Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all its related characters belong to J.K. Rowling
AN: I feel like this chapter ended up with way too much dialogue but oh well. Let me know what you think!
Chapter 4: Midnight McDonald's Meeting
"You look like hippogriff dung." Draco remarked while lazily leaning back on the seat in the booth he had commandeered for them, popping a chip in his mouth, the perfect picture of casual arrogance. It greatly amused Harry how much of a pureblood prat Draco could still be even de-aged and sitting in a fast food restaurant.
"How charming," Harry huffed testily, collapsing in the seat opposite Draco. Merlin, he was starving, in the many years that passed he had evidently forgotten how much the Dursleys adored food deprivation (and endless stream of chores) as his punishment. He eyed the selection on the tray, passing over the still unwrapped cheeseburger and the large cup of what he knew to be coke (he still didn't know how Draco never got diabetes with his sweet tooth and how much sugar he consumed), before reaching out to nick a chip from the greasy pile, only to have his hand swatted away.
"Mine! Go get your own, and get me more ketchup while you're at it." Rolling his eyes, Harry snorted at the demand and protective hoarding action.
"And how do you suppose I do that? I don't have any money with me and don't you think the cashier will have anything to say about a seven year old boy buying a meal at, let's see, 12.14am? In fact, I'm surprised they haven't noticed two children in McDonald's without their parents after midnight." Draco gave him a droll stare.
"Well, of course I had Dobby cast a notice-me-not charm on this booth, I'm so impressed by your astounding observational skills. Now go get your own food!"
A ten pound note was shoved in his hands and he was waved towards the counter. Harry resisted the heavy urge to roll his eyes again.
"They really need to invent self-ordering kiosks sooner. I swear the cashier was going to start asking questions, she was already giving me the eye." Grumbling, Harry flopped down on the seat, taking a large sip of his chocolate milkshake. Technology really was fantastic in the future, so much could be done with just one button or voice command, too bad they were stuck in the twentieth century. Merlin, he missed the internet, Google was great when he didn't have Hermione around to be his walking encyclopaedia and sounding board for advice.
"Aww, poor itty baby Harry. Whatever happened to loving the Muggles?"
Harry shot Draco a dirty look, "You sound like your dear Aunt Bella. And it has nothing to do with Muggles, even if I had the inestimable pleasure of seeing my magic-hating relatives again."
"Ah yes, the whale, the horse and the pig? Sounds like Aunt Bella would enjoy them."
At Harry's disbelieving look, Draco continued, "Torturing them I mean. I'm sure their screams would make very lovely music for her. I think she would appreciate it more than Bach or Mozart anyway."
"We're not going to cruciate my relatives, no matter how much they deserve it."
"I didn't say anything about us doing it. And who says it has to be the Cruciatus? There are plenty of ways to do it within the law, Cassiopeia Black even wrote a book about it; Ten Thousand Ways to Torture One's Enemies Legally. Anyway, if we do get caught, we could always argue that they're animals and laws for humans don't apply."
Harry sighed, "You know what I mean. Enough about the Muggles, what are we going to do about us?
"Us? Oh Darling, I never knew you felt that way!" Draco simpered, clasping his hands together, lashes fluttering.
Harry promptly responded by throwing a chip in Draco's face.
Draco spluttered.
It was strangely comforting how easily they settled into their previous (or was it future?) normal given their current circumstances. Midnight McDonald's Meetings, or Code 3M as Draco liked to call it (Harry was convinced that he just wanted a pretentious way to cover up the fact that his posh pureblood self enjoyed greasy Muggle fast food), were one of the key cornerstones to their partnership.
The very first time they had stumbled into a McDonald's together, they had been Unspeakables fresh out of training, running headfirst into the Muggle world to hide after a serious blunder with the criminals they were supposed to be tracking. They had severely miscalculated the strength of their opponents and the chasers had turned into the chased. With no back-up as well as the combined stubbornness of a Potter and a Malfoy to refuse to admit failure, they made a strategic retreat, slipping through the throngs of Muggles to avoid their pursuers (who like most wizards had less than zero knowledge of blending in with Muggles) and regroup and think of a new plan.
While munching on chips and chowing down burgers, they concocted the most outrageous (but absolutely bloody brilliant) plan to take down their opponents. If they failed, they would be hurled face-first into a shit storm – getting fired would be the least of their concerns, they would be breaking more statutes than the number of galleons that made up their pay and to say the political fallout would be bad would be akin to saying Voldermort was as harmless as a flobberworm. If they succeeded (which they did), well, putting both Harry and Draco on the fast track for promotion (and granting them a brand new spacious office) was the least their supervisors could do.
