Severus Snape was not really gratified with the concept of Boy-Who-Lived-turned-colleague, so he quickly excused himself and left for Spinner's End with the trademark scowl firmly in place. Harry, spotting his younger selves' fatigue sent him back to the Burrow. The boy definitely needed a good rest after the 'holiday' in the Dursley household.
This left only the Headmaster and older Harry slowly heading towards the Room of Requirement to retrieve the second readily-available Horcrux.
"I must say, dear boy, you seem to know the castle a bit better than most students that finish their education here..." - said Dumbledore as the two wizards ducked into a rather obscure secret shortcut leading to the seventh floor. Harry chuckled at this and making a mental note to retrieve the Marauder's Map from the twins, said:
"Well, I can't claim credit for finding all of these things, but I definitely do know my way around. Ah, here we are!" - he pointed at the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy - "Very conveniently marked."
Dumbledore's eyes twinkled like mad in the dimly-lit corridor.
"He put one in here? That's highly arrogant, even for Tom..."
Harry was already walking back and forth along the wall, chanting "I need to access the room of hidden things..." in his head. As the door appeared he turned around to face the headmaster.
"Say, if the school is in a such bad shape financially, why don't you sell or use the things from this room? I'm sure something valuable is in here..."
The two wizards entered the room and looked around.
"Yes, perhaps a good look around wouldn't hurt, however..." - here Dumbledore's gaze fell on a dilapidated broom that looked too fragile to sweep the floor with, let alone take into the skies - "I suspect that people which leave actually valuable things in here do remember to retrieve them back..."
"...But the room's hidden. People would leave things and then wouldn't be able to find the door again, no?" - Harry was actively looking around for the Horcrux now. Despite this being the third time he'd be looking for it, it was still rather hard to find in the piles upon piles of old, dusty stuff.
"Dear boy, they would remember the corridor they left their belonging well enough that they'd surely stroll around it more than a couple times. And since their missing item would be the first thing on their mind right then..."
"...the door would eventually appear." - finished Harry. Dumbledore smiled and nodded.
"Thus, I am afraid there isn't much in here aside from old and hopelessly broken things..." Dumbledore looked thoughtful for a second. "Harry, what are we actually looking for?"
The time traveller smiled sheepishly, as he forgot the headmaster would probably be able to help find the elusive object.
"Ravenclaw's diadem."
Dumbledore looked startled for a second and then smiled sadly. "What a shame. Such a priceless artefact..."
Harry returned the smile. "Indeed. This pile of trash isn't a fitting place for it, Horcrux or not." Suddenly, he got an idea and laughed, remembering the familiar quote from Hermione about the lack of logic in wizards. "What are we even doing?" He shook his head and started to head out of the room. Dumbledore followed with a curious look on his face. Once they were both out of the room, the door leading to it disappeared and the time-traveller started to walk back and forth along the wall once again.
"Why waste time looking around when we can just ask for it specifically..." - Harry muttered, and the entrance to the Room of Requirement reappeared shortly after. He motioned the headmaster toward it. The two wizards entered and were greeted with a much smaller room, with only one thing in it - a discoloured old tiara. There was a bout of silence as they took the sight of the item in. Finally, Harry spoke up.
"Well... there we go. This is the second Horcrux." - he picked up the soul container - "Good thing these weren't usually cursed further." An image of Dumbledore's shrivelled-up black hand shot through his mind for a second, before he dismissed it. The slight wince that momentarily adorned his face was not missed by the headmaster, however.
"Usually?"
The pent-up anger Harry has been suppressing suddenly flared up. Thoughtlessly putting on that ring was the height of stupidity! It caused Dumbledore to have to rely on teenagers to go onto that damned camping trip of doom and despair! It caused Hogwarts to become a twisted horror house of torture for non-purebloods! It probably partially caused all those deaths in the final battle, as having Dumbledore there would probably shift the balance a bit. Perhaps Voldemort wouldn't even dare to attack...
"Oh, just a Shrivelling Curse on one. We lost a certain headmaster due to its effects..." - he quipped, shooting a pointed glare. The ancient wizard looked taken aback, but didn't lose his composure.
"Oh my. I must have been very careless" - he responded calmly. Too calmly. Damn this old fool and his carefree attitude!
