Chapter 3
The landing was surprisingly easy. They both came down on their feet, the cloak not slipping an inch, yet he was sickened by the motion and it took a good few moments of slow breathing before he felt safe to open his eyes without vomiting on Draco’s shoes.
“Strange” he said, taking in the surroundings. They’d moved again, whether in time he did not know, but they had not gone far in space, if he wasn’t mistaken the corridor they were standing in led straight to the library. “Do you think it reacted to us talking about wanting to go here?”
Draco made a face. “I don’t know. It shouldn’t have done that at all. Timeturners aren’t portkeys. They move through time, not space. And they certainly don’t make multiple jumps, they’re supposed to take you to one moment and possibly back.”
“Possibly?” Harry didn’t like the sound of that.
“Well, since you’re just supposed to travel five hours or less, you’re expected to live through those hours until you’ve caught up with the present.”
“Right” Harry said. It was what had happened in third year after all, when he’d lived through what had literally been the longest night of his life. Even to this day it was one of his more surreal experiences and he still caught himself pondering it sometimes. If he’d only captured that rat…
“Time turners are usually designed to take you back in time, not forward” Draco said, snapping Harry out of his unpleasant trail of thoughts, landing him in another one.
“You think it won’t be able to take us back? We’ll be ancient when catch up with our time and I had dinner planned with Teddy and Andromeda tomorrow.” For the first time since they’d landed in the cupboard, he was feeling something close to panic.
“You still do in fifteen years or so” Draco said unhelpfully. “And I don’t think much at all about it yet. We’ve already concluded it’s not manufactured by the ministry and if we are able to make a leap that far back in time, it is most likely designed to make an equivalent leap forward.”
Harry nodded, a little reassured. “Do you think that’s what just happened? We’re back in our own timeline?”
“Maybe, though it’s an ancient, cursed object running amok on its own, it might as well have taken us further back.”
So much for being reassured then.
An echo of footsteps crept up on them and Harry edged towards the wall, hauling Draco with him as they were passed by a group of chattering students. They looked like they could be seventh years and were in Hufflepuff robes but there was nothing familiar about them. He hadn’t expected to recognize them of course, if this was the present, he would not know them and if he and Draco were still in their first year, he probably wouldn’t either, not having paid much attention to the students above him at the time. At least their robes looked modern enough and not like they’d been made in the days of the founders.
Once their footsteps died away they began their uncoordinated march to the library.
“We have moved in time” Draco whispered into his ear, sending a warm breath against his skin. “At least a bit.”
“How do you know?”
“If there are students moving about, it’s earlier in the evening.”
“Yeah” Harry agreed. “They could have been breaking curfew though.”
“Potter, they were Hufflepuffs.”
“Right” Harry snorted and stopped as they’d come to stand in front of the heavy wooden door.
“Now what?” Draco asked.
“We walk inside, it’s how doors usually work.”
Draco aimed a kick to his shin. “They also don’t open and close on their own.”
Harry shrugged. “It’s a magical castle, stranger things have happened.”
“We can’t be seen” Draco hissed. “What if we walk into someone or if Pince catches suspicion.”
“She’ll probably just think it’s Peeves messing about.”
“We’re meddling with time here, we can’t take any chances.”
Harry sighed. He’d made it through a lot of tricky situations during his life. He’d snuck into Gringotts and the ministry while dubbed undesirable number one, broken into Umbridge’s office when he knew the cow was dying for a reason to chuck him out of school, taken off to Hogsmede without permission as a thirteen-year-old, and now Draco was expecting him to be thwarted by something as simple as a door. Though in fairness, on all those occasions he had ended up being seen.
Still, it was a bloody door, not the gates to the chamber of secrets. It probably wasn’t even locked.
“Do you want to find out how to get back or not?” he argued.
“Not if we’re altering the course of history.”
“We won’t alter the course of history by opening a door” Harry said through gritted teeth.
Before Draco could reply, or kick him, which seemed to be his way of debating, the door swung open and a pair of Ravenclaw boys walked past them. Somehow, he and Draco managed to usher through without making a sound or letting the cloak slip. Their carefulness was redundant though, there were only a handful of students inside the library and none at the nearest tables. The thud of the door closing behind them did not cause the slightest reaction.
He puffed Draco’s arm, hoping his attempt at telling him I told you so got through.
Draco puffed him back which he took to mean something on the line of Fuck off Potter.
He kept a snort inside but dared a whisper. “Do you know where to find the books we want?”
“Yes” Draco whispered back and began to stride up an aisle, leaving Harry no choice but to tag along like a dog in a leash.
“Where are we going?” he hissed after they’d clumsily made their way across the area, knocking into three shelves along the way.
“Section W, by that window over there. And keep quiet.”
“I would have been more quiet if you’d told me where we were going” he hissed and managed to bump his toe against a chair, groaning in pain.
“You didn’t ask” Draco hissed back.
“For the love of Merlin” Harry swore. “It was implied.”
Draco hushed him and they turned around a shelf, finding themselves in the section Draco had intended. Indeed, there was a small golden placard which read Mysteries of time/time travel. There was also a study area at the end of the aisle, occupied by a very blond boy sitting between Crabbe and Goyle.
Harry instinctively cast a muffliato, realizing it would have made their walk through the library a lot smoother if he’d remembered to put up the spell in the first place. Draco who snorted next to him obviously thought so too. Harry threw him a dirty look, it wasn’t like he had considered casting it either.
Further down the aisle there was a snicker from Crabbe and Goyle, as if they’d caught up on the joke at his expense. He felt a mild annoyance and half expected the trio to smirk at him but the younger Draco had his back turned and the other two were huddled over a magazine which seemed to be the source of their amusement.
