This is a new POV, but it's only here for a short time, so you won't have to deal with it for long if you don't like it.
Disclaimer-I don't own Harry Potter, nor any affiliated characters or plots.
2022
Mervyn Nott was completely confident that this project was going to work out. He smiled in a satisfactory way at the neat, organized desk in front of him-files stacked in symmetrical piles, old memos folded and placed in cubbies with a careful hand, and new ones locked in the cage on the windowsill, disturbing the silence by banging on the bars. Most importantly, the time turner sat in the middle of the desk, polished until it shone in the sunlight that Magical Maintenance had blessed them with that day.
Nott sat in his cushioned chair, his hair parted to the side, his robes pressed just that morning, and his hands folded in his lap.
There was a knock on the door. In a swift motion, he strode to it and opened it to see his boss.
"Morning, Nott," Nicole Belby said, pulling a quill out from behind her ear. "Been busy, I hope." The quill suspended itself in midair, and then began to scribble on the clipboard that Belby released as well. "I have," she continued, eyes unfocused as if she was thinking about something else. "Harry Potter's come in, did you hear? He thinks his kids are stuck in a different time-he said one of them was in 1975, definitely. Maybe she'll come home with a pipe full of gillyweed-Merlin knows that's what my friends were doing in the seventies."
Mervyn found his interest piqued. Belby would tell him the problem, and then he would present her the solution-it was sitting on the desk right in front of her! "How did that happen?"
"A broken time turner, of course," she replied. "The higher ups say there's been some sort of exchange-one person for another, maybe? Potter said he's got a different Lily in his house right now. I don't know. That family is always getting up to something weird."
Mervyn struggled to think of the brief Wizarding family history lessons his father had given him over summer breaks from Hogwarts. The only Lily he could remember was the first Lily Potter.
"I have been busy, ma'am," Mervyn smiled without showing his teeth, glad to have reminded Belby about the troubles of time travel. He sat down at the desk chair.
"Oh, don't give that ma'am rubbish," Belby said with a roll of her eyes. "Just Belby is fine. You know that."
"Noted, Belby," Nott agreed, uttering the same phrase he said every time she corrected him.
Belby settled herself in the chair on the other side of Mervyn's desk, the clipboard and quill following her. With a wrinkle of her nose, she checked the clipboard, frowned, and then slapped the quill almost out of the air. "The meeting hasn't even started yet and you're already taking notes!" The quill picked itself up and shook its feather at her indignantly. It continued to scribble on the clipboard.
"Sorry about that," Belby continued. "The Ministry's made the bloody quills mandatory. I hate them. Anyway, let's get started, shall we?"
Mervyn smiled. He could do this. He'd prepared-he'd even memorized his speech! This was going to be his big break.
"Nott, this is not happening," Belby said, eyes wide in shock as she stared down at the time turner. It seemed she hadn't noticed that she'd just told the worst joke of all time on accident. "Long distance time travel? This is something for the Department of Mysteries. To confiscate."
Mervyn wasn't sure where he'd gone wrong. He'd explained the theory and then the benefits, but Belby seemed convinced that he was out to destroy the world. "But imagine being able to change time-to keep people from dying!"
"Look," she said, standing up now, the clipboard no longer floating but clenched in her hands, her knuckles beginning to go white and the quill fluttering aimlessly around her head. "Everything's turned out alright, hasn't it? Voldemort's gone-"
-Mervyn gave an instinctive frown-
"-and yeah, people died, but we're safe now. What if this technology you've just shown me changes that?" Belby sighed. "Nott, I'm going to give you twenty four hours to hand this over to the Department of Mysteries. That's final," she added before Mervyn could protest. "I'm sorry."
The door slammed behind her. Nott slumped backward in his chair, running a hand through his neat hair, mussing up the gel and making strands stick up in the back.
"Nott, is it?"
Mervyn hadn't noticed that the door was open. He looked up, expecting to send whoever it was away feeling bad for disrupting his misery and not reading the nametag on the door. With one glance at his visitor's face, he revised that expectation, straightening his sweater and trying to re-comb his hair. "Mr. Malfoy. Erm, how can I help you?"
He had never met Mr. Malfoy-just Scorpius when they'd both taken Arithmancy. They'd exchanged maybe ten words in total over the course of the year. Lucius was taller and lankier, with his long blond hair beginning to show streaks of silver and wrinkles setting in around his eyes and on his forehead. His back was the slightest bit hunched, though everything else about his posture was proud and haughty.
"I notice that Mr. Potter is leaving. I don't suppose he came to ask about anything time travel related?" Malfoy stopped in front of Mervyn's desk, both hands resting on his cane.
If the Ministry wouldn't give him funding, maybe the Malfoys would. "He did. He thinks one of his children is in 1975."
Malfoy seemed to take this in stride, nodding slowly. He turned to look around the office, and Mervyn felt a bit like those ridiculous reality show contestants on Wizarding Wireless, waiting to be thrown off the island because he wasn't good enough.
Finally Malfoy's gaze settled on the time turner still sitting on Mervyn's desk, an unpleasant reminder of what he was going to have to do in just a few hours. "This isn't a normal time turner," Malfoy remarked.
"It's long distance. It goes back further than a normal one," Nott said. Forget his office, this was the real judging.
"How much longer?"
"How much do you need?" Mervyn looked up from the time turner to see Malfoy's gray eyes staring back into his.
He jerked backward, still gripping his cane. "Can it take me to 1975?"
That was not what Mervyn had expected, but so far almost everything he'd expected Lucius Malfoy to be like was wrong-he was far more unsettling. "Yes." Nott paused before he decided to ask the question on the tip of his tongue anyway. "Do you want to change it? The war, I mean. Its outcome."
"The Notts served the Dark Lord well," Malfoy said, smiling a little, though he looked uncomfortable. "How hard did you have to work to get even here, Mervyn? Imagine if you'd had help-how high you'd be by now. And your father, he'd be renowned by all instead of a war criminal, your mother hosting parties instead of… doing whatever she's doing. Isn't that what you want?"
Mervyn put his hand on top of the time turner in almost a protective gesture, studying Malfoy through squinted eyes. "If you want to change things, why don't you just kill Lily Evans? She's here, in this time. Wouldn't that be easier that using an untested time turner?"
Lucius sighed, and stifled what Mervyn thought might have been a roll of his eyes. "Yes, sixteen year old Lily Evans is in 2022. She's also in Harry Potter's house, protected by the best the Boy Who Lived can afford and also all of those bloody Weasley's. Trust me when I tell you she's impossible to reach. However, in 1975, before anyone knew what was coming?" He smiled. "That's when I can get to her. Or, Lily Potter, really, but I can get rid of her and warn the Dark Lord in one fell swoop. The only question is if you'll help me." He fixed Mervyn with a cold glare.
"Will you fund me?" Malfoy looked surprised, so Mervyn continued. "I mean, when you get back-the Ministry won't fund my time turner project. Will you?"
"My dear boy, when I get back you'll have enough money to fund whatever you want."
Mervyn imagined that-no more hard times for him or his parents. His father would be able to hold a steady job without a criminal record, and his mother wouldn't have to worry so much about appearances since the very name Nott would be one of power. Mervyn himself would have dozens of patents with the sufficient funds for his various projects.
"Alright," Mervyn said. He slid the time turner across the desk until it rested in front of Malfoy. "You can take it."
With a smile, Malfoy accepted the time turner. He stood up from his chair, shook Mervyn's hand, and turned to leave. He paused in the doorway, one hand on the knob, and smiled back at Nott in a way that no longer reached his eyes. "You won't regret this."
Mervyn hoped not. He was still supposed to turn that in tomorrow.
The Ministry had been entirely useless. Harry shouldn't have been surprised-it had never been very helpful to him in the first place, but he was disappointed. Even the Department of Mysteries had stopped experimenting with time turners after a second accident in 2002, which meant they had nothing to offer Harry but stern reminders of the laws regarding time travel and suggestions for more research, as if he and his family hadn't already combed through the sources they had access to. Getting anything done would require a court order, which could take weeks. Of course, Harry had submitted it, but he was getting antsy-he just wanted his children back. Did they really need to review his credentials countless times when he asked for help?
He shook soot out of his hair as he stood up in front of the fireplace, the green flames beginning to die down behind him.
"Harry!" Ginny said, turning around from her conversation with Hermione and James. "Did the Ministry have anything to say?"
With a sigh, he shook his head. "Nothing right now. They might be able to help in two weeks, but time travel has a lot of… restrictions around it." He ran a hand through his hair, sighing again. He wanted to lie down and sleep for a few days and tear apart the Ministry until he found a way to his children at the same time. "So basically all I did was waste time."
"Well," Ginny said. "I don't know about that. We found some interesting information about the time turner, didn't we, Hermione?"
Hermione smiled. "We described the time turner to a maker in Knockturn Alley, and he said it was a lot older than we thought. Decades, even. It was manufactured for a rich Malfoy who'd been expelled from the family and made her money selling illegal potions-things that turn people into other creatures and such. She lived in Surrey, surprisingly. To annoy her family, I'd assume. Anyway, the maker's father was in charge of the business then, and he wrote in the records that he'd made a house call for this one-apparently a lot of people respected Edrea Malfoy for leaving her family, so he did her a favor."
"So either Al or Lily ended up in Surrey at some point in time," Ginny summarised. She seemed to realize that this was far too general to do anything with as the words left her mouth, her lips turning down in a frown.
"No, wait," Ron said. "If we go by Harry's theory-not you," he interjected, nodding at older Harry. "I mean, younger Harry's theory that time is trying to correct itself-why don't you tell us that again, yeah?"
"Erm," Harry said, shifted his weight uncomfortably like he was shy as he sat on the sofa. "Well, if we assume time tries to correct itself, you know, keep things flowing in the right direction and all, then wouldn't Albus replace me, because he at least looks a little like me so it would be less noticeable?"
Her arms crossed, Hermione sighed. "If we assume, which is never something to do when talking about experimentation or research…"
"But we've had some experience with it," older Harry reminded her. "Remember third year? We ended up in the exact right places at the right times to make sure Sirius got out okay and the dementors didn't kiss me, even though we didn't really know what we were doing. He-me, whatever, has to be right."
Younger Harry nodded along with this. Hermione didn't seem convinced, however. "That's still very vague, Harry. What do we do if we're wrong?"
"Then we make up a new plan on the spot; we're good at that," Ginny cut in before they could yell at each other. "Look," she continued in response to a glaring Hermione. "We're not going to get any further along with this without further experimentation, which is going to take ages. This is our best bet, and we might as well take it."
There was a general murmur of agreement throughout the room. Hermione sighed. "Alright. Fine. So Lily's in 1975 and Albus is in 1995."
"Agreed," Ginny replied. "Now all we've got to do is figure out how to get them back."