I don't own it.
I wanted to write a time-changing story from the POV of someone other than the person doing the going-back-in-time. What it be like to just switch realities? Would they have any memories of the previous reality? It's an interesting concept to explore...
Enjoy!
Changing Time
Severus Snape was sipping his post-dessert coffee when he felt a tugging sensation in the back of his mind. His head came up with a muttered oath, eyes narrowing as he doubled his Occlumency barriers, scanning the crowded Great Hall for the potential attacker.
He ignored the reproving look from Minerva at his language. She wouldn't have understood what he said anyway - he'd sworn in Russian, out of the plethora of dialects at his disposal.
The niggling feeling continued despite his barriers. Hmm. Not an external attack, then.
Which meant it must be something else...
Blast.
Now frowning slightly, Severus closed his eyes fully, searching within his mind for the disruption. Skimming the surface layer, he dove deeper, intent on rooting out the source... and then he found it, and sat back, and swore fluently - this time in Welsh.
Someone, or something, had changed one of his memories.
He could feel the old memory fading, slipping like water through his fingers, being replaced by a new one; only, of course, the new one couldn't be classified as new, because it had now been there all along.
Wharepaku.
And the new memory that was pooling and filling the gap in his memory involved a skinny, black-haired boy with green eyes.
"Potter, you imbecile!"
Severus hurriedly pulled a large vial from his spacious pockets and made copies of his most important memories - the incident in fifth year, his part in the prophecy business, the attack on the Potters, his spying for the Order, most of the last six years since the boy had come to Hogwarts - and stored them in the vial.
More memories were changing now, a chain reaction going faster and faster, the old memories falling away only to be replaced.
Ich spucke auf das Gesicht eures Vater und erklären dass er eine uneheliche und eine vollständige und vollkommene Trottel war!
Severus swore viciously under his breath. Events that had already happened were out of his control, but that did not make them any more desirable.
On the platform in first year, he'd been distracted by a flash of green eyes, and had turned, only to discover that it was a skinny, black-haired boy, and not Lily as he'd first thought. The distraction was all that was needed to deflect certain events, and change the remainder of his life.
He'd now avoided the incident with Potter on the train in first year, and thus was no more a target of the Marauders' pranks than any other Slytherin. Lily and he had remained fast friends throughout their junior years at Hogwarts, and as the episode by the lake didn't occur, the friendship continued into their NEWT years. They'd even dated for a while in sixth year, but had broken it off in favour of remaining platonic best friends.
Lily had forced a truce between Severus and the Marauders when she started going out with James halfway through Seventh Year. The cessation of hostilities had to remain private - in public, Severus was too deeply embroiled with the wrong sort of Slytherins to be seen consorting with Muggleborns.
Graduation night ended badly - Lucius Malfoy had turned up to the after-party with a generous offer to join the Death Eaters. It wasn't the sort of invitation one could refuse.
He'd gone to Lily straight afterward, of course; she advised him to seek out Dumbledore. He did so, and thus began his career as a double agent.
If not for his role, he would have gladly attended James and Lily's wedding - but he was amply recompensed just over a year later, when Lily named him Godfather to young Harry. Officially, Harry had two Godfathers - Severus being Lily's choice, and Sirius being James'; unofficially, the agreement was that Harry would have four Godfathers - Snape, Black, Lupin, and Pettigrew.
The next twelve months was simultaneously one of the happiest and most horrific years of his life. The monthly Death Eater meetings were absolute hell - he could almost feel his soul becoming cracked and heavy with each passing moon, and the strain showed in the lines about his eyes and mouth. He made time to visit the Potters about once a week, to read to Harry, catch up with Lily, and - once - submit to James shoving a Pain Relieving Potion down his throat, as the tremors from the Cruciatus the night before made themselves known. He'd woken from that particular incident in the spare room, blanket settled comfortably about him, boots tucked neatly under the bed. It was the best sleep he'd had in a long time.
Severus' last visit was on the night before they invoked the Fidelius Charm at Godric's Hollow. His understanding was that Black was to be made Secret Keeper - Dumbledore was too obvious, Pettigrew too weak, and he and Lupin were both too much in contact with Dark forces for it to safe.
And then had come Hallowe'en, and the news of the attack. Severus had arrived at Godric's Hollow within ten minutes, and had taken two steps toward the door when Sirius appeared. A brief, furious fight had followed, ending with Black flat on his back, Snape's wand held to his throat.
