“Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should!”
“Merlin, Harry, you sound like our mother,” Fred said, shaking his head. “We can apparate now, so why wouldn’t we?”
Harry laughed breathlessly as they stumbled to a stop just out of sight of the Burrow. “Side-along is no fun,” he said, turning away from the brightness of the summer sun. “Is that a good enough reason?”
Fred considered it for a moment. “No,” he said finally.
“Because it’s not our problem,” George added, grinning and grabbing his arm. Harry didn’t have time to protest before the sensation of being squeezed overtook him.
When he could breathe again, Harry gasped for air. “What was that?” he choked, coughing. He was doubled over, trying to catch his breath after a longer period of compression than he remembered feeling before. George was on the ground beside him, barely visible in the gloom.
“I’m… not sure,” George admitted.
“I am more interested in where we’ve ended up,” Fred said in a strange voice that had Harry’s attention immediately.
“What do you mean, where - you brought us!”
“Well, I thought we were both aiming for Hogsmeade,” Fred said. “We had something to show you. But apparently both of us got that wrong.”
Harry frowned, distracted. “What were you going to show me in Hogsmeade?”
George held out a hand in a silent request for help up. “Never mind that now,” he said weakly. “I’m more concerned about why it’s dark, when it’s only just after lunch time.”
Harry almost dropped him back to the ground in shock as he realised the truth of his words. There were stars visible in the strip of sky above them, between the buildings that bordered the street they’d appeared on.
“Have we apparated through time?” He asked.
“It certainly seems that way,” Fred said grimly. “This looks like Diagon Alley.”
Harry squinted. “It… doesn’t,” he replied. “There’s nothing - oh. ” He caught sight of Gringotts in the distance. “But it’s - it’s - when are we? None of these shops are current.”
George whistled through his teeth. “We’ve just invented a new mode of time travel,” he said with a show of bravado. “These shop names are from mum’s time, maybe before. Remember how she always calls Flourish and Blotts ‘Writs of Warlocks’? It had been called that for about five hundred years.”
“So we could be anything from forty-odd years to five-hundred years in the past?” Harry yelped.
“You can’t say we’ve invented it when we did it by accident,” Fred said reproachfully at the same time. Harry stared between them.
“Can we please sort out our priorities?” He asked desperately.
The twins had one of their silent conversations and nodded to one another, turning back to Harry.
“The logical thing to do would be to try again,” Fred said reasonably. “We’ve apparated through space and time, albeit accidentally. So let’s just… apparate again.”
Harry swallowed hard and nodded. George took his arm again, and they disappeared with an audible pop .
“Angelina is going to kill me,” Fred groaned a few hours later as dawn broke, flooding the valley with golden light. They had successfully apparated across the country, travelling flawlessly through space and finally resting in their current position somewhere outside of Hogsmeade. But - according to the countless tempus charms they had each attempted - they remained inexplicably and unequivocally in late August of 1938.
“Our mother is going to kill us all,” George pointed out. Harry nodded fervently in agreement.
“Our mother hasn’t even been born,” Fred retorted, and stopped suddenly. They all looked at one another, the reality of the situation beginning to sink in.
“Merlin’s beard,” George muttered, letting his head fall into his hands. “What are we going to do?”
Harry swallowed hard. “We’ll have to find out who the headmaster is, and enrol for Hogwarts,” he said. “Beg to stay here until term starts, and spend the school year working out what has happened and how to get back.”
Fred shook his head, and seemed unable to stop shaking it. “No one is going to believe us,” he said. “This is - this is unprecedented. It’s unheard of. It’s not in our history, so that means we - the time we’re from - they don’t know about it. So it hasn’t happened.”
There was a silence as they all tried to work out what that might mean, but then George began to chuckle uncontrollably. He was soon roaring with laughter. “Un- unprece - unprecedented!” He choked. Fred’s answering grin spread reluctantly, and Harry, utterly bemused, laughed along.
“It isn’t a very Fred-like word,” he admitted finally, wiping away his tears and looking fondly at the twins.
“Want a hand?” It was one of the red-haired twins he’d followed through the ticket box.
“Yes, please,” Harry panted.
“Oy, Fred! C’mere and help!”
With the twins’ help, Harry’s trunk was at last tucked away in a corner of the compartment.
“Thanks,” said Harry, pushing his sweaty hair out of his eyes.