Harry eyed them for a moment and felt a spur of excitement. Not that the sight of the three Slytherins had ever inspired much happiness on his part, but he was grateful for a familiar element that would help him make sense of the timeline.
“Get closer” he whispered urgently to Draco, although it was no longer necessary to keep his voice down with the spell at work.
“Huh?” Draco asked, staring at him confused.
“I want to get closer to you” Harry said, pulling at his wrist, watching Draco’s jaw fall.
“What? Why?” Draco looked down at the hand enclosed around his and resisted the pull.
“The younger you” he clarified, nodding towards the table and suppressed a smile at the sight of Draco’s cheeks reddening, understanding dawning on him. Harry let go and rolled his eyes at him.
Draco scowled but fell into step with him as they edged towards the three Slytherins.
The boy at the table looked about the same age as the one they’d seen in the corridor, which had him think they might not have moved in time at all but Draco whispered “second year” into his ear.
“How can you tell?”
“Greg’s hair.”
Harry studied Goyle, who appeared the same to him as he had all through Hogwarts, only smaller, but then again it wasn’t like he’d ever paid attention to the hairstyles of Slytherin bullies.
“Better keep our eyes closed if we move about” Draco mumbled.
“What?”
“Second year, Potter. The basilisk. One would have thought you of all people would remember.”
“Oh.” It hadn’t crossed his mind at all. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll hear it coming, I’m a parselmouth, remember?”
“Vividly” Draco muttered and Harry grinned at him.
“Didn’t think a pureblood like you would worry about it, you seemed quite in your element at the time.”
“It was a clever act, I was terrified most part of the year.”
“Really?” He could well recall Draco strutting about the castle as if he’d owned the place.
“A monster with the ability to petrify a ghost, of course I was scared.”
“You look pretty relaxed now” Harry said, nodding towards the twelve-year-old Draco. They were close enough to the trio to be able to make out the words of their conversation.
“This is all wrong” the younger Draco said, looking up at Crabbe from the parchment he’d been reading.
Crabbe stopped his discussion with Goyle and turned to Draco with a blank look to his face.
“The quantities are wrong, if you change the amount of one ingredient you have to adjust them all you know. And you’ve mixed up bicorn hair with unicorn, they’re not nearly the same.”
“Huh” Crabbe said, staring at the parchment. “So, what do I write where?”
“I’ve already changed it” Draco snapped, shoving the parchment towards him.
“Thanks” Crabbe said, beginning to roll it up but Draco snatched it back, unfurling it.
“Read it through, it’s not enough just to hand it in, you have to get it or Professor Snape will notice” his tone was bossy enough for Crabbe to bury his nose in the parchment, which was a feat on its own. Harry doubted he was able to make much sense of what he was reading though and the younger Draco obviously thought so too.
“Look at the numbers” he said, pointing. “Now, pretend you were to double the dosage of boomslang skin, how many lacewing flies would that make?”
Crabbe thought hard about it and surprisingly Draco didn’t pester him but let him take his time.
“Twelve?” he asked uncertain, very much resembling Dudley in maths.
“Yes” Draco let out triumphantly and Crabbe’s face split into a grin. “Now work out the rest, will you” he said, shifting back to bossy. “What about you Goyle, have you done the one for charms?”
“I always wondered how those two were able to advance to the next year” Harry mused, watching the two of them bent over the parchment, Goyle mouthing the spells and Draco correcting him every now and then.
“Yeah, I spent as much time on their homework as my own” Draco sighed yet he was eyeing Crabbe with a soft expression.
“Sounds like Hermione.”
“I doubt even you and Weasley were that thick. It was rather a lost cause to get anything to stick with those two, I don’t know why I bothered.”
“They were your friends” Harry said softly. “And they did make it through every year, quite a remarkable feat on your part.”
“Maybe” Draco mumbled, his voice somewhat strained and Harry evaded his eyes. They stood, shoulder to shoulder, watching the three boys in silence.
Harry didn’t know what had happened to Goyle after the war, apart from him serving a brief sentence in Azkaban. Maybe Draco didn’t either. Did he keep in contact with any of his housemates? Had he made other friends since Hogwarts? The two of them might be able to hold civil conversations about their cases these days and Harry occasionally let some details of his activities outside work slip but Draco never ventured into anything concerning his personal life.
Crabbe let out a groan and let his head come down to rest on his parchment. The younger Draco kicked him under the table and as he sat up again the words bat spleen were smudged across his cheek from the not yet dried ink.
Harry snorted but the laughter died in his throat, remembering the last he had seen of the boy before he disappeared into the flames and he became aware of Draco standing tense next to him.
“I’m sorry” he offered. “This must be really hard for you.”
He expected Draco to snap at him like his twelve-year-old self would have but he only let out a sigh. “Mm, seeing Severus was bad enough.”
“Yeah” Harry mumbled. Stumbling upon the old potions master had happened so suddenly he hadn’t had time to think about it but he assumed it was. Snape was gone too, though still alive and breathing somewhere in this castle at the moment, unaware of his death slowly approaching and although Harry owed his life to him there was nothing he could do about it. Still, Harry had never been close to the man and could only imagine what Draco was feeling, watching the scene before them. What if they were to come across Fred or Lupin or…
An arm folded firmly around his waist, interrupting his train of thought and for a weird moment, he thought he was being pulled into a hug but then there was a surge to his stomach and he realized Draco must have caught on to what he himself had missed. The time turner had sprung to life once more.