Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

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"Lily?" Lily had been sitting in Harry's favorite chair, not that she knew of course, by a blazing fire.

She looked up, "Mmm, Harry what is it?" Her eyes kept glancing back at the book in her lap. Harry's lip twitched upwards.

"I was wondering if you had a spare notebook I could, er-borrow, permanently?"

She looked confused, "A notebook?" Harry nodded. Lily glanced behind him, looking at James. "Are you joking?"

"No."

"What's wrong with parchment?" Harry looked incredulously at her.

"It's just a notebook, Lily. You're the only person I've seen with one. I would like to have one because it's easier to pack around then a roll of parchment."

She held up her hand, "Ok Harry." Lily looked through her bag and handed him a black notebook.

"Don't do anything stupid with it." She said curiously.

What the hell could I do with a notebook?

"Me? Never!" He gave her his best innocent look.

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"I told you to check the wards, Padfoot." James said, starting up the argument that seemed to last for days. "I told you he'd have it protected but noooo-"

"I get it, Prongs, we'll-" James glared at him, "I mean, I'll be more careful next time."

"Wait, next time?!"

"Don't act so surprised, Moony. It's the only reasonable thing to do."

Remus shook his head, "Reasonable? Reasonable?!" He hissed, "How could you be so stupid? To do it once, but to do it again-"

"It's what needs to be done." Sirius said firmly.

"Let it go, Sirius. Getting caught a second time will get you nowhere."

"But we won't." He defended himself.

"Yeah. We've been watching it. See what the trunk does when we get close to it, away from it, inches near it. We're paying attention this time." Wormtail added.

Remus rubbed his temples, "But have you gotten any closer to breaking what's protecting the trunk without actually setting off the extremely loud, obvious alarm?"

Sirius looked at him blankly, "Alarm?" He asked weakly.

"Padfoot! URGH! How could you have forgotten about the loud hissing?!" Sirius clearly didn't understand why this was so bad, so Remus tried again, "Remember? The large boils on your face?" Sirius paled and quickly ran a hand over his face, shuddering.

Remus rolled his eyes. How self-centered his friend could be sometimes….

"Relax, Moony, we're going to go over it a few more days before we actually do anything. Promise."

"Prongs? James? Are you actually going to do this?"

"Huh? Oh, Yeah. Best friends help each other." He looked pointedly at Remus.

He ignored James's comment, "You're going to regret this."

"Why are you so against this? We're trying to make Hogwarts safer." Wormtail asked.

Remus clenched his jaw, "No, you're trying to bring attention to yourselves and ruin someone's life in the process." He swiftly got up, "And if nothing else I tell you will change your mind, remember how you were babbling the night of the incident about how scary Nelson is and that he's not a person to mess with? What happened to being scared?"

"We were never scared, Moony Bear. We're Marauders. We're Gryffindors. Brave until the very end." Sirius replied, his chest puffed up in pride and a grin on his face. He also knew that nick name would irritated the werewolf. Remus shook his head in disbelief and left before he did something stupid like hitting his friend upside the head. On his way out, he heard Sirius saying something that sounded like 'Stop looking at your Lily Flower and pay attention.' Remus couldn't help but smile.

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The Flesh Eating Curse was originally used for medical reasons. It was used especially during the 1500's when healers were just delving into a person's magical core and how it was connected to the healing process.

Now, it is used as a torture method because past a certain extent, the damage is permanent and the person subjected to the curse would die a slow and extremely painful death…

That's pleasant. Harry winced and closed the same book he had read out of yesterday.

Harry looked at the moving picture again. The motion of the wand needed for the spell was simple; a violent jab forward and a quick flick to the right. It was easy, he admitted to himself. He still didn't think anyone deserved it, though. But as Harry closed his eyes, he thought back to last year when Bellatrix held Neville under the Cruciatus with an evil glint in her eye-and then later as Sirius fell through the veil….

Maybe some people, he decided, deserved it without question.

The book hadn't described what the curse actually did to someone, just that it ate the skin. Pretty self-explanatory.