“What’s that?” said one of the twins suddenly, pointing at Harry’s lightning scar.
“Blimey,” said the other twin. “Are you -?”
“He is,” said the first twin. “Aren’t you?” he added to Harry.
“What?” said Harry.
“Harry Potter,” chorused the twins.
“Oh, him,” said Harry. “I mean, yes, I am.”
The two boys gawped at him and Harry felt himself going red. For the rest of the journey, he shared his compartment - and his sweets, when the trolley lady came around - with them, asking as much as he could about the school he was now on his way to.
It had been the start of a whirlwind at Hogwarts. Harry hadn’t been looking forward to the next school year without these two boys, who had so effectively adopted him as their own that Harry exchanged cordial words with the boys in his year, but no more. He had learned so much from the twins - about humour, and Hogwarts, and growing up with magic, and family - than he could have hoped to learn from Hogwarts alone. And he had barely seen the Dursleys other than weekly summertime visits - for an afternoon at a time, with the Weasleys in tow - to satisfy Dumbledore’s blood ward requirements.
In all that time - five years of being almost inseparable - Harry had never once heard either of the twins use the word unprecedented.
He chuckled again, swiping at his eyes, and then froze.
“Wait.”
The twins stopped laughing abruptly. For all their fun-loving natures, they could be serious when they needed to be, and Harry - despite becoming quite the practical joker, now - still had a steely streak that the twins had never yet replicated.
“That day, on the train - that changed everything for me.”
George glanced at Fred worriedly. “Mate, we’re not dying,” he said uncomfortably. “We’ll find a way back. Let’s not get too deep.”
“No, I didn’t mean - I just meant, how different might my time at Hogwarts have been?” Harry took a deep breath, and confessed something he’d never told them before. “The Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin. You two are the reason I refused. I chose Gryffindor, because of that train journey.” He looked up at both twins, who looked identically startled. “What if I had been sat with Malfoy, or Blaise? Who might I be, now, if the Hat had had its way - if you two hadn’t helped me with my trunk? I’m the orphan who was hidden away from the Wizarding world. I owe it nothing.”
There was a silence as they all remembered the various conversations they had shared about Dumbledore. George remembered most fondly the day Molly Weasley had declared Harry as good as her own, and drawn her wand on Albus Dumbledore, demanding he remove himself from her kitchen. Sparks had flown at the suggestion that Harry be returned to his blood relatives. Hexes had flown at Dumbedore’s admission that he was aware of the cupboard.
“So what you’re saying is that you could have been a baby Voldemort, and we are the saviours of the world as we know it?” Fred asked cheekily.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Harry replied seriously, and Fred’s smile melted from his face, becoming a deep frown.
“Harry, there’s not a bad bone in your body,” George protested, but Harry shot him a look that silenced him.
“I’m not debating my own fate,” he said quietly. “I’m considering temporal mechanics, and magic. None of us have time turners, nor have we filled our pockets with any of the Sands of Time. There is no way this should have happened - especially with two separate apparitions - unless Time itself demanded it.”
Fred shook his head like a dog trying to get water out of its ears. “I’m not following,” he said.
“Do either of you pay any attention to Bill?”
“I mean, more than we do to Percy,” George said with a smirk. Harry grinned despite himself.
“Cursebreakers travel through time regularly,” he said. “Most curses have a temporal element - it’s not just how you break them, it’s when , too. So they’re often hopping backwards and forwards. Minutes at a time, usually, rather than hours or years - because you just have to break each part in the right order. Although in fairness, there are some that are tied to a particular day or date.”
“Okay, we get the point,” Fred said impatiently. “What about it?”
“Bill said that often, in the thrill of breaking an enchantment, cursebreakers forget to send themselves back to where they started. They’re often only half a day out, so what would it matter, really? Easy thing to lose track of, when you’re changing it so often, but in both directions and in such small increments. But after a few hours, or a day or two - they get pulled . Like involuntary apparition, or like a portkey you don’t know you’ve touched. They just get dragged back and dumped where - or when - they should be.”
George frowned. “There are thousands of recorded incidents from experiments with time, where things have gone so totally wrong… why would those things have happened if it’s meant to self-correct?”
Harry shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know ,” he said, running a hand through his hair so it stuck up even more than normal. “Perhaps because they’d done something that irrevocably altered the timeline before Time could correct the error? Or because the jumps were so much bigger?”
