Exit Stage Left

••Forced Foray••

…with a high chance of time travel

§Parseltounge§

There are some moments in life in which you find yourself unbelievably embarrassed, but are able to look back on those moments and laugh about them later.

When Harry Potter woke up naked in the middle of Diagon Alley, he immediately knew a few things: 1/ He had absolutely no idea how he got there. 2/ He was fairly sure he didn't remember having that tattoo before. 3/ He was never going to be able to live this down. 4/ He felt like he had the hangover of the century. Oh, and 5/ If he was able to laugh at this later, he was going to have to get himself a big old-fashioned bag of REVENGE first.

Apart from that, it really was just another day in the life of Harry Potter.

Higher brain function had mostly ground to a halt, and he was still pulling a blank on just how he wound up here (but couldn't really bring himself to think about the logistics of that just yet) so when he felt someone poking his shoulder and realised that that was most likely the reason he had woken up, he blearily looked up into a face that he could have sworn shouldn't have been there, but he shrugged off his suspicions of resurrected dead (it caused too much pain for his already bad headache) and focused on his (its?) voice.

"Ah, sir? How bout we get you up and into the Cauldron, yeah? We don't want to leave the poor muggleborn students and their parents with a bad first impression when they come for the tours soon, do we? Here, put this on, and I'll help you up. I'll even give you breakfast on the house, yeah? Looks like you could use it, ya poor bloke." Tom, the once-owner and barkeeper of the Leaky Cauldron had conjured a robe while he was talking and held it out to Harry, which he had the presence of mind to quickly pull on. Harry blindly got up at Tom's prompting (or was it the man's evil twin?) and allowed himself to be steered through the archway to the Leaky Cauldron, not really paying attention to the man's rueful muttering about bachelor parties and 'tradition'.

The next moment, he found himself being pushed into a seat at the bar, a headache relieving potion in one hand and a glass of water in the other, told to just relax as Tom was going to get him breakfast.

Without a thought about how uncomfortable drinking poison could be, Harry chugged both down and wished for the best, happy when he didn't feel anything different for the consumption of the liquids, apart from the horrible concoction that was the headache potion – it must have been a cross between hippogriff dung and salamander toenails, or something equally as vile – really, you'd think the wizarding world would try for stuff that didn't make you want to obliviate yourself after being dosed.

The water didn't really help, and Harry was contemplating conjuring up some soap to wash his mouth out (no matter how bad it tasted and how many people would stare at him, even in the wizarding world) when the old barkeep dropped a plate of toast, bacon and eggs in front of him.

He mindlessly pulled the plate toward him, picking up the utensils and started eating. He could just sense Tom's amusement at his silent and immediate following of the man's prompting, but really couldn't be bothered. He easily tracked the bartender as the man moved around the room, handing out a few meals to the scant few occupants of the pub at what Harry assumed to be an extremely and atrociously early hour (especially considering he had been enjoying sleeping in past noon) and wasn't really surprised when the man got behind the bar to kind-of hover in that way that all trained hospitality people did to make customers think that it was a good idea to tell them your life story.

All was silent, and Harry was steadily making his way through his bacon and toast when Tom cracked and revealed that he was too curious to let Harry eat in peace. The voice was filled with humour, Harry idly noted, and he questioned, "So, what's a young man like you doing naked in Diagon Alley?"

Ah, just the regular conversation starter, then.

Harry mentally gave the man points – he certainly had the right mix of humour, geniality and curiosity to get your regular Joe to spill their guts. And since he apparently had to pretend to be the regular Joe, he should probably pretend, anyway. He let out a long, put-upon sigh. If there was anything Harry Potter was good at, it was dramatics. He slouched in his seat, and took on a slightly boy-ish persona that made the people who were interrogating him more pliable and began, "Well, it all started last night…"

He really only paid half a mind to his story, made up on-the-fly with no real elements to it. It was specially crafted to get Tom to trust him – give the old man something to laugh about, get him in a position to not be suspicious of you, add in odd details that he would see as signs that you really had no idea how to audit your words, thus removing any element of doubt that you could be some kind of threat – the usual stuff that you have to do when you're a stranger that turned up naked at his front door. It was standard procedure. You get used to averting attention after the weirdest situations when you lived his type of life.

