Wow... Um, so I'm still alive. I'm so sorry for not updating sooner, but life got in the way, you know? I was rereading the Harry Potter series recently, and the pure Harry Potter-ishness of it all just got to me, and I had to write again. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. And as always, please review!

Lily Evan's POV

Sixty Two Hours Left

I hate feeling depressed. I really hate it.

I've always thought of myself as someone who's happy, optimistic.

But there was nothing happy about this. If there was, I wouldn't feel depressed. The fact that there was absolutely nothing we could do was what bothered me the most. If I hated anything more than sadness, it was helplessness.

"In a few hours, we'll just disappear; fade into thin air, as it were," Rose had murmured, not meeting anyone's eyes. "From what I've read, we'll go to the time we were born. No one will be able to feel us, hear us, touch us… and that will continue until the time we walked through Dumbledore's door. So, get ready for a re-run of your life…"

Encouraging words, I know.

We were all sitting around the room of requirement, doing nothing. Ginny and Harry were on their Easter break, and so they could spend all the time they wanted with us.

Alright, so we weren't doing nothing, but we weren't talking, either. Rose was feverishly ripping through her potions book, trying to find if she'd done anything wrong. Harry, Ginny and Lily were sitting down together, looking at the floor – Harry's and Lily's disconsolate expressions were identical. Al and James junior were asleep. In a feat I thought was pointless to attempt, Hermione and Ron were off looking for Dumbledore.

James Potter the first was staring at me.

Really staring. I'd always thought that describing someone's stare as 'tangible' was ridiculous. You can't feel a look!

I could now. I could even feel where he was staring: my hair, my hands, and most often, my eyes.

This wasn't his usual staring. Usually, he looked at me to get my attention, or just to keep tabs on my every move. This staring was speculative, almost like he was thinking of something else, but at the same time, wondering why I was doing what I was doing.

In case you want to know, I was doing Harry's homework. It was a potions paper on a subject I had mastered a couple of weeks ago. I was so glad I had something to do with my hands, and this subject was actually interesting. We'd discovered that our handwriting looked somewhat alike, so that was good too. It felt nice to be doing something somewhat helpful. Again, the silence was bothering me.

"GERONIMO!"

I jumped and spilled half of Harry's ink onto the paper. Everyone was staring at the source of the outburst. It was Lily, who was quickly turning a bright tomato red.

"Sorry everyone, I just had to shout… something…" she said, and then went back to staring at the floor.

"Well thanks for waking me up, Lily. Next time, just use the old water bucket technique, okay?" croaked an irritable James Jr.

"You'd kill me."

"No I wouldn't, I love you too much. I might turn your corduroy's invisible, though."

The three siblings laughed at their inside joke – Lily wasn't wearing corduroy.

"What's that about corduroy?" Ginny asked curiously.

"Oh, nothing," Lily said in a much too casual voice.

James II was oblivious. "Are you kidding? That was the best pra—"

"If you say anything about that James, I will hex you into the next century." Lily glared at her oldest brother. Al was silently laughing.

James dropped the subject, and the room was again thrown into desolate silence.

I only noticed the presence of sound when it suddenly stopped. I was the only one who glanced up to see Rose, staring at her book with an expression of astonishment on her face.

"Rose, what is it?" I asked.

Everyone looked at me, then at Rose.

"I'm – we're… it's… Lily, when you hit your head, did any of your blood spill?" she asked her cousin tensely.

"Well, I dunno, um maybe?"

"Listen to this: 'When the time traveler takes the potion to begin his/her journey back to the present, there are some things the traveler must be sure of. Firstly, that the right amount of Fwooper claw powder, otherwise you will be thrown into the wrong time period (see pg. 117 Aristotle rides a motorcycle). Secondly, that no physical evidence of the time traveler remains in the time, namely, and most importantly, blood.'"

"So…"

"We could – well, not definitely, but maybe – We could get rid of that blood and… and get out of here." Rose swallowed and looked up, eyes wide and hopeful.

***

24 Hours Later…

"Why the hell… who the hell…"

"What kind of idiotic, reckless, inconsiderate imbecile would do such a thing? Honestly!"

"I think I'm gonna be sick. Like literally, bring it down all over Al's shoes."

"'Cause that'll make everything so much better."

These were the sort of comments my fellow time-travelers were coming out with.

After clearing up Lily's blood and then trying the potion –unsuccessfully—again, the prominent emotion had been despair. Crying and comforting had ensued, which was honestly quite exhausting, so we'd all fallen asleep on the floor of the Room of Requirement. As soon as we were all awake, we had a furious brain-storming session, which resulted in some serious anger at each other and at whoever had sent us to 1996. This, I believe, was the cause of their ridiculous almost-insanity at the moment.

It was a frightfully pleasant situation, believe me.

"There has to be something, something that can be done! Argh!"Rose wailed. I felt especially sorry for her. She seemed to feel, in some convoluted way, that this was her fault. Her red hair was getting frizzier by the minute, and she looked a little deranged.

"Rose. It's going to be fine. Really," said Al, in what would be a soothing tone. Rose just threw him a dark, insulted sort of look, but she stopped her loud fretting.

I was sort of resigned to the fact that I was going to have to watch sixteen years of my life, powerless. I would just pretend it was a very drawn-out, vivid dream. That's what I would do.

I caught James' eye from across the room, and I gasped softly. Instead of in panic, the familiar lines of his face were arranged into an expression identical to mine – composed, acquiescent, and hopeless. The knot in my stomach loosened slightly when I saw this. I felt less alone.

Rose was muttering quietly to herself now. "I mean, there must be some sort of curse or – or hex to get us back to our century. Maybe in Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes… I should go to the library again…"

"No, wait," said James, unexpectedly. He was looking at Rose, head cocked to one side, a curious expression on his face.

I asked before I could help myself, "What is it, James?"

He looked at me, took a short breath and said, "Isn't there a charm that sort of… shakes an area of the earth for a while, to restore things after a huge accident? Didn't McGonagall mention it in class the other day? Didn't she say that it affects the realms of time as well?"

I felt my breath leave in one shaky moment. I remembered the lesson clearly…

"But, professor, the ministry can erase as many memories as they want, but that doesn't erase the fact that there's an enormous magical hole in the middle of the city."

We are discussing the transfiguration involved in hiding large magical crimes from muggles. We managed to get off topic a few minutes ago, and now the whole class is actually paying attention – some trying to get McGonogall on a tangent, others truly interested.

"That's a good question, Mr. Fitzgerald. There is a charm the ministry employs in situations such as these to restore the earth to its former normalcy. Very difficult, very powerful, it shifts the earth back to the way it was, so muggles notice no difference. Because of the complexity, it can actually be adapted to fit a number of circumstances – problems with the appearance of a natural formation, mass memory wiping, even issues involving the time/space continuum. It's a rather marvelous invention."

I raise my hand, feeling curious. "If it's so effective, then why don't we just use it every time something goes wrong? Wouldn't life be a lot simpler?"

A wry smile crosses the Professors face. "Not quite, Miss Evans. The charm requires enough energy to quite disturb the area surrounding the spell's coverage (which can only be a rather small area, incidentally). It can only be done every twenty years or so, and I'm afraid catastrophes happen quite oftener than that."

Potter raises his hand. Strange. He never pays attention in Transfiguration, not that I'm keeping track.

"What's the charm called?"

"Aetas res rei renovo."

I gasped, struck by the implications of this revelation. "Aetas res rei renovo," I repeated softly, looking deeply into James' dark hazel eyes.

It seemed unlikely, after all our failures, but perhaps we'd finally found a solution.

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