Chapter Eight

Greetings, readers. It has been a while. As in, almost a year. Yikes. Sorry about that, but this year has been nuts, as I'm sure you would all agree. Uni was crazy, since it was my final purely pre-clinical year, which means next year I'll be thrown head first into my clinical years of med school. Plus, I realised there was a massive time travel plot hole in this story, so I literally spent forever trying to work it out. Hopefully it's all smoothed out now. ;-;

(A note to anyone considering writing a time travel fic – I would advise against it. Despite plotting it all out, I still confuse myself on occasion.)

(Another note – I hope this chapter will clear up what exactly the trio are hoping to achieve, and what Tales from Beyond actually is on about!)

But much bigger things have happened across the world since we last saw each other (and are still happening). So wherever you might be on this planet of turmoil, please gift a moment of your silence and thoughts for anyone who has been hurt during this time, the lives which have been lost, the friends and family and people we never got to meet who we have said goodbye to.

I dedicate this reunion to the ones which have been lost this year, and the ones which will never happen.

This chapter has not been betaed, so apologies for any typos.

The world woke with a dull, dragging throbbing. Or perhaps it was him who was waking (he didn't think so, he rathered it was the other way around). The blunt hammering of a headache resounding through his skull. The next sensation to enter his space of awareness was the glaring sun beating down on his face, the heat stinging his skin until it itched unpleasantly. The nape of his neck was also burning something dreadful and he gritted his teeth against the pain, which at the very least assured him that the nerve endings were intact.

Beyond the pounding headache and the pain on his neck, he heard a bird cry out in the distance, accompanied by the gentle lapping of water against a shoreline.

Harry flexed his hands. Warm, silky smooth dirt met his palms and gave way to his fingers like soft butter.

He opened his eyes and immediately had the good sense to shield his face with his arm.

The sky overhead was clear, the perfect gradient of pale blue to deep azure. A glaring white disc of brightness sat amongst that cloudless sea.

Harry pushed himself into a sitting position from the supine one he had found himself in. He brought his hand up, watching grains of sand drip to the ground from his fingertips. He lifted his gaze.

A long stretch of white sand extended out as far as his eyes could see, neighbour to a boundless, sparkling body of water. The air was ripe with a salty sea breeze.

Harry squinted. There were dotted silhouettes of seabirds in the distance, circling high above in the sky.

He stumbled to his feet, cradling his aching head. Of course it was gorgeous and a little slice of heaven on earth and all that poetic rubbish, but there were more important matters at hand than appreciating the scenery. Such as where the hell Peregrine's magical time-travelling portal had regurgitated him.

His eyes widened as the memory jolted back into his body.

"Hermione!" he yelled hoarsely, wincing as his voice cracked. He lurched forward a few more steps, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Hermione!"

His cries were met by silence. There was no one in view, not as far as he could see. Had something gone wrong? Peregrine had seemed so confident. As long as they focused on the time and place they needed to be, everything should have worked. Their first target was an impressionable Tom Riddle. The portal should have brought them to him, wherever in time he may exist. Yet he was here on a beach that couldn't have been less like England, he may as well have been on the opposite side of the world…

Harry slumped forwards onto his knees, gazing down at his trembling fingers.

He remembered now. Hadn't his thoughts ventured into the unwanted territory of Peregrine, living out his youth as a wandering renegade in Australia? At the most crucial point his mind had betrayed him and who knew where he was, where Hermione was, all he could now do was wait out the forty-five day time limit and pray to be brought back home…

Harry brought his fists down on the sand. The impact of beating against soft sand was far from satisfying. He eventually relented, chest heaving, and lowered himself further down to rest his forehead against the ground. He'd really fucked this one up. Biting his lip, Harry screwed his face up against the howl of fury at his own stupidity. An image surfaced of Ron, Hermione and Peregrine's disappointed faces when, if, he saw them again.

No. He couldn't collapse at the start line. He had to do something. If he truly had been taken to Peregrine, then Tom was still running rampant somewhere in this world. Besides, both people were required to be found, eventually. Despite his unexpected separation from Hermione, he could still take action. It wasn't as if he was crippled without her. She wasn't his crutch.

His head remaining bowed down, Harry drew in a deep breath of salty air, filling his lungs to the brim and oxygenating his brain. He expelled the breath through pursed lips and repeated a handful more times, washing away the mindless panic to be replaced by calm reason.

