Chapter 12

"I told you the piece would be a distraction," Time said in a voice that could only be described as smug.

"This round has not yet played out," Fate snapped in response, his eyes not leaving the Game board.

"And what has your pawn done the entire time mine has been there?" Time sounded like he was desperately trying to pick a fight with his opponent. "He has moped and pitied himself, and done nothing to help his situation."

"He will focus!" Fate nearly roared in response. "This Game is mine!"

Time chuckled, "You sound very unsure, friend. It is not something I think Fate should be."

Harry didn't know how the Marauders ever got away with anything. They were so insanely obvious about planning their pranks that Harry was surprised the Slytherins and staff didn't see it coming a mile away. For the past three days, all four of them had been sitting in one corner of the common room, their heads together, whispering and every once in a while lifting their heads up to look for eavesdroppers.

On the third evening, Harry was so desperate to get Ginny out of his mind (she had been giving him the silent treatment, and he was loath to admit how greatly that upset him) that he decided to figure out what the Marauders were doing. Hermione had locked herself up in her room again (this, like Ginny's silent treatment, was an ongoing event), Ron was trying to understand Charms through Lily's and Fee's tutoring, and Ginny was out of the question as an accomplice, so Harry decided to go it alone.

He made for the supply cupboards in the room (always guaranteed to be filled with parchment and ink, and conveniently located just behind the four seventh years).

"…nicked it from Slughorn just this morning," James was saying. "It should be good for another two days as long as we keep it warm."

Remus nodded as Harry quietly shifted through the ink wells in the cupboard. "I've got it under a perpetual heating charm. So long as one of us renews the charm every five hours, it'll keep as long as we want it to."

"But we're doing it tomorrow, right?" Sirius asked quietly, shooting a look up at Harry, who was innocently (and slowly) measuring a piece of parchment.

"Definitely," James replied. "Does everybody know their part?"

The other three nodded, and Remus said, "Right. Whoever's part starts today, get to it. Status meeting tonight at ten, got it?"

Once more the Marauders nodded. Remus and Peter got up and walked off, but Sirius and James stayed sitting. Harry casually cut off a piece of parchment and turned to walk away…only to find that he couldn't. He glanced down at his feet, then up into the grinning faces of Sirius and James. Oh, they were good. Harry hadn't even felt the charm hit him.

"Hear anything of interest?" James asked nonchalantly.

Harry glanced pointedly at his feet, "I'd tell you, but being constrained tends to affect my ability to remember."

Sirius flicked his wand, and Harry was free. He walked over to the couch across from his father and godfather and sat down. He had been able to understand some of what they were going to do as a prank, but only out of sheer luck.

"So?" Sirius prompted.

Honesty was probably the way to go with these two. "Who are feeding Amorentia to?" Harry asked.

James raised an eyebrow and Sirius's jaw dropped. "How?" was all he managed.

Harry shrugged. "I heard you saying you nicked it from Slughorn. I do have the same Potions class as you two. He had Amorentia sitting in the front cauldron." He smiled at their put out expressions. "So who are you giving it to?"

"I won't tell," Sirius said, sticking his nose in the air and sounding like a three year old.

There was a moment of silence before James broke it, somewhat awkwardly, "So…does it ever…rain in Australia?"

Harry tried very hard to hold back his laughter, and almost succeeded. He chuckled a moment before straightening his face. "Oh, it's been known to happen time to time. But only when we get all of our ghosts together and they perform an ancient variation of the Macarena."

"Is it any fun to watch?" Sirius asked interestedly.

Harry nodded and replied with mock sincerity, "Oh, very. Just don't let them get into the ghostly ale, or they'll screw it all up and we'll have typhoons for weeks."

"I thought ghosts couldn't eat or drink," Sirius remarked, sounding extremely confused.

Unable to hold in his laughter anymore, Harry threw back his head and laughed.

The confused look on Sirius's face didn't abate until he looked across the room to see a sobbing girl. "Oh look, Eleanor's upset. She looks like she could use a comforting arm." He got up and strode immediately to the girl.

"He's not really that much of an idiot…usually," James said, somewhat embarassed, trying to explain his friend.

"Oh, I know," Harry replied, still laughing quietly at his godfather.

"You know," James said, tilting his head to the side and studying Harry, "I really haven't talked to any of you too much, have I?"

"I didn't expect you to," Harry lied easily.

James nodded, quiet for a moment. The entire time the silence lasted, Harry was begging for him to say something, anything, so that he could strike up a friendship with the father he never knew. Yet he was too scared to say anything himself, for fear of chasing James far away from him.

In the end it was James who spoke first, "So, you ever played Quidditch?"

Harry brightened considerably. "Yeah, I was a seeker on my house team."

James leaned forward, immediately interested, "Really? Me too. Were you any good?"

"I've probably got one of the best Snitch catching records around." Harry was trying so hard for it to come out nonchalantly, but this was the first one on one conversation with his dad, and he couldn't help but brag.