While he was telling his story, his mind was on other things. He really did need to figure out just how the hell he'd gotten to Diagon Alley, why – because it hadn't really registered before the headache potion kicked in – the street was filled with people striding about in colourful robes like they hadn't a care in the world, and why the shop fronts looked like they had when he was still in school. Oh, not to mention that he was talking to a zombie, because Tom the Leaky Cauldron bartender was dead.

Yeah, good things to think on.

Think think think.

…

He was kinda slow, wasn't he?

Okay, think. What do I remember last? Ron. Ron! That son of a… er. Well, probably not a good idea to insult the dead. Freaky beyond powers and all. Well, that utter bastard! He hit me with a stunner! In the back! In the Great Hall, rallying place for Potter Haters everywhere. Ooooh. It's all coming back. He could remember waking up, now.

He was cold. Well, cold was relative, really. It was mildly chilly.

«•Flashback: How He got into this mess•»

The return to consciousness didn't reassure Harry.

Hs arm twitched, and he instantly recognised the feeling one gets when they are tied up.

He'd had more than enough experience with it, after all.

Well ain't that a comforting thought – the situation was not without precedent.

His captors though… well, they left something to be desired. But at least it wasn't old snakey – the last time this happened he'd run out of various torture devices and decided to sit Harry down for continuous re-runs of Big Brother. It hadn't had quite the instant impact as say, a good ol' carving, but after a while… well. Let's just say that was probably one of the driving forces towards his encroaching insanity.

Fortunately, when one of the DE guards had started foaming at the mouth, he'd been able to sneak out the back door.

But he dragged himself back to the present, and keeping his eyes firmly shut he stretched out his magical senses and affirmed that he recognised every single person in the room. Traitors.

Of course, he wasn't exactly sure why they were traitors right now, but it was safe to say that anyone who decided to knock you out and tie you up shouldn't exactly be on your Christmas card list.

"We know your awake, Harry." Well, they've got the 'I know what you're doing and you are under our control' thing down.

"Yesss?" He really had to learn to control his sarcasm.

Really.

He didn't go off half-cocked because it was fun, that's for sure. Actually, it kinda ended up the opposite.

He opened his eyes to meet the faces that he expected – standing in front of him were Minerva McGonagall, Hermione Granger, Remus Lupin and Ronald Weasley (synonymous with bastard, as far as he was concerned) and he could see the others spaced out around him, in a big circle. Ooooh, they seemed to know how to play 'circle the captive'.

They seemed to pause, as if waiting for him to start cursing their existence, calling them 'traitors', insulting their existence or whatever it was people do when they find out all their friends have turned on them. Well, he didn't exactly feel like playing the poor captive and betrayed friend, so he just sat there, slightly uncomfortable with the sensation of the sticking charms which held him in place (impossible for him to cancel, at least right now) and there was an awkward silence where all of them kinda shuffled around before they glanced at each other uncertainly.

When Minnie realised he wasn't going to start screaming at them about releasing him, she cleared her throat a little uncomfortably and continued on, "Well… Harry, we have a plan."

Harry very obviously eyed the floor, to which he was glued, and then the weird design on the floor, which it seemed he was the centre of, and then the circle of his friends that were pointing wands at him, before he drawled, "Well, I'd imagine so."

Because, really, what could you say to that?

She seemed once again thrown at his lack of… proper prisoner etiquette, perhaps? Well, whatever it was, she seemed a little put out that he wasn't going to go off at them. He found this funny – really, he'd learnt that all you had to do was greet the Tosser as 'ol' Tommie ol' pal' and he'd fly off the handle, usually crucio-ing you so much and then storming out, forgetting that he'd caught his DE's in the process.

