Chapter 1
Harry slammed back first into the grass on the Hogwarts grounds. Head swimming and momentarily going black as the breath was knocked out of his lungs. He felt the time Turner slip out of his grip. For a moment he only lay there trying to catch a breath and waiting for his vision to return.
"Ow," he groaned when he finally got enough air. He rolled to his side and got his elbows and hands under himself, pushing up to his knees and blinking away the confusion.
He looked around but didn't see the time turner on the ground anywhere near him.
"Shit," he felt around in the grass with his hands. "Shit, Shit!"
He lifted his gaze and looked around. Spotting movement ahead he fixed his gaze on a rodent looking creature running across the grass. A golden glint from it's mouth had Harry scrambling to his feet.
"Shit, that's a niffler." And it's got my time turner.
He ran full tilt after the creature, but before he could catch up, it disappeared in an odd whirl. The time Turner taking the niffler back with it to the future. Or who knew when.
"No!" Harry came to a halt and swung his fist uselessly through the air.
What am I going to do now? His arms fell slack to his sides and he tipped his head back, closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths.
The Hogwarts grounds around him were quiet and peaceful. The only sounds birdsong and distant chatter presumably from students enjoying the warm weather.
He wasn't sure what had happened. In the aftermath of the final battle after the funerals and sitting in on the trials of the remaining death eaters who had been caught, he had decided to help with repairs and restoring Hogwarts. It had been his home after all, and he knew it would be important to other students after him. And with all the loss it was the one good thing he could focus on despite the memories among the rubble.
While working with Minerva and Neville in restoring some of the destroyed rooms in the castle he had stumbled upon a time turner among some destroyed shelves. It shouldn't have been there. All time turner's should be locked away in the ministry. He was planning on doing exactly that with it. But he hadn't told anyone he found it and had paused on the grounds, close to where Hagrid's hut had stood before it burned down. He'd gripped the time turner studying it and wanting so badly to go back and fix everything. That's when he noticed it was oddly bent in places, and as he tilted it to examine the damage the piece had suddenly started spinning on its own before jamming between two bent joints. And Harry had been swept away with a curse.
It was clearly damaged, and now it was also gone, and his way back with it.
He had no idea where he was, or more to the point when . Clearly he was still at Hogwarts, and looking around he saw no signs of the damage from the battle. So before then at least. The temperature and weather told him it was close to summer, but the sound of students meant not summer break. It had been July in his time. Just a little over two months after the battle. But this didn't feel like April-May weather, so he'd have to have travelled at least a year back. Looking around the grounds he spotted some trees in the process of turning yellow, confirming that it was beginning of autumn and the start of a new schoolyear.
He started walking towards the castle, careful to look around in case he had to hide quickly from someone who might recognise him. There were rules about time travel for a reason.
He spotted the whomping willow and stopped dead. It was wrong. It was too small. About half the size he remembered.
Fuck, that meant he'd travelled back years, perhaps decades.
He knew the tree had been planted when Remus started school, almost 30 years ago.
So he was some time after that but before he started school, so more than a decade in the past at least.
Damn and blast.
How was he going to get back? If it was just a few days or even months he could have just waited it out he supposed, but a decade or more? No.
I guess I'll have to find another time turner. Wait, if I'm in the past then the time turner I just travelled with might still be in the castle where I found it!
He hurried on looking closely at the students in the distance once they came into sight. He didn't see anyone familiar, but otherwise they looked just like regular students from his time at school.
He wondered if he ought to sneak in later when no one was around to see, but walked casually towards the front doors like he belonged there.
The castle looked just like he remembered and he found himself noticing things that had been destroyed in the battle that he had forgotten about. Paintings and statues and the odd piece of furniture.
As he rounded a corner in a hallway on his way towards the storage room where he had found the time turner, a classroom door opened ahead and a flock of students emptied out, clearly just done with class. He spotted a too familiar face in the crowd and frantically lunged through the nearest door cursing himself for just walking in in the middle of the day. With no invisibility cloak or disguise.
