Privet Drive looked very different from what Harry remembered. But then, it had been a few years since he had been there, and a lot had happened in those years.

The last time Harry had been there was the summer after his sixth year at Hogwarts, after Dumbledore had been murdered. The Order had arrived to escort him to the Burrow and to escort the Dursleys to a safe house somewhere. That was the last time Harry had seen them. The safe house the Dursleys were in had been attacked during the war and the house burned down. Aunt Petunia's body had been found in the ashes, along with two bodies that had been burnt beyond recognition but were no doubt Uncle Vernon and Dudley.

They were among the lucky ones who had died before the Return.

"Harry, what are you doing?" Hermione's curt voice snapped Harry out of his reverie. He shook his head, realizing that he had been walking along the road without keeping an eye out like he was supposed to. "Sorry," he said, giving Hermione a sheepish look. "This place is bringing too many memories back. I got lost in my thoughts."

Hermione's glare softened marginally.

"I know what you mean, mate," Ron said. "Never thought I'd be back here, either." He glanced around, shivering.

The war had not been good to Harry's old home street. The asphalt on the road was cracked, with enough potholes to make driving on the street impossible, despite the fact that no one had cars anymore. The homes were rundown, with broken windows and junk-ridden, overgrown yards. The suburb hadn't been affected by some of Voldemort's more flamboyant attacks, but the general neglect and fear had taken its toll.

Harry saw a movement in a window of one of the houses. If he remembered correctly, the house had belonged to Mark Evan's family. He kept a close eye on it as they passed, twisting his head around to watch for the tell-tale feeling of wrongness that accompanied the Shades.

"Harry?" Hermione asked. He shook his head. "Something moved, but it doesn't feel like a Shade. I think it's either an animal or a human."

"Don't look!" Ron said as Hermione started to turn. "If it is a human, then we don't want to attract attention. If they know how to recognize disillusionment charms, then we're screwed."

"And if it's a Shade?" Hermione asked.

"I just said it's probably not," said Harry irritably. Ron shrugged. "If it is a Shade, then it's already seen through the charm and it's too late."

Hermione sighed. "I miss apparating," she muttered.

Harry nodded in silent agreement. Apparition was too dangerous for them, now that Voldemort could track it. The only ones who apparated anymore were the death eaters. The trio had traveled for weeks on foot, weaving their way through the country to get in touch with the last pockets of resistance. As Voldemort's return had grown obvious and the world had grown aware of the war, the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's army had been joined by other witches and wizards. And when the war had escalated so much that keeping the wizarding world secret had become impossible, the resistance had been joined by muggles.

It was something that had surprised Harry, and had probably taken Voldemort completely aback, but the muggles were more effective than the magical world was. The death eaters did not understand muggle technology and weapons, and so they underestimated them.

It was from one of those muggles that had set Harry, Hermione, and Ron on their scavenger hunt among the centers of resistance.

A group in London had been salvaging books from both muggle libraries and wizarding homes and combing through them in search for something that would help give them an edge.

They had found a book on time travel. The wizards had quickly cast it aside as useless since everyone knew that time turners were the only means of time travel, and they only went back five hours before it became too dangerous, but one of the muggles had taken and read it and found an experimental spell that had seemed promising. The Ministry's research into time travel had been destroyed with the fall of the Ministry, but the people who had looked at the spell seemed to think it was worth a shot.

The notes and instructions just looked like nonsense to Harry, but Hermione thought it might be possible.

Unfortunately, the list of potions ingredients required were long and varied and they couldn't just waltz into an apothecary and buy what they needed, so a quick visit to various safehouses had been necessary to pick up ingredients. It helped that they had been planning to make the attempt at Harry's childhood home and just took a circuitous route. The trip had taken them a few months, but they had finally arrived.

They stopped in front of number four. It was intact and looked the way Harry remembered, albeit unkempt. He grabbed Aunt Petunia's spare key from the flower pot by the front door and unlocked the door. Once they were inside, they followed the careful routine they had developed over the years: Ron inspected the ground floor for traps or spells, Hermione placed the protective enchantments, and Harry helped Ron until the house was cleared and then helped Hermione finish her rune circle.

