Chapter 4

Now that they had secured the first of the Horcruxes Harry and Hermione had room to move. Their first order of business was Wormtail. Until Sirius was out of Azkaban there was no way they could get into no.12 Grimmauld place. They had debated a long time on what was the best way to get Sirius out and the only workable option they could come up with was to use the rat to get him a trial.

Capturing the rat had been laughably easy. The deatheater hadn't expected a thing from the boy he had helped arrange a murder attempt of. So Harry who was still proficient at silent casting had stunned the rat as he and the red haired menace had slept in the bed next to his. Harry had then stuffed the rat into an unbreakable cage that Hermione had peppered.

While Harry was doing this Hermione had the harder job. They needed a way to say they knew that the rat was an animagus and the only thing that could do that was the marauder's map. But there was no way the twins would be ready to part with it. Last time it had taken Harry saving their sister from the chamber of secrets to make the two feel they owed Harry enough to part with it. And Harry and Hermione were unwilling to put her through anything like that again. Ginny and Harry would never again have what they had, but that didn't mean Harry didn't care. So, Hermione slipped into the twins' dorm room under Harry's invisibility cloak, with a bunch of silencing and non detection charms applied to herself just in case.

She tried the summoning charm first, but nothing seemed to happen, which meant it was probably in one of the trunks. Hermione, knowing the twins, cast a silencing charm on the first trunk before she opened it. That was apparently a good call, as a bunch of stuff that looked loud started moving as soon as she opened the trunk. She tried her summoning charm again and got lucky, the map came sliding out of the copy of The Standard Book of Spells - Grade Four that this twin was using. Hermione slipped a letter that Harry had penned, apologising for taking the map the way they had, that he had signed 'the son of Prongs'. They hoped that that would take the sting out of losing the map for the two. She closed up the trunk and slipped out of the dorm.

The Weasleys had all gone nuts over their missing things. Harry didn't know which of them had gone through his trunk (and every other student in the tower's trunk), but given that the girls had been hit as well he suspected Ginny. Ron was searching high and low for his rat, and the twins were grumpy. Given that Ginny had done the same thing in the old timeline, Harry and Hermione had not stored any of the items in the dorm. Harry kept the map on himself at all times, but in a pocket he had spelled to make anything inside it resistant to summoning charms. Wormtail was put in an old hidden room that was out of the way. Hermione had taken great delight in informing the animagus that there was nothing stopping him from turning back into a human if he chose to, but as the cage was unbreakable and he wasn't, the result would be messy.

-ϟϟϟ-

That Halloween was the first that Harry could remember that went well for him. Instead of the Chamber of Secrets being opened, Harry was visited by a few people from the Ministry. Harry had written to the Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge and had asked the man to come speak with him on that day. A similar letter had made its way to the head of the DMLE.

Minister Fudge was as predictable as he was self-centered, a meeting with the Boy-Who-Lived could do him a lot of good with the public. Of course, for him to get public support, the public had to know about it. That was why he had brought the witch who was clearly losing the fight with middle age, even if the green robes she was wearing were any indication she refused to acknowledge it. Harry heard Hermione whisper the phrase "mutton dressed as lamb"* under her breath as Rita Skeeter walked in, and he had to fight not to burst out giggling.

Both the minister and Director Bones were surprised by the other being there, having arrived separately. Professor McGonagall was there because when Harry had asked if it was OK for him to ask the two to the castle, she had reluctantly agreed on the condition that she was there to act as a responsible adult on their behalf. Harry had done some quick talking and everyone stayed; Madam Bones had tried to send Skeeter away, but Minister Fudge wanted her to stay. Eventually, they got around to asking why Harry had called the meeting.

"Well, you see, it's a little complicated," Harry started, as he found that he didn't need to act nervous as much as he thought he would; the nervousness was all too real when he considered what was at stake. "I have very few memories of my parents, and what I do have is mostly just flashes. But I do have some memories of that night, just fragments: a flash of green light, my mother hugging me while she cried and told me she loves me as the sound of feet coming up the stairs echoed in the background, and my father saying 'Run, he is here, Pettigrew betrayed us.'"