Harry pushed himself into a sitting position, bracing his hands against his knees as he properly evaluated his surroundings. The first thing to do was– wait, where was his wand? Harry scrambled around the sand, tossing it into his eyes as he floundered. He couldn't have lost his wand, he was as good as dead without it… his searching fingers found something long and solid.

"Yes! Wand!" Harry grabbed onto it greedily, tempted to kiss it, and looked further ahead. To his utter delight, his pack of supplies was lying further along the deserted beach. He dragged himself to his feet and stumbled through the sand to it, patting it down to ensure everything was intact. With that settled, he unfastened the mouth of the pack and pulled out his water bottle, giving it a shake. It was mostly empty. He unscrewed the lid and pointed his wand into it, muttering, "Aguamenti."

A clear jet of water filled the bottle to the brim. Harry carefully tucked his wand into its sheath, not terribly fond of the idea of losing it again, before shakily bringing the drink to his lips. He all but inhaled two full bottles of water before his headache finally began to recede, but there was barely any difference in the throbbing pain at the nape of his neck. Harry scraped his hair aside and gingerly brought his fingers to the stinging spot. It was tender to the touch but his cool fingertips offered some relief.

A burn, he supposed. He could deal with it later. He let his hair fall back and repacked his bottle before pulling the bag onto his back. All he had to do now was find his bearings.

He stood up, drawing himself up into the sea breeze which whipped his hair back into his face. He spat it out of his mouth and scowled. While unruly at best, he could tell this wind was going to transform it into his worst enemy. Harry summoned the broad-rimmed desert hat from his back and jammed it onto his head, tucking his hair messily up into it.

Then, armed with his wand and backpack containing all his bodily possessions in this world, he began his trek towards the new world.

Harry wasn't sure how long he had been walking for. To pass the time he set his sights on a tree in the distance, urging himself on with the promise of when you reach that tree, you can stop and rest. He couldn't remember how many such promises he had broken at this point in time.

His muscles ached and quivered from the seemingly endless effort. His skin was slick with sweat and he had stripped his shirt off at least five trees ago. While this succeeded in cooling him off, his shoulders were now chafed from where the straps of his pack dug into bare skin.

Harry flicked the brim of his hat upwards so that he could squint skyward. It hadn't yet deepened to navy, so he couldn't have walked for hours in the double digits… he gritted his teeth and soldiered on.

What are you even searching for? asked a little voice in his head.

"A sign, I don't know," Harry snapped back. "Anything's better than sitting still."

Fool, sneered the voice, which sounded suspiciously like the snide Phineas Nigellus. Wasting your energy without a stellar plan, nor so much as an idea of what you're marching towards. The little soldier who danced until his legs fell off.

"Shut up," said Harry sharply.

You cannot 'shut up' your own thoughts, silly boy.

"There's always a first for everything."

It only occurred to him then that he was truly arguing with the voice in his head and thought that this may be the first sign of madness and that he had better find some form of guidance soon, when it appeared before him.

It began as a speck in the distance. It may have just been another pebble in the sand. As Harry trod onwards, the shape enlarged, moulding itself into the lone figure of a person reclined in a beach chair underneath a large tree, wilting in the sun.

With a sudden surge in energy, Harry ploughed forwards with renewed vigour because at last here was something, a human, and Muggle or not he would finally know where the hell he was…

As he drew nearer he came to realise it was a young man wearing an open Hawaiian shirt with flamingos printed on it, his long legs stretched out before him. He was wearing a pair of sunglasses that were at least a few decades out of date of the 1990s and long, deep red hair was swept up into an effortless ponytail. His nose was stuck into a book, with several others scattered haphazardly around his feet, and Harry cringed when he imagined the sandy mess it would be later. There was a quill tucked behind one of the man's ears and–

"Oh! Quill!" said Harry aloud as he approached. Potentially a wizard, then?

The man glanced up from his book at the sound of Harry's voice, his dark-tinted glasses reflecting back the image of Harry's distant, dishevelled figure tramping along.

Even from the short distance separating them, Harry could see the man quirk a manicured eyebrow at the sight. He knew he probably looked mad, as though he had just escaped from a jungle or something, half-naked and trailing a pool of sweat, still wearing that ridiculous desert hat which set his face in shadow…

"Can I help you?" asked the man, his voice cool. He had lowered his book and was evaluating Harry with an expressionless face. Harry could see that his hand was clenched in his pocket, as if gripping a weapon. Harry paused a few metres away from him, his caution skyrocketing.

