Chapter 1
And as Harry stared Voldemort in the face for one final time, he didn’t fear death. In its place fostered a morose guilt. That he’d be leaving everyone.
That he’d be leaving Ron and Hermione.
Blinding green fills his vision, and they’re the last desperate, clinging thought in his mind— don’t take them away.
The very next sensation is a thudding, sharp pain in his forehead. But it’s not his scar. Something rough and solid and strangely real had collided with his head, and he opens his eyes to a cramped cupboard that has him squinting in the dark. But he doesn’t need to see; he’d recognize the terribly familiar scent of dust and rough wooden floorboards anywhere.
“Up, up!” Aunt Petunia’s shrill voice cuts through his confusement, and a kick on his little door sends spiders and dust rattling off of the stairs. “Up, you lazy dunce! Honestly…”
Harry rubs his eyes, grapples for his glasses, all while his mind races beyond measure. This is the afterlife? Not heaven, because being anywhere near Pivot Drive again cannot be heaven. But if this is hell, then it’s rather mundane.
“Get up!” She shrieks, and the cupboard door threatens to fall off of its hinges. An all too familiar lump forms in his throat, one that Hermione had once looked so heartbroken about when he’d described it to them.
“Coming!” he calls in his squeaky eleven year old voice, muffled with sleep and bemusement.
As he’s scrubbing away at dirty dishes, the sponge in his hands too large and the sink far taller than he’s used to, Harry tries desperately to grasp at a sense of reality.
The water trickling down his elbows is hot, and the ceramics solid on his skin, and when he pauses to pinch the back of his hand, it hurts. It’s safe to say he’s alive, at least for now. How, though, is anyone’s guess. Hermione might know.
And that’s another thing: Hermione. Ron. There’s nothing to suggest that they remember anything, nor that they even exist. A small, doubtful part of him thinks it might have all been some insane dream. He pushes it to the farthest corner of his mind, because a world without those two is not a world he wants to live in. He aches for the distance stretched between them.
“The mail, boy.” Uncle Vernon’s dangerous grumble startled him from his reverie. He knows this. Vaguely, but how could he ever truly forget? Harry scrambles to dry his hands, only one thought on his mind: that envelope, sealed with the Hogwarts symbol.
It’s all he can do not to run outside, and there it is, insurmountably more beautiful than he’d remembered.
And just like the time before, it’s gone from his grasp almost as quickly as it had come. He lets it happen; there’s no use in fighting his aunt and uncle, not as a malnourished eleven year old who has not yet gotten hold of a wand. And anyway, he needs Hagrid to take him to Diagon Alley. He sees no reason to change the course of events just yet.
He watches as Uncle Vernon grows redder and Aunt Petunia more frantic with each letter, and this time doesn’t even need to argue. It’s almost laughable, if he hadn’t spent the days leading up to Hagrid’s visit in a flurry of emotions.
So many people haven’t been killed yet. Dumbledore, Cedric, Snape, Fred, Lupin, Sirius. God, Sirius is still in Azkaban, isn’t he? Harry won’t let them die again— he can’t. He spends nights staring at the bottom of the stairs in his cupboard, wracking his brain for ideas. Some outlandish, some crazy enough that they just might work.
The night Vernon drags them out to that frankly horrifying cabin— did he really think being out here on a precarious rock in the middle of a storm was better than being safe at home with a magic letter?— Harry’s giddy with excitement, but also, strangely, anxiety.
He lets it play out exactly the same as before, letting Hagrid find out just how little he knew of the wizarding world and flip on Petunia and Vernon. This time, he’s calm enough to appreciate the sight of Dudley with a pig tail and Vernon’s red faced outrage.
At Diagon Alley, he finds Hedwig exactly where she’d been all that time ago. His heart leaps in his chest, and he leaves the store with the biggest grin he’s had in years. Hagrid laughs, jovial, and delighted to have made the boy so happy.
At Platform 9 and ¾, he finally finds who he’s been waiting for. The Weasley’s red hair is visible from anywhere.
“Now, what’s the platform number?” The last time he’d seen Mrs. Weasley, she’d been hunched over her son’s body, wracked with grief. And now, seven years earlier, her hair is significantly less gray, and the wrinkles around her pinched brows softened.
“Nine and three quarters!” Ginny supplies helpfully, her face still round with baby fat and shining with eagerness. “Mum, why does Ron get to go without me? It’s not fair!”
“Oh, chin up, Ginny, you’ve only got another year’s wait.”
“Right,” either Fred or George grins down at her. “Not to worry, Gin. We’ll send you a Hogwarts toilet seat!”
That brightens her considerably, though Mrs. Weasley quickly snaps, “You’ll do nothing of the sort. Now, in you go! Percy first.”
Harry watches each Weasley child filter through, until it’s only Ron left.
“Um, excuse me.” He goes to tap her shoulder, voice young and meek. “Do you have any idea how to get to Platform 9 ¾?”
Naturally, she softens to see him. “Your first year, isn’t it? It’s Ron’s first year, too.”
She pulls him up, and Harry could cry right then and there, because it’s Ron, it’s really Ron, and he hasn’t seen his best friend in months, and it takes every ounce of will in his body not to bound forward and pull him close, close enough to feel his heartbeat and his chest rise and fall and know he’s really alive, that they’re both really alive.
Ron only stares, in what he can only assume is an “I just met Harry Potter” type stare, and yet his eyes don’t linger for even a moment on his forehead.
That’s the first sign. Harry doesn’t want to believe it; the fact he’d miraculously come back with all of his memories was difficult to believe, but to think Ron knew too? He couldn’t risk being wrong. Couldn’t risk getting his hope crushed. Instead he holds out his hand, and forces his voice not to strain. “Hi. I’m Harry.”
Ron takes it, gripping tighter than he maybe needs to be. He’s almost dazed. “Ron Weasley.”
“Alright now, Ronald, you go first. Show Harry here how it’s done.” The moment’s broken as quickly as it had come, with Mrs. Weasley rushing Ron through the wall. “Your turn, dearie. Best to go at a bit of a run if you’re nervous.”
The moment he steps through, the charcoal smell of train tracks and the chatter of loving goodbyes hits him all at once. Ron is nowhere to be found, and so he settles on going to put away his luggage.
“Need a hand?” He’s pretty sure it’s Fred who had asked— bloody hell, he’d taken George’s lost ear for granted; it had made differentiating the two easy. He nods, grateful. The two are lifting the impossible weight of his luggage from his arms with perfect ease. Being eleven again and severely malnourished can be frustrating at times. “I’m George, that’s Fred.”
So it is Fred, then. They’d only ever called themselves by the other’s name. He smiles, despite himself. “I’m Harry Potter.” That stops them in their tracks.
“Harry Potter?” George gapes, dumbfounded.
“Like, the Harry Potter?”
“Are you sure?”
“Blimey, he’s got the scar and everything!”
Harry only rolls his eyes. The disbelief has long since gotten old. “Uh, yeah, I’m pretty sure I know my name.”
“Woah.” Somehow, they’re too shocked to even finish each other’s sentences.
Harry, content with leaving them to let it sink in, grins cheerfully, taking Hedwig’s cage up in his arms. “Well, thanks for the help! See you on the train!” He’s still got Ron and Hermione to find, anyway. The very thought fills him with nerves and has him bounding up the train steps.
He glances in every compartment, restless energy gnawing in his stomach. Finally, Ron’s. He’s sitting alone, looking rather forlorn for a new first year. His head snaps up as soon as the door slides open, with a kind of cautious speed that Harry convinces himself he’s looking too much into.
“Oh, Harry,” he deflates, relieved. “It’s you.”
“Don’t know anyone else here,” Harry mumbles, sliding into the seat beside him, with Hedwig’s cage opposite. The nagging urge to get as close as he can get to Ron is all consuming.
“Yeah,” Ron mutters, taking furtive glances at the compartment window. “My brother Percy’s in the prefect compartment, and I’m sure Fred and George are already out there finding ways to cause trouble.”
Harry’s almost certain, now, that Ron knows. The compartment falls into awkward silence, and both boys pretend to watch the scenery outside fly by. It’s this strange game they’re playing, one that Harry isn’t really even sure Ron knows of. Maybe he’d been remembering it wrong, that Ron had really been this quiet on their first day. Or maybe something else had happened to subdue him. The thing was, Harry couldn’t be sure. And he couldn’t bear the thought of being wrong about this.
