Summary: A thoroughly impossible freak accident transports our favorite attractive psychopath forward in time from 1942 to 1996. Harry Potter/Tom Riddle slash. It's finally time for the actual time travel!
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, Tom Riddle, or any other people, places or objects that may appear in this humble work of fiction.
Warnings: Possible spoilers up to the fifth book. M/M, obviously. Rating is down as T for now but may, possibly, increase to M as things progress.
Author's Note: Thanks to those reviewers who noticed my errors in the last chapter, which have been fixed (I always type Transfiguration when I mean to type Divination, bah, I just did it again). This chapter took me a bit longer than the others, mostly because of the ending. NOW UPDATED to show dates, to make it a little less confusing!

Chapter Four: A Minor Technicality in Time

September 2nd, 1996
12:47 PM

'Be careful, dear!' cried Professor Trelawney as Harry wobbled a bit from the strain of the heavy object in his arms. Harry struggled to keep a firm grip on the crate; his fingers were becoming slippery with sweat, and he knew that they were a good ten minutes away from Trelawney's classroom. He dug his fingers in deeper and continued forward. 'The object in that box is very sensitive,' she added.

Harry couldn't imagine how anything so heavy could require as much tender care as Trelawney seemed to think was required. When he had unwillingly approached her in the hallway, she had explained that the object in the crate was a device that had belonged to a previous Divination teacher at Hogwarts, and that she had found it in a storage locker in the dungeons. It was resistant to levitation charms, and she didn't trust something so 'delicate' to house elves, so she was trying to carry it all the way to the North Tower on her own – with limited success, based on Harry's observation. As a result, he was now hauling whatever it was through the hallways himself, with Trelawney supervising. Next time I'm going straight back to the common room.

'What's in here, Professor?' grunted Harry.

'I'm afraid the answer would be too complex for you to understand with your limited knowledge of Seeing.'

Then you must not know either, he thought. He shifted the weight of the crate again to keep himself from falling over as he rounded a corner. Come on, Harry, just a little bit further…

September 2nd, 1942
12:32 PM

Arruns, Tom decided, owed him about a pack of cigarettes for this already, and they weren't yet out the door. The errand she was oh-so-politely asking him to complete involved hauling a large crate to some backwoods part of the castle without using any kind of magic. 'It's a sensitive device – doesn't like magic much. I tried to levitate it out of the dungeon I found it in and it wouldn't budge an inch. I nearly broke my back getting it this far and I ruined a perfectly good pair of heels,' she said. 'And since you're such a gentleman, I was rather hoping –'

'Say no more, Professor,' Tom said gallantly. I could just charm up a dolly, he thought. Wait – that would be showing off, by Arruns' standards. Arruns hates it when students outdo her. She'd be insulted that she didn't think of it herself. He hadn't gotten this far at Hogwarts without ingratiating himself to the more egotistical teachers a bit, and that meant pretending to be stupider than they were once in a while. This left him with only one option, and he grimaced as she turned away and put a notice up on the classroom door to inform the other students of the new location of the class. He waited with inward impatience as she cleaned a few more packs of cigarettes out of her desk and slowly packed the last few items in the room into her handbag.

'All right, doll, let's go,' she called, once she was finally done.

There will come a time when people who call me 'doll' end up with their innards on the outside, Tom promised himself, swallowing a curse and picking up the crate. It was even heavier than it looked, and he grunted from the exertion.

'Which way?' Tom panted.

'Just down here,' she replied. Together, they started down the still mostly empty hallway.

September 2nd, 1996
12:59 PM

Harry would never know how he managed to get the crate up the trapdoor. It was just barely wide enough on all sides for the crate to fit through; its edges scraped along every side of the opening. However it was done, the crate now sat on the floor of the Divination classroom, as did Harry, sweaty and exhausted. He had hoped he would never have to enter that room ever again, but now he didn't know how he would manage to scrape up the strength to leave it.

'Very good, dear. Now, if you could just help me get it open…'

Harry sighed and stood back up.

September 2nd, 1942
12:48 PM

He was going to kill Arruns. She was traipsing along easily through the hallways, considering which direction would take them to the North Tower. 'No, no, it wasn't this way, and that hall leads west,' she muttered, 'we'll have to back up to the last turn.' Tom managed to turn around and reach the previous intersection, at which point she realized that that hallway must lead north, not west, so they had to go forward again. His back was killing him, his arms felt like they were going to give up the battle at any moment, and Tom really wished he could throw her a Killing Curse without the use of his wand…

September 2nd, 1996
1:02 PM

The bell to signal the start of the period had rung several minutes before, but Trelawney had a free period, so she wasn't bothered. Ron's probably back in the common room by now and we should be enjoying our free time.

Harry and Professor Trelawney spent several minutes trying to pry the top off the crate and finally succeeded once Harry noticed that it was bolted down with a Sealing Charm. Once that was removed, the top of the box popped up, and the sides collapsed to the floor, revealing the crate's contents.

September 2nd, 1942
1:01 PM

It had proved difficult to get the crate through the trapdoor to the top of the North Tower, but Tom had succeeded at last, just as the class bell rang. 'The other students probably won't find the classroom for some time,' Arruns said, 'so we may as well open the box up.'

He sat on the floor, leaning on the wall, as he watched Arruns trying to pry the top off. I'll wait a few minutes before putting her out of her misery. It's obviously got a Sealing Charm on it. I wonder if witches and wizards go into Divination just because they're no good at anything else?

