Author's Note: This story has been updated for formatting and continuity issues.

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The Schrodinger Effect

Part 03: Meddling Concepts

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"In the darkest of times, hope is something you give yourself." –Uncle Iroh, Avatar: the Last Airbender

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It was strange at first, having Luna around all the time. After the night that they found her in that pub, both Harry and Neville were leery about letting her return to the Rookery. Both knew their friend had a tendency to live inside of her head unless deliberately kept out of it. So they decided to keep her with them as much as possible, even if it meant dragging her with them to Hogwarts every day.

It soon became very clear that while she had only completed six years of her formal magical education, Luna was clearly well-versed in obscure and ancient magic. Luna had a way of looking at things from a rather unique perspective which became increasingly useful as Flitwick began repairing the magic and wards of Hogwarts. Harry had expressed surprise at that responsibility being taken up by the diminutive man, but Neville had quickly explained about magical creature inheritances. As a half-goblin, Flitwick had not only keen senses for nuanced variations of magic, but also training in more types of magic. He then honed his childhood training with the attainment of a Mastery of Charms. Having inherited her mother's vast collection of work journals and books on theoretical magic, Luna had a similar degree of training despite her youth. While Neville and Harry worked on the crews doing the physical repairs on the castle, Luna and Flitwick sequestered themselves with Vector and Babbling in the Ward room, doing their best to repair the intricate magical network which had been last studied when the Founders created it.

It was in the middle of the Solstice celebration that another of her advantages was revealed to her self-appointed guardians. Luna could see magic. Noticing how tense both the men got at her revelation, and knowing that Sight was considered to be a Dark ability, she had stumbled over her words in her rush to reassure them. Neville had stopped her by pulling her into his lap.

"Nothing will ever make us believe that you are evil, Luna," Neville reassured her.

"Even if I turn Dark?"

"You will never be Dark," Harry whispered as he knelt beside Neville's bent knees where the other Gryffindor was holding the little blonde. Luna looked as if she was about to argue and Harry placed a finger against her lips. "No. You don't get to say anything different. I know you, Luna. You may have a rare ability that is thought of as Dark, but so is parseltongue and you have never thought less of me for that. So I'm not going to think less of you for being able to see magic…besides," he said with a wry smile, "that would be hypocritical of me."

"What do you mean?" Neville asked.

"I can see it, too," Harry confessed quietly. Luna blinked at him while confusion colored Neville's face. Harry looked away as he resisted the urge to fidget with the hem of his jumper. "I figured out quickly that it was not normal for a wizard, so I decided to act as if I couldn't and not mention anything about it. I wish I had done the same with being a parselmouth, but I didn't figure that out until after the whole school knew. But you see, it would be hypocritical to think you'd be evil just because you have a certain ability."

Luna pulled Harry to her, knocking him off balance. The result of this was Harry's face buried in her stomach with Neville's knees digging into Harry's chest. That is, it was until Neville shifted his legs apart to allow Harry to slide between them. It was an awkward hug, but what it lacked in comfort, it made up for in the warmth that it shared between the three friends.

Just like that, the three of them had become a unit. Luna and Neville didn't replace Ron and Hermione, but as Ron busied himself helping George run the shop and Hermione worked with Kingsley to organize the shambles that Voldemort had left of the Ministry, they had left a gap in Harry's life. Neville and Harry had fallen in together due to being on the crew repairing Hogwarts. It surprised Harry, in the brief moments he could pause to think about it, that the Wizarding World had been able to bounce back from Voldemort's rule so quickly after his fall. They buried their dead, picked up the broken pieces of their society, and carried on like the Brits that most of them were.

The three of them practically moved into Neville's suite at Thistlewood Manor. This had the benefit of Neville and Harry being able to wash the dirt and grime off before the house elves delivered dinner. Despite Neville's fears about his grandmother, Augusta Longbottom did not seem to have any problem with Neville sharing living space with Luna and Harry. In fact, she seemed to encourage the budding partnership by assigning the adjacent rooms to Neville's suite to them.

It did mean that Harry moved out of Grimmauld Place, where he had been staying, despite Molly Weasley's insistent invitation to stay at the Burrow. Ginny didn't seem to mind Harry's new friends, despite the fact that he spent more time with Neville and Luna than he did her, especially after he moved into the manor. Her ambivalence most likely was due to her pursuit of a spot on the Hollyhead Harpies rather than disinterest in her boyfriend. Harry didn't care either way, as her interest had bothered him at times and the respite from that was a relief.

"We could do it, you know," Luna announced at dinner a week after her revelation about seeing magic. When Harry and Neville looked up at her with matching confused expressions, she repeated herself. The two men exchanged glances at each other. She watched as their energy sparked off each other in that silent communion that they shared so often. It brought a slight upturn to her lips even as a part of her that remembered her parents' sparks twisted in loss. When they returned their attention to her, she simply repeated her statement.

"Luna," Harry carefully enunciated, as if her name carried some weight that she was unaware of, "we don't actually know what you are talking about."

"Temporal energy is still energy," Luna said. Neville lost color under his tan but Harry still looked confused. "We are Magi. We are born with the innate ability to use one type of energy and one type of energy can be used to harness another. It would just take figuring out the how."

"Luna, we can't," Neville denied weakly. He seemed to be barely holding himself together. "Terrible things happen when wizards meddle with time-"

"Like, what? Are they tortured? Do they die?"

Her words were quietly spoken and lacked accusation. Even still, Neville fell silent. There was a loud clatter as Harry rose from his seat so violently that his chair went to the ground. He paid it no mind as he came around the table to kneel beside her. He raised a hand hesitantly to cup her cheek. The action was sealed by the cool moisture that she hadn't even been aware of leaking.

"Luna," Harry whispered with the same gentleness she had seen him use with a thestral during their forbidden wanderings during Umbridge's tenure as Defense teacher. His dark green eyes beseeched her to let him help, even though they both knew that there was actually very little to be done. "The time turners were destroyed and even if they weren't, going back a few hours won't change anything. The past is fixed."

"What if it isn't?"

"I don't understand," Harry said even as the thought took root like one of Neville's plants, growing with every passing second. What would he change? There were too many things to count. He should have acted much sooner—he would have acted sooner if he had the knowledge. But the past wasn't like an essay. It couldn't be changed once it has occurred. Like Devil's Snare, the idea began to strangle all other thoughts.

Luna slid out of her seat so that she had straddled his lap without putting any weight down on his legs. She lifted two trembling hands to cup his face similarly to how he was cupping hers. She was so close that he could smell a soft floral scent that was vaguely familiar. His heart ached at the very idea that the past could be changed. But it couldn't be, could it?

"I don't understand," Harry forced through lips that had gone numb.

"What if the past wasn't fixed? What if we could change it? What if time could be rewritten?"

"Oh, god," he gasped as the ramifications that he had been trying to deny hit him. What if he could save all of them? He repeated himself before a sob which he could not voice began to choke him. Desperately, he pulled the slight girl closer to him. Luna acquiesced easily, pressing his forehead against the space above her pert breasts. Her left hand slid along his jaw to stroke the hair at the nape of his neck while her right fisted in the pullover shirt that covered his shoulder. The pair found themselves being pulled into Neville's arms.

The warmth seeping from the gardener broke loose the sob. It followed by several more as Harry lost himself to the grief that had been building for all his life. So many had died for him, because some duffer of a dark lord believed in predestination. But it could be changed.

And Harry knew, in a moment of perfect brilliance, that it would be changed. It was only a matter of 'how'.