A Matter of Time

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to any of the canon Harry Potter characters present in this work.

Assorted Agendas

1991

"Brown, Lavender."

"Ah, my dear, I must say that I have been anticipating your arrival. You did not do anything to terrible with the actual Lavender Brown did you? No, I see you did not. Well then, between my previous decisions and your objectives, there is nowhere to put you save for GRYFFINDOR!"

"Granger, Hermione."

"Oh you are a bright one and an opinionated little dear as well. What it seems to me you truly need is a few good friends, which Ravenclaw is not most apt to provide. Your ambitions fit the Slytherin house, but I fear the dank dungeons might snuff out your heart. That heart, not to mention your work ethic, would earn you a fine place in Hufflepuff. However, altogether, and it seems you agree, you follow your predecessor's path: GRYFFINDOR!"

"Malfoy, Draco."

"SLYTHERIN!"

"Potter, Harry."

"You are a challenge I have been anticipating for some days, Mr. Potter. You have a talent which I have not seen in decades, not to mention plenty of capability in a more general sense. Your mind is apt, and your heart exudes nearly palpable courage. You seek to prove yourself worthy of your place here."

"Not Slytherin, not Slytherin…"

"An Interesting sentiment: I had not anticipated all of this. I acquiesce then. You shall join GRYFFINDOR!"

"Weasley, Ronald."

"You are another I have anticipated for sometime."

Ron's face scrunched up in confusion for a moment. Last time hadn't the hat said something about brothers or blood, and trial? He certainly hadn't heard anything like that remark.

"Last time? Oh, this is quite ironic. It is fairly obvious where you want to go, but, perhaps, it is not your best choice. For a manipulator of the lines of fate, you don't seem to have very much planned out ahead of time. Ravenclaw, clearly is not consistent with your personality, but Slytherin could serve your also ends. Maybe even Hufflepuff, considering your loyalty, would make a good selection."

"No. I've got to help Harry, and I wouldn't go to ruddy Slytherin away."

"No? I suppose such a choice is your prerogative, but recall, Ronald Weasley, that fate is not a fixed board, and that even the most noble knight wins not the game alone. If such is your wish then, it had better be GRYFFINDOR!"

The next time the hat was worn, it found itself on a far older head.

"Albus, how many seasons has it been since I last found myself placed upon you?"

"Many indeed, for I have not needed you since far darker days."

"You are concerned, headmaster, for your students, school and world. I know little of the latter, but, perhaps, I can offer you advice upon the former."

"That was my hope."

For a moment the hat was silent, as if contemplative. Dumbledore wondered at this curiosity, for the hat's duty was first to the headmaster. No quavering from this course had ever occurred from this course in its many long years, at least as far as he knew.

"No indeed: the duty is clear. Oft, however, an old hat has trouble placing these matters in the proper perspective. Many ages have passed since my making. What is it that you desire to know?"

"How is Harry Potter? Have matters progressed as I had hoped?"

"His upbringing was hard, but, for that, he has come out with a rare strength: tested, yet not broken."

"What of the others? Is there anything about which I should know?"

"They are capable, Albus: perhaps the most impressive group of first years I have ever sorted. What comes will be faced, and faced well."

"Good. Hopefully, then, they will be enough prepared, for dark days lie ahead, my friend. Tom has stirred once more, and I am not sure whether these old bones have the strength left to battle with him for another decade."

"Perhaps, then, Albus, this shall not be your war."

1991

The feast had been everything he remembered and more. After a year of hunting horcruxes, and then weeks of heart-wrenching grief, the food, warmth, and companionship had been a balm, which he had not known he needed until the contented glow of Gryffindor House had surrounded him. Fred was alive once more, cracking jokes with a twin whose hunger for vengeance had never been whetted; Percy no longer carried the burden of having to walk alone, haughtily battling to make a place apart from his family. Dumbledore had even returned to the land of the living, cracked as ever. Most of all, Harry, Hermione and he were together again. Even if his bushy-haired friend felt the need to send periodic, snooty glares towards him, that was not so strange an occurrence in his memories. Everything was as it should be. There was even, in the back of his mind, that feeling in his brain, which, in the past year, he had come to associate with his best friends: the subtle greeting of their skilled legilimency. Wait a moment. Legilimency? Oh no.

Focusing for an instant, Ron detected the direction from which the subtle probing came, his head snapping towards the right end of the table reflexively. Ice blue orbs met familiar chocolate brown pools. Suddenly, he began to relax. Why not just look into the eyes; they were quite nice eyes really; it was a subtle compulsion: bloody hell. Consciously focusing on clearing his mind of all thought, Ron snapped his eyes back to Harry, who was now looking at him in confusion.

