For you, my brightest star

This has to stop happening. Harry regaining his consciousness at unknown locations then forcing his brain to catch up its speed to remember what happened and work out where he is.

Groaning he opens his eyes and looks around and is shocked to see the place he has found himself this time.

It suddenly feels like a dream. One second he was fighting in the biggest battle against Voldemort to end the second war, the next second he finds out that he is a horcrux and his death is the key to end it, then he is walking towards his own death so that Voldemort can also die, then meeting death and learning about his soul mate then agreeing to be magic’s champion and travelling through time. So much has happened in so little time. His brain is loaded with too much information. And now finding himself here of all places.

This is the place where he had lost one of the most important person in his life. He has to agree that Death has a strange sense of humour. To drop Harry outside the veil where he had lost Sirius. The audacity!

He supposes, it is also a sign of reversing his mistake at the same place where he had made it. Coming out of the same veil to which he lost Sirius. But that Sirius was his godfather and this Sirius,,,,, … He doesn’t know what will he be to him.

He looks around the chamber of death. It feels strangely melancholic to be here once again after everything. The last time he was here, he was a naive 15 year old who thought he could do anything like saving his godfather from the most feared dark Lord of all times. Now he knows what secrets Voldemort is hiding and how only it takes a few seconds for a spell to hit someone and life to leave a loved one’s eyes. A blink of eyes and your whole life is crashed.

He walks towards the stairs to leave the chamber as soon as he can. While passing through the outdoor corridor he is in such a hurry that he collides with a young woman in her early twenties. The both of them fall on the floor.

He gets up and offers his hand to her, now remembering that he has no reason to be in department of mysteries whatsoever, let alone anywhere near the death chamber.

“Umm I am really sorry miss, I didn’t see you coming. Are you all right?”

She is wearing all blue robes that is the standard dress code for the trainee members of the department of Unspeakable. Really, just his Potter luck to be found by someone hear.

The girl takes his hand and gets up then watches him for a few moments as if trying to decipher if she has ever met him .

She looks somewhat recognisable but he could not put his finger on where he had seen her face. Maybe he had seen her in one of the pictures from his parent's school days that Sirius had shown him.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” She narrows her eyes.

“Ohh.. Ummm,,, I am Harry,” wow it feels strange to introduce himself when in his time people just used to recognize him without needing any introductions. “I was actually shifting to London permanently and visited the ministry to make arrangements for it, but I got lost.” Right, Harry shouldn’t even try to lie. The way he is giving extra information without even being asked for it, he may as well write liar on his forehead like Marietta Edgecombe got sneak written on her face for betraying the DA.

The girl clearly also thinks that Harry is lying through his teeth as she gives him a flat look and says, “Right, so you missed all the signs pointing that this is the way to department of Unspeakables, also you temporarily lost your hearing abilities when the voice in elevators spoke that level 9 is for a different department. Try again mister.” Smart girl, must be a Ravenclaw.

Harry looks at her badge to see her name, oh so she is the Dorcas Meadows, who was killed by Voldemort himself. But why? What had she done to earn the most evil wizard's personal rage.

Dorcas snaps her fingers, bringing him back to attention.

“Right” Harry clears his throat to earn some time to think for an excuse, “you know it was so full that I got pushed out of the elevator by the crowd.” A little better but still too far from a perfect liar.

This is not going to be easy. Not at all. In his time, the problem was everybody knew about Harry Potter, and here he doesn’t know how to explain his past. Because technically he should not even exist in this timeline. What will he say. Who is he. What is he doing here. Which school he went. Who are his parents. Why not Hogwarts. What work does he do.

Oh merlin. He does not even has any money. And on no, on no,,, no, no, no… . This can’t be happening. Where is his wand? What game is death playing with him. Sending him out of his time without money, without his wand, without any friends.

