A Stitch In Time (Saves Harry) (by Catatonic Catalyst)
Summary: Breaking into Azkaban only to be arrested for attacking the Minister, his best friend present for the start of what promises to be a long string of interrogations, Harry is desperate… and this desperation has subsequently somehow gotten him stuck in his parents final year at school.
Author's Note: Hi guys! Enjoy! I don't know how well this turned out or if I want to continue, so reviews are handy!
He should have brought a cloak.
He wasn't sure exactly what his plan had been. Typical Gryffindor, he was sure that people would have said, rushing into danger at the first opportunity. Not thinking of the consequences.
Only, he had thought of them. He'd just sooner take the risk.
Harry had fought dementors before. He knew how to conquer them, but he hadn't reckoned for Azkaban itself. The fortress almost seemed to have a life of its own, and the air was thin and made your lungs burn with the cold. Even traipsing through there had been hard enough.
He'd started to realize that he'd really got himself in a mess, and then the dementors came and the mess exploded. He fell to his knees. The steady grip on his wand was lessening – even then, he could still point it at the door where the unpleasant feeling was coming from.
He told himself that his hands weren't shaking; it was just a trick of the dimmed lights.
They could sense his presence. He knew they'd come, but he'd hoped it wouldn't be so soon. As soon as the first one glided into the room, Harry rasped, "Expecto Patronum!", grasping at anything vaguely happy, and was mercifully successful. A silver stag pranced out of the wand gleefully, head butting the dementor, who backed away cautiously.
The other dementors kept coming. The stag snarled and butted again, but the surrounding dementors simply pressed onwards, and the stag ended up backing away instead. Holding the patronus charm was very exhausting, Harry thought. Why had he never thought of this handicap before? His mind was becoming hazy, and he lost focus. The stag flickered, but remained.
The dementors seemed to be closing in. There were… so many…
Harry didn't like the idea of saying that he must have passed out. He didn't remember doing so, either, only that in what seemed like the next moment, the dementors were gone.
Somehow he seemed to have become curled up in a tight ball. Oh, he thought slightly hysterically, that was nice. It was comfy. He pushed himself up onto his knees, then groaned slightly and closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to the floor and his chin touching his knees. His forehead had been burning, but the cool was like some sort of miracle.
"Mr Potter." Harry's eyes snapped open, and he watched bemusedly from the gap beneath his legs. He blinked, befuddled.
"Minister Scrimgeour?"
"I am he," the man confirmed, staring at Harry. "And what are you doing within my prison? This is ministry property, and restricted access only."
Well, he thought rather belatedly, Scrimgeour seeing him on the floor like that shouldn't have happened. He forced himself to his feet, swaying a little. His brain didn't seem to have caught up with his movements.
"I'm waiting for an answer, Mr. Potter," Scrimgeour declared, looking slightly impatient.
An answer? Oh. Oh! He shouldn't answer. There was no reasonable excuse for breaking into Azkaban, was there? Nobody had tried it before. It was ridiculous! Who would want to be there?
Harry had made a promise.
He couldn't answer the minister, so he did what instinct told him to. His wand, now back in a proper grip, was pointed at Scrimgeour within a moment, and he yelled, "Stupefy!"
The minister simply raised an eyebrow and sidestepped. He got ready to take aim again, and –
Something that burned hit him in the back. It was obviously some sort of silent spell, he realized, just before his arms and legs were bound with cuffs that seemed to radiate magic.
And that was when Harry knew that not only was his plan to infiltrate Azkaban a flawed one, it was also the worst idea that he'd ever had.
He knew he'd wake up to some sort of interrogation, and indeed, he found himself in the company of the Minister and two Unspeakables. He was surprised that there weren't any Aurors to stop him from further attempting to bodily harm the minister, nor was any visible bars or restraints, and wondered whether or not he could wordlessly fling flames at the man and carry on with his search. He had time to find Remus, he had to!
To his credit, he did attempt it. One of the Unspeakables glared at him, and the strange object she'd been holding in her hand glowed and he could feel it sucking magic from him like a leech. He let go and jumped backwards. Maybe he could have beaten it, but he didn't want to become a squib on those odds. He had too much to live for, too much responsibility against Voldemort and the man's mysterious second – who, for a change, seemed fairly dangerous.
The other Unspeakable, a surprisingly good-looking young lady, had something tied around her neck. She looked pristine and was staring at him hard, and he stared back, hoping she'd turn away. She didn't, and her gaze was as cutting as taking a knife to his skin would have been. He winced, but Scrimgeour didn't notice.
"Mr Potter," said Scrimgeour. "What you did is a very serious crime."
"I'm sorry," said Harry, "but I was busy and you were interrupting me." It went without saying that Harry's business was obviously more important; he was far more valuable as a person than Scrimgeour, and he was hoping this would become common knowledge, at least in some sense. It might have got him off detention at school, and perhaps it would make him unvulnerable now. They couldn't afford to lose him.
Scrimgeour narrowed his eyes. "And what was so important that required you to come to Azkaban in the first place, Potter? This is not an open prison."
"The last bit wasn't planned," Harry assured him, then tried to think up a good lie. "And for the first… I was bored?" The Unspeakable snorted with mirth, and there he learned that he was a horrible liar.
