Disclaimer-I don't own Harry Potter, nor any affiliated characters or plots
Some lines were taken from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Thanks to Fayne Rider for reviewing
Also, writing camp is coming to and end and it's summer, so I should be able to update more frequently for the next two months :)
I've also edited the mistake in the title (I really should've noticed that earlier.) and changed the rating to T based on the cursing in the past couple of chapters, just to be safe.
Enjoy, and please review
1995
"Why can't I go?" Sirius was speaking so loud they could hear him from upstairs. "It's not like the Death Eaters are going to turn me in to the bloody Ministry!"
"If you think Lucius Malfoy would even hesitate to call the Minister when Sirius Black shows up at his manor, Azkaban drove you even more insane than I thought."
Hermione and Ron, both huddled around the Extendable Ear with Albus, flinched. Ginny looked like she wanted to go downstairs and break Snape's nose. Having trouble imagining that his father had ever liked this man, Al wondered why he had been named after the sour potions teacher.
There was a strangled shout that was so indistinguishable that Albus couldn't tell if it had been uttered by Sirius or Snape. Then there was halting laughter in Snape's voice. Al felt disgusted.
"This is awful," Hermione remarked, sighing and leaning back onto her heels, bumping into Ron in the process. He made no indication that it bothered him, and she didn't move.
Ginny was clenching and unclenching her fists. "This is ridiculous. I can't believe we're not allowed to listen!"
If anything Albus knew about his teenage parents was true, it was a good idea to try to keep them out of the loop. Given information they might, you know, sneak into the Ministry or something.
"Calm down, sister dear," Fred (Or was it George?) said from behind Ginny. "We're listening anyway."
"Shh!" Al hissed. "They're talking again." The group of teenagers once again huddled around the Extendable Ear.
"Red haired, Lucius said. Draco caught her in the main hall, wand drawn. They haven't killed her… yet." Snape was saying. The room hall downstairs was unnervingly silent. "She looked a bit like a Weasley… but of course, that isn't possible."
"Ginny's upstairs, isn't she, Arthur?" Mrs. Weasley said, voice quivering a little. Albus looked up to stare at the aforementioned girl, whose jaw was set and muscles tense.
"Yes, dear."
"Has she said anything? Mentioned who she is, what she was in the manor for?" Albus frowned at the unfamiliar voice. The man hadn't been at dinner, at least, he didn't think so.
"She was stunned before they let her speak. They had just woken her up when I found a window of opportunity to leave."
"Your window that didn't appear for an hour?" Sirius challenged, sounding disgusted.
"They wanted me to oversee the interrogation." He sounded like he was sneering, but Albus couldn't tell. "It seems Lucius has misplaced his wand holder."
Ron snorted and Fred and George shared vicious grins.
"Anything else, Severus?" Lupin asked.
"That is all I've been told."
"What are they going to do her? Oh, Merlin, what if she's a muggleborn?" Albus recognized Tonk's voice. In between him and Ron, Hermione shifted uneasily.
"We should send a team," Sirius announced. "I'll go."
"We've been over this, Black," Snape replied, haughty.
There was a general murmuring, some of it assent and some dissent. Whether or not the idea was mostly supported was undeterminable.
"Don't be ridiculous!" the unfamiliar man from before cut over the rest of the chatter in a gruff voice. "We don't even know who this girl is. It could be a trap. Constant vigilance, in case you've bloody forgotten!"
"We haven't, Moody, but thanks," Tonks said.
"They can't just not go, can they?" Ginny whispered. "That poor girl. We have to do something."
Hermione and Ron shared nervous glances and then turned to Al, who was still listening. "They still might try," Hermione said, pursing her lips in an expression of uncertainty.
"I think we should sit this one out, at least until we have enough information." Kingsley's voice reverberated even through the Extendable Ear.
"There was one other interesting fact about the girl. I do believe she mentioned her name was Rose."
Albus's heart sank to his feet, and he would've dropped the Extendable Ear if Ginny hadn't also been holding on to the string. He braced himself on the wooden floor, trying to keep his expression in check. Rose, looks like a Weasley, somehow got into the top security mansion of a rich pureblood family. Who else could it be?
