Hello lovely readers here we are back again with our regularly scheduled programming. Hopefully I will be back in two weeks with the next one (which I'm excited for) but I start classes again next week and have to get back in the groove of College(tm). I will hopefully be able to post but if not, I'll see you a week after that! Hope you enjoy the chapter. Please review!
*
The Marauders didn't realize just how used they had gotten to Ron's presence in the dorms until it was gone.
They also didn't realize just how many nightmares Harry had without his so-called brother there.
Sirius was no stranger to nightmares and a week into September, he decided he had to help the other boy. Even if he didn't think he was that close to Harry, he couldn't just let someone go through that alone. Sirius knew all too well what that was like. It wasn't something he would wish on anyone else.
Sirius heard Harry's voice, muffled by his own curtains. He pulled them back and listened.
"No….no please….no Ron!" Harry's voice was distressed and Sirius quickly scooter himself out of bed and opened Harry's curtains. He was tangled in his sheets and soaked in sweat, his face screwed up in pain. "Not Ron, no no no…."
Sirius reached out and gently put his hand on Harry's shoulder. "Harry, wake up, you're having a nightmare." He rocked him softly and Harry jerked up with a yell.
Sirius backpedaled for a moment, shocked, but went back when he saw the look on Harry's face.
He watched as he looked over to Ron's bed and when he found it empty, tears started to fall.
Sirius cautiously reached out and wrapped his arms around him, as Harry buried his face in his hands. He pulled him close and said, "It'll be alright, Harry.
"I can't be without him, not again, not again, I can't let it happen again, I love him too much, I have to get him back, I can't let it happen again." Harry sobbed into Sirius' shirt, and Sirius held him tighter.
"We'll find him, Harry. I know we will."
"I now call this meeting to order." Lily said from the front of an abandoned classroom. She would have liked to say it was a Head meeting, but the people who were in the room bellied that remark.
All four of the Marauders sat atop desks, with Hermione and Harry on a desk and in a chair respectively. Lily had ambushed all of them at dinner and had pulled them after her into this classroom on the second floor for reasons unbeknownst to any of them.
"You know, I am Head Boy, aren't I supposed to know about meetings before they happen?" James complained, kicking his feet back and forth like a little kid.
"Yes, if this were a normal meeting, that would be the case. But as you can see by the rest of the people in this room, sans Remus, we aren't here to talk about prefect patrols." Lily hopped up onto the teacher's desk and started rummaging through a bag she brought with her.
"Well then, why are we here?" Sirius asked, tossing a glance over at Harry and Hermione. Harry looked like he had given up on being vertical and had wrapped his arm around Hermione's leg and had his head on her knee. Hermione looked unbothered by this and was lovingly running her fingers through his hair.
Both of them looked hollow, and Sirius couldn't blame them. He knew what it felt like when someone close to you was taken away.
Lily pulled something impossibly large out of her bag and set it up in front of the desks. It was a chalk board and in big letters at the top was written 'SAVE RON'.
She smiled. "We're here to help obviously."
All of the Marauders sat up straighter. This was something they could do. No matter what qualms they had about Harry, Ron, and Hermione and where they came from, they were on their side. They wouldn't just let them suffer like this. They couldn't.
Lily looked at Hermione, who was shaking her head. "Hermione? How can we help?"
"You can't."
Everyone froze. They had been expecting Hermione to speak, but instead it was Harry's tired voice that responded.
Harry lifted his head and readjusted his position so he was sitting up straighter. He kept his arm around Hermione's leg and glared lightly at everyone else.
"You can't help. This isn't something we can let you do, you're all teenagers and you'll get yourselves killed."
"But," Remus said, his face scrunched up in confusion, "you are also a teenager. Are you saying you're not going to help Ron?"
Harry stood abruptly and started pacing. "It's not the same thing. None of you are a part of this, it's my fault this happened and I have to be the one to fix it."
"Harry, this isn't your fault and you know it." Hermione said. She hopped off the desk she was on and stood in front of him. Despite the fact that he towered over her, Hermione gave off such an air of authority that Harry stopped and bowed his head.
"'Mione, you know that wasn't my point." He said softly, his eyes swimming with sadness. "I can't let anything happen to them, not after everything we've done to get here."
Hermione reached up and put her hands on his shoulders. She grinned slyly up at him.
"Where do you think you get your heroics from?" She whispered.
He rolled his eyes and smiled softly at her.
They both started when Lily jumped off the desk and made her way towards them.