"Yes, I was rather hoping you could," he said, inconspicuously holding his hands in clear view to show that he was unarmed. "I just have a couple of questions." Moving slowly, afraid of spooking the edgy man, Harry reached up and removed his hat, cupping it against his chest. Sweaty, matted strands fell into his face and he shook them away impatiently, opening his mouth to speak again–

Only to close it again.

The man's face had suddenly drained of colour beneath his sunglasses, his lips were parted, quivering slightly. He stood up, long and lean, and reached out for Harry with the hand that was no longer in his pocket.

Alarmed, Harry took a step back, his own hand automatically going to his wand.

Suddenly coming back to himself, the man quickly retracted his arm. "I… I didn't mean to frighten you," he said. "It's just that you look a lot like someone I once loved dearly. Someone I've been searching for. For a while."

Harry paused in his retreat, his head tilting to the side curiously as he stared at the man, scanning over his sun-kissed skin and smattering of freckles across the high-bridged nose, the high cheekbones and the barely-visible five o'clock shadow, the Muggle-print shirt and the bare feet buried in sand.

The image in front of him was so heartbreakingly familiar to another snapshot he had not long ago conjured in the theatre of his imagination.

Long, auburn hair, pitch-black eyes, the loping gait of youth, sun-tanning in Australia, a quill behind an ear, the tip of his tongue tucked between his teeth as he consulted paper after paper–

The world suddenly became dizzyingly bright, drawn into sharp focus. Harry had not realised how blurred his vision had been until now.

He allowed the heavy backpack to slide off his chafed shoulders, landing with a dull thud in the sand, and dropped his hat to the ground. All baggage thrown to the wind. Despite the sensation that his feet had been transfigured into leaden weights, he forced himself forwards until they were nose-to-nose. The man may as well have been carved from stone. He may not have even been breathing.

Harry reached up and removed the man's sunglasses. He carefully folded the arms closed before raising his gaze back up to the man's face. Just as he had been expecting, a pair of dark eyes, as black as sin, met his.

He felt his own eyes crinkling into a smile for what felt like the first time in a small eternity. "I've been searching for you, too."

Peregrine burst into laughter and when he did, he shone so bright and young that it blinded Harry. He threw his arms around Harry, hunching down to press his forehead into Harry's shoulder. The sharp point of the quill behind his ear poked Harry in the neck but he couldn't find it within himself to care. He brought his own arms up hesitantly, moving to return the embrace but before he could, Peregrine pulled back and pushed Harry away, hands braced on his shoulders.

His nose was screwed up. "Sweet Merlin, Harry, you stink."

"Well, I haven't exactly had a portable en suite to cart around with me," said Harry, then tacked onto the end, "You just called me 'Harry'."

"Don't be ridiculous, Hardwin, why would I call you that?" said Peregrine, turning away from him to dab his eyes dry with a handkerchief he had seemingly conjured from thin air.

Harry stood to the side for a moment, watching him quietly, then reached out a hand to touch his cheek softly. Peregrine seized up, mannequin-like, his eyes travelling to meet Harry's.

"When did this happen?" Harry wondered aloud, his fingers exploring the stubble spanning across soft skin and the sharp angle of the jaw. "You didn't have this last time. How old are you, Peregrine?"

"Twenty-four." His lips barely moved, his gaze still glued upon Harry's features.

It was Harry's turn to freeze. "How many years have passed?"

"Six," Peregrine breathed. "It's 1951."

Harry lowered his hand, inclining his head a fraction. He heard Peregrine exhale quietly but could still feel a prickling sensation upon his face, indicative that he was the subject of intent focus.

"A lot must have changed," he said, raising his face again.

"You could say that," said Peregrine, and a bitter smile twisted his lips. "Merlin and Morgana, you look hardly different. Except the eyes. And the hair. Longer. I always thought you'd look good with long hair, but you had to go ahead and chop it all off during that rebellious phase of yours." He snorted and turned away, glaring out across the water. "This is such a cruel joke."

The sea breeze suddenly seemed a lot chillier than it had moments earlier. The sun slunk behind a cloud, throwing them into sudden shade. Peregrine's profile darkened.