James whistled in appreciation. They spoke for quite some time, debating strategy and plays. Harry was having a hard time grasping it. He was speaking with his dad for the first time in his life. He was really speaking to him! He had been given a chance to see for himself how his parents were. James had an ego, like Snape had always told him, but he was a good man, hopelessly in love with Lily as Sirius and Remus had constantly assured him. He was James- his father.

The father/son bonding (even if James didn't know that was what it was) was broken by Hermione flying down the steps of the girl's dormitory. "Harry!" she practically shrieked.

Harry whipped around in alarm. His mind flashed to a million things that could be wrong, before he relaxed at the sight of his friend grinning at him happily.

"I just finished it!" She exclaimed happily, waving the book above her head. "I've got so many ideas, and I think it explains a lot, and… where are Ron and Ginny?"

Harry shrugged, "Lily's tutoring Ron. I don't know where Ginny is. Did you need to find them?"

Hermione thought for a minute, obviously torn between sharing what she had learned and letting her boyfriend continue devoting his time to his school books for the moment. Her studious attitude won. "Well…I guess I can tell you tomorrow. Can we all get together then?"

Harry nodded, "Tomorrow."

Hermione and Ginny were already in the Room of Requirement, waiting for Ron and Harry to show up. They were supposed to have been there ten minutes ago, but something held them up.

"We're going to be late," Ron deadpanned as the stood at the back of a very packed, unmoving hallway with no staircase in sight.

Harry nodded, not saying a word.

"What d'you reckon is holding them up?"

Before Harry could answer, a very loud 'gobble' echoed down the hallway.

"What the-," Ron muttered.

Five large turkeys came running between the throng of people, followed closely by Snape. "Wait, please! Come back!" He called after them, arms extended and back bent as he tried to catch the turkeys, all of which, Harry saw, were wearing Hufflepuff scarves.

"What happened?" Harry asked a girl who had followed Snape and the turkeys from the beginning of the hallway.

"They used to be a group of Hufflepuffs," the girl replied, nodding toward the birds, "until they walked through the door up ahead. The second they were through, poof! Sunday dinner. We were all trying to catch them for a bit, until Snape came running at us. He started professing his undying love for them, and we stopped trying to catch them and started watching."

"Huh," was all Harry said as Snape- a few feet away- threw himself down onto the floor, arms raised to the sky. "Why can't you see that I love you!" he cried in agony.

Ron nearly fell down laughing as Snape continued, "Your round body, those floofy tails, that nameless things on your necks! I love you! Please, please come back!"

Rolling his eyes at how pathetic it was (and trying as hard as possible not to laugh at how Snape sounded when confessing his love), Harry grabbed Ron's elbow and pulled him toward the Room of Requirement.

"You're late," were the first words out of Hermione's mouth.

Ron winced. If she was angry, he'd be the one to get hurt the most.

"Sit down, then," Hermione continued, motioning to the two empty chairs. "We've got a lot to get through."

Ron sat beside his girlfriend, leaving Harry the chair that was placed, at least he thought, incredibly close to Ginny. Sighing, he took a seat and tried not to think of the redhead beside him.

"They're here now," Ginny said, sounding slightly irritated, "Tell me why we're all here."

Harry closed his eyes. Don't look at her, don't look at her, don't- oh, Merlin, he looked. She glared. Was she really that angry? She looked like she was. Why hadn't she forgiven him yet?

"…finished last night, but you weren't there," Hermione's voice cut through Harry's thoughts.

"So what's it say?" Ron asked, motioning to the book.

Hermione picked it up and opened to a marked page. "The concept of Fate as a being, rather than a concept, has been around for years beyond count," she read. "It would be impossible to pinpoint the exact date when this concept occurred, most likely because Fate has been accepted as an entity since the beginning of time. This leads to the assumption that even primitive people knew that something controlled their lives. It is possible to hypothesize, then, that the assumption has been around for such a long time because it is more than an assumption- it is the truth. Fate exists, and this being governs our lives."

"So that's saying there's some all powerful thing up there, looking down and pointing to random people saying, 'you're going to die', or 'you'll become anorexic'?" Ron sounded extremely skeptical.

Harry was silent. He wasn't sure if he should dismiss what Hermione had read so quickly. After all, if Fate truly did exist, as that book claimed, then that would certainly explain the majority of Harry's life up until that point.

"But it makes sense, Ron," Hermione argued. "Going back in time, the voice telling us we had a second chance, everything that ever happened to Harry. Fate could explain all of it."

"So could rotten circumstances," the redhead shot back.

Hermione glared at him, "Just listen to me, alright? We went back in time because something happened that wasn't supposed to, so Fate gave us a second chance. Why here? Who knows? This is where we were supposed to come to. Why did I find a book that would explain our situation to us? Because I was fated to! I'm telling you, Ron, this is true! That being, entity, god, whatever it is sent us back here and led me to this book so I would understand! This is how we got here!"

Ron crossed his arms, "Since when did you become so into divination?"

"This isn't divining! It's an explanation to something that's happened to us!"

"Okay, say you're right," Ginny interrupted, "How does knowing that help us? We're still here, unable to get back. Who cares if it was a god named Fate who sent us back?"