It was hard to make out anything through the haze of red, but Severus heard enough to gather that Sirius was protesting his innocence. An incanted legilimens, a quick trip through Sirius' mind, and the two of them were on their way to find Pettigrew.
They left the bike with Hagrid, along with a coded letter for Dumbledore explaining the situation, signed and blood-sealed by both Sirius and Severus. By the next afternoon they had caught up to Pettigrew, and made haste to capture him unawares, without, as Severus put it, "doing anything so moronically Gryffindor as confronting a desperate, volatile man in a street full of bystanders."
It took another two days to transport the traitor back to Headquarters, by which time Dumbledore had gathered the remnants of the Order of the Phoenix from their various missions across the country. The Order was ensconced in a full meeting when Severus interrupted, muddied and exhausted, with the news that Sirius was in the largest living room with Pettigrew, and "if you don't want the traitor dead, you had best make haste. I don't know how much longer Black can restrain himself."
Sirius, it turned out, was doing a remarkable job of guarding the unconscious Pettigrew, but it took Hagrid to keep an irate Remus Lupin from tearing the rat's throat out. Severus force-fed him a Calming Draught, Dumbledore called in the Ministry, and within six hours Sirius was cleared, Pettigrew had been Kissed, and Severus was enjoying a scalding hot shower before retiring to bed for a solid ten hours' sleep.
As both of Harry's official Godfathers were very much alive (as well as one of the unofficial ones), the boy was not sent to live with the Muggles, but grew up in the newly-built Mingûlost, bachelor pad of Sirius, Remus, and Severus, and secondary Headquarters of the Order.
There were rumours of what the media termed an "unhealthy relationship" between the three, but as Sirius was a confirmed ladies' man and extravagant flirt, Remus quite content with his bachelor status, and Severus practically asexual, the rumours soon died down.
The grieving process continued, for all of them - it was not unusual to find one of the three asleep on the couch in Harry's room, wand in one hand, the boy held against a warm chest with the other. Severus buried himself in his Potions research, emerging for evening meals and at odd times during the day to spend some time with his godson and flatmates. Sirius continued with his Auror work, and Remus embarked on a post-graduate Defense Against the Dark Arts degree, specializing in Dark Creatures.
The monthly Order meetings became more of an informal catch-up between old friends; Arthur and Molly brought their children to play with Harry, and Molly and Minerva became surrogate aunts to Harry, lending the maternal touch as he grew.
The years passed. As Harry's fifth birthday rolled around, Severus finished writing his Treatise on Improvements to the Wolfsbane Potion, and Albus offered him a job at Hogwarts. Slughorn wished to reduce his number of classes, and so Severus consented to take on the NEWT classes, on the condition that he be allowed access to the wards to floo home each night and for weekends.
With the ongoing improvements to the Wolfsbane Potion, it wasn't long after Harry's seventh birthday that Remus was approached about the Defense Against the Dark Arts job. In preparation, Remus spent a month in confinement with an expert curse-breaker, and the job was his for years to come. Severus' temporary quarters at Hogwarts were expanded, and Remus moved in, with room for Sirius and Harry to visit overnight when they wished. Harry was a year ahead of his classmates in muggle Primary School, and loved the odd lessons at weekends that his Godfathers gave him, in every subject from Potions and Charms to Latin and Classics.
The Linguistics lessons were kick-started with Harry's inquisitive "What does Mingûlost mean?" The meaning - as Severus patiently explained - needed to be broken down into parts. Min meant bright; gûl was magic, sorcery; and os(t) meant fortress. From that moment, Harry was hooked on languages.
By the time Harry was ten years old, he had finished Primary School, and was fast becoming as much of a bookworm as Remus, as eager to learn as Severus, and as talented with practical work as Sirius. The final decision was made when news came that Flitwick was retiring; Sirius was offered the Charms position and promptly accepted, Harry was ensconced in their now-permanent quarters at Hogwarts, and Mingûlost became the retreat for weekends and holidays.
It came as no surprise when Harry requested two wands for his eleventh birthday - he'd heard enough stories from Sirius about wands being stolen or lost to know that a spare wand would be a Very Good Idea. Likewise, it was no surprise when he was Sorted into Ravenclaw; with his level of intelligence and thirst for knowledge, it was practically inevitable.
Harry remained fast friends with his childhood playmates, the Weasleys, and with Ron in particular. Hermione Granger - a muggleborn in Ravenclaw - became another firm friend, able to share Harry's love of learning in a way that Ron never had been.
