Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE
Let Bygones be Bygones
Time had always been a fickle thing; something that was too excessively arduous and increasingly intricate that not even the brightest minds of wizards nor witches for that matter was able to decipher over the course of time. While magic had its wide variety of subjects that had been passed down from generation to generation among wizardkind, each foundation branching off onto a myriad of other topics, time was an essence that was simply so paradoxical and capricious that it became a distant dream for many.
Not that it prevented anyone from at least endeavouring to unravel its fluctuating mysteries.
Harry chuckled brokenly to himself in the solace of the living room— his living room. The sound bounced off of the walls, a slight echo reverberating back into his ears. While it was a gift in itself to finally be separated from the press and sea of reporters that had continued to relentlessly hound over each other for a measly personal interview with him the minute he took a step outside into the public, there were some things that never seemed to change; a rather prime example being the hollow and barren emptiness that plagued his tainted soul.
One of his old trench coats was draped over the edge of the wingback chair, a splendid gift from Hermione, who had — of course — planted a permanent charm on it to make it water-resistant.
"But of course, Harry! Now, I know you don't go out much, but it wouldn't hurt to have a few charms in place. You already get sick frequently because of those— oh, never mind."
That was years ago.
And although it always hurt to look back on it, those were both equally the most memorable and bitter of his memories. Hermione had always been one of the brightest among their year group, and it followed her into adulthood; even going as far as to rub off on Ron.
His heart ached at the reminder, and his eyes burned painfully. He clenched his jaw tightly as he grasped desperately onto the armrests of the chair, digging his nails into the rough material. He stayed like that for a good solid minute before he found himself capable of leaning back into the chair with an exhausted sigh, tapping his fingers along the armrest. It wasn't much, but it was a minor distraction.
Occlumency, while previously appearing unfeasible in his school years, was a subject that had become increasingly straightforward after that damnable Horcrux had been extracted from the crevices of his mind. Apparently, having something so colossally dark and sinister lurking within the depths of your mind — unwittingly, mind you — was bound to severely hinder your efforts in actually honing that skill.
A rather inconvenient situation at the time, he was sure of it.
Oddly enough, it was a familiar experience to locking himself away from the rest of the world; he had a lot of experience with that. The cupboard. Similar to utilizing a happy memory for a Corporeal Patronus, Occlumency — for him, at least — was learnt through the vivid memories of the cupboard. Unpleasant was an understatement for how it functioned, but it worked.
The doorbell chimed with a cherry little sound that Harry found grating to his ears, as if announcing the visitor was a great reason for celebration. Harry felt as though it were the trumpets of death playing through his fateful demise with a great furore, taunting him and yet all the more promising of what he coveted.
He flung a hand in the direction of the hallway off-handedly, listening to the violent groan of the battered door sliding open with an unappealing screech that made him wince. Really, he'd thought that his spells would've been able to hold the house in place, not make it deteriorate faster.
Then again, the house was old, there was always that. Never mind the number of incidents that must've occurred behind these closed doors; maybe it was a good thing, a sign even, that the walls were peeling, that the door hinges never seemed to stay in place. Perhaps it was its way of saying that it was best to leave things as they were, to start anew someplace else. Let bygones be bygones.
But… Harry had no place to go. No place to start a new life. It was as simple as that. He was adamant in refusing that it was because of his attachments to the past, that it was his denial of needing to accept what had happened; what and how much exactly the war had taken from him. Again.
The sound of graceful footsteps registered in the back of his mind, but he kept his gaze fixated on the dust-coated fireplace, feigning interest. He hadn't lighted it, not once. But he'd collected enough firewood to last him for at least a few months by now; rows among rows of them laid on display in their racks by the fireplace. There were only a handful of photo frames that lined the mantelpiece, all of them featuring the fierce form of his late Potions Professor.
It was quite the odd sight, even now, seeing the morose man so young.
"Has anybody ever told you that it reeks of depression in here?" The words were drawled in a familiar haughty, supercilious voice from the doorway leading into the living room. With a tone that was so overbearing yet equivalently concerning, Draco Malfoy was the only name that came to mind. "Bloody appalling, Potter."
"Flattering, Malfoy. Truly." Harry hummed softly with a sigh, not bothering to reach his eyes out to seek the blonde aristocrat's steel stare. He could already feel him burning holes into the side of his forehead, but not because of his demented scar. That was old news now.
