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Chapter Text

Harry took the train.

He sat in a random compartment in that endless white train-void, and felt the gentle lurch and rumble that meant they were moving. He wondered where they were going, but honestly didn’t care all that much. He’d left Dumbledore and that horrible baby-like creature behind on the platform, and they could make their own way to wherever it was they were going.

Somewhere else.

Harry was tired. He couldn’t really summon up the energy to care.

He was tired, and he was dead. The horcruxes were gone, and someone else could deal with the little bit of Tom that was left. It was sad, he supposed, in an abstract kind of way, that his friends would have to mourn him, but…it had been building to this for a while, hadn’t it? And there was a war on. Harry had always been going to die a hero.

They would live.

Harry burrowed down into his seat and rested his head against the window that looked nowhere, and let the steady vibrations of the train rock him to sleep.

Harry woke up, and he was still on the train.

It was the same train, he was sure of it, but also quite different.

Brilliant observation, Potter , he thought.

There were sounds now, and smells. Colors, even. The giddy shrieks and hisses of children, slamming doors, and the scents of candy and sweat. There was even somewhat familiar scenery rolling by the window.

Faintly bemused, Harry stuck his head out of his compartment and into the hall.

It was the Hogwarts Express, sure enough. Kids scampering every which way, half in and half out of uniform, trying to find their friends. Luggage bumping along behind them.

They looked happy.

They looked unafraid.

This was the Hogwarts Express of his first year, he decided, or maybe his second. After that, there had been a pall of fear over everyone that hadn’t quite ever scrubbed away, even in moments of joy.

It was nice of the train, he thought, to bring him this memory.

Or—not quite memory, was it, because he’d never been precisely here before, wherever or whenever it was. Maybe it was even the future. He hadn’t recognized anyone yet, but he hadn’t really known all that many people in the years above or below him, besides the DA, so that didn’t say anything much.

Harry wandered the halls, just enjoying the atmosphere. No one seemed to recognize him, which was a novel experience, and absolutely brilliant.

He was also a good deal shorter than he remembered being—either that, or everyone here were half-giants, and he thought that the less likely option—but he figured maybe he’d shrunk back into his knobbly little eleven-year-old body to match the memory.

The halls settled down, most people having found their friends and claimed a compartment, but Harry remained content to just wander.

Eventually he came across a student coming in the opposite direction, who could not have been in a more opposite mood than Harry if she tried. She was obviously tense and frazzled, sticking her head into each compartment as she went and getting more and more frustrated as each one failed to give her whatever it was she was looking for.

She was tiny, but she also had a very familiar head of bushy brown hair.

“Hermione!” he called. “I didn’t think I’d see you here, but I suppose it makes sense. Bit sad, though, isn’t it?”

He wondered how his friend had died, and was more than a little glad that they seemed to be on the way to the same afterlife.

Hermione drew herself up to her not-very-significant-at-all full height—though they did seem to be in that brief period of time when she was a good deal taller than him, which definitely meant first or second year—and frowned at him.

“How do you know my name?" she demanded.

Harry manfully resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “The wrackspurts told me,” he said instead, which satisfied his innate need for sarcasm quite nicely.

“Those aren’t real,” she said.

“Says you,” said Harry, just to needle her, though he tended to agree with her more often than not about whatever creatures Luna was always spouting on about.

“And what do you mean, it’s sad to see me? That’s a weird thing to say. And a bit mean.”

Harry blinked, taken aback. “Sorry,”  he said. “I just meant that if you’re here, Ron got left behind without us. And that’s sad.”

Hermione bustled up right in his face. “What do you mean, Ron got left behind? How do you know? And was Harry with him? Harry Potter, I mean—have you seen him? Either of them?”

“Er,” said Harry, amused to be asked about himself, “in a manner of speaking…”

He raised an eyebrow at Hermione, inviting her in on the joke, but she didn’t key in. “You don’t recognize me,” he said, “do you?”

“No,” she said. “Should I?”

“I’m only your best friend,” he retorted, “though maybe that hasn’t happened yet…”

Except she was looking for Ron and Harry, so that didn’t fit either.

Hermione sniffed. “I’ve never seen you before in my life. Who are you, anyway?”

Harry wasn’t quite sure how to answer, except he was spared the need to when they went into a tunnel and he caught sight of another familiar face out of the corner of his eye.

Except—that wasn’t actually another person. It was only their reflections in the window. Hermione, looking just as she was, and…

Harry titled his head at the window. The reflection tilted its head right back to match. He raised a hand to wave, and it waved too. His reflection had dirty blonde hair, tied back, with a wand stuck above her ear.

“Huh,” he said, less surprised than he should by all rights be, “I think I’m Luna Lovegood.”

Chapter Text

He ended up in a compartment with Hermione and Ginny Weasley.

“Hullo, Ginny,” he said. “I’m both very happy and very sad to see you too.” He thought of stolen kisses with Ginny by the lake, of her sharp curses and sharper wit, of the way her hair whipped in the wind on a broom. 

This Ginny was not that Ginny. This Ginny was eleven, and also she was dead, and presumably she didn’t even know him yet, and that was all very, very sad. 

But also she was Ginny, and neither of them were leading armies of children into battle, and they could just hang out, and that made him very, very happy.

“Hi, Luna,” said Ginny.

“Oh, do you recognize me then?” He asked.  Not him-him, obviously, but Luna-him.

“We’re neighbors, Luna,” said Ginny. “We hang out all the time.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Harry. He vaguely remembered now that Xenophilius and Luna’s rook-like house had indeed been very near the Burrow, in Ottery St. Catchpole. He wondered why they had never hung out with Luna over the summers—though maybe she and her father had been off hunting imaginary creatures? He remembered her telling him about those little trips across the world, which she had enjoyed very much.

“Cool,” he said, after considering all this. “I’m sure I like hanging out with you a lot.” He was sure of it, too, even if he wasn’t actually Luna—Ginny and Luna had been very good friends, and who wouldn’t like hanging out with Ginny?

“Yeah, Luna,” said Ginny. “It’s loads of fun.”

“Wicked,” said Harry. 

Hermione gave him an odd look. “What did you mean, about Ron and Harry being left behind?”

It had occurred to him at some point in all this that Hermione and Ginny didn’t remember dying, and thought they were actually the school kids they appeared to be. And, of course, that they thought he was Luna Lovegood and not Harry Potter.

And, well, he could tell them the truth. He certainly trusted Hermione and Ginny. But that seemed an awful lot of trouble, and a huge burden on the both of them besides. They were just kids, like this. 

Plus he wasn’t really sure how to go about convincing them. It was all rather unbelievable, even with magic.

He wasn’t sure why he retained his memories, if not his appearance—maybe it had something to do with the Hallows? They would probably regain their memories soon anyway, or he would forget, or they would arrive at the actual afterlife and all this would be moot. He could do the actual explanations then.

Besides, he was very much enjoying hanging out with his much-more-innocent-and-happy friends, even if they didn’t know it was him, and he didn’t want to ruin it with talk of death and Voldemort and all that.

So he just shrugged in response to Hermione’s question. “I just meant that they’re not here, and we are. I suppose they will catch us up eventually.” 

The nice thing about being Loony Lovegood was that he could be terribly vague, and no one expected him to make sense. And it was all true anyway—eventually Ron would die too, and if this was indeed the afterlife, would join them where they were.

“What’s this about Ron and H-Harry not being here? They were right behind me on the platform.” Ginny was bright red for some reason.

Harry blinked at her for a bit before he remembered that if this was second year—and it must be second, not first, if Ginny was here—that was when she’d had that massive crush on him. He found himself blushing too, at the memory. It was rather cute though, in the way little kids were cute. And because it was a tiny, adorable Ginny.

“I don’t know,” said Hermione, biting her lip. “But I can’t find them anywhere, and I’m so worried something must have happened. They’re always getting themselves in trouble.”

Harry huffed. It wasn’t his fault he was always getting in trouble! And summer of second year—yeah, that one definitely hadn’t been his fault. “It’s not their fault the barrier closed up on them,” he defended. “And they’ll be safe and sound in Hogwarts by the end of the sorting feast, so it’s fine. You don’t have to worry about them, promise.”

“What do you mean, the barrier closed up on them?” Hermione cried. “And how do you know?”

“Er,” said Harry, realizing he didn’t have a good explanation for any of that. “Well, the nargles told me.” 

Hermione shrieked through her nose. “And what,” she said, “are nargles?”

Harry wasn’t honestly sure. But he did know what Luna said they were.“They’re invisible creatures that live in mistletoe, and like to play pranks on people.”

Hermione gaped at him. “Those don’t exist. And neither do, those, whatever you were talking about earlier—wrackles!”

“Wrackspurts,” Harry corrected. He bit down on a smile and tried to keep his face open and guileless. It really was quite fun winding Hermione up.

Hermione took a deep breath. “So you’re saying that these…‘nargles’ stopped Harry and Ron from coming through the barrier as some kind of prank?”

“Oh, no,” said Harry. “It was an elf who did that, and it wasn’t a prank exactly. The nargles just told me about it.”

Hermione gaped at him. “Are you insane?!”

“Hey!” said Ginny. “Be nice to Loony—I mean Luna. She’s a bit odd, sure, but she’s always been nice to me.”

Harry beamed at her. “Thanks, Ginny. That does sound like an accurate description.” Of Luna, at least, if not Harry.

“…Right,” said Hermione. “Sorry, Luna.”

“It’s fine,” said Harry. “I realize I’m not making much sense to you right now, and I can’t really tell you any more. It’ll all become clear later, though, promise.” Whenever it was that Hermione and Ginny got their memories back. Or Harry lost his, at which point it wouldn’t be his problem.

“Right,” said Hermione again, sounding even more dubious this time. “Are there any books about these ‘nargles,’ then?”

“I have no idea. Probably.” Harry grinned at her. It was fantastic, seeing her like this again, bookish and brilliant and young.

Eventually, Hermione seemed to realize that she wouldn’t get any more out of him, and the conversation turned to their summers, and schoolwork, and the sorting ceremony.

Harry sat, staring out the window so he could gaze to his heart’s content at Hermione and Ginny’s reflections and not be completely weird about it, and basked in the uncomplicated joy of being with two of his favorite people in the world.

“Aren’t you going to change into your school robes, Luna?” asked Ginny.

“Oh,” said Harry. He’d completely forgotten about that, even as Hermione and Ginny had changed. He’d assumed at some point that the train would shift, or the memories would, or that they’d just keep on going into eternity. He hadn’t expected to actually arrive at Hogwarts as if it were second year all over again. “I don’t think I have any,” he said. “I’m not really sure where my trunk is.”

“How do you not know—nevermind.”Hermione snapped. “You’ve got to have a uniform though, Luna, it’s the rules. I’d say you could borrow mine for the feast, except they all have Gryffindor trim on them, and think you’d probably get in trouble for wearing them before sorting. Besides, you probably won’t be a Gryffindor, will you?”

Harry snorted, almost offended, before he remembered that he was Luna Lovegood and not Harry Potter. He remembered the airy girl letting him into Ravenclaw tower, only last night, to search for the diadem, and was struck by a sudden wave of sadness and longing. “No,” he said, “not Gryffindor.”

“You can borrow my spare set,” offered Ginny. “Except—well, I only have the one spare, so can you make sure you give them back after?”

“Oh,” said Harry. “That’s really nice of you. Yeah, of course. Thank you, Ginny. You don’t have to, though. I can just get in trouble, I don’t mind.”

Ginny scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous. Here.” She shoved a worn set of plain school robes at him. 

“You can borrow some of my spares, Ginny, if you need them before Luna gets those back to you.”

“Thanks, Hermione.”

“Of course.”

Harry smiled. His friends really were such good people. He was glad he could be with them now, though he hoped they would get to the part of the afterlife where he could be with everyone else—his mum and his dad and Sirius and everybody—soon. And where Hermione and Ginny actually remembered him. This was pleasant, sure, but a bit too surreal.

“Hello there, beautiful.” He ran his fingers along the beak-snout thing of the elegant, skeletal horse before him.

The thestral huffed and butted its head gently into his chest. He laughed. They really were quite magnificent, thestrals.

He’d lost Hermione and Ginny in the crowd, but wasn’t too bothered about it. He was sure he’d find them again.

