A/N: So first of all, I think I forgot to say in the beginning but if it is not obvious – I am American and this has not been Brit-picked – I fix the things I catch but I am by no means an expert!

After about an hour of feeling sorry for himself, Harry dragged himself to a sitting position against the headboard of the bed. The wood of the board was intricately carved with constellations and he let his fingers dip along the grooves, wondering if Regulus had ever done the same. His other hand rested on the sheets, which must have been acromantula silk. Harry remembered the scratchy sheets of the tent, listening to Hermione stifle her crying as they both pretended to sleep when Ron left. It was still hard to grasp that he was not in active war at the moment, that he did not have to spend every waking moment on edge and fighting.

He needed to go the library and do more research on time travel tonight when the others were sleeping. Just drifting through events like he had been lately was awfully reminiscent of how he acted the first time around. He did not want to be so controlled by his emotions – so angry like he was in fifth year.

Harry swung his legs off the bed, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck. He made his way to the toilet next to his bedroom, where he splashed cold water on his face and took a moment to marvel at his less conspicuous scar on his forehead. He walked back into the gloomy hallway and headed down the stairs towards the library.

By this point of the day, it was mid-morning and Sirius and Remus were already researching. They sat near a slightly grimy window in green velvet wingback chairs, piles of dark books on soul magic on the table between them. When Harry walked in, they were alone in there and he paused on the threshold of the room. He didn't think that even Remus and Sirius realized how they gravitated towards each other, how their hands subconsciously brushed each other's when reaching for a teacup or another book. Harry felt his lips twitch up at the sides at this show of cozy domesticity, before he pushed himself off the door hinge he had been leaning on to sit with the remaining marauders.

"Hello," he said, hesitant to break up their moment. He needn't have worried, since Sirius's face lit up when Harry moved into his line of vision.

"Hey kid, where'd you wander off to?" Sirius asked.

"Ah, sorry, I didn't sleep much last night, I wanted to catch another hour before researching."

Remus still looked slightly suspicious of this (rightly so, because Harry had blasted out of the meeting like a wild hippogriff was chasing him) but accepted the reasoning easily enough.

"Did you find anything this morning?" Harry questioned, serving himself tea from the pot that Remus perpetually kept with him in the library.

"Well...we found something," Sirius said. "How much do you know about magical weddings?"

Considering Harry had only been to Bill and Fleur's - an event that was severely overshadowed by the fall of the ministry - he didn't know much. "Not much, why?"

"So, in magical ceremonies the bride and groom exchange magic - for lack of a better term. Your magic is tied together like how you would be tethered by an unbreakable vow. It is painful and risky to break a marriage vow, depending on the terms used. There was a woman - Carina Black - in the 1600s who wanted to go even deeper than the magical bond - she wanted to connect her husband to her soul. Now soul magic has always been rather taboo because it's so dangerous, so even then this was kind of a crazy idea. She tried to create her own bonding ritual but ended up splitting her soul and putting some into her marriage ring. The book I read this in said that she was able to reunite her soul," Sirius said.

"That's brilliant! If we could reunite all of Voldemort's pieces, we could kill him all at once!" Harry enthused.

"Yes, however...we don't know how she did it. We just know that she did do it," interjected Remus before Harry got too excited.

"Ah, I see. Well at least we know it's possible, right? Do you think there's a book that says how she did it somewhere?" Harry asked.

"I don't know. She was a Black and this is from a family grimoire that's more of a history text than a spell guide," Sirius grimaced.

Harry considered this, idly stirring his tea with a spoon. There had to be a way to figure out how she did it. Maybe a portrait? Harry repeated this question aloud.

Sirius looked thoughtful, "Maybe. There are portraits all over this house - the basement, the attic, the drawing rooms. There are even more in Gringotts I would imagine. It's worth a try."

"I can ask around the ones here," Harry volunteered. "You guys should join Fred and George in their bedroom today. I talked to them last night and they had some ideas they wanted your input on."

Sirius practically bounced out of his chair and out of the room at this news, pulling Remus along who looked bemused and shouted a goodbye to Harry from across the room.

Harry smiled before heaving himself out of his seat. He decided to start his search for Carina in the basement, so he headed down the stairs towards the kitchen. He knew there was a door to a deeper basement through there, but he had never gone through it - it seemed too creepy.

Luckily no one was in the kitchen when he got there, so he didn't have to think of an excuse for why he was heading though the door to what could potentially be a creepy dungeon used for torture (and possibly sex, the kinky buggers that they undoubtedly were) by the Blacks.

The door was unsurprisingly locked when Harry grasped the metal doorknob. He groaned slightly in annoyance – that most likely meant he had to wait for Sirius to come open it with his black blood. Harry turned and headed back into the main house, trying to decide between cleaning, research or homework. The decision was made for him when he heard a series of muffled bangs from the twins' room.

Harry knocked on the door, which was cracked open by Fred, whose eyes lit up with manic glee when he saw Harry.

"'Ello! George! It's our boss!" he yelled into the room behind him, before fisting Harry's shirt and hauling him into the room. Inside, Remus was sitting in a hard wooden chair while George and Sirius stood at a window covered in some sort of green powder.

