The Changed Timeline
by Teddylonglong
All recognizable characters belong to J. K. Rowling, and I am not earning anything by writing this story.
I am not a native speaker of English. Please excuse my mistakes.
COMPLETELY AU! Partly OOC! Time travel!
"Severusss," Harry hissed at the snake that was lying on the floor next to his bed in surprise.
"Yes, it'sss me. Sorry to disturb you," his friend apologized.
"No problem. What are you doing here in your snake form?" Harry hissed back.
"I wanted to tell you something, and I couldn't wait until tomorrow," Severus admitted. "I think I have the potion. Tomorrow morning, we can test it on a rat."
"Wow, that's cool. You're absolutely brilliant," Harry whispered in complete amazement.
"I'll show you the recipe tomorrow. I'll return to Slytherin now. Good night, Harry, go to sleep. I'll see you in the morning," he added and slithered away.
HP
Right after breakfast the next morning, Severus approached him and handed him a small piece of parchment.
Harry read the text that was written in Severus' meticulous handwriting with interest.
Floo powder to get back to the future:
- fairy dust
- essence of whirlwind
- powdered unicorn's horn
- fresh basilisk powder (made from the venom to be collected from a living basilisk or within 24 hours of its death and preserved immediately)
- house elf hair freely given, 1 mm per day (7305 mm = 20 years)
"Don't lose this parchment; nobody except for us should know about it," Severus instructed him. "And don't get your hopes up yet, you know that we haven't tested it so far. There's still a possibility that it won't work at all."
"All right Severus, thank you so much. When can we test it?" Harry asked eagerly.
Severus smirked, as he replied, "We can try it out right after dinner if you want."
HP
Later the same day, the two boys strode straight to the Potions classroom, catching and stunning a rat as they went. In the classroom, Severus took a small box filled with yellow powder out of his pocket, threw the rat together with the powder in the fireplace and shouted, "Hogwarts Potions classroom."
Harry and Severus watched the rat disappear. "Now we can only wait until tomorrow," Severus said, matter-of-factly. "The problem is that we don't know if it's going to arrive exactly at the same time. As it said in the recipe, 1 mm of elf hair means a day. I put about 1.1 mm into the potion to be on the safe side, so the rat should be back about 2 hours later than now, so we should be able to be here in any case."
"All right," Harry agreed, chuckling. "What are we going to tell Lily though, when a rat arrives through the Floo during our Potions tutoring?"
"Let's just tell her it's an experiment, don't reveal any details," Severus decided, smirking.
"Okay then, shall we brew something together?" Harry suggested. "I still have time until my wandless magic lesson with Dumbledore."
"That's a good idea," Severus replied, grinning. "Pomfrey has asked me to make a batch of the new pain-relieving potion that I invented, so if you don't mind, we could do that now."
HP
During their Potions tutoring the next evening, neither Harry nor Severus was able to concentrate on their potion.
Suddenly, Lily giggled and asked, curiously, "What's wrong with the two of you? You're constantly looking at the fireplace. Are you waiting for someone coming through the Floo?"
Severus and Harry could not help grinning, and Harry answered sincerely, "Yes, of course, we are waiting for a rat coming to visit us."
When an hour later the fireplace flared green and a stunned rat appeared, Lily glared at the two boys, who inwardly congratulated themselves.
"Lily, you don't want to know," Harry spoke up, chuckling.
"I want to know what you did now," Lily objected, causing Severus and Harry to let out a collective sigh.
"Sorry Lily, it was just an experiment for a potion," Severus explained in a soft voice, promising, "If we succeed, you'll get to know about it; all right?"
"All right," Lily grudgingly agreed, still glaring at her friends. " Let's get on with our potion then."
HP
Later the same evening, Harry thought, 'In my time, everyone told me that the Marauders had always been funny at playing pranks, but ever since I've arrived here, they haven't really done anything interesting. Do I have to help them with that as well?'
On their way to the Great Hall the following morning, he whispered to James and Sirius, "Don't you think that we're much too well behaved? Shouldn't we play some pranks?"
