September 1, 1991

Harrison Black watched the first years file into the Great Hall and pursed his lips. Everyone looked so young. Hermione's teeth hadn't been that big, had they? Ron was taller than he remembered, with more freckles and a longer nose.

He was startled and rather amused to see Ron and Draco Malfoy roll their eyes simultaneously in response to Hermione's comment on the ceiling, before their eyes met and they turned away, scowling at the shared reaction. Harry, staring up at the cloudy sky, missed the exchange entirely. Albus Dumbledore and the rest of the Hogwarts staff were also watching the line of first years. Dumbledore, with his deep purple robes, silvery beard and half-moon spectacles, was alive.

He was alive and twinkling and making good-natured remarks about pudding not ten feet from where Harrison stood. This man had (and had not yet) been Harrison's mentor, his leader, the man who pulled strings and orchestrated both of their deaths to the best of his considerable ability. Harrison resented him, deeply, yet could not deny the flash of relief that Dumbledore was back at Hogwarts. He had spent years thinking about the headmaster, but actually seeing him again in all his nonsensical glory was something else entirely. It seared the apathetic film off of his feelings and left all of the disappointment intact.

Good lord, Harrison thought as his eyes traveled down the high table. Snape.

The Potions Master wore stiff black robes and a blank expression as he watched the Sorting Hat finish its song. Harrison lost count of the number of times this man had saved his life and, at the same time, made living it immensely unpleasant. Harrison smiled. Perhaps he would return the favor. He looked over the house tables next, and his throat tightened when he saw Fred Weasley happily chatting away with Angelina Johnson. He wanted to save that life, too.

He pulled his attention back to the Hat and watched the rest of the Sorting, which went exactly as he remembered it, as did the rest of the welcome feast. Before he knew it Percy Weasley stood up to lead the newest Gryffindors to the dormitories.

...

Harry lay back on his four-poster bed and giggled as he heard Ron try and fail to stop Scabbers from crawling into bed with him. He ran a hand over the covers, then stretched, luxuriating in the new space. He could get used to this. It was nothing like his cupboard. Harry stared at the wooden underside of the canopy until he fell asleep. Every inch was covered in names, presumably those belonging to all the boys who had stayed in this bed. A big one in the lower right corner read "S. O. BLACK."

Perhaps Harry had eaten a bit too much, because he had a very strange dream. He was wearing Professor Quirrell's turban, which kept talking to him, telling him he must transfer to Slytherin at once, because it was his destiny. Harry told the turban he didn't want to be in Slytherin; it got heavier and heavier; he tried to pull it off but it tightened painfully (…) there was a burst of green light and Harry woke, sweating and shaking.

He rolled over and fell asleep again, and when he woke the next day, he didn't remember the dream at all.

...

Harrison decided there would be little point in following Harry to class. He knew that, for the next several weeks, Harry and Ron would face nothing more dangerous than Bludgers. The thought of Quiddich made him humm slightly under his breath; he could not wait until he was solid enough to fly, and wished that his spectral form did not obey gravity quite so readily. By this time he could, at least, make himself solid enough to hold and move books, and so he decided to spend his time in the Hogwarts library.

His research led him to Mindscapes for the Muddled by C. Xavier, which described a meditative process for accessing and organizing one's consciousness. Harrison spent three weeks reading and meditating in an empty classroom. Over the first few days he wondered, angrily, why Snape never saw fit to teach him how to clear his mind. Xavier's process needed as much patience and concentration as the instructions Death had given him for envisioning a proper body. Two weeks passed before Harrison found the white noise behind his conscious thoughts. It took another week to call up and set aside his confusing swirl of memories, fears, and plans for the upcoming war. At the end of the fourth week, Harrison finally reached the calm oblivion which, according to Mindscapes for the Muddled, marked the first step in calming one's mind. He floated there, enjoying a measure of peace for the first time in years.

Something intangible snapped, quite suddenly, and a vertigo–like lurch sent his mind hurtling deeper into itself.

Harrison landed flat on his back and lay still, completely winded. After a long moment of gasping and coughing his diaphram relaxed, he caught his breath, got to his feet, and looked around.