Harry snorted and asked, "What are you guys working on?"

"Look here, Harry!" George said after he wiped green from his eyes. "We're improving our fireworks and trying to adjust them to mimic killing curse colors and beams. We figured it would really freak out the death eaters if we could make them think killing curses are shooting at them!"

"That's brilliant!"

"That's not all!" Sirius added in. "These two have created telescopes that will punch you in the face. We want to create other objects that will do the same thing and send them to death eaters!"

And on and on it went. The two marauders with the demon twins were an unstoppable and frankly terrifying force and Harry listened with wide eyes as they detailed their ideas.

Xxx

After everyone was asleep, Harry snuck back down the stairs towards the library. The magic in the townhouse was old, and the candles lit themselves when he entered the room. He felt like a first year sneaking into the restricted section, and for a moment his heart ached at his naivety and optimism when he was eleven. He trailed his fingers lightly over the edges of the nearest bookshelf. He was careful not to touch any of the books themselves for fear they would try to bite his fingers off (you never knew with the Black family).

He paced back through the room until he reached a set of books he had seen earlier, all having to do with temporal magic. He selected one randomly, not knowing where to begin, and retreated to one of the overstuffed chairs that resided in the library.

However, after only a few hours of reading and discarding the books Harry was beginning to spiral into his fifteen-year-old anxiety again. Every book said what he had already known – you cannot travel back in time more than a few hours. Any more than that, the results were gruesome or caused massive instability to the timeline – like Eloise Mintumble aging five centuries after her botched time travel.

So why was he here, almost three full years into his past? Harry knew his situation wasn't entirely comparable to the literature he had read since he had genuinely died before he traveled backwards but he was still worried. The books he read seemed to make it clear that changes to the timeline could be catastrophic. But that was even assuming that Harry was still in his original timeline. There were just too many unknowns to wrap his head around and he felt increasingly out of his depth. Was he really the best choice to go back in time (not that Harry understood whatever force had sent him here)? And what if the timeline reasserted itself when he made changes? Voldemort had already acquired the prophecy, which suggested that things could change, and not necessarily for the better.

Sure, when Sirius died or when Dumbledore died, Harry had thought about time travel, but it had always seemed like a sure thing that life would improve if he was allowed to change events. Now, that seemed a hopelessly naïve thought. It was not guaranteed that Harry could save lives – he could make things worse by accident. He could make things worse just by being in the wrong train compartment that he wasn't in before. The possibilities and consequences stretched out endlessly in front of him, the path seeming more shadowed and treacherous than before.

Harry drew his hands through his thick black hair – which was slightly greasy now that he felt it. He hadn't even noticed because part of him was still living in a tent, hair unwashed and eye bags dark as he poured over Hermione's book collection. And god he missed his Hermione. He thought he was doing her a favor by keeping her at arm's length (the fact that she had not tried to reach out to him this summer a convenient excuse), but he didn't know what to do without his best friend. But this Hermione wasn't a soldier, hadn't been tortured, hadn't starved with him, hadn't slept wrapped up with him to keep warm when the nights were long and dark, and their trio had been shaved down to two.

As though summoned by his dark and lonely thoughts, he heard a shuffling at the door to the library – and now that Harry looked it was definitely beginning to lighten outside as the sunrise approached – where Hermione stood hesitantly in the doorway. Despite the summer heat outside, the dampness of the old house was obviously felt by the witch as she stood in a long sleeve cotton tee and sweats, her hair swept up into a huge bun on top of her head. She had evidently come to read before the house was up and crowded and loud again but was now unsure of her welcome.

But Harry was tired, and he missed his best friend so instead of distancing himself he said, "Hi Hermione."

Surprise crossed her face and Harry felt a pang of guilt when he saw the dark circles under her eyes. She had tried to talk to Harry a few times over the last week, but Harry had gently rebuffed every approach.

"Hi Harry," she said, still standing in the door and tugging on a loose curl that framed her face.

He had moved to a sofa at some point in his stressed out reading, so he inched over to one side while patting the other cushion for Hermione to join him. She came and sat with her back to the other sofa arm and her knees pulled up in front of her as she hugged them to her chest and faced Harry.

"I'm sorry, Harry," Hermione said softly. "I should have made sure you were okay after the tournament."

Harry sighed and blew air out of his mouth before he responded.

"I'm sorry too, Hermione. I've just had a lot going on lately and I needed time to process everything." He looked to his right and smiled slightly at the witch. "Thank you for apologizing."

Hermione had such a profound look of relief on her face that Harry regretted pushing her away all over again. He had convinced himself that he had grown apart from her, but it wasn't true. True, this girl had not stayed with him on the camping trip from hell but there was no question in his mind that she would do so. In that moment, he gave in and allowed himself to fall back into their friendship. He readjusted and Hermione instantly knew what he was getting at, moving to lay her head on his shoulder as they stared into the fire that Harry had lit earlier. They sat this way sometimes in the Gryffindor common room, and the feeling of comfort and safety it provoked washed over Harry and he found his anxious brain quieting a bit. His mind cleared and he wrapped an arm around Hermione's shoulders, letting the peace settle over the two of them.