Chapter Text
Harry awoke with a horrible headache and a warm weight on his chest. A warm weight which turned out to be an equally hungover Ron. What the hell had happened? And then everything came rushing back to him. Teddy dead. James Potter alive. Dumbledore evil. The Weasleys traitors, except for Ron and the twins; well, twin, now. Hermione evil. Their mad, drunken plan...which couldn't possibly work, but which was sounding better and better every minute.
He shook his brother, who groaned. "H'rry! S'too early!"
Harry completely concurred, but summoned two headache relievers anyway. It was a testament mostly to his formidable core and finely-honed control that, even with the worst headache he had ever had since his visions from Voldemort two years before, the vials scarcely wobbled as they flew through the air. He caught them with the ease of Gryffindor's one time star Seeker and uncorked one of them immediately, gulping it down. Damn. Why did they always have to taste so awful? Still, after a few moments of nausea, his hangover died away completely, and his head was clear enough to try to get Ron up, as the man had already fallen back asleep.
"Ron!"
Ron buried his face in his pillow. He'd never gotten up early in all the years Harry had known him, unless there was quiddich practice, an emergency, or bacon, and after such a wild night, it was very likely that nothing short of Voldemort could startle him into any semblance of wakefulness.
"Ron!" Harry repeated, uncorking the bottle and making his friend swallow it. Ron blinked a few times, swallowed hard, and tried to go back to sleep.
Harry gave it up, and went to rummage in Ron's kitchen for something to make breakfast with. Before long, he was slicing fruit- even with potions, it was probably not a good idea to eat anything heavy- and making porridge and eggs the muggle way.
Ron came down in another half hour, red hair mussed and clothes rumpled, and gave him a sheepish twitch of a smile. "Um...so...what now?"
"Now we eat. Then...then we should probably talk about last night."
Ron looked at the food and groaned. "Right. Never thought I'd say this, but I'm not hungry."
Harry pantomimed fainting, but nodded and put everything but the fruit under chef's stasis. They managed a few slices of peach and orange before Harry gave it up and just watched Ron, who stopped himself after another slice of pear, and then they simply sat there over the nearly-full fruit bowl in silence.
"Ok," said Harry at last. "What are we going to do now?"
"I don't remember too much from last night," Ron replied, blinking as he tried to focus. "Don't remember much of the past week, to be honest. It didn't really feel like it was happening to me, you know. But yeah. The ritual. Also, do you have a place to stay? Didn't you say your father has the deeds?"
"I...I don't, actually. I guess I was just going to book a room at the Leaky...?"
"You can crash on my couch as long as you need it, Harry. But what about long term?"
"Long term's not going to happen," Harry responded firmly. "I know it's dangerous and probably stupider than sticking my wand up a troll's nose, but I want to try that ritual, and as soon as humanly possible.
"I was going to say that that might not be a good idea, but you know what, I'm game. It would be horrendously hard, though, especially if it was the ritual I'm thinking of. Hard and dark with a capitol D. I did read a book in the Restricted section which contained some time-travel spells; I was really curious. I also read a book specifically about time travel a year ago, s'called The Golden Hourglass, the Methods and Mechanics of Traversing Time. It said that long-distance time travel is actually possible with the right preparations, unless you go farther back in time than your birth; if you do that you explode. You're not supposed to meet yourself, or change things, unless everything is really drastic, because you can end up changing the future so much that you don't exist, so you should always take a friend with you to try to iron out any mistakes that you make. Also, time has a habit of partially repairing itself. Even if you were to go back and kill Voldemort as a child, per say, someone else would become a dark lord instead. So to keep things changing, you have to stay in the timeline you're trying to change, which is really, really problematic. Essentially the only way to really truly go back in time and fix things would be to do a dark ritual to literally reintegrate with your younger body."
Harry stared at him. Then he drew his wand. "Ron. What is the password to the Marauders' Map?"
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good. What did I say?"
"How the hell are you a sudden expert on time-travel?"
Ron muttered an expletive and looked down at his lap for a long moment. "Her-Granger was always complaining that I wasn't a good conversationalist in anything but quidditch and clobbering dark wizards. So I looked up the most obscure things I could think of and self-studied until I was 'good enough' for her."
Harry winced. "I see." There was a long silence.
"So when you say it's dark, what does that entail? Liiike, illegal dark?"
Ron nodded. "We'll have to get the actual book; it's been a long time, but the spell in the Restricted sections was a complicated ritual involving blood magic. Like, explosively dangerous blood magic. And I think one of the ingredients is banned in ten countries."
"Will it kill me, though?"
"Probably not, but you never know. I...are you sure, Harry?"
That would not have seemed at all encouraging to your average wizard, but Harry had always known that if it was rare, odd, or potentially life-threatening, it would probably happen to him and he would probably survive it, so... "Ron, I'm not asking you to come with me, or even help, but...there's almost nothing left for me in this timeline. I've got no job, no vaults, since whatever James doesn't have, the goblins froze for our stunt during the war, I get fans wanting me to autograph their breasts but no one who actually cares except you, and all I want is to make things right. So if I can safely make it back in time, then I will. I owe it to Teddy. To Tonks. To Remus. To Sirius. To Fred and Colin and Ginny and Snape and Moody and all the other people who died because I wasn't smart enough, or fast enough, or in the right place at the right time to make a difference. I need to do this."