It was a bathroom, and he hurried over to the mirror over the sinks and fished out his wand. He silently thanked Minerva and Hermione for being excellent teachers and quickly transfigured his hair to a mousy brown that he thought resembled Remus' hair a bit. He couldn't transfigure away his scar. Curse scars were resistant to being physically altered, but he could change how it appeared to people. He used some of the spells Hermione had taught him while they were hiding for the last year, to obscure and lead the attention away.
In his concentration he didn't notice the door opening behind him.
"Potter?" a somewhat familiar voice said behind him. His tone one of contempt but also uncertainty.
His heart in his throat Harry spun around to face a young Severus Snape. Maybe a year younger than he was now. He looked just like in Snape's memories, same lanky build, long hair and hawkish nose, just somehow more there, more corporeal.
Harry just stared at him for a heartbeat, his feelings conflicted with all he knew and felt about the man. But mostly he found a beat of happiness at seeing him alive again, despite knowing this was the past, and Snape was still gone in his time.
"Sorry, I mistook you for… you look just like…" Snape tapered off uncertain. "Are you related to Potter?"
Harry panicked for a second and then blurted out "cousin. I'm his cousin."
He hurried back to yhe mirror and waved his wand at his eyes changing them from his mother's green to blue, hoping Snape hadn't noticed that resemblance too. He moved on to his eyebrows, making them thicker and straighter, hoping to obscure familiar features with strong eye-catching ones.
"What are you doing?" Snape asked suspicious.
Harry scrambled for a plausible excuse.
"I don't want him to know I'm here." True enough, Harry thought.
Snape chuckled lightly. "I can understand that sentiment."
Yes, I suppose you could. He studied Snape in the mirror behind him, and in a moment of inspiration he turned his wand to his nose, making it a little larger, longer and with a strong nose ridge. Not bent like Snape's, but definitely eye catching.
Before he could consider doing more the door slammed open behind Snape and another achingly familiar face came in followed by the one that promoted this hurried disguise and the one he had tried to disguise himself from resembling.
His teenage dad right behind his godfather.
"Snivellus!" Sirius exclaimed like he'd run into a favorite friend by coincidence. Harry didn't think it was a coincidence. They had been behind Snape in the hallway, and made right for him now with intent.
Harry's heart ached at seeing two of the people he loved most and got to know least, alive and well. At seeing them and being able to talk to them, touch them, but not being allowed, not allowing himself. This was much more painful but also sweeter than in the pensive and Snapes memories. Because he both couldn't freely enjoy watching them, but he was also really here with them, and this wasn't just fixed memories with beginning and end, this was real. He lowered his face so they couldn't see him clearly in the mirror, afraid his quick disguise wouldn't be enough to fool people who were so familiar with his features. Pretending to wash his hands, he listened with quiet dread as Sirius and his dad crowded around Snape, clearly trying to intimidate him.
"That prank you pulled on me in class was funny, right James," Sirius asked smirking at his best friend.
"So funny that I wanted to get you back, give us all another good laugh." Sirius' voice was full of sarcasm and vindictiveness.
Snape's hand crept to his wand sticking out of his pocket, but before he could draw, James, having already drawn his wand while Sirius distracted him, fired a petrificus totalis spell at Snape, locking all his limbs and making him tip over onto the floor.
Harry's heart sank. He had seen this kind of behaviour in memories of his father and Sirius, but it was just as disappointing and heartbreaking now to see. He related more to Snape's position, remembering how Dudley and his gang had bullied him in school. He itched to stand up to them, but couldn't risk being noticed by more people or changing too many things.
But then Sirius started waving his wand and making Snape's clothes rip and fly off him, sending them hurtling for the nearest toilet bowl. When he was going for Snapes last piece of clothing, his gray underpants, clearly intending to leave him naked and petrified for anyone to find and laugh at, Harry acted instinctively. He swung around and flicked his wand, yanking Sirius' wand out of his hand and letting it clatter to the floor behind the pair of friends.