The last of the three was only half true; he had no real memories of his father accusing Wormtail, but the rest was true. Harry remembered hearing somewhere that the best lies had a lot of truth in them. As he spoke, Rita was scribbling away with her quill. Harry was surprised it was a regular quill and not the acid green Quick Quotes Quill. Maybe Skeeter didn't think she could get away with it in front of the director of the DMLE.

"Of course, I don't know who Pettigrew is, but I did come across that name again. My father was a prankster at school, he and his friends called themselves the Marauders, and they made this." He pulled out the map and tapped it with his wand. "I solemnly swear I am up to no good." The map revealed itself to the astonishment of the adult's. "As you can see on the map, it shows the location of each person in the castle. Look, here we are." He pointed to the room and started reading the names on the map. "Minerva McGonagall, Cornelius Oswald Fudge, Margarita Skeeter, Harry James Potter, Hermione Jean Granger, and lastly Peter Pettigrew." There was a gap from the assembled adults.

"That's impossible, the man is dead, killed by Sirius black. Your map must be faulty with age," Fudge started out.

"That's what I thought at first," Hermione said. "That the map was broken. But then I noticed that the Peter Pettigrew name was nearly always following one person, Ronald Weasley."

Harry took over. "But I'm a roommate of Weasley's, and we share classes and everything, and there was no one following him anywhere. However, a few nights ago I was watching the map, and Weasley got up to use the bathroom but the Peter Pettigrew marker stayed in his bed. I looked and the only thing in his bed was his pet rat."

Hermione took over again, sticking to the story they had concocted. "Harry told me about what happened, and I thought about Professor McGonagall's first lesson. She started the lesson showing us that she could become a cat. And I thought, if Professor McGonagall could transform into a cat, maybe someone else could turn into a rat."

"We tested it out by catching the rat and walking around the castle with it to see if the name on the map followed it, and it did." Harry finished up, with the adults looking at him, stunned. He pulled the cage with Wormtail out of his school bag and set it on the desk in front of him. "I know that it might be nothing, it might be just a coincidence or the map may be malfunctioning, but given what I remember my dad saying, I need to know, please?" Harry asked as only someone with the appearance of a child could.

Amelia bones looked at the rat with a calculating expression, as if she was weighing up the possibility of this being someone who everyone believed was dead. Given her job ,she was probably trying to work out what crimes she could charge the man with if it was true. Rita was scratching away with her quill, her expression almost hungry. Knowing her, she was hoping that the rat was a hidden animagus. After all, that would be a much bigger story.

McGonagall looked conflicted. Harry understood that, from her point of view Pettigrew was a hero who had tried to avenge the deaths of some of her favourite students, a true Gryffindor that gave his life to stop a madman. Everything that she was hearing was an assault on that world view. Fudge looked as calculating as Director Bones, though he was spending almost as much time looking at Skeeter as he was looking at the rat. He was a politician, looking for the best angle for himself. He probably thought that it was a war orphan with a broken toy and a bit of paranoia, albeit a famous war orphan who could earn him some good fluffy press stories.

For once, both Director Bones and Minister Fudge were in agreement for what was to happen. "OK Director Bones, I think this is just the enchantments running out on an old map, but it should be easy enough to prove. Why don't you perform the charm to return an animagus to their human form and we can clear this up without delay?"

The head of law enforcement for the magical community smiled a little at not having to fight with the self-serving oaf that currently held the title of minister. She slipped the tip of her wand through the bars of the cage and stunned the rat before removing it from its cage and setting it one the floor and started to cast the spell.

