A/N: WOAH. I just saw a tree fall while I was revising this chapter.

Chapter 2: Asleep And Awake

Harry drifted backwards in time with the giant time turner around his neck, and a giant blue crystal encasing him. The crystal and all of its contents also began to drift in space, traveling slowly over London and then north. Nobody saw it, of course; it was traveling backwards in time so it didn't really intersect with the normal timeline. Even if someone had caught a glimpse, they would have thought it was just an extra shiny piece of sky.

Time travel was usually quite rapid, but this crystal was just drifting backward slowly. The time turner was quite unnerved by the fact that it was drifting rather than just traveling. Not only that, but it was moving in time and space—and then it gave the inanimate-object version of a startled jump and wondered how it could possibly be thinking at all as it was a time turner. Preposterous! it thought Britishly.

As it happened, objects all around Harry were having similar moments. The bowling ball had just been wondering if it would be thrown against a wall again before it realized that it was sentient. The bowling pins were trying to figure out where the bowling ball was and weren't bothered much by their own thoughts, but the broom was using its aloof thoughts to calculate how sentience could help its future. The vinyl records all wished they could play, and the rubber ducks passed the strange time by pretending the crystal was water. Even Felix Felecius was counting its blessings that its bottle had not broken when Harry fell.

Only two masses in the crystal remained unaware. One was the fiery egg. No curious thoughts passed through its inanimate shell, nor did it wonder why everything was blue. It was silent. And it was waiting.

The other silent object was the thirty-seven year old man, his body broken and lifeless. All of the objects chattered on inside their little minds, and none of them noticed the lifeless Harry.

Just as the time turner thought it couldn't possibly go back any further, the crystal stopped moving. The time turner felt relief as they stopped moving in time as well. After that, it felt nothing at all; its consciousness vanished. All of the objects' minds vanished.

And Harry's mind kicked into overdrive. His whole life began to flash through his memory, jumbled and out of order. Things from his early childhood that he never remembered as an adult came back to him—his parents, their death…

He remembered saying goodbye to his children and his godson at the Hogwarts Express. He saw it all as if he were living it.

He was living under the stairs, picking spiders off Dudley's old socks.

He watched Dumbledore's funeral from his little white plastic chair, heard the phoenix song, and felt the vacant part of his life where his mentor had been.

He was at his first day of work as an auror, packing his auror's bag with his faithful invisibility cloak, a set of replenishable potions, money, a sneakoscope and more, and then attaching it to his belt to always wear.

Then he was wielding a giant, ruby encrusted sword into the mouth of the basilisk, the phoenix song filling his heart with bravery.

And then the joy and spirit of the phoenix was replaced with anguish as he remembered his last conversation with Ginny; he couldn't do it anymore, couldn't pretend that he loved her, as much as he wanted to. He said he was sorry. He though she would yell, but she simply sighed, said she was glad he was going to get to finally explore, and that this would have been easier if he'd figured it all out sooner. "Figured what all out sooner?" Harry thought, pitched into confusion.

And then he was sailing through the air on his Nimbus 2000, diving, and then nearly swallowing the snitch to win the game.

And then he was locked in a duel with Lord Voldemort. They circled each other like lions, never looking away. Then each of their trademark spells erupted from their wands and Harry knew he would win. Albus Dumbledore had told him so, and then…

He was at the birth of his son, Albus, so named to try and fill the void Harry's old mentor had left…

He was watching from the turrets of Hogwarts while Fawkes ended his song, flying away from the castle for, Harry knew, the last time.

And then he was saying goodbye to his children and apparating to his new apartment. They wanted to stay with Ginny, and besides, he didn't have enough time to take care of them properly with his job. Ginny was a busy woman, too, with her Quidditch career, but she had taken up with a retired player who wanted nothing more than to raise her children. Harry planned to see them some weekends.

He was in Voldemort's dark, wet Horcrux cave and Dumbledore was slowly turning in a circle, whispering words to the walls in a mysterious language. He stopped and pointed his wand. There, for a moment, on the rock glowed a bright, shining blue—no, bright, shining white arch, and Harry cheered, "You've d-done it!" through his chattering teeth. Dumbledore turned immediately and the glow disappeared.

"Harry, I'm so sorry, I forgot," he said and pointed his wand instead at Harry. The dampness and chill in his robes vanished immediately to be replaced by warmth, like the clothes had been sitting in front of a fire for hours.

-But not just that. Suddenly warmth spread through Harry's actual, physical, dead, limp limbs. Tickles of blue magic raced up and down his form, piecing his cracked skull back together, replenishing his blood, charging his magic.

The other objects felt the spark of magic, too. Bent twigs in the Lightning broom repaired themselves, and the bowling ball's surface shone more brightly. The vinyl records suddenly found themselves as if they'd never been played.

Harry's memories did not stutter. He dreamt on, unaware of where he was, unaware of the passage of time. Harry slept, and the crystal remained still in a forest for ten years, almost undisturbed. Almost.