Al heard himself mumble something about going to the bathroom, then standing up and retreating to the bedroom. He ducked inside the attached washroom, locking the door and sitting on the closed toilet.
His cousin was stuck in the wrong time in the wrong place, and Merlin knew what those Death Eaters were doing to her… the thought was enough to turn his stomach. What was he going to do? Desperately, Al wished for his siblings. They made a good team, the three of them, and there was a reason they preferred to work together instead of sabotaging each other. It would be so much easier to infiltrate the mansion of a Death Eater if they worked together.
Was that what he was going to do, though? Was he really going to sneak into Lucius Malfoy's house?
Don't be ridiculous, of course you are.
Someone knocked on the door, soft and hesitant. "Harry?" asked Hermione, still in the bedroom.
"Yeah," Al said, all of the sudden wanting to be nowhere near any of his parents' friends. "I… I'm fine." He stood up, strode across the room, and opened the door. Hermione looked nervous and concerned with her arms folded and her weight all on one leg.
"You alright?" she asked, as if he hadn't just told her. "The Order's decided not to go."
Well, that makes things harder, doesn't it? Now, if he tried to go himself, there would be no help from the Order. "I'm fine. Really," he told her when she gave him a disbelieving look.
"Okay, Harry." Hermione sighed. "Look, you've been acting weird since you've gotten here. It's not much, but, it's odd. And now you've run off, which is very, well, you…" She laughed a little before continuing. "But you're acting like you know this girl." There was another awkward silence, and Albus didn't know what to say, because if he opened his mouth he thought he might just tell her everything. "Just, you can tell us, Harry. Okay?"
"Yeah," he replied. "Thanks, Hermione." She nodded, smiled a little, and then followed him out of the room.
The underage members of the Weasley family plus the twins were in Ginny and Hermione's room. Ginny and Ron were talking softly to each other in the corner, arguing over something. Fred and George were playing a very loud game of Exploding Snap next to Ginny's bed.
They all turned to Albus when he walked in, and he wanted to leave. Merlin, telling people what to do was James's thing. Why did his dad have to be so good at it too?
Ginny was the first to speak, turning around and giving Harry a brilliant smile. "So, we're going, right? Because Ron's being awfully pig-headed…"
"I am not!" Ron retorted. "We don't even know who she is! If Moody says it's a trap, then it's probably a trap. There's a reason he's still alive, yeah?"
"And missing a leg and half his nose," George said, eyebrows smoking. It looked like Fred had won the round.
"Shut up," Ron muttered.
"I agree with Ron," Hermione said, leaning on a bedpost. "Think about it. If a girl was skilled enough to get into the manor, past all of the curses and hexes that we can assume are guarding the entrance, how would she be taken down by Malfoy?"
Frowning, Ginny tilted her head to the side. "Malfoy's that much of a coward?"
"He can't take a punch," Ron said. Hermione grinned brilliantly at him, and Al felt like he had missed something.
Taking a deep breath, Albus said, "I think I should go." Hermione was right, it wasn't smart and he was probably going to get killed, but it was Rose. It wasn't like he had a choice, right? Lily or James or Teddy or Rose would all come after him if he was captured.
Ginny stood up, folding her arms and fixing him with a fierce glare. "You should go? You think we're going to be alright with that?"
"You will," Ron said to her. "But we won't." Hermione nodded behind him.
There was a tense air in the room as Hermione and Ron glared at Albus, and Ginny glared at the two of them.
"If you think I'm just going to sit here while you go get killed, then you're wrong," she declared.
Albus opened his mouth to argue, but George beat him to it. "Oh, give it up, Harry. You too, Ron," he added. "Neither of you are going to win this fight."
"That's right," Fred continued for him. "We're going to go give the Malfoys hell."
1975
It took two days for Lily to stop being on edge, waiting to start fading, or receive some sign that she'd screwed something up in the timeline. What if Snape didn't finish the Levicorpus spell until after Voldemort died? What if because of it someone died who wasn't supposed too?
