thankyou to all my pat re on supporters with special thanks to the awesome people SvenGTX and Jack Schriner.

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Chapter 5

Harry's summer turned out to be amazing. Sirius had been successful in getting Grimmauld Place looking and feeling like a real home. Having money to spend on help, and actually being able to walk into a business to hire that help, had made the cleaning of Grimmauld Place a lot easier. Hermione had spent a lot of time with him at Grimmauld Place as well. With both of her parents working at their dental practice during the week, one of her parents would drop her at Harry's home and the two of them would spend time together. Of course, they got their homework out of the way in the first week.

Thanks to Harry giving Kreacher the basilisk fang to destroy the locket, the house elf was a lot more willing to help Harry, and he hadn't called Hermione a mudblood all summer. Instead, the elf was helping them get to the books in the Black library that Sirius had understandably banned the two teens from. They were researching how to get past the wards and traps that they knew were on the Gaunt shack before they even considered going anywhere near the building. They both remembered what had happened to Dumbledore's hand, and neither of them had any intention of experiencing that for themselves, especially as they hadn't been able to find the curse that Tom used, and without the curse it was almost impossible to find the counter curse.

That's not to say their summer was all work. Sirius had gone out of his way to take the two of them to have fun as well. He had taken them to a professional Quidditch match, a dueling competition, the beach, even *Oakwood Park. The five of them (Harry, Sirius, and the Grangers) went out to eat together a few times as well. Harry's birthday had been especially memorable, as Sirius and Hermione had worked together and had arranged a day at a go kart center. The three of them had fun racing against everyone; Harry was surprised to find Hermione could be a bit of a speed demon when she wanted to be. With her aversion to brooms from her fear of heights, she had never had the opportunity to show off that part of herself in all the years Harry had known her. After that, they were joined by the Granger parents and Sirius took them to Ambrosia, the most exclusive restaurant in magical Britain. The food had been amazing, though the atmosphere was a bit stuffy for Harry's taste.

Overall, Harry's birthday experience was good for Harry and Hermione as well as being good for Sirius. It reminded Harry and Hermione why they were pressing to change the future instead of running off to another part of the world, leaving Britain and letting the country (that had turned its back on Harry until they wanted him to save them) rot. It was also good for Sirius to build some good memories after his years of Dementor exposure.

Remus finally turned up two weeks before the start of the new school year. Harry had expected Remus and Sirius to immediately hit it off, so he was shocked and surprised when instead Sirius had punched Remus, sending him careening to the floor.

"I guess I deserved that," Remus said as he rubbed at the bruise that was slowly starting to develop on his jaw.

"Damn right you deserved it, you left me to rot in Azkaban!"

"I thought you had betrayed James and killed Wormy. I thought it was what you deserved."

"You should have known better. You also didn't once look in on Harry."

"Dumbledore said Harry was safe."

"You're a Marauder! It's not Dumbledore's responsibility to check on Harry, it was YOURS!"

"Dumbledore said there were anti-werewolf wards to keep Greyback and his pack away from Harry."

"You could have still looked in on him from afar! Dumbledore dropped the ball, he wasn't checking up on Harry and Lily's sister was treating him like shit." It was easy to see that Sirius was not happy with Remus. "And I have been out of that hell for months. Why is it only now you came looking for me?"

"I didn't know. I was in Norway teaching English, I only got back into the country yesterday, so when I heard about your release today I came right over." Remus explained as he finally climbed back to his feet.

"Why did you come back?'' Harry asked. "Why suddenly return to Britain now?" Harry was sure he already knew the answer but asked it anyway.

"Dumbledore is having trouble finding a Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, something about the previous one taking liberties. It was an opportunity to come home for a year and I would get to see you again Harry." Remus explained his side, and Harry mentally nodded as that was what he thought. Considering he had met Lupin originally as his Defence professor, it wasn't a huge leap in logic.

"Taking liberties? I guess that's one way to describe a teacher sleeping with a number of his students and getting two pregnant," Hermione said from the doorway. Harry hadn't heard Hermione come in, but Kreacher knew to let her straight in whenever she came over. With Hermione there, she and Harry retreated to Harry's room after a quick and polite introduction between Hermione and the soon-to-be Professor Lupin.