He got up wondering how one of these dummies could possibly show the effects of the curse. One dummy moved forward just like last night, bowed, and shuddered. It looked like it was shivering, its' outline fuzzy and out of focus. It started to change, to Harry's horror, into a copy of a human. The only difference was its' empty face. No nose, or mouth, or eyes….And it somehow made the situation worse, so much worse.

Violent jab forward and a quick flick to the right. At first, nothing happened and Harry thought it hadn't worked.

But then the dummy froze, its wand falling from limp fingers. He didn't understand, nothing was happening…

He watched as his 'opponent' brought its' pale and shaking hands up against its chest, cradling them and then stretched them out in front of itself.

Harry looked closer to the hands and regretted it, wanting to look away fiercely.

Slowly, the finger tips turned black, and then the dark color crawled up the hands, wrists, and arms. He looked down again and saw that the same thing was happening to the dummy's feet. Then came the clicking noise and it took only a moment for Harry to realize it was the sound of cracking. He glanced back up at the hands, and saw that the black, dead skin was chipping and falling away in thick, crispy flakes. As the flakes fell away, the muscle and in some places, bone was bright, livid, and raw. The black spread higher and higher until it had reached the expressionless face.

And then, the face became real. Like a combination of everyone he knew and he had to look away, knew he had to, but he just couldn't. The familiar, yet strange face, crimpled and twisted and burned like it was lit by a black fire. It spread, all over the dummy's face. The skin chipped, and fell just like the rest of its body. And nothing was left on the face except bone and muscle. Nothing except the mouth.

And just before the mouth fell away, too, it opened, and let out an inhuman scream. Harry recognized it immediately.

It was the dying scream of his mother.

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'Where is he?' Lily asked herself for the millionth time that day. 'He's missed breakfast and now lunch, too…'

Alice turned to look at her and when she saw that Lily's eyes were towards the Great Hall's open doors, she gave her a worried smile. Alice reached over and squeezed her best friend's hand. "Don't worry. He'll show."

"He'd better." She responded half heartily.

It had nearly been a day since the last time she'd seen him, right before he left with her notebook. It was frustrating. Sometimes she wondered if he was, even distantly, related to Potter. This was definitely something he would.

She was worried and she could tell, no matter how hard Alice tried to hide it, that her friend was, too.

Someone moved at the door and Lily quickly looked up. Her heart fell to her toes when she realized it was just Remus. He smiled at her and took the seat in front of her.

"Hello, Lily." Remus said pleasantly, "Alice. How are you too today?" Lily looked at him for a while. He didn't usually talk this much outside the Marauders. She had a feeling the 'amazing' four friends were having some trouble in paradise. She sighed when she realized it was because of Harry.

"Fine-"

"-Just great." They both mumbled sarcastically.

"Are you worried about Nelson? Is he actually missing?" Lily turned to glare at him. He wasn't welcomed to the forbidden conversation. "I didn't mean anything by it," Remus rushed, "Just that I noticed - listen, he's… maybe he shouldn't - maybe you shouldn't be around him. That's all I meant."

Her glare, if possible, turned even icier and Alice answered before Lily could. "We appreciate your concern-"she glanced at Lily when she felt her friend's glare turn towards her and she quickly continued. "But Harry isn't like that, at all, actually. And there isn't anything to worry about."

Remus shook his head back and forth slowly. "There's something up with him. He's hiding something, something big. I was just warning you-"

"The hell you were!" Lily spat. "If you're here on behalf of your little leader, you can tell him to shove it and leave you the bloody hell out of it! He has a problem, he can come here himself!"

"Lily, please-" Alice was violently shaking her head, trying to silently tell Remus to be quiet.

"Leave!" She snarled.

Hurt flashed in Remus's eyes, but he quickly hid it, got up, and walked away, his shoulders slightly slumped.

Alice looked accusingly at her. "What?"

"Lily, how could you?"

"I was defending our friend!"

"That wasn't Potter, Lily! That was our friend. Remus, remember him? He was warning us, like any good friend would do! He didn't mean anything by it. I can't believe you!"

"I didn't do anything."

"It was unnecessary. It was mean."