George nodded slowly. “Cursebreakers don’t change much about the timeline, they just break an enchantment over the course of a few hours. Doesn’t matter much if they don’t live those hours in order, and Time might get impatient with the imperfection in her weaving and self-correct it. But if someone goes back fifty years and changes something huge - well, that can’t be undone.”
“So you think that if we just stay out of the way and don’t get involved, we’ll eventually get sucked back to where we should be?” Fred asked hopefully.
“Maybe,” Harry said. “But there’s also the fact that we didn’t come here by choice or by misadventure. And that only leaves the possibility of Time bringing us here deliberately.”
“Which means… we have a job to do?”
“I can’t think of any other reason,” Harry said. “Can you?”
There was a silence as they all considered this. “If you’re right… what in Merlin’s name might we be here for?” George asked finally.
“Do you know what happened on the first of September 1938?” Harry asked quietly.
The twins shook their heads.
“Tom Marvolo Riddle came to Hogwarts.”
It had taken a few hours to explain everything to the twins. Harry hadn’t talked much about his experience of the Chamber of Secrets, because they doted on their little sister, and he didn’t like thinking about his ability to talk to snakes. They had known nothing of Tom Riddle, and they knew nothing of what Dumbledore had told Harry, or the memories he had shared with him. By the time he’d finished, the sun was beating down on them, and glittering off the nearby loch.
“There is no way I’m assassinating an eleven year old boy,” George hissed.
“Even knowing what he grows up to be?” Fred asked with a show of bravado.
“We’re not going to kill him,” Harry said. “That would make us no better than he is.”
“God, you sound like Dumbledore,” Fred groaned.
Harry fixed him with a glare. “That,” he said with dignity, “is really rude.”
“I might disagree with his methods and his superiority and his generally poor decision making when it comes to Harry,” George said, “but I think not wanting to kill is a pretty good trait.”
“Sorry,” Fred muttered. “You’re right. He’s as cunning and underhanded as a snake, but he’s not entirely ruthless.”
“But that eleven year old boy will be,” Harry said pointedly. “Just like I might have been.”
George raised his eyebrows and whistled. “You want us to adopt Tom Riddle the way we adopted you,” he said.
“Well, not quite,” Harry answered quickly. “We’re not staying, are we?”
Fred laughed. “No one could replace you, Harry,” he said, ruffling his black hair. “Don’t worry.”
“Do you really think it could be as simple as steering him towards Gryffindor?”
“I think it could be as simple as steering him away from Slytherin,” Harry answered honestly. “He knows he can talk to snakes before he gets on the train, so it won’t be easy. But his formative experiences at the orphanage are - they’re bad.” He frowned. “I wonder whether he’d have turned out so bad if they’d let him stay at Hogwarts during the summers.”
“He needs to find a family, like you have,” George said quietly.
“Yes. Because if I’d found Malfoy, and been drawn in as a loyal follower to resurrect Voldemort by choice rather than by force… if I’d been put on a pedestal, instead of becoming one of you - if I’d managed to hate Dumbledore, instead of recognising his flaws but also playing the long game on your advice… where would I be now?”
“Bloody scary,” Fred muttered. “Something so simple…”
“It’s not simple,” Harry said. “It was kindness, and a pinch of curiosity, but mostly kindness. And kindness is complicated and human and the exact opposite of every animal instinct we have. It was brave .”
There was a silence, and then George slapped Harry on the back. “You’re doing a lot of emotional rubbish today,” he said thickly. “It’s been heavy. Let’s have a break.”
They napped in a pile on the bank of the loch, and Harry knew that they were far too old to be sleeping in a tangle of limbs - had been, in fact, since they met; but they’d missed out on it when they were young, and it was comforting in a way that he couldn’t explain. The first time he’d slept like this, it had reminded him of one particular visit to Mrs. Figg’s, when he’d seen a mound of kittens in a cardboard box. The mother cat was hovering protectively nearby. Harry had stared, fascinated, wondering how it felt to be one of a litter, rather than a black sheep.
And the twins had taught him that. They had welcomed him into the fold, and Harry felt as much a Weasley as they were, now, even if there were some memories he didn’t share, and some jokes he missed the punchline of. Much of Gryffindor house referred to them as the triplets, and it made Harry feel more wanted and more at home than he’d ever felt in his life, even with his black hair and green eyes.
That was why Time wanted the three of them here. He was sure of it.
