Disclaimer: Vuzznut does not own Harry Potter nor have the money to pay
legal fees so no sue. I'm her muse speaking on her behalf ! Yes she has
several muses so you'll be hearing from all of us ^_~
Well here goes, introducing......TIMEWARP!!!
Chapter One
The Future
It is Harry's third year at Hogwarts, and the Marauders, in their seventh year, are about to disappear into the future.
Dumbledore was finishing his end-of-term speech. It was the final year at Hogwarts for the Marauders, and even now the four of them – James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew – were seeking a new adventure.
'Before I finish talking, and our feast begins, I would like to point out a certain – ah – problem that has arisen. One of our seventh year students has misplaced a Time Turner that has generously been lent to him by the Ministry of Magic. I would ask any student who knows of its whereabouts to come to me immediately.'
For a small moment, Dumbledore's eyes seemed to rest on James, until he smiled at the students gathered in the Great Hall, and sat down.
'He knows we have it,' James whispered to Sirius, as the students around them began to eat. 'And he was talking as if we'd stolen it from Snivellus or something! It fell out of his bag. We picked it up. That's not stealing!'
'Yeah, but maybe we should have returned it,' replied Sirius, pouring some pumpkin juice into his cup. 'It's not like it works.'
'Lupin says it's broken,' said Peter. 'But wouldn't Severus ... I mean Snivellus ... have gotten a new one, if it was?'
'Obviously we took it from him before he could, dunderhead,' said Sirius impatiently, rolling his eyes.
For a moment, a dark look seemed to fill Peter's eyes. Then it was gone, and his face turned red.
'Prongs! Padfoot! Wormtail! I think I've got it ...!'
There was a scream. Heads swivelled and mouths opened in shock.
A blinding white light had begun to form in the area where the Marauders were seated. There was a bright flash, and the white light seemed to envelop the four friends. They all looked confused for a moment. Peter whimpered. 'Time Turner's don't usually work like this ... do they?'
'Now you've done it, Moony!' shouted James. 'I swear, I'll kill you ... if we don't die!'
But Remus had leapt to his feet, grinning.
'It's working!' he yelled.
And as he said this, he began to disappear, the bright light swallowing him up. James, Sirius and Peter also began to fade away.
The teachers at the head table were all standing now, and some had whipped out their wands, waving them and shouting out words the Marauders couldn't hear.
'POTTER!'
Dumbledore was running towards them.
James was the last to vanish. 'See you later!' he said, waving. 'Goodbye Snivellus!' A boy with greasy black hair and a hooked nose scowled from the Slytherin house table.
*In the future!*
'In light of Sirius Black's recent escape from Azkaban, I assure those who feel they have reason to worry ...'
Harry looked up as Dumbledore trailed off. The Headmaster of Hogwarts never stopped in the middle of any important speech, and this was clearly one of them. His clear blue eyes, always so full of warmth, were trained on the back of the Hall. Ron and Hermione were already straining to catch a glimpse of the disruption over the heads of other students, who were all standing to get a view of the Great Hall doors.
There was a sudden bright flash, and many people screamed, covering their eyes. Hermione gave a small gasp, and Ron nearly fell off his chair, yelling, 'It's You-Know-Who!' knocking off Harry's glasses in the process.
As the light began to fade, there was a collective gasp from the students. Hermione began to tap urgently on Harry's shoulder. He spun around in his seat, scrambling for his glasses, and as Ron said, 'Blimey' and Harry pushed his glasses onto his eyes, he went cold with shock.
'I always wondered where you four disappeared off to on your last day at Hogwarts,' said Dumbledore in a deep, amused voice.
Chatter erupted throughout the Hall as though Dumbledore's words had cast some spell on the students. Many of them were glancing, unabashed, at Harry, whose mind was racing.
'Look at the one with the glasses!'
'They look exactly the same!'
'It couldn't be .... ?'
Right here, only ten feet away, was a boy who looked almost exactly like Harry, and who was only a few years older. And all four of the new arrivals were wearing the Gryffindor house robes.
'Hi, Professor Dumbledore,' said the bespectacled boy who looked like Harry. He cracked a grin, gazing around the Hall, which was now silent again.
'So how's the future going?' he asked.
A very handsome boy, who, standing next to the bespectacled boy was about a foot taller, sniggered, his eyes roving the staff table. The two other boys were grinning too.
'It's going quite well,' replied Dumbledore courteously. 'But I do wonder ... why would you and your friends want to come here? As I recall, the trip you have made was not authorised by the Ministry of Magic.'
