Disclaimer: If you know it, I do not own it.

A/N: Timeline wise: Tom was one his own for nineteen years, while Addy's been "dead" for twenty. Why? Because Sirius lived with Tom for roughly a year after Addy "died." (Proofing this, I was getting confused by the Tom's use of nineteen and twenty. Then I remembered: Sirius lived there till he went to jail.)

Never Leave the Past Behind

Draco didn't have a morning class, allowing he had a two hour block of free time the first morning of classes. Seeing Tom had class (he'd taken Airthmancy as he'd never actually taken it before— yet somehow passed the OWL), Draco figured this was a good time to go see Addy Black in the Hospital Wing. He slipping away without Harry's notice while Harry was bemoaning his morning schedule. Pushing the door to the Hospital Wing open, Draco found the ward void of life. Just a line of white, empty beds and bright sunshine.

At the noise of the door closing behind Draco, Madam Pomfrey emerged from her office.

"Oh, it's you," she said, seemingly unsurprised to see him. "She mentioned you'd be here to see her as soon as you had a free moment. She's this way."

Beckoning him with a hand, Madam Pomfrey vanished into the back of the ward. Draco hurried passed the empty beds till he met Madam Pomfrey at a closed door. She took one look at him and tutted.

"She's badly off, but she's a stubborn woman. Likely the only reason she's even here."

Draco nodded dumbly.

Madam Pomfrey opened the door and motioned Draco into the seemingly empty room. There looked to be a person shaped thing in the white hospital bed, but the room was lifeless save for him and Pomfrey.

"Miss Black, you need to—"

"Oh yeah!" said a very softly Southern American accent that was oh so unfamiliar yet familiar at the same time. "I'm Atlanta Dorothy Black and I am right here!"

And suddenly without a single noise or movement of air, there was an unfamiliar person in the bed smiling at him.

Draco stared.

"Oh, I guess I look different, don't I?" she asked, patting her straight, mahogany hair. "Dumbledore put glamours on me all those years ago. I doubt I look much like the girl you saw before you vanished."

Draco shook his head. "No, but I knew you had glamours. I found your photo in an old paper, but it's still…not the same."

Atlanta nodded. "Oh, the hair. Yeah. It got annoying so I chopped it all off."

It wasn't the hair, but Draco didn't correct her.

"I'll leave you two," Madam Pomfrey said. "Try not to excite her too much. She does have a large wound around her middle and is still in need of several doses of Blood Replenishing Potion."

Draco nodded as the Madam exited. He shuffled over to the plain wooden chair next to the bed and sat. He felt Addy's keen eyes studying him intently. He shifted uncomfortably.

"So, here you are," Addy softly muttered. "God, you look nothing like the last time I saw you."

"Well, I'm not scared to death and about to do something dangerous and illegal," Draco drawled.

Addy snorted. "True. Your hair…what the heck is going on with that mop on your head?"

Draco ran his fingers through his loose hair and shrugged. "Embracing the Gryiffindor way of hair keeping: let it go."

"Ohmygod. Tom sorted himself into Gryffindor too! I don't even know how to handle that information. And his hair! Where did it go? He has such lovely hair and now it's totally channeling Gene Kelley. And I just accidentally time travelled for the second time in my life."

"True. You seem to accidentally time travel often," Draco said, repeating someone else's words.

"Yeah, seems to be the case," Addy grumbled. She let out a breath, cringed, then shook her head, tucking her short hair behind her ears. "So, Tom's told me all about the changes in the timeline so far. Seems I died. Again."

"You're not dead," Draco snapped. "You and Atlanta Lupin are two very different people. Just as all the others we used to know in the previous timeline are separate people."

Addy nodded. "That's how you've separated them in your head. Smart. I kind of did that too. You know, being friends with my own father."

"Yes, how is that going to work?" Draco inquired. "He knows Atlanta was his child."

"I'd hope so, since she took his last name," Addy remarked. "I don't know how it will work when I get out of here. I've kinda not thought about it since I woke up last night to Tom drilling me."

"He wanted to know the four-one-one?"

"He did," Addy answered, not noticing his use of the odd phrase Sirius often utilized. Draco inwardly smirked, finally learning where Sirius had gotten that phrase from.

"Tom didn't share, by the way. How did you exactly end up here?"

Addy's right cheek hitched up and her eyes (an odd jade color) twinkled a little. "Oh, 'tis a great tale. You got an hour?"

"Two, actually."

Addy's right cheek hitched up further and she studied Draco. "I take it y'all know how Regulus went to get one of those toxic horcurxes, right?"

Draco extended his head in agreement.

"Yeah, so, he went off with Kreacher and drank the potion. It induces nightmare and makes you really thirsty. Anyway, I had put a location spell Tom and I were in the mists of testing on him when he came to visit to tell me his horrible plan. The location spell was supposed to break through any wards but I knew the wards Moldy Trousers put on the cave wouldn't be able to be broken by the location spell, mostly because it was still in the testing phase but also because Moldy had learned from breaking our wards and likely strengthened his own. I was totally right to be worried as they were so thick and complicated I was worried I'd never break through them."