The compartment door swings open without warning, making both boys jump. Harry’s hand instinctively flies for his wand, but then, to his utmost delight, it’s—
“Hermione,” they say in unison, barely a breath. And he hadn’t meant to say it, he really shouldn’t know her name yet and he ought to keep his head on straight, but all at once her tensed shoulders drop, and her face falls. The door slams shut behind her and she’s falling into the two, pulling them close into a haze of bushy hair.
She clings, like a lifeline, buries her head in their shoulders and shakes with sobs. There’s no what if this time— she knows. He looks over at Ron, and there’s tears welling up in his eyes, and he knows.
And there’s no words to describe this kind of relief, this kind of desperation. All Harry and Ron can do is stare, at each other and at Hermione, wedged between them, still wracked with sobs. Her cries are silent, save for each sucked in breath, which she takes from the air like it’s choking her. He can feel her chest rise and fall desperately, her nails digging into the back of his shirt.
He pulls his arm out from the entanglement of limbs, and carefully drapes it around her shaking form. And Ron does the same, rubs her back and lets his knuckles brush up against Harry’s.
When her grip on them only grows tighter, and her breathing more erratic, he knows she won’t calm down on her own.
“Breathe, ‘Mione. In and out. We’ve got you.” He looks over to see Ron’s red rimmed eyes, and he knows his own voice is thickened with tears.
Eventually, her shoulders aren’t shaking so much, and she pulls back, rubbing her eyes furtively and staring like they’ll disappear if she looks away.
Then, she shoves them both.
“You idiots!” she hisses, the sentiment somehow not distilled by her round, eleven year old face or her stuffy voice. “You absolute imbeciles! No calls? No letters? I thought I was alone!”
“I thought it was just me,” Ron answers, sheepish.
“Me too,” Harry replies only for Hermione to turn on him.
“And you!” even watery, her eyes flash dangerously. “Where were you? One minute you’re there, and the next you’re not, and me and Ron are shouting for you, and then we’re separated, and— God, Harry, we thought you’d died!”
In a small voice, Harry admitted, “Actually, I did.”
Ron pipes up in an even smaller voice. “Someone got me. Dunno who— just saw that awful green light, then I’m in my bed at home, all sweaty and screaming.” He looked positively ill. “You know who got to me first? Fred.”
Now, Hermione’s face has grown pale. “Me too. It was a misfire, I think. It didn’t— didn’t even kill me, not right away. I bled out, in the end.”
Harry sighs, woefully resigned. His eyes bore into the floor, preferring very much not to meet their eyes. “I’m the last Horcrux. When Voldemort killed me, he got rid of it.”
The two can only stare at him, pale and scared. It aches to see his best friend’s young faces so haunted. Hermione is the first to speak. “So, does that mean—?”
“I need to die. Again.” His throat is uncomfortably dry and tight.
“We won’t let it happen,” Hermione declares, and even through its impossibility, she says it in such a tone that you have to believe her. “We’ll— I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”
“So,” Ron sucks in a breath. “We all died?”
“I suppose so,” Hermione falls back into her seat between them, looking rather put out at the prospect.
“But we’re not anymore,” Harry says, stubborn. “And everyone else isn’t, either. We can fix this. We just need to—“
The compartment slides open for a third time, making all three nearly jump out of their skin. In the doorway stands Neville, all teary eyed and small. It’s amazing to think how small they’d been, with soft, round cheeks and the lack of the weight of the world on their shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” he starts, looking indeed rather regretful for startling them. They’re all too well aware of how strange this must look: the three of them huddled into one seat when there’s a perfectly good one just across them, faces all puffy and red and scared. “Have you seen a toad? I’ve lost mine.”
Harry opens his mouth to say no, sorry, but Hermione’s already melting into a smile. “Neville, right? Come on, I’ll help you look.”
The very moment she steps out, Harry can already feel the tension return to his shoulders. It’s just that he’d spent the last year with these two, always by his side, always in arm’s reach. And the last few weeks without them have been nothing short of hell, and maybe it’s melodramatic— no, it definitely is— but a part of him leaves with her.
“You really think we can do this?” Ron turns to him, haunted in the way that only the three of them will ever be able to understand. “All over again?”
“We’ll make it,” Harry says, hoping that having the audacity to believe it might be enough. “We always do.”