'Oh, I know,' said the boy carelessly. 'We just wanted to know if anything at Hogwarts has changed, and now I see,' – he breathed in the heavy aroma of delicious food in the air – 'it hasn't.'
'I'll tell you what else hasn't changed,' the taller boy said, a slightly malevolent look in his eyes as he stared in the direction of the staff table. 'Well, look who it is ... Snivellus.'
Harry jerked his head towards Snape, who was glaring with such a rage at the boys that it was as though they had all pointed their wands at him and said, 'Avada Kedavra.' He jumped up in his seat.
'I told you, Dumbledore!' he said imperiously, stabbing a finger at the time-travellers. 'When they disappeared for that week, that they were the ones who stole my time-turner, and that they had used it to break the law and travel to the future! You didn't believe me ... but here is your proof!'
'Snivellus,' said the tall boy, rolling his eyes, 'Shut it.'
'Don't take that tone with me,' said Snape lowly. 'Hogwarts may not have changed, but things outside of it have.' His eyes glinted from beneath his greasy hair. 'Murderer.' Harry swivelled bemused eyes from the tall boy to Snape. His teacher's eyes looked as cold as Harry had ever seen them.
'You're twenty years older, and you still haven't changed,' sneered the bespectacled boy.
'Some things never do ...'
'ENOUGH!' said Dumbledore over all of them.
He rose from his seat and made his way down to the four boys. One of them, who looked pale and somewhat ill, was staring at the ceiling of the Great Hall, which showed nothing but a clear night sky and a three-quarter moon.
Dumbledore stopped in front of the pale boy. Without hesitation, he pulled off a necklace from the boy's neck which held a beautiful hourglass pendant. Hermione gave a strange cry of understanding that nobody heard.
'Very clever,' Dumbledore said. 'I do not know how you knew Severus was using a Time-Turner to attend more classes than he was able to without it. However, I must agree with him in the present circumstances ... this is not your time. There are people who exist in the present now who, if you face them, and talk to them, could enable you to gather information that you will take back to the past ... and will use to change the future, possibly for the worst. I cannot allow that. You must return.'
For a fleeting moment, it seemed to Harry as though Dumbledore had glanced at him.
'Oh, come on, Professor!' exclaimed a short, fair-haired boy from the group, who had a wheezy voice. 'We didn't travel this far to be ordered to go back!'
'Yeah, we want to know about everything!' said the tall boy. 'Like what the four of us are doing now? Or how things are going with Voldemort and the Death Eaters? Snivellus? I'm sure you can tell us all about it.'
Dumbledore turned to the tall boy, and Harry saw the bright fire in his blue eyes intensify. However, before he could speak, Snape cut in.
'It would be my pleasure to tell you everything I know about the Dark Lord,' he sneered, as a sinking feeling filled Harry's stomach. 'I believe he his dead. And I know his – faithful – supporters have all but abandoned him ... except one, who escaped the Azkaban prison just a month ago, and has set out on a mad quest to restore the Dark Lord to the height of his power!'
There was a heavy silence. Then the tall boy began to a laugh. 'What are you talking about, Snivellus?' he asked, grinning broadly. 'That's ridiculous ... really ... Peter, what's wrong?'
The short boy had made a funny noise from behind him. Harry opened his mouth in utter disbelief as Hermione's grip on his arm tightened.
Peter Pettigrew. Alive. This meant that he and his father ... his father ... had somehow made their way into the future. And they were with Sirius Black – the Sirius Black who had not yet betrayed James to his death. But who was the pale boy? Dumbledore was speaking again, in his usual, calm, manner.
'I will make a deal with all of you. I will allow you to stay at Hogwarts for one week, and ask all the questions you like. I will allow you to obtain all the information about your future you need. But,' – the grins on the boys' faces slid off them – 'at sunset on the seventh day, I will modify your memories, and I will deliver you back to the past.'
'We won't remember who we are, Professor!' cried James. 'And ... one week? We need more than that to find out about what's going on in our future!'
'I have the capacity to erase a few ... specific ... memories from a person's mind,' said Dumbledore. It looked to Harry as though Dumbledore was staring at his father with irrefutable sadness.
A confused look had come across James's face. 'What could I possibly find out now that you wouldn't want me to take back into the past?'
The sad look filled Dumbledore's clear eyes again. 'There are some things,' he said finally. He cleared his throat.
'I have made my decision. I know I will never be able to convince you four to return to the past at this moment, or to stay for only a short while. But I will do this. I will permit you to stay for the rest of the year ... on my conditions. Firstly, you must attend to the rest of your seventh year lessons for this year,' – a groan of disbelief broke from Sirius's lips – 'and at the end of the year,' continued Dumbledore in a sharper tone, 'you must return to the real end of your time at Hogwarts.'
