"Benjy Fenwick, he copped it too, we only ever found bits of him…" - Alastor Moody

Chapter 1

…

"Well, if nothing else, I'm glad to see Hermione hasn't gotten any better at drinking," Seamus joked, getting a chorus of laughter from the group circled around a table at the Leaky Cauldron. They were hidden behind a few privacy spells with Tom's approval, safe from being overseen or overheard by any overzealous fans - or, more importantly, by the papers. "Merlin, woman, you have to at least finish the Firewhiskey before you go get a glass of wine!"

"Yeah, Hermione," Harry said, prodding her in the side, "show the whiskey who's in charge. Don't let it just sit there."

Hermione rolled her eyes and began to defend herself, only to be cut off by Ron Weasley standing up and saying, "Oi, leave her alone - if my girlfriend doesn't want to drink whiskey, I'll finish it for her." Hermione simply rolled her eyes again, albeit with a small smile on her face.

"Oh, are you two dating?" Padma managed to ask with a straight face.

"You should have said something, mate," Seamus got out between sniggers, earning himself a sharp punch in the arm from Ron, who had settled back into his seat and was leaning against the dark wood of their crowded little booth. "Really, we had no idea."

"Fuck off," Ron said, lacking bite due to the smile on his face and his arm around Hermione's shoulders.

The fun continued good-naturedly through the evening, and eventually the group was discussing their next moves in life. It was, after all, July. Two months had passed since the Battle of Hogwarts, and while each of them was recovering at a different pace, the world expected them to be back up and running sooner rather than later. It was… important to morale, and they all knew it.

"I'm really very excited to start back at Hogwarts," Hermione said, studying her most recent, nearly empty, glass of wine closely. "It'll be nice to be there without worrying about anyone trying to kill Harry," she added quietly.

"Odd, but nice," Dean Thomas echoed.

"I'll toast to that," Padma smirked. The three of them lifted their glasses and clinked, keeping stoic expressions even as the rest of the table chuckled. "What about you, Parvati? How's work been going?"

Since the final battle, Parvati had been working at St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Everyone had thought it was short-term, a way of coping with all the pain and death by learning to heal instead, but she had really grown into the nursing role. Her feelings for the job were evident in the way she leaned in conspiratorially and said, "Oh, work's been great. They've even let me into the mystery ward." Here she paused, clearly waiting for someone to ask what the mystery ward was.

Seamus took the bait, and Harry vaguely wondered how long it would be before those two started dating. "What's in the mystery ward?"

She leaned back, posing primly. "While I'm afraid it would be breaking patient-nurse confidentiality to tell you anything specific…" Another pause, this time to give a Cheshire cat grin. "It's where they put all the long-term cases that they have no idea what to do with. It's incredible, and some of them are pretty creepy." Here, she frowned. "I really can't tell you anything more than that, though. I'd hate to get fired."

Harry chuckled a the way she could ride an emotional roller coaster in a matter of seconds. If you had told him back at Hogwarts, or even while on the run, that he'd willingly spend an evening at the pub with Parvati Patil for company, he'd have told you off and called you mad. And yet, here they all were. Even Hermione was having a pleasant time with her.

When he tuned back into the conversation, Padma was detailing her most recent date with… someone, he really wasn't sure who. With a glance at his watch, he realized it was nearing his usual bedtime, and he said as much when he stood to leave.

"Hermione can't drink, Harry's about to fall asleep at the table! What a bunch of old women!" Seamus cried, prompting Parvati to demand what, exactly, was so much worse about old women than old men, hmm? Hermione perked up at the banter and joined in, only making Harry more sure that it was time for him to leave.

He bid them all goodbye, even Ron, not that he wouldn't be seeing him the next morning. Harry was still staying in Percy's old room at the Burrow. Mrs. Weasley had realized that he was planning to stay at Grimmauld Place and had immediately rushed him off to her own home after the battle, where she could keep an eye on him. He had been too tired to fight her that day, and it had just become a pattern. He knew he would have to get his own place sooner or later (or come to terms with Grimmauld), but he hadn't been able to yet, not that he'd been trying very hard.