The minister just said, "So it wasn't that you came here to assassinate me?"
"No!" Harry exclaimed, shocked. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
Scrimgeour put his head in his hands and sighed. "Potter, you are going to be prosecuted for attacking me anyway – to have your motive is an obvious procedure that must be followed."
"You're going to put me in prison?" Harry demanded. "What for? I told you it wasn't planned! Surely I won't be punished for that?"
"Potter, you can't just decide what rules apply to you!" the minister snapped, irritated.
"And if you lock me up, what about Voldemort? He's not going to leave you all alone, you know!"
"You're still a child, and by the look of things, your effort would currently make no different to the war effort. At least this way, you're safe."
Harry gaped, then looked to the female Unspeakable who'd been looking like she really wanted to say something for some time. "Hermione," he pleaded to her, but then didn't let her speak when he re-examined the object hanging from her neck. A time turner. He wanted to laugh; he could flee and this would never have happened, although the inner satisfaction of having fired a shot at the minister would always be there! Harry dived for it.
Hermione stepped backwards quickly, blinking, but she was too late. "Harry!" she exclaimed as he jumped a top her, trying to wrench the time turner from her neck and half strangling her in the process. "Please, Harry!" They were both fumbling with the object, now, and to their shock it shattered into pieces before them, tiny shards of glass burying themselves into their palms.
They hardly noticed, considering the blue vortex that surrounded them and removed their existence from the room. If it hadn't been for the two who could remember them, anybody could have sworn that they had never been there.
When they arrived at their new destination, Harry swore, glaring at the glass particles embedded in his skin. The room around them was silent, and he paid no attention to his surroundings as Hermione got up, exclaiming, "Harry, how could you!" and rubbing her neck.
Harry winced. "Doesn't that hurt?"
"What hurt?"
He gestured to her hands, and she examined them and then shrugged, and the next minute the glass was burrowing out of her skin with a life of its own, and falling to the floor so quickly it was as if it had been burned. "Don't be silly, Harry, it was only a bit of glass. I've been through much worse."
They both winced again, and Harry remembered the time he'd found her collapsed on the roadside after being beaten half to death by her father. She'd never been the same since, confusing himself and Ron to no end when she kept looking at people and gasping in abject horror or smiling as if she'd known them all of her life.
"Don't worry about it," she'd told them when they inquired what as making her do that. "It's nothing to do with that, really. It just helped me feel that I can do something useful now! See, I know people's intentions when I look at them – nobody can ever hurt any of us again, see?" At his and Ron's uneasy nods, she'd just carried on beaming sincerely, showing off her pearly whites.
Suddenly all noise and motion seemed to return to the room, and a familiar voice boomed, "Who are you?" Harry turned to stare at the man incredulously. He had no trace of a twinkle in his eyes, but looked generally alive, despite it being a known fact that he was dead.
"Damn you, Voldemort," Harry snarled, and Dumbledore seemed to hear him. "What magic is this?"
"Oh, Harry, isn't it obvious?" Hermione snapped. "We held the time turner when it broke. Dumbledore's alive – and look." She pointed at a group of four boys, all of whom looked rather confused at having been specifically picked out, though they certainly looked interested and perhaps a little too fascinated with Hermione. Harry knew why she'd pointed at them, though. They were unmistakably the Marauders. His father… his mother somewhere, too… Sirius… Remus… alive. Unimprisoned!
Of course, there was Pettigrew too. "Ooh," Hermione whispered, scrunching her eyes up as if it hurt to look at him. "He's as shifty now as he was when he left school – I can barely see him through all the heavy air and darkness around him; it's like the centre of a hurricane! I hope it chokes him!"
Harry had thought he was the sadistic one of the trio, but now he was starting to reconsider his opinion.
Dumbledore looked relieved, now, as he'd heard Harry's comment about Voldemort and both the young man and woman had turned toward him. Dumbledore laughed jovially and said, "No matter, I must apologise, I had forgotten our meeting. Children, these are your new Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers, who wish to remain nameless and request you call them by appropriate terms of address – such as 'professor', or 'sir', or 'madam'."
Harry blinked, wondering why his attitude had changed so much and how he'd known how to straighten out things like that, but Hermione whispered next to him, "Don't worry, I told him. I knew he'd listen. Good old Dumbledore." Harry decided not to ask, but smiled in relief. "Besides," she laughed. "We get to be Defence teachers! How fun will that be?"
And Harry's expression fell.
"Albus," muttered McGonagall, sitting on his right side. "Are you sure that was the right thing to do? I was quite sure you hadn't interviewed for the Defence position yet – you were struggling for candidates, weren't you?"
"I was," agreed Dumbledore cheerfully. "However, I think they fit the post quite well, don't they, Minerva?"
"Albus! They could be spies for You-Know-Who – you're the one always saying we should be careful!"
"Ah, nonsense, Minerva. I'd know if they were being dishonest, and from their attitudes, they would not get along with Tom and I'm sure he'd dispose of them as soon as possible if he joined them. They could be assets to one side, but trouble for Tom. If they are still alive, they are not with him."
"What if he wants you to think that way?"
"I see no reason to be suspicious of them, Minerva. 'Innocent until proven guilty', as the Muggles say!" He saw McGonagall sigh, and continued jovially. "Tea?"