He ended up sharing a carriage to the school with a pack of Hufflepuffs he didn’t recognize, content to spend the ride gazing out over the grounds. 

“Miss Lovegood!”

Harry didn’t respond at first, forgetting that the name belonged to him. 

“Miss Lovegood, really.” This time a hand tapped his shoulder, and so he actually spun around to face the speaker.

“Professor McGonnagall!” He cried out, and slammed into her side to hug her. She didn’t respond at first, but then awkwardly started petting his back.

After a second, he pulled back. “Sorry,” he said, “I don’t know why I did that. That was weird, wasn’t it? I’m just very happy to see you.”

There were a few snickers in the background, but Harry didn’t care. 

“Yes, well, Miss Lovegood, it is very nice to see you safe and sound as well, although you should probably refrain from hugging unfamiliar witches and wizards in the future, especially your teachers.”

“Right,” said Harry, “sorry.”

“It is no matter,” McGonnagall brushed it off. “Though may I ask why you did not get on a boat with the rest of the first years? Rubeus does make it quite clear where you are to go after the train.”

“Oh,” said Harry. “I forgot I’m a first year.”

“Indeed? And how does one forget, Miss Lovegood, that this is the first time you have been here?”

Harry thought it wouldn’t go over particularly well if he tried to explain right now that he wasn’t actually a first year, and was in fact Harry Potter, who was both a second year and a…seventh or eighth year? “Well, er—I was petting the thestrals, and I got distracted, so I just came on one of the carriages.”

“The thestrals? Oh, of course, Miss Lovegood, I’d forgotten that you were present at your mother’s terrible accident.”

“My mum? What does that have to do with—oh, right, because that’s why I can see them. Because I was there when Lu—my mum died.” 

He’d technically been there when his mum had died as well, but he hadn’t been able to see the thestrals until after Cedric got killed in front of him. He wasn’t sure why that was. Maybe because he’d been too little, as a baby, to understand what death actually meant?

Poor real Luna, though. It couldn’t have been easy seeing her mum’s magic accidentally backfire like that. He’d got the sense it had been a messy death, as well, although all Luna had ever said about it was that it was “rather horrible.”

“Right, well, I’ll just escort you down to the rest of the first years. Please do try not to wander off again.”

“I’ll try, Professor,” he said. “No promises though. I’m not very good at staying where I’m put.”

McGonnagall sighed. “No, that would be too much to ask for, wouldn’t it?” she muttered to herself. “Just one well-behaved student, honestly, that’s all I want. But instead we have three of them missing before the welcome feast even begins!”

Technically, Harry thought with more than a bit of amusement, there were only two missing students, since he was both Luna-him and baby-him. But he didn’t say anything, not wanting to face McGonnagall’s wrath when he’d gotten off quite lightly, all things considered. 

“Where’ve you been?” Ginny hissed when McGonnagall dropped him off with the first years and began her welcome spiel.

“I accidentally took a carriage instead of the boats.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Just happened.”

Ginny huffed and shook her head. “Only you, Luna.”

Harry smiled at her. Honestly, it was quite a Harry Potter thing as well, ending up where he shouldn’t be.

It was quite comforting really, that they still had that going for them.

The Great Hall was a truly nostalgic view, and upsetting. There was little Hermione, sitting next to little Neville, both of them looking quite anxious.

Percy—Percy! When was the last time he’d thought about Percy?—a few seats down also seemed quite worried, though the twins were busy whispering amongst themselves and didn’t seem to be overly bothered about their missing younger brother.

God, poor Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. That was all of their kids here, except Ron and maybe Bill and Charlie.

What was the fucking point, if Harry hadn’t managed to save any of them?

They all looked so young, even Percy, who’d always seemed a bit old and unapproachable to him.

Oliver Wood had the same odd dissonance about him—much younger than Harry, when he should have been older.

Harry was dismayed to see how many people were dead—it seemed like basically everyone he knew. Angelina was there, and Katie and Alicia and Lee Jordan. Dean and Seamus sitting next to each other as always. What the hell had happened after he died for everyone to be here already? Had Voldemort blown up the whole school or something?

Crabbe, of course, had died just that morning, and there he was, in all his twelve-year-old-bully glory. But Goyle was there too, and Draco, and his whole gang—Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini and the rest—all of them chubby-cheeked and glowing with all the bright-eyed malicious intent that could fit in their tiny little bodies.

I saved them, thought Harry, with a growing sense of rage and desolation. I saved them! They were supposed to be safe. They were supposed to be alive.

Not that Harry liked Goyle or Zabini, or even Draco, really, but—they deserved better than whatever pointless deaths they’d suffered. He’d felt, at the end, that he could even quite sympathize with Draco. He certainly much preferred Draco Malfoy as his rival and nemesis than fucking Tom Riddle, even if Draco could be a bit of a pathetic and poncy git sometimes. Most of the time.

All of the time.

Cedric was alive too, at the Hufflepuff table. Harry could hardly bear to look at him. Farther down sat Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott, Zacharias Smith and Justin Finch-Fletchley.

Cho was at the Ravenclaw table, next to Marietta Edgecombe, like they’d never had that huge falling out after Marietta betrayed them. He was pretty sure the dark-haired boy on her other side was Michael Corner, who he only recognized because Cho had dated him after she and Harry broke up, and Ginny had been seeing him before she and Harry got together.

Thinking about it, that was a bit weird, wasn’t it—that both of Harry’s serious girlfriends had dated this same other guy who was not Harry? And now they were all dead before any of them even came close to hitting twenty.

It was very depressing.

The staff table was full too. Flitwick was there, and Professor Sprout. Madame Hooch.  Trelawney, shawls and bottle-thick glasses and all. Professor Sinistra. A few others Harry either didn’t recognize or didn’t remember their names. McGonnagall’s seat was empty only because she stood before them all, next to the sorting hat, scroll of names in hand.

And of course, front and center of the head table, there was Dumbledore. Purple-robed and resplendent. Less weary and worn down than in Harry’s memory—even his very recent memory of meeting the deceased headmaster just before getting on the train. Both hands hale and whole. His twinkling gaze skimmed over Harry with no sense of recognition.

This was a bloody weird afterlife.

Snape, oddly enough, wasn’t there, even though Harry had seen him die a scant few hours ago.