Hermione would know what to do Or Ron would think of a lie fast enough. He is not good at anything without them. He was stupid, an idiot to think that he could even survive one day in this new world without them let alone surviving a full fledged war, hunting horcruxes and ending the war.

The first person he met here is already super suspicious of him.

Harry is thinking of Oblivating this girl when some senior unspeakable calls for Meadows. She begins to speak something to Harry again, most probably trying to find his real purpose for being here, but the voice calling for her name sounds urgent. She gives him a frustrated look before ordering him to leave the department, giving him the correct directions of the required department. But still he can see in her eyes that she would have called his bluff if not for her boss calling her.

Harry thanks all the gods up there both muggle and magical for helping him. Maybe Hermione was on something when she said that he is alive solely due to his Potter luck.

Harry quickly gets out of the ministry before being accosted by another ministry employee.

He reaches a muggle area near the ministry and uses wandless summoning charm to steal wallet from an unsuspecting man who was just about to sit in his car. Though the car is quite luxuries so Harry feels a little less guilty for stealing and hopes that the man does not suffer much because of stolen money. Oh how the mighty have fallen, Harry thinks while remembering about the heaps of galleons stored in the Potter vault.

Harry then buys muggle newspapers of the recent dates. He had to know the exact date at which he had arrived in this timeline. Also the extent of damage Voldemort and his death eaters are causing can also be hinted by getting up-to-date about the latest ongoing of the muggle world.

2nd May, 1979, it reads on today’s newspaper.

So, death had sent him to the same date and month, 19 years in the past.

Then Harry takes a bus to go to Diagon alley to buy himself a new wand. Being in times of war with no wand is the most stupid thing one can do.

Harry tries to formulate some vague story about his past and his identity but comes up with no perfect solution. He knows there are a lot of Potters in this time but that does not mean that he can go under radar as just being another Potter, especially if he has no records to support his story.

He thinks about how death told him that the tattoo on his forearm will either get him help or keep people out of his way if they know what is best for them. But that will be helpful with people who understand the significance of this mark and those will only include witches and wizards from old pureblood families only who have learnt about magic's real history.

He does not know about any of his own family history. Should he trust them and go directly to them. But what if he sees James there. He is not ready for that. So he can’t go to them. Also now that he thinks about it he remembers what Lupin told him about his grandparents’ death. It was just before Bill and Fluer’s wedding when Lupin told him, Ron, Hermione, Fred and George about how it was to fight in a full fledged war.

“one year had passed since our graduation and in that year we thought that we had learned what it is to be part of a vigilante group and fight in a war. But 1979 was the year we faced the real hardship and found out what we were really against. About how bloody a war really gets. It started with the death of our good friend Mary MacDonald. I remember it all too clearly because it was the same day on which we were celebrating our graduation last year and just in a year we lost one of our friends. Lily and Mary and I were very close friends. As close as James and Sirius. So you could imagine how difficult it must be for us after that. That was the first of many major blows to us that year. The death of someone our own age. Then news came that Sirius’s brother has gone missing. Sirius never said anything but we knew how it affected him, how he blamed himself for Regulus becoming a death eater even though he tried a lot to prevent it. That was the beginning when people started pointing fingers at each other. Sirius was doubted by many order members because of his family. When after three month Regulus was declared to be dead, ‘why are you so affected by the death of a death eater scum?’ they asked him. He just used to look at them with steel in his eyes and wiping away all the emotions from his face. But then came another blow for both James and Sirius, your grandparents died. They were suffering from dragon pox for a long period you see. After that Sirius changed because he was as much their son as James was and it was a really big blow to both of them. Sirius became distant with most people except for your father. James also matured and grown out of his childish world view. Then next month Dorcas was personally killed by Voldemort and the month after that the entire McKinnon family was attacked by the death eaters. Peter was dating Dorcas at the time, I think that’s where we lost him too. I was gone for order missions to talk to the other werewolves most of the time, Sirius himself was so lost because of the deaths of his found parents and his brother, for whom he still secretly cared for and loved after all this time that he could also not see how bad Dorcas’s death had affected Peter. James tried to help Peter despite his own parents’ death but after Marlene’s death he was the same as Sirius. Marlene was his childhood friend you see and the McKinnon family were the Potters’ neighbours and family friends. So many blows in the span of just 4-5 months. The second half of 1979 was solely the period in which many were attacked and gone to us. We were so lost. All hope was gone but then around the year end your mother found out that she was pregnant with you and your parents decided to get married. You were like a little ray of light among all the darkness of that time for all of us. Sirius also learned to get a hold on his feelings and cope with deaths and war by the time you were born. By then James became even more responsible knowing he has to protect his family. In all this nobody noticed how little we met with wormtail. How much pain he was in. I think, I should have seen it as I did not had such personal loses as James and Sirius had. But as always I was busy in my own problems that I could not offer the support which he needed at the time. There is no excuse for what he did but maybe we were also not much good friends to him in the time of need.”

When Harry said to Lupin that he did not want to listen to any of the excuses for Pettigrew’s betrayal, what Lupin told him shocked him.

“Harry,” heaving a sigh, really looking like a man who has lost so much to the war, “for you Peter is a man who betrayed your parents and caused their deaths. But for me before all that he was one of my best friends who risked going to Azkaban and became an animagus so that he can help with my transformation. When everything was over I had plenty of time to myself to wallow in self pity and think where it all went wrong. When I thought that it was Sirius who had betrayed us all, I will admit it myself that I will always be ashamed to assume that his family connections were the reason for him becoming a turncoat even when I was one of the few people who personally knew how he felt about them. Anyways, after your third year when I learnt that Peter was the real betrayer, I once again asked myself that why Peter chose to do this. And the only answer that I can think for is Dorcas Meadows. She was a year senior to us, a Ravenclaw. She was best friends with Marlene McKinnon. Who was in the same year as her in Hufflepuff house. And Marlene was your father’s childhood friend. In our 6th year after what happened with Snape in the shrieking shack, I was really very angry and used to spend most of my time away from the marauders with Mary and Lily. Prongs spent half the time being upset at Sirius and then oscillating between trying to comfort me and being jealous of me at getting to spend time with the girl he was attracted to. Sirius used to sit totally alone. Trying to punish himself for what he did and also wishing to give me as much space and time as I needed to recover from his betrayal and the hurt of it all. That left Peter who was really stuck with all three of us being at odds with each other so he began spending time with Dorcas and Marlene. The change in his personality was really visible after that. They first became friends. When both girls graduated and we were in our seventh year, they both still continued to exchange letters. They got together after our graduation. We were all sure even at the beginning of their relationship that they were the 'it' couple. That they will always be together. Dorcas's death destroyed Peter. It was as if he also died with her. She brought the best in him and after she was gone, all the good things in Peter were also gone. I know that my friend was not an inherently bad person. But living through a war changes you so much that even you cannot recognise yourself.”

That day Harry came to realise many things.

1. He does not actually know what it feels like to live in a world where a war is ongoing and your friends, family and people you know are dying constantly.

2. That 1979 was the year in which Voldemort began actively killing people through whatever means necessary if they did not side with him. Before that he was collecting funds and arranging people to side with him.

3. That Peter Pettigrew and Dorcas Meadows were the 'it' couple and maybe if war didn’t happen or if he wasn’t a part of it, Pettigrew was not such a disgusting human being in himself. He just didn’t cope well with the death of the love of his life. He was brave in day to day life but that bravery was not enough in the face of war and personal loses.

4. And most importantly the thing which is implied but Lupin did not voice but Harry still understood was that his parents were not the ideal couple as Sirius made him to believe. Maybe he was just trying to give a child a standard picture of his parents' life and relationship but in reality it was far different. Because as per Lupin’s story, amidst all the deaths which included his grandparents' and of very close friends of either of his parents’ that is Mary and Marlene, he does not think either of them was really in a mental state to make the decision to get married especially his father whose own parents had passed away just a few months back. Harry came to the conclusion that his parents had an accidental pregnancy which they decided to keep and then got married afterwards for the sake of the baby. So, if he has to complete Lupin’s words, Peter and Dorcas were the couple everyone was rooting for, your parents just got married as a result of circumstances.

Harry can understand now that he is an adult himself that life and people are not simple. Just because James had gotten in his head that he and Lily will be great together does not mean that they actually were compatible. Especially if the war took priority in every spectrum of their life to such an extent that no decision can be made without thinking about the horrors of the outside world.

Harry personally would never want to bring a child in times like these, where deaths and loses are a more common occurrence, like James and Lily brought him or like Tonks and Lupin did in the second war. But to each their own, he supposes.

Thus, if it is may 1979 then he supposes that his grandparents are really ill, so he cannot imagine them being able to help him in the matter. But he still wants to help his grandparents to fight dragon pox disease.

He remembers what Hermione had said once while they stayed at Grimmauld place during horcrux hunting, they were really tired of going round in circles on their mission and Hermione decided to take a break by reading other books. Later during dinner she told him and Ron that a half blood wizard named Derek Lincoln had released a study about dragon pox disease which only affects wizards and witches and not muggles. He tried to find the cure for this disease in muggle world and afterwards came to the conclusion that the Antiviral medicines used by muggles to treat influenza and Hepatitis C can be used to treat it. This was also apparent because the symptoms of dragon pox are very similar to those of the said muggle diseases combined.

This study was published in America and they do not give much credence to focus a witch or wizard's blood status. Thus, after successful trial of the study they used muggle medicine to cure dragon pox among their magical population. Hermione guessed that most probably the people of Britain wizarding society also used the same solution to eradicate the disease because by early 90s there were almost no patient of the disease left here but nothing is known explicitly about how Britain overcame the disease.

“Just another case Harry, where they used a muggle method to help their sorry arses and are not even grateful for it or had the curtsey to at least accept that muggles are really way ahead from wizarding world. I wish they knew how they can never win from muggles like this. Because muggles are way smarter than wizards. The war had only created a divide between the Wizard kind and ultimately will lead to the end of us magical people. Muggles will continue living their life.” She had said with a sad smile. Harry thinks how really smart and intelligent his friend was because it was exactly the same thing that Death had told him would happen after the second war.

So, Hermione’s hard work will once again help him. He will provide to Fleamont and Euphemia Potter muggles antiviral medicines and hope that they survive. They can also pass on the medicines to other people they know who are also suffering from the same disease.

He has to find a discrete form of doing so because cure for a disease in the times of war handed to them will raise their hackles which is not at all what Harry wants.

But until his grandparents return to their normal health he cannot ask for their help. So which other Potter can he approach for aid?

Before he could think anymore on the issue, the bus reached his destination. He entered Diagon Alley through the way Hermione had explained to him that all muggleborns use and made a beeline towards Gringotts to convert his muggle money into galleons.

He converts almost 90℅ money in magical currency and retains remaining in pounds.

It’s May month so thankfully the place is not crowded as he makes his way towards the wand shop.

The bell rings as he open the door to Olivander’s shop.

He feels nostalgic re-entering this shop. The same place where his journey began. Where he obtained the biggest weapon for a wizard. He remembers how shell shocked he was when Mr Olivander told him about his wand's origin.

At the end, he bought his second wand without much fanfare. Although this time he got a slightly different wand for which he is thankful as this wand did not gain much attention from Mr Olivander.

The wand that has selected him this time is made of holly wood just like his last one but this time instead of Phoenix feather, it’s thestral hair core. Harry supposes that maybe it’s because he had met death itself. Both literally as well as figuratively.

He does not want to think what would have happened if this time also his old wand selected him. Olivander would have most probably informed Dumbledore about how the wand with the second feather of his Phoenix bird has been sold. And then Dumbledore would have wanted to get to know him.

No he does not want to meet the man who had known the significance of Harry’s scar and still not informed him personally as soon as he came to that conclusion. Rather he used Harry as a pawn, a child soldier all his life whose sole purpose was to defeat Voldemort and nothing else as per Dumbledore. No, Dumbledore does everything for the greater good. And Harry finds such ideology flawed because he himself has seen what does it mean to be a guinea pig for the wizened wizard.

Mother magic wanted Harry to save as many people as he can and help finish the war early on with his knowledge about future. And Harry is not sure anymore that Dumbledore has the same goal for the ongoing war. Harry does not want to do this alone but he would not seek for the help of a wizard whose entire revolution is resting heavily on the shoulders of the youth of the society. Why is it that not many people past the age of 30 years are supporting Dumbledore and order of the Phoenix, Harry is unsure. Only those mature people are part of the order who are either indebted to Dumbledore or are his close supporters, otherwise it is full of people in there 20s. Harry supposed that it is easier to brainwash these youngsters into joining a vigilante group when they are so full of hope with no experience or Understanding of outside world whatsoever and till the time they see the horrors of the war and understand what actually they have subscribed themselves into, it’s much too late just like Peter Pettigrew. Harry supposes then, that there really is not much difference between Voldemort and Dumbledore. Voldemort trapped people like Draco Malfoy and Regulus Black and Dumbledore traps people like Fred Weasley and James Potter. Each used the youth to become a leader. Neither personally invested in the mortality rate among their followers.

No the secrets about future will have to stay hidden from both Voldemort and Dumbledore.

Harry decides to eat some food and rest for the day in a room in the Leaky Cauldron.

Tomorrow, he thinks, he will come up with a solution for his identity crises in the past era. He cannot make any mistake or raise anyone’s suspicions as he did earlier in with Dorcas Meadows who is apparently Peter Pettigrew’s girlfriend and an order member.

After eating an early dinner, he lays on his bed in the rented room and thinks about how he had once again found himself in such a bizarre situation. Just his Potter luck! But one thing Harry had done most in his life is landing himself in strange situation and then finding a way out. He just needs people he can trust on.

In his past, he had two of the most trustful and loyal friends in the form of Ron and Hermione. Alongside he also had Luna, Neville and Ginny. The Weasleys, Sirius, Snape, Tonks, Lupin and Dumbledore also.

He need to soon find people who could help him in this timeline. Because horcrux hunting is not a one man job. Besides the Slytherin locket and Ravenclaw’s diadem, he does not know where the other horcrux are.

Also, as death said that fate will help him meet the one who also sacrificed himself so that the dark Lord meets his end. The only person who had done so is Regulus Black. So if that is the case, Harry will make sure that the youngest Black survives this time. But can Regulus Black really be the person whom Harry can trust.

How will fate lead Harry towards Black and when?

Still, the most pressing issue is to establish an ironclad identity for himself because if Voldemort learns about the precious information about future that he is carrying then their may come a case where the war will never end or will end with Voldemort on the winning side.

No, Harry will have to keep away from suspicious eyes. His story has to be bullet proof.

Now that Harry had thought about protecting the knowledge he possess, he realises that he will have to learn the art of Occlumency. Because chances are very high of him getting caught by either leaders of the war or ministry officials and then getting suspicious of him because of his sudden appearance and using legilimency on him.

He will also learn how to prevent information under Veritaserum. He knows both of this are time consuming and that the war will not stop while he train himself but he is not a child anymore, he knows how important it is to loose small battles when one has to win the war.

People will keep on dying but still protecting this information, forming a real identity, and finding trusted ally will be his sole priority for now. He will not play God. He will not decide who to save and how and when. He will firstly make sure that he achieves a suspicion free identity and that nobody can get behind the real truth about his timeline until he decides to do share it with them.