Malfoy harrumphed, unimpressed. He shoved one of his gloved hands into the opening of his coat, shuffling the fabric around for a while before pulling out a glinting necklace and boldly tossing it into Harry's lap and then landing with a grunt into the chair next to him. Harry jolted and floundered a bit in his seat, catching a bundle of golden chains intertwining between his fingers. He drew the accessory up to his face, prompting a strangled cough when his breath got caught in the middle of his sharp inhale.
It was a Time-Turner.
"Careful, Potter," Malfoy's sneering voice came from beside him, his cane hitting the floor twice as if in a warning. Harry knew that it was nothing but a bluff though; the pompous bastard had gotten soft despite his sardonic behaviour over the years. "Wouldn't want you to inhale all of these dust particles now, would we?" The man made a point of waving his hand through the air, what little light that was filtering through the opened curtains illuminating them well enough for even the tiniest motes of dust to be visible.
The response nearly came automatically, "'Course not, little Ferret."
"Watch your mouth, Scarhead." Malfoy shot back half-heartedly, though there was no venom in his words.
A heavy but thoughtful silence settled over them both, not quite holding the usual umbrageous tension that used to be present in the atmosphere from years ago during their schoolyard rivalries. Thinking back on it now, it was a rather trivial and petty thing in retrospect. While neither of them would define the relationship between them as something so close as to friendship, it was in a way; partnership.
(Both had grimaced at that realisation.)
Harry fidgeted with the chain of the necklace with small and repetitive movements, a cluster of nervousness and anticipation squirming through his body. Distracted, he scratched at the outer linings of one of the scars running down the inside of his forearm. While it was one of his most distressingly daunting cicatrices, running a finger along it quelled the emotions threatening to gush out of his jittery core.
He turned to face Malfoy but kept his eyes scrutinising the necklace in his hand, running a thumb over the frozen hourglass with a shaky breath rattling his bones. "Where did you—" he fumbled over his words in a frazzled but desperate tone. "I don't really want to know, but…"
"Theodore Nott."
Harry looked at him curiously, eyes calculating at rapid speeds as he rifled through his brain for the familiar name. "He was good at potions," he blurted without thinking. "I mean, well, he was pretty independent and all that, but—"
Malfoy scoffed, the end of his lip curling in distaste as if he had just swallowed a sour lemon drop. "Oh, yes. Of course, that's all you remember about him," he spat menacingly, his nose scrunching up the longer he continued on his tangent. "He was in the same bloody year group as us, Potter. Or did you perhaps forget everything about him because he's a slimy—"
"I didn't mean—"
"Slytherin?"
Harry threw his arms up in the air before throwing himself back into his chair, wishing with all of his remaining hope that it would just swallow him down and never spit him back out. He tilted his head back to look at the ceiling, praying for whatever deity was out there to lend him their patience. Harry breathed in deeply through his nose before releasing a sigh that made him feel older than he probably should've felt. He turned back to Malfoy, expression withdrawn and genuinely apologetic.
Malfoy was still waiting for him, almost as if he was daring him to say something to contradict him. He didn't.
"You're right," he conceded, running a corroded hand down his face. The words felt right in his mouth, but there was a particular bitterness in the back of his mind that roared at the faintest admission that he was indeed in the wrong. "You're right," Harry growled at his inner frustration, using both of his hands to card through the nest of his hair before settling at the back of his neck.
Malfoy sunk back into the seat he was currently occupying, eyes narrowed with his leg crossing over the other in a calm demeanour when he was anything but. "You bet your bollocks, I'm right." That elected a more lighthearted huff of laughter from Harry; it was a rare phenomenon that a Malfoy was to degrade themself to using such paltry vocabulary.
With his heart rate beating at a more sedated pace to the point of where he felt capable of doing something without having a burnout, Harry twirled the extended chain between the gaps of his fingers like he would with his wand. It slipped easily in and out, and it gave him a sense of calm; a reverent of hope. And really, that was what it was. Hope. The object he held within the palm and fingers of his hand, gliding gently around it.
"It hasn't been tested as of yet," Malfoy carried on, the conversation earning a dubious glance from Harry. The blonde sounded nonchalant from its possibilities, picking at his nails with a scandalized sneer. Harry didn't know what kind of dirt he might've been trying to get at because from his perspective, his nails were beyond immaculate.
"How far back?"