"Ron? Are you okay? You were a bit out of it for a minute there."

"Er… yeah: sure, Harry. I just… don't worry about it."

The probing seemed to intensify for an instant to a point just below the threshold of the inexperienced, and then subsided. He hoped she had not gotten anything. That was Hermione: the one with whom he had spent the past seven years. There were small differences in her appearance from what he recalled, but the feel of her mind was unmistakable. Somehow, for some reason, Hermione (his Hermione) was here, in the past, and, considering the note upon which he had left, Ron somehow doubted his best living friend was here to help. Having her around Hogwarts would complicate his problems. Hermione knew how the year should turn out, so she would notice if things strayed too far from their original path. She might even detect his hand in the changes.

This time, Harry gave him a hard poke in the arm.

"Ron, what's going on? That's twice you've been lost in thought in about two minutes."

Panicked, still reeling from his realization, the red-haired youth searched his mind for a reply which a first year might use. "Er… it's just… I've never been away from home before Hogwarts really, so, y'know?"

Harry seemed to size him up for a moment. "Do you mean that you're scared of being away from your parents?"

When Harry put it like that, the excuse did not quite sound so good. He wasn't some sort of Nancy boy; he was in the house of the brave for Merlin's sake. Nonetheless, he couldn't think of a better excuse.

"Yeah, I guess," he replied in a less than enthusiastic tone.

"Right then," Harry replied, having no idea what to say to reassure Ron.

After a brief pause, both boys went back to eating their treacle tarts in silence. While Harry, however, appeared to ponder his new friend's strange contradictions, one moment entirely self-possessed, and the next second plagued by frivolous concerns, Ron considered the changes in his circumstances.

Hermione was a phenomenal legilimens for a witch of her age. She, Harry and Ron had started training together in legilimency and occlumency, during the summer following their sixth year, and, within weeks, she was picking errant thoughts out of his head. He had, of course, having spent a year with a pair of legilimens, picked up a few tricks, but had enough trouble keeping up with Hermione's other plans to help Harry already, and just wasn't that good at shielding his thoughts. Hermione was not even his only concern, as he considered the problem in more depth. Dumbledore, Snape and You-Know-Who were all master legilimens, while at least McGonagall, and probably Flitwick, had rudimentary training in the art. He had a whole life's worth of secrets to keep from a castle full of mind-readers. The professors would probably spend little time in his mind for now, but that would change if he was involved in any unusual events. There was only one solution: he would have to get much better at occlumency.

Having come to a determination, Ron supposed he had better fix his relationship with his best friend. Having Harry consider him a Nancy boy would not offer ideal circumstances, if he wished to guard his friend from harm.

Leaning in near his friend's ear, he whispered, "Want to sneak out tonight, and explore the castle?"

Harry's bleary-eyed stare started to clear at the sound of an adventure.

"My brothers said there are piles of secret passages all over Hogwarts. I bet we could find loads of cool stuff."

Harry grinned at this pronouncement, seemingly intrigued by the idea. Then, his eyes seemed to darken again.

"Won't we get caught though? I mean, I bet the professors know the school way better than us."

"Nope: we won't. I've got something that will make sure of it."

Ron grinned, deciding to remain mysterious for the moment.

"Off you trot," the Headmaster's voice rang across the Great Hall. The tables began to clear, and the first years followed their prefects towards their dormitories. Tonight would be an interesting one.

1997

"Avada Kedavra."

The lethal green flashed towards her more swiftly than she could have imagined, reducing all of her vision to death's jade brilliance. Then it was gone: her head lost in massive tangles of unkempt, black hair. Her titanic shield abruptly fell forward, collapsing to the ground with a crash worthy of any giant.

"Hagrid? No!"

"What a fool. I would have thought that even one so impure would know not to die for nothing."

Lucius Malfoy was right in one regard: Hagrid seemed to have died for nothing. The death eater still held her wand, while his remained pointed at her heart.

"So then, let us resume the festivities. Ava-"

"Reducto," twin voices screamed, and the wall behind her captor exploded.

"Expelliarmus!" Harry exclaimed, cobalt spell power blasting forth, but Malfoy was too swift.

"Protego."

Then, without a word, his wand whipped forward, and a crimson spell shot towards her friend. A second swish had Ron under equal fire.

Wordless shields springing to life in unison, the two found that, rather than deflecting Malfoy's hexes, the cruciatus curses were merely slowed. Without a moment to think, the two wizards rolled away from one another, wands up to deflect more incoming hexes, but Lucius Malfoy was gone, and Hagrid, the kindest man Hermione had ever known, was still dead.