"Because," Hermione explained, "As soon as I realized that this was true, and that Fate was what brought us back, I started thinking about how we could fix all this. I've got an idea now."

"Pray tell," Ginny said dryly.

Hermione crossed her legs, taking up her standard 'explanation' pose. "I've gone through all the years when something of importance has happened in Harry's life, so basically when he was one and every school year. And I think… how do I explain this? Because I know Fate is real, I'm pretty sure that Voldemort will mark Harry. He was destined to. So this second chance isn't to keep Harry from becoming the Boy-Who-Lived, it's to fix the end."

"How?" Harry asked, speaking for the first time. Ron might not believe any of what was going on, but if reading that book helped Hermione figure out how to fix his life, he was all for it.

"I'm going to go through, year by year and explain what can and can't be changed, okay?

"First, Halloween. It has to happen, Harry, I'm sorry. The world needs a reprieve from Voldemort, and the only way I can see that happening is by what happened to you when you were one.

"But we can keep Sirius from going after Wormtail. If, somehow, we can stop him from doing that, he'd never go to Azkaban. I'm not entirely sure how that will effect everything, but it will be better for Sirius, right?"

"So…" Harry was trying to work through everything in his mind, "I could go live with Sirius?"

Hermione looked at him sadly, and he knew what the answer would be. "I'm sorry, Harry," she said quietly, "but there's the matter of the blood protection that you had while living with your aunt. Plus, I think that living with the Dursleys somehow made you into who you are today. If you changed, you might not be able to do the whole 'saving people thing'.

"So, first year, Quirrell, I think is necessary too. It taught you how strong you really are; you stood up to Voldemort and won. I think you needed that confidence boost.

"Second year's the same, sorry, Gin. I think the diary has to stay. Harry destroyed a Horcrux that year, and if you didn't, who knows if we'd have ever been able to find the diary locked away in Malfoy Manor? There's the whole Parseltongue thing too, although I don't think it's a very large deal.

"Third year, though, we can change. If Sirius doesn't go after Wormtail that night, he wouldn't have gone to Azkaban, and there'd be no reason for anything in third year to happen."

"But what about Scabbers?" Ron asked.

Hermione frowned. "I don't know; I really don't. Let's say, though, hypothetically from here on out since we've changed something, that Wormtail doesn't get to Voldemort at the end of third year. That leaves us with an incredibly altered life.

"Wormtail wouldn't have gone off to Voldemort, so Crouch Jr. wouldn't have gone out to find him. No Quidditch Cup mayhem, no Triwizard Tournament, and, most importantly, Voldemort won't have used your blood that day in the graveyard. That means he'd be incredibly weaker.

"I don't know what would happen after third year. I mean, he has to come back sometime. There's no way he'll be gone forever. And if Wormtail doesn't get away to help him come back, someone like Crouch certainly will."

"So what would we have changed, really?" Harry asked quietly.

"It all revolves around Sirius, really," Hermione explained. "Because of him not going to Azkaban, Voldemort will come back, hopefully, later- weaker. And Sirius won't be hiding away in Grimauld Place, afraid of getting sent to back to Azkaban, so who knows how drastically that will affect the future? He may not even die that night in the Ministry. And, well, I hate to say this, but when we were on the Horcrux hunt, and you were finally away from everybody, you hit a funk, Harry. Sirius's death came and hit you hard then. You were depressed, and a lot of things that shouldn't have happened did because of your depression. I think… maybe if those things didn't happen, that night in Russia might not come to pass."

"What happened in Russia?" Ginny asked quietly.

The other three looked at her silently. "We'll tell you later," her brother said, before continuing, "This all seems like an awful lot of guesswork. Why don't we just kill Voldemort in the past, so we won't have to worry about any of this?"

Hermione shook her head, "We don't know when Voldemort made any of his Horcruxes, or where he's hidden them. It would be impossible to know if we had found them all or not, so it would be impossible to kill him here. I think our best bet is to change what we can in the future."

"Okay," Harry said, "So we just, what? Leave a message telling Sirius not to chase after Wormtail?"

Hermione was quiet, thinking. "I actually had a thought. I haven't worked it out fully yet, but I think I'm on the right track. Harry, I- now, you're not going to like this, but please think about it, and how I'm usually right- I want you to talk to Peter. Become friends with him, and teach him a little about loyalty. Don't look at me like that! I think it could really help. I'm not entirely sure how just yet, but I… I have a feeling, alright?"

Harry was quiet. Yes, Hermione usually was right. Her feelings usually panned out. But could he actually go and become friends with the man who would betray his parents to their deaths? A little part of his mind was telling him yes, because that man didn't exist inside of Wormtail yet. He could change him, so that his parents weren't betrayed by a friend. But that would mean actually conversing with the little rat…

He sighed. "Fine. I'll try. But I won't guarantee results."

This was not going to be easy…

AN: Okay, thanks go out to WhiteTwitch, Fensta, and- in some ways- lonelyslytherinslowlydying for the prank. I'm going to reiterate that I am not so good at funny, so if the prank was not up to any of your standards, I'm sorry. Truly I am.