"Yes, of course," Sirius immediately agreed. "We almost forgot that we've got to keep up with the reputation that we got in our fifth year. Let's prank the Slytherins."
"No, Sirius. Not the Slytherins," Harry objected in a firm voice. "Don't forget, one of the Marauders is a Slytherin. Instead, let's prank either the teachers or everyone. In fact, I've already thought of something, but I can't tell you here; let's meet with the others beside the lake right after lunch."
"Well, what I was thinking about," Harry began to explain, mischievously, "was making the floor under all the doorways to the main classrooms act as Portkeys." Seeing that his friends looked at him, questioningly, he continued, "I mean the type of Portkey that's going to remain in its proper location and merely transports the people to another location. The Portkeys are supposed to transport people to different classrooms..."
"A great idea," Sirius blurted out in excitement. "We can change the floor under the door of the Transfiguration classroom into a Portkey that sends everyone straight to the Potions classroom."
"And the door of the Potions classroom could send people to the hospital wing and so on," James continued, equally excited. "It should cause a great deal of chaos throughout the school. A brilliant idea, Harry," he commended his friend.
Remus spoke up, pensively, "Harry, do you know how to make Portkeys? Even the ones that will not move together with the victim?"
"Yes, I do," Harry replied, grinning. "In fact, I had that idea the other night. I flashed straight into the library one night, borrowed a book on Portkeys and studied what to do. It's not really that difficult." Seeing disbelieving looks directed at himself, he chuckled. "Since I'm the only one capable of making Portkeys right now, I could go alone some time during the night, but I'd prefer to have one of you with me, and we need to make a plan of which door should lead to where before we head out to charm the doorways."
"When you make the Portkeys, can you fix a time, during which the Portkeys are active?" James queried, looking very enthusiastic.
"Yes, and I think we should just set all times to a fixed date from ten minutes before the beginning of the first class to five minutes after classes start. Afterwards, the Portkeys should deactivate, and we can easily cancel them completely, if that's what we want," Harry suggested, grinning.
"Harry, that sounds great, but are you really sure it'll work? Should we meet in the dungeons tonight after dinner and try with some of the unused classrooms?" Severus queried, quirking an eyebrow.
"Yes, we could do that," Harry replied, pensively. "Does anyone have a free period today? If so, you could make a plan, and if our test works this evening, we could set the whole plan into action tonight and set the Portkeys to activate for tomorrow morning."
Remus and Sirius had a free period and developed a plan to transport everyone the farthest possible distance from their original classroom. Unfortunately, the classes for Care of Magical Creatures could not be considered, but all other classrooms, even the green house, where the Herbology classes took place, were included in the plan.
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Harry could not believe that the teachers were not even aware of the obvious excitement that was emitting from the Gryffindor table the next morning. The Marauders could not wait for classes to commence. All six of them had Charms as their first class, and the Portkey under the door to the Charms classroom was set to take everyone to the Transfiguration classroom.
"Oh, I can't wait to see McGonagall's face," Sirius whispered to Harry, who just couldn't stop grinning at the thought of the impending mayhem that would ensue with the beginning of the first morning class.
"Be careful Harry, you're attracting attention. Your great grandparents are watching you," Lily whispered from his other side, causing Harry to sober quickly.
"Oh no," he groaned. "If Granny thinks that I'm behind this, I'll be grounded for the rest of the school year." With that he managed to put a very serious expression on this face and pretended to concentrate on his breakfast.
"All right then, let's go; we don't want to be late for Charms," Remus said in a normal voice for everyone to hear.
HP
The Marauders made their way to the Charms classroom, followed by their classmates, and waited for Professor Flitwick to open the door. As soon as they tried to enter the classroom, they felt a familiar pull behind their navels only to find themselves standing in the middle of the Transfiguration classroom together with the rest of their classmates and Professor Flitwick.
