After the Triwizard disaster at the end of his fourth year at Hogwarts, Harry Potter, Boy-Who-Lived and now liar extraordinaire, witness to the dark lord's rebirth and most insane person alive, was carted off to his aunt and uncle's house. Miraculous really, how much he was treated like a weapon or a tool. He was the main target of a sort of immortal and totally alive dark lord, the favorite person of the leader of a bunch of rebels and possible vigilantes, the boy who needs to be smothered by his best friend's very loud mother, the godson to an escaped prisoner with not that many crimes to his name, the sort of nephew to a poor werewolf, the freak accident to his mother's sister and said sister's husband, the easily accessible punching bag for his darling whale of a cousin. Need he even go on? The list was extremely long and really, really irritating because it just showed how popular he was. And guess what, even with all that popularity, not one person actually tries to help him! And oh, how he needed the help!
When he was finally taken to the headquarters of the "Order of Phoenix", (and why wasn't he taken there in the first place?), it was after he had nearly had his soul sucked out by a dementor who was obviously desperate, after the ministry of magic themselves had sent a letter of expulsion, almost wand snapping, not so much expulsion, a trial and all sorts of other rubbish because the ministry of magic was just that - a ministry, complete with rich people, weak-willed toadies, bribery and corruption.
So, yeah, he was glad that he was with his friends and godfather and sort of uncle and sort of brothers and sister, and oh, who knows how to describe everyone else there? The only problem he had now was that everybody refused to give him any information. There was not a single word from Dumbledore, the ever-useful headmaster and leader of the vigilantes and everyone else assumed he needed smothering, namely one Molly Weasley, or not to be told because he was traumatized by Cedric's death, most of the order members. Obviously, Sirius and Remus wanted to tell him all about everything and Snape saw him as a carbon copy of his father, who shared the blatant disregard for rules and the need to know and have everything they asked for. But besides all of that, life was fine.
Well, there was still the trial for breaching the Statue of Secrecy, not that he had actually breached it since his cousin and Mrs. Figg already knew about magic and the Underage Magic Laws, which were annoying because honestly, was he supposed to let a dementor, a soul-sucking horrible beast, kiss him? Dementors may really be desperate and need to get laid, but they were not going to kiss him!
Dumbledore decided to appear at the Ministry, where his trial was unfairly moved earlier and without anyone letting him know that, and Dumbledore decided to completely somehow save him. Not that he needed saving per se, he might've gotten out fine on his own, but if Dumbledore wanted to help him, who was Harry to stop the greatest wizard of all time since Merlin, and who had been ousted from the International Confederation of Wizards as well as the Wizengamot in the past month alone?
Besides all the bad news though, there was some good news! Guess what, his best friend, Ron, was made prefect and so was his other best friend, Hermione! How wonderful for them and everyone else! Okay, maybe he was a bit bitter, just a teeny-weeny bit though. He needed their help and there the great Albus too many names Dumbledore went and made them prefects. Say bye to your friends, Harry, and say hello to your better, no… your best friend, loneliness. Yes, he was being overdramatic, and sulky and broody and moody, but he was a teenager with a lot of issues. Too many, you could say.
But now, he was at Hogwarts, and how glad he was! There was no new professor who was possessed by everybody's favorite Dark Lord (hopefully), no new professors who were frauds (actually very possible. The pink ministry toady looked very promising in this field), no professor who was a dark creature (wait, do half-giants and a witch-toad crossbreed count as dark creatures?), no death eater posing as a teacher (again, the pink toad looked too ugly to be normal, but no self-respecting death eater would dress like that), no professors trying to murder him at all times (oops, never mind that, there's always Snape with his glares and detentions and Dumbledore with his awful security over the most secure building in the world).
Overall, this was turning out to be a wonderful school year, even though he had been back in school for less than 24 hours and had already been called an attention-seeker (no less than 27 times), a liar (more than 50), whispers behind his back (most of the school come to think of it), an insane fool (that was just a few people though) and taunts to his face (just the one, courtesy of our very own Slytherin Prefect, Draco Malfoy!).
And as far as bad years went, that was the worst that could happen, right? Wrong. He had nightmares constantly, and he clearly needed help. If no one was going to help him then he was going to help himself, thank you very much. He wanted his sanity preserved how it was, terrible and very close to insanity, but that's not the point.
That is why he was sitting in the library in the middle of the bloody night, under his very own invisibility cloak (were students even supposed to have one?) and the Marauder's Map (It's definitely illegal to have that!) open on the table. He was researching a way to talk to people who could help him the most. So far, the most promising spell was one where said person or people would be brought to the present time, meaning from a different time, either future or past. It didn't seem too hard, so of course he decided to try it out.
Moving to an empty room in an abandoned part of Hogwarts, there were surprisingly a lot of those, he set up for the spell. 10 minutes later, he was ready. A ring of simple runes formed a circle and he sat at the center of the circle. The spell was more like a chant and required quite a bit of magical power, so he was hoping that none of his supposed helpers were homicidal, against him or murderers. With his luck, he wasn't holding too much hope.
He started the spell and immediately felt the energy slowly draining from his body into the runes on the floor. It was at that point that the spell exploded, and the energy dispersed like a shockwave. For a second, Harry wondered if something had gone wrong, until the magical shockwave rushed back, as if the entire spell was reversed, and the magic built up around him. In a bright flash of light, the magic cleared to show seven figures.