"Oh alright!" Ron threw his hands up. "So you've actually gone mental, then? Because what you're considering-" He couldn't even finish his thought, he was so distraught. Hermione rubbed a comforting circle on the boy's tense back. It did little to soothe the crazed look in his eye.
"Maybe I have lost it this time," Harry admitted with a sheepish smile. Ron might be horrified, but Hermione had yet to argue- which meant that it wasn't a completely shite plan.
The three of them sat in Lancashire, in a dingy backwater pub. The kind that had those old, low ceilings and naught but one, dingy window that showed an alleyway. Harry was staying up here, most morbidly, in Spinner's End. While Ron and Hermione didn't quite understand the whole Snape thing, they understood that Harry understood... and that it was important to him that the sour Professor be referred to only with respect.
The war was over, but there were still pocket uprisings led by some whack job or another. None had the sway or sheer strength of Tom Marvolo Riddle, and Harry was done fighting battles. The remaining Aurors, mostly replaced by young graduates, could deal with the insurgents.
It was late-summer and it was highly unlikely that Hogwarts would open her doors this year. The infrastructure, wards, and the teachers... all needed to be repaired and replaced.
At any rate, the entire Wizarding world was in repair as well.
Presently, Ron nursed his left hand milk stout. Harry was new to drink, and he refused beer on principle. Not solely because it doesn't taste good to him, but because it stunk of his uncle's breath whenever Harry was about to have a verybad night.
Hermione had the same as Harry, a double gin. It was clean and clear, and tasted sharp. It made his head feel clear even as he knew it was clouding his senses.
Her face was indecipherable to him. It always was so screwed in concentration, hiding the machinations behind those lovely, honey eyes. She didn't sleep well, and it read in the lines on her face so young.
"Harry's right." Hermione said distantly and Ron immediately sputtered. "This could be a real chance."
"You can't be serious Hermione, I mean, you're the sensible one!" Ron was not having it. His left hand was nervously, methodically picking at the damaged wood of their heavy oak table.
"Look, if we have a shot, then let's do it." She said sharply. "Your brothers, your sister, my parents..." Her voice cracked. It still haunted her that she had chosen not to erase their memories. "With so much more information... even if things don't go perfect, Ron, we have an advantage. We have a chance, really, and a chance is enough for me." Habitually she went to run her fingers over the large carving of mudblood on her right forearm. It was magically induced. A permanent reminder.
Ron looked from Harry to Hermione, as if searching for a sane person amidst the insane.
"You talked her into this, didn't you?" He accused. "Why's she been so helpful about something so utterly ridiculous- you're smarter than this Hermione!"
"Please, can anyone talk Hermione into doing something she doesn't want to?" Harry offered. He sipped his double, still unused to alcohol, but enjoying it the way one enjoys gambling. You don't play to win.
"Explain to me, again, how you'd think this can even work." Ron was caving, he had been for the last couple days that Harry had been inviting them up north, once Ron'd gotten over the inherent creepiness of Harry living in their dead Professor's house. He was still so wary. It was the wizard-raised in him, they had certain things that you just don't do. Messing with time was one of them.
"I've worked out all the details. After altering Hermione's old time turner-" Harry was cut off instantly.
"Wait, this is that time turner?" Ron turned on Hermione. "But I thought all of them had been destroyed. You did know Harry was up to something then, right from the start. You've been helping more than just this last week."
"The one from third year," Harry continued when Hermione did little more than shrug. "McGonagall found it, actually. Dumbledore was a sentimental guy, and I just guess he'd hung onto it. It wasn't exactly in perfectly functioning order, see." Harry explained.
Ron sighed with instant clarity. That wasn't too often with him. "So the two of you, you fixed it up. How?"
The two in question shared a fond smile.
"At first we had hoped to go back to before Voldemort murdered... well, the Potters." Hermione shot Harry's impassive face a glance as she spoke. "But it's just not possible. The concept of displacement turners are applicable commonly for minutes, hours, a few days at most. Without the injuries sustained to that time turner, we'd never have been able to figure out the displacement loophole. Lucky us."
"So, if we can't stop Voldemort from marking Harry, or even from him making any horcruxes, then how far back can we go?" Ron's eyes were darting back and forth between his friends. He'd finished his beer, not his first of the night, but he was not soothed by drink thusfar.
"We've managed nearly six years, we think." Harry murmured.
"Oh. We think? That's reassuring, really, no it is." Ron replied.
"And then we were thinking we'd have to be so careful, about our past selves seeing us." Hermione went on.
"And then we took care of that too." Harry smiled the widest he could. "Er, well, you know how time is still happening the same way once you, er, go back?" Harry asked, and his friends nodded. Even though Hermione was the one who helped him with this, she listened with rapture. "Well, we managed that without doubles of ourselves, we'd try something more like... replacement."
"Harry," Rom said with a look of disbelief as they gathered their robes from the rack near the pub's door. They'd finished their drinks and were headed out onto the empty streets, the muggle bartender left behind with a hefty tip and a fading memory of the three. "Harry we're not twelve anymore. I don't think people would buy the 'growth spurt' rubbish either."