He Apparated to the Burrow's front door and entered quietly, aware of the somewhat late hour. Fortunately, the other residents of the house were still awake, even Mrs. Weasley. His arrival cut short her laughter at something George had said - he still sometimes caught himself trying to figure out which twin was in front of him - and she stood and bustled over to him, embracing him in a tight hug.

"Welcome home, Harry, are the others still out, then?" She didn't really give him a chance to reply before continuing: "You've gotten a letter from Hogwarts. I assume it's from Professor McGonagall; she probably wants you to reconsider attending in the fall." She had located the letter by now and held it out to him in one hand, the other placed firmly on her hip. "I hope that you aren't avoiding school because of what happened between you and Ginny. There are no hurt feelings, after all, just like you said… she would survive, if she were to watch you date another person, another young man," she clarified brusquely at the end.

Harry tried to splutter out an answer to that - when after a moment he had still had no success, he just took the letter and managed to get out "I'll just be upstairs, er, good night!" before practically sprinting up the rickety stairway and into Percy's bedroom.

Objectively, he understood that the Weasleys were trying to make him feel loved and accepted, but it was all too much sometimes. He had no idea how the wizarding world in general felt about homosexuality, but it didn't matter just yet. It was something that he was still working through on a very private level, and he didn't want to have to explain anything to the public before he really understood it all himself.

Locked in Percy's old bedroom, heart pounding, he sat down on the edge of the bed. Mrs. Weasley's hand-knit, rust-colored afghan already had holes worn into it from years of loving use, and the fingers on one hand laced into them with ease. He held himself still like that for a moment before taking a deep breath, holding it - one, two, three, four - and letting it out. He would open the letter, scrawl a reply if necessary, and then go to sleep and forget that conversation had ever happened.

As Mrs. Weasley had said, the letter came from the school. It bore the Hogwarts seal and McGonagall's handwriting, and he opened it with some small amount of trepidation.

Mr. Potter,

I have a matter of some urgency to discuss with you. Please stop by the Head office at your earliest convenience; if possible, please provide a time to expect you.

Minerva

He frowned down at the page. Did Minerva consider him coming back to school a matter of some urgency? Had something gone wrong? His chest tightened at the thought, but he would not go barging into her quarters at this hour. He resolved to go to her office first thing in the morning and sent her owl with a reply advising that she expect him via floo at around nine-thirty.

With that taken care of, he stripped down and crawled into the bed, hoping that sleep would come easily.

…

Harry was itching to floo to Hogwarts the entire morning; he had woken up at seven o'clock sharp, just like every other day since the beginning of July. He had helped Molly serve breakfast to the other later risers, he had helped her clean, and he had even attempted to read, although he couldn't stay focused enough to become invested in the rise and fall of the Chudley Cannons Chasers' Curse.

In retrospect, he could have told McGonagall he could meet at eight-thirty.

Finally, it was nine-twenty and he decided that was close enough. He tossed the borrowed book across Ron's room and bounded down the stairs, only pausing to bid Molly a quick good-bye before rushing through the floo. Minerva was sitting at her desk having a terse conversation with the Sorting Hat and smiled tightly at his arrival.

"Welcome back, Mr. Potter. Please, take a seat. We'll finish this later," she said quietly to the Hat before moving it back to its shelf.

Harry settled into one of the small winged armchairs in front of her desk, his knees knocking together uncomfortably. There was only a brief moment of silence before he asked, "Professor, why am I here? You said it was… urgent." He was wringing his hands, and his knuckles popped.

Her lips were pursed into a small frown, and she took a deep breath for replying. It was as though she was steeling herself, and it didn't reassure Harry. "We'll get right into it, then. Sometime between your birth and Christmas of 1980, the Order of the Phoenix gained a new member. I was the one to bring him into the fold, and he was not allowed to any meetings until Albus and I had jointly determined that he was in no way a security threat."