-ϟϟϟ-

The first thing Hermione did when they got to Diagon Alley for their back-to-school shopping run was to drop into Magical Menagerie and get Crookshanks. Harry had slipped Hermione a few extra galleons to get things for the cat, knowing how much Hermione had missed her pet. Sirius had insisted on buying both Harry and Hermione new trunks. Hermione had tried to refuse but Sirius had insisted, calling it a thank-you for her part in helping to catch the rat, combined with an early birthday present. Hermione had given in, only to then discover just how far Sirius was going with their trunks. Each one contained a large free-standing wardrobe that grew out of the trunk when you opened one compartment, a full bookshelf when you opened the second, a chilled compartment for storing potions ingredients, and a second shelving unit not unlike the bookshelf but sized to hold their other possessions; Harry's had a tall section where he could keep his broom, for example. Hermione's trunk also had a vanity table with a large mirror in another compartment.

They had both been surprised to find that The Monster Book of Monsters was missing from their book lists, until Hermione had worked it out. Because they had prevented the basilisk from petrifying students, the real culprit of the murder Hagrid was accused of was never revealed. While they had kept Hagrid out of Azkaban,, they had also cost him his chance at teaching. Harry was on the fence about that; on one hand his friend had loved teaching and knew his stuff, but on the other Hagrid was a bad teacher. Maybe it was better for the students to have a different teacher, even if it meant Hagrid was left where he had been.

After they had gotten everything, leaving books until last (mostly so they didn't have to carry Hermione's books for every subject around with them), they went to Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour. Dan and Emma had grumbled a little over their teeth but had quickly given in to Hermione's pleading. Harry got a strawberry sundae and Hermione had a large bowl of chocolate ice cream with caramel sauce. As they ate, Hermione discussed what subjects they would take this year at length. She was going to take every class again, more because they wanted access to the time turner again. They had considered having Harry try to take every subject as well, but even with his improved grades over his first time taking his first two years, they didn't think that Professor McGonagall would agree; his grades were good, but not THAT good. He did agree to take a third class; Hermione's argument was that he could coast through Care of Magical Creatures and Divination to O.W.L. level. He had opted for Ancient Runes because Muggle Studies was a joke according to Hermione, and while he was OK at maths, Arithmancy didn't hold any appeal for him.

-ϟϟϟ-

It was soon the first of September, and Harry and Hermione met up at Kings Cross after saying goodbye to the Grangers and Sirius. It was Harry's most emotional departure for Hogwarts ever. After an entire summer of spending time with Sirius (a Sirius with better mental health than Harry had ever seen him with), Harry had gotten a taste of a real home, and leaving it was hard. The two teens settled into a compartment, glad that they had changed enough that the train wouldn't be attacked by Dementors this time. Without Sirius breaking out of prison, there was no need for the Ministry to set the damned demons loose on the public. However, without the Dementors, there was no need for Dumbledore to station Professor Lupin on the train either.

Just after the train had left Kings Cross, there was a polite knock on the door to the compartment. At their acknowledgement, the door slid open to reveal a second year Ravenclaw and an old friend who wasn't supposed to know them yet but still had (in her own odd way) worked out some of the truth, despite no-one else having been able to.

"Hello Harry, Hello Hermione, do you mind if I sit here?" Luna Lovegood asked.

Harry and Hermione both smiled. Hermione invited her in while Harry hefted Luna's trunk into the overhead rack. Luna sat down next to Hermione.

"So Luna, Harry said you worked out mine and Harry's little secret." Hermione said to luna.

She nodded to Hermione. "It was the only option that made sense. Both of you are older than your bodies, at least your magical aura is, and the two of you are surrounded by Wrackspurts. Most teenagers aren't troubled by thoughts heavy enough to attract even a third of the swarm you have."

Most people wouldn't have seen it, but Harry had known Hermione for over eight years, so he saw the muscles in Hermione's jaw flex as she bit back her comments on Luna's made up creatures. Instead Hermione remembered she needed to focus on what is important at the moment. "You understand that you can't tell anyone about where we are from, right? It would be dangerous for us and it would make our task a lot harder."

"I promise, it's not like anyone would believe Loony Lovegood anyway." Luna shrugged.

"You should never call yourself that," Hermione insisted firmly as she put an arm around the younger girl. "If you accept what they call you then the bullies win, and once they win once they keep coming back."

Luna just looked at them in the off-putting way she had and said, "But they keep coming back anyway." Both Harry and Hermione silently vowed that, if they had any say in the matter, the people bullying Luna were going to stop. They would have said it out loud, but before they could Luna changed the subject. "So I know you came from the future and you want to change something, but Harry never said what it is you want to change."