"Peregrine," Harry began, then caught himself. He wasn't sure what he had been planning on saying. The first draft had been something along the lines of 'are you alright' but that seemed a silly question given the circumstances. He finally settled for, "What do you mean?" after an extensive pause.

Peregrine didn't respond immediately. Harry watched the transformation take place across his face. The furrow in his brow smoothed, the storm in his eyes ceased, as though it had never been there. When he turned back to Harry, all fondness had faded from Peregrine's gaze and Harry felt as if he were a mere stranger to the other. The warmth that had blossomed in his chest since their reunion shrivelled. A cold, sharp nail trailed down his spine unpleasantly and the hairs stood up on the back of his neck.

"I think you should leave now," said Peregrine. His voice was lined by shadows.

All the while praying beyond hope that Peregrine had simply developed a new, horrible sense of humour, Harry choked on a dry laugh and managed to articulate, "What?"

Peregrine held his gaze for a heartbeat longer, then turned his back and stormed less than gracefully away from Harry and began levitating the copious number of books surrounding his beach chair into a sleek russet briefcase which must have been bewitched with an extension charm.

This was not a joke.

His heart stamping a tattoo in his throat, Harry tripped after him.

"Peregrine!" he said, raising his voice. "What the hell?"

Once more, this yielded no response. Peregrine did not turn around, and the last of the books vanished into the briefcase's open, dark chasm before it snapped shut with a neat click of the brass clasp. He picked it up and started to walk away, the chair abandoned in the sand.

"Peregrine!" Harry shouted, running after him and wrenching at his shoulder, forcing him around, pressing for some form of acknowledgement. But Peregrine's eyes merely swept across then away from him, as though he were no more than the reflection of some long ago memory.

Harry's hand slid from his shoulder limply, his mind blanking as he watched Peregrine's figure slump away from him across the darkening horizon.

It was like saying goodbye before they'd even met.

Harry set his jaw, sucked in a deep breath until his chest swelled, then expelled it all out through a bellow which resonated through the still air. "Don't you turn your back on me, Lestrange!"

Peregrine didn't so much as flinch.

Harry felt a fleeting temptation to hurl the beach chair at his friend (the collision would be so satisfying to watch), but ultimately decided upon the more mature response. He darted back to grab his fallen belongings before chasing after Peregrine's retreating back.

Now that he had overcome the shock of the abrupt change in Peregrine's temperament, he was furious. He was going to get a reaction from Peregrine, even if he had to pry it from the other's cold, dead fingers. With a spurt of energy he hadn't known was within him, Harry threw himself at Peregrine's back, sending them both flying into the ground. Flailing, Peregrine shoved Harry off and scrambled back to his feet, spraying sand everywhere.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he yelled, albeit grittily through his mouthful of sand.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Harry spat back, shoving his face right up to Peregrine's. "One moment you're all chummy with me, the next it's like I've murdered your mum or something! What the bloody hell are you on?"

"I've realised my mistake," Peregrine said coldly, looking down his annoyingly straight nose.

"Then I'm ready to accept an apology at any time," Harry returned stiffly.

"I shouldn't have been chummy with you at all," said Peregrine sneeringly, and it was like looking at him across the Slytherin table that first night. The fire in the pit of Harry's stomach dimmed slightly and he sank back to his normal height, no longer elevated by amplified emotions. He and Peregrine stared at each other in silence for a long while, then finally he asked quietly, "Please, talk to me. What's going on?"

Peregrine popped.

"YOU'RE! NOT! REAL!" he roared, each syllable punctuated with the jab of his index finger into Harry's chest.

Harry stumbled back a step, his tongue tripping over itself to find the words to string together before falling into a clumsy heap after managing nothing.

Peregrine paced away, weaving a small, manic figure eight into the sand underfoot, lacing his fingers together around the crown of his head and tucking his chin towards his chest. Harry stood back, watching in dumbfounded silence.

"He can't be real, it makes no sense," Peregrine was muttering, head still cradled between his forearms. He was shaking. "Thought you were over this. Wishful thinking can't bring anyone back from the grave. Back to stage fucking one after six years!"

The latter line was uttered in a raised voice and kicked Harry out of his stupor. He tried to take in a deep, soothing breath, but it shuddered down his windpipe uncomfortably and it took a handful more goes before he had reclaimed some semblance of calm.

"Hey," he called out carefully, as though addressing a spooked creature, despite this never having been his forte. "Hey. Hey. Um, Peregrine. Can I come over to you?"

