Return to Grimmauld Place

Harry was sure he would not be able to fall asleep; the evening had been so packed with things to think about that he fully expected to lie awake for hours mulling it all over. He wanted to continue talking to Ron, but Mrs Weasley was now creaking back downstairs again, and once she had gone he distinctly heard others making their way upstairs ... in fact, many-legged creatures were cantering softly up and down the bedroom door, and Hagrid the Care of Magical Creatures teacher was saying, 'Beauties, aren' they, eh, Harry? We'll be studyin' weapons this term...' and Harry saw that the creatures had cannons for heads and were wheeling to face him ... he ducked ...

The next thing he new, he was curled into a warm ball under his bedclothes and George's loud voice was filling the room.

"Mum says get up, your breakfast is in the kitchen and then she needs you in the drawing room, there are loads more Doxys than she thought and she's found a nest of dead Puffskeins under the sofa."

Harry James Potter's eyes flew open. He was suddenly frozen in place, his muscles rigid. Despite himself, he was more scared than he had ever been of anything in his life before now. And he'd had reason after reason to be terrified of the impossible situations he'd faced in his life.

Though his entire body remained stock still, his eyes flicked side to side, surreptitiously taking in his surroundings. There's no doubt about it; This wasn't right.

He was on his feet in seconds, wand in hand and crouched in a defensive stance. It didn't matter that he wasn't wearing his glasses, that he couldn't make out the finer details of the world around him. He'd learnt many, many years ago that his gut instinct was usually right. As Head of the Auror Department, he'd learnt to trust his gut, no questions asked. Well, some questions asked - he'd learnt the hard way was a trainee that it was better to go on the defensive, rather than the offensive. The younger Harry would've stunned the blurry, maroon-clad person on the other side of the room right where they stood. The older, experienced Harry knew it was better to cast a shield charm and assess his surroundings thoroughly. (That way, you don't accidentally wind up stunning your supervisor during a training exercise).

Right now, however, was not the time for a trip down memory lane, regardless of how funny that story might be twenty years later. Right now, he was squaring off against an unknown adversary. One who sounded oddly familiar...

"Waz going - bloody hell, Harry!" the familiar voice yelled.

Harry's defensive stance suddenly turned to one of total confusion. He knew that voice anywhere.

"Wait - Ron?"

He blindly groped around on the nightstand until he found the old, round glasses he'd refused to replace even into his adulthood. In a matter of seconds, he'd shoved the wire frames onto his face. One arm of the glasses landed in the right place, the other wound up hooked over his left ear awkwardly. What he saw literally made his jaw drop.

Standing in front of him was his best friend in the world, Ron Weasley. While this wouldn't have been a huge deal on a normal day, there were two major issues he immediately identified:

1) This was not the Weasley he had gone to bed with last night.

2) Ron Weasley - the married father-of-two who'd retired from the Auror Department to join his older brother in running Weasley Wizards' Wheezes - was a teenager again.

"... Harry?"

Though he was bleary eyed and very freaked out, Ron managed to pull himself out of his bed. By unceremoniously tumbling face-first onto the floor. At any other moment, Harry probably would've laughed. But not today. Today, he'd opened his mouth and was about to curse whoever was impersonating his best friend when the bedroom door flew open to reveal two identical red heads.

Harry's eyes were wide as saucers. The Weasley twins hadn't been 'the twins' in more than twenty years.

"Okay, what the hell is going on?!"

None of the red heads answered. All they could do was stare at him like he had two heads.

To the twins, he demanded, "Why are you here?"

To Ron, he said, "Why are you fifteen?"

And to the room at large, a pissed off, "And what the hell are we doing in Grimmauld Place?!"

It was at that point that he remembered his raised voice tended to carry. By the sudden noise of footsteps on the stairs, he knew his outburst had caught the attention of the rest of the household. He didn't give them an opportunity to intervene, however. The twins were far enough inside the room that he could just slip past them through the doorway before they had a chance to react.

Back in his defensive stance, he found himself standing on the second floor landing, now looking into the room containing three of his very confused brothers-in-law. Though he was in a less defensible position now, he wasn't trapped inside that room.

"... Harry?"

Despite his years of experience, his extensive training, he couldn't help himself. His head flicked around to the right, where he found a very tired and thoroughly confused Ginny Weasley leaning out of a bedroom doorway on the landing below. Before she had time to register what was happening, he'd run down the flight of stairs separating them and pulled her into a tight hug.

"Gin," he sighed contentedly. "Oh, thank God. I don't know what's going ... on."

That was the point at which he realised something was very, very wrong. His wife wasn't being sarcastic, or calling him out for using that muggle turn of phrase again. She also wasn't wearing her wedding ring. And her hair was significantly longer than it had been when they went to bed last night. She was also clearly quite uncomfortable being in his arms.

"Uh, Harry?" she said awkwardly, delicately manoeuvring herself out of his embrace. "What's going on?"

"What do you mean what's going on?" he asked her confusedly. "Gin - it's me. Harry. Your pain-in-the-ass, workaholic hus-"

His voice died mid-word. He couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Before anyone could register what was going on, Harry had walked straight past Ginny and into the bedroom his teenage wife had been sharing with her best friend that summer. All of a sudden, it made sense. He'd caught sight of himself in the dirty, dilapidated mirror hanging precariously on the wall between the two beds.

Harry Potter was fifteen years old again.