"Careless? More like idiotic! Do you even know what you caused?!" - Harry was shouting by now. He made for his wand, about to hex the damn codger into next century, when he accidentally dropped the Horcrux diadem. The stick of holly was almost on target, but then Harry noticed the anger quickly dissipating. Dumbledore was looking rather worried. Harry frowned and lowered the wand, then looked down at the fallen tiara on the floor. Oh. Of course. The time-traveller shuddered. That thing was much more powerful than the locket. Recalling the Horcrux-making theory, it made sense. While the locket was locked away for several years in an old, dilapidated house in a muggle neighbourhood, this thing had spent an eternity feasting on the ambient magic of Hogwarts from thousands of students, wards and magical objects.
"Okay, maybe picking them up isn't a good idea under any circumstances..." After swiftly apologizing to the headmaster, which the man simply waved off, he conjured up a wooden box and levitated the Horcrux in.
"Hopefully this will do for the time being but it'd be probably best to destroy it as soon as we can..." - Harry sighed - "...unfortunately, we cannot at the very moment."
"I see," - said Dumbledore with a thoughtful look on his face. Harry and the headmaster have returned from the Room of Requirement back into the latter's office and the time-traveller has just finished explaining why going after the basilisk right now wasn't a good idea.
Simply put - timing the Weasley's visit into Flourish and Blotts so that Lucius Malfoy gives Ginny the diary Horcrux again was going to be practically impossible. Too many factors played into that happening that day; Harry's visit to Knockturn Alley (which probably wouldn't happen now, since his younger self already succesfully used the floo), meeting the Grangers and Hagrid, getting spotted by Lockhart... if any of those didn't play out exactly as they did the first time, Malfoy would likely hand the diary to someone else - unless he was specifically looking for the Weasleys, which was rather unlikely.
With someone's else's hands on the diary, the basilisk would likely be released once again. There was no telling what the Horcrux would try to do if the basilisk wasn't actually in the Chamber of Secrets. Harry decided the known devil was better than the unknown devil - after all, catching the culprit before anything even happened would be pretty simple. He'd just have to vigilantly study the Marauder's Map around Halloween and see who was hanging out around Myrtle's bathroom.
"I must say I'm not entirely thrilled with the prospect of unleashing a basilisk onto the school, controlled environment or not" - the headmaster finally spoke up after a moment of thought.
"No, me neither" - said Harry - "I mean, I suppose we could try arranging things into going the same way as before... or I could try stalking Lucius Malfoy under the invisibility cloak that day... But it's still best to leave the beast alone for now in case it doesn't work out, isn't it?"
"Yes, that does seem like the smart course of action..." - mused Dumbledore - "Doesn't hurt to try to prevent it, however, as you said. Which means... you need to pick out the defence textbooks for your classes, so we can send the supply lists out at the right time" - he finished with a smile.
Soon after, Harry was headed towards the defence professor's quarters he was going to occupy. It was actually located in a rarely used wing of the castle, but the instructions gotten from the headmaster were rather precise. He soon got to a rather unremarkable portrait of a witch in an obscenely large wig and frilly dress.
"Err... I'd like to get into the defence professor rooms..." - Harry said after a second of staring at the witch, remembering that Dumbledore didn't actually give him a password.
The portrait's occupant glared and scoffed.
"Students don't get to visit! How'd you even figure out that they're here?!" - the witch replied in a posh accent. The freshly-made professor rolled his eyes.
- "Look, I'm not a student. I was just hired for the defence job..."
- "Oh, sure you were. Pull the other one. Heard that a million times already."
This made Harry sigh in exasperation and wonder if the portrait has indeed heard that line around that amount of times, seeing how there's a new professor every year. Well, oh well. No way was he wasting time arguing with some paint. He turned around, ready to go back to Dumbledore's office in order to get the password when the portrait started talking again, completely losing the posh accent.
- "Awww. You're no fun."
Whirling around, Harry noticed a cheeky smirk appear on the witch's face.
- "What?"
- "Most of the new professors go to ridiculous lengths to get in."
Harry blinked a few times.
- "Wait, so you know I'm not actually a student?"
- "'Course. Gossip spreads from portrait to portrait really quickly, you know..."
- "So you play this joke on every single new defence professor?"
- "Why, yes! Some of the older professors get really mad when I call them students!" - the witch cackled and Harry rolled his eyes. What a great picture this was.
- "The last one was especially hilarious, he started stuttering like crazy! I did it multiple times just for fun!"
The time-traveller did get slightly amused at the concept of Voldemort getting annoyed by being barred from accessing his rooms due to a crazed painting.
- "Well, can I get in, then?"
- "Sure. Just tell me the new password, hon."
Not feeling particularly creative, Harry picked the Marauder's Map revealing phrase and stepped through the hole behind the canvas when it finally swung forwards to let him in.
