I think every fic needs a "Sirius—Serious" joke. :D And this chapter is rather short...

009..."Knowing Eternity, Whatever Darkness and Pain I Will Overcome"

The rest of the week went by, doused with the homework, studies, and friends. Remus came back from the hospital wing the next day, but chose to spend his extra time catching up on the homework he missed.

Rushing through his own homework easily, Harry challenged Sirius to a game of Exploding Snaps. Sirius easily won the game and refused to play with "the guy who can't even follow the rules correctly." (Ron had a habit of changing the rules to his own liking... Harry adapted to it and often had to remember what was allowed... and what wasn't.)

During the small banter, mostly on Sirius's part, Lily picked up Harry's book of Light Magic and flipped through it casually, "Are you planning on becoming a Light Lord, Harry?" she joked, eyes not leaving the book.

Harry laughed in response and shook his head, 'I could technically be considered one already... killing Voldemort has to count for something...'

But losing countless lives didn't.

"Harry?" Lily blinked when the boy stiffened. She reached out and gently placed a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her with his bright eyes.

"I'm fine," he placed his own hand on top of her's, making the red-head blush to her ears, "Will you help me memorize all the useless names from my History of Magic notes?"

Lily jerked a nod, trying to ignore the warmth of the other's hand, "Yeah, I'll help," she smiled awkwardly and hurriedly pulled away from Harry to dig out her notes from her bag. Harry dismissed her strange reactions and turned to Sirius with a grin, "Want to study with us?"

"If I hear any more of these stupid wars again, I will bleed from the ears, evidence that my brain is crying from the work overload."

"Ah... still too green."

Sirius shot a glare and inched towards Harry threateningly, "What is 'too green?'" demanded, irked at Harry's casual smirk. Pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, Harry reach forward and flicked Sirius on the forehead, "You, Silly Sirius. Can't even concentrate right can you? Green, green, green."

Sirius jumped Harry at that point, grabbing the glasses off his face and tossing it to the side, but before he could even begin to flick the boy back, Harry's hands found themselves at Sirius's side and began to tickle him relentlessly.

Despite his cool exterior, Sirius seemed to be horribly ticklish and fell back to escape the twitching fingers, out of breath and chuckling softly, "Cheater..." he accused. Harry merely shrugged and ran his hands all over the floor for his glasses.

Sirius kicked them aside.

"What'd you do that for!"

"Hm, don't think you need them much," he sneered and pinched the bridge of Harry's nose, "'Sides, this way you can't study either and you'll be asgreen as I am."

"Haha, you're hilarious, Sirius. Contrary to your name. ... where did you hide my glasses?"

With slight guilty pleasure, Sirius did nothing to help Harry in his frantic search and simply watched him from his spot on the floor. Harry was heading off into the opposite direction.

"Harry! Where are the n—what are you doing on the ground?" Lily walked over to the boy, Harry's books in her hands. The boy looked up at her with a frown and sniffed, "Sirius hid my glasses."

Lily blinked over to where Sirius sat and growled, "Where are they?" she demanded. Sirius made no move to retrieve the spectacles, he instead stretched out and sighed, "You should stop babying Riddle, Evans. He'll become green."

"... green?" she looked to Harry who stopped his search to glare at Sirius. The boy rubbed the red mark on his nose irritatingly, "Look, just... drop it okay? God, if I knew you were one to hold things like that..." but he frowned in a manner that looked thoughtful, '...he never did give up on killing Wormtail for 13-years now that I remember...'

Sirius heaved a breath and reached over to where Harry's glasses were kicked aside and threw them at the boy, successfully nicking his arm in the process, "Sorry," he said hastily, "But really... I'm one to hold a grudge so you'd best watch it. ... it runs in the family."

"Thanks for the late warning," Harry grumbled, slipping his glasses on casually and blinking to get his eyes adjusted. He looked to Lily with a kind smile, "And those notes.."

