?" Ron asked, rubbing Harry's head. "We got here like half an hour ago!"

"Yah, so did I..." Harry grinned.

"Ohmigod Harry!" Hermione giggled, jumping up and down. "Hihihihihihi!!!! Oh--don't worry. I'm not turning into Parvati and Lavender. I'm just really excited to see you!" She hugged him.

"Don't worry, Harry," Ron said. "She did this to me too," he whispered.

Harry breathed a sigh of relief. Then he looked around. His group was a little less than half gone! Where were Fred and George??! Then he saw two red heads poke out from behind a wall. "Psst....Harry! Ron! C'mere!" Harry and Ron followed, as did Ginny and Hermione. "Damn!" they cursed to each other. "Now we've got Hermione and Ginny here too!"

"Never mind," George said. "At least we got those two."

"Yeh, but we've got the two goody-goodys following along, they're gonna tell Mum."

"Follow us." George crept past the wall. There were two walls, sort of like a hallway, and the other four followed uncertainly. They went through hallway after hallway, the twins seeming to know exactly when to turn, and once in a while, they would argue, not agreeing on left or right. Finally, the six reached a vault. Fred took out his wand, and uttered, "Alohomora." The door's eyes appeared and mouth as well, and the words came:

"What's the password?"

"Alohomora," Fred repeated. The eyes and mouth vanished, and the door slowly, as if reluctantly, opened. The door slammed behind them. "Don't worry," Fred whispered. "We've gotten out of here before, we can do it again," George whispered.

Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny followed the two pranksters down a narrow hallway, that just got narrower, until they could only go single file. Finally, they all squeezed out at the end of the hall. Fred pulled a lightswitch, and there...there...there was a huge invention.

There was a huge spiral, about 12 feet long, and it was blue, at the bottom was a red machine with two blue buttons: one stating, "Back", the other, "Forward". "This," Fred stated, "is a time machine. You can go anywhere in time, back or forward."

"We've no use for it, we can make and have plenty more." George grinned. "So, we're handing it over to you. You want it or not?" He snapped, grin disappeared, because Hermione and Harry were both staring into space. Ron, on the other hand, was rubbing his hands together, a greedy grin on his face. "And the best part is--" George's grin was returning slowly--"you can use the Shrinking spell--I forgot what it is--to carry it around."

The three approached it, Ginny still standing back, a bit afraid. But, just as Harry hit the back button to 1977, Ginny decided she was going for it.

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A jolt of energy surged through Harry's body. His head was spinning and all he could see was yellow smoke, though he could breathe fine. Every part of his body felt like it was asleep, he saw Ron dozing on, if there had been something there, a pillow. Hermione was sitting up straight, frantically trying to move her arms and legs. As far as Harry could tell, nothing was moving. They stayed like that for a few hours, at least to Harry it felt like that. It was actually 20 minutes. Finally, they hit the ground BOOM!! Ron shrieked as he hit the ground.

"No Mummy, no, I won't take the nasty medicine, it looks like Hermione's--"

"Hello! RON!" Hermione hollered.

"Huh?"

"We're there!!"

The three stepped out and it was identical to where they had just been. They rushed again through the corridor, and happy when they could breathe again and could actually walk next to each other.

Outside, there was the same goblins, above the same desk, and as they walked outside, they saw the same cobblestone streets, and still with people rushing down frantically, trying to get to one place before it crowded. And as they approached the Leaky Cauldron, they saw that everything was exactly the same. Tom the bartender looked about in his 60s, and still toothless. People still stared at them as they went by, though of course Harry had not yet been born. Everyone was a bit timid, for those were the times when Lord Voldemort was around.

~*~

TWO WEEKS LATER

~*~

Somehow, while living on the streets--actually it was a very comfortable living...there was a tent, some very comfortable pillows, and lucious food, which Hermione had conjured up--the three had survived.

Now, they were very happy...they were going to go to Hogwarts. They wouldn't be pestered by some people in their thirties, throwing empty soda cans at them through the alley, nor people who looked older than 100 yelling at them so loudly that five minutes later their ears were still ringing. No longer would they be scared nonstop about Voldemort or one of his accomplices finding them and killing them, though he had no idea who they were!

Lastly, they decided to go to Gringotts, to get the time machine.

After they had squeezed through the corridors, they found two machines. The time machine, and next to it, another machine, identical to the time machine, but at the top, they found two people, one a symbol of a child, the other a symbol of an adult, and an arrow pointing to the adult between them. None of them had any idea of what it meant, but they decided to see what it would do. The buttons said, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90. Ron decided to go first. He closed his eyes and hit a button. As he slowly opened them, he saw it landed on 30. Instantly, another booster popped out. Ron fell back; it had hit him in the stomach.

These buttons said: 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, and 39. Again he closed his eyes and picked...34. Instantly he began to grow, he grew, he grew and he screamed in pain. Until he grew a beard and was now about 6'3". "How do I look?" he asked.

"Ron!" Hermione shrieked. You don't even know what just happened, and all you can say is, 'How do I look?'!!! You look fine, but the beard" she paused, pointed to her own chin, and continued "uh-uh!"