After 48 hours of worry, and nothing odd had happened, Lily elected to just stay on guard and make sure she didn't ruin anything else. It was with this disposition that she visited Mcgonagall while the other students in her year took an OWL. Lily was now very glad she'd explained her situation with the elder teacher, because it meant she didn't have to take exams again.
"I apologize, Miss Potter," Mcgonagall said. "I haven't had much time to look into your situation-I have a number of students not quite prepared for their exams that have taken up most of my time."
Lily's enthusiasm dropped a bit-she had been hoping that the professor had found an instantaneous way to bring her back before anything else went wrong, but apparently that wasn't going to be the case. "It's fine, professor. I haven't found anything either. There don't seem to be many books on time travel in the library, at least that I've found." She had looked, and very hard too, spending hours on end in the narrow halls between ceiling length shelves. Her roommates had chalked it up to trying to get ahead for next year.
"Try the restricted section," the teacher suggested. "I'll write you a note-time travel is considered quite dangerous, as you probably know, and there might be more information there. Tell Madame Pince you're researching something for me."
"Thank you, professor," Lily said. She opened her mouth to mention something about giving the spell to Snape, but Mcgonagall had already turned around to look at a stack of parchment. She felt like she had been dismissed. Fingering the piece of paper Mcgonagall had scrawled a quick note and her signature on, she made her way to the library.
Madame Pince barely even glanced at the note, nodding and motioning toward the restricted section before turning back to a stack of books she seemed to be putting away. Lily decided she would actually read the books back in her room, not willing to risk someone asking why she was reading a stack of books on time travel. Sure, there were other girls who could bother her in her room, but she was confident in her hiding abilities.
Lily left the library with a stack of books under one arm. The last OWL had already finished, which meant Marlene, Mary, Dorcas, and Alice would be waiting for her out on the green, probably with the Marauders, who seemed to worm their way into everything, whether or not they were wanted.
It was a nice day; the sun glinted off the lake and the breeze made pleasant patterns in the freshly cut grass. For a moment Lily could forget that she was stuck in an impossible situation and imagine that a bunch of her cousins were about to tap her on the shoulder and ask if she wanted to put itching powder on the toilet seats of the staff bathrooms.
But they weren't, because she was stuck almost 30 years before any of them would be born. Lily knew that her best motivator was a constant reminder of how she'd messed up, so she kept the thought implanted in the front of her brain.
She settled under one of the arches that looked out onto the green, grateful for the shade. Hogwarts uniforms weren't exactly designed for comfort in the hot weather. Feeling sufficiently isolated, she pulled out one of her borrowed books and began to read.
Though the official time turner manual had seemed promising when she checked it out, it was more about how not to brake a time turner rather than what to do if you already had. Not willing to miss a single piece of information because she had deemed the book unhelpful, Lily kept reading regardless.
Students began to stream out of the Great Hall behind her, laughing and chattering, finally free from exams. She caught a few lines of the Marauders' conversation as they traded jokes about the test.
"Loved it," she heard Remus Lupin say. "'Give five signs that identify the werewolf.' Excellent question." Lily hid her giggle behind her book, resolving to tell Teddy about it when she got home.
"D'you think you managed to get all the signs?" James asked, and then they moved to far away from Lily for her to continue listening. She felt peaceful, half in the shade and half in the sun. If she had ever wanted to go back in time she would have wanted it to be like this-just enjoying the experience, listening to people's conversations without having to hide.
The four boys had stopped to gather under a tree, and James was playing with a snitch, lazily letting it go and then showing off his speed as he jumped to catch it. His casual arrogance reminded Lily of her James, and Merlin did she want to go home.
Lily turned her attention away from the green and back to her book, trying to focus on the mechanics of time travel, but it was so hard to concentrate when she didn't understand half of what she was reading.
Her attention was jerked away from the book when someone shouted "Expelliarmus!" out on the lawn. She turned around, having been facing the wall in an unsuccessful effort to stay focused, to see her grandfather sporting an almost predatory smile as he stared at Snape, who had lost his wand.
What were they doing?
