Harry Potter never expected to be a father at sixteen. In fact, he never expected to be a father at all. He knew, upon the return of Voldemort, that his life was just as certain as the Dark Lord's. But only, theirs were opposite. If one was stronger, the other was not. Harry knew the Dark Lord was getting as strong as he had ever been... with Dumbledore gone, hardly anyone could stop him.

But Harry.

"I don't know if I can act like this guy, Hermione," Harry said as he set the file she had produce on some wizard that worked at the Ministry down. "He's like thirty years older than me."

"Have you read the file, Harry?" Hermione sighed, setting down her own.

"Well, yes, but..." Harry shook his head, "I still don't understand how you even got it. You're supposed to be missing!"

"Well," Hermione blushed. "I, actually... ordered an elf to do it."

Harry raised an eyebrow, "I'm sorry, did I just hear you right? You ordered an elf to spy on these two people?"

She turned a brighter shade of red and glanced at the file, "I had to think of some way to do it... this was the quickest way. I paid them, too. There's a month of observations here. It's nearly the middle of July, the Ministry is slowing down it's season... it shouldn't be too difficult."

"What if we get separated?" Harry asked.

"We have an hour," she responded. "We're bound to get separated. Just remember the time... and don't forget to leave..."

"And if we're caught?" Harry pressed.

"We run as fast as we can," Hermione responded as if it were normal. "And we apparate to the Forest of Dean, from the World Cup."

"I remember," Harry nodded. "But I can't apparate. I have the trace."

Hermione bit her lip, "Oh... Right, that is a problem."

He groaned, "I just need to be two weeks older. Two weeks!"

Hermione giggled, "I might have something... I asked McGonagall for a favor over the summer... before we left school. I wanted to study for some classes I wanted to take, that I hadn't taken the prerequisites for, so I had to catch up..." she dug around her beaded bag that was at her feet and presented Harry the small golden chain. "I think a few turns every few hours would do."

"Well, I am already three hours older than normal," Harry said thoughtfully.

Hermione took a spare piece of parchment and began to do the math. "You need three hundred and thirty three hours extra... Merlin, okay. . . So every hour you need to do two... Can you do that?"

"Yeah, and every night, I'll just do eight ahead at a time."

Hermione nodded, "I don't know what rules apply for time travel... I mean, if you do see yourself, you already know what's going to happen... just try to avoid yourself, I think... Lock yourself in a broom cupboard or something."

"Lock myself in a broom cupboard?" Harry asked, a smirk causing Hermione to smack his arm. He placed the necklace around his neck. "How do I use it?"

"Twist the small knob as many times back for as many hours you want to go. So let's just start out with one and see how it goes."

"Alright," Harry nodded. He flipped it once and it began to spin on its own until he dissolved from in front of the girl. Hermione took a deep breath, waiting for him to return. But she had only to wait a few seconds because he suddenly appeared at the door of the library and gave her a grin, "That was wicked."

"Feel older?" Hermione teased.

"Much," he grinned.

"Okay, so I think you can do a few more, but you should probably eat first," Hermione laughed as his gleeful expression. "Did you have fun?"

"Fun? I got to give all the portraits a right scare because I was supposed to be with you."

Hermione giggled and pulled him away from the library, "Perhaps this was a bad idea."

"No way. So I have four hours on me... three hundred and thirty two to go."

Over the next few days, Harry went overkill and did around a hundred hours in the span of twenty. Hermione warned him he was going to over-exhaust himself, but he insisted his was fine. He mostly did the hours at night, when she was sleeping, going about eight hours at a time back to the beginning of the night and replaying it over and over again. He got about forty in a night, before Hermione woke up at his fourth entrance and took the necklace away from him.

He kept a tally, marking each set of twenty he did.

By the end of the week, he had done nearly two hundred.

Hermione sighed, exhausted from brewing all day, "Harry, I told you to go slower!"

But he didn't listen. He ate when he got hungry, he read when he was bored, and he haunted the pictures for good fun. After all, seeing Harry walk one way and then come from another did give them quite the double take.

And he slept. Some of those eight hour shifts were spent sleeping.

By mid-July, two weeks before his birthday, and on the day of the Ministry infiltration, he did his last tally.

"How many, then?" Hermione asked from taking James out of the bath besides the cauldron in the bathroom. She wiped the water from the soft baby skin and James gurgled in laughter. Hermione kissed the little boy's cheek, before rubbing the water from his air. She placed James on the warm counter, placing a diaper on him and then his jumper and socks.

"Four hundred and sixty," Harry said proudly. "I'm officially older than seventeen."

Hermione sighed, "You could have stressed out your magical core, Harry!"

"But I didn't," he insisted. He spun around for her and she rolled her eyes.

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Another chapter! Reviews are most welcome(: