"Time and Time Again"
A/N: I promised a Lupin/Tonks one shot at the end of my last story, and that will be appearing very soon, I just want to make it REALLY good because it is, after all, only a one-shot. In the meantime, I have another Marauders' tale for you! I have also included my Marauder OC, Bastet in this fic, because I wanted to further her character a bit. If you're confused by Bastet at all, read my other Marauder's Fic: Harry Potter: A Prologue. All (or most) of your questions shall be answered! I also make reference to said fic in this one, so refer to my previous one for those details. Enjoy, and don't flame me, but do review!!
General Summary: Takes place the summer before OOTP.Remus and Sirius are living a very miserable life. They're best friends are either dead or traitors, not to mention, neither of them have a love life to speak of. One fateful day, Sirius discovers a Time-Turner, and the two of them decide to use it to go back in time and change history so that James, Lily, and Bastet would still be alive and with them in the present. But soon they realize that sometimes even bad things happen for the greater good…
Rating: T-16 for violence, swearing, and drama.
One upon a time there was light in my life,
Now there's only love in the dark,
Nothing I can say, a total eclipse of the heart…
Sirius grunted and quickly turned off the damn Muggle radio before he heard another not of that dratted song. It was written 14 years ago…why are they still playing it incessantly, as if it were the only song left on earth? It made Sirius cringe every time he heard it, and it killed part of him to hear it nearly every day. It was the song that was playing that day 14 years ago…to date it was the last purely happy memory Sirius had ever had. It was the song playing when he and Bastet made love for the first…and only time.
Now, sitting in his old room, plastered with Gryffindor posters and other various artifacts from his youth, Sirius felt himself wanting to melt into the walls. He was the only one in the house for the time being. As the summer drew to a close, the Order would reunite here. But the summer had barely begun, so Sirius had 2 long, endless months to wait.
This room, so many memories. Not the making love memory (that had occurred in Bastet's apartment), but so many others with not just his dead girlfriend, but his friends, James, Lily, Remus, and Peter (ugh). Just 15 years ago, they were all wild and carefree with nothing stopping them from taking over the world and painting it red. Then, of course, Peter had to go and destroy it all slyly from right under their noses. Only he and Remus managed to survive Peter's betrayal. James and Lily were killed by Voldemort as a result of Peter's revealing their hiding place secret to him. Sirius, wanting revenge, had challenged Peter on the street outside this very building, and Bastet ended up being killed in the crossfire while saving Sirius' own life. Since that day, Remus and Sirius, especially Sirius, had suffered the consequences of Peter's betrayal. Sirius was sent to Azkaban in Peter's place on false accusations and spent 12 of the last 14 years suffering and sitting. Remus, who already had his own problems to deal with, was especially sensitive to the deaths of his friends. Bastet was like a little sister to him, and James and Lily always made Remus love to be alive. Now it was just the two of them, fighting against prejudice, and the sudden re-rising of Voldemort and his Death Eaters.
Life sucked.
Sirius sat on the floor beside his old bed and fingered through the old letters and photos of their Hogwarts days. What he wouldn't give to go back to that school as a 15 year old boy again…
"YOU DARE DISTURB THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS, YOU BLOOD TRAITOR!!!"
Sirius rolled his eyes. "SHUT UP, MUM!!" Sirius wished there wasn't a permanent-sticking charm on that damn painting downstairs. Suddenly, he realized that someone must be downstairs. Who could it be? The Order wasn't meeting for 2 months…
"Padfoot?" called a worn-sounding voice from downstairs. Sirius recognized it instantly as that of Remus Lupin.
"Moony!" Sirius called, shooting up and bounding out of his room like a child running outside on a sunny afternoon. From the top of the stairs, he could see Remus standing in the hallway, smiling weakly. "What are you doing here?"
"I got a case of the blues," said Remus bluntly. Damn, thought Sirius. It was as if they shared a soul.
"Come on upstairs, I was just pulling out the old box of letters!" Sirius said. His mood dramatically improved. While still feeling down, at least he could feel down with a friend now. Sirius and Remus went upstairs and shut the door to Sirius' room. They sat on the floor and immediately began looking through the letters.
"Awww…look at this one!" Remus teased. "It a lo-ove letter!"