Behind James, Sirius let out a laugh that in any other circumstances would be joyful, with a flick of his wand putting Snape in a body-bind. Students had begun to gather around the spectacle, some of them egging on the Marauders and other looking wary, as if this was going to be painful for Snape. Lily watched with bated breath, hoping everyone would just calm down.
Sirius and James continued to taunt the boy while the rest of the green watched on, for the most part laughing. Lily felt sick. She did just hate bullies, she didn't understand them. There were so many other ways to get people to like you, and just didn't comprehend why other people couldn't see them. She knew some of it was from carelessness with words-the wrong remark could send someone else spiraling into misery without any warning. Lily got it, she really did. Figuring out the effect of her words before she said them was a Slytherin thing, and something she had trouble with only when she was particularly nervous. But this was no mistake. They were laughing as Snape struggled, trying to reach his wand, which was lying ten feet away. He swore.
"Wash out your mouth," James said, with that unnerving grin still on his face. "Scourgify!" Snape was now choking on soap as it flowed out of his mouth into the grass. Lily watched it in disgust for a moment, though with the two Marauders who laughed down at him rather than the soap in his mouth. Think like a Gryffindor, she told herself, and she knew what her grandmother would do.
"Leave him ALONE!" Lily left her books under the archway, striding into the middle of the throng of people, the fury on her fact very, very real.
James ran a hand through her hair, and Lily resisted doing the same, realizing that the familiar habit probably had traces to the very person in front of her.
"All right, Evans?" he asked, as if he was trying to flirt with her.
Even if they hadn't been related, Lily would've been disgusted. What did they want from him? Bullying was always a means to an end, everything was. "What did he do to you?"
"Well," James said, as if he was seriously considering her question, "It's more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean…" A wave of laughter rose up from the crowd.
She decided at that moment that her grandfather was a major asshole. "You think you're funny," she said. Words she knew would get under his skin appeared in her brain and she let them out. "You think a bunch of laughs from children matter? You're just a bully, and that's all you'll ever be."
James faltered, and Lily felt satisfaction creep into her expression. He recovered quickly, and shot back, "If you'll go out with me Evans, I'll never touch Snivelly again."
It sounded like a declaration of bloody love, and Lily felt disgusted. "No. To be honest, I'd rather go out with the Giant Squid."
He faltered again, but this time he seemed to be almost devastated, staring at Lily too forlornly for his previous question to be insincere. She almost regretted her words, but she remembered the soap still dripping out of Snape's mouth, and turned her attention back to him to see Snape's wand pointed at James.
"No!" Lily started to stay, aware that if James died or something, she'd fade too, and wouldn't that be a dilemma for Mcgonagall to explain.
Luckily, Snape's curse only drew a line in blood down James's cheek. As the deep red liquid dripped onto his robe, Potter whirled around and hung the greasy haired boy in the air with a very familiar spell.
Dammit. Had Levicorpus really spread that far in just a few days? Lily was screwed. Lily was very very screwed.
"Let him down," she demanded, voice low and menacing, fixing her wand at James's nose.
He gave her a crooked smile. "Don't make me hex you, Evans."
"Don't make me hex you, Potter." Lily really didn't want to play all of her cards and administer the countercurse herself, but if she had to...
James considered this, and then with a flick of his wrist behind him, Snape slumped back to the ground. "Lucky Evans was here to help you, Snivellus-"
"-I don't need help from mudbloods like her," he snarled, and Lily couldn't help it. Her mouth dropped open. It didn't matter that both of her parents were wizards, but the term was so… archaic and offensive that she couldn't believe that someone had actually uttered the word.
"Fine," she snarled. "I guess that's the last you'll see of me. Wash your pants, Snivellus." Lily turned around, fuming, ready to go bury her nose in a book.
"Apologize to Evans," she heard James demand behind her. That was the last straw; him acting as if he was any better.
"Don't be ridiculous, you're not any better," Lily said, hair flaring out behind her as she whirled around. "Sticking your hair up and catching that stupid snitch of yours? Walking around and… and hexing everyone in school because you think it's funny? Your head's so big I'm surprised you can even get your bloody broomstick off the ground." Satisfied with the shocked look on James's face, she turned back to go to her dormitory.