She paused again, and Harry wasn't sure what to say yet; this was not going in any direction he had imagined. "Was it.. Pettigrew?" At least this earned a sharp laugh from the woman.

"No. This was a man none of us had ever met before; he had no past to speak of. He was dosed with Veritaserum, he underwent Legilimency by Albus, and he willingly swore Unbreakable Vows to us that his story was true. His name was Troy Raphter."

Harry looked at her blankly. "Has he done something recently that's important? Is he trying to become a new Dark Lord or something?" His brows scrunched together. "I'm having a hard time connecting the dots here."

"Troy Raphter never gave us a middle name, and I'm very curious to see what he could have come up with. You never were one for word games, were you, Mr. Potter?"

No, Harry was not. "That's more Hermione's area of interest, Professor," he said with a snort.

"Troy Raphter is an anagram of Harry Potter." She paused to let this sink in, and he suddenly found himself unable to move, barely able to even breathe the suddenly thick air in her office. "Albus and I knew that you had come from the future, and we allowed you to continue with your mission."

"I can't - what are you talking about? That's - that's -" he was going to say impossible, but he had traveled through time before, he had broken rules and done the impossible before, it was no use. "What was the mission?" he demanded. "What was he - I - there to do?"

She looked down at her hands, and he noticed they were shaking nearly imperceptibly. "You were there to ensure that your parents lived long enough to die at the hands of Voldemort. We were… unaware that this was through the machinations of Peter Pettigrew. It is probably for the best- we likely would have tried to change things, putting your life at risk. Time, in the eighties, was not very well-researched," she added listlessly.

Harry said nothing. This was a level of morbid beyond anything he had yet experienced. Briefly speaking with his dead parents from beyond the grave, sure; using a dead man's memories to clear his name, absolutely. The dust-corpse of Dumbledore in Grimmauld Place, placed by Moody before the man's own death. Attending Fred's funeral and still accidentally mistaking George for him for weeks after.

Keeping his parents alive during Order missions of the early eighties - missions he remembered Moody and Sirius telling him were fraught with danger, missions that ended in his parents' bodies never being found - only to feed them, through Wormtail, to Tom Riddle. This was definitely a step up from everything in the past. Just his luck that after literally defeating Lord Voldemort he had some new bloody mission to go on, the fate of the world resting on his ability to carry the load. Of course he would do it, and of course he would succeed.

"So I was the new member, and I need to be the new member." If Professor McGonagall was taken aback by the sudden firm set in his jaw, she didn't show it. "What else do I need to know before I go?"

She let out a large breath that he realized she must have been holding. "We can begin by me showing you the memories of our first encounter, and I can familiarize you with the version of the Time-Turner that Filius and I have been working on to ensure this trip would be possible." Her voice trembled with the next few words. "I assume you will then wish to share this with your friends. You do depend on them quite a bit, and it will be a long time before you see them again, from your perspective"

Bloody hell. He hadn't even thought of that. He'd tell them that night he was leaving, and he'd make the trip in the morning. No use in wasting time. It would be like ripping off a bandage.

...

"I think Harry will be fine," Hermione interrupted. Harry was a bit startled - her voice had gotten all lilty so frequently, probably from riding the high of being head over heels in love with Ron, that he'd forgotten she could sound so harsh. "Won't you, Harry?" He couldn't break the fierce eye contact she was holding with him, but he nodded. The others were hushed, hanging on her every word now. The fact that they were all quite drunk likely only added to the atmosphere of it all "We've time traveled before; you already know that you can't change anything." Her tone was less sharp now and more generally swotty. "It isn't a law in that you would be punished for trying; it's a law like the conservation of mass. It just is."

The others were staring blankly at her. Ron blinked once.

