"James?"

James jumped and twisted around to see Lily standing behind him. The Gryffindor common room was empty of any other students, but was filled with warmth from the fire. James sighed and turned back to face the flames. Lily slowly walked around the deep red couch and rested her head on his shoulder.

"It's two in the morning, James."

He didn't respond, he continued to stare at the delicate, yet dangerous, fire.

"Everyone's really worried about you," Lily said, placing her hand in his. "You've been through a really horrible, horrible experience. And I know there's nothing anyone can do to make it right again, but your parents wouldn't want you to feel like this constantly. It's eating you up inside, and to be honest James, you're taking it out on those who want to be there for you."

James still didn't respond. Lily sighed.

"I'll leave you alone then." She stood up and began to walk to the spiral staircase leading up to her dorm room.

"Wait," James finally spoke. Lily stopped and turned. James was twisted around in his seat, looking over the back of the couch. "Please stay."

Lily walked back over and wrapped her arms around his torso, pulling him back so he was leaning against her chest. She stroked his hair, twisting it around her fingers gently.

"It'll get better, James." Lily said quietly as she watched his eyes flutter closed. "Sunshine always comes after rain."

o0o0o0o0o0o

Harry and Remus watched as the flames flickered and died down. Remus anxiously glanced at Harry, who was visibly shaking, with tiredness and with anger.

"Why doesn't it work," Harry finally breathed. "Why is no one responding. What if… What if no one's there to respond?"

"I don't think that's true, Harry, it's more likely that there's something wrong with our potion."

"But it's doing what we wanted it to, right? It's doing what we would expect it to, and yet no response."

"Maybe it only works one way? Maybe you can only move forward in time? The potion I based this off of was for speeding up time, not reversing it. It's quite possible they've tried to respond and can't…" Remus trailed off as he watched Harry stand up once more and carrying over yet another jar.

"That's the last one we have, we'll have to make more." Remus said.

"Not unless I use it to go back home now," Harry muttered as he poured the liquid into the stone bowl in the fire place.

"What?" Remus said slowly as Harry took out his wand.

"Incendio," Harry said, bringing the potion to life.

"Harry — " Remus said in a cautioning tone.

"Grimmauld Place, June 30th, 1997!" Harry called, and with out hesitation stepped forward and placed his hand into the flame.

Harry's eyes widened with horror as pain shot up through his arm. He grabbed onto the edge of the fireplace and tried to pull it away from the fire, but the familiar vacuum effect only tried to bring him in closer.

"Remus!" Harry cried desperately, trying to pull his arm away. Remus jumped and grabbed Harry around the waist and together they tried to pull away from the fire, but it only slowly brought his arm in further and further.

Suddenly, with a force even stronger than had been holding him in, Harry felt his arm forced back through the fire, and he fell over backwards into Remus. The fire swelled in a gust of wind and then vanished.

Harry lay on the ground, shaking and wincing. His head and vision swam, he couldn't concentrate on anything. Remus immediately got up from the ground and came to his side, laying him flat on his back.

"Harry?" Remus called urgently as he looked him over. "Harry!"

Harry tried to respond but his mouth wouldn't move. Remus looked around the room before running over to one of the sets of cabinets. Harry couldn't make out what Remus was doing, but he missed the reassurance of hearing his voice.

"Re-mus?" Harry's voiced cracked weakly.

"Here, drink this," Remus said quickly, trying to keep his voice level. Remus lifted up Harry's head, and carefully poured the dark potion down his throat. Slowly, the world stopped spinning and Harry's vision cleared. The pain in his arm, however, did not disappear.

"My arm," Harry said, grimacing. Remus looked down at Harry's arm. The bandages that had been around it before and been pulled apart by the force of the fire. Remus undid them entirely and looked it over. Harry's skin looked darker than it should in some places, and in others far lighter. His fingers were a pale white where as his burn was now a deep purple and black.

"Harry, you need to go to the hospital wing."

"I can't," Harry breathed, flinching as Remus gently touched his arm. "How would I explain this?"

"I'm not a mediwizard, I'm not qualified to help with this," Remus said anxiously. "Can you move your fingers?"

"No."

"Harry," Remus said desperately. "You need to go."

"Get Lily, she can help."

"She isn't a mediwitch either."