When he’d laid and reminisced for long enough, and when his left arm was beginning to ache with Fred’s weight on it, he shook both twins awake and raced them into the bracingly cold water of the loch - for no other reason than that they could.
“So it’s decided?” George asked, when they’d finished their impromptu waterfight and were drying out on the bank. “We intercept Tom Riddle on the platform, and make his train journey life-changing.”
“Yes,” Harry said. “We have to try.”
“We’re not going to be able to get on the train, though,” Fred reasoned. “We’re not students here.”
“We’ll have to find a way,” Harry said. “We’ll have to find a way to get through the next couple of days without being seen, and then manipulate the train to put Riddle with someone - someone nice. Someone who isn’t a Slytherin.”
“What else do we know about young Riddle?” George asked thoughtfully.
“He goes on to kill Myrtle Warren with the basilisk,” Harry said. “And he gets Hagrid expelled. And he’s a Prefect, when he gets to that age - Head Boy too, I think. He spends a lot of time reading up on all the things he missed - all the things he feels he should have had. His father was a wealthy Muggle, who refused to have anything to do with him, and his mother was a pureblooded witch, but her family was violent, poor, and unstable. They were direct descendants of Slytherin’s, but I don’t know when he found that out.”
Fred whistled through his teeth. “His family are nuts, he has a reason to hate his Muggle father, and he’s descended from Slytherin. And we want to make him an even-tempered, Muggle-loving not-Slytherin?”
Harry chuckled nervously. “When you put it like that,” he murmured.
In the end, it was easy. Fred - the better of the twins at Transfiguration, while George favoured Charms - made them look entirely unremarkable. They wandered Diagon Alley as a trio of anonymous students, browsing Hogwarts supplies, buying none, and learning a lot.
Money went much further in 1938, and Harry’s pocketful of galleons kept them comfortably fed. It was while they were in the Leaky Cauldron - almost entirely unchanged, it seemed - that they saw a family to rival their own descend on Diagon Alley.
A harried-looking mother shepherded five girls through the dingy pub. One was very tiny, and was hanging back. Harry looked at George, then Fred, and they all nodded to each other and slipped out after them; something about that girl was intriguing.
She gave her name to Ollivander - a predecessor of their wandmaker, it seemed - as Miranda Goshawk. While Fred explained once again that he was a genius for carrying an Extendable Ear at all times, George muttered to Harry that the name was familiar. Harry agreed.
“Textbooks!” George said suddenly. “She writes our textbooks. Standard Book of Spells. ”
“That’s it,” Harry said. “That’s it.”
Fred fell silent, and a smile spread slowly over his freckled face. “She could be the key. Her family are poor, aren’t they? I’m sure it says so in the foreword of her books. She’s in hand-me-downs. She can connect with Riddle - explain some of the magic he missed in childhood, but also show him that it’s not all plain sailing. She’ll be fair, she’s not bigoted - her books are translated into Mermish. And she can pull him to Ravenclaw - we know he likes knowledge.”
“And he’ll have a family,” Harry said softly. “A big one. Like ours.”
George cleared his throat. “What… what are we doing, here?” He asked carefully. “We’re risking everything on this very simple plan working… but if it does work, then what? Hagrid won’t be expelled. Moaning Myrtle will graduate Hogwarts. The whole first war vanishes. Harry, you’ll have parents . So much will change. We might not even exist - Gideon and Fabian will still be alive.”
Harry shook his head wordlessly.
“We have to try, right?” Fred asked helplessly. “We’re here for a reason. Surely Time wouldn’t be doing this if we’d write ourselves out of existence in the process.”
“Right,” George said with a confidence he didn’t feel. “Do you… do you think we’ll forget? If we change reality, and we go back, and everything is different… will we know it’s different?”
“I dunno.” Harry pressed his lips together and passed a hand over his face. “I dunno. But we have no choice, do we? The only other option is that we stay here, and that makes more of a mess of everything, and we have to watch Riddle become… well, you know what he becomes.”
“I know,” George muttered. “I guess I’m just feeling a little put out with Time at the moment, that’s all.”
They all stood in silence for a moment, leaning up against the wall of an empty shop next door to Ollivander’s, while inside, a wand chose the young witch that would go on to pen the books they learned from. Harry tried not to think about it too hard, because the paradox of it made his head spin.
“Come on,” he said finally. “Best work out how we can get a room for tonight.”