Peregrine had stopped pacing, but his figure remained curled, on the defence. He shook his head. He was staring straight down at the ground. "I'd rather you just leave," he said roughly. "I don't want your type around anymore. Please."

"Right," Harry said, swallowing his disappointment. He lingered on the sidelines, momentarily struggling to find the right words before settling on the most blunt path. "Could I just make one request? That you hear me out, and if you still want me to go when I've finished, I'll go."

Another beat of silence hung between them, almost tangible in its potency, then Peregrine said, "You weren't this diplomatic before you left."

"Time passes," Harry said. "Old dogs can learn new tricks."

"No, no, that's entirely wrong," said Peregrine, shaking his head in disagreement. "It goes that old Crups can't learn new tricks. Can't."

He had released his head and was looking at Harry again. He hadn't rejected the offer, but he wasn't smiling.

Harry shrugged. "Well, I guess I'm just more malleable than most."

This wasn't strictly true, and they both knew it but neither vocalised it.

"You weren't like this last time," Peregrine said.

"Like I just said," retorted Harry. He expelled a deep breath and sighed, dragging an exhausted hand through his hair and flinching when he accidentally touched the nape of his neck, still burning. "Look. Shall we just talk here?"

"You talk. I listen."

"Yeah, that," said Harry, a touch of irritability creeping into his voice.

This day was turning out to be trial after trial. Escaping Death Eaters, being blasted through some confounded time-travelling portal, trekking for hours with no hope on the horizon. Losing Hermione and Ron. But what really took the cake was somehow having to prove that he was in fact real.

"What the fuck," he mumbled, then pulled his wand out and pointed it at a convenient mop of wet, sandy kelp on the ground. It morphed itself into something akin to a dark green picnic blanket, and he threw himself onto it. His sore joints groaned their relief.

"What are you doing?" Peregrine asked in a hushed voice.

"Sitting," Harry snapped. "If that's alright with you. Unless imaginary people aren't allowed to sit down."

Peregrine stared at him. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

"Sorry," Harry said, despite the mild irritation still simmering beneath his skin. "D'you want to sit down here, too? Plenty of space far away from me. Not my best transfiguration, but it'll do."

He was sure that Peregrine would turn his nose up at the offer, but he settled down a little distance from Harry, still watching him. Carefully, almost warily, the way one might regard a fragile glass ornament balanced on a point, or a bomb.

"So," Harry said, awkward now that it had come to it. "I may as well start from the beginning. It might all sound a bit far-fetched. But then again, maybe not. Anyway–" he cleared his throat. "Over a year ago, me and Hermione were sent back into your time. Well, longer than a year ago for you. We didn't know how it happened. We'd been trying to use a time-turner to go an hour into the past to do… something." He tactfully left out the bit where he had put a pumpkin around Malfoy's head and fled the scene of the crime like a criminal. "But it ended up taking us back to your time. Fifty or so years. It was the scariest bloody thing, and Hermione… at the beginning, I know that deep down, what she was most concerned about was the fact that the time-turner did something outside of its textbook description. If we hadn't landed fifty years in the past, she'd have been hopping mad!" He started laughing then, despite how inappropriate it was given the current situation.

He could have sworn he saw the shadow of a smile on Peregrine's face from the corner of his eye, but it was gone a split second later.

He cleared his throat once more before continuing, his tone sobering. "Dumbledore knew about our dilemma, of course. He found us the minute we arrived. While me and Hermione posed as students, Dumbledore put that brilliant mind of his to the task of puzzling out how to send us home. He took some time. Thinking back on it now, it took too long."

Harry turned his face towards Peregrine slowly, carefully. Imploringly. A flower seeking the sun. Yet Peregrine's gaze still evaded Harry's, deeply shadowed.

"He said that someone had cast the Tempus Charm on the time-turner we'd used."

Here, Peregrine started, recognition of the name behind his years of research sending a spark of light zipping like a shooting star through his dark eyes. The slightest furrow formed between his eyebrows.

Harry maintained his unblinking gaze on Peregrine's face, willing for him to finally understand. "He also said the only way to go home was if we were killed by the hand of the one who had cast the charm."

"Riddle," said Peregrine quietly, then immediately looked like he wished he hadn't.

"Yeah," Harry said quietly, not at all as casual as he had hoped he could fake, repressing the inner turmoil which rattled around inside his ribcage, howling like a hungry ghost. "It's always him, isn't it? I was so stupid, so naïve, to have…" the words caught suddenly in his throat, roughening his voice.