"Harry, please. Let us help you. You're my…" Here she paused and looked over towards James and she flushed. "You're my, you know. I can't let you go alone."
"Lily it's too dangerous." Harry said, a note of finality in his voice.
Good thing Potters never learn to take notes.
"We're going with you." James stood as well, and the rest of the Marauders followed. "We Potters stick together."
Harry and Hermione froze, and Harry barely dared to breathe. Did he just….
"We've known for quite a while. Well Sirius is actually the one who figured it out first." James clapped Sirius on the shoulder and moved past him. "Honestly we should have figured it out sooner, but we were fifteen when you lot showed up. All I cared about was Quidditch."
"Ha! That we are all well aware of, James." Lily laughed. They looked at each other and smiled for a moment, and Harry felt something indescribable in his chest.
James looked back at Harry. "I don't know why you came here, or really how. But I know you're a Potter, it's painfully obvious to be frank. And Potters help each other."
Harry glanced down at Hermione and then back at James. "I don't know what-"
"Harry please don't insult our intelligence." Remus interrupted. "You're from the future. We all know."
"To be fair, we didn't know that Lily knew until just now." Sirius tossed in. "But you being her 'you know' kind of gave it away."
"And obviously you three aren't related, I don't know how you got away with that one." Peter said. "I mean none of you even look remotely similar."
Harry didn't know how to respond.
Luckily, Hermione did.
"We did have a cover story for that, you know. The three of us being siblings. No one ever said anything though, so it never came up." She shrugged, like everyone figuring out the secret they'd been keeping for three years wasn't a big deal.
"So you admit it? You're from the future?" Sirius sounded skeptical, as if he didn't actually believe that they'd confess.
"Well Lily already knows and we did plan on telling you all eventually." Hermione looked over at Harry and smiled sheepishly. "I suppose we should have planned for them figuring it out themselves. Judging from their previous accomplishments."
"To be fair," Harry started, "figuring out someone is a werewolf is way less far fetched than someone being from the future."
"Oh." Remus breathes out softly. "That's how you knew."
Harry laughed a little. "Yeah, uh, I've known you were a werewolf since I was thirteen."
"You were our Defense professor in our third year and I was always one for solving mysteries and you were gone every full moon so….I put it together." Hermione shrugged.
James and Sirius started hooting loudly and nudging Remus. "Defense professor, aye? I always knew you had it in you, Moony." James cheered.
"Professor Moony!" Sirius exclaimed.
Peter looked happy for his friend but then his face turned contemplative. "You said you've known since you were thirteen. How old does that make you now?"
Harry and Hermione looked at each other and seemed like they were doing the math.
"I guess technically I would be...twenty? But I don't feel twenty, I feel the way I did when I was seventeen." Harry said.
"That means I'm almost twenty-one." Hermione looked confused. "You're right, Harry. I don't feel twenty-one."
"That's because your birthday is next week and you're not actually twenty-one yet." Harry smiled at her and looked to the side as if to share a joke with someone, but his face fell.
Lily noticed but didn't comment on it. Instead she said, "I never really asked any of the questions I wanted to because it never seemed like a good time but what year was it? When you left I mean."
Hermione answered her. "It was the summer of 1998."
"Merlin." James looked slightly stunned. "I know we have been sitting here talking about the fact that you're from the future, but I don't think it actually hit me. 1998 is twenty-one years from now. And you came back…." Here he stopped and turned to Harry. "Why did you come back?"
Harry wasn't sure how to respond. Did tell them the truth, that he came back so he could stop people he loved from dying? Did he make something up?
"It's dangerous….telling you so much about the future. What if it changes things?" Harry said.
"Harry, mate." Sirius came up and threw his arm around Harry's shoulders. "I don't think in your time any of this happened, so it's safe to say things have already changed."
"He's right, Harry. We've already changed our timeline into something unrecognizable. Might as well give them some useful information. And besides, they know this time better than we do. We'll need their help to find Ron." Hermione said.
Harry sighed. Hermione knew he was anxious to find the third member of their trio, and if telling them why they came to this time made them get a move on to finding Ron, Harry wasn't about to hold out. "Okay. I guess I'll tell you all the story of the Boy Who Lived."
In a small, cold, and definitely magically suppressive cell somewhere, Ron Weasley sat in a corner.
A black robed figure walked past the door and Ron shouted at them.
"Oi! If you're gonna keep me here, you could at least get me a fucking blanket!"
Ron watched as the figure pulled out their wand and shot a charm at the door. Ron groaned and fell back against the wall. Silencing charm.
Fucking Death Eaters.