"You'll hear no argument from me," replied Ron at long last. "I want to win the war without so many people dying, and I want Dumbledore to pay. Dumbledore and Madame Pomfrey and 'M-'Mione, and everyone that's ever hurt us. The hell I'm not helping you. But it's not as simple as all that. First of all, the ingredients are going to be hideously expensive, and both of our accounts are frozen. I got George to get most of mine out a while back, citing 'right of kin' but we still don't have nearly enough. Plus, I think we should make some plans beforehand, because once you're at the Dursleys it'll be hard to do anything wizardly until Hogwarts without anyone being suspicious."
"Well, first of all, we need the book. Where was it that you found the spell?"
"100,000 Spells You Should Never Use," Ron replied. Harry winced. It sounded almost prophetic.
"You think we can get it in Knock Turn?" he asked calmly.
"It's out of print."
"Well damn," Harry swore. "Do you think we can sweet-talk Minerva into letting us borrow it?"
"Maybe, as long as we don't tell her what it's for. But if you think for a heartbeat that Madame Pince is going to let us borrow one of her precious books..."
"Right, I forgot about that. Do you know how to disable copyright charms?"
"Disable copy - oh! No, we don't need to know." Ron grinned. "All the copyright charms have already been taken off, so that the students can copy information for their essays!"
"How do you know that?"
Ron's face darkened. "Osmosis. 'Mion- Granger was always reading parts of Hogwarts, a History, out loud to me. I'll admit, some of it was fascinating, but..." his voice trailed off.
Guilt swamped Harry at once. "Oh, sweet Merlin! Sorry, Ron."
"Don't. That bitch is the only one who needs to apologize. So, are we...do you want to do this? Once we start, it'll be too hard and too much of a waste to stop halfway through."
Harry was silent for a long moment. "Yes," he replied at last. "Are you with me?"
"Yes, absolutely." Ron chuckled a little. "We never seem to do things by halves, do we? Single-handedly trying to protect the school, going down to the Chamber of Secrets itself, running around in the Forbidden forest to talk to giant sentient spiders-" he shuddered.
"Don't forget breaking into the most secret part of the Ministry, hunting horcruxes with the sword of Gryffindor, and riding a ruddy dragon."
"So...should we get out of our nightclothes?" asked Ron after another short, nostalgic silence.
Harry had forgotten he was still wearing them. "Yeah, maybe that's a good idea. Um, can I maybe borrow some robes?"
"Of course!" Ron retreated into the bedroom and returned wearing pale golden semi-formal robes and carrying some red ones for Harry. "Your turn to change; you can have the bathroom."
Harry hurriedly pulled on the robes, pulled a comb through his messy black hair and returned to the kitchen.
"If you'll just give me a second, I'm warding Granger out so that she doesn't get any ideas. And then should we stop by Hogwarts?"
"Absolutely. Once we have the recipe, we can do more of the planning and buying," was Harry's response. And within half an hour, they had apparated to just in front of the gates of Hogwarts.
They entered quietly reminiscing about their Hogwarts days, and as it was about nine in the morning, classes had already started, and so except for a few students whose free period it was, they escaped relatively unscathed. They ascended the spiral staircase up the Headmasters' tower, and at last came to the top, where the gargoyle, no longer password-protected (as the war was over, Minerva McGonagall had felt no need to 'protect' her office, a decision that Harry fully agreed with, since during Dumbledore's leadership nearly any given firstie knew that you could just list candies and the door would open when Dumbledore wanted it to).
As they came in, McGonagall looked up from a pile of documents, setting down her pen so that it wouldn't drip. A smile creased the aging face as she recognized her favorite lions. "Oh, hello! How can I help you?"
"Um, we'd like access to the library, if that's ok. And maybe if you have time we could have a chat?"
Headmistress McGonagall smiled. "Absolutely. Although..." she looked almost like she did not want to ask. "Why do you want to visit the library?"
"Ron wanted to find a book from the Restricted Section he'd read a long time ago." Harry supplied, figuring that a partial truth would be easier to defend, and not having anything else made up on the fly.
"I see." McGonagall pursed her lips. "I'm going to assume that it's for research only. May I ask when were you in the Restricted Section, Ronald?"
Ron blushed, and Harry couldn't help thinking that he looked rather cute. At last he squared his shoulders. "Second year. 'Mion- Granger had Lockhart autograph a permission slip, and of course the idiot didn't read what he was signing, so we had a chance to look around. I got an extra book while Granger was looking for Moste Potente Potions."
"Granger? Have you two been fighting?" McGonagall began. And then the rest of the sentence seemed to catch up to her. "What were you doing with Moste Potente Potions in Second Year?!"
"Brewing polyjuice in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom," Harry replied calmly. At Ron's horrified look, he gave an impish grin and added: "you can't take points for it, either."
Had Minerva McGonagall had been an ordinary woman, she probably would have facepalmed. As it was, she only huffed a long sigh. "I see. Dare I ask if you actually drank it?"
"Yeah. It worked, too. We snuck into the Slytherin Common Room to spy on Draco. Ron and I were Crabbe and Goyle and 'Mione accidentally drank cat hair, serves her right." Harry paused. "We should probably get to the library before it's swamped with Ravenclaws on their free period. Are you doing anything for lunch?"
"Just paperwork, and that can wait," McGonagall replied. "I...well, carry on. And don't do anything stupid!" she added as the two young men turned to go. Ron called back cheekily, "Love you too, Headmistress," and then they began to make their way towards the Hogwarts library.