Since then, Midnight McDonald's Meetings had become somewhat of a staple in their friendship, sometimes for brainstorming (it didn't hurt that some of their best plans were made amidst gorging on fast food), sometimes for ranting when they couldn't go to a bar and get shit-faced drunk.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand…
"So, how do you figure how that damn thing managed to quite literally rewind our time? This isn't even remotely close to what the idiot was trying to achieve."
"Well, in case you have already forgotten, that damn thing wasn't your regular Ministry-issue Time-Turner, which in case you have also forgotten is supposed to contain – "
"Exactly 777 grains of time dust, yes I know, I was with you when they made us take apart and reassemble dozens of those things." Grumbling, Harry cursed his rotten luck as memories of the numerous unfortunate (to put it mildly) events began to run through his mind.
"Aside from guessing what went wrong with how to achieve immortality plan 1001, we also need to decide our next course of action. Trying to get back to our time isn't exactly feasible since we don't have the Time-Turner so we can't try to reverse its effects…I don't recall anything odd except for the size, it didn't have any special runes or magic circles around it…"
Something in Draco's musings caught Harry's train of thoughts. Unbidden, a memory surfaced – a Gringotts vault, Hufflepuff's cup, the Thief's Downfall, Griphook, the painful burn of the Geminio cursed objects…the size of the Time-Turner…
Size.
"The time dust! Wasn't only a small bottle stolen? There was definitely more than that in the Frankenstein Time-Turner!"
"But how – "
"Geminio."
Well, that certainly didn't have any pretty implications. Stolen time dust was one matter. Stolen time dust that was magically replicated was a bloody-fucking-murderous-dark-lords-rampaging-around level of disaster.
Lesson numero uno that every Unspeakable trainee received before even being allowed to stick a toe into the Time Room was that time dust was finicky as fuck. It was to be harvested on a specific day, at a specific time, using a very specific method. A single mistake could end in varying results from the time dust being rendered ineffective to turning extremely volatile. In absolutely no way were they supposed to magically tamper with the time dust, every Time-Turner had to be physically put together by hand, no magic was to be used even to count the number of grains, that was how sensitive it was.
The fact that the time dust had not only been magically altered, but actually multiplied spelled nothing but trouble (I mean look where they were now).
They sat in silence for a few moments, pondering.
"So, now what? I meant what I said, I don't think we'll be able to find a way back. We might have been top Unspeakables but we are currently seven year olds who don't even have wands."
"Yeah, I've been thinking about that, and really this golden opportunity just landed on our laps…"
A pause.
"Potter, you cannot be suggesting what I think your suggesting. Do you even know how many rules regarding the space-time continuum we would be breaking?"
And that had been lesson numero due for Unspeakable training in the Time Room – never, ever, interfere and change the original course of time. Changing the future was a big no-no in the Department of Mysteries rulebook (which wasn't so much a book but a whole volume of them, each one thicker than A History of Magic). Harry figured that since he had already broken that rule before even joining the Unspeakables, what with saving Sirius from dementor doom and Buckbeak from execution via Macnair with Hermione back in third year, they could probably just screw it.
"Unless the manual I read during training was vastly different from yours, I think I might have a rough idea. I can tell, you're already considering it aren't you? Come on, we could change everything." Harry very pointedly let his gaze linger on Draco's bare, tattoo-less left arm.
If Draco was being completely honest with himself, the idea was more than just appealing. This was quite literally a chance of a lifetime, they wouldn't have been able to purposefully manipulate the situation to land up in these circumstances. Did he really want to look this gift horse in the mouth? It wasn't just the dark lord, all those regrets… Besides, both of them had lived rather fulfilled lives anyway – they had watched their children grow up, reached the peak of their careers, there wasn't much they could want for, but now…
"Let's do it."
"I knew you had some Gryffindor in you! Can you imagine, if we do this right, we could become the most benevolent, awe-inspiring leaders of Magical Britain!" Harry threw his head back and laughed, emerald eyes glittering with joy.
"Only Britain? It should be the world – Potter just where is your ambition? Are you sure you were almost sorted into Slytherin?" Draco shot back, grinning.
Maybe, just maybe, they could make this work.
No, why was he even casting doubt, they would be magnificent – the world wouldn't know what hit it.
AN: The bit about Cassiopeia Black and her book was taken from Growing Up Black by Elvendork Nigellus which I highly recommend even though it's unfinished. It's about Harry being taken in by the Black family and I just really love the brotherhood/close bond between Harry and Draco. Anyway, hope you guys enjoyed this chapter!