Sirius blushed. "Give it here!" He said, making a grab for it. Remus kept it in his hand, and he read from it aloud: "Dearest Padfoot, only 3 months until graduation! I can't believe we've been together three years! Now that we're nearly out of school, we can have a real life together without having to worry about Peeves making fun of us and throwing ink pellets at us every other word! Meet me in the common room after Potions, and we can have a private little dinner in the clock tower, I already have it approved by Dumbledore. Hope you can make it! Yours forever, Bastet!" Remus laughed lightly. Sirius pouted and sighed.
"At least I HAD a girl back in school!" he bounded back. Remus frowned.
"Ouch," he remarked. Sirius crossed his arms and sighed, looking at a black-and-white photo of he, Remus, Lily, Bastet, and Peter waving to the camera while sitting under the tree they so loved to study at.
"We were fools," said Sirius.
"Huh?"
"None of us really LIKED Wormtail…did we?" asked Sirius.
"I really wasn't partial to the boy myself, but James insisted on giving him a chance," said Remus.
"It makes me wonder…if only we KNEW what was going to happen, then we could have left him out of our circle of friends, and everyone would still be alive. Bastet and I could be married by now, maybe have a few children even…Harry would still have his parents and not be living with those god-awful Muggles who treat him like shit," Sirius lamented. Remus groaned.
"It sounds like it almost could have been that way, instead of us, two grown men, sitting on the floor of your room feeling sorry for ourselves."
"It seems like such an easy thing to fix…if only we could go back in time," said Sirius.
"Oh, damnit!" Remus suddenly swore, holding a torn letter in his hand. "I just ripped the letter…"
Sirius shrugged. "It's no big deal, but I left my wand downstairs…"
Sirius and Remus got off the floor and shuffled out of Sirius' room. Sirius sighed again woefully, thinking to himself how easy it would be to change the past so that the future was much brighter, all with one choice of a friend. If Peter wasn't friends with any of them, not only would everyone be alive, but Sirius wouldn't have spend 12 year in Azkaban suffering and waiting for revenge! 12 wasted years of life Sirius could have spent on the outside…
Sirius, lost in thought, had no idea where he was going, and tripped over a bookcase that was in the middle of the hallway. Luckily, he was able to steady himself, and the bookcase, and only one book fell to the floor. It was one of his mother's old romance novels called "The Witch's Last Spell." Remus bent down and picked up the book, which had fallen open onto the ground. Remus shelved it and walked on, but Sirius fell behind. Remus quickly looked back.
"What do you suppose this is?" asked Sirius. He was holding up a long golden chain that had fallen out of the book. Remus dashed back top have a look at it. He couldn't believe his eyes. On the end of the long chain was an hourglass.
"Damned if I'm wrong, but this looks like a Time-Turner…" Remus muttered.
Sirius lifted a bushy eyebrow and scowled. "Why would my mother hide a Time-Turner in a crappy romance—"
"—never mind that!" said Remus. "Talk about your coincidence…"
"Are you kidding me?" asked Sirius. "A Time-Turner? We were just—I was just—"
"I know," said Remus. "You think we could…ahem…give 'er a try?" Remus asked, taking the chain from Sirius and studying it. "Maybe fate gave this to us," he suggested.
"Or maybe my mother in her senile oldness used it as a bookmark and forgot where she left it…" Sirius said. Remus snorted.
"I'd bed my Sickles on the latter," he joked. Sirius and Remus looked at each other.
"You really think we should…?" asked Sirius.
Remus looked around. "I don't see why not. Think about it, with this, and if we do everything right wherever we end up, you could have your family with Bastet, Sirius," said Remus.
Sirius smiled at the thought. "Harry won't be on the run from Voldemort. James and Lily will still be living," he added. Remus nodded.
"All we really have to do is get Wormtail away from the rest of us, and then we can spring forward again!" said Remus. "We'll go to Hogwarts, of course. We'd have to Apparate there from here."
"But…we're two fully grown wizards, Remus," said Sirius. "It'll look a little suspicious having two shaggy old farts like us walking around a school," he said.
"We'll be able to figure something out later," said Remus. "We can always sneak into our dorm room," he said.
"That's right! I always had a case of Polyjuice Potion under my bed for pranking around with James!" Sirius recalled. Remus nodded. He took the chain and placed it around his neck first, then around Sirius' neck. Sirius looked at Remus and took a deep breath.
"For Bastet…" he said.
"For James and Lily…" Remus nodded.
"For all of us," they said together. Remus then flipped over the hourglass several times, counting under his breath as he flipped. After a few minutes turning and counting, Remus let go of the hourglass, and the world suddenly began spinning around them.
They were on their way to changing their lives.