Another silence. A strange feeling of anticipation mixed with foreboding filled Harry. Suddenly, the pale boy spoke for the first time. 'But then we'll have been gone for half a year in our own time.'
Dumbledore smiled for the first time since the boys had materialised in the Great Hall.
'That is how long I remember you were gone for,' he said.
To Harry's shock, his father and Sirius laughed, slapping their hands together. 'A whole half-year!' cried Sirius.
'Just imagine all the stories we can make up!' James said, rubbing his hands together with glee. 'I won't be able to wait to see Lily after this!' Lily? Harry caught Ron gaping opened mouth at him. Hermione whispered, 'Who's Lily?'
'I would like to ask a question,' said the pale boy suddenly, cutting off the few whispers which had broken out again. He looked nervous.
'Oh, please do,' said Snape in a sarcastic voice. 'It's just what we need, one more of these monsters roaming through the school ...'
'I would like to hear what the boy has to say,' Dumbledore said, silencing Snape. Snape's jaw clenched, though he said no more.
The pale boy coughed nervously. Harry, with a jolt, realised who he was.
'Is You-Know-Who really dead?'
As Dumbledore stared down at the pale boy and the students' shocked mutters faded into nothing, Dumbledore said, 'Voldemort has passed from the mortal world. And all of your fates, I regret, have been linked to his. Especially yours, Potter.'
The crowd was silent no more. Harry went a deep red as a mass of heads turned in his direction. Anger surged through him as he spotted Malfoy smirking at him from the Slytherin table.
'My fate?' said the bespectacled boy cheerily. 'Can you tell us? How are Sirius, Remus, Peter and I doing at the moment?'
More hurried whispered chatter. Hermione looked thunderstruck; Ron completely bewildered.
'That can wait,' said Dumbledore softly. 'At the moment, I would like to remove us from the gaze of the students, so that we may talk ... more privately.'
The four boys looked at each other. 'Lead the way,' said James.
As they headed in the direction of Dumbledore's office, Snape strode in front of them, a sneer on his face.
'If you are to tell them anything, Dumbledore, I would very much like to be present.' Dumbledore smiled mildly. 'Of course. And now that I think of it ...' – he turned and looked directly at Harry – '... I think it would be prudent if Harry came with us.'
Harry swallowed hard. James had turned around too, and was asking, 'Who's Harry?'
And then their eyes met, and James's mouth fell open.
Well here goes, introducing......TIMEWARP!!!
Chapter One
The Future
It is Harry's third year at Hogwarts, and the Marauders, in their seventh year, are about to disappear into the future.
Dumbledore was finishing his end-of-term speech. It was the final year at Hogwarts for the Marauders, and even now the four of them – James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew – were seeking a new adventure.
'Before I finish talking, and our feast begins, I would like to point out a certain – ah – problem that has arisen. One of our seventh year students has misplaced a Time Turner that has generously been lent to him by the Ministry of Magic. I would ask any student who knows of its whereabouts to come to me immediately.'
For a small moment, Dumbledore's eyes seemed to rest on James, until he smiled at the students gathered in the Great Hall, and sat down.
'He knows we have it,' James whispered to Sirius, as the students around them began to eat. 'And he was talking as if we'd stolen it from Snivellus or something! It fell out of his bag. We picked it up. That's not stealing!'
'Yeah, but maybe we should have returned it,' replied Sirius, pouring some pumpkin juice into his cup. 'It's not like it works.'
'Lupin says it's broken,' said Peter. 'But wouldn't Severus ... I mean Snivellus ... have gotten a new one, if it was?'
'Obviously we took it from him before he could, dunderhead,' said Sirius impatiently, rolling his eyes.
For a moment, a dark look seemed to fill Peter's eyes. Then it was gone, and his face turned red.
'Prongs! Padfoot! Wormtail! I think I've got it ...!'
There was a scream. Heads swivelled and mouths opened in shock.
A blinding white light had begun to form in the area where the Marauders were seated. There was a bright flash, and the white light seemed to envelop the four friends. They all looked confused for a moment. Peter whimpered. 'Time Turner's don't usually work like this ... do they?'
'Now you've done it, Moony!' shouted James. 'I swear, I'll kill you ... if we don't die!'
But Remus had leapt to his feet, grinning.
'It's working!' he yelled.
And as he said this, he began to disappear, the bright light swallowing him up. James, Sirius and Peter also began to fade away.
The teachers at the head table were all standing now, and some had whipped out their wands, waving them and shouting out words the Marauders couldn't hear.
'POTTER!'
Dumbledore was running towards them.
