I swear to god I'm not on drugs! Really! It's school. This is a weird idea... and probably none of you will like it all that much, now that it's done... but *shrugs* The muse MUST write!
*******
Harry slid into the Potions class, five seconds late.
"Potter!" Professor Snape snapped. "What's your excuse for being absent?" He snarled.
"I... I had to go to the loo..." Harry said, blushing a deep scarlet. The Professor rolled his eyes.
"Get in your seat, ten points from Gryffindor." He said sharply. Harry slunk into his seat, right next to his best friend Ron Weasley. Harry couldn't shake this nagging feeling that he was suddenly getting, something wasn't right here...
"You okay Harry?" Ron asked, concerned about his friend.
"I don't know... there's something wrong.... something *missing* and I don't know what!" Harry sighed under his breath.
"Did you remember to put on your underwear?" Ron suggested, while pretending to pay attention to Professor Snape. Harry looked at his friend as if he were nuts.
"Yes, Ron, I put on my underwear this morning..." He drawled sarcastically.
"Geez, don't take it personally... there was just this one time that I kept thinking something was missing... I realized in Charms that I forgot my underwear, I just wanted to see if had happened to anyone else..."
"Sorry... I'm just so frustrated... I don't know what it is!" Harry said, a little louder than he had intended. Snape was glaring at him from the classroom.
"Would you like to share that with the whole class?" He hissed.
"No sir!" Harry said quickly, but Blaise Zambini snorted, he'd been sitting next to them the whole time.
"Potter was saying that he felt something was wrong, and Weasley asked if he remembered his underwear!" Blaise said, shaking with laughter. Soon the Slytherin side of the classroom had burst into laughter. Ron and Harry both blushed hotly and slid lower into their seats. To their morbid horror, Snape was shaking his head as if he were amused, before getting the class back into order.
They wouldn't live this one down.
******
His eyes, the picture of innocence, cherub-like almost, and also eerie, stared at the glowing white specter before him.
"Do you understand?" She asked. He nodded slowly.
"If I stay... the world is doomed, caused by the theif, who stole too early. But as to the answer to your question... I do not know the answer..." He noticed he was talking more and more mystically, just like the being before him.
"What I am asking you to do is a tough choice to make." The specter replied, trying to be sympathetic.
"I just don't know... I've never been so unsure about anything... I've never been unsure about anything!" He exclaimed.
"You say you've never been unsure... are you sure that you've never been unsure, or perhaps you're not sure about anything, although you're sure you are."
"What?" He asked confused. "Run that by me again."
"Don't worry, I didn't get it either." The specter replied with a sigh. "What I meant to say is, if you've never been unsure, then you've never made a descision by yourself. Now you've got to make the biggest choice in your life, in anyone's life as a matter of fact. And everything depends on it." She showed him into a room. "I will leave you in here, to think, it is quiet and no one will disturb you." The specter said before shutting the door, and leaving him alone... with his thoughts... which were becoming more and more disturbing by the second...
In one hand he had his life, with his mother and father, and the destruction of the world as he knew it. In the other hand a new life, completely foriegn to him, and the guarentee of continued safety of that same world. Did he decide based on what he wanted, or on the greater good? And which one was right? He'd never had to think this hard before...
******* (Let's do the time warp again! {back to 1968!}First you jump to the left...)
He looked around the common room with confusion as the full moon's glow descended. Sirius and Peter looked edgy.
"Where's Remus, and why the heck are you so edgy?" He asked finally. He'd been here for seven months, which had passed like a blur, but he found himself with good friends (Sirius, Peter, Lily, and Remus), and on the Quidditch.
But Remus always had been a little peculiar, he disappeared once a month for a week, and only recently had he noticed. So far he'd been unable to find out where Remus went. And Sirius and Peter were completely silent about it.
"We're not edgy!" Peter squeaked.
"Remus has to go see his mom... she's really sick, so Professor Dumbledore let's him spend a week with her every month... hasn't got long to live they say..." Sirius coughed.
He scowled... they were hiding something, and he was just as good of friends with Remus as they were! He deserved to be let in the secret. He looked around the common room, and saw they were the only ones left.
"That's bull." He spat. "I'm your friend, I'm not going to rat you out to anybody!" He said with a sigh. Peter and Sirius looked at each other for a second before staring at him.
"Are you absolutely sure?" Sirius said, near threateningly. "If any of this gets out... I'll... I'll..." Sirius said, getting carried away. Peter slapped his arm.