Once everything was finished, they sat in the living room staring at each other.

"Right," Harry said, clearing his throat nervously. There was no excuse for them now; no last minute supplies that needed to be fetched or theories to be researched. "I guess we should get started, then."

The time travel spell combined potions and runes together, and like most magic, involved the witch or wizard focusing mentally on what they wanted. Unlike time turners, which employed an hour-reversal charm, the spell was designed to tear a hole in the fabric of time big enough for a person to slip through. When she had first read the description, Hermione had gotten excited and started rambling about some muggle scientific theory, which had all gone over Harry's head, but from what he understood, it might be possible for a powerful magic user to force whatever time was made off apart and create a hole.

They cleared all of the furniture out of the living room, and Hermione drew a large circle of runes on the bare floor and set up her cauldron with her trademark bluebell flames underneath. She pulled out her bag of potions ingredients and began brewing.

Two hours later, Hermione was feverishly stirring the potion with a look of concentration on her face. Harry could tell from the color of the smoke exuding from the bubbling cauldron that it was at a critical stage. They had all pored over the recipe for hours, and had memorized every step. Not that it stopped Hermione from keeping the book in front of her. She checked it again, for the umpteenth time.

It made Harry wish that Fred and George were still with them; he knew how good they had been at potions, despite their dismal grades in it at school. That wasn't even their fault, though, it was Snape's. Thinking about it made Harry regret that Snape was dead. He had a few things he would have liked to discuss with him.

The potion reached the temperature it was supposed to, and Hermione carefully added the final ingredient and stirred. They all held their breath as bubbles rose to the surface, and then a silver shimmering vapor followed.

Ron audibly let his breath out.

"What are you so anxious for?" Harry laughed tiredly. "You're not going to be the one using it."

"No, but I'm going to have to watch you use it," he retorted. Their eyes met. Harry understood what he meant. After everything that had happened, everything they had lost, and all of it together it was hard for Ron and Hermione to watch him take on this adventure alone.

But there was no other way. The potion only made enough for one person to travel back, and it would take too much time to prepare again. Voldemort had taken over the country and was invading the rest of the world. There was no chance of defeating him now, and even if they could, there would be no world left to save. It was their last chance to save everyone, and it was an untested spell that no one had heard of before.

"Thirty more minutes at a constant boil," Hermione said, "and then we take it off the heat and cover it." She consulted the book again.

Ron flopped onto the couch. "Mate, why do you keep checking that? We all know you have it memorized."

"Does it hurt to check again?" Hermione asked him. She put the book back down on the table and sat next to Ron on the couch. They all stared silently into space, thinking and remembering.

Harry thoughts wandered again to his memories of Privet Drive. About where they were, and how the place had changed. There was a myriad of memories associated with the house, most of them bad, but with a few good ones thrown in there, like when Ron, George, and Fred had rescued him second year, or when the Order had showed up fifth year and rescued him.

Most of them were dead now. Either dead, imprisoned, or disappeared. And it was all in this house where it had started.

The plan had been for them to use polyjuice, and divide into groups to confuse the death eaters. But then everything had gone wrong when Snape had killed George, and Remus had retaliated and killed Snape. The deaths just kept coming after that: Bill and Fleur hadn't made it out of their wedding alive, the students and teachers at Hogwarts who had tried to fight back were publicly executed to discourage others from following their example, and almost the entire Order had been slowly picked off.

And that was all before the dead started coming back. No one knew how, but somehow Voldemort had become a necromancer, and the Shades had started popping up. Not inferi; those were just reanimated corpses with no memory of their life. The Shades remembered who they had been, and they were completely controlled by Voldemort. Harry was familiar enough with the muggle concept of zombies from Dudley's video games, and they were similar, except Shades could think.

The old cuckoo clock on the wall chimed, startling Harry out of his thoughts for a moment. He was surprised that the clock still worked. The house had been abandoned for a few years, ever since the Order took the Dursleys into hiding.