He was immediately violently assaulted by the stench of garlic, which made his eyes water. It appears Quirrel's personal belongings weren't yet cleared from the room. Cloves of garlic hung around the ceiling and Harry idly wondered if they were there just to keep the charade going in case some other teacher decided to visit Quirrel in his room, or if the man himself couldn't stand the smell wafting from Voldemort's face.
The first thing that caught the time-traveller's eye were various documents scattered around the room. Quickly scanning them, Harry deemed them to be lesson plans and some ungraded papers. Slightly disappointed, he supposed Quirrel couldn't really keep notes on his masters' evil plans, lest someone find them. He neatly arranged all the bits of parchments into a big pile to examine a bit closer later (the lesson plans COULD come in handy) and then made a beeline towards the window in order to let some fresh air in. He also started banishing the foul-smelling plant bulbs. When that, and several air-freshening charms didn't seem to have much of an effect on the stench, Harry decided it was time to call a house elf for help. The creature arrived holding its nose.
- "Cans I help, Master Professor, sir?" - it squeaked muffledly.
- "Ah, er, yes, I was wondering if you knew of a way to, er, clear the air a bit?"
The elf looked relieved at the prospect of finally stopping the room from reeking so much, but then frowned.
- "Tilly can try, but it be taking a few days..."
Great. He'd get to spend the night breathing in fumes so strong they would likely be enough to rid of Britain's entire population of vampires. Harry sighed, but smiled pleasantly at the elf, as it seemed to be getting nervous.
- "That's fine, Tilly, I don't mind." The elf immediately started working, seemingly casting it's own versions of air-freshening charms (which also did nothing). Having nothing to unpack yet, Harry elected to get out of the smelly room for the time being.
The fleeting images of fireplaces slowed down, he prepared to get out and... came barrelling out of the hearth. He tried to stop himself from falling over, but it was of no use this time. He barely managed to keep himself from kissing the Burrow's floor. A string of rather foul curses escaped his mouth.
"Language, Potter, language!"
Adult Harry quickly got up onto his feet and saw his younger self standing next to Ron, both with identical smirks on their faces after watching his ungraceful exit.
- "Oh, shut up. It's not like you don't know any of those. Dudley took care of that." - he retorted, scowling, but blushing slightly.
- "Why do you use the Floo anyway? Why not just apparate?" - asked the twelve-year old. Putting on his best Hermione impression, the time-traveller replied,
- "Harry, you can't apparate in and out of Hogwarts, I read so in..."
- "...Hogwarts: a History." - the trio finished the sentence together and chuckled afterwards.
- "That reminds me, I should write Hermione about everything!" - the younger Harry suddenly exclaimed. His older self didn't have any objections at first, but then remembered something.
- "Oh, actually, it'd be best if you didn't mention me yet..."
- "Why?"
- "Well, it wouldn't be good if someone intercepted Hedwig, but there's actually something we're planning to set up..."
That was when Mrs. Weasley stepped into the room.
- "Ah, Harry, I've heard that you made professor! Congratulations, dear!"
He chuckled.
"Yes, indeed. Just got back from checking out my rooms at the castle. I guess I'll be staying there for the time being..."
"Dear, if you'd like, you're always welcome to stay here, you know..." - she interrupted and the time-traveller briefly considered acquiescing to the offer, considering the state of the defence quarters, but decided the Burrow was full enough at the moment.
"Ah, no, thank you, I'm fine at Hogwarts, really." - he smiled, and then continued - "I'm actually here to tell you something, though... In a few days, you're going to get the supply lists from Hogwarts." - he paused until everyone nodded - "Please go to Diagon Alley on the same day, if possible. And once you get there, don't go into Flourish and Blotts until you meet up with Hermione, okay?"
Everyone looked confused, but Molly eventually replied,
- "Certainly, that shouldn't be a problem at all. Why, though?"
- "Ah, well, there's an occurrence we're trying to recreate from the original timeline..." - he stopped there and considered what he should tell them. - "I doubt it'll actually occur, seeing how the timing is crucial and that I don't remember too many details from that day, so I think it's best I let as much happen naturally as possible. I'm only mentioning Hermione because I know we initially got hung back for quite some time..."
That out of the way, Harry decided it was about time to get an old map of Hogwarts and one of its creators out of the Burrow.
[Author's note: Really sorry about the slightly shorter chapter and longer wait this time. Not entirely happy with how this turned out, either, but there's a load of other projects that I really needed to get onto... and still need to be getting onto, as well.]