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!

Remus was the first to speak up in clear excitement. "Yes, I think she's right. Let's try it anyway. Lily, you're the best at Charms, will you please try the spell?"

"But please use a copy of the map first, not that I don't trust you Lily, but just to be on the safe side," James contradicted.

Lily rolled her eyes in annoyance. "Of course, we must try all charms and spells on the copies first. Only when we're sure that they really work, we should apply them on the original map," she replied in a firm voice, before she tried the charm, noticing contentedly that it seemed to work.

"All right, so we need another charm to close the map afterwards. We need the charm as well as a text for it," Sirius said.

"Try 'Mischief managed'," Harry threw in, grinning mischievously.

"Very well," James agreed, smirking. "For the charm, let's rely on Lily. I mean it shouldn't be so different from this one, right Lily?"

Lily only nodded, already wrapped up in the book again. "Oh here, now let me try," she suddenly said, gripped the copy that she was working on and charmed it.

By dinnertime, they had found some more useful charms, which Lily applied on the map.

"That's it, now we only have to explore the castle a little more and the map will be finished," James said, contently.

However, Harry, who had so far contented himself to listen instead of actively participating in the activity, cleared his throat, so that everyone looked over to him in clear expectation. "We need a charm which provides that the map always shows the real names of people, even when they're under Polyjuice potion or some other charm or spell," he spoke up, quirking an eyebrow.

For a minute, silence followed his announcment. His friends were too impressed to say anything, but then James voiced his consent. "All right, Lily and Remus, our Charms heads, go on and study please."

However, at this moment, Tipsy appeared and announced dinner, so that the research was postponed to another time.

HP

After dinner, Mrs. Potter took Harry aside. "I'd like to speak with you in private if you don't mind," she whispered, causing Harry to agree immediately.

He followed his grandmother into another room, where they could talk undisturbed, and looked at her in expectation.

"Harry, may I ask you something?" Mrs. Potter spoke up in a soft voice.

Harry gave his grandmother a surprised look, before he replied, "Yes, of course."

"Harry, I don't know if you're aware of this, but Professor Dumbledore has put a spell on Harold and me, so that we're not able to talk about your connection to us or about anything that you tell us about the future. Therefore, you may speak with us about anything you want. I'd like to ask you who raised you? It was not your parents, was it?"

Harry sadly shook his head. "My parents both died when I was a year old," he admitted in a small voice. "That's why I chose to kill Voldemort in the past – in order to save my parents' lives. My mum's sister raised me. She's a Squib, but she doesn't know it; she thinks that she's a muggle, and her husband is one, and they're just horrible. However, as Voldemort is dead now, my parents won't die by his hand, so I hope that they'll survive and raise me themselves this time. And my mum has already promised to take precautions so that I wouldn't have to live with her sister if she and my father died by any other means."

His grandmother, who had been listening intensively to comprehend everything Harry was ranting about, tried to ask in a more detailed way. "Harry, how exactly did they raise you? Didn't they love you at all?"

Harry let out a snort. "No, they hate me. As soon as I was old enough to look over the kitchen table at about the age of three, they made me do chores, in the kitchen, in the garden, in the house; I was their house-elf until I started Hogwarts. Until then I had never known about my parents, about wizards, about anything concerning magic. I got my first birthday present and also my first Christmas present when I was eleven."

"Did they ever beat you?" his grandmother asked in a soft voice.

"Only a little bit, when I did accidental magic or so. It was nothing," Harry replied, dismissively.

"I see," Mrs. Potter said, pensively. "Madam Pomfrey told me that your immune system is very weak. Does this have anything to do with the way your relatives raised you?"

Harry sighed. "Probably. They never took me to a healer when I was ill; everything had to heal by itself. And last year during the summer, I had a bad cold, but I couldn't do anything about it. I even thought about flying to Hogwarts to see Pomfrey, but they had taken my broom away, so I couldn't, and finally I got pneumonia and had to stay in the hospital wing at Hogwarts for more than six weeks. Poppy told me that this was what damaged my immune system. Before that, I've never been ill at Hogwarts, but since then every second week," he admitted.

"Harry, you don't have to answer any questions which you don't want to answer, all right?" Seeing Harry nod, Mrs. Potter enquired, "Is my assumption correct that your mother is Lily?"

Harry smiled. "Yes, Granny. You can't imagine how happy I am to be with my parents whom I haven't known during all these years."

"I can believe that," his grandmother said, soothingly. "Is there a reason why they're not to know that you're their son? And for your friends not to know that you come from the future?"