"There, you see, it's just a norm… bloody hell he really is an animagus. But, but, but…"

-ϟϟϟ-

Harry and Hermione watched from one of the classroom windows as the man was taken out of the school by three Aurors, one holding each arm and the third walking behind at about six feet, wand out and ready if the man tried to escape. Director Bones had called them almost as soon as the rat was turned back into his human form. She had only delayed long enough to shoot a stunner, a full body bind, and an Incarcerous at the unconscious pile of human garbage that had just been revealed.

The minister was flipping between wanting to throw the book at Pettigrew and believing the whole thing was somehow staged. But it was Skeeter who did exactly what Harry had hoped she would and set the minister straight, though admittedly Harry had expected it to be via new articles forcing his hand rather than collaboration on what article she would write. "So, Minister, what headline sounds better to you? 'DMLE, Minister of Magic, and Harry Potter work together to capture hidden Death Eater'...a little wordy, I admit. Or maybe 'Death Eater taken down!' would be better and use the first one as a subheading."

The words had calmed the minister quickly, causing Director Bones to roll her eyes. "Minister, perhaps we should be seen to be quick and decisive in this. Unless you have an objection, I'll open a full investigation into this," she nudged the unconscious man with her foot. "I'm already considering what to charge him with."

"Being a Death Eater, of course." Fudge insisted.

Bones sighed. "That's a political charge, minister, not a legal one. It's not illegal to be a Death Eater. However I doubt the Weasleys knew about this, so trespass, voyeurism, theft, and tax fraud."

"Tax fraud?" Harry asked.

"If you're pretending to be dead, you're obviously not paying your taxes, but you still owe them on what you earned between the last time you paid tax and when you faked your death." Madam Bones had explained.

Harry went back to watching the group of people leaving the castle. Apparently the DMLE preferred to portkey prisoners rather than use the floo, as it was possible to leave the floo network by the wrong exit. Fudge didn't have that problem though and had left via floo. The disadvantage of having people leave in two groups became obvious less than a minute later, when a beetle Harry and Hermione both recognised flew up and landed on the windowsill the two teens were currently looking out of. The DMLE must have thought Rita left with the minister, while the minister thought she was following the DMLE.

Hermione gave Harry a significant look before saying, "You want to head down to the feast, Harry?"

Harry shook his head. "Not really." Then an idea struck Harry; if Skeeter was going to spy on him then he would use it to tell her exactly what he wanted her to hear. "I wonder if Director Bones will look at the case of the man who was convinced of killing Pettigrew again?"

Hermione instantly caught on to what Harry was doing. "Well, she should. If his victim is still alive, he obviously didn't commit murder, and if the investigation got that wrong, then the whole investigation needs going over to see what evidence was missed."

-ϟϟϟ-

Dumbledore sat behind his desk, a lemon flavoured sweet rolling around his mouth as he considered the case of Mr. Potter. Obviously the boy still had his mother's protection, the incident with Quirrell was enough to prove that. The elderly man shuddered at the memories of what had happened to the posed professor at the boy's touch. Yet, it was also just as obvious that the boy still had the shard of Tom's soul in him as well, his reaction to Legilimency was enough to work that out. Obviously Tom's shard didn't want to risk being discovered by a probe.

Did that mean that the shard was connected to the boy's mind and was influencing him? The old man didn't think so, Mr. Potter spent all his time in the company of the muggleborn girl, no way Tom would allow that if he had any say in it. But the boy was brilliant; he and the Granger girl were top of the class, and both Flitwick and McGonagall had mentioned that the two didn't appear to be pushing themselves.

Maybe the boy could defeat Tom. He definitely had the brilliance to handle the feat. But to do that, he would need to find a way to rid himself of the foul shard. A feat that has never been accomplished without the destruction of the container. Yet the transfer ritual was never completed, and Mr. Potter wasn't a prepared vessel to hold a soul fragment. There was still hope that the shard's hold on Mr. Potter wasn't as strong as in most horcruxes.

And what of their discovery of Pettigrew? He never expected for someone like that to be hidden right underneath his, admittedly crooked, nose. This will definitely take a lot of pondering to work out the best way forward. He slipped another lemon drop in his mouth and made a mental note to buy some more.