Hagrid, at least, was also absent. Harry was struck with a sudden unbearable stab of guilt that Hagrid had been in that clearing, that Hagrid must have been the first of his friends to see his dead corpse.

Fucking Lockheart was present, though. Which didn’t make any sense. Surely he was still at St. Mungo’s, obliviated but alive?

If it weren’t for the fact that he could quite clearly be seen by and interact with people, Harry would think he was in someone’s memory—probably Luna’s—rather than an afterlife. There were too many dead to contemplate otherwise, too many children and teachers, too many friends and acquaintances and even enemies who’d been alive and determined to stay that way this morning and now were all here, with Harry, past the place where the train took the dead.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when Professor McGonnagall’s crisp voice cut through the air with yet another name he knew: “Creevy, Colin.”

Colin was dead. Dead, and tiny and vibrating with excitement once again, camera in hand. How brutally unfair. How utterly horrible.

He’d survived the basilisk and Umbridge and the Carrows and now he was another dead child who didn’t know it.

How pointless his stupid bloody sacrifice had been, if kids like Colin couldn’t grow up.

At some point, a weird, giggly and whispery rush interrupted the typical pattern of hush-sort-cheer.

“Luna,” Ginny hissed beside him, pushing at his shoulder. “That’s you.”

“Hm?” asked Harry.

“You have to go up to be sorted now.”

Harry blinked at her. He’d quite forgotten again that he was Luna and was supposedly a first year waiting to be sorted. It all seemed so pointless now, as the reality of so many deaths began to sink in.

Still, he wasn’t sure what else to do, so he dutifully approached the stool and allowed the ratty old sorting hat to be dropped over his eyes to the general laughing amusement of the whole assembled student body.

“Well, well, well,” came the rough, familiar voice of the hat in his head. “What have we here?”

Hello, Harry thought at it. Do hats get afterlives, then? Do you know what’s going on?

There was a very long silence in response. Harry got the impression that the Hat was surprised, though he wasn’t quite sure how he knew that.

“…Harry Potter,” said the Hat, finally. “This is quite unusual. I could have sworn I already sorted you just last year, but it’s been quite a bit longer than that for you, hasn’t it?”

Yeah, thought Harry. No shit. Also I’ve died since then, so this all feels a bit farcical and pointless.

“Ha! You’ve got a tongue on you, haven’t you? Much bolder than my usual first years. Of course, but then I suppose you aren’t a first year, are you?”

Obviously not, thought Harry. It is reassuring you can tell I’m not Luna, though.

“Now, I wouldn’t go quite that far.  Hmm, yes. Harry Potter, you may be, but Luna Lovegood, you are also.”

No offense, thought Harry, in a way that made it clear he was full of offense, but that doesn’t make any sense.

“Something need not make sense for it to be true. You know this already, don’t pretend otherwise. Now! For the Sorting—”

Fuck the Sorting! Harry thought at it, suddenly furious, Do you know what the hell is going on?

“Hmph. Not as such, no. I can see in your head, and see the last six years as they have most certainly existed for you. However, I can tell you most certainly that those events have not happened here—not yet, at least. Perhaps they will; perhaps they won’t. I can tell you that this is not the afterlife, Harry Potter, or if it is, then the afterlife for you is an entire world very similar to your own, except six years offset in time.”

This is…time travel, you mean? I’m actually back in my second year?

“It does seem like that’s the case. Either that, or perhaps you’re in a parallel timeline to the one you came from.”

But time travel doesn’t work like that, he thought. You can’t actually change things. Nothing’s different in the end.

“Have you changed anything yet, Harry Potter?”

Of course I have, he thought furiously. There’s no way I was Luna bloody Lovegood the first time around.

“How do you know that?”

Well because…because I wasn’t!

“Stellar reasoning, truly. Ravenclaw is missing a star pupil.”

Exactly, thought Harry. Luna was in Ravenclaw, and she was a great Ravenclaw. I’m…definitely not.

“Hmm…perhaps. I have never personally met your Luna Lovegood, only glimpsed her through your memories, and so could not tell you the intimacies and reasons of her Sorting.”

Do you know where she is? Harry asked. If she’s not here, if I’ve taken over her body somehow…where is the actual Luna?

“That, I could not say. Perhaps you swapped places. Perhaps she was you all along. Perhaps she is somewhere else. Perhaps she is simply gone. All I can say for certain is that yours is the only soul inhabiting this body, whether you are Luna Lovegood or Harry Potter or someone else entirely.”

How would you know?! Harry thought, furious. I had Tom Bloody Riddle’s fucking horcrux, his fucking soul, in me all throughout my time at Hogwarts, and you never suspected a damn thing! No one did, except Dumbledore, and he—

His thoughts broke into incoherent anger and pain and betrayal.

“I did miss it the first time around, I suppose,” the Hat groused, “but now that I know what to look for, that there could exist something I’m looking for…mmm, yes. I am quite certain. There are no other soul fragments within this body except your own.”

Fine, thought Harry. I suppose I have no way to know if you’re telling the truth anyway, so I’ll drop it for now.

“Your magnanimity knows no bounds, truly. This humble hat is humbled.”

Harry rolled his eyes. You’re hardly humble, you obnoxious git of a hat.

“And you’re rude and delinquent. Yes, yes, that much is plain and consistent.”

Harry snorted. The hat truly was an obnoxious git, but he was quite fond of it. This really is…real? he asked. Time travel or an alternate universe or what have you? Not the afterlife?

“Yes, I do believe so.”

Great. Just…fucking great.

On the one hand, it truly was great that not everyone was dead. And it fit with all the things that hadn’t made sense since he woke up on the train.

On the other hand, what the hell was he supposed to do now? He’d been dead! He’d been dead, and he’d been ready for it, and ready for what came next, and now he was freaking alive again, and tiny, and surrounded by ghosts who weren’t actually ghosts, and also he was Luna bloody Lovegood!

This was…purgatory, he was pretty sure now. Or Hell. He wished he’d never gotten on that stupid fucking train.

“Despite your unenthusiasm for this world, Mr. Potter, I don’t believe that you will be able to go back to your time. It was a one-way ticket here, as it were.”

I don’t want to go back, thought Harry, and it was true. If he’d wanted to go back, he would have gone back at the bloody train station. He wouldn’t have gotten on the train at that King’s Cross void.