“Easily,” Fred said cheerfully, grasping gladly at the subject change. “George will be invisible, because he’s the best at Charms, and you’ll be my wife, because it’s the nineteen thirties and there’s no other way we’d be allowed to share a room.”
“Wife?” Harry yelped.
“Well, of the three of us, you’d make the prettiest girl, and you’re the shortest. Hold still, now.” He moved his wand in some complicated little wiggles, frowning with concentration.
“This had best be reversible,” Harry snapped as his hair grew in ringlets past his shoulders and his chest expanded. His robes became a gown.
“Of course it is,” Fred assured him. “It’s just the time period, you know. We don’t want to be memorable, and two blokes asking to share a room in this day and age would be memorable.”
“You’re my brother, you tosser, why couldn’t we just tell the staff that?”
“Too memorable,” Fred said, and stepped back to admire his handiwork. Harry stumbled and nearly fell in newly-heeled shoes. “You’re no Angelina, but you’ll do,” he decided, smiling brightly. Harry punched him on the shoulder.
“Not very ladylike,” George’s voice said from his left. His Dissolusionment Charm was flawless.
“I’m - this is - ugh ,” Harry muttered in disgust. “I can’t believe I have to pretend to be in love with you.”
“It’s literally just while we get hold of a room, and maybe for breakfast tomorrow. It’s not like I’m asking you to fake-date me for a whole term or anything, is it?” Fred rolled his eyes. “Come on.” He stuck out his elbow, and Harry slipped a thin, elegant hand that he didn’t associate as his own into the gap and stalked on unstable ankles over the cobbles.
“Couldn’t have waited until we were closer, I assume,” Harry said, voice dripping with venomous sarcasm.
“So sorry, my love, but we’re nearly there,” Fred said theatrically as George paced along near-silently beside them, placing his feet down exactly as Fred did to minimise the noise.
Once ensconced in a large room given to the “newlyweds” by a leering barman, Harry had to admit it had been a good plan, even as he made a mental note not to honeymoon anywhere near the Leaky Cauldron.
Fred returned him to his usual disposition, much to their mirror’s exclaimed surprise. George melted back into view, and the mirror promptly fainted. Harry caught it before it shattered and laid it down carefully.
“I don’t want seven years of bad luck in any decade,” he said decisively. “Come on, then. Any bright ideas to direct Riddle and Goshawk towards one another tomorrow?”
They batted scenarios and ideas around for hours, until George’s eyes grew heavy and Harry’s head fell onto Fred’s shoulder. None of them had expected to sleep well, but in fact, their slumber was restful.
The station had changed almost beyond recognition. King’s Cross didn’t feel in any way familiar, and Harry - once again disguised, much to his disgust, as Fred’s wife - worried for a moment that they wouldn’t find platform 9¾. The station was smaller, and steam locomotives waited on some of the platforms, belching smoke towards the roof. The air was thick and hazy.
“Which one is it?” He hissed. “Is it - did they even get to the platform the same way, before?”
Fred shrugged helplessly. “We didn’t consider this when we were talking it all over, did we?” He muttered.
“No,” George’s voice said somewhere to their left. “But I just watched someone vanish into the next wall on the right, so we should be fine.”
Harry visibly relaxed. They strolled together through the barrier with twenty-five minutes until the train was due to depart. The scarlet steam engine was familiar in a way that made him homesick, despite the two most important people in his life being on either side of him.
“Right,” said Fred. “See either of them?”
“Not yet,” Harry murmured, scanning the platform.
“Miranda is here,” George whispered. “Looks like her parents are seeing her off already, over there, look.”
“We can’t see you pointing, doofus.”
“Beyond the train, tucked behind the first pillar on the left.”
“Got them,” Harry said. “Well spotted. That means she’ll have to get her trunk over here and into a carriage on her own.”
“She’ll go for an end one, because of the weight of her trunk,” Fred prophesied, and sure enough, the tiny girl waved determinedly at her parents and began to drag her heavy case over. The adults melted back through the wall, and Harry and Fred grinned at one another.
“Perfect,” George muttered.
They watched her struggle to a carriage door, and then Fred led Harry forwards. “Can we help you, dear?” He asked politely, and Harry choked down the wild urge to laugh.
“Oh, er - please,” she said, flustered. Her robes were too broad in the shoulder and too long in the waist, even as they hung above her ankles, giving her the impression of being smaller than she actually was. “Thank you.”