Harry hesitated for a few seconds, but decided that if he was in for a penny he was in for a pound. "We want to stop the Second Blood War from happening. When we left, I can't really say we were losing; we had lost. The Death Eaters had taken over the Ministry, and they were rounding up muggleborn witches and wizards and sending them to camps. We can't say for sure what was happening there, but none ever returned so all we can do is speculate. Death Eaters were running Hogwarts as well, and we know some students were taken to control their parents." Harry specifically didn't look at Luna as he said that. "There were gangs everywhere looking for 'undesirables' hoping to collect on the reward offered by the new regime. I was actually 'Undesirable no. 1'. We hadn't given up, but honestly looking back it was a fool's quest; however, it was that or lay down and die." Harry didn't realise it, but while he talked his voice became hollow and his eyes stopped focusing on the present as he watched the memories playing out in his head. Luna launched herself at Harry and pulled him down so he was seated between her and Hermione, and the two sandwiched him in a much-needed hug.

-ϟϟϟ-

The day slowly passed them by, and Hermione and Luna sat chatting for a long while. Harry hadn't considered that Hermione would miss having another girl she could talk with. Eventually the trolley came by, and Harry got them a few sweets each. Sirius had told the Grangers that the lunch trolley was all sugar, so the two more responsible adults had insisted on making lunch for Harry and Hermione. Harry was only looking for something to have after his chicken salad sandwiches.

After lunch was an enjoyable game of every flavour roulette, where Harry and Luna got to have a laugh at Hermione when she got a rhubarb flavoured bean, her own personal food hell. Of course, Hermione and Luna got to return the favour when Harry got a bean flavoured like jellied eels. They were in the middle of laughing at Harry when the door to the compartment slid open.

The three of them turned to find Draco Malfoy and his two security trolls standing in the doorway. "Well, if it isn't Potter and the lying little mudblood."

"What do you mean lying? I don't recall lying to you?" Hermione sounded indignant.

"You told me you were a Pureblood!" Malfoy insisted.

"No, I didn't. I have never said I was anything but a muggleborn." Hermione knew where this was going now and she had to suppress a smirk. She had laid the foundation for this little prank two years ago; she expected it to happen far earlier, and as time had gone on she suspected the Malfoy heir had seen through her words and that the prank was over before it had begun.

"You said you were from the house Dagworth-Granger!" It was easy to see how angry the blond was now.

Hermione slipped into her lecture mode. "No, you said you hadn't heard of the name Granger so I must be a muggleborn. I was curious if I was the first magical in my family, so I looked up wizarding families to see if I could find any Grangers, Rawlings, Pickmens, and a few other material names from both sides of my family. The only name that jumped out as worth following up on was Dagworth-Granger, but there was no relation. When you said there were no wizarding families with the name Granger, I corrected you. I told you that House Dagworth-Granger was an old prominent wizarding family, that's it. Everything else was just you jumping to conclusions."

As Hermione lectured, Malfoy grew angrier and angrier. "You think you're so smart, mudblood, I'll teach you your place." His hand shot into his robes and pulled out his wand. He was just inthe middle of pointing it at Hermione when he was hit by a spell from Harry.

"Expelliarmus!" Malfoy's wand went flying, Harry probably could have caught it if he tried but he was too busy casting his next spell, 'Levicorpus'. At Harry's non-verbal spell, Malfoy was hoisted into the air by his ankle. His robes started to fall, so Harry (remembering the scene between his father and Snape) cast a quick sticking charm, adhering the robes to the boy's legs. After all, Harry didn't want to see what was under Malfoy's robes, and he suspected that the two girls wanted to see it even less.

Crabbe and Goyle tried to rush Harry but this time it was Hermione who was quickest of the mark, hitting the two with Impedimenta jinxes freezing them in place. Once the two trolls transfigured to look like students were dealt with, Harry walked up to Malfoy and looked him right in the face. "Let's make this perfectly clear, Malfoy. If you ever draw your wand on Hermione again, you will be answering to me. No teachers, no bodyguards, and no daddy to protect you. Just you and me. And for now, here is a little taste." Harry cast a quick silencer, then drew back his fist and slammed it into Malfoy's nose with all the force he could muster. He felt satisfied hearing the crunching sound it gave off as it broke. 'Serves the git right for breaking my nose in sixth year' Harry thought.

Blood began pouring from Malfoy's nose, covering the top half of his head in the crimson liquid, standing out starkly against the Slytherin's blond hair. While Malfoy silently cursed and screamed obscenities, Harry turned his back on Malfoy and picked up his bottle of pumpkin juice that he had gotten from the trolley witch and took a drink, also surreptitiously checking on Hermione and Luna. Hermione barely looked like anything was happening at all. That made sense, compared to what the two of them had done in the past this was nothing noteworthy. Luna was looking at Harry with a strange expression that he couldn't determine, but when she noticed him looking she flashed him a weak smile.