"How did you?"

"I cut myself," Addy said, looking a little sheepish. "On accident during a tantrum. A drop of my blood hit the wards and they shimmered, letting me through."

Draco frowned. "Why would they do that?"

Addy shrugged. "Likely because he keyed them to let anyone in with blood similar to mine?"

"Ah," Draco said, realizing what she was telling him. "So if Atlanta found it, she'd be able to enter."

"And be trapped. When I went through, I couldn't get out. Not that I wanted out. Once I was in there, I could Apparate into the cave, right to Reggie using the location spell. I got there just after Reggie had drunk the potion and touched the water. Kreacher was dithering, so I dragged him out, used the time lock spell I'd invented to keep fruit fresh longer—"

"That's why you invented that spell?" Draco interrupted.

"Yeah, but it didn't work right on non-living things like fruit. Plants and animals, yeah, it worked great. I thought it'd be great for vets and doctors or something, but further investigations led us to realize when living things— such as myself— were under the spell, you couldn't do anything to fix what was wrong. So, it was kind of useless, so we shelved it."

"But, you used it on Regulus. And saved his life."

"Yeah, well, in cases of poison ingestion, it'd work great, but the wand movement is complicated and the incantation is difficult, as you've got to know how long you want to freeze the person for and all this other stuff."

"You did it," Draco pointed out.

"Well, yeah. I had thought long and hard. Kreacher had drunk the same stuff Reggie was planning on to and at the time there was no known cure. So, I wrote up a request asking Dumbledore and Snape to research an antidote and gave them fifteen years to do it."

"Why fifteen?"

Addy shrugged. "I figured if they didn't know how to cure Reggie by them, Dumbledore would have figured out how to preform the timelock spell."

Draco let out a puff of air through his nose quickly. Addy looked away from him, picking at her nails absently.

"So, by the time I'd locked Reggie, gotten Kreacher to agree to take him to Dumbledore, Moldy was on his way. I'd known he was looking for me and why, but I was not the Atlanta Black he was looking for. That night, he found out I was not the Atlanta Black he was looking for. He was less than pleased."

Draco snorted.

"So, he and I exchanged some serious spell work. He was livid I'd discovered his horcruxes, but because Regulus had drunk the potion and the bowl had refilled itself, Moldy assumed I'd not gotten around to stealing his evil soul necklace. He was impressed with my dueling, but I was nothing like Calliope. Which, duh. I'm not Calliope Riddle. So, the curse that got me, well, no clue what it was, but god did it hurt like a mofo. Now, before I left my flat, I grabbed a handful of the portkey rings Tom and I had been trying to make work. I figured the more the merrier. When Moldy showed up, I put on two, hoping one would work. Anyway, the stomach wound kind of made me worthless, so he was closing in to kill, doing his Disney villain thing—"

Draco kind of really wanted to know what that meant, as Harry had said something similar, but he didn't interrupt.

"—so he gave me time to think. I hit the portkey on my left hand, whispered Park Quad. It takes about five to ten-seconds for the portkey spell— flaw if you're wanting to make a quick escape. So, while I waited for the spell to kick in, I backed up and fell backwards into the water."

Draco frowned. "Water?"

"Cave by the ocean. Filled with water. Moldy made a lake and filled with dead people, Inferi. The ones in Moldy's lake are programmed to react to human movement in the water. You see, Regulus touched the water and activated them while I was trying to save him with Kreacher, so I'd seen them in action already. They just pull you down, to drown you and kill you, likely to add you to the dead army when Moldy gets around to it. Since I knew if I struggled I'd join the army, I didn't move. Playing possum bought me enough time for the portkey to kick in."

Draco shook his head, unable to believe what he was hearing.

"I mean, I was kind of almost dead," Addy mused, shrugging then grimacing. "So, since I don't check my spellwork because I'm a lazy being, it wasn't actually just a portkey, but a portkey with a time traveling spell on it. I thought that maybe I could use time travel to save Reggie, but gave that up as none of the spells worked. Know why? Because the portkey spell was already on the ring. Anyway, the two spells mixed and it dumped me outside in the hallway in 1996 rather than 1979. Didn't notice any changes, so I stumbled in and reactivated my protection spells. Didn't realize I'd traveled twenty years into the future, so I was mildly shocked when Tom was solid so I passed out."

"Yes. That is rather new."

"I figured. I told Calliope how to make him solid if she ever got the chance. I almost took him with me that night, but didn't think making him solid in front of Moldy in a cave of Moldy's creation was a great idea."

"You knew where you were going?"

"Yeah. Kreacher told me," Addy said. "He's my House Elf. Is he still alive?"

"I believe so. I've only seen him once or twice," Draco admitted. "The flat is quite clean for being filled with males, so he must be cleaning it still."

Addy snorted. "So, I noticed y'all are calling me Addy."

She did not look pleased.

"Sorry. Tom called you that and we needed a way to keep you apart from Atlanta."

"Lanta. What is wrong with Lanta?"