His old professor threw him a strange look, pursing her lips, before deciding to continue on, "Well Mr. Potter, we had an idea. This idea was at first considered impossible, but after a bit of time our situation got so that we dug up this idea and decided to give it a go. With Miss Granger and our spell crafter's help, we made a breakthrough that, we are hoping, will save us from Voldemort – even allow you to save a lot of people that have been casualties of this Blood War."

Harry stared mutely at her. She'd cracked. There was nothing else for it. Oh Lordy, they were all doomed.

Minnie proceeded to motion to Granger (for she was not Hermione, considering she was one of the people responsible for tying him up) and said, "Now, Miss Granger is going to explain our breakthrough to you."

Granger cleared her throat, and Harry caught the gleam in her eyes that she got on a zealous book-high, which was automatically followed by all incomprehensible and highly worded stuff on the intricate theories of… well anything. And thus it really shouldn't have surprised anyone that when she started in her lecturing voice using words such as 'antiquated' and 'antecedent' he didn't catch a whit.

He just kind of stared at her as her mouth moved, his eyes unfocused and generally not appreciating being practically hog-tied and tortured via lecturing. Although he had to admit that it was a better method than some that the Tosser had pulled out of his arse.

After what seemed like forever, McGonagall seemed to notice his inattention and cut over Granger. "- Basically, Mr. Potter, what we are going to do is send you back in time."

Well there isn't really anything you could say to that either.

But at least it was all the affirmation he'd ever need to label her insane.

Everyone was, once again, looking at him as if curious as to how he would react. Since staying lamely silent didn't seem like the right course, he just went with a genial, "Sure, let me just grab my coat."

Minnie blinked, but seemed to be able to pick up on his heavy sarcasm.

"We are not joking here, Mr. Potter."

Harry raised an eyebrow, but in a voice that was sure to push her buttons he said, "I'm sure you don't think you aren't."

Her lips thinned, but she turned to Granger and Lupin instead and nodded her head.

They approached him, stepping carefully so as to avoid scuffing the designs on the floor as they did so. He wasn't all that worried – after all, if they thought they were going to send him back in time, apparently with a weird ritual that probably involved them all standing around this design thing and chanting, chances were they needed him alive. Well that, and he didn't think they could kill him, no matter how obnoxious he got – he'd avoided annoyance-driven murder before now, after all.

Granger got to him first, and knelt down in front of him. She didn't go into the 'oh, it's for your own good Harry' or the 'I'm so sorry for being a back-stabbing bitch and tying you to the floor, Harry' speech, she just grabbed the left sleeve of his jacket and rolled it up to his shoulder, turning his arm over so that she had access to the underside of his forearm, presenting pale skin.

He got worried when she pulled out her wand, and started chanting in a way that alerted him to the fact that something was Not Right. Or that he was in a Bad Situation, that he would want nothing to do with. When the skin underneath where she was running her wand started to hurt like she was dragging a piece of glass over it, he bit his lip to distract himself and vaguely realised that Lupin was there to hold him down through whatever they were doing.

When Granger didn't stop after a few minutes, and he got a little worried that he could see some black designs appearing on his arm, he turned to Lupin and asked, in a vaguely curious voice that belied none of the pain he was feeling, (something that he'd perfected under his time with the Death Eaters) "Just what is she doing and why?"

Lupin's eyes seemed to communicate many things; a scant bit of it that Harry actually wanted to see, but his tone seemed exasperated, "Harry, Hermione explained why we were doing this just a few minutes ago."

The pain had not abated, but grown just a little worse, although it had nothing on the cruciatus. "Well, why don't you assume that I didn't pay attention to anything she said, and spell it out for me now, kay?"

Lupin sighed and shook his head in a way that told Harry he was amused. "Well, you know about the time travel spell, yeah? Well, we found that there was one glitch about the spell that could have caused problems." Harry forced himself to look mildly curious about the drawbacks of their imagined time travel spell. "Well, the problem was that we could find a way to get a person through, but we couldn't modify it to include things like clothes, or anything else you might bring through – such as money – and it certainly wouldn't be able to keep any disguising spells stable while you travelled through it."