"He's our friend, you know that, he wouldn't do that."
"You're right." Sirius sighed. "Remus is... well a werewolf." Sirius said in a low voice, and was obviously expecting some gasp of suprise, because he looked confused when James shrugged.
"There were lots of werewolves in India... well, actually they were tigers, but same principal." He said boredly. Peter sighed in relief.
"Any way, well, me and Sirius... we felt kind of guilty about just abandoning our friend once a month for a week, so we became Animagi..." Peter shrugged.
This time he looked suprised. "What? You just up and decided to become animagi and voila?" he said with disbelief.
"Nooo... it took us to our fifth year to get it to work dependably. So now we go down and visit Remus... keep him company, you know that sort of thing..." Sirius shrugged. He looked at the clock. "We'd better go too..." He said to Peter.
"I wish I could go..." James sighed. Besides the fact that he wanted to keep a best friend happy, the idea of being an animagi thrilled him. As did sneaking out of the school late at night.
"Well, there is a spell that will make you into your patronus temporarily..." Peter volunteered. "We didn't find it out until last year, and by then it was useless to us. But I suppose it would work..."
*******
Harry sighed as he did his essay on himself... hated this.
********
He sighed blissfully as he stared at Lily down the table from him. It was nearly the end of the school year, which meant graduation. He was also despairing about how he hadn't asked her out yet. She was availible, after all. That's what he was planning to do right now...
If his palms weren't so bloody sweaty.
But there was nothing he could do about it, he told himself. And summoning up his courage, he walked over to her, where she was chatting with some of her dorm mates.
"Lily?" He asked nervously. She turned and gave him a dazzling white smile, which nearly blinded him. "Would you... would you go out with me Saturday? To Hogsmeade?" He said rapidly. Lily's grin broadened. She leapt up and hugged him.
"I was wondering when you'd ask!" She squealed, and the girls behind her sighed romantically. "Of course! Of course!" She said excitedly.
"Can I pick you up around six?" He asked.
"It's a date." She said softly, before leaning up and pecking him on the cheek just as the class bell rang.
He sat through his classes for the rest of that day in a daze, constantly rubbing the spot where Lily's angelic lips had touched him. He kept seeing him and Lily dancing together in a little club... close together... romantic music playing....
His dreams were interrupted by someone giving a sharp kick to the back of his chair.
"Didn't you just hear what Professor McGonagall said? You're supposed to report to Dumbledore's office." Hissed Severus from behind. "Geez... you must be really dense." He said with a sneer. "I expected this sort of thing from Remus, Sirius and Peter... not from someone new like you... guess their influence rubs off..."
Still thinking of Lily, therefore not even listening to the remarks that Severus, who had been assigned to sit in the back, just one ahead of where Lily was assigned, was saying about his friends, which normally would have led to confrontation. He wandered out of the classroom.
He approached Dumbledore's office, and knocked politely.
"Come in!" Came Professor Dumbledore's voice through the wood. The doors swung open and he entered to the mad house of machinery that worked independent of each other.
"Ah..." Dumbledore said, peering at him through his classes. He grinned. "Congradulations are in order."
"What sir?" He asked.
"You're Head Boy, best male student in your class! I just told Miss Schunard, she'll be your Head Girl. You've done marvelous, adjusting to this school, and your teachers are very proud of you."
He smiled, his cloud nine rising higher in the air. Lily AND the highest honor you can get in Hogwarts, in one day!
******
"Why did you choose me?" He asked the specter, confused. She'd just come back to him, after leaving him for several hours alone in the small room.
"We chose you because your spirit is a kin to the one we need to replace, so that another may live." He blinked his eyes in shock.
"What?" He said fiercely.
"Your kin in spirit, almost exactly the same.... only different." The specter said, maddingly calm.
He sighed. It made no difference, even if it... he shook his head, it made no difference. Summing up his strenth, he whispered, "I'll go."
The specter smiled. "I knew you would!"
"How?"
"It helps when you can see into the future." She shrugged.
*****
"Hey! Weasley! Did you make sure to check if your underwear's still there?" Shouted a voice from down the halls. Ron flushed red, and turned on his heel. Out of the mass of crowds, came an elfin like boy, with pale skin.
"Shut. Up. Damyco." Ron scowled. Harry sighed, staying behind to make sure that his friend didn't start a fight with the Slytherin.
