Harry, Ron and Hermione sat around a golden cauldron full of a bubbling gold liquid that was gently steaming as a blue fire raged under it.

"It's almost finished. I can believe that three fifth year students were able to brew the Paradox Limiting Opalescent Temporal Deviation Engine Variation In Calcifying Emulsion." Hermione said.

"You're the smartest student in Hogwarts, if anybody could do it, it would be you." Harry replied. Hermione blushed at the praise.

"Yeah," Ron said, "It's almost as cool as the time when you used the felly-tone to make that delicious pizza show up at our door." Harry looked at Ron, then Hermione. Ron continued, " Oh! Harry, you weren't there. Hermione just picked up the felly-tone and told it what we wanted and then fifteen minutes later she found pizza on our front step." Ron was very enthusiastic, "I don't know how she got around the Trace and she wouldn't tell me how to make the felly-tone work, but it was so cool and the pizza was really good."

"There is a place that delivers close to the Burrow, and Mrs. Weasley was making beet stew." Hermione explained. "But lets talk about that later, we need to finish the potion soon its almost cool enough to pour."

"Uhh… Hermione, forgive me if this sounds like a stupid question but isn't hot fire supposed to make the potion hot?" Harry asked.

"Well yes, but this potion works backward we had to cool it down to heat it up and heat it up to cool it down." Hermione shrugged " It flow backwards in time, that's why all the ingredients went in in the beginning and we had to separate them out later."

"Alright… I'll take your word for it." Harry muttered.

" Now we need to bury these glass vials in quartz sand." Hermione said as she made a few final adjustments. The two boys quickly formed three mounds of sand around the glass vials, being careful not to get any sand into the vials. Hermione extinguished the flames and pronounced the potion ready and they all gathered around it. Ron and Harry picked up the metal rings and lifted the solid gold cauldron up off of its stand. Hermione did her best to keep the top flat and steady to prevent anything from splashing out.

"Bloody hell! whose idea was it to make a solid gold cauldron?" Ron complained.

Harry snapped at him to be quiet. This small lapse in concentration was enough for disaster to strike. A glass stirring rod had rolled into the path of Harry's left foot.

Harry stepped on it, and panicked as his foot flew out from under him. He grabbed the lip of the cauldron in a reflexive attempt to stay upright.

Crash!

The potion fell and splashed all over the Boy-Who-Lived. The cauldron fell onto Harry's stomach knocking the wind out of him and allowing a large portion of the motion to enter into his mouth.

Harry was on the floor. He was mostly sure how he got there.

Everything was silent. Nothing was moving. Ron and Hermione were standing absolutely still.

Then it a roar sound, movement and life came back.

"Harry, Harry are you okay?" Hermione asked.

"Yeah, I think so." Harry slowly got up, rubbing his head where he got hit as he fell. " That was unpleasant." he said.

"Woah, mate are you okay?" Ron asked.

"Yeah. I'm good." Harry repeated

"Do we need to take you to the Hospital Wing? I don't know what the potion will do to you." Hermione was very worried. "I think madame Pomfrey should look at you."

"I just want to be washed off." Harry said " I feel fine, just a little shaken up. If anything happens we can go to the Hospital Wing, but this is against the rules and we need to stay out of trouble while Umbridge is still here."

"Allright." Hermione wasn't convinced. "But, if anything happens, we get you checked out."

The Trio began the walk back to Gryffindor Tower in low spirits. Three months of work had all been a waste and there wouldn't be another opportunity for the potion for another year. They would have to start over then.

It just wasn't fair. They had worked so hard for this and it get messed up and Harry had almost gotten really hurt or worse.

The next morning, Harry woke up to the sun shining through the dorm window. He got up changed into his school robes and walked down into the common room. Just as he normally did every morning.