But he’d gotten on the train, because he thought it went to where you go when you’re dead, and he was past ready to go there. To rest. To be with his family.

He’d finished saving the world. He was supposed to be done.

He was laughing, he realized distantly. Laughing and crying and rocking on the stool, in front of the whole school, which was, supposedly, real and full of real people. Looking for all the world like a madman.

Or, madwoman, he supposed, since he was Luna now. Madgirl?

Well, at least he had plenty of experience with people thinking he was off his rocker, and it wasn’t like Loony Lovegood had a stellar reputation to ruin.

I don’t want to do this, he thought.

“Tough,” said the Hat. “You have to do something. I suppose you could take me off and refuse to be Sorted, but you’d still be here, in this world, and you’ll have to deal with that sometime.”

I was supposed to be done, he thought, with more than a hint of a whine in his head. He was so tired. It was supposed to be over. It should have been over.

“You’re done with all that back there,” said the Hat. “Now you’ve got new things to do. You could make things better, even, for the versions of us still here. From what I could see of your past, we could use some more inter-house solidarity in the coming years. Hogwarts seemed to be a fractured, failing mess by the time you were done with it.”

You can’t actually change the past, Harry thought at the stupid Hat. Hermione explained it to me, after Cedric. Something to do with physics and relativity and all that. You can only make the timeline go how it already went.

The way he understood it, if you tried to make something that had already definitively happened unhappen—or, alternatively, attempted to happen along something that had gone unhappened—when you were in the past, you simply popped out of existence.  Or the entire changed timeline popped out of existence? Something like that.

If you were very, very lucky, and it was a very, very small thing you’d tried to change, you just returned to the present where you’d started from. But otherwise you just disappeared from all the planes of magic and reality, and even the Unspeakables at the Ministry didn’t know if that meant you were dead, or if you’d be entirely erased from existence.

She’d explained it to him again after Sirius. After that, he’d stopped asking.

“And under the normal rules of magic, you’d be right,” said the Hat. “But I have a feeling this is something different. An alternate universe, perhaps, or a branching timeline. There’s an easy way to find out, though.”

Oh? thought Harry.

“Yes. To your knowledge, you haven’t yet actually tried to unhappen a happening or happen an unhappened thing. For all you know, Hermione and Ginny did have a strange conversation on the train with your Luna Lovegood during your second year, and McGonnagall found her riding the carriages in instead of a boat.”

Fair enough, thought Harry. He hadn’t been there until the end of the feast, last time. Those things could have happened, and he’d have no idea.

“So,” said the Hat, “we change things. If you’re right, either this entire reality will disappear, or you’ll pop out of existence and things will go on how they did for you before. Perhaps your Miss Lovegood’s consciousness will return to the body you are currently inhabiting. I don’t know. It won’t matter to you, anyway—you’ll be gone. But if I’m right, you’ll still exist and we’ll still exist, and you’ll know that changes can be made, and you can go ahead and start making them, with the knowledge that they’ll stick and this will be a separate timeline from the one you’ve lived through.”

Huh. Harry thought about it. This kind of logic puzzle thing really wasn’t his strong suit, but he thought what the Hat was saying made sense. At least this way he’d know what was going on. Sort of.

And he wouldn’t be stuck trying to impersonate Luna Lovegood for all eternity, which he was pretty sure he couldn’t do anyway.

And if he could change the past…present…

He peeked out from under the broad brim of the Hat, at the sea of students before him. Students he’d thought were all dead just moments ago. Who deserved better.

Cedric, and Colin, and Ginny, and even Draco Fucking Malfoy.

Sirius.

Dobby.

Dumbledore.

Yeah, all right then, thought Harry. Worst came to worse, he’d be dead or erased from existence. Which honestly was the ideal scenario at this point. Any ideas as to what kind of change I can do to be absolutely certain this is different from my timeline?

“Well,” said the Hat, “you’re certainly not a Ravenclaw.”

Yeah, I know that, thought Harry, brimming with impatience now that they’d settled on a plan of action.

The Hat’s silence felt pointed this time.

…What? asked Harry.

“You,” the Hat repeated itself, “are certainly not a Ravenclaw.”

“Oh!” said Harry, feeling rather stupid. “And Lu—”

“Just so you know,” said the Hat, “you’ve started speaking out loud.”

Harry closed his mouth, feeling even stupider. Oops, he thought at the Hat. But I think I get it. Luna was in Ravenclaw, so if she—if I—get sorted somewhere else, then we know things are changed, and that it doesn’t cause reality to implode or whatever to make changes.

“Precisely. So! Shall we finally, finally get on with the Sorting that is my entire point of existence?”

Harry rolled his eyes. Ponce, he thought fondly. So, Gryffindor then?

“Now let’s not be hasty here. You’ve certainly proven that you could thrive in Gryffindor, but is that actually where you belong? Especially if you’re changing things, it seems unwise to take the same path again.”

Yeah, thought Harry, but it would be Luna-me in Gryffindor, not me-me. Well, little me-me would be there too, I guess, but that’s kind of besides the point…

“Think, child! If you go to Gryffindor again, you’ll be surrounded by the same people as before, the same opportunities. It will be harder for you to make meaningful changes to the timeline.”

Harry didn’t actually think that was true, but he thought about his train car ride with Ginny and Hermione, and he thought about Ron, and himself, and how much he ached to be with his friends. But these tiny little children with his friends’ faces were not, actually, his friends. They weren’t the same people that he knew and loved; if he were to change things, they couldn’t ever even become them.

And that sounded like torture, being so close and yet so far away from the people he loved. So, not Gryffindor, then.

“No, not Gryffindor,” the Hat agreed, “and not Ravenclaw. Two left to choose between—I think you know what I’ll say.”

I could be a very good Hufflepuff! Harry protested. You don’t know.

“Oh, you could,” the Hat agreed, much more easily than he thought it would. “You could indeed. Loyalty and hard work will be needed in spades for this, and you’ve more than proven yourself there. Indeed, if you were more yourself—that is, yourself as you remember being—I might even recommend it! A good house for making quiet, steady change, behind the scenes as it were. A good house for fading into the background and being underestimated. And Harry Potter could certainly have used that. But we are not sorting Harry Potter today, are we? No, we’re sorting Luna Lovegood. Your insides might be the same, but when it comes down to it, what you can do with your house also depends on how others see you.”