Silence reigned back, though it was short-lived. Harry didn't need to elaborate more on what he was questioning; he knew fully well that Malfoy understood what he was trying to get at. His countenance was solemn, wearied down into the wrinkles of stress and weight that no one should have to uphold among their shoulders.
Malfoy cleared his throat, "First Year, end of term. Just after Quirrell's downfall." He swapped legs and shifted slightly in his chair, jaw clenching as he stole glances in Harry's direction, eyes uncertain yet shrewd. He took the other's silence as a chance to segue into the topic of formulating the project. "We tried fine-tuning the device to the best of our abilities, but we weren't precisely able to—"
"No, Draco," the words darted out as clear as a thunderclap. The pronunciation was sombre but razor-edged, like a blade so sharp it didn't pause when puncturing the skin. Nor did it hesitate to stab into the core of his heart when his own words echoed back to him in his ears. While it hurt for him to say it, he knew that the possible complications that were involved in time travel deemed it too risky for anyone to endeavour. Anyone excluding Malfoy and Nott, apparently.
Malfoy bristled in response, his grip around his father's cane tightening stiffly as he curled his other hand into a fist. "What?" He started mockingly, blowing out a humourless laugh past his gritted teeth. The fact that Harry used his first name went lost on him. "Is it because it's before the war or because it's too dangerous to try? Merlin, Potter. You aren't Dumbledore."
"Don't start, Draco," Harry threatened.
Malfoy ploughed through without acknowledging him, knowing he'd already hit a nerve. "We were children; victims that were stuck in a war between the Light and Dark, between what was 'right' and 'wrong'," his voice grew sour and his nose twitched irritably. "We didn't deserve that— any of that. No one did." With those words out of his mouth, the blonde sank back with his face visibly drained of vitality. Both of them did. "No one."
Harry clasped his hands together rigidly between the space of his legs, elbows balancing on the ends of his knees as he slouched forward slightly. He could feel the metallic necklace whirling impatiently between his hands, grazing across the skin of his palms in a beguiling manner that grew increasingly tantalising the longer he slowly began to waver in his initial intentions.
"I know," Harry inclined his head, breathing in once more and releasing an old sigh. "I know."
Malfoy reared back his ugly head at that moment, and Harry barely managed to keep himself together enough to stifle a groan. "You do, do you? Then why don't you do something? The opportunity to do so is right in your hands!" The blonde slapped both of his hands onto his kneecaps with a harsh bang, peering down at him with feral eyes. "Look at it, Potter!" He shouted in his ear, livid beyond belief at the sight of the once Boy-Who-Lived turning his head away in remorse.
"Look at it!"
"Look at me."
While Harry had been known for his volatile temperament issues that had pursued him like an overhanging shadow through his school years — particularly when he had enough on his plate already — he was prideful in how amiably he had fought to amend that flaw. But while it had been a decade or more later into adulthood, there was always one person that managed to get under his skin.
"You have your mother's eyes."
Harry exploded by the time the distant memory receded into static. His head shot up and the anger from his eyes showed the scared child within, the boy who was taught to fight and was starved of the family and friends he desperately craved to live with again. He looked so broken and tired of everything at that moment that Malfoy didn't know what to say.
"I know what it is, Malfoy. I know what a bloody—" he swung the object vigorously in the air with trembling arms. "—Time-Turner is. Do you think I don't want to go back? To- To see everyone? To see them? To save them?" Harry yelled, the decibels of his voice increasing tenfold in the ominous quiet of the doddery house as the walls shook with the intensity of it. "Because I do. Bloody hell, I do."
Malfoy riveted his eyes on Harry, his brows knitting together contemplatively. There was something in that shout; an evident pain behind it. Malfoy watched Harry's eyes. Then he knew. The anger was nothing but a shield for pain, like a cornered soldier haphazardly throwing out grenades, terrified for his life, lonely, desperate. He breathed in real slow.
"Potter—" he scowled for a second before forcing out a strained, "Harry."
The man looked up from the floor he had been glaring at after his — temper tantrum, really, Malfoy's head automatically supplied — less-than relevant outburst. Fortuitously, Malfoy found himself almost immediately commiserating with him the moment their eyes locked and shook his head at himself. Outrageous.
"You won't be in it alone." Digging into the inner lining of his collar and lapels, he wrenched out a near-identical necklace to the one Harry was holding. Though it was highly more embellished in stark comparison to Harry's own, its design held a certain style to it that simply flashed 'Malfoy'. It was more of a feminine pendant meant to be worn to festivals or to a gala than being used as a potentially life-endangering time travel device.
