Chapter 1
As Harry lay limp on the floor, his mind raced at thousands of miles per hour whilst he struggled to keep his body as still as possible.
“Narcissa! Confirm that the boy is dead.”
His entire face was blocked from anyone else’s view as the once-beautiful Lady Malfoy, whose face had been aged a great many years by stress, knelt over him and began furiously whispering into his ear. “Draco. Is he alive? Have you seen him? Is he alright?”
Harry risked cracking an eye open and offered an almost imperceptible nod. Narcissa promptly paled and set her jaw, looking very much like she had a difficult decision to make.
“Narcissa! Is he dead or is he not?” The Dark Lord’s insufferable, victorious cackle seemed to make Narcissa’s choice for her. She shoved a small object that felt cold and metallic into his hands - Harry could sense the tremendous amount of magic radiating off of whatever it was - and glanced down at him with pity, but without an ounce of regret.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“What do you mea-” Harry was so done with being confused by the actions of those around him. First Dumbledore, then the entire Order, and now Draco Malfoy’s mother?
“Tempus Itinerantur.” Quietly but clearly, Narcissa spoke the words in a way one only would if they were intending to cast a complex spell. The object in Harry’s hands began to vibrate impossibly fast - almost as if it were spinning?
And suddenly Harry was spinning too; and so was everybody around him; he could see Narcissa Malfoy, looking at him with the same distinctive blend of compassion and curiosity that the Hufflepuffs who had followed him around in first year had had in their eyes; he could see Voldemort, outraged that there appeared to be life in Harry’s eyes once again; he could see Hermione, Neville, and Ron; he could see Ginny; he could see Hagrid; and he felt the impossibility of their defeat dawn on him like a punch to the chest.
And suddenly he wasn’t seeing them. He wasn’t seeing anybody; instead, he was howling in pain, the sounds of anguish comparable to those made by Remus Lupin the first time Harry saw him transform without any wolfsbane. It felt like his first time taking the floo; disorienting, sickness-inducing, and with very little idea of where he was going to end up.
However, he didn’t have to wait long to find out; once the metaphorical (and literal) dust had cleared, Harry found himself in a position he had spent years of his life in, and one he had thought he was never going to find himself in again. He looked down at his hands, hoping to discover what the object Narcissa Malfoy had forced onto him was, but was quickly distracted by nothing other than his hands. Hands that had not looked this scrawny since before he was a teenager. This thought made Harry still for a minute, and he scrambled to grab a small mirror he had spotted on a shelf, and proceeded to stare in terror at his face.
“Freak! Why are you late to cook breakfast? Dudders is waiting!”
He was eleven years old. And he was back in the cupboard under the stairs.