When he got down to the common room, Harry noticed a difference in the morning routine. Nothing was moving. There was no sound

Everything was frozen. The people, the fire, even the ball that Fred and George were throwing just hung in mid air. Harry tried to unfreeze them with his wand but the spells formed at the tip and them didn't move through the air, just hung in the air like little colorful lights or slight heat distortions. Harry tried to move them but they were like pushing a book across a table, just no life.

Harry ran up into the dorms to see that Ron and Dean had started to get up but had been frozen as well.

Harry ran up the stairs to the girl's dorms to check on Hermione. He only half noticed that the stairs didn't transfigure into a slide as he ran up then. He opened the door.

Ohh.

Hermione and Parvati hadn't finished getting dressed yet. Their partially clad figures were quite a lot for the fifteen year old wizard who felt the blood rushing towards his groin,

Harry just slowly backed out of the dorm, his eyes firmly fixed on the exposed skin until he could no longer see it.

He kept backing up until he ran into the table. The sudden contact shocked Harry, he gasp and his pulse skyrocketed.

Then a flood of sound, Fred (or maybe George) fell over. Sheamus yelped as as his tie turned back into a sock. The stairs turned into a slide and the flying ball hit Colin Creevey in the face.

"Oh, hey, Harry didn't see you come down." George (or maybe Fred) said. "When did you get up?"

"Just a minute ago," Harry said "Did you notice anything strange a few seconds ago?"

"Well, Sheamus's tie turned into a sock and-"

"No. Just before that."

"Not really, was that a prank, because if so, good one."

"Wasn't a prank."

George (maybe) just grinned and nodded knowingly before pressing his finger to his lips and smirking. "I gotcha, Harry, no need to worry about ole' Fred spilling the beans"

Crap! Not George. Probably.

Harry sat down in his favorite armchair, very confused.

Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!

Harry quickly turned to look at the source of the scream, Parvati had just slipped down the slide/stairs.

"Not funny!" she yelled. Her glare stopped most of the snickers. She picked herself up and brushed herself off before waving her wand and fixing the stairs with a mumbled phrase. "If I catch who ever did this, I will get even!" She yelled.

Harry turned red at the sight of her and buried his face in his hands.

"Hey, Harry what was going on down here?" Hermione asked from behind him.

"Oh, hey, Hermione," Harry said nervously, "The stairs had been turned into a slide and Padma fell down them."

"And how are you feeling today?" Hermione asked.

"Uhh… fine I guess, I just had a weird morning." Harry said, to nervous to look at her.

"Weird how?"

"Seamus' tie turned into a sock."

Harry refused to look at Hermione until breakfast was over.

All through out transfiguration, Harry went over the events of the morning in his head, trying to figure out what caused it. Or even what happened.

He wanted to know if the potion incident had anything to do with it. The experimental potion was supposed to grant the user the ability to make everything work to their advantage. Like a luck potion but more controlled. Or at least thats what the records from the experiments said it did. But it seemed like time had frozen in place, just nothing moved and not even a second passed, all the clocks in the Gryffindor tower were still accurate, so it wasn't just the room.

Maybe this was the power of the potion.

Harry knew he had to find out one way or another.

Harry began to try to remember how being in the frozen world felt, tried to imagine the class frozen. It didn't work.

Harry sat in the library trying to focus on the homework in front of him. He didn't make any progress as he stared at the parchment. Between the memory of mostly naked Hermione and the potential new powers his mind was far away.

"Harry?" Hermione asked from across the table. " You have been staring at your pen for almost a ten minutes. Are you feeling alright?"

"Just a bit distracted, you know, with all this crap thats happening right now." Harry smiled at Hermione, he didn't want her to worry about him. " Hermione, I'm fine." Hermione smiled back at him.

"We should really try to get some work done or Flitwick will be cross." Hermione stood and walked over to Harry's side. "Want me to look over what you've got." She said, and held out her hand for the parchment.

"Uhh… sure," Harry passed her the sheet, "I'm not sure what to do with the extra space, I wrote down everything I could think of."