"Stop it." Harry was a bit surprised at how deep and mature his voice sounded. How serious his tone compared to these two men who he had always seen as parental figures. It felt weird. Wrong.
"Did you make a new friend Snivellus?" James asked casually, but he was looking at Harry, holding his wand in front of him to protect in case Harry decided to retaliate.
Harry sighed, absolutely not wanting to fight with his father like this, either with magic or words.
"Just leave. You made your point." He was sorely tempted to lash out, berating them about being immature and petty. Suddenly he felt old. Like an adult man looking at a completely of kids.
He was angry and disappointed with his two father figures, but also knew that this bad behaviour didn't mean they weren't good and great wizards and even heroes as adults. And it didn't stop him from loving them. But he did wonder how with only a year less than him or so, they seemed so much more immature and he felt so much more old and done with childish grudges than they seemed.
He supposed it was because he'd grown up with the Dursleys, without his parents, without love and friends. And having faced death, loss and Voldemort many times already before adulthood. That kind of a thing makes you grow up fast. Pranks and schoolboy grudges seeming meaningless by contrast.
And he should give credit to his mother too. In the memories of her she was always mature and kind. How she ended up with his dad he had no clue.
"Fine," James said, putting his wand away and grabbing Sirius by the shoulder. Sirius looked conflicted for a moment.
"See you around then." Sirius' words sounded like a threat to Harry, and he cringed.
The two boys walked out of the bathroom, leaving Harry standing over a prone half naked Severus Snape.
He let his head fall back, relief and frustration mingling. He shouldn't be interacting with anyone, let alone people who might suspect anything. He shouldn't even have let anyone see him. He had been too impulsive and impatient to fix this.
He rubbed his forehead and then pointed his wand at Snape, undoing the spell. As Snapes body relaxed and he got movement back, Harry went in search of his clothes. Finding them drenched and ripped in the nearest toilet. He levitated them out of the toilet and made them wring themselves out, getting as much toilet water as possible out and dodging the puddle they made. He grimaced. Even if he bothered to get them all dry they were still full of toilet water germs. He did a repair spell on them anyways and made them fold themselves into a damp stack before levitating them out of the stall.
Snape stood awkwardly with his hands folded across his bare chest. He looked cold and embarrassed and very young.
"You don't want to wear these," Harry said, contemplating his shirt. He unbuttoned it and shrugged out of it, leaving him in a white tank undershirt. He jabbed his shirt with his wand, making it grow longer.
"Here," he held his shirt out to Snape. Who hesitantly took it, his cold hand brushing against Harry's.
"Thanks," he said putting it on and buttoning it up. The shirt went to his knees, making Snape look like a kid wearing his dad's shirt as pyjamas. He looked so young and uncertain. Such a contrast to the proud, brave man Harry knew.
"Why did you stop them," Snape asked looking at Harry with some suspicion. "He's your cousin. You don't even know me."
Harry sighed. "Just because someone is family, doesn't mean I'll look the other way when they behave like shit."
"Well thanks," Snape said. He tugged at Harry's shirt. "I'll get this clean and return it when I get back to my dorm."
Making a decision Harry held out his hand for Snape to follow him.
"Come," he said making for the exit. "I'll walk with you in case you run into my d-... cousin again." He almost said his dad. "We can drop these clothes off to the laundry on the way too and you can give back my shirt at your dorm."
*
Snape had followed him uncertainly. Uncomfortable in just Harry's shirt and with his legs bare. And maybe not used to anyone but my mom helping him like this.
"You're not a 7th year, are you? You're older," Snape asked suddenly. More of a statement really. And implying that Harry was older than him, confirming what he had thought. Snape and his dad and friends were probably in 7th year, making them around 17 years old, just a year younger than him.
"I'm not a student, no. Graduated last year," he threw out absentmindedly.
"Are you here for the defense against the dark arts position?" Snape asked, breaking Harry out of his wandering thoughts.
"You don't have a DA professor already?" Harry asked, a bit curious. He had had a new DA professor each year he was at school.