-ϟϟϟ-

The investigation into Pettigrew and the articles in the Prophet were enough to get Sirius Black a trial, and as the man volunteered to be questioned under Veritaserum, there was plenty of evidence to get him released and Pettigrew thrown in prison. Sirius was awarded 66'000 galleons for being unlawfully imprisoned for 11 years, though it was just the money he would have made himself if he had been working for that time: 6'000 gallons a year, or almost £30'000. Harry went home for Christmas to meet him, and had slipped a basilisk fang (that he had gotten from the basilisk in exchange for a buck Harry had stunned in the forest) to Kreacher so that the elf could destroy the locket.

As London was both where Grimmauld Place was and where the Grangers lived, Harry and Hermione spent a lot of their break visiting each other. Mostly Harry went to the Grangers, as it was an escape from the dungeon that was Grimmauld Place; Sirius was working at making the place into a liveable home, but it was slow going. In part because the house had been neglected for so long that it was in a terrible state, but also because Sirius was still more focused on healing himself. But Sirius thought that the house should be liveable by the time Hogwarts sent the students home for the summer. Harry thought Sirius was being a little optimistic, but he didn't say anything to his godfather.

When he was at Grimmauld, Harry spent most of his time talking with Sirius about his parents. Harry had a few stories repeated from the previous timeline, but he had many more times that in new stories. He had never really had the time to just sit and talk with Sirius. The man was on the run during his fourth year, and in his fifth Molly Weasley was jealous that Harry was turning to someone other than her to be a parent. Coupled with her paranoia that Sirius might inform Harry of anything to do with the war without Dumbledore's approval, this had led to the woman keeping them apart as much as she could.

Sirius went a little nuts at Christmas. First, he bought Harry and Hermione a high end muggle road bike each, so that it would be easier for the two of them to visit each other. But he went all out getting Harry everything he could think of. Harry now owned a deluxe chess set, a set of gobstones, exploding snap cards, a wand holster, a new wardrobe (both muggle and wizarding), new seeker's gloves, and an expanded five compartment chest to replace his school trunk.

Harry returned to Hogwarts and the rest of the year passed without incident. He made a few trips to the Chamber of Secrets to see if the horcrux was hidden there, It wasn't, but Harry did find a hidden cash of books that included one with instructions on how to create a horcrux. However, Harry and Hermione already knew the information in it from the books Hermione had stolen from Dumbledore's office after he had died.

Harry surprisingly developed a sort of friendship with the basilisk. Turned out, actually feeding her and talking to her so she wasn't completely bored was enough to get her to be friendly. She gave Harry some stories about Salazar (she exclusively used Slytherin's first name), and Harry half wished he could share some of the stories to the Slytherin purebloods, as some of the ideas they had about the man were completely wrong. For example, of the four Hogwarts founders, Salazar was the one who was considered the soft touch by the students. And as the one who loved animals, his lessons were a cross between Care of Magical Creatures and the type of Defence Against the Dark Arts that Harry had experienced in his third year with Lupin, when the teacher had focused on defending yourself from dark creatures. According to the basilisk, Salazar even advocated for better rights for goblins and centaurs.

Without any petrification or rogue bludgers to interfere, Quidditch had gone off without a problem, with Harry catching the snitch in all of Gryffindor's games that year. Harry got a good laugh at Malfoy as he threw a fit at being beaten by a "halfblood on an inferior broom". Wood was singing Harry's phrases for a week after Harry caught the snitch in their final match against Hufflepuff, winning Gryffindor the cup.

On the last day before they left for the summer, two things of note happened. First, the curse of the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor struck again when two irate parents came storming into the Great Hall at breakfast, screaming at the self-absorbed moron for getting their daughter, a seventh year Hufflepuff, pregnant. That another girl, this time a Gryffindor, had then spelled a jug of milk on the teachers table to empty its contents over Lockhart while screaming at him for cheating on her was how everyone lend that the man had been sleeping with a number of sixth and seventh year girls, two of which were pregnant. This of course meant that Dumbledore had needed to fire the man on the spot. The only thing keeping it from being worse was that each of the witches were of age.