"To have trusted him?" Peregrine asked, suddenly over-interested in the topic.

Harry shook his head, his mouth pulling into a grimace, removing his gaze from Peregrine's face to stare at his own hands with the splintered nails, the crevices filled with sand and dirt.

"No. I never trusted him. I don't think. Maybe I did, I can't remember anymore. I know I wanted to help him, as if he was some kind of kicked dog. Stupid. But trust him? I don't know, the lines blurred a while ago."

Peregrine's eyes drilled into the side of his face. It was the first time he had stared so intently at Harry since his accusation, and all of a sudden Harry wished that he would look away again.

"Then what were you stupid and naïve to have done?"

The memory of a face above his blurred before his eyes, cold and blue, as if he were seeing it from the bottom of a lake.

Harry's nostrils stung with the sensation of unshed tears. He blinked hard, his tongue heavy and dry, little more than a wad of sandpaper balled up in his mouth.

"It doesn't matter anymore," he managed to lump out, each word a thick paste. He cleared his throat heartily, his mouth twitching into a mocking smile. "It's too late. Anyway. I've forgotten where I got to."

From the corner of his eye, he saw that Peregrine had diverted his gaze again, once again more interested in this scenery around them than Harry

"The Tempus Charm," he said. "Riddle having to kill you to return you home. But… I find this tale to be an impossibility."

"And here we reach the purpose of my arrival here," Harry muttered, but Peregrine appeared not to hear him.

"Your story doesn't work because the Tempus Charm doesn't exist," he said, eyes narrowed and lips pinched. "Thomas Broughton-Tempus only ever wrote one paper on it as a theoretical concept, about a hundred years ago… and not a well-known one, either. I thought Dumbledore had sent me on a wild goose chase for the longest time…" he trailed off, clouds on the horizon reflected in his black irises.

"It works," said Harry, "because you're the one who takes up the mantle. That's the only way any of this is possible, because the Tempus Charm exists in my time. This was a finicky little puzzle, but Hermione figured it out. You publish your completed research in 1994. You're much looser with the details about the Tempus Charm than you are with your theory about a fluid past. So that's how Tom discovered the charm, how he created this time loop. We're, I mean, I'm here to break it so that the world finally has a chance at a future without Tom… without Voldemort."

"Even if the Dark Lord never comes to be, there will always be others," said Peregrine briskly.

"Trust me, I know," countered Harry, equally grim, and when he turned to look at Peregrine once more, their eyes finally met. "But I can't hold myself responsible for every possibility out there."

Peregrine chuckled into a dark chasm many octaves below his usual voice. "What happened to that kid who would have sacrificed his own soul to save the world?"

"I'm not a bloody martyr," Harry retorted, stung.

"Not anymore." Peregrine shifted, drawing one knee up to his chest and extending the other leg. He tossed Harry a lazy sideways glance. "Alright. I'm on the verge of believing you right now. But you lost me with the time loop stuff. Looks like you're going to have to teach me everything I taught you or whatever. But I've got to ask – aren't you breaking the number one rule of time travel by telling me all this?"

"Your book covers all of that. That rule only applies to one form of time travel, in a fixed time-line, the only form that wizards ever learned to meddle with… that is, before you came along. Time-turners facilitate travel through a fixed timeline, where the future cannot be altered. Or at least, if it is altered, indescribably terrible things could happen. Or so Hermione says. To be honest, I never really understood it. Hermione also says the Tempus Charm forced us back into a fixed timeline, since when we got home everything was as we had left it. Hence the time loop. The two of us were, and always will be, destined to spend a year in the past by Tom's hand." It sounded terribly, horribly romantic, in the worst way possible. Harry read the same sentiment on Peregrine's face and hurriedly ploughed onwards. "Needless to say, I haven't travelled here through a fixed timeline.

"You also explore theories around parallel universes, where events can create divergent timelines from the first. But this is still such an arcane subject and we have no manner of interacting with these parallel universes, nor do we know how they're created. This is still a subject far from understood, so there wasn't really much point in me bringing it up… just consider this irrelevant.