Hermione broke the silence. "Alright, Harry, what's the plan once you make it through?"

Ron groaned, shifting in his seat. "Come on, 'Mione, we've already been through this a thousand time. He knows what to do."

But Hermione kept her eyes fixed on Harry. He sighed and ran a hand through his already tangled hair, tangling it even more.

"I have to focus on when I want to travel to. I have to envision it completely in my mind, like with apparating. And then I step through the smoke, still focusing on the date I want to go to."

"Which is?"

"September 1, 1991."

Hermione nodded. "Good. And once you're there?"

"I contact Dumbledore and tell him about everything. If we can, we find and destroy Riddle, and if we can't, then we stop him from gaining power. Then I find and personally kill a couple death eaters."

Hermione's eye twitched at that last statement. Harry knew she wanted to object to it, but they had already had this argument multiple times and she knew he would have his revenge.

"And then?" she prompted again.

Harry's mouth tightened. "I… relax. And enjoy my life." The words tasted strange in his mouth. It was something he'd never expected being able to do.

"And you have the notes I wrote up for you?" Harry patted the moleskin pouch from Hagrid that was hanging from his neck. "Got 'em right here."

Hermione nodded. "Good." She glanced over at the clock, then the cauldron. "I think it's almost ready."

"The question is, are you almost ready?" Ron joked.

Harry managed a half-hearted smile. "I'm gonna have to be."

It was hard to prepare for time travel, especially with so much at stake. But the hardest thing for him would probably be having to see everyone again- the Weasleys, Remus, Sirius, Tonks, McGonagall… they would all be there. Everyone who was now gone, and he would have to face them, talk to them... he didn't know how he could do it without breaking down and crying.

"It's ready," Hermione's quiet voice announced.

Harry looked up, taking a deep breath. Ron stretched, his arms high in the air. "Well, this is it, mate. Good luck." The unspoken words, "you're going to need it," hung in the air between them.

Harry took another deep breath and stood up. Hermione lifted the lid of the cauldron, revealing the shimmering silver sea inside.

"It's beautiful." For some reason, Harry was surprised by that.

Hermione carefully lifted the cauldron from the table and poured it into the rune circle on the floor. The silvery potion spread to the edge of the runes and then stopped.

"When the fog appears," Hermione reminded Harry again, "step completely into the circle and stay there, concentrating on when you want to go to.

Harry nodded, his eyes fixed on the circle.

His concentration was shaken by a yell, coming from above them

Ron frowned. "Did that come from upstairs?"

There was another indistinguishable shout, this time definitely coming from upstairs.

"We forgot to check the entire house when we got here," Harry groaned.

"Don't beat yourself up about it. We were in a hurry, and didn't expect anybody to be here," said Hermione.

Ron pulled out his wand.

"Don't do anything!" Hermione yelled. "Casting spells near the potion will disrupt the magical field!"

"But there's someone up there!" Ron said desperately. His eyes flickered towards the circle on the floor. Tiny wisps of smoke were beginning to form.

"Just ignore it. They don't know we're here, and have no reason to come downstairs." Despite her words, Hermione's eyes flickered to the stairs. "Harry, are you ready?" she asked tersely.

Harry nodded wordlessly. His throat was dry.

The first wave of smoke was rising from the potion and Harry was mentally preparing himself to step into it just as a drunken Vernon Dursley stumbled down the stairs and into the room, stopping just inside the circle.

"No," Hermione said. For some reason, her voice was calm.

Vernon caught sight of Harry. His face filled with rage. "Potter! This is your fault! They're dead because of you!"

Vernon's body started to fade out as the smoke waved around him. He looked down, and, realizing his body was disappearing, reached out to hurl the empty bottle in his hand at Harry. Just as the bottle would have left his hand, Vernon disappeared, hurtling through time and space.

"Well," Ron said, "Someone's going to get a surprise."

"I wonder what time he was thinking off," was Hermione's response.

Harry was full of despair. "That was our last chance."