Prologue
Albus Dumbledore was looking at his Phoenix chick, which had risen from the ashes not ten minutes ago. It was small, the size of a little finger, and it was tucking into its first meal. Dumbledore had always admired phoenixes, with their rich red feathers and their little cawing sound of their young, and how it was a tragedy that a Phoenix couldn't be there to see its children. But Dumbledore didn't dwell on that, he was thinking to the little Phoenix. Did you know that your father Fawkes saved my student Harry Potter's life? He smiled, as the young Phoenix dropped his beak in awe.
Then, something in his mind clicked. It was as if old memories were overwriting new ones, and Dumbledore knew immediately what it was. Time travel. He looked back and tried to remember who it was, who had time-travelled? The room was quiet, the only sound coming from the slurping of the baby Phoenix. And Dumbledore remembered.
He went across his office, past the Pensieve, past the Phoenix cage where, the little Phoenix was watching him, his head to the side as he wondered what his owner was doing. Past all his Sun-and-Moon Calculators and boxes of Acid Pops and Chocolate Frogs towards a cupboard that had always been empty. A cupboard that was empty not five minutes ago. And Dumbledore pulled out a small, shining-silver present from the Empty Cupboard.
He told Flitwick to fetch Luna Lovegood, the charming albeit slightly ditzy blonde girl whose father published the Quibbler and McGonagall to fetch Ron Weasley the red-haired, freckled boy who was living in the shadow of his brothers' glory; Hermione Granger who was the brightest girl in her year and most of the year above her, and could well go on to be a Professor here in any subject she'd like and Harry Potter who was simply, the Boy Who Lived.