Fred lifted her trunk onto the train and Harry followed them both into a compartment and watched him stow it on the racks, all the time chatting to the girl to put her at ease. “And which house do you think you’ll go to?” He asked kindly.
“My family are all Hufflepuffs,” she said nervously, twisting her hands. “But I think I’d like to be in Ravenclaw.”
“You like to learn?” Harry asked softly. She nodded shyly.
“I am sure the Sorting Hat will take your preference into account,” Harry said with a gentle smile. “Did you know that the station was built on the site of an old hospital?” He steered her back out onto the platform as he told her about smallpox and Muggle diseases, and their effect on the Wizarding world.
Tom Riddle arrived alone.
He stood tall and proud despite being small for his age, and Harry recognised the stance as that ramrod straightness of someone who does not belong, and feels that acutely, but is determined to try. His trunk was sleek and new-looking, and his robes were fashionable and fit perfectly. No one would guess that he was an orphan. Even at eleven, his cheekbones were high and sharp and haughty.
As expected, he made for an empty carriage - the one in which Miranda’s trunk was carefully concealed by George.
“You’d best get yourself settled,” Harry told Miranda with a smile. “There’s only a few minutes until the train leaves, and it’s going to get busier here.”
“Thank you for your help, Miss…” Miranda trailed off.
“It’s Mrs Ross,” Fred supplied, smiling. Harry stood on his foot.
“Ross. Well, thank you both for the help with the trunk, and for the information. It was really interesting,” she said, smiling shyly.
“You’re welcome. Good luck at Hogwarts - and don’t forget, you have a choice!”
Her grin was blinding and she skipped off, waving.
They watched her stop short at the entrance to her compartment, and saw Riddle’s eyes narrow as they took in her ill-fitting robes and her faltering smile.
“Er, hi,” she said, and they heard her words clearly through the Extendable Ear.
“Hello,” Tom Riddle said quietly.
Miranda threw herself down opposite him. “You have nice robes,” she blurted. “My parents couldn’t afford new ones, so these are my sister’s and they fit horribly.”
Tom smiled. “They do,” he agreed. “But soon, we’ll have learned how to Transfigure them so they fit you better. I have no one to hand their robes down to me.”
Miranda was silent for a moment, and then said, “I’m really looking forward to Transfiguration. Are you?”
“Yes,” Riddle replied. “I’m looking forward to all of it. I haven’t stopped reading for weeks.”
“You didn’t grow up with magic, did you?”
“No. Apparently my mother was from a pure blood family but she died and left me in a Muggle orphanage.” Some of the derision was already there, and Harry wondered whether they were too late.
“How terrible,” Miranda said softly. “She must have been so desperate. What an awful experience for her.”
And Tom Riddle blinked, as if he’d never thought of that. “Yes, I- I suppose so,” he agreed cautiously.
“I have eight sisters,” Miranda said. “It’s nice, but it’s a lot, as well. I’m the youngest, so I never get anything new, and I’m never the first to achieve anything. That’s why I want to be in Ravenclaw.”
“The house? Why?”
“Because I want to learn, and Ravenclaw values intelligence. All of my sisters were Hufflepuffs, so it might be the only thing I get to do that makes me different.”
Tom Riddle studied the girl opposite him with her mousy brown hair and her baggy robes, and wondered. “If your family have all been Hufflepuff, why would you be any different?” He asked.
“Because I know I have a choice,” she said simply. “Which house do you want to be in?”
There was a pause. “I… assumed I would be in Slytherin,” came the reply. “Because of my family.”
“Do you want to be in Slytherin?”
He shrugged. “I value intelligence, too,” he said. “There’s so much I want to learn.”
“Then come with me to Ravenclaw.”
“Maybe I will, if we get to choose.”
The sensation took them all by surprise. Fred frowned and opened his mouth to say something - perhaps to tell them that it must have worked, or that he didn’t feel right - but then he’d gone. In the blink of an eye, and with a crack like a whip, he’d vanished.
“What -?” George started, but then he, too, disappeared.
Harry didn’t have time to panic before a tug behind his belly button gave him the unpleasant sensation of being dragged inside out, and squashed into unrecognisable shapes, before he was deposited unceremoniously onto the grass outside the Burrow. It was hot - hotter than the weak September sunlight they’d been bathed in moments before entering King’s Cross station.