It was a fairly large room with a high, sloping ceiling. Sunlight streamed through four windows in the right-hand wall. Wooden shelves filled with all kinds of broken, misshapen, or well-formed pottery lined the other three walls as well as the space beneath the windows. A large wooden table covered in bags of raw clay took up the middle of the room. More clay and broken crockery lay scattered across the floor. At the end of the table nearest Harrison was a potter's wheel.

He felt heat at his back, turned around, and saw a rough-looking kiln attached to the back wall.

A studio. He thought wryly. I guess that makes sense, even if I'm not quite a Potter anymore. Smiling, he rolled up his metaphorical sleeves and got to work.

Harrison spent most of October understanding and organizing his mindscape. The misshapen pots turned out to be distorted memories, and the broken ones were things he would have forgotten entirely, given time. The bags of raw clay were new memories. The well-formed pots held the memories he had held onto most fiercely during the decade before Harry turned eleven. His friends' warmth. His godfather's barking laugh. Dumbledore's flawed plan for the Elder Wand. The location of each Horcrux. The tragic love story of Severus Snape and Lily Potter. He fixed what he could, and slowly moved all the pieces of his past life until they filled the wall opposite the windows.

As he worked, Harrison was made to relive the memories in each pot or pot shard. Each new detail made his quest to improve Harry Potter's life seem that much more impossible. He saw how small moments, like Malfoy's insult to Buckbeak in third year, set in motion the events that led up to Sirius's escape. He realized, more clearly than ever before, that this foreknowledge gave him a priceless edge over….Voldemort? Over Dumbledore? Over his own younger self?

Harrison sighed and rubbed his hands over his face.

I really need a body.

...

The first time Harry brought Ron to meet Hagrid, they were nearly bowled over by an enormous and very excitable black boarhound.

"Make yerselves at home," said Hagrid, letting go of Fang, who bounded straight at Ron and started licking his ears. Ron Hagrid, Fang was clearly not as fierce as he looked.

"This is Ron," Harry told Hagrid, who was pouring boiling water into a large teapot and putting rock cakes on to a plate.

"Another Weasley, eh?" said Hagrid, glancing at Ron's freckles. "How's yer brother Charlie? I liked him a lot – great with animals."

"Yeah, Charlie's fine. Blimey, Hagrid," Ron said, still trying to fend off Fang, "He's huge –"

"Ah don' worry about Fang," said Hagrid, who reached over and dragged the dog off Ron. "Dogs are sops, they are…even the biggest Cerebus goes straight off ter sleep if yer play him a bit o' music – "

Hagrid suddenly looked horrified.

"I shouldn'ta told yeh that!" he blurted out. "Forget I said that!"

Harry and Ron looked at each other and shrugged. They spent the next few minutes telling Hagrid all about their first lessons, including the disastrous first Potions lesson, where Harry hadn't been able to answer any of Professor Snape's questions.

Hagrid and Ron agreed that Harry shouldn't worry about it too much because Snape was notoriously bad-tempered.

"But he seemed to really hate me."

"Rubbish!" said Hagrid. "Why should he?"

Yet Harry couldn't help thinking that Hagrid didn't quite meet his eyes when he said that.

Ron went to pick up the tea cosy and picked up Hagrid's copy of the Daily Prophet instead, which had been lying underneath it. One of the headlines had caught his eye.

"Look at this, mate. The Gringotts thing. I told you about it on the train, remember?"

"Oh, yeah."

The headline read GRINGOTTS BREAK-IN LATEST and, to Harry's surprise, it said that the vault in question had been emptied on the same day as the attempted robbery. His birthday, July 31st.

Harry grinned.

"Ron, get this – me and Hagrid were at Gringotts the same day! Weren't we, Hagrid?" Hagrid grunted. This time he definitely didn't meet Harry's eyes. Harry kept going. "How cool would it've been if the break-in'd been happening while we were there?"

Ron grinned back. "Wicked."

"Er – Ron, what kind o' work is Charlie doing? Yer never said." Harry let Hagrid change the subject. He settled back in his chair and re-read the article, thinking about Hagrid's "secret Hogwart's business" and the grubby little package in vault seven hundred and thirteen. That vault was certainly empty once they'd left.

Harry didn't believe in coincidences.