Well... I just saw New Moon and it was terrible... so boring... nothing else much to say here except "Please review, thank you!"
The Time Warp Saga
Harry and Draco get stuck in a paradox. Now they have to re-live their Hogwarts years. Over and over. And over. And---
Warp One
Harry Potter wakes up one morning in the body of his ten-year-old self. This time around, he declares, nobody is going to die! (That's a lot harder than you think, Potter. People shouldn't meddle with time.)
When there is a time skip it can be assumed that during that time something equivalent to canon is happening without major changes.
Thanks to swanpride for being my plot beta!
Book 2, Chapter 11: The Duelling Club; Chapter 12: The Polyjuice Potion
Warp 1, Year 2 (part 4), Chapter 9: Petrified
Harry had planned to serve his detention in complete silence so he could concentrate on keeping any attempt any Legilimency at bay— he was terrible at Occlumency, but if he focused on things that happened since he went back in time it would work out fine.
This idea was scrapped though. Snape had assigned him to sort through Filch's old files on the Marauders and the teacher started a spiteful lecture. "You're just like your father," he spat.
Harry was playing the part of a twelve-year-old neglected boy who didn't know his parents; he couldn't not respond, "You knew my parents?" in an excited tone. As soon as the words were out of his mouth he made a plan. He'd be more curious about his mother than his father— it might not win Snape over, but it would probably cool his anger a bit.
"Yes, I knew your git of a father," Snape drawled. "He was an arrogant—"
Harry interrupted, "What about my mother?" he said excitedly. "Did you know her as well?"
"Yes, I knew Lily as well." He noticed the tone of voice— it was softer— and the usage of her first name. "But Potter," the Professor called James by his last name, "Potter was—"
So Harry cut in again, "No offence, Professor, but I'm more interested in my mum than my dad."
"You… mum…?" Obviously, Snape wasn't expecting this. "I would think," he spat out, "you would be interested in what your dear ole dad has done. You sure act enough like him. See all these files," he gestured to the files that Harry was working on, "those were all the work of your can-do-no-wrong dad and his perfect group of friends!"
Harry couldn't help himself, "You talk about them as if they'd tried to feed you to a werewolf or something like that!" he blurted out. Snape glared at him and did not respond. "They didn't… try to feed you to a werewolf… did they?"
"In fifth year, they thought it would be funny," Snape stated dryly.
"They did? That's not funny at all, sir…you know, wizards are so weird…"
"And why do you say that?" he said with a scowl.
"Well, in a muggle school, if someone tried to feed another student to a wild animal they'd be expelled… Hogwarts is a death trap…"
"Yes," he said in a fake kind tone, "so you should get yourself out of here to save yourself… then I wouldn't have to deal with you anymore."
Harry sighed as he found another file on the Slytherin being harassed. "Sir," he said, "do you think I'm like my father because I did that spell on Malfoy? Because they've gotten into a lot of trouble for using it on… you, it seems, on multiple occasions…"
He snatched the paper away from Harry and replied, "You're as arrogant as your father, Potter. Get," his voice rose, "out," louder, "of" he was almost yelling now, "my sight!"
Knowing he had said something wrong, Harry rushed out of the room.
It was after curfew and he needed to get back to the tower. He rushed up the stairs as fast as he could and turned into the seventh floor corridor. He ran past Nearly Headless Nick, who was out for a stroll, and then right into the petrified body of Penelope Clearwater, holding a mirror and looking into it. Her hands were in her hair, and it could be assumed that she was primping herself. She was probably planning on meeting Percy here.
Harry yelled out in shock— an action that attracted Peeves. "Why it's Potty, wee Potter. What's Potter up to? Why's Potter lurking— ATTACK! ATTACK! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! ATTAAAACK!" he screamed. The Gryffindors must've heard him, because the next thing Harry knew they were all pushing their way into the hall and surrounding him.
"Oh Potter, you rotter, oh what have you done? You're killing off students, you think it's good fun!" Peeves sang teasingly from above them.
The crowd broke out into whispers. Lavender and Parvati gave the poltergeist a strange look and spoke out above the rest. "What are you going on about, Peeves? Everyone knows it's Hermione! She's been alone in our dormitory all night!"
Hermione whimpered from somewhere near the back of the mass. Harry couldn't see her face, but he could only imagine the look she might have. "She was upstairs! She couldn't have attacked somebody down here…" he shot at the girls.
"Obviously," Lavender scoffed, "she can control it from a distance. I heard from Hannah that Hermione is really secretly the daughter of Voldemort," she whispered the last part to the other girl quite loudly. A fifth year beside them nodded in agreement.
People in the crowd began to move to make way for Hermione as she pushed her way to the other side of the mass and began to sprint out of the corridor and into the staircases, emitting muffled sobs. Harry glanced from the petrified Ravenclaw and to where his friend disappeared and knocked over a couple first years in his way and took off after her. "Ow," the first year said, "You didn't have to do that!"
He ran back into the staircases, and looked down to see the floor that she was at. "Hermione!" he called as he thundered down the stairs, carefully skipping the trick stair.
"Hermione," he called as she turned into the second floor. "Hermione!" He was worried. He didn't want her to run into the basilisk without any way of protection, after all, he didn't know if it was still loose or not. He didn't notice Ginny in the crowd, so there was a pretty big chance it was still out there.
He ran down the stairs like an elephant, trying to reach the girl as fast as he could.
He yelled her name again as he reached the second floor. "Hermione!" it was a panicked tone. He really hoped that she wasn't running for the Basilisk's lair— Myrtle's bathroom. He turned into it.
They were both petrified. Hermione was facing Myrtle, who was standing in front of the tap that didn't work, eyes on the spot she'd first seen the eyes with a look of terror. Hermione was pointing at it with a less frightened and more curious appearance than the other.
"Hermione!" he yelled out and grabbed the stiff body and began to shake it. The door swung open.
"Potter," McGonagall addressed him, but didn't give him a glance. Her eyes were on Hermione and Myrtle. "Potter, come with me."
She led Harry up into the Gryffindor Common Room. The portraits silenced as she passed and just watched. The Fat Lady swung open without a password and McGonagall stepped in to face the entire Gryffindor House. "Hermione Granger was petrified in the girls' loo on the second floor," she announced. "I hope you are all very proud of yourselves." She swooped out of the room like Snape always did.
Parvati and Lavender cowered. It can also be noted that by the end of the week they were complaining that their room felt too empty and boring without Hermione's presence.
The next morning at breakfast Dumbledore made a solemn announcement to the school. "— So you will all be accompanied by a teacher at all times. You will be in your common rooms whenever there are not lessons going on. Supervised library visits will be organized within the week. Your first period teacher will escort you to class in ten minutes."
"That's it, Ginny," Ron whispered to the girl three people down, sitting with first years, "I'll stop complaining about you sticking with us."
"You're an idiot," she whispered back. "I'll have to stick with the first-years now, and the rest of the time I'll be in the common room, where it's safe. I'm good." She gave him a sarcastic thumbs up and Ron sighed.
"Ginny, I'm worried about you."
"You don't have to be," she snapped back. "I'll don't need to follow you around anymore!"
"What about the Polyjuice Potion?" Luna replied, "We've got enough brewing for you to come too. I liked not being the only first year in our group."
Harry wondered what was wrong with Ginny and concluded that the Horcrux was affecting her. He didn't want anybody to be suspicious of her, so he voiced an agreement, "Let her. She'll be safe and sound. I'm more worried about you," he looked at Luna. "Are you going to be okay with the first years all day?"
"I'll be just fine, Harry," replied Luna.
"It's you, Potter!" Zacharias Smith yelled across the hall. "I knew it wasn't Granger! You were found with both the bodies!"
"If I recall," Harry stood up, "you were one of the people starting the rumours about Hermione… idiot. And what've I done besides find one body and go running after my crying friend? And I have alibis!"
"You could've ordered in advanced!"
"Then what provoked you to blame Hermione?"
Zacharias didn't know how to answer this.
"Now that we've figured that it's not me or Hermione petrifying people, can we please just eat out breakfast?" he finished and sat down. "Merlin," he mumbled to the Dream Team, "I can't believe those Hufflepuffs."
"It's just Zacharias, I think, Ernie and Hannah were just following along," Neville defended them. "The sorting hat thought I'd do good in Hufflepuff before it decided to put me into Gryffindor…" he admitted.
The teachers began to stand and the students all crowded around them quietly as they exited the Great Hall.
"Mr Potter," McGonagall said to him when his group joined up with her to go to Transfiguration, "Professor Dumbledore would like to see you. Please go up to the staff table and he'll take you to his office."
"But I just said I didn't do it!" Harry cried out, pretending to be concerned. He was concerned, but not about that. He was worried that Dumbledore would use Legilimency; Harry knew nothing about Occlumency besides what Snape taught him fifth year.
He decided that he was going to just think that he had nothing to say, let his thoughts stray to Hermione, and the Polyjuice Potion in Myrtle's bathroom.
He walked over to Dumbledore in the nearly-empty hall. Only a couple of NEWT students who had spares remained. "Any professor without a class will supervise students with a spare in the Great Hall during the day. Your second period teachers will pick you up out of the Great Hall. Harry, come with me."
Dumbledore led him to the familiar stone gargoyle and led him up the stairs. Harry sat down casually in a chair and sunk down low. He remembered how uptight he was about being in Dumbledore's office last time and realized how silly he was. Harry was extremely comfortable in Dumbledore's office now— he knew he wasn't going to be expelled and he'd been in it about a hundred or so times, dozens of times alone. After the final battle Harry had visited McGonagall in her office many times, not just to visit her but to visit Dumbledore and Snape's portraits too. He'd sometimes help her with her duties she could no longer perform alone; those stunners in fifth year were catching up on her.
Fawkes looked over to him and cocked his head to the side. "Hello," Harry said to him. This happened a bit earlier than last time, so Fawkes was healthy.
"That would be Fawkes, Harry. He's a phoenix—"
"Why am I here?" Harry cut to the point. He didn't need a lecture on the nature of the phoenix. He just wanted to finish this as soon as possible.