He cast a hurried tempus.
August 1996.
“Yeah, we’re back,” Fred told him. “We already checked.”
George held out his hand, and Harry took it and let himself be pulled up.
“You don’t sound… that happy about it,” he said.
“I am,” Fred said hurriedly. “I am. I’m just… nervous. It obviously worked, didn’t it? Because Time let us come back. So Tom Riddle was sorted into Ravenclaw. And I wonder what’s changed.”
Harry let his eyes wander away from Fred’s, and thought about it. What would be sad to have lost?
His eyes widened. “I have two sets of memories,” he said. “I remember my parents.”
George stared at him. “What?” He asked.
“My parents are - they’re dead. But Voldemort didn’t kill them. They were Aurors and they died in a raid, along with four others - including Sirius. When I was - before I went to Hogwarts. Remus is kind of my guardian but he obviously has trouble working, and so I’m still basically a Weasley, and you still got on the train with me, but you knew my name because I'm a Potter, not because I lived.”
“I remember,” Fred said softly. “I remember, because Fab and Gid were two of the others, so we had even more reason to know your name.”
George opened his mouth and closed it again. “So we get to remember both realities,” he said. “We get to wonder whether we did the right thing for the rest of our lives.” He kicked at a tuft of grass, and a stream of fast cursing told them that there was a gnome inside.
“We had no choice,” Fred said, gripping his twin’s shoulder. “Time gave us no choice.”
“There is always a choice,” George answered. His tone made Harry shiver.
Hermione stared around at the platform and wondered how big the school was. She’d imagined thousands of students, because Hogwarts: A History said the site was a castle, but this train looked entirely normal. There weren’t that many people lining up to board. How small was the magical community in Britain?
For now, it just looked like a film set. Weirdly dressed people with weird animals and old-fashioned trunks boarding a perfectly average and ancient steam train. The only impressive part had been walking through an apparently solid wall to get into the hidden platform. Diagon Alley had been more fun than this.
She sighed and dragged her luggage onto the train, finding an empty compartment. She dragged her well-thumbed copy of Bagshot’s book from her trunk and took up residence in the window seat. No one joined her during the journey, apart from a brief visit from a tearful boy asking after a toad. A lot of older students in red ties stampeded backwards and forwards along the corridor, and they seemed very immature. None of them came in to speak to her.
She supposed her last school had been a lonely place, too. At least this school would be full of things to discover.
When the Sorting Hat whispered to her about the Houses, Hermione considered what she had read, and thought Ravenclaw sounded like it might suit her. She was smart, after all. But then again, she didn’t want to be another smart kid in the house for smart kids. She wanted to find her way in this new world.
She had decided already that Gryffindor sounded like a good house - the opposite of everything Lord Voldemort stood for, and the likely destination for the Boy Who Lived, whose parents had both sorted there. The draw of the mystery of Harry Potter was great, and at least she wouldn’t be surrounded by other people who spent all their time studying.“Find your way, eh?” The hat murmured in her ear. “Well, if making a mark is your aim, there is only one place you should go. You could be great, you know, it’s all here in your head… Slytherin doesn’t usually welcome those of your birth, but what a shock it would be…”
And, emboldened by the hat’s suggestion that she could break the boundaries, Hermione eagerly accepted.
She could be powerful, she knew. She had tried some magic at home, and it had seemed too easy, too intuitive. She could make her mark on this world. If the hat told her Slytherin was the place to do that… how could she refuse?
“It’s Hermione,” Harry said a few days later, clutching his letter in his hand - a fistful of perfectly acceptable OWL results, which had prompted further memories of lessons and exams which overlaid his old ones, matching in places but just not quite fitting in others.
George looked startled. “What’s Hermione?” He asked.
“The compromise,” Harry said. “We defeated Voldemort before he ever existed. And now we get Hermione.”
“Merlin,” Fred muttered as some of his own memories clicked into place. “I hope Dumbledore gets on top of that sooner rather than later.”
“He won’t. For the greater good, remember? She hasn’t shown her cards yet, not really. She’s not cruel like Tom was. But she’s cold and calculating and she’s developing an agenda.” Harry frowned. “It’s just that she’ll become Minister for Magic rather than a tyrannical dictator. She’s going to turn the world inside out.”
“How do we stop her?”
“I… don’t know. But we’re going to have to. Maybe not yet, but in Time.”