Chapter Text

Everything had changed after that fated battle. Nobody was quite the same as before: Everyone had lost someone dear to them in the fight. So had I. Harry. He had almost made it though alive. After he had killed Voldemort, a student, who had hidden amongst the crowd of Hogwarts students, aligned to the dark side, shot a killing curse at him. The traitor was soon after found by the DMLE and sentenced to life in Azkaban.

As the years passed, everyone moved on. He was still some kind of hero, but he quickly faded to being an idol of the past, a person, whose death marked the end of the violent battle against this century’s dark lord.

Everyone remembered the boy who lived, nobody remembered Harry. Ginny got married to Dean two years later, all of his classmates in Hogwarts told stories of his battles, but stopped thinking of him as a person, but rather an idealised concept of a distant past. All of them… Except for me. I never was the same after his death. Not many days passed without me spending a thought on how unjustified his death was and I visited his grave in the cemetery of Godric’s Hollow at least once every month. I eventually broke up with Ron, because he cheated on me with Lavender; I really hate this guy!

After I had finished Hogwarts and retrieved my parents, I went to Cambridge, in order to study theoretical physics, in hopes of finding a reason for magic (I eventually managed to integrate magic into physics by proofing that the energy used to for example light up your wand came from the excess antimatter left from the big bang) and afterwards got accepted to work as an unspeakable, a position, that allowed me to get access to a lot of research papers going into all kinds of crazy magic.

There, I got allowed to research something, that I had wondered about since my third year at Hogwarts: time travel. It had to be possible to travel back in time, before I even started school and fix everything, that had been broken the last time around.

As it turns out: traveling back in time for more than approximately 21 hours is harder than it sounds. And it doesn’t even sound easy! Just putting myself back in time would not work, because then it would break all laws of causality, since, if Voldemort never came to his eventual powers, my younger self would have no reason to travel back in time! I hate the laws of causality! They make everything more difficult.
My final solution basically consisted of three different major rituals and a couple minor ones. The first major ritual basically copied our universes timeline to the universe that existed for the least amount of time. Finding such a universe actually isn’t that difficult, because a new universe is created, every time that a quantum event happens in any universe.

The second ritual was way more complex to create. On the surface, it sounds pretty simple: Just put my memories into the other universes me’s head! Some of the problems I encountered were: What is the universe, I copied everything into? At which time do I want to insert the memories? How do I even find the other universes me?

After I got all of that arithmancy sorted, I started work on the third major ritual. It was designed to get all of the memories out of Harry and store them. When I would touch him in the new universe, all of those memories would be reinserted into his mind.
Right when I had all of the rituals planned out and was already preparing some of the more complex ingredients, hell brake loose!

Some german wizard had come to Britain in order to finish Voldemort’s task. It turned out, he had found all of the pureblood supporters and reinserted the ideas, that Riddle gave them, once more into their brain. In our next try, we would have to work hard to be sure that such an issue would not arise.

Given, that he had assembled a sizable army, all of the DOM was put to researching spells and weapons to defeat this new dark lord. Thus, I missed my opportunity to perform the rituals and had to wait a whole thirteen years.

These years were however not spend doing nothing! I researched a way to allow me to bring items with me to this new timeline and spend the last decade in this timeline, refining a plan for what to do different in the next try. I also created a few spells that would hopefully come in useful next time, like a way stronger version of the protego that can even resist one AK and a Horcrux tracker (not that I hoped that we