After Arruns pulled so hard that she ended up falling over and breaking the heel on her shoe, Tom lost his patience and reached lazily into the pocket of his robes to pull out his wand.

'Relevi,' he murmured. The box went to pieces; the sides came off, and the top exploded up to the top of the room, hit the ceiling, and fell back down, hitting Arruns on the foot. 'Sorry Adora. I suppose I don't know my own strength,' he pouted, with a slight hint of a smirk catching the corners of his lips.

'Quite alright, dear,' she gasped, grabbing her injured foot and hopping on the other, which already had a broken heel. 'Now, let's see what we have here…'

September 2nd, 1996
1:03 PM

'I'm quite certain that it must be a Seeing Crystal. It's the largest I've ever seen! Oh, this is so exciting!' Trelawney gasped, inspecting the large, shiny, jagged rock that occupied the middle of the room.

'What's that?' Harry asked.

Trelawney could not contain her impatience with him. 'I told you it's far too complex an object for you to understand! However, I suppose I may as well try to explain it to you. We Seers must have patience with those of less natural talent, I suppose,' she sighed dramatically. 'It allows you to view your own past, dear.'

Harry shrugged. 'Sounds like a Pensieve.'

'No, no, no!' she said exasperatedly. 'A Pensieve allows you to see memories. A Seeing Crystal shows the true past!'

'I thought Divination had more to do with the future.'

'You happen to have had a very narrow experience in the subject,' Trelawney sniffed.

And whose fault is that? Harry thought grumpily.

September 2nd, 1942
1:04 PM

'Is it a Seeing Crystal?' Tom asked. 'I've never heard of one so large.'

'No,' Arruns said, 'there would be no purpose to having such a large Seeing Crystal. It would work no better than a smaller one...' She walked around the base, inspecting it with a furrowed brow.

'Maybe that's why it's been in storage for so long?' Tom suggested.

'What's this?' she said suddenly, bending down and poking at a bit of parchment under the crystal. Pulling it out, she read aloud:

'Thy past be in the future, Thy future with thy past, If ye – hmm, there's some ink spilled on this part… Thy selves, ye may contrast.'

'Sounds like the important bit got blotted out,' Tom frowned.

'Hmm,' Arruns mumbled. She made one more loop around the object before putting her hand on it.

September 2nd, 1996
1:04 PM

When Professor Trelawney's hand touched the giant crystal, a high tinkling sound – like wind chimes in a mild breeze – filled the room. After a few moments, she removed her hand and looked at it. 'It's warm,' she said in surprise, her magnified eyes looking down her spectacles at her fingers.

September 2nd, 1942
1:04:11 PM

'My, my, this is interesting,' Arruns smiled. 'We seem to have a genuine mystery on our hands. I'm sure it's for use in Divination – why else would it be in the Divination storage room? But I don't believe I've ever seen anything like it.'

September 2nd, 1996
1:04:22 PM

'It must be broken,' Trelawney declared, peering into the device with disdain. 'I suppose that's why it's been in storage so long. They ought to have thrown it away. Still, I suppose it would make a nice centerpiece for the classroom.'

'Let me see,' said Harry, walking towards the object and reaching out his hand before Trelawney could gather herself enough stop him. Broken? It was certainly doing something

September 2nd, 1942
1:04:22 PM

'You said it was warm when you touched it?' Tom questioned. He could hear voices in the corridor below and knew that the other students would be arriving once they figured out how to get up. He stepped right in front of the crystal and placed his hand on one of its flatter, gentler planes. Just before he did so, he could swear that he saw…

There was a handprint, male, larger than Harry's own hand, glowing directly below where his hand hovered…
But ignoring it, or in spite of it, or because of it –
Harry placed his hand firmly on the crystal, and it glowed, and a cold wind hit his face so hard that his eyes squinted nearly closed –
And there was such a noise, a wailing, a siren –
That it pained his ears to hear it. He tried to move his hand, but couldn't; it was as though it was sealed to the crystal. Then the wind died, and there was a sound like cracking ice. Harry opened his eyes and saw that the crystal was breaking, right along the lines of his hand, outward from his fingers. A dozen other cracks broke off from them, then a dozen more, until the crystal was covered in spidery fault lines.

It shattered.

September 2nd, 1942
1:05 PM

Tom removed his hand from the crystal and stepped away hastily. 'That was… bizarre,' he said, looking at his hand. 'I think it's faulty, whatever it is.'

'Perhaps you're right,' Arruns sighed. 'But it's still quite pretty. I suppose I'll keep it, anyway.'

The trapdoor opened, and students began climbing through. Tom looked back at the crystal suspiciously before taking one of the plush seats and waiting for class to begin.

September 2nd, 1996
1:05 PM

Tom's face stung, and he knew he must be bleeding. He tried to push himself up with his hands, but they fell on sharp, cutting edges, and all he managed to do was slip back down and cut himself further. He was able to get to his knees, scraping them against the shards of crystal on the floor, and squinted up to see a boy with spectacles staring down at him, his wand pointed at Tom and his mouth moving, before a spell hit Tom square in the chest, and his vision went black.

SachiAmi: As indicated in the above segment, Harry had no trouble at all recognizing Tom ;)

DARKMARKLV: Nope, no 'blushing girl' Harry here. I just don't see that as his character. Hell, he couldn't stand Cho getting all weepy on him; Harry's not too in touch with his feminine side. And of course Tom will like Harry in return! I didn't say this would be a rape fic, did I? Hehe.