It was late when he met up with Snape in the Room of Requirement... but Arthur had no problem with it, strangely enough, and Snape seemed to have little problem making his way up to the room.

Although seeing Lucius Malfoy by his side as they entered was something totally different.

Arthur stiffened like a board and twitched awkwardly; Harry caught his movements out of the corner of his eye, "What's he doing here?" he asked with a frown. Arthur nodded briskly in agreement.

"... the same could be said for him." Snape jutted his chin out to where the red-headed seventh year stood, crossing his arms over his chest. Harry pursed his lip and looked down at his shoes, "The... wandless magic problem and... stuff."

Malfoy groaned and regally ran his fingers over his forehead, "If I stay too long, I might contract the Weasley disease. Terrible," he sneered when Arthur bristled and his ears grew red. Pushing his glasses up his freckled nose, Arthur returned the smirk, looking surprisingly sinister as he did so, "Yes, and it might be better for us all if you leave. Your abnormally, large forehead has taken up half the room."

The blond threw the red-head a look before directing his steely, gray eyes on Harry, disgust evident in his voice and face, "Riddle, you had to bring this scum didn't you?" Harry was not fazed.

But Arthur was. He stepped in front of the first-year protectively and glowered darkly, "Leave Riddle out of it," he threatened.

"Don't you tell me to do anything, Weasley! Disgusting blood traitor! Worse than that infernal Black!"

It was at this point Harry whipped his wand out of his front pocket and cast a swiftSilencio. Ignoring the wild movements that Arthur made and the cold glare that Malfoy sent his way, Harry looked at Snape's pinched face, "One of them has got to go."

"Indeed."

"Think we can obliviate Malfoy?"

A pause before Snape spoke again, "... I was thinking Weasley be excused."

Harry pursed his lips and shook his head, challenge in his eyes, "Headboy and a seventh year."

"Slytherin."

Harry grinned, "Touché ," he turned and broke the spell with his wand. Arthur, who was in the midst of screaming, stopped himself and turned to Harry, "Using a wand on the Head boy is not the best way to get there help Riddle!" he berated, but Harry's eyes were on Malfoy, making sure his twitching fingers did not actually make it to his wand.

This was not going to work out, and neither Harry nor Snape were going to let their two choices go, "... we could... switch I suppose? Mondays and Thursdays for Arthur and Friday and Saturday for Malfoy," Harry suggested uncertainly. Snape made a face and stood in silence for long seconds, trying to come up with another solution, "Very well, if the two are satisfied with this...?" he looked to the older teens, one who nodded and the other shrugged.

With a pleased smile, Harry ushered them to magically summoned chairs that appeared in the middle of the room and began to explain the point of this potion, "Malfoy, you remember when I was studying werewolves in the library with Pettigrew?" The blond shrugged curtly, Harry smirked and continued, "I was gathering up information that we would need in order to make this potion. You saw my notes," he directed a look to Arthur who nodded in return, "Snape and I, we've been trying to find a cure for lycanthropy."

The outburst was immediate as Lucius snapped out of his cool position with a glare, "No such thing! Lycanthropy is an irreplaceable disease, there is no cure for such a sickness! It is as if saying you can bring the dead back to life!"

"Exactly Malfoy! That's just what it is, a disease! Like... cancer.. mere muggle diseases. Hell, even Wizards can catch the common cold! Chicken pox, influenza, scurvy, all of those! It's just an illness and people have made various breakthroughs in curing those. Albeit there is still nothing for cancer... people are working to heal the entire world, because there is such a thing as a cure. Lycanthropy can be cured."

There a sense of pride welling up in Harry's chest at Malfoy's stumped expression as the teen went lax and sighed. It was a sign for him to go on, "But I'm not really looking for a permanent solution or a cure-all type... something temporary that might just take the insanity away from a werewolf's mind... giving them their human self in a wolf's form. We don't have much. Just lists and lists of potion ingredients... but it's still a start."