She screamed.

"Helen, are you all right?"

Hermione felt hands on her, gripping her firmly, and heard an unfamiliar name.

"No!"

Wand sliding from her robe's sleeve into her right hand, the witch instinctively hurled a stunner right on target. The grasping hands went slack and the sound of a body collapsing to the floor resonated throughout the room. She was in a red and gold, four poster bed. Where was she? You are at Hogwarts her mind helpfully supplied. Then who had she stunned?

"What's going on?" Rachel's tired voice drifted through the room. "Some of us are trying to sleep."

That left only one plausible possibility for the victim of her stunner. Her heart slowed its racing pace, as she opened the curtains of her bed, looking to the floor. The light of her wand displayed Nora's long hair splayed out around her collapsed body in a golden mess the girl would have never permitted if aware. Hermione felt a moment's self-reproach. How could she have been absentminded enough to forget to place silencing charms? Her sloppy handling of legilimency with Ron at the feast had been bad enough: using a strong enough touch that he had apparently discerned that she was attempting something, even if, as a first year, he could not have comprehended her actual activities. Admittedly, since Ron had discovered her using them in March, she had not been allowed to continue the practice of using silencing charms on her bed for some time, but she could not be awakening her dorm mates every night at Hogwarts; such notoriety could only be counterproductive.

"Obliviate," she whispered in the dark, proceeding then to levitate Nora back into her bed.

Hermione, however, failed to notice that, rather than returning to her slumber, as the time traveling witch had assumed, Rachel was by now wide awake. Silently, she observed her roommate's actions. She also was watching as Helen erected a powerful silencing charm around her bed. What was going on?

1991

"Ah, my dear brother George, do you see what I see?"

"Indeed, indeed, most beloved sibling Fred: it appears ickle Ronniekins is off for a late night stroll."

"Too true: he almost qualifies as a brother after my own heart."

"Just so: if only he was not sneaking out after hours, in order to visit the library."

"This does seem a waste of an excellent opportunity for rule-breaking on his part, does it not?"

"It does indeed."

"Perhaps, we should see that he-"

"Ah no: it appears we are too late. Ronniekins and his compatriot are caught."

"Snared."

"Entrapped."

"Nabbed."

"Netted."

"Fini-"

"George, do you see what my eyes do observe?"

"That would depend, Fred."

"Did you view ickle Ronniekins and Harry Potter walking within one foot of Professor Snape with no consequence?"

"Oh no: there was most assuredly a consequence; they passed him. Such a reality seems most consequential. Moreover, I would argue eleven inches might be a more accurate measurement of distances, and I question whether it might not be better on the whole to deal with mean distance in this case. After all-"

"Come now, George. What I really wonder is how the two ickle firsties have accomplished such a feat. Should we not go ask them, as concerned, rule-abiding upperclassmen?"

"I would agree that we should inform them of the questionable legality of their choices."

"Excellent. Then let us be off to do our duty as responsible, older students."

"Yes, I suppose that we should see whether we will continue to be responsible for all the mischief occurring at Hogwarts."

"Now George: that seems unfair. Lee is responsible for at least half the mischief in this school on every third Tuesday."

"You make a good point, Fred. We should try to be modest, after all."

1991

Ron was an absolute contradiction. After knowing his new friend for less than twenty-four hours, Harry had already decided that the youngest of the Weasley brothers was utterly incomprehensible. He was self-possessed, and yet seemed plagued by chronic doubts; Ron had seemed so full of energy and enthusiasm, but, in the Great Hall, he seemed to spend half his time completely zoned out; now, despite having repeatedly remarked on how everything he had was rubbish, the red-haired wizard just happened to own an invisibility cloak. Admittedly, the cloak was rather worn in some places, but did all wizards keep a few lying around? Harry had seen few things so amazing in his life. Harry did not understand, however, why they were bothering to sneak into the library.

"C'mon, Harry. I told you, I need to pick up a couple of books, and, even with the cloak, we should try to keep this quick."

"Why are we going to the library anyway? Couldn't you do this tomorrow?"

Ron stopped, and sighed in consternation. "We can check out secret passages later, all right? It's just that we aren't allowed to be in the restricted section normally, so I have to sneak in, okay?"

Harry still didn't quite follow why Ron needed books from the restricted section, but was willing to let that pass for the moment. After all, he could find out what Ron was getting once they arrived. Besides, even if trying to keep the cloak covering the two of them was a challenge while walking, sneaking around like this was sort of exciting. He also wondered how Ron knew where the library was located; Harry did not recall Percy mentioning that detail. Maybe his brothers told him.