"Lastly, there's a dynamic timeline, where the future can be altered. Time is fluid. Future outcomes can be changed. You see, throughout your years of research, not only do you create a useable Tempus Charm, but you also break the barrier to a fluid past. You're the one who sent us back here now, and you're the one who is waiting to bring us back once we've done what we need to do. The fact is, you're the only one in the entire world who's able to do so."

It was only now that complete understanding dawned across Peregrine's face, like sunlight breaking through the clouds at the end of a rough storm. The creases on his face smoothed out and his lips parted slightly. If an exhale had a face of its own after a long breath held in, this would have been it.

"So you're here for me," he murmured. "You need me to stop what I'm doing."

"And have a little heart-to-heart with Tom Riddle," said Harry grimly.

Peregrine was silent for a long moment, staring into some unfathomable universe over Harry's shoulder, the machinery ticking over in his brain, then his face swept clear, a blank canvas once more. But where his features were bare of emotion, the deep sense of betrayal in his eyes were clear when his and Harry's gazes met.

"You're not going to remember any of this," he said.

"What?" The observation came so unexpectedly that when Harry forced a laugh, it almost came naturally. But not quite. It tasted like pepper burning up his throat. It scorched his lips. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't play dumb, it doesn't suit you," Peregrine said, though there was no venom behind it. It rang hollow, as the truth often does. "I take back what I said about you. You haven't changed one bit."

"I'm not sacrificing myself for the world!" Harry said sharply, but then his voice cracked, betraying him. "It's just… it's just a few memories."

"Memories are nothing to scoff at. They're all that some of us have. Memories are…" Peregrine's voice shimmered, flickered, ever so gently, like a candle in the breeze. "Memories are more precious than status. More precious than gold."

Harry glared at his feet, unable to bear looking into such a tender face any longer. "What the hell do you want me to do? This is it. This is our shot. And we all need you to play your role." He forced himself to soften, his eyes flicked upwards. "Could you do it, for me?"

"I would be the one responsible for what happens to you," Peregrine said, a hush shrouding him like a pale cloud. "If I stop, then when you return home, you'll live in a place where my research never existed. A paradox. You'll live a life as if none of this ever happened. And only us, the ones you leave behind, will remember."

"You don't need to need to spell it out for me," Harry whispered back. "I've thought it over for a while. It'll be alright. We'll be alright."

He held out a hand, brown and filthy and scarred. He didn't allow it to tremble.

Peregrine stared at the proffered hand, unreadable in all ways, and for a split second Harry was certain he was going to stand up and walk away, but then he extended his own hand, soft and manicured. Harry marvelled at the contrast, the feeling of smooth skin beneath his callouses. They shook once, a promise sealed.

His lips compressed to a flat line, his eyes hooded, Peregrine breathed, "Alright."

Peregrine jiggled the key in the lock of the entrance to his city apartment, swearing under his breath when the lock caught again.

"Damn, bloody thing," he muttered. "I could've sworn I'd fixed it just this morning… I'd use magic on it myself for a permanent fix if I knew the spell for this claptrap Muggle junk."

Harry glanced over the balcony behind them, casting his gaze up and down the main street, the footpaths swarming with harried-looking women in full-skirted dresses and exhausted men with hats stuffed on their heads, the roads cluttered with models of cars he'd only ever seen in museums, junkyards or on vintage posters. The peak hour rush home after work.

"I'm amazed you've deigned to live among Muggles," he said, returning to watching as Peregrine finally managed to open the door and wrestle the key back out of the lock.

"Don't be like that, Hardwin," said Peregrine, who had reinstated the title after multiple pedestrians had interacted with Harry in any manner (namely skirting around him where possible, due to his wild appearance and even wilder smell), removing any lingering traces of doubt that Harry was, in fact, a figment of his imagination. "I've learned that Muggles aren't all that bad, when they keep their noses to themselves. Good safeguards, too. No one would expect to find me in the middle of Muggle territory."

Harry raised an eyebrow, following Peregrine into the unlit entranceway of the apartment. Peregrine slammed the door shut behind them and locked the door, then lifted his wand in a manner reminiscent of a conductor instructing an orchestra to lift their instruments. Light bloomed from the lamps positioned throughout the apartment.

It was far plainer than Harry had expected. Beyond the sparse furniture, inclusive of a sofa, dining table and an armchair, the only thing characteristic about the place was the number of books, quills and sheets of loose parchment smattered upon every surface in sight. Harry wandered through the apartment, gently alighting his fingers upon the walls, the books, the parchment. Some of the scribblings looked vaguely familiar. A five-pointed star, which Harry recognized as the one which had later been integrated into Peregrine's design for the travel portal, had been scrawled messily onto one sheet. Harry ran his index finger across the star vaguely, before glancing up to see that Peregrine was watching him from across the room.