The second thing was that Harry met (or rather re-met) Luna Lovegood. Harry bumped into her as she was searching the castle for her possessions, and Harry offered to help her look. They were just finishing with the third floor, where Harry's ability to use a summoning charm had helped in retrieving a copy of the Quibbler, a left shoe, a family photo, and (much to Harry's embarrassment) a pair of knickers, when Luna spoke up.

"How far did you come back, Harry?" Her tone was light and dreamy as always, but her words chilled him

"W-what do you mean? How far from where?"Harry tried to act calm but the slight stutter in his voice was a dead giveaway.

"I suppose the language is confusing. It should be how long did you come back, but that sounds like you could go back to when you came from. What I want to know is what was the date you left the future and what was the date you came back to."

Harry stared at Luna with his mouth hanging open. "How did you know?"

She smiled at him. "I asked first."

Harry sighed, knowing that Luna can be stubborn when she wants to be and answered, "24th of December 1997 to 31st of July 1991."

She smiled at him, looking innocent. "Your aura looks older than it should, both yours and the girl you hang around with, Miss Granger. I have been trying to work out what would make your aura age like that, but when you spoke to me your aura reacted to mine like we were friends, and not just casual friends either but best friends. But if we were close friends, I would know wouldn't I? So we must have been friends in a time I can't remember, and no-one remembers the future. Why did you come back?" Luna said all that in a tone that a normal person might use to talk about the weather.

Harry was still on edge but relaxing a little now. "We didn't mean to come back, it just happened to us. But it's given us an opportunity to help a lot of people. Luna, please don't tell anyone about this. If people know, they will try to learn about the future and change it to suit them, or they may decide that it's more important to keep time the same as it was before." Harry didn't know it, but a dark look came over his face as he remembered the things that were going on during the war. "Trust me, you don't want that future."

"Sounds lonely," The blonde girl said. "Having to keep so much of your life a secret from everyone. Do you want to be friends again?"

The question took Harry by surprise, and he almost forgot to answer. "I would love that Luna, and I'm sure Hermione would love it as well."

Harry helped Luna take everything back to the Ravenclaw's common room. Luna answered the riddle, opening the door and letting them both in. Harry was standing next to the stairs that led to the Ravenclaw girls' dorms; as both houses were houses in a tower, they had similar layouts for the common rooms, though Ravenclaw had a whole library of books instead of wall decoration. While Harry looked around, his eyes fell on a statue of who he assumed was Ravenclaw herself. The statue was wearing a tiara that looked familiar to Harry, though he couldn't remember where he had seen it before.

Luna reappeared at the bottom of her stairs, pulling her trunk behind her. She opened it and Harry started handing her the things he was carrying. He had agreed to put a simple ward on her trunk; his warding was not very good and would probably collapse in two or three days, but he could keep anyone apart from himself and Luna from being able to open it until then. But she would be home by then and her things would be safe. He would have excluded himself from the spell if he could, but the spell he knew was meant for someone to protect their own stuff, not someone else's. So he could add people apart from himself to the permission list, but couldn't remove himself as the caster. Harry left the Ravenclaw's common room still trying to work out where he had seen the tiara before. It wasn't like he had seen a lot of fancy jewellery in his life.

A/N

*mutton dressed as lamb. I don't know how common this phrase is outside the UK so just in case it refers to an older woman who is dressing like someone much younger. Often with the connotation that they look ridiculous doing so.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me over on pat re on and special thanks to SvenGTX and Jack Schriner who are awesome people. Remember that people who support me there get the next two chapters for all my fics early if you are interested I use the name Lowten there as well

Also thanks to my beta phineas who turns my ramblings into something enjoyable to read