And if Loony Lovegood goes into Hufflepuff, no one would ever take her seriously, Harry finished the train of thought. Especially since I’m definitely going to be doing and saying all sorts of nonsensical things. Pretty sure it’s inevitable, what with the future and the dying and the trauma and the being surrounded by people who I know, but who don’t know me and also might be dead.

“And so you have it,” the Hat agreed. “Better be—”

Wait! You’re sure this isn’t because I’ve got some leftover Tom residue on my soul?

“Quite certain.”

Eurgh. He couldn’t believe he was even contemplating of doing this of his own free will.

Ah, well—hadn’t he just been thinking that Draco and his gang deserved better than they got? At least being Luna meant that he wouldn’t have to share a dorm with Malfoy or any of his minions.

“No more objections, I trust? We’ve been here quite some time.”

Yeah, all right then, he thought. Do your worst.

“Finally! This one’s a...SLYTHERIN!”

Chapter Text

Dear Diary,

Hello.

Hello? Who is this?

My name is Tom.

Is this a prank? Very funny, F+G. Get out of my diary! It’s private.

I’m not a prank. Who are F+G?

Some of my stupid older brothers, Fred and George.

And they would play a prank using your diary? That’s very mean.

It is! They’re always playing pranks on people, and really usually it’s funny but they can be SO mean and annoying and you always have to be on your guard and they won’t let me join them because I’m “too itty bitty like a baby” even though I’m ELEVEN and at Hogwarts now just like them and it’s the WORST.

That sounds very unfair. I’m sorry you have to put up with them. You’re a Hogwarts student?

Yes. It’s actually my first day today. I just got sorted and we’re in the dorms now.

Congratulations. That’s a very big deal. What House did you end up in?

Gryffindor.

You must be very brave. What’s your name?

Oh, sorry! I’m Ginny. Ginny Weasley.

It’s nice to meet you, Ginny Weasley. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you find my diary?

It was in my schoolbooks—we had to get them secondhand, and I think someone must have accidentally left it inside one of the textbooks, and it’s a very handsome and grown-up looking book, so I thought I’d start keeping a diary. I didn’t know it was yours though. I’m very sorry if I’m intruding—I can find a different book to write in if this is private.

Not at all! It’s very nice to talk to someone. I made this diary when I was at Hogwarts to help me sort through my thoughts, but I think it’s been a very long time since anyone wrote in it. It’s been very lonely with no one to talk to.

I’m sorry. That sounds horrible. I’d love to keep talking to you if that’s alright? You’re very nice. We could be friends.

Yes. Let’s be friends, Ginny Weasley.

Yay! I’m so glad, Tom Riddle. You’re my first new friend at Hogwarts! I know my brothers, obviously, and their friends, but that doesn’t really count. I really want to be friends with Harry Potter, because he’s so amazing and brave and kind and famous and he defeated He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named when he was just a baby, and his eyes are really nice and green, and it should be easy because he’s my brother Ron’s friend, but I always freeze up and start stammering whenever he looks at me, and it’s so embarrassing! 

He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?

Oh, he was this really terrible dark lord who killed a lot of people. He killed my uncles, and tried to do a lot of other terrible stuff. And he tried to kill Harry, too, when he was a baby, but Harry somehow rebounded the killing curse and saved the whole wizarding world! It’s weird you haven’t heard of him though.

Maybe he was after my time? Do you know what his actual name was?

Yeah, but you’re not supposed to say it. It’s kind of scary.

You’re a Gryffindor, right? Be brave.
 
Um, okay. It was Voldemort. Lord Voldemort.

Thanks for telling me, Ginny. That was really brave. I haven’t heard of him. It was the 1930s when I was created. Was he after that? What year is it now?

Wow, yeah, you’re really old! Sorry that was rude. I don’t really know all the history stuff. I think he started coming to power in the 50s sometime? And then the war was in the…70s, maybe? It ended in 1981, anyway, which was when Harry Potter defeated him. Except then maybe he sort of came back last year and Harry defeated him again? I’m not really sure what happened. There’s a lot of rumors and whispers and stuff, but Mum said not to push Ron and Harry about what actually happened. Oh, and it’s 1992 now. 

That sounds fascinating. I would love to learn more, if you would tell me.

Sure! If I can ever screw up the courage to actually talk to Harry, I’ll let you know.

I’m sure you can. You seem like a very brave girl to me, Ginny.

Thanks. I hope so. I want to be.

I think you are.

Thanks, Tom. It’s really nice to have someone to talk to about stuff.

Of course. You said you don’t really have any friends of your own yet?

Not really. So far I haven’t really clicked with any of the girls in my dorm. There’s Hermione—she’s in the year above me—but she’s also more Ron’s friend than mine, and she’s always hanging out with Harry and then I freeze up and can’t talk at all. And then there’s my other brothers’ friends, but they’re all so much older than me and they think I’m annoying.

That’s really frustrating to be looked down on like that. I think you’re very mature. Your brothers are obviously idiots if they can’t see that. 

They’re not so bad, I guess, but...it’s just hard, sometimes, being the Girl and the Baby. Like, they won’t let me play Quidditch with them, even though I’m really good! Better than Ron and Percy, even, and Percy’s a sixth year! It’s like they think I’m not just as much of a person as they are.

That’s awful. They don’t deserve you if they treat you like that.

Thanks, Tom. No one’s really said that before except maybe Luna. 

Who’s Luna?

She’s my neighbor, and we’re in the same year. She’s really nice, but she’s bit odd and spacy. Also she got sorted into Slytherin so I’m not really sure if we’ll still be friends anymore. 

Why not?

Well, Slytherins are all supposed to be evil, aren’t they? What if she starts being evil? I didn’t think she could be, but then I thought she’d be sorted into Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, not Slytherin. What if I don’t actually know her all that well? 

That’s a good point. Maybe you should be a bit wary around her?

Yeah, I guess. Sorry for going on and on about me. You said you were a student? What House were you in?

I was in Ravenclaw. 

That makes sense—you must have been really smart to charm a diary like this!