"Well, what I mean is... we'll be replacing ourselves. Permanently. Like, we'd... become ourselves. At twelve." There was a slight breeze out today, and the sky was clearing up. Hermione didn't don her robe again but Harry and Ron were. The Notice-Me-Not's were second nature to the teenagers by now. No one would've blinked if they'd seen them, and as it was there was hardly any soul still alive around Spinner's End.
"W-we can't kill ourselves!" Ron protested. "It's that muggle thinking I swear. No wizard would ever dare to think to... why can't you see?" He moaned. "These aren't the sorts of things you can just mess with and get away with!"
"It's nothing so depressing," Hermione soothed. "It's a developed kind of magic that is stronger than simple displacementcharms." She spoke so prim when she taught someone something. "When we turn this- well it's sort of a time turner but not really anymore- it will locate our magical presence and displace us into our past. It's like a portkey, Ron, but with time too. Think of it that way. But that would, oh Harry! You!" Hermione realised.
"Hermione?" He frowned.
"The horcruxes," she said. "You too! Your horcrux..." She said meaningfully.
"We don't know that for sure," he said hastily. "And if... I mean we know how to get rid of it, worst comes to worst. Hermione we've done the work, this is doable."
When they got to the narrow home of Severus Snape that Harry was currently holed up in, Harry ushered them in through the somber hall into the outdated kitchen. He threw a kettle on, out of habit. No one was thirsty, but the comfort of a cuppa couldn't be refused.
"This is potentially very dangerous," she swallowed, and admitted to Ron after thinking about the horcruxes for a good bit. Hermione was being truthful. It was risky. But Harry saw in both their eyes thoughts of their families, and all their friends. So very dead, and could be so very alive.
"It's worth it, isn't it?" He said once the water was done boiling. "It's a price I'm willing to pay for all the people who paid with their lives for us."
"Alright," Ron conceded after days of badgering. "I think I've got most things straight on all this." He sighed gustily over his piping tea.
"Well, if we're all agreed, then we better go on before we change our minds." Harry knew that either way, he was leaving today.
"Hang on," Ron let a laugh burst free, startling Hermione and Harry. "You've got it here, haven't you?"
"Yeah," Harry admitted sheepishly. "But I couldn't just... go. Hermione wanted to. And we couldn't not, at the very least, tell you. I mean if you don't want to, we wouldn't force you but... you're our best mate, Ron. We'd want you with us. Like always."
"I'm tired, Harry." Ron said wearily, and Harry knew he meant more than physical. Harry could relate. But then again, he never was one to quit.
"I am too." Harry agreed. "But I need to do this, Ron. Now that I know it's possible? I can't live with not taking the chance. I can go alone, but been having a hard time convincing Hermione of that."
"We'd never let you do this alone." Hermione said furiously, looking at Ron with a hard-set jaw.
"You need us. Just like we need you, Harry." Ron said with finality, and a soft smile.
Harry let that ink in for a moment, then Ron spoke again.
"What will happen to the people here... like Neville, or Cho? They're still around. They'll remember us."
"This timeline, once we've gone back with replacement, won't exist with regards to us. It's like a clean slate, or so Hermione explained."
"Exactly," she said softly.
"Alright." Ron said again, nodding his head with consent.
"Ready?" Harry asked, to make sure, drawing the gold chain out of his robe's inner pocket.
"Absolutely." Hermione replied with a quiet ferocity.
"When you are, mate." Ron's voice cracked a bit.
Harry stretched the gold chain necklace around them all, in that shabby kitchen, then twisted the sands exactly seven times one way, and three the other. Numbers of power. Then once more in the other direction to seal the count, and that should've been it. They seemed to hold their breath as one in that pin-silent house in the cul-de-sac of Spinner's End.
Nothing happened.
They stood there huddled in the room, then Harry frowned, about to ask Hermione if he'd done it wrong when the lone lightbulb in the kitchen burst, followed by the small glass window over the sink. Ron grabbed his shoulder in solidarity and perhaps some fear. Harry linked his arm with Hermione, pulling her into their group huddle even more.
The clock to the side of the cabinets began to whir. A clock? Harry couldn't recall a clock in Spinner's End's kitchen, and certainly not one like Mrs. Weasley's.
But it was Mrs. Weasley's.
Harry's clock hand, an honorary addition that had him cry in privacy, was pointed to moral peril along with Ron's. He couldn't look away as the hands on the clock began to jerk and spin uncontrollably, never settling, and as their surrounding began to blur with odd periphery movement, Harry remained focused on that clock, wondering how in the world it'd gotten to Spinner's End.
A sound like wind, or maybe a train, or maybe a fog horn, filled the air, rising in pitch. Harry felt his skin and hair blow back as if by a great force, and he felt the comforting touch of his best friends in the whole world fade away like mist, dissolving, and he couldn't move. There was no floor anymore, just movement all around him and that clock that couldn't settle.
The last Harry remembered was the hands of Harry and Ron come to a rest on Mortal Peril, and he jerked upright from a stiff bed.
Jesus did Dudley get him good, his head was still feeling fuzzy. Actually, his mouth was too. It had a curious, numb feeling to it. Harry felt around his face for a bruise or cause of numbness before he let the hand fall down to the ratty sheets.
He smiled and let his sore, thirteen year old body fall onto the bed. He remembered the taste of gin very suddenly- and something else, something that tasted like hope.
They did it.