"She's great with herbology and potions, she can help."

"You should just go to the hospital wing, this is out of our hands," Remus said sternly.

"No, we can't have more people knowing, it's already a risk with Lily. She helped me with my burn last time, she has medical supplies. Please, go," Harry begged, pain etched deeply into his face. Remus paused.

"Stay awake, I'll be back as soon as I can," he said, before running out of the room.

Harry watched as the door closed, and looked back down at his injured arm and frowned. For a second there, right before his arm had finally been released from the magical fires grasp, he had looked through the flames and could have sworn that rather than his flesh, he had seen only his bones instead.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Lily jumped as the portrait opened. She sighed as she prepared herself to have to lecture whichever unfortunate student was about to be caught out of bed this late at night. However, before she could even turn to look, she heard her name.

"Lily!" Remus cried, rushing into the common room as fast as he could. James jolted awake from the shouting, and pulled away from Lily.

"Do you mind, mate? It's a little late," James yawned.

"Remus, what's wrong?" Lily felt her stomach sinking.

"I-I need your medical kit. And you," Remus stuttered in a rush. "Please, go get it, and come back down, quickly."

"But why —"

"Just, please go get it, I'll explain later."

Lily nodded and ran upstairs to her dorm.

"What's going on?" James said worriedly.

"It's not really my place to say," Remus said nervously.

"Is it something to do with Harry?"

"Why would you think that?"

"Because, Sirius and Peter are asleep upstairs and you and Harry have been going off together a lot recently."

"Yes," Remus sighed. "But I can't talk about it more, maybe speak with him later, like I said, it's not my place to say."

"What have you guys been doing together?"

"I can't tell you about that either," Remus said uncomfortably. At that moment, Lily rushed into back into the room.

"Ok, let's go," Remus said, and together they rushed out of the room. James stared at the now closed door into the hall, his eyes narrowing.

'Don't even say goodbye,' James thought. Frustration and jealousy swirled around his head as he laid back down on the couch and stared into the fire.

"What's going on?" Peter squeaked from the stairs.

"Just something going on with Williams," James said, glancing up.

Peter scurried down the stairs quietly before sitting in the chair next to James.

"Ha-have you confronted him about what I saw?" Peter asked.

"No, I don't think it was them you saw," James mumbled. "It was probably someone else. Lily wouldn't do that to me."

"O-oh, yes. You're probably right," Peter said, nodding vigorously. "B-but, Harry still doesn't seem right to me, you know? Something just seems off about him."

"Yeah, sometimes I get that feeling too, but Sirius thinks he's fine, and so does Remus and Lily so… He probably is," James shrugged and stood up. "I think I'm going to go to bed now, goodnight."

Peter's face fell as James left the common room. He sat in the cushiony armchair, his face twitching nervously until he heard the door to the boy's dorm shut behind James.

"Wh-what do I do," Peter muttered to himself, clicking his nails on the wooden handles of his chair. "I-I need to, I need to speak with him, yes, I need to speak with him, yes, yes…"

Peter looked around nervously, checking all corners of the room as if he was being followed, and the silently exited the common room.

o0o0o0o0o0o

"Where do you think he is?" Hermione whispered. She looked nervously up at Ron as he paced back and forth. Ginny twisted her hair around her finger over and over. They could hear the continuous low hum of arguing coming from the Black's kitchen.

"I don't know," Ron growled. "But he's somewhere, and we have to go find him. They need to stop arguing over where is safest for them to hide and go find him."

"Why would he only write hello?" Ginny asked, staring at the parchment that had been left on the table. "Why would he even write, 'it's me, Harry' or something?"

"It was actually rather smart of him not to," Hermione said. "If that parchment had ended up anywhere other than here and he had written anything more identifying it could have been very bad. The wrong people could have found him."

"Why can't we find him," Ron said his voice getting louder. "This isn't good enough!" He stood up and kicked the fireplace, quickly recoiling and wincing as he clutched his foot.

"Everyone's doing the best they can, there's really nothing el—" Hermione stated when suddenly, the fireplace lit up once more with green flames. The boards quickly burnt away revealing the same roaring fire Ron had seen before. The flames exploded, turning purple with shocks of blue.

Ron stumbled backward in horror and Hermione screamed as a bony skeleton hand clawed its way through the flames.