Thank you, Ginny. It was a very tricky bit of magic. It took me many years to make—I was in fifth year when I finally figured it out, so the me in the diary has all my memories up until fifth year. I could help you with schoolwork and navigating the school if you want? It could be a secret, just between us.

That would be really nice, Tom. Thank you!

Of course. We’re friends, aren’t we?

Yes, friends!

Wonderful. I trust you to keep me safe and secret. As far as the other girls in your year, and this Luna and Harry Potter, sometimes making friends is hard. It’s okay if you’re not really close to anyone yet, or if old friendships start falling apart because you’re on different paths now. I don’t know your Luna, but I found that it was hard to keep up friendships across houses, especially with Slytherins…they would always be looking out for themselves first, which makes it hard to trust them as true friends, you know?

Yeah, I guess. Maybe.

Just something to watch out for. Tell me more about this Harry Potter?

Okay! Actually, he and Ron were late to the feast today because they missed the train somehow, and then they stole dad’s car to fly to school! 

Really?

Yeah, they….

Chapter Text

“Miss Lovegood,” said Severus Snape, as his usual imbecilic lot of first year Slytherin and Hufflepuffs slinked out. “A word.”

The tiny blonde child cocked her head and stopped her progress out the door. Her green-and-silver trimmed robes hung crookedly off her shoulders. Her wand was stuck haphazardly in her hair. There were ludicrous facsimiles of murtlap tentacles hanging from her ears—or, now that he was looking closer, those might actually be pickled murtlap tentacles tied to a hook. Her shoes were missing their laces, and had instead been fastened around her ankles with several layers of muggle duct tape. She looked, in a word, a disgrace.

He did his best to convey his disdain for the every detail of her existence           with a truly sordid once-over of the caliber that often had his seventeen-year-old NEWT students quivering in shame.

Miss Lovegood, alas, did not quail even a little bit. Instead she just blinked those damnably guileless blue eyes up at him.

“You have a free period now, Miss Lovegood,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, “do I?”

“You do,” he snapped. “That was not a question, and I would thank you to cease your useless inanities and flights of fancy in the times when I am forced to be subjected to your presence.”

She furrowed her brow. It was not quite a frown. “You’re really very terrible at talking to children, Professor,” she said.

“It is not my job to coddle the infantile sensibilities and puerile vocabularies of children.”

“I mean, it kind of is. You are a teacher of children. Professor.”

He clucked his tongue in lieu of taking points. The words were right there—five points from Hufflepuff, or Ravenclaw, or Gryffindor, for she should surely be one of them with her lackadaisical whimsy, or her air-headed obliviousness to the realities of the world, or her uncaring recklessness in every word she spoke—but no, this little…creature was supposedly a snake.

He wondered, not for the first time, if the Sorting Hat had gone insane.

“You will sit down, shut up, and listen, Miss Lovegood, for your own good if nothing else. Show some of that Slytherin sense of self-preservation that you supposedly have.”

She gave him a wry look much too old for that wide-eyed face, and sat. He got the distinct impression that she was only humoring him. It did not endear her to him.

“You are,” he admitted, “unfortunately, a Slytherin. That means that your bearing and conduct within this school reflects upon Slytherin house, and, more unfortunately, upon me. It also means that it is my responsibility to rectify any egregious lapses in behaviour on your part. So. Here we are.”

She looked around the room, swinging her legs. They were small enough that they did not reach the floor. “Here we are,” she echoed.

She seemed perfectly content to leave it at that.

Severus must be losing his touch. At this point, even most of his snakes would be trembling before him.

“It has come to my attention,” he ground out, “as head of your House, that there are several issues we need to address. First, you have reportedly been…somewhat lax, shall we say, on your homework assignments and class attendance.”

She continued to sit and swing her legs, and did not respond at all.

“Well?” He demanded.

She had the gall to look confused. “Was there a question in there, professor? Only I was trying not to subject you to any ‘useless inanities,’ and you didn’t actually ask anything.”

“This is not a game, child.”

“Are you sure?” She asked. “Because I think I’m winning.”

Severus bit back his temper with an extreme act of will that only a master occlumens such as himself could possibly muster. “Miss Lovegood, as much evidence as I have before me to the contrary, you are not an idiot.”

She gasped. “I suppose I did see a pennascrofa I saw the other day…”

“What.”

“It’s a type of boar with wings.”

“I am aware of basic Latin etymology,” he snapped. “‘Penna’ for wings or feathers, and ‘scrofa’ meaning sow. Simply mashing the two together, however, does not bring into being a creature that does not exist. And additionally has no bearing to the conversation at hand.”

Lovegood shrugged, unbothered. “It’s just that, well, you complimented me, and—you know the saying, ‘when pigs fly’?”

Severus pursed his lips. It was, admittedly, a decent bit of wordplay. “A muggle saying.”

“Is it? Huh.”

“Regardless. You have not shown up to a single one of your Defense Against the Dark Arts or History of Magic classes. It is now October, Miss Lovegood. Those classes are mandatory.”

“Did Binns say that I haven’t shown up to any of his classes?”

Well, no. He hadn’t. That had only come to light quite recently, after a Ravenclaw classmate of hers had reported it to Filius. Severus was unsure whether the reporter’s motivation was jealousy, spite, a continuation of the bullying that seemed to be plaguing Miss Lovegood, or—least likely of all—genuine concern.

“Whether or not Professor Binns noted your absence is irrelevant.”

“If Binns hasn’t said anything, I don’t see why I should be in trouble. Maybe I was in class this whole time.”

He fixed her with an unimpressed look. “Regardless of who reported your absence, it was indeed reported, Miss Lovegood. You got caught. What was the final tenet of Slytherin house the prefects informed you of at the beginning of the year?”

She sighed. “Don’t get caught.”

“Mm.”

“Fine. I’ll go to class.”

“And Defense?”

She pouted. “I’ve gone to all the detentions I got for skipping. Why can’t I just keep doing that?”

Admittedly, she had. Nightly detentions, even, for the past month—served with Filch or Hagrid or even Severus himself. The first one had been with Lockhart himself, but the imbecile had refused to take her on for any subsequent detentions, despite being the one who assigned them in the first place. He also refused to say why he seemed…almost frightened of spending any time alone with the tiny eleven-year-old girl. What a spineless idiot.