In October came the incident with the troll - in which the Muggle Studies Professor, Quirrell, had come bursting in to the Great Hall yelling "Troll in the dungeons!". The students had promptly been barricaded in the Hall while a number of teachers went to deal with the problem (Severus had responded to someone's suggestion of sending the students back to their Houses with a sarcastic, "Oh yes - split the school up so it's harder to keep them all safe. Not to mention sending the Slytherins to the dungeons, where the troll is.")
Christmas at Mingûlost was peaceful, even if Severus had to have a strong word with Albus about sending unsigned packages - "The boy was running so many curse identifiers over it the wrapping almost disintegrated." Harry was allowed to keep the cloak in his trunk on the understanding that he would only use it on important occasions.
They resumed school life, and it was not until late April that Harry showed up after tea spouting some nonsense about Hagrid having a dragon. Remus had quickly taken charge, and had returned from a visit to Hagrid's hut with the news that it was true and Hagrid did, in fact, have a newly hatched dragon.
"I've contacted Charlie Weasley," he said tiredly, accepting a glass of butterbeer from Severus, "and some friends of his are dropping in on May 9th to pick it up."
The dragon was dispatched, but it wasn't long before Harry was once more bursting into their quarters, this time yelling about the Philosopher's Stone being in danger. Severus set aside his question of "How do you know about that?" - Harry was a Potter, not to mention a Ravenclaw; it was inevitable he'd find out something he wasn't meant to know - and alerted the Headmaster. Sirius and Remus, as Charms and Defence teachers, went with Albus to confront the intruder, and returned three hours later with the body of the late Professor Quirrell and a charmed jar containing the soul of the Dark Lord.
With the discovery that what was in the jar was only a part of Voldemort's soul, the search started for alternatives, and it was Hermione who found the obscure reference to a Horrcryx, wich splitteth the Soul.
Over the next eight months, the locations of five horcruxes were pinpointed. This number grew to six when Ginny Weasley was discovered trying to flush a diary down the loo and had a nervous breakdown, babbling that Tom was a bully and begging for the unknown Tom to let me go, stop it, please.
With Ginny's breakdown came the location of the Chamber of Secrets. Harry discovered that he could befriend a basilisk through copious use of Parseltongue, and his Godfathers discovered that it was, in fact, possible to gain grey hairs from stress. The Basilisk venom made the destruction of the Horcruxes a very real possibility, and the six known artifacts were summarily rounded up and dispatched, the remnants of soul captured in charmed jars before they could disperse.
A very vivid dream in which Harry was trapped in a glass cage, and an attempted (and failed) Possession by the remnants of Voldemort's soul were the catalyst for finding the location of the disputed seventh horcrux. His Godfathers were understandably horrified, but in the end, Severus only trusted himself to carry out the appropriate ritual to exorcize it. He had more experience in matters of Dark Magic than even Remus, and the ritual needed a certain level of bloody-mindedness to successfully complete.
Twenty-four hours later, Severus stumbled out of the sealed room, carrying Harry's unconscious body. The boy was unblemished and merely looked asleep; Severus, on the other hand, was bloodied and bruised, eyes shadowed and bloodshot with dark circles under them. He handed Harry to Sirius, and it was a mark of just how exhausted he was that he leant against Remus, accepting the arm around his back supporting him to the hospital bed.
With all seven Soul Jars full, all that was left to do was to destroy them. One by one, the jars were opened, a very precise measure of basilisk venom was poured in, and the jars were re-sealed. They were left for twelve hours, until all traces of residue had dissipated from inside the jars, and then Vanished.
With the final destruction of the horcruxes, life at Hogwarts settled down. The next three years had been relatively normal - in Harry's fourth year, Cedric Diggory won the TriWizard Tournament for Hogwarts, and in his fifth year, Harry had gained nine OWLS, all with an 'Outstanding' grade.
Which brought them to this year, Harry's sixth at Hogwarts, where Severus was sitting between Albus and Remus at the Head Table, staring down at a vial of smokey memories - memories that he had no idea whose they were. His brow twitched as he stared at the vial - there was a niggling in the back of his mind, a moment where both sets of memories were perfectly juxtaposed, where he remembered everything, in both realities - and then the old memories were gone, slipping like water through his fingers.
His dark eyes scanned the hall, pausing on Harry at the Ravenclaw table, nose buried in a book. Harry glanced up, green eyes meeting black: the boy flashed a quiet smile and returned to his reading.
Severus sipped his coffee and shrugged.
He'd borrow the Pensieve from Albus after dinner.
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