CHAPTER 2

Speeding towards a dark abyss. Rushing wind. Falling. Hard. Fast.

Bolting up in bed, wand in hand, heart pounding in his chest, he looks around in a panic.

No one is there.

He takes a deep breath, a slow breath. In. Out. In. Out. Letting the motion ebb his terror.

'Tempus,' he casts the spell silently with a flick of his wand in the air. In a gray shimmer the time appears. 03:03:15

The seconds ticked up. 16, 17, 18. "Damn, it's still so early," he mumbles to himself and lays back down. Covering his eyes with his left arm, his right hand clutching the Elder wand.

He lowers his left arm, opens his eyes and looks about a bit more calmly. It's pitch black and he's in a small enclosed space. He starts feeling around in the dark.

As his hands map the sloped rectangular indentations above him, he catches sight of his very small frame. He looks down. He's on top of a lumpy camping mattress covered in a worn blue sheet. He looks himself over and is startled. He's short and all his muscle mass is gone.

The tiny room, the weight loss, the oversized pajamas. Flashes of his early years rush past his eyes unbidden. "What kind of nightmare is this?" he whispers to himself.

Not wanting to panic he tries to get his bearing once again. Making sure he's in the real world and not trapped in his mind, or worse, someone else's. Since scars map out his life he checks those.

He inspects his right arm first. Nothing. Strange. He was expecting to see the scar from the basilisk fang on his forearm. There is only pale unblemished skin. He is also missing the thin line from the ritual knife Pettigrew used for the resurrection ritual as well as the etched sentence on the back of his hand from Umbridge's blood quill. Taking a deep breath he reaches to touch his forehead and feels the scar that first cursed his life. It's slightly raised. He knows that if he conjures a mirror that it would be red, like a cut trying to heal but never scabbing. The last time it felt this way, well, he rather not think about that actually.

"Stupid scar acting up. Flashes of pain with Quirrell, then nothing with the diary, which made no sense since the locket made it flare up like the dickens. Then fourth year, oh that was a bad one," he mumbles. He lays down, closes his eyes, and thinks back. "Bloody tournament, bloody Death Eaters, bloody Ministry, bloody Volde…" He bolts up again, eyes peering at the darkness in surprise. He waves his wand to seal and silence the small room. He sends out a pulse that comes back to him. Three signals from the level above. With a shaking hand he casts Tempus Annum, the date-time charm.

03:08:11 03-08-1985

He stares at it for a minute, watching until the minute mark changes. He counts every single tick. He finally blinks and with another wave of his wand the digits frizzles out like a candle in the drizzling rain.

"I'm back." His voice full of shock and incredulity. Then, as if the invisible strings holding him up were abruptly cut, he falls back on the bed.

Long forgotten emotions slam into him. Tears flow unbidden. His body shutters. Left hand crushing his mouth and nose, muffling his soul wrenching cries. Right hand never dropping his wand. Both survival instincts carved into him deeper than the scars that used to litter his body.

He's back. He could save so many. All those whose names he knew too well, all those he didn't. He could stop it all before it even started. For the first time in a millennium, Harry cried himself to sleep.


He wakes up about an hour later to find that it hadn't been a dream. He really is back. He sits up and decides it would be best to meditate and get his occlumency barriers in order and reinforced. Not only did he have too much to hide but it would also temper any future emotional collapses. Plus, dealing with everything that happened to him along the onslaught of puberty, again, was not a good combination.

It took two hours but everything is safely tucked away which has the bonus of further securing the soul-leech. He didn't like having to be a horcrux again but he knows how to get rid of it so he doesn't harp on it.

Now that he isn't going to burst into tears upon seeing someone he had seen die before, he has to think of a plan. Something effective, if not a tad ridiculous, to end this madness before anymore people started dying.

He cracks his back and shakes himself like a wet dog. The change was instant. There was no way he was going to run around looking like a child. Then he casts a small light charm and conjures writing materials then gets to work. He has a plan to hatch. It might even be fun. It was supposed to be a holiday after all.