"Sounds too much like Atlanta," Draco pointed out. "At the time, she was still Atlanta Black, so we couldn't exactly call one of you by your surname. Tom called you Addy, so we all went with it. Though, if you did not allow people to call you that, it explains why it took Sirius months to stop calling you Lanta."

"I only let Reggie and Remus to call me that," Addy admitted. "I never heard Tom call me that."

"I guess he started after you died."

Addy nodded. "Y'all gonna to keep calling me that?"

"Unless you do not want. Harry will likely to be unable to call you Atlanta."

Atlanta sighed. "Yeah, I noticed that. He's not really dealing with her death very well, is he? He's so…so different from the Harry I kinda knew. He's…happier. Even with this whole grief thing he's got going on right now."

"He's not had as hard of time since I arrived, I'd like to think. He's got a family, stability, and I try to keep him from killing himself."

Addy nodded. "That's good. So…"

"So?"

They sat in awkward silence for a moment.

"Since y'all are calling me Addy, I think I'll change my name," Addy proclaimed. "I can't go back to being Atlanta D. Black, as she's kind of publicly dead."

"Regulus is as well, but still goes by Regulus."

"Ah, but he's not American and a simply middle name change solved his issue. And I guess accent change. Where the heck was he supposed raised? Tom couldn't tell me."

Draco shrugged. "I think that was the point. Give him a bland enough accent you can't tell where he's from."

"Tom is so bothered he can't figure it out."

Draco shrugged.

"Anyway, I'm not all that attached to the name Atlanta. My mother named me after the city. I'm serious. I've never told anyone, but in her will, she apologized for naming me after a city, but I was a born out of wedlock and not actually a proper Black, so she didn't think I ought to have a proper Black name."

"That's why you were named so? That's…horrible," Draco whispered.

"I know. I used to tell people she liked the Greek myth about Atalanta," Addy said. "I mean, that's what she used to tell me when I was a kid, so I just stuck with it. But, both versions of Circe Hilderbatch are dead, so whatever. Let dead dogs lie or whatever the saying is."

"She named you after yourself this time around."

"I know. Tom told me," Addy said, shaking her head. "Atlanta was always told she was named after me. Wizard, huh?"

Draco gave her a strange look, but she flapped her hand at him. He was hit again with how he didn't really know her. She was just a person he used to know. And never all that well.

"Anyway, it was nice the other Atlanta was named because Circe heard Remus say he'd name his daughter after me. So much nicer than being named after a huge city in Georgia just because she saw it on a map when trying to think of a name for me."

Draco made a face.

"I know. Anyway, since y'all are calling me Addy, I'm thinking of changing my name to Addison."

"Addison?"

"What?"

"Not very…wizard."

Addy snorted.

"What about your code name?"

"Adrasteia? That's kind of a mouthful," Addy remarked.

"Sounds more of a name a wizarding family would choose."

"Maybe I'm a Muggleborn!"

"Oh? You're not going to go by Black?"

Addy pinked a little in her cheeks. "No. I was going to take Lupin's name and be his distant cousin. Addison Lupin. I was going to have Dumbledore remove his super strong glamours no one but him can get off and go back to looking like I naturally am. I'd only be Addy Black, well…"

"If I take you back?"

Draco whipped around to find Regulus Black draped in the doorway as if he wasn't interrupting a private meeting between two…people who once knew one another in another lifetime.

Draco turned back to Addy to find her staring at Regulus Black as if the sun and moon set on his face. Having seen Sirius look at a certain wizard in a similar manner, Draco knew to make himself scare. He excused himself without either of the other two in the room breaking eye contact or noticing his exit. He made his way down the Hospital Wing and pondered. He'd known Regulus was in love with Addy, but the fact the feeling was returned ten fold was kind of…breathtaking to see.

And made him a little jealous.

Shaking his head, he pushed the feeling deep down and hurried off to make it to his first class.

"Though, if you wish to be technical, you are the one who chose to end things so you'd have to take me back," Regulus said to the empty air. He knew Addy was there, he was still unable to see her as the last time he'd been in her presence.

Regulus cleared his throat, shutting the door and taking the seat Draco had vacated.

"So, Sirius tells me you're not dead," Regulus offered. "Seems to be some of that going around."

"Reggie," breathed Addy's voice somewhere on the bed. He could see the shape of her legs, so he put his hand there.

"It's fine," he lied.

"I'm Atlanta Dorothy Black and I'm right here," a choked up voice stated next to him.

Suddenly, Regulus had a face full of Atlanta D. Black and he couldn't be happier. He placed his hands on either side of her too pale face and drank his first glimpse of her in years. She'd lopped off most of her gorgeous hair (seemed the thing to do in times of strife for both girls named Atlanta), her skin was pale (likely due to blood loss), and those jade green eyes were staring at him filled with as much love as he'd always seen— even as she told him she hated him.

He'd never believed her.

There were words needing to be said, things to sort out, stories to be told, but that could wait. There was one thing Regulus Black had wanted to do from the instant Sirius had told him Atlanta D. Black wasn't as dead as they thought.

"I need to kiss you."

"Okay."

And Regulus did just that.