"What?" the boy asked innocently. "I wasn't the one whispering during Professor Snape's lectures. If you don't want personal information to come out, then maybe you shouldn't talk about in class." The boy snorted.
"Yeah! Well at least MY family doesn't live in a little one room shack!" Ron shouted angrily. The boy flushed dark red, his eyes glinting sharply.
"Well, at least MY family doesn't all sleep in the same bed!" He spat.
"Hold it right there!" Dean Thomas snapped, and Harry could tell, from his glinting Prefects badge, that he was in authoritorian mode right now. He shoved herself between Ron and the Slytherin. "I'm suprised at the both you! You're both seventh years. Gods... we're only here for a few more months, and then you'll never have to see each other ever again!" He snapped.
"Fine by me..." Ron scowled. The other boy just stuck out his tongue.
"Both of you! To classes!" Dean ordered before walking off. The boy sneered, before turning on his heel.
As Harry walked away, he did a double take at the Slytherin who was walking off in the opposite direction. He could swear he'd seen him before... only now it was different.
******
He graduated with top honors, his diploma in one hand, and the other around Lily's hip. They were married by the end of the year.
All was right in the world.
******
Harry graduated with top honors, his diploma in one hand, and the other around Ron's shoulder, who had in his arm around Patsy Patil, Pavarti's twin sister, they were married by the end of the year.
******
"I see you still wonder what has happened." A confident specter smirks at you. She has long dark red hair, and vibrant green eyes. She leans back in her chair.
"I'll introduce myself first. My name is Chess, the angel of fate. I once was mortal... but I do not remember that time." She leans back in, smiling cattishly.
"But that's not your question, about my mortal life, or me." She gives a small laugh.
"I do suppose you know of Lord Voldemort, do you not? Of course you do. And I also suppose you do know of his legendary battles with Harry Potter. Naturally! In Harry's seventh year, Voldemort came up with a fiendish plan. He knew he couldn't defeat Harry Potter, not now that he was a seventh year, and an almost fully trained wizard. So he decided to make sure his problem never happened." She shakes here head.
"He went back in time... far back, into 1962, when Harry's father, James Potter was a second year and waited for a chance to get at him. He did get that chance, late one night, while James was out to cause mischief for the Slytherins... he suddenly found himself in a different world, being chased by a man in the shadows. James did not survive the encounter." She cocks an eyebrow.
"It was a mess, I mean, the WHOLE game was changed while I was out! There was no Harry Potter, which meant half the wizarding world was destroyed. Voldemort had interferred with the flow of time, and it was my job to set it right. I had to find someone to take James' place in history, as well as the little trivial thing of rewriting the past so I could fit the new James in, fast. So I chose Draco Malfoy..." She stops and smirks at your shocked expression.
"Yes, young Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter's arch rival. I wanted someone who would actually think before jumping into this situation. Afterall, there's nothing I can do once you're through and in. I also knew... that after he'd thought about it, that he'd do the right thing. Afterall, his father had given him no guidelines to what happens when a strange specter picks you up in the middle of the night, and asks you to save the world by going back in time. That and he had a good spirit, hidden under tonnes of varnish that his father had painted on."
"That happens to children. They're all good, or at least they want to be. They'd always be like that, if it weren't for adults and the enviroments they put their children in. Some are good, some are bad. Some teach to hate, some teach to love, and some just don't care at all. But that is off-topic. So I sent Draco back, his mind wiped of his former life, and a new life, created by myself, knocking around in his head, changed enough to look like James Potter. Thanks be to God, he got along well, and fit right in."
"Of course, then I had to remove Draco from the minds of others, which wasn't a picnic. But Harry still needed a rival... so I created Damyco, out of a few spirits waiting to go back, with permission of course, and sent them back to Earth. Don't worry, I assure you, Damyco will experience a sudden change in attitude about a week after Hogwarts, when the role of Draco Malfoy is no longer needed." She fumbles about in her robes and places a bottle of asprin in front of you.
"And that's how the story ends... although it's not as neat as it should have been... a lot of filler, sort of wooden dialouge, and rushed explanations... but..." She shrugs. "It was a rush job. I'm sorry if your head hurts, it's a lot of information to comprehend. Welcome to the bare bones basics of Quantum Physics." She stands and begins to walk away, leaving you.alone with the bottle of asprin. She stops suddenly and looks over her shoulder at you.
"Oh... and as for J.K. Rowling? Let's just keep this whole little incident, our little secret... it'd ruin the storyline."
The End