Harry Potter and the related characters are the sole property of J. K. Rowling. No malicious intent or ill will is meant by using those characters and events in this fictional work.

Harry's morning classes were spent ignoring inquisitive classmates and dodging the dumbstruck looks that were fired at him from every angle. He'd never remembered looking forward to the afternoon meal in the Great Hall more than he had today. Sitting on the bench, his face contorted in discomfort, he leaned over to Hermione. "I forgot how uncomfortable these were," he mumbled, shifting in his seat. His hand dropped, slipped under the table, and cupped her knee. With a smirk on his face, he purposely looked away from his wife and let his fingers travel under her grey pleated skirt.

"Harry!" Hermione hissed, her eyes wide, but she made no attempt to stop him.

"Yes, dear?" he quipped innocently, making a small circle in the skin of her thigh with his index finger. His eyes narrowed and darkened, knowing full well the spell he was silently casting was working like, well, a charm. He chuckled, hearing her soft moan, knowing there was pure pleasure coursing through her. "Isn't this what we came back for? If Sirius heard our little chat, then, sweetheart, we have a lot of..."

"Potter," a cold, low voice interrupted, and a tall, thin body flopped onto the bench across from Harry.

"Malfoy," Harry said, startled, nodding at the blonde. He wondered if he would be met with the Draco he knew now, his friend, his brother, or if this time-ripped world had reaffirmed the dark-side of the enemy he'd once known. He bit his lip, waiting, unsure of how he would handle having to re-live the days where Draco was a nemesis and not family.

Draco blinked at him, his bony fingers tapping rapidly on the long wooden table. "I...this is going to sound ridiculously absurd, but I...do the two of you..." he stopped, took a breath, and looked Harry in the eyes. "Last night, I went to sleep in my flat, completely bloody knackered, and I woke up here, back in the dungeons, a foot shorter and..."

"You...you remember, too?" Hermione asked, ensuring her voice was but a whisper. She slapped a hand over Harry's spell-casting hand in her lap and looked around. "It wasn't us, you have to know that. Believe me, if I were going to turn back time...er, again...it wouldn't have anything to do with this place." She shot Harry a long look and smiled at him.

Harry returned her grin, nodded once, then turned to his friend. "We have no idea what happened," he said to Draco. "But, I have to say, I am so relieved to find out you made the trip back with us." He gripped Hermione's hand and, unconcerned, lifted it up and set their linked fingers on the table. "I remember what happened this year, and we...well, I wouldn't be able to live through that again."

"Me, either, mate," Malfoy said with a snort. "We were brought back here for a reason, and if I'm here, too, Harry, I doubt it has anything to do with that smarmy, ginger-haired weasel."

"Tell us how you really feel, Draco," Hermione laughed. "I think...well, Harry thinks...Sirius showed up last night. Don't ask, it's a rather long and quite hurtful story, but he had a time-turner...one that...I'm fairly certain is not...normal."

Draco raised one thin eyebrow and tilted his head. "You suppose he sent us back here? Why?"

"He must've heard us talking," Harry surmised. "I had mentioned that this last year at Hogwarts wasn't happy for any of us, and it should have been the best one of our lives. Freedom, fame, the full-on run of the school..." he smirked. "I had plans for this one," he said, tugging on Hermione's hand. "Maybe Sirius thought he was giving us the chance to have all of that, while, at the same time, preventing..."

"Oh, cricket!" Hermione gasped, her hand flying to cover her mouth. With wide eyes she looked at Harry. "He said the future was entirely preventable. He...he said he couldn't save anyone's life, but..."

"He sent us far back enough to keep Ron from hurting..." Harry swallowed the formed bulbous lump in his throat and let his eyes wander over Hermione's form, Sirius's warning of Ron threatening his future son ringing in his ears. "I don't understand. Clearly, Sirius changed a few things. Things had to have happened...well, differently. But if we are still heading for the same shitty outcome, then how the hell are we supposed to..."

"Shh," Hermione hushed, alerting Harry and Draco that Ron was heading their way.

Ron glared at Malfoy as he sat with his overflowing tray of food. "How dare you sit at the Gryffindor table, Malfoy?" he said with disdain and a scowl on his face. He bit into a chicken leg with a growl. "Bloody bastard," he garbled.

Draco simply offered a condescending smirk and a snort. "I can sit anywhere I damn well please, you tosser." He looked back at Harry. "Think," he whispered, eyeing Ron carefully. "What happened? I mean, when did he...change?"

Harry looked at Hermione, puzzled and pensive, then turned to look at Ron. "This morning, you said...Fred and George...how...how are they, um, making this wheel thingymabob? And what does it do, exactly?"

Ron swallowed his mouthful of food, and as he scooped up a heap of mashed potatoes, he cleared his throat. "Well, it's really mostly George, as Fred hasn't quite figured out how to hang 'round for more than a few minutes at a time." He blinked away what might have been tears. "It's a wooden spinner, with a spoke on the end. You concentrate on whatever it is that's causing you pain, physical or emotional or..." he glared at Malfoy. "Mental," he said with a scoff. He looked back at Harry. "Press the spoke into your finger, give the wheel a spin, and if the thing works, it makes the pain stop." He looked back down into his dish, poking at his peas with the end of his fork. "George knew you felt so terribly guilty for all that happened. It took everything Hermione had to pull you out of that hole you dug for yourself, and for a while there we all...we all thought we were going to lose you, when we already lost so much already, and George, well, he couldn't...he refused to lose another brother." He blinked quickly, refusing to cry. "He wanted to give you something to help."

Hermione whispered to Harry, "Fred must be...or he wants to be...a ghost." She pulled herself closer to Harry, snuggling against him and catching his pained eyes. "Um," she looked back at Ron, "How would this...you called it a Potter's Wheel...make the pain go away, exactly?"

"Depends," Ron said, though it was muffled by the treacle tart in his mouth. He chewed and swallowed. "It heals wounds, bruises, broken bones," he eyed Harry, "Can't grow 'em back, though," he said with a laugh, elbowing Harry in the ribs lightly. He squinted then. "George can't figure out how to get it to do much else, yet. The only thing that's even been remotely feasible is to meddle with time, but we all know...we know that's a bad idea."

"You said it spins?" Hermione asked, an idea beginning to bug her, pecking at the back of her mind.

Ron nodded, taking another bite of his chicken. "Clockwise if you want to heal yourself, counterclockwise for someone else."

Hermione looked from Ron to Harry, to Draco, and then back to Harry. All three young men were looking at her as if her hair had suddenly caught fire. She jerked shakily and pulled Harry down to her, whispering in his ear.

He backed away with a confounded look on his face. "But where would he get one? Ron said George hasn't even..." he stopped, and then looked at Ron. "What did George do with the ones that didn't work?"

"Turned them into firewood," Ron said, chuckling. Except one. There was this stray dog out back the other day, poor thing looked a hair away from death. George threw him some leftover chops, a half an apple, and one of those useless things to give him something to play with, then shot him a hard locomotor to get him away from the house." He bit into a biscuit and shook his head. "Still can't understand where it came from. It's nearly impossible to get to the Burrow from anyplace in town."

"Stray dog, huh?" Harry hummed as he shot Malfoy a knowing look. "Hedwig," he said, then.

"What about her?" Draco asked, not following the randomness of Harry's thoughts.

Harry threw his hand in the air, casting a privacy charm to prohibit Ron from hearing anything he was about to say to Draco and Hermione. "You asked when Ron lost it," he said, tapping a finger down in the middle of the table. "When I brought back Hedwig." He swallowed and took a breath. "He went mental when I...when we brought her back. He begged me to do the same for Fred but I just couldn't, and that's when he...well, you were there."

Draco nodded, closing his eyes at the horrible memory. 'I was there," he said, choking as he recalled Ron's violent outburst, the insane look in his eyes as he attacked Harry and lunged for Hermione. The coppery taste of blood filled his mouth when he remembered taking the hardest blow from Ron, right to the jaw, so Harry wouldn't. He shook away the powerful memory, and the unconscious spell that caused him to relive it so fully, and then he looked at Harry again. "So, what do we do? Do we just not bring the bird back from the..."

"Problem is," Hermione intruded, "Hedwig is in her cage in Harry's...in our bedroom." She tilted her head. "Why, exactly, are we sharing a bedroom, come to think of it?" She eyed Harry. "I remember having to sneak in and out, nearly getting expelled for it, so some things aren't the way they were before. We need to think. We need to ask questions, and we need to find out exactly what's been altered. Because if Sirius has this wheel of George's rigged to that cursed time-turner, there's no telling how far back he went, what he did, and what we've landed ourselves in, is there?"

"Mione, my love," Harry said, rolling his eyes, "Who do you presume we ask?"

"Well, for starters," Hermione said, turning her head slowly and looking into the yellow eyes of a big, black dog at the far end of the hall, "Him."

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Jo

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