Harry was vaguely concerned about the apparent 'no clothes' rule concerning time travelling, but didn't question it – after all, they were hallucinating the spell, and it could never work. He didn't have to worry about hallucinated drawbacks either. He asked the pertinent question. "So why does it feel like she's cutting glass into my arm?"

"Well," Remus said with far too much cheer, considering they were talking about his pain, "We found a way around that. It was inspired by those muggle things – tattoos – and so we worked this out. It acts as a permanent glamour spell – well, actually it is stronger than that. What Hermione is doing is tweaking parts of your DNA to change your appearance, and tying the spells to a tattoo that she's creating on your arm. It involves runes and such, but that was in the lecture she gave you before. Actually, she's also found a way to get rid of you scar – moving it somewhere in your hair, that is – and some of the rune groups act as a storage device. It is an innovation – there's nothing else like what you have in the world. This way, we'll store some stuff in those designs so you won't be left without anything when you pop out the other side. You can't afford to leave your money sitting around here when you'll need it back there."

Harry blinked, very slowly and deliberately. What. The. Hell.

He clenched his hand, suppressing the instinct to fly off the handle and desperately clutching for whatever insanity had allowed him to keep his cool before this. Even so, he yelled, "WHAT!?"

Granger kept chanting, although she seemed to flinch a bit as he jerked a little before Lupin secured him again. He forced himself not to hyperventilate, and implemented occlumency to calm himself down – whatever the hell they thought they were doing, he had no doubt in his mind that if they managed to fuck up right now, he'd probably die from the backfire. Probably should have listened to the Granger incomprehensible intellectual drone, to have known to at least attempt to get out of this.

Just as suddenly as his anger rose, it settled back down, and he muttered in a detached kind of way, "Oh, you really are insane, aren't you."

Lupin didn't answer, as he seemed to realise this probably wasn't a good time to be convincing about any argument of sanity. Instead, Harry grasped on to one bit of that conversation that his brain had flagged for further inspection, "Wait a second. You said something about my money."

Lupin smiled, and Harry instantly recognised the smile from the days Dumbledore was alive. It was that smile that said, 'I've done what's best for you, but I knew you wouldn't like it so I didn't tell you and now that I have to spill the truth I wish I could run for the hills'.

It was a very communicative smile.

"Well, Harry, when we decided that you were the best choice for sending back in time – after all, you are the best person at adapting to new situations, not to mention that you're prophesised to defeat him and all, we knew you needed to have monetary support to get into the right circles and so fourth. So we kinda… bribedthegoblinsandstoleyourhairtouseinapolyjuicepotiontogetintoyourvaultsandwithdrawallyourmoney."

Harry was vaguely aware that Granger had finished whatever spell work she was doing, but he had gone into lockdown. He knew what he thought Lupin had mumbled really quickly so the words were slurred and it was hard to understand, but he would like to hear it properly. In a deadly tone, he ask/stated, "Rewind, repeat."

Lupin licked his lips nervously and took a few steps away, just barely missing the edges of the designs. He breathed in and out, bracing himself as he said, "Oh, sorry. I just said that we kind of bribed the goblins and stole your hair to use in a polyjuice potion to get into your vaults and withdraw all your money."

In a weird voice, although it was still tightly controlled, Harry said, "That's what I thought you said." He shut his eyes, clenching his jaw as he controlled the immediate rage that flared up at these… people that had wronged him in so many ways. And these were his friends? Well, his enemies were pretty bad too… Oh Lordy just let them get over with whatever they're gonna do.

Harry didn't bother to smile, he scowled at them all through them teaching him how to store stuff in the (permanent) designs that they had tattooed onto him without so much as a by-your-leave. They demonstrated by showing him what was probably a grand trunk, considering it had one of those extra space deals that contained a few fun stuff thrown in, and they said that all his stuff was already stored in that little trunk that, at the moment, was the size and shape of a box of matches.