Arthur seemed interested with a slightly glazed look in his eyes while Malfoy merely crossed his arms over his chest and frowned, "Where do we come in?"

"Unicorn horn," Harry immediately answered, "is a magical property and it's hard to contain all of its magic with a stirring rod, whether the rod is magical or not. So it needs to be—"

"—mixed with magic. Oh, I see now," Arthur nodded his head in understanding and smiled, "But Unicorn horns are expensive."

"Right," Snape stepped in at this point, lifting himself out of the chair, "so we'll practice with beetles eyes. I believe that some ingredients are still faulty so we won't be adding in the horn until we make sure the other ingredients don't react to each other and explode."

"Boom!" Harry added childishly, shuffling nervously when Snape stared at him from the corner of his eye.

"Anyway," Snape continued, acting as if Harry hadn't just done that, "Mondays and Thursdays Weasley, and Fridays and Saturdays for you," he looked at Malfoy who stood importantly.

"Dismissed!"

"... Riddle... don't ever do that again."

With a shy smile, Harry hurriedly shooed the three to the door, "I'll clean up a bit around here. Go on ahead. Bye Snape, Arthur; go to hell Malfoy."

Without complaint (although a dirty look from Lucius) the three left Harry in the room as he closed the door and locked it before turning back to the room which transformed itself into a quaint tearoom, "You can come out not. The other's might not have seen you, due to you hiding behind them, but it doesn't help when I'm facing your way."

Dobby peeked over a cushion, his wide eyes unblinking and innocent as he tiptoed closer to his favorite wizard, "Harry Potter, sir. Dobby has found something."

"... what?"

Slipping his hand into the dirty, pillow cover, Dobby seemed to magically conjure a thick potions book from under his rags and dropped it to the ground, "Dobby has found this in Master's library while dusting. Dobby had to jump from the tower window into the Mistress's rose bushes."

Harry winced when he took in the house elf's dog-earred form and smiled, "What is it Dobby?" he asked, indicating to the book.

Dobby happily flipped through the book, eyes wide and intelligent as it roamed the pages. He finally stopped on one, "Dobby cannot read very well, but it said 'time,'" he pointed to the word, "and 'return.' Dobby think it might help Harry Potter."

In deep interest, Harry took Dobby's book and read through the small words, speaking of the potion's purpose and needs. With a sudden light feeling in his heart, Harry gave Dobby a bright grin and reached forward to hug the elf, "Dobby!" he cried in joy, "Thank you! This... this might work. This might really work. It looks tough... and the ingredients rare... but... thank you so much."

"Harry Potter wants to go back, Dobby has sworn to help Harry Potter out. Sworn the day Harry Potter freed Dobby."

"... it has not happened yet Dobby."

"To Dobby is has," the house elf replied and smiled shyly, "Dobby is always happy to help. Goodbye Harry Potter." And he popped out of the room.

Harry gulped the wad of saliva that had unknowingly gathered up in his mouth and looked back to the thick, leather-bound book on his lap. A Dream Through Time Potion, more scientifically, it was called "Moon Hallucinogen," as it was hard to concoct and without the proper ingredient could be a powerful drug.

It was used to contact those of the future using a piece from someone's body. That someone would be the one you wanted to connect to, or their spawns. It was often used by false seers that wished to know more about the future in this form.

As useful as this potion was, it was dangerous with highly poisonous properties. Harry licked his lip and sighed. The chance he would be able to brew this without help was low... but he had no other choice.

He lightly fingered the stained pages as the plan slowly unraveled in his mind... he would dream... and through the dream he would find a way to move his soul through this... new body and into his old one. He'd do it...

He shut the text and gathered it up along with his other notes. Undoing the locking charm on the door, Harry walked out of the room, each step lighter than what it had been since he entered this world.

-be continued-

Title from "Shinjitsu no Uta" by Do As Infinity. Green is another meaning of "unripe."

EDITED: Saturday, July 28, 2007