"Alice-"

"No, I understand that you were defending someone who means a lot to you, but in case you haven't noticed, there's subjects he purposely avoids, like talking about his family or his past, or relatively anything about him. Remus was probably just putting all that together. And he was worried. Nothing more to it. He hasn't talked to James in a while, Lily. How could they have planned this?"

"It was a set up!"

Alice shook her head and looked down. "I have to go." And she walked away.

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Harry blinked.

He opened his eyes and looked around.

Everything was blurry.

He felt around for his glasses and shoved them roughly onto his nose. There was a fog over his brain, and somewhere his mind registered that it was a defense mechanism of some sort. His body was trying, useless as it was; to defend him from something. What was it?

He slowly got up, pushing his feet awkwardly under his body, supporting his weight. His hand ran over his face as he took in his surroundings. He was in the Room of Requirement.

How did I get here?

Harry tried to think back to yesterday. What had happened here? The fact that the Room was completely clean didn't help his mission. He reached for his wand, it had somehow ended up a few feet away from where he had fallen. Again, he wondered what had happened. His heart began to pound faster and his breathing came more quickly. His head started whirling and, for a second, he was afraid he would fall again.

And then everything came back. The face. And the screaming….

Harry braced himself for the fall, but it never came. He looked at his hand, the one that was gripping the table that had suddenly appeared. And he wondered how his hand had gotten there without him telling him it to do so.

Something else had appeared on the table, too. He looked curiously at his notebook, the one his mother had given him, and a plan started spinning around in his head. It was impossible, what he was thinking, it couldn't happen. There was no way. But, like everything else, he had to try.

A new command entered his head and the Room automatically changed to meet his request. A decent sized library appeared before him, and he immediately pulled out a book and skimmed through it. He did so with the next few hundred books, each time looking less thoroughly through then the last.

It had to have been the four hundredth book he had looked through before he finally found what he was looking for. The Connection Spell. His strained smile came out more like a grimace.

He grabbed the note book.

"Copia!" An exact copy appeared. And then another so that Harry now had the same three black note books.

He waved his wand over two of them and whispered, "Concero!"

A purple glow covered them.

He waved his wand one more time and one of the notebooks disappeared.

Harry took a deep breath and grabbed a quill,

'Hello?'

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1995

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"Ron? Ron. Ronald!"

"What?" The red head asked annoyed. When were they all going to leave him alone?

"Are you going to help look for him or not?"

Ron looked up at Hermione. "No, I'm not." He replied calmly. "And I don't want to."

She frowned for a second, and then her face grew angry, "And why not?"

"Because if Harry wanted to be found, he would already be here. He left because he wanted to."

"Ron," She continued lamely, "He could be in trouble."

"Honestly, Hermione, He's Harry bloody Potter, if he really was 'missing', don't you think someone would've found him by now? Or some sort of clue as to what happened to him?"

"Exactly. It's odd, don't you see? He could've been bewitched or, or-"

Ron's ears were turning red. Why were they all denying the truth? "Why don't you accept it? He left a note. He said he was 'sorry'. End of story."

"How can you be so uncaring?"

"BECAUSE HE WANTED TO GO! HE DIDN'T WANT TO BE HERE ANYMORE!" He yelled. Hermione looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. She sighed, walked toward his bed, and sat down next to him.

"We have to try. Ron, we just can't give up. He wouldn't give up on us." She said weakly.

"Dumbledore said to give him time. He'll come around."

"I think you're ignoring the issue. You're acting as if he never left."

"It's easier that way." He said, closing his tired, blue eyes. He felt Hermione grab his hand and give it a tight squeeze.

"It doesn't make it right." She whispered, letting go of his hand to wrap her arms around him.

"It doesn't make it wrong, either."

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"Have you found anything, Remus?" He ran a tired hand over his face.

"I would've told you if we did, Molly."

She put her head in her hands. "You're right, I don't know what I was thinking." She mumbled. Remus put a comforting arm around her shoulders.

"Any luck?" Ginny asked as she walked into Grimauld's kitchen. She took in their expressions, "Yeah, I didn't think so."

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Thanks for the reviews! The future, or present time, won't exist for much longer, but for right now, Harry knowing what's going on in the future is extremely important to how he's going to change his parents' deaths.