They also said that one of the compartments held all his money, another held all the books and journals of research that they had all compiled together since their theory-shattering discoveries, and that the library also included a few of the most useful compilations of stuff from Hogwarts, which were made from people going through the books and basically 'cutting and pasting' the helpful stuff into more helpful books, so that nothing stupid was left in. Granger had to be restrained while they were doing it, but on the whole those books had turned out much better than the biased books that are printed in the wizarding world.

There was a lot of stuff and they got him to make up a parseltounge password for the trunk's separate compartments, which afterwards sealed off because of all the newly-developed runes and stuff the spells had been made of, then they put it to a grouping on the tattoo and pressed it to the middle, and he felt the magic that they fed into the design and saw the trunk just disappear. He didn't feel anything, so he assumed that Granger's spell had worked.

Lupin and Granger backed out of the circle, moving to their places in the ring of bystanders. There was one question that he really needed the answer to, though, before they did whatever they were doing. He had no idea what about his appearance Granger had changed, but he wasn't really worried. Hell, if she had gotten rid of his bloody scar, he'd probably allow himself to acknowledge that he was grateful for that, at least. Even if she was participating in whatever they were going to do.

So he asked, "Just why are you doing this? I mean, I'm not unreasonable. I'm sure I could have probably been convinced to do this had you come to me for it…" He didn't bother with adding that they were completely off their rockers, and that he would have most definitely recommended a few mind-healers had they ever suggested something as insane as time travel to him anytime he wasn't tied up in the middle of an I-hate-you circle, where all his apparent traitor 'friends' were pointing wands at him.

They all seemed to adjust their positions, sliding into almost identical postures and wielding their wands in the same way.

Minnie was right in front of his line of view, and he could easily see the smirk on her usually strict features. "Potter, turnabout is fair play. Oh, and Happy Birthday."

Well shit. Seemed like they were taking this as some big joke to get him back for all the grief he'd caused them over the years, Minnie especially. Hmm. He probably should have expected that he'd make them snap some day, and when he did it would somehow come back to bite him in the arse. But somehow, being shoved backwards in time with explicit instructions to murder Voldemort (they were quite insistent on this point of contention) was not how he had imagined that turning out.

Go figure.

And so they started chanting in unison, he thought he caught the Latin word for 'mulligan' and the pretty designs lit up like a Christmas tree, then began spinning around.

Unfortunately, he didn't really get to enjoy the pretty colours, mostly because of the debilitating pain. Yes, surprisingly it can do that. It felt vaguely like being ripped to pieces, joint-by-joint, and then sautéed. And then the people around him… well, they just kind of came apart. You know when you see a piece of knitting and all it takes is to pull on the right string and it will all come undone? Well, he was watching everything around him come undone, just trailing off into the… expanse… and all of a sudden something grabbed him up, and it felt like he was being sat on by Hagrid before he lost consciousness, and the world withered away to nothing.

«•Flashback Ended: Back at the Leaky Cauldron•»

"Hello? Are you alright, Mr Clothing-Is-Optional? You aren't looking too good there."

Harry really had to wonder how his expression looked at that moment, because he felt really weird. Like 'I just found out that my friends snapped and shoved me into a time vortex that sautéed me back x amount of years and dumped me naked in the middle of Diagon Alley' weird.

And let me tell you, that is fairly peculiar.

He shook his head, clutching it as the phantom memory of pain crossed his thoughts, before he focused on the concerned bartender that he now knew not to be a zombie, or an evil twin, or the product of whatever else could bring someone back from the dead – it was really him that was out of place.

Harry looked into the concerned eyes of Tom the bartender, and said the first thing that came to mind.

"I really need a drink."

«±ΰ±»

Well, I hope ya'll enjoy that, just know it's gonna get fun, and be a bit less totally insane in the next few chapters. He he he this is gonna be fun. As far as I know, there are no fics that I've read like what I'm gonna write, and I've read a lot of them. I'd appreciate if you'd review, too.

-skyflyte12