"Let me see… " Hermione scanned the essay, "You forgot about the incantation origin, it's Latin based but it was altered by the French, then adapted into English."

"Brilliant, that should give me enough." Harry took back the parchment and began to write out a linguistic history of the silencing charm. "Hey, Hermione?" Harry asked.

There was no answer, the usually quiet library was completely silent. It took Harry a moment to to realise what was happening. He was scared to look up. Harry was a little scared of this still world, the silence was unnatural and the constant stillness was absolutely wrong. It set the little tiny, ancient, animal part of Harry's brain into a frenzy.

Harry slowly looked up, things were still, Hermione was in the middle of turning a page, Madam Pince was either trying to sit or stand, a student had dropped a quill which was stopped almost a half meter above the ground. Harry could hear his own breathing, it was creepy. He slowly stood up, even the chair being pushed back caused no noise. The Boy-who-lived slowly began to wander around the shelves of the library. He brushed past the frozen students, still focused on the books, he walked around just looking at the frozen world.

Then Harry saw a particular student. He grinned an evil grin.

Draco Malfoy was in the library and a still and frozen as everyone else. Harry couldn't resist.

Harry circled the Slytherin, like a shark around helpless prey. What to do? Harry thought, What to do? Then Harry had a wonderful idea, in the Common room, Harry's spells had worked, just after time had started again. Harry began to cast, little things, tripping jinxes, little prank hexes, and a misfortune curse. Nothing that would hurt the idiot, just humiliation, lots and lots of humiliation..

Harry felt that Sirius would laugh over this. Maybe, Harry's father would have too. Harry was a little giddy with the flawless implementation of a perfect plan to wreak a little undetectable havoc on one of his least favorite people.

The small high of success carried Harry back through the shelves and around the people still frozen. Right up until Harry almost ran face first into the very pretty Susan Bones.

Harry Potter, was a good person, a hero who would risk his life for just about anybody. He had saved lives, fought monsters with almost no concern for his own safety. Harry Potter was also a teenage boy, with all the hormones and potential bad decisions that entailed.

Harry Potter was less than ten centimeters from a very pretty girl and wasn't in the clearest of moods. Susan Bones was very pretty and there was no one watching.

Harry lasted almost a full twenty five seconds before his big head lost to his little head.

Susan had rather stunning breasts.

Harry carefully pulled her outer robe off before lifting her jumper over her chest and working her shirt open. She wasn't wearing a bra. Harry couldn't believe this was actually happening. He could do anything like this.

Harry Ran his hands over Susan's breasts, he flicked he nipples, nothing happened. Harry supposed that nothing would happen when the world was still, though he was disappointed. Harry pushed Susan's breasts together lifting them up and making them seem much larger. They stayed press together. Harry laughed at the ridiculous floating breasts. Harry redressed Susan trying to make sure everything was as it had been before.

Harry quickly moved back to his seat, he could feel a sensation not unlike a building pressure getting ready to burst and he wanted to make sure that he wasn't caught. He made it back to his chair and sat down trying to remember how he had been before.

The pressure bubble burst, sound and movement rushed in.

Susan made a noise, a moan and a yelp at the same time.

Malfoy just shrieked as he fell forward and hit the ground, hard. His bag spilled open and all of the contents spilled out.

"Who did this?" Malfoy yelled "My father-"

"Mr. Malfoy," Madam Pince interrupted. "This is a library you will be silent or you will leave."

Malfoy flushed red, anger and embarrassment playing over his face. Harry thought, hoped, that he would start to yell, but all the Slytherin did was scoop up his belongings and march to a table.

Harry spared one more glance at Susan who was bright red, her hand over her mouth.

Harry smirked as he felt the free flow of time rush by. He willed it to stop, felt a blockage like a dam in a river, and everything did, for a moment. The dam broke as Harry let it go and time moved forward.