The violence was definitely off-putting to Luna, so Harry decided to end it. He pointed his wand at Malfoy's nose and cast "Episkey". There was a second satisfying crunch as Malfoy's nose was fixed. It was Luna who had first fixed Harry's nose with that spell, and Harry had first hand experience that fixing it was almost as bad as breaking it in the first place. Harry considered leaving Malfoy covered in his own blood, but the decision was taken out of his hands by Hermione when she cast a scouring charm on his face that was meant for cleaning cauldrons. It wouldn't do any damage, but it was definitely not a pleasant experience.

Harry ended the silencing charm and asked "Do we have an understanding?"

"When my father…" Malfoy started to rant, but Harry hit him with the silencer again before he turned back to the girls.

"So Luna, what's your favourite subject?" Hermione had to hide a smile, as she knew exactly what Harry was doing: winding up Malfoy by acting as if he was unimportant.

Luna lit up at the question. "I like Transfiguration, you get to be really creative. I can't wait until we start animal transfiguration. I want to turn something into a crumple-horned snorkack, maybe if I can do that my transfigured one can attract a real one."

"I always wondered, is there a smooth-horned snorkack?" Harry asked instantly, and Hermione was unavailable to keep herself from scoffing at the idea.

"Not that I have heard of, why?" Luna asked, curiosity painted across her face.

"Then why specify them as crumple-horned? Why not just 'horned snorkack'?"

Luna's face lit up like it was Christmas. "I need to owl Daddy as soon as I get to the castle. Maybe there is a different subspecies of snorkack out there, if we can find that one maybe it will give us a lead in looking for their cousins!"

Harry turned back to Malfoy and again tried talking to him but was hit with a string of vitriol, so Harry returned the silencing charm again. It took another 45 minutes and three more silencing charms before Malfoy worked out that he needed to agree to leave them alone and not point his wand at Hermione, but eventually he did. Only then did Harry let Malfoy and his bookends go.

The rest of the journey to Hogwarts was filled with telling Luna a few stories from the future and giving her an idea of the items they were looking for. They avoided mentioning horcruxes and souls, not because they didn't trust Luna, but because it was better for the world that the information about them be lost so that people stopped trying to make them. They did tell her that they thought there was one at Hogwarts but that they hadn't been able to find it yet, despite doing an organised systematic search of the castle over the last two years at the castle.

That's when Luna surprised them. "You're going about it wrong. You shouldn't be trying to search the castle, you need to think how you would hide something important in the castle."

Suddenly, bidden by Luna's words, Harry started to connect a few memories. Him hiding Snape's book in the Room of Requirement and creating a marker in the piles of junk with a bust, a wig and a tiara; Dumbledore telling Harry about how Voldemort was obsessed with the Hogwarts founders; seeing the statue of Ravenclaw in their common room with a strangely familiar tiara on its head that he was sure he had seen before.

Harry threw his arms around Luna and hugged her. "Thank you, Luna, thank you!" He turned to Hermione. "I know where it is, I know where it is!"

"Really?"

"It's in the Room of Requirement, the hidden things room. I saw it in sixth year, but I had no clue what it was."

"That's brilliant Harry, that only leaves two more to get and we know where one of them is!" Hermione, caught up in Harry's excitement, jumped to her feet and threw her arms around Harry who had just released Luna. As Hermione hugged him, Harry suddenly found he was aware of Hermione's chest as she held him close. The de-aging had robbed them of their physical development, and with it the awareness that came from Hermione's hugs in the later years. Now he was aware that she was almost fourteen already, and his bushy haired best friend was once again quickly turning into the beautiful young woman that he remembered from before, the one he had first seen (to his own chagrin) at the Yule Ball.

The rest of the trip to Hogwarts passed extremely slowly; each of them wishing time away so that they could get to the school had the inevitable effect of making every second feel like a few minutes. Harry tried to focus on telling Luna tales from the previous timeline, mostly focusing on what happened in his first two years. As that time was past them, it felt safe to talk about in detail. Luna was a good listener, oohing and ahhing at his tales of trolls, flying keys, giant chess sets, giant spiders, a basilisk, and a Dark Lord. But Harry's mind kept drifting back to the Room of Requirement and the fragment of Tom's soul that was waiting for him there.

A/N

*Oakwood Park is a British theme park that in the summer of 1994 was building Europe's first water coaster