Disclaimer: I own nothing but my OCs and plot. Everything else goes to the Rowling-meister.

Title: A Different Kind of Schooling

Rating: T

Pairings: None foreseen, other than what is obvious

Author: Jaing

Beta: Zaera! (cousin)

Contains time-travel, non-canon elements, Magitech™, and others.

So, folks, while you're waiting on my new chapter of Harry Potter and the Dawn of Honor, I thought I'd post up this quick, unrelated story that had promise in my head. I want to know your opinions, to see if I should go on with it. Oh, and I'm now working with my cousin Z as my beta reader.

Surrey, United Kingdom, 1991

Ten-year-old Harry Potter was sleeping on his cot in the cupboard under the stairs on a starry night in mid-June, mere days before his eleventh birthday. He never expected anything in the way of a birthday present, minus the possible socks or his whale of a cousin's old clothing. He shared his space with a veritable horde of spiders and other small insects that had come to be his only "friends". He thought that this year would be like any other, but what he did not know was that this was the year something rather special would happen - a letter would arrive from a school, a place of magic. A place called "Hogwarts".

Or, rather, that was what was supposed to happen.

What did happen, was another matter entirely.

Leipzig, Germany, 2030

Guardian Kayleigh Sommers wiped sweat from her brow, panting in exhaustion. Her grip on her rifle tightened momentarily, before she sat it on the ground, peering over the top of her improvised barricade. Dark shapes moved in the near distance, shuffling back and forth, getting ready once again to assail her position. She couldn't hold and she knew it, knew it was impossible. She and her squadmate Julius were all that remained of the last Light Brigade forces in Germany - in fact, the world. Colonel Potter had told them this was coming, that they should prepare.

Prepare they did. Hermione Potter sweated and toiled with her people,sweating and bleeding with the rest of them to turn their training complex into a fortress. Gun emplacements were dug, bunkers were made, earthworks completed. Small magical factories churned out munitions and medicines as fast as their overworked replication apparati could handle.

It still wasn't enough. The first wave of Death Eaters and their muggle counterparts broke against an impenetrable wall of fire, as did the second, but by the third munitions for the heavy weapons were running out, and positions started to fall. By the fourth, nothing remained of the outer walls and defenses but maimed bodies and twisted rubble. Hermione herself had fallen among a dozen enemies, her knife and wand flashing useless vengeance as she went under. Her body had been retrieved by Kayleigh herself, and it was portkeyed to the Citadel in Antarctica.

Now Kayleigh and Julius had but one, final mission: Hold long enough to draw the enemy forces in, and detonate the demolition charge buried under the base. Kayleigh was no fan of martyrdom - as a matter of fact, she was completely terrified of dying - but a stubborn sense of duty propelled her forward.

"I think it's time." Julius said to her, face covered in soot and ashes and grime. She shared a look with him, before nodding and setting a magical tripwire and explosive charge next to the barricade. She and Julius took deep breaths, before sprinting towards the engineering room door in an explosion of movement that drew spell fire from the Death Eaters behind. Julius grunted as a Reductor curse slammed into his armor from behind, and Kayleigh let out a gasp of pain as a cutting curse opened a gash on her thigh. Still, they ran on, diving through the door and bolting it behind them.

Gasping for breath, they limped together over the dust on the floor and went to an engineering station. Their keys flew over the keyboards, tapping in codes. The computer digested the input, before blinking an Affirmative on the screens before them. The timer set for three minutes.

Kayleigh hugged Julius fiercely."It's done." she whispered. He held her tightly to him,and they were both quiet for near three minutes, listening to the sounds of curses rebounding off their door with ever-increasingly loud clangs, scared to death but glad that if they had to go, they at least had each other for company when they talked to Gabriel.

As the final five seconds blinked on the screen, the door burst asunder, and Death Eaters slammed in, only to be hurled back on a storm of spells. "Long Live the Light Brigade!" Kayleigh and Julius shouted as the counter reached zero.

For miles upon miles around, people who weren't blinded by the initial blast gazed in shock and awe upon the explosion, which topped 60 megatons. It wasn't nuclear, and there was no fallout, but the devastation was far, far more total.

Almost. Physical essence ripped away by the blast, a soul fought to regain form as it was flung through space and time...

Somewhere in Wales, United Kingdom, 1991

Alice Brighton squinted her eyes at a flash just inside the woods near her house, and would have gone to see it if it weren't for the sudden wail of her newborn. Later, she would remember, but by then it wouldn't matter. But had she checked, she would have found a black-red haired someone gasping for breath in the undergrowth.

The figure stood on shaky new legs, searching its' surroundings, before harnessing its magic and vanishing from sight.

Surrey, UK -

Harry looked through the lense of his dreams upon a very strange scene. Black-robed figures brandishing sticks flowed down a hallway, shooting streams of colored light from the tips of their sticks against a very heavy looking door. When the door finally gave way, Harry followed the figures into a room, watching in muted horror as they were cut down by two armored figures, a man and a woman, firing stubby weapons. Then, a flash of light, and he was miles away, watching an immense mushroom cloud ascend like some malevolent plant miles and miles above the earth.

Harry woke up, sweating, very confused. What was that? he thought. His dreams, when he had them, were never this... real. What was more, he felt a faint tug on his mind, but he couldn't tell which direction. The dream was disturbing. It's just a dream, Harry , he thought. You were just dreaming.

The words sounded false to his own mind.

Minutes later, he fell back to an uneasy sleep, dreaming of nothing.

The Ministry, London -

Auror Alastor Moody studied a blaringly noisy silver instrument on his desk, watching the view-panel flash hundreds of colors before settling at black, and giving him a location. His raised eyebrow showed enough of his opinion to his peers, before he growled and stumped off to the nearest Apparition point. He grumbled the whole way about stupid people time-travelling without knowing what they were doing, and was unhappy, to say the least, to have the job of turning them around. It wasn't like he'd meant to kick Fudge in the ass... actually, he hadn't meant to leave any evidence. That's what got him in trouble. So now he was the Time-Travel Watcher.

When he reached the Apparition point, he focused on being outside a small town in Wales. And, moments later, he was.

A\N: This is a plot bunny that literally hit me in the middle of the night. Can someone give a review? Should I write more?