James was the last to vanish. 'See you later!' he said, waving. 'Goodbye Snivellus!' A boy with greasy black hair and a hooked nose scowled from the Slytherin house table.
*In the future!*
'In light of Sirius Black's recent escape from Azkaban, I assure those who feel they have reason to worry ...'
Harry looked up as Dumbledore trailed off. The Headmaster of Hogwarts never stopped in the middle of any important speech, and this was clearly one of them. His clear blue eyes, always so full of warmth, were trained on the back of the Hall. Ron and Hermione were already straining to catch a glimpse of the disruption over the heads of other students, who were all standing to get a view of the Great Hall doors.
There was a sudden bright flash, and many people screamed, covering their eyes. Hermione gave a small gasp, and Ron nearly fell off his chair, yelling, 'It's You-Know-Who!' knocking off Harry's glasses in the process.
As the light began to fade, there was a collective gasp from the students. Hermione began to tap urgently on Harry's shoulder. He spun around in his seat, scrambling for his glasses, and as Ron said, 'Blimey' and Harry pushed his glasses onto his eyes, he went cold with shock.
'I always wondered where you four disappeared off to on your last day at Hogwarts,' said Dumbledore in a deep, amused voice.
Chatter erupted throughout the Hall as though Dumbledore's words had cast some spell on the students. Many of them were glancing, unabashed, at Harry, whose mind was racing.
'Look at the one with the glasses!'
'They look exactly the same!'
'It couldn't be .... ?'
Right here, only ten feet away, was a boy who looked almost exactly like Harry, and who was only a few years older. And all four of the new arrivals were wearing the Gryffindor house robes.
'Hi, Professor Dumbledore,' said the bespectacled boy who looked like Harry. He cracked a grin, gazing around the Hall, which was now silent again.
'So how's the future going?' he asked.
A very handsome boy, who, standing next to the bespectacled boy was about a foot taller, sniggered, his eyes roving the staff table. The two other boys were grinning too.
'It's going quite well,' replied Dumbledore courteously. 'But I do wonder ... why would you and your friends want to come here? As I recall, the trip you have made was not authorised by the Ministry of Magic.'
'Oh, I know,' said the boy carelessly. 'We just wanted to know if anything at Hogwarts has changed, and now I see,' – he breathed in the heavy aroma of delicious food in the air – 'it hasn't.'
'I'll tell you what else hasn't changed,' the taller boy said, a slightly malevolent look in his eyes as he stared in the direction of the staff table. 'Well, look who it is ... Snivellus.'
Harry jerked his head towards Snape, who was glaring with such a rage at the boys that it was as though they had all pointed their wands at him and said, 'Avada Kedavra.' He jumped up in his seat.
'I told you, Dumbledore!' he said imperiously, stabbing a finger at the time-travellers. 'When they disappeared for that week, that they were the ones who stole my time-turner, and that they had used it to break the law and travel to the future! You didn't believe me ... but here is your proof!'
'Snivellus,' said the tall boy, rolling his eyes, 'Shut it.'
'Don't take that tone with me,' said Snape lowly. 'Hogwarts may not have changed, but things outside of it have.' His eyes glinted from beneath his greasy hair. 'Murderer.' Harry swivelled bemused eyes from the tall boy to Snape. His teacher's eyes looked as cold as Harry had ever seen them.
'You're twenty years older, and you still haven't changed,' sneered the bespectacled boy.
'Some things never do ...'
'ENOUGH!' said Dumbledore over all of them.
He rose from his seat and made his way down to the four boys. One of them, who looked pale and somewhat ill, was staring at the ceiling of the Great Hall, which showed nothing but a clear night sky and a three-quarter moon.
Dumbledore stopped in front of the pale boy. Without hesitation, he pulled off a necklace from the boy's neck which held a beautiful hourglass pendant. Hermione gave a strange cry of understanding that nobody heard.
'Very clever,' Dumbledore said. 'I do not know how you knew Severus was using a Time-Turner to attend more classes than he was able to without it. However, I must agree with him in the present circumstances ... this is not your time. There are people who exist in the present now who, if you face them, and talk to them, could enable you to gather information that you will take back to the past ... and will use to change the future, possibly for the worst. I cannot allow that. You must return.'
For a fleeting moment, it seemed to Harry as though Dumbledore had glanced at him.
'Oh, come on, Professor!' exclaimed a short, fair-haired boy from the group, who had a wheezy voice. 'We didn't travel this far to be ordered to go back!'
'Yeah, we want to know about everything!' said the tall boy. 'Like what the four of us are doing now? Or how things are going with Voldemort and the Death Eaters? Snivellus? I'm sure you can tell us all about it.'