"It's not much," Peregrine said, scratching his ear a little, his face slightly redder than it had been a moment ago. "But I move around a lot, so I've got to settle for places I can get quick."

"I wasn't expecting a five star hotel room," Harry said. "Besides, it's plenty. I once lived under a staircase, so I'm no connoisseur of accommodation."

Peregrine wrinkled his nose, clearly put at ease. "Why in Merlin's name would you want to live under a staircase?"

"Not by choice," said Harry, exasperated.

"Hey, I'm not judging your preferences," said Peregrine, throwing his hands up. "But would you mind taking a shower now? I said it before and I'll say it again - you stink."

The shower, for one, was pure luxury. Beneath a warm jet of water, Harry scrubbed away weeks' worth of sweat and grime on his skin and washed his mop of hair which he finally acknowledged had reached an unmanageable length after a year's growth time. The nape of his neck still stung with contact. If only Hermione was here, it would surely be an easy fix for her.

After simply standing beneath the water for a while longer, he shut it off, dried with the towel Peregrine had left for him, used a quick drying spell on his hair and dressed into a set of clean clothes from his pack. He then braced his arms against the sink to stare at himself in the mirror for the first time in an age. The constant sun exposure had warmed his skin to a deeper brown and left an almost imperceptible collection of freckles on his face. His hair now liberated of sweat to plaster it down, it was as unruly as it had ever been and sprung past his thin shoulders. Stealing the razor on the sink, Harry lathered up some soap and plastered it to the mousy excuse of a moustache that had grown, nicking himself only once. Searching the bathroom cupboard for anything else that could refresh him, he uprooted Peregrine's toothbrush and toothpaste, mouthwash, a bottle of painkillers, a handheld mirror, a packet of condoms and several hair elastics. He nicked one of the latter and scraped his hair back into something more manageable. It was then that he heard a muffled crash on the other side of the door.

He seized his wand and flew out of the bathroom, expecting to find Peregrine confronted by an assailant or two, only to see Peregrine standing over an upturned armchair torn open from the base, chest heaving and eyes manic. The rest of the room had been trashed, books thrown in disarray and parchment pages crumpled around the floor.

Harry gaped at the scene before him. "What happened?"

Peregrine started. Setting his sights on Harry, he stalked towards him, kicking away obstacles along the way. He held his wand, his hands flying about him madly as he advanced. The words that jumbled out meant little more than gibberish to Harry.

"I was going to burn it, I swear I hid it in the stuffing, it was there only a couple of days ago, but it's not there anymore, I don't know who could've done it, no one's ever searched the armchair before–"

Peregrine's pupils were blown wide, his eyes darting around the room, rarely settling on Harry for more than a millisecond at a time.

"You need to explain to me what's going on," Harry said, crisply cutting through the rant and holding out a hand to slow Peregrine's advance. Peregrine immediately seized the hand like a lifeline.

"It's gone," he hissed. "Someone has stolen my research!"

Harry's mouth went dry, his chest hollowing. He glanced around at all the parchment still lying around them and tried for a logical approach. "All of it?"

"All that matters," Peregrine groaned, tossing Harry's hand to the side and lurching away to throw himself onto the upturned armchair, caging his face between his fingers. "Everything I've finalised. Harry… if someone else has got it, they can continue it. It'll take years, but I've given them enough for a strong foundation – and more. You understand what this means, don't you?"

"Research still out there, time loop not broken," Harry muttered and lifted his gaze skywards in a silent prayer for strength to whichever higher being out there was listening, if such a thing existed. "And so the plot thickens."

Stay safe everyone, and look after yourself and others. And if you don't hear from me until later, an early Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

(although I have my doubts about 2021)

Ah I almost forgot to say, I'm slowly editing When in Rome (the first part) and the first two chapters have been updated so far on Archive of Our Own. While I'm not going to make any plot changes, I'm improving the writing quality and hopefully tying it together a little better considering it's already finished and I finally know where everything's going. So if you're ever keen on a re-read, you can pop on over there where you can find me under the same username. I'll probably update the chapters here on FFN as well, but AO3 is where the majority of my reading base is.