Harry raised a satirical eyebrow in questioning. "It's different," he pointed out lamely.
Malfoy sat up ramrod straight at his statement, a smug smirk gracing the lines of his lips. "Decent deduction skills you have there, Potter." Harry resisted the nudge to remind the blonde to call him by his first name. "The only difference is the distinctive style and design that envelopes mine, as you can see—" He was cut short when Harry interjected in a very Snape-like manner.
"Quite suitable for a Malfoy, is it not?"
Malfoy's mouth clicked shut with an audible snap as his hands gripped the curled end of his cane more severely than he needed to. "Indeed," he drawled with a sneer, eyes hard and cold. In a more solemn manner, he drummed the pads of his fingers along the neck of his cane carefully. "Now, I do need your answer. If you wish to remain here and die alone in a wheelchair in a diaper, be my guest. Just know that your decision won't alter my own."
Once again, Harry's emotions turned jagged and his insides ached with indecision. He could feel them all, raw and fresh, straight out of his core; like there was no skin over his pain and the wind made it bleed. He could hear Hermione's admonishing voice all over again like it was only yesterday— oh, how he wished it was.
"You're bitter, Harry, and that's worse. Anger is over fast, bitter lasts."
She was right; like she always was— because she was Hermione and it just made so much sense at the time. But then when she died — when everyone died — it was like being handed over all of the memories they'd experienced together over the years like he was lucky to have so much. It came as a pouch of coins wrapped in velvet, a golden cord pulling the top tight, heavy and cold that it was almost too much to merely touch it. But he didn't want the coins, they were only metal, easily replaceable; he wanted her back. He wanted all of them back.
Suddenly he feels like he's drowning, everything crashing down on him in a wave that he couldn't handle. Emotions he didn't want to even think about ambushing him from all sides, striking against his mental shields with a renewed resolve. And with them, came the memories. Terror.
"Come out, come out wherever you are!"
Frustration.
"You don't know everything, Harry!"
Anguish.
"Kill the spare!"
Guilt.
"Dying is quicker than falling asleep."
"Harry, take my body, will you? Take my body back to my father."
"Such a beautiful place, to be with friends. Dobby is happy to be with his friend, Harry... Potter."
"No — no — no! No! Fred! No!"
"Take it, Harry. Take it! Go!"
"Go on, mate. We've got your back!"
There was hope before. Just a tiny flicker against the battling wind. And with the gullible open eyes of a child, he'd reach out, fingers extended with trembling limbs that threatened to relinquish their strength. And in that moment of desperation, he'd lurch to seize it within his grasp; only to have the smouldering embers of its vapour escaping through the gaps of his fingers. It was cruel, just as reality often was. Just as war was.
Tears pricked dangerously near the brim of his eyes, and he was mollified to realise that a few wayward droplets had glided down his cheek. Though they were nothing but the silent reminders that he did indeed still have some resemblance to a human soul, it made the hollowness inside him only widen.
"Oh, Merlin." Malfoy's voice came awfully close to his ear again. A hand containing a speckless handkerchief reached out in front of him, the sleek material nearly smothering him as it ventured across his face erratically. Harry spluttered incoherently in the blonde's grasp, trying to shove the offending hand away from his face. He could hear Malfoy snickering under his breath, finally pulling away as he drew in a hoarse gasp of air through his lungs. "There you are."
Harry turned to glare heatedly at the man, crunching his nose up in derision as he cradled the right side of his jaw gingerly. "Do that again and you can say goodbye to your barbie doll hair," he hissed darkly.
"Yes, yes," Malfoy gave a dismissive wave of his hand, boredom covering his features once more as he made a move to brush his shoulder. He turned back to Harry more seriously. "Now, your answer."
Pursing his lips into a singular straight line, Harry rolled the Time-Turner around in his hands again, as if hoping that it would somehow change his mind when all it did was make it worse. It was like Malfoy had declared just moments earlier, a second chance; a way to fix things to the way they should have been before. Or, it could turn out to be a disaster, a cruel voice murmured in his head.
Consequences be damned, he wasn't sorted into Gryffindor for no reason. He had nothing else to lose except his residence in the living realm; he might as well go out with a bang.
"Fine," he finally choked out, looking up at Malfoy with a resolute nod.
Malfoy's lips twitched before growing into a downright terrifying smirk. "Wonderful."