"I must ask you Harry, is there anything you want to tell me? Anything at all?"
Harry didn't think about anything important. He thought about Hermione and the Polyjuice Potion and said, "Nothing at all, sir."
"Are you sure, Harry? Because Professor Snape retrieved a very illegal potion out of the bathroom Miss. Granger was found in and suspects it was made by you and your friends," said Dumbledore.
"Uhh… yeah… can we have that back? We have plans for that… don't worry, we won't be impersonating any teachers or anything…" Why would he have Polyjuice Potion besides sneaking into the Slytherin Common Room? "We were planning a prank with it to throw Fred and George out of the water, see… do you think we could…?"
The headmaster looked thoughtful for a moment before saying, "Harry, Harry, what kind of headmaster would I be if I returned an illegal potion to students?"
"A… a very loved one, sir…"
"Well, I better escort you to your class. You have Transfiguration next, correct?"
"Yes sir." Harry's tone was extremely disappointed, though he wasn't really disappointed at all. He was relieved that he wouldn't have to go through with drinking Goyle.
"You guys are extremely unlucky," Harry muttered to them. "They found the potion when they found Hermione."
"What!" Ron cried out. "But what about Malfoy!"
"I've told you, it's not him! But I did try to get it back for you and failed, so let's just drop it. I probably couldn't have finished it without Hermione anyways…"
"Harry! You and Hermione are the best in our year. You could've done it."
"The Polyjuice is extremely complicated and advanced, Ron. I'm just good at Potions right now because it's all easy stuff. Let OWLs come around and watch me fail to get into NEWT level potions, what with Snape's 'You have to get an O to get in' attitude…"
The list of people leaving over the holidays grew quickly after the attack—the unease had turned into panic— even all the Slytherins except Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle were leaving. "It doesn't even matter," Ron mumbled when they checked the list. "I can't believe we lost it!"
The response to this was simply, "Shut up, Ron."
Luna took to sleeping in Hermione's bed. She would meet up with them at diner and after it she'd stay in the common room. Even Percy stopped objecting when she reminded him about the Quidditch Party incident. He shut up after that. "Miss. Lovegood," he said eventually, though, "why can you not just go to your common room after diner?" Harry just took Luna by the hand and led her away.
"Stupid Percy, doesn't understand…" he muttered.
Neville went home for Christmas and Luna slept the holidays in his bed instead of Hermione's. Nobody was allowed to wander alone, and there were more teachers than students.
"I really don't think it's Malfoy, Ron," Luna said to the redhead in the common room Christmas evening. "Harry's Voldemort idea sounds plausible…"
"You believe anything that's shot down by everybody else!" Ron argued. "Give me a good reason to think it's not Malfoy!"
Harry replied plainly, "He's twelve years old." He looked to the common room door and sighed. "You know, I think I might go to the library and look up snakes that kill people… probably without biting them— there's not venom in their systems that we know of."
"The Venomous Lapideus doesn't leave any traces of venom or bite mark, Harry."
"Luna, can you drop that for one moment," Ron snapped. "Hermione's been petrified! You're a Ravenclaw! Help Harry! I'll cover for you two."
As they left the portrait hole under the cloak Harry comforted Luna. "It's okay, he doesn't understand. But I do doubt that's what it is. Slytherin's monster has been around for centuries, so I think it would be a very old species. These are new ones that haven't been discovered yet that The Quibbler writes about."
This brightened up Luna a little as they unlocked the closed door to the library. "So," Harry said as he passed Luna World's Deadliest Snakes and took Dark Creatures Revealed for himself, "What kind of clues do we have?"
"It's at least a thousand years old. It's a snake. It petrifies and kills people," Luna listed.
"I think," Harry threw out, hoping she'd buy it, "that it might have something to do with looking at it. That Ravenclaw had a mirror in her hand and was looking right in that. Colin was looking into his camera, Hermione… Hermione saw it through Myrtle… and there was water on the floor when Mrs. Norris was petrified…"
Luna mused, "Maybe, maybe…"
"A basilisk?" Harry found the page he was looking for. "I think I have it. A basilisk kills just by looking it in the eye… I expect that nobody has seen it in the eye yet… except that girl fifty years ago…"
"And Myrtle couldn't die again!" Luna was getting excited as she found her own page on the basilisk. "It lives an exceptionally long time, which fits too."
"And King of Serpents! That would fit Slytherin's ego!"
"Spiders flee before it…"
"I haven't seen a spider since this thing started."
"The crowing of a rooster is fatal—"
"Hagrid's roosters have been all killed."
"The Heir obviously doesn't want the basilisk to die…but how would it be getting through the castle?"
"I dunno. Pipes, maybe?"
"Should we just take these books back to the common room?"
"Yeah," Harry looked around shiftily. He wished that Ginny hadn't been so influenced by the Horcrux, because he had looked forward to knowing when she was probably writing.
Harry threw the cloak back onto them and the two crept out of the library and heard something move behind them. Instinctively, they turned around to see what it was.
They caught a pair of great big yellow eyes through the cloth and they knew no more.