Harry sighed again. "Lily knows that she's my mother and of course that I come from the future, but I didn't tell her. She guessed it, when my great grandparents told her about their relationship to her. Concerning the others… James guessed that I'm somehow related to him, nothing more. And I'd like to leave it at that."

He frowned and glanced at his grandmother. "I don't want to influence Lily and James about their relationship. I don't want them to think that they have to be together in order for me to be born or something like that, and I don't want to attract any attention. Believe it or not, I hate attention, nevertheless I'm always getting too much of it, and if the Marauders knew that I'm from the future, they'd cease treating me normally I think. I don't know, it just seems the right thing to do, to hide it from them. Do you think I should tell them?"

"Harry, I don't know that," Mrs. Potter replied, thoughtfully. "We can talk about it another time, maybe by then we'll have other ideas. I won't tell anyone. I give you my word. Now, I suggest that you go and look where your friends are. It'll be bedtime soon enough."

"All right, Granny, thanks for talking to me and for everything else as well," Harry replied, smiling, before he hurried away to search for his friends.

HP

When his grandmother entered Harry's and Remus' room in the morning to tell the boys that it was time for breakfast, Harry was talking to Remus very excitedly. "Remus, how could I forget about that? It's horrible. What am I going to do?"

She quickly went to Harry's bedside and gave him a sharp look. "Harry, calm down, son. What is wrong?" she queried in a soft voice.

Harry had a panicked look on his face when he glanced at his grandmother and said excitedly, "I can't believe it. In two days, it's already Christmas, and I haven't bought any Christmas presents yet. I need to go to Diagon Alley or somewhere today to buy Christmas presents."

Remus added, "You see, Mrs. Potter, we went to Hogsmeade all together, but Harry was injured after his fight with the dragon, so he couldn't go with us. And when he was allowed back to school, we had tests every day, and then we came here, after a lot of worrying if he was allowed to come at all. So it's not surprising that he forgot plus he didn't even have a chance to buy anything yet."

Mrs. Potter sighed. "Harry, I don't think that it's a good idea for you to go anywhere, but as we already have Christmas Eve tomorrow, we'll just have to go today. I'll accompany you to Diagon Alley, but you can't spend a lot of time there, only just to get your presents and we come back."

"All right. Thank you very much," Harry said, gratefully.

"Mrs. Potter, may we come too, please?" Remus asked hopefully.

"Yes, we can go all together, but as I said we won't stay very long," Mrs. Potter replied, gently.

Remus dashed out of the room and straight into James' room to tell the good news. Together they ran to wake up Sirius.

HP

They left immediately after breakfast. Fortunately, the Knight Bus came very quickly and took them straight to Diagon Alley in only three big jumps. When they arrived in front of the Leaky Cauldron, Mrs. Potter told them that she would go with Harry and the other four had to stay together all the time and had to meet them again in two hours at Fortescue's ice cream parlour.

Harry only needed to go to Flourish & Blotts as well as to the Quidditch shop and the apothecary, because he had asked Lily to buy some chocolates for him that he could give to the Potters, so they were the first to arrive at the ice cream shop. He did not really want to eat anything but was glad to be able to escape the crowds in the alley.

Harry and Mrs. Pootter had to wait quite a while. The others were almost thirty minutes late, and Mrs. Potter was very angry with James and Sirius whom she obviously thought responsible for their delay.

"Oh I'm sorry Mrs. Potter, Harry," Lily said. "It's my fault, because I had to go to the sweets shop to buy some last-minute presents, and it was incredibly crowded."

"Which wouldn't have delayed us at all if they hadn't spent nearly two hours at the joke shop, so it's not your fault at all," Remus added in a stern voice.

"So is it our fault that the joke shop was so crammed full that it took us two hours to go through it? Wait until we're back at Hogwarts planning our next pranks, then you'll be grateful to have waited a little today," James said a little upset.

"Oh, it's no problem at all, except that we've already eaten all the ice cream they had, so you won't get any," Harry countered jokingly, and Mrs. Potter nodded.

"Yes, we've been sitting here now for nearly an hour and want to go home. We'll have lunch at home and you can have ice cream for dessert. All right?" Mrs. Potter suggested.

They all agreed and took the Floo back to Potter Manor.

Back at home, James whispered to Harry, "Harry, thanks a lot for giving us the opportunity to go to Diagon Alley today. If not for you, Mum would have never taken us there a day before Christmas."

"By the way," Lily threw in, smirking, "we met Professor McGonagall at the sweets shop buying sweets for Dumbledore." Everyone laughed. "She asked about Harry, and we just told her that he was with you, so that she couldn't assume that he was in Diagon Alley as well; I don't know if she'd have appreciated it."