Harry wasn't sure what the conservation of mass was all about, but he had a firm enough grasp of time travel to explain what (he hoped) she meant to their friends. He managed to tear his eyes away from hers before speaking. "I've already gone back in time, so anything I do while I'm there, it's already happened." The looks of dawning comprehension were near, he could feel it. "I've always already gone. Erm… if you ask McGonagall, she already remembers Troy being there!"

A chorus of Oh and I get it now. Neville applauded him. Waiting until everyone had been well and truly plastered to break the news was a questionable idea, but Harry didn't regret it.

"Really, Harry," Hermione sniffed, "I wish you would consider becoming a professor. You have a way with simple explanations. But yes, you've already been, and you know how your life has been up to this point. You know that the way things are now is a result of what happened in the early '80s. There shouldn't be any temptation to change anything by your presence, because your presence has always been there. I think it's incredibly valuable that you already know that, and I think it's the key to your success," she reiterated.

Harry agreed. It was morbid that his parents had known him and that they had died anyways, but that was history. All that he could do was go back and follow the guidelines set by that history, go through the motions of a preset past.

…

The next morning, Harry made an executive decision to wait until he took a nice Cure for Hangovers potion before going to Hogwarts. If this version of the Time-Turner was anything like the one he had used in his third year, then it would be dizzying and fairly nausea-inducing. The professor hadn't mentioned anything about him vomiting onto her desk immediately after arriving, and he didn't feel like adding that to the narrative.

After ten horrible minutes, the potion seemed to kick in and he felt his headache clearing and the dryness in his eyes and mouth abating. He had said his goodbyes to his friends and the Weasley family the night before, honest in the way only drunks can be when he told them that if he had to face them in the morning he wouldn't be able to go. True to the word he had forced from each of them, the living room was empty when he strolled from the base of the stairs to the fireplace, small duffel bag under his arm, expanded by Hermione and stuffed with his clothes and toiletries, more books and journals than he had any hope of making use of in the next year (courtesy of Hermione), and an old snitch gifted to him by Arthur Weasley in a fit of emotion the night before.

He stepped firmly out of the headmistress's fireplace and onto the elaborate rug on her office floor, a holdover from the past two headmasters. She was already next to him and pushing a mug of coffee into his hands. She had offered him a full breakfast the night before after their discussion, and he had told her he didn't need anything. When she had realized he was planning on going on a veritable bender that night, she had assured him she'd have something nearly as good as a pepper-up potion ready for him the next morning.

And Merlin help him, it really was delicious. Perhaps Troy Raphter would be a coffee drinker where Harry Potter was not.

They spent several minutes confirming the settings on the Time-Turner were properly set, that he knew what exactly he was to tell past-Minerva and past-Albus, that he was not going to suddenly collapse and be unable to travel back due to the anxiety of it all. Finally, his coffee was gone, and he was finalizing the appearance that he would be taking on for the next year and a half. He and his friends had had a bit of fun planning this aspect of the trip out during a more sober lull in the evening.

He would be taller, with Kevin Bishop's nose and Neville Longbottom's coloring, an odd thought matched with Severus Snape's jawline. With any luck, he'd only have to redo those charms once a week. His glasses were traded for the larger frames favored by the late seventies and early eighties, and the robes he was in were lengthened and given a dated trim that would be very trendy in the past. He would purchase more after arriving; the concept of inflation would treat kindly the coins he would be bringing with him.

There was no more stalling, no more waiting.

"I'm ready," he said. The professor nodded shortly before placing the Time-Turner around his neck.

Thirty-seven extremely slow turns of the hourglass later, and he found himself flying through time and extremely happy that he had taken that hangover cure.

…

A/N: I know that there is no Benjy Fenwick yet. He is coming; you must be patient. I'm really excited about my characterization of him, and I'm looking forward to getting input on what is essentially my first OC since middle school!

Prompts used from SiriusMarauderFan's Hamilton challenge: [character] Harry Potter; [scenario] Write about someone being incredibly unlucky.

Prompt used from the If You Dare Challenge: #297, I'm Ready.