That was the first hint Severus had that Miss Lovegood’s sorting was not entirely hogwash.

However, it was cutting into Severus’s extremely limited personal time, and so it had to stop.

He sighed. “Why are you so averse to attending Professor Lockhart’s classes?”

“Have you met him?”

Severus wasn’t entirely successful in smothering a snort. “However…odious you may find the man, his class is still mandatory.”

“His classes are useless rubbish,” said Lovegood, “and I would be better off failing the course and taking it again next year, when the professor is actually competent.”

“While I am sympathetic to the sentiment behind your motivations, Lockhart will be your teacher next year as well.”

“No, he’ll succumb to Tom’s curse just like everybody else, and next year’s professor will be fantastic.”

“…Did you say Tom’s curse?”

“Mm-hm,” confirmed Miss Lovegood. “The man who put a curse on the Defense position so that no one can hold it for more than a year, he was a failed teacher named Tom.”

Severus’s mind blanked. What—how—what.

“How do you know that, Miss Lovegood?” he rasped out.

She shrugged. “I see creatures that other people don’t. Sometimes they tell me things. Mainly the wrackspurts and the nargles. I know about Tom’s curse from a nasty wrackspurt that lives in a crown. It used to belong to him, you see. The wrackspurt, that is, not the crown.”

“….I see.”

“No, you don’t. But that’s okay. There are three particularly bad wrackspurts living in the castle right now, plus a rat that isn’t a rat, and they all used to belong to Tom, but you don’t have to worry: I have plans to get rid of all of them before they become too bad.”

“…Right. Tell me, Miss Lovegood, this ‘failed teacher named Tom,’ as you so put it”—and didn’t that epithet make him want to both howl with laughter and quiver with fear at the thought of the Dark Lord ever hearing it—“do you know who he is? Who he became?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “And I think you do too; he did give you a tattoo.” She tapped her forearm.

A chill went through him from the crown of his head all the way down to anchor itself in his gut.

“Then you know,” he said, “how dangerous it is to speak so…cavalierly of such a subject.”

“I know,” she said, “but I’m not scared of him. He’s kind of silly, isn’t he, dressing up in all those funny names, running away from Death like that could ever actually work? It won’t. He might come back if I don’t get to him first, but he can’t hide forever. He doesn’t even have the Cloak.”

Severus could hear the capital letters in her pronouncements. They called to mind a children’s tale, half-remembered. His mother’s rough whisper over paper. Death’s Three Gifts.

A soul-deep instinct, somewhere beneath his bones and magic, in a place he hadn’t even known existed, told him he would be a fool to dismiss her words. The only other time he’d felt something even approaching this shivering certainty was over a decade ago now, kneeling with his ear against a keyhole as Trelawney prophesied for perhaps the only time in her miserable life.

But that—that had had all the trappings of ancient mysticism. This was simply…a girl, casual as you please, too small for the chair she sat in, disheveled and swinging her legs.

“Are you a Seer, Miss Lovegood?” he asked.

She smiled. “Not exactly.”

He ran through her seemingly nonsensical pronouncements in his head. “‘If you don’t to him first’—are you planning on killing the Dark Lord, Miss Lovegood?”

“Hmm. Is it killing, if he’s not really alive? But, if that’s how you want to put it, then yes, sure, I’ll kill him.”

“A rather ambitious goal.”

“I am a Slytherin.”

“It is also a dangerous goal, to share with me of all people.”

“Not really. Tommy won’t take me seriously, even if you tell him about me. Neither will anyone else. Even Dumbledore, probably. I’m ‘Loony Lovegood,’ professor. I’m just a crazy little girl.”

“…And how much of ‘Little Loony Lovegood’ is an act?”

She tilted her head. “Less than you’d think, but probably more than it used to be.”

“Whatever it is, you need to tone it down.”

“No, thank you.”

“Surely you can see that your…odd nature and manner of dress and speech are winning you no friends?”

“If they won’t be friends with me as I am, then they’re not worth being friends with in the first place.”

“It is also causing you to be the subject of much mockery and ridicule.”

For the first time in their conversation, Miss Lovegood actually looked upset. “Surely it’s the bullies’ fault for bullying me, and not mine for being bullied? I would have thought that you of all people would know that. Professor.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Lovegood?”

“Just that I would think you’d understand. But then again you are quite a bad bully yourself, now.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re excused, professor. Actually, no, you’re not. You’re really horrible to all the students who aren’t Slytherins. You demean them, and you mock them, and you make their grades worse than they should be, and you even force them to test potions on their pets! That’s just cruel. We’re kids, and you’re a teacher. And I get that you were bullied yourself, but so was I, and you don’t see me going around being mean to everybody!”

Severus felt the last vestiges of his temper snapping as the little shrimp before him got louder and louder in her accusatory whining. “You dare,” he hissed.

“Yeah, I do! Someone has to.”

“I am a professor, and you will treat me with respect!”

She leapt to her feet, fists clenched. “I will treat you with just as much respect as you deserve! Which, for the record, is none!”

Her tiny body was trembling with rage, and for a second, Severus swore he could see in her another young girl, this one with red hair and green eyes, brimming with righteous fury at every injustice in the world.

Lily.

“Detention, Lovegood, for a month!”

“Yeah, that really shows me, doesn’t it. Tell me again how you’re not a bully?”

“Two months, and be glad it’s not suspension. You are on thin ice, Miss Lovegood; I’d advise you to tread carefully.”

Slowly, the girl nodded, and drew her rage back into herself.

Severus let out a trembling breath, but it turned out he had let himself relax too soon.

“She would be ashamed,” said Lovegood, “and horrified and furious at the way you treat her son.”

Severus saw white. “Get out,” he ordered. “Now!”

Lovegood left, but it didn’t feel like a victory.

He realized, about ten minutes later, that he hadn’t addressed even a fraction of the concerns he’d meant to bring up.

At least he would have plenty of time to make her listen, in the two bloody months of nightly detentions he’d just assigned her.

Two bloody months of being trapped in the same room as that child. What Hell had he made for himself? Perhaps he could outsource most of the detentions?

Oh no.

No.

This was the true Hell.

Severus Snape found himself, horrifically, sympathizing with Gilderoy Lockhart.