"Certainly not. I'm glad we didn't meet her or anyone else," Mrs. Potter replied, smiling mischievously.

HP

After lunch, the friends retired to Harry's and Remus' room to check the new joke items which they had purchased. James showed them a small, dark brown wand.

"Well," Remus said, frowning. What's so funny with a wand?"

Sirius grinned. "Take it in your hand and try a spell. Then let's see if it's funny."

Remus reached for the wand, and the instant he took it into his hand, it changed its form so that it looked like Remus' own wand. He eyed it with suspicion.

"Now, try something," James requested impatiently.

Remus pointed the wand at a book on Harry's bedside table and said, "Accio book", but the book did not move; instead, blue sparks came out of the wand and formed themselves to a sentence. 'That doesn't work,' was written in large blue letters in the air. Grinning he waved the wand once more and repeated, "Accio book," but nothing happened. This time yellow sparks appeared and told him 'Try harder'. Remus tried again just to be told 'Have you still not given up?' in red letters. Everyone was laughing now. Remus asked, "So how many different sentences does it know? It won't work at all, will it?"

James and Sirius roared with laughter, and Sirius suggested, "Just try it out, Moony, we'll wait and watch."

James said, "No, it won't work. But don't you think it's worth trying it on McGonagall or so?"

Everyone laughed even more, but suddenly Remus had an idea. "Yes! I know what we do, but we need Harry to do it."

"What do you need me for, Remus?" Harry asked, curiously eyeing his friend.

"You can do wandless magic silently, right? I thought you could silently and of course wandlessly accio McGonagall's wand out of her robe pocket and replace it with this wand," Remus informed him, smirking.

"Yeah. That's it," James shouted with excitement, and the others could not help but agree to what seemed to be a great idea.

"Do you think you can do that?" Lily asked Harry, causing him to nod, reluctantly.

"I'm not sure; I have to try wish magic on it. But I hope it'll work without her noticing that it was me. Otherwise, I'll be grounded for the rest of the school year," Harry replied, laughing.

"So, what other things did you buy? I suppose you haven't spent two hours in the joke shop just to buy a few wands?" Remus asked, and they discussed a few more items until it was time to go down for dinner.

HP

On Christmas Eve, the five friends were allowed to decorate the huge Christmas tree in the parlour. As it was the first time for Harry to decorate a tree at all and the first time for Lily to decorate a tree using magic, James and Sirius had to teach them the required spells. Suddenly, Harry took a piece of parchment from the table and transfigured it to a golden bauble with an image of his ice phoenix on it.

"Wow", Remus said, "look, it's adorable."

"Can you teach us how to do this?" Lily asked, but Harry shrugged.

"I'm sorry," Harry replied, shaking his head. "I can only do it with wish magic, so I'm not able to tell you a specific spell to do it. You'd have to ask McGonagall about that, or maybe Mrs. Potter. But if you want me to I can make one for each of you," he offered, looking questioningly from one to the next.

Everyone agreed that they wanted to have their own, so Harry transfigured parchments into golden baubles, decorating them with one of their animagus forms on each; he even made one for Severus, although he was not there.

Lily looked fondly at hers. "Harry, thank you so much," she said, admiringly. "This snowy owl looks so beautiful in front of the golden background; I love it."

Harry smiled, as his friends seemed to be so happy with their baubles. When they were finished with the tree, James and Remus glanced at each other for a moment before James cleared his throat and having the attention of everyone said, "As you know, tonight is the night of the full moon. What are we going to do? Are we going to spend the night in the park?"

"Yes, of course, we always do, don't we?" Sirius replied, eagerly.

Everyone agreed, and James was tasked to inform his mother about the fact that the friends always spent the night of the full moon out on the grounds.

"Let's ask her at dinner. It's time for dinner anyway," James said and went over to the kitchen. When they asked Mrs. Potter if they could spend the night in the park in their animagus forms, she was not too happy about it.

"Do you know how cold it will become during the night?" she asked in obvious concern.

"Yes" said James, "but in our animagus forms, we'll be warm. Each of us has a thick fur or in Lily's case warm feathers, and we do it at Hogwarts as well, every full moon."

"All right, then let me go out with you for a minute – I'd like to see all the Animagi. I haven't seen Lily's, Harry's and Remus' forms yet," Mrs. Potter said, decisively. "But if you get cold or tired or anything is wrong, you'll come in immediately, is that clear?" She looked strictly at the five friends.

"Yes, of course Mrs. Potter. We're always very careful," Remus replied, honestly.

After dinner, they went through the kitchen door onto the terrace, where James, Sirius, Lily, Harry and Remus transformed into their Animagus forms.

tbc...

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