"Here we are," Ron whispering, quietly opening a rather grand, wooden door. "Let's see if I can't speed this up a bit."

Closing the door behind him, the larger boy raised his wand. Seeming to concentrate on something Harry could not see, he swished his wand around for a moment. That was strange; Harry could have sworn the wand Ron showed him on the train was more battered than his current tool, as well as shorter. He must have been remembering incorrectly, though, because it made no sense for Ron to have two wands.

"Hmmm… Hope this'll work. Accio occlumency books."

Within moments, Harry began to hope that, in fact, Ron's spell had malfunctioned because if having half the library fly at them (or at least it felt like half the library) was his friend's intention, Harry would have to hit him over the head with something rather painful. That was, of course, assuming that they even survived this spell. Harry revised his determination. Intention be damned; Ron was suffering for this regardless.

Harry ducked under a particularly large tome, just as he was forced to jump, in order to escape a shelf which a virtual armada of texts had decided to drag along with them. Unfortunately, ducking and jumping simultaneously is rarely effective. Rather than one blunt object, Harry managed to take both strikes, and found himself hurtling right back towards his incredibly idiotic friend.

"Finite Incantatem!"

The books stopped moving abruptly. It was just too bad about that force of gravity. The tome above him smashed into Harry's back just as he found himself falling onto the shelves beneath him. That hurt.

"Ron, if you ever do something like that again, I'll-"

"Accio books that offer a self-contained primer of superior quality on the subject of occlumency."

Harry tensed, expecting another flurry of dive-bombing books, but was, instead, pleasantly surprised to find that, this time, only four books moved towards Ron: each quite worn and ancient-looking.

"Hah! It worked!" Ron yelled, just as Harry hurled the ridiculously overlarge tome for which he had acted as cushion moments before at his friend's head. Fortunately, or unfortunately, he missed, only hitting the lanky wizard in the gut.

Letting out a huge burst of air, Ron grabbed his side in pain.

"Bloody hell! What was that for?"

Harry simply glared, raising his eyebrows, as if to say, "What do you think?"

Suddenly noticing Harry's current position awkwardly smashed against a bookshelf, Ron's ears reddened slightly, as he sheepishly grinned.

"Er, right then. I suppose I deserved that one. I did get the books though, and with a quick cleaning charm, no one will be the wiser."

At the far end of the library, a displaced book from the restricted section flopped open, and began to scream.

Ron paled.

"Merlin. Harry, get over here! Get under the cloak!"

Understanding the urgency, the boy who lived lifted himself from his painful position and ran. He was just barely fast enough.

The black-haired, hook-nosed professor who had glared at him during the feast had arrived in the library, and he looked quite unhappy. The sight of the room was enough to make him quite furious.

"Where are you? Who did this?"

Careful to remain under the cloak, books held in his left arm, Ron pointed his wand at the teacher, whispering something Harry could not hear. Suddenly far too loud for prudent speech in such a situation, Ron practically yelled, "Harry, we've got to get back to the common room now! Sorry about the passages, but, if Dumbledore gets here, he can see through the cloak."

The emerald-eyed wizard briefly wondered how Ron knew such a thing about the headmaster, but decided to ask later, as there was a far more pressing concern at the moment. At the volume with which Ron just spoke, there was no way the nearby teacher had missed his words. Whirling around, expecting, at best, a confused, searching look, Harry instead found the sallow man still scouring the library, looking away from the door.

"I hit him with a muffliato, so he can't hear us. I can show you later, if you want, but right now we've got to get out of here."

Nodding, Harry followed as Ron opened the door and began to retreat towards Gryffindor tower. By now, Harry had figured out that he had a lot of catching up to do, if he wanted to even pass first year. Even though that weird spell with the books had not worked out quite right, it was evident that his friend knew all kinds of magic already. Hopefully, Ron would be willing to help him reach the level of the students with a wizarding background; he could not imagine how horrible it would feel if he was sent back to the Dursleys for failing first year. He did not think he could survive having to leave this world with his wand snapped. Then he had another, even worse, thought. What if he and Ron were expelled for half-destroying the library? He would be sent back on the train tomorrow, given only a night in this wonderful castle surrounded my magic. At least Ron lived in a magical household. Maybe he could become Hagrid's assistant, and remain here that way. They wouldn't send him back would they?

Sudden footsteps in their path shocked Harry out of his reverie. Someone was coming.

"Ickle Ronniekins, Harry, where are you?"

"We know you're hiding here somewhere."

Unable to suppress his reaction to the end of his time at Hogwarts, Harry gasped.

The jig was up.