"Professor Cross retired after the giant squid attacked him," Snape told him. "It was in the paper. No one has applied for the position yet that I've heard."
"Ah, yes of course," Harry said, remembering that the position was rumored to be jinxed since Dumbledore turned down Voldemort for the position. So he supposed no one had held the position more than a year even back when his parents were at school.
"I wasn't planning on staying that long," Harry told Snape, still lost in thought. He had just realised Voldemort was still alive, and active since Harry had not been born yet. It was unsettling and making him feel antsy after just having defeated him once and for all in his time. It made him feel even more keenly how wrong it was for him to be back here.
"What's your name anyway?" Snape queried.
"Harry," he replied automatically before thinking better of giving him his real name. Harry was a pretty common name and Lily and James son had not been born or named yet, so it was probably fine. Snape would likely forget this brief meeting anyway.
"I'm Severus," he said, giving Harry a careful smile.
Harry dropped of the stack of Snape's damp robes with the house elves on the way to the dungeons. Snape lifting a brow when Harry started tickling the pear in the painting to the kitchens.
Snape led Harry to a bare stretch of stone wall in the dungeon with no marks to make it easy to find. Harry actually thought the Slytherin dorms were the best hidden because of this. Although he hadn't ever been to Hufflepuff House he supposed now.
Snape spoke the password quietly and the wall slid aside.
"Come in," Snape offered. And Harry shrugged a why not and followed him through.
The common room looked pretty much exactly as he remembered from the time him and Ron had got in using polyjuice in their second year.
Eerie green light bathing the room from windows looking out into the water of the lake. Otherwise the furniture looked pretty comfy just like in the Gryffindor common room.
He waited, looking around at the kickbacks Slythetin students had left around the room, while Snape went for a change of clothes in his dorm room. A few students shot him suspicious and disgusted looks. Probably judging his jeans and white tank. Not exactly an outfit that screamed proud wizard.
Harry found that he'd outgrown feeling embarrassed at that kind of superficial judgement. He was realising all sorts of things about himself today it seemed. Mostly that he no longer felt like a kid. And that he saw his professors more as his peers now than students almost his age.
Snape came back wearing a new pair of Slytherin uniform pants and shirt.
"I can get this washed for you," Snape said holding out Harry's shirt. But Harry took it and shrugged into it, only noticing it was still too long and shortening it with a quick tap of his wand.
"Nah, I don't have a spare with me anyway," he said as he buttoned it and tucked it in his pants. It was still a little warm from Snape's body he noticed.
He opened his mouth to take his leave, but hesitated looking into the young and a lot less troubled face of Severus Snape. He would leave and this last year at Hogwarts would be the year Snape arranged to join the group that was a front for the Death Eaters, and become entangled with Voldemort. As much as Snape might have suffered from being bullied by Sirius and James, this year would be the last before his true suffering would start.
Harry wished he could change that. Wished he could change everything.
*
Harry cursed himself for his stupidity as he verily ransacked the shelves in the storage room that it had apparently been he found the time turner in. He couldn't find it. Perhaps it wouldn't even be put on this shelf for decades yet.
As frustrating and worrying as that prospect was, his cursing was because he had quite blatantly broken Dumbledore's most important rule of time travel. Don't be seen. He had figured the faster he found the time turner and got out of here, the less damage he would do. And now he was stuck until he could find another time turner.
He supposed there might be another in the castle, but how would he know, or find out where? Other than that it was the department of Mysteties. Breaking in there again was not an very solid idea. He'd done it before, but not only had he had help from his friends, but unbeknownst to them the death eaters had made it easy for them, probably removing security measures. It was the most secret part of the ministry and was probably much better guarded than it had seemed that night.
He dragged a hand down his face. As serious a situation as this was, he had more immediate concerns. He didn't know how long it would take to find a way back, and he needed food, and a place to stay in the meantime.
Grimmaulds place was still occupied by Sirius' family. And none of his friends families knew him.
He supposed he could go back to camping, but that idea made him cringe. And he didn't know if he could handle being on his own as well.