Professor McGonagall was there as well though. 'She probably entered the classroom through the connecting door from her office,' Harry thought and tried hard to put up an expression of absolute confusion just like the other five culprits did. The students, who noticed that they were in the wrong classroom, tried to leave through the door, where they stepped on the next Portkey, causing them to end up in the Potions classroom. There was complete and utter chaos, and it took almost the entire class period before all the students finally reached the appropriate classroom.
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That same day, just after curfew, Fawkes appeared in Harry's dormitory and asked, #Do you know anything about the prank of this morning?#
'Oh no, they found out,' Harry thought in annoyance, but asked innocently, "Why are you asking, Fawkes? Did my great grandfather suspect me and sent you here?"
#No, he didn't,# Fawkes replied with a soothing trill. #He doesn't even know that I came to see you. But Albus was as amused as Minnie was upset. He thought it was funny and even said he was impressed with the abilities of the students who made the Portkeys. You know, he'd rather award house points to someone for playing a good prank than taking them and assigning detention. In fact, I believe both of them suspect you and your friends, but of course I won't give you away.#
"All right Fawkes; yes, it was us," Harry admitted, however, warned the phoenix, "You may tell Dumbledore but not McGonagall please."
#She can't understand me anyway,# Fawkes trilled, happily. #I'll be on my way then; come to visit me again soon.#
As soon as the phoenix had flashed away, James, Remus and Sirius rushed over to Harry's bed.
"What did he say?"
"Do they suspect us?"
Harry couldn't help laughing at his friends' excitement. "It's all right, everything is okay," he explained, grinning. "They suspect us, and McGonagall is quite upset, but Dumbledore thinks that it was funny."
Fortunately, their head of house could not see the four inhabitants of the Gryffindor sixth year boys' dormitory rolling on the floor with laughter holding their sides.
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Two days later, James cornered Harry after their Transfiguration class and asked, "When are we going to resume our work on the Marauders' Map?"
Harry let out a long sigh. "I'm sorry, James, but I think we really should concentrate on the test first. As soon as they're over, I'll help with the map," he promised. "We might be able to do a lot during the Easter holidays, or are you all going home?"
"Usually, we all go home for the holidays, but I suppose we could stay here for a change," James replied thoughtfully.
Over the next two weeks, Harry spent all of his free time studying, and the tests went extremely well. 'Thank Merlin,' Harry thought, 'I've never had such good grades before.' Thanks to Severus' Potions tutoring, Harry and Lily both managed to get an O in their Potions tests.
"Cool," Harry said to Severus, happily. "Thanks to your tutoring, I received an O in Potions for the first time. You never gave me anything better than an A before."
Severus smirked. "Your Potions skills have probably improved a great deal during the last six months."
"Well, that might be, but your teaching abilities have improved as well," Harry replied, teasingly. "By the way, Severus, are you going to remain here for the holidays?"
"Of course Harry, as I told you before, I won't leave you here alone," Severus replied, sounding surprised.
"That's great, thank you. The other Marauders are going to stay as well, and I thought we could work on the Marauders' Map. Are many of the Slytherins staying?"
"As far as I know, there'll only be two first years staying, everyone else is going home," Severus replied, his emotions hidden behind a blank expression.
"Shall we ask Dumbledore or McGonagall if you could stay in our dormitory over the holidays?" Harry asked, knowing that his friend would be lonely all on his own in Slytherin. "There's a free bed in our room anyway."
"I'd like that very much, but do you think they'll allow it?" Severus asked, hesitantly.
"You mean, because there is no need to have you with me, because there are three others to baby-sit me?" Harry queried, rolling his eyes. "Let's go to the headmaster's office and ask my great granddad. It's easier to ask McGonagall after getting his approval."
"But won't your room-mates mind?" Severus enquired, his expression schooled into a blank mask, of which Harry knew that he always used if he was uncertain.
"No, of course not, you're a Marauder, aren't you?" Harry returned the question and ushered them towards the headmaster's office.
To the boys' relief, Dumbledore as well as McGonagall immediately agreed and allowed Severus to stay with the Gryffindor sixth years. They merely requested that Severus had to explain the matter to Professor Slughorn.
tbc...
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