Dumbledore turned to the tall boy, and Harry saw the bright fire in his blue eyes intensify. However, before he could speak, Snape cut in.
'It would be my pleasure to tell you everything I know about the Dark Lord,' he sneered, as a sinking feeling filled Harry's stomach. 'I believe he his dead. And I know his – faithful – supporters have all but abandoned him ... except one, who escaped the Azkaban prison just a month ago, and has set out on a mad quest to restore the Dark Lord to the height of his power!'
There was a heavy silence. Then the tall boy began to a laugh. 'What are you talking about, Snivellus?' he asked, grinning broadly. 'That's ridiculous ... really ... Peter, what's wrong?'
The short boy had made a funny noise from behind him. Harry opened his mouth in utter disbelief as Hermione's grip on his arm tightened.
Peter Pettigrew. Alive. This meant that he and his father ... his father ... had somehow made their way into the future. And they were with Sirius Black – the Sirius Black who had not yet betrayed James to his death. But who was the pale boy? Dumbledore was speaking again, in his usual, calm, manner.
'I will make a deal with all of you. I will allow you to stay at Hogwarts for one week, and ask all the questions you like. I will allow you to obtain all the information about your future you need. But,' – the grins on the boys' faces slid off them – 'at sunset on the seventh day, I will modify your memories, and I will deliver you back to the past.'
'We won't remember who we are, Professor!' cried James. 'And ... one week? We need more than that to find out about what's going on in our future!'
'I have the capacity to erase a few ... specific ... memories from a person's mind,' said Dumbledore. It looked to Harry as though Dumbledore was staring at his father with irrefutable sadness.
A confused look had come across James's face. 'What could I possibly find out now that you wouldn't want me to take back into the past?'
The sad look filled Dumbledore's clear eyes again. 'There are some things,' he said finally. He cleared his throat.
'I have made my decision. I know I will never be able to convince you four to return to the past at this moment, or to stay for only a short while. But I will do this. I will permit you to stay for the rest of the year ... on my conditions. Firstly, you must attend to the rest of your seventh year lessons for this year,' – a groan of disbelief broke from Sirius's lips – 'and at the end of the year,' continued Dumbledore in a sharper tone, 'you must return to the real end of your time at Hogwarts.'
Another silence. A strange feeling of anticipation mixed with foreboding filled Harry. Suddenly, the pale boy spoke for the first time. 'But then we'll have been gone for half a year in our own time.'
Dumbledore smiled for the first time since the boys had materialised in the Great Hall.
'That is how long I remember you were gone for,' he said.
To Harry's shock, his father and Sirius laughed, slapping their hands together. 'A whole half-year!' cried Sirius.
'Just imagine all the stories we can make up!' James said, rubbing his hands together with glee. 'I won't be able to wait to see Lily after this!' Lily? Harry caught Ron gaping opened mouth at him. Hermione whispered, 'Who's Lily?'
'I would like to ask a question,' said the pale boy suddenly, cutting off the few whispers which had broken out again. He looked nervous.
'Oh, please do,' said Snape in a sarcastic voice. 'It's just what we need, one more of these monsters roaming through the school ...'
'I would like to hear what the boy has to say,' Dumbledore said, silencing Snape. Snape's jaw clenched, though he said no more.
The pale boy coughed nervously. Harry, with a jolt, realised who he was.
'Is You-Know-Who really dead?'
As Dumbledore stared down at the pale boy and the students' shocked mutters faded into nothing, Dumbledore said, 'Voldemort has passed from the mortal world. And all of your fates, I regret, have been linked to his. Especially yours, Potter.'
The crowd was silent no more. Harry went a deep red as a mass of heads turned in his direction. Anger surged through him as he spotted Malfoy smirking at him from the Slytherin table.
'My fate?' said the bespectacled boy cheerily. 'Can you tell us? How are Sirius, Remus, Peter and I doing at the moment?'
More hurried whispered chatter. Hermione looked thunderstruck; Ron completely bewildered.
'That can wait,' said Dumbledore softly. 'At the moment, I would like to remove us from the gaze of the students, so that we may talk ... more privately.'
The four boys looked at each other. 'Lead the way,' said James.
As they headed in the direction of Dumbledore's office, Snape strode in front of them, a sneer on his face.
'If you are to tell them anything, Dumbledore, I would very much like to be present.' Dumbledore smiled mildly. 'Of course. And now that I think of it ...' – he turned and looked directly at Harry – '... I think it would be prudent if Harry came with us.'
Harry swallowed hard. James had turned around too, and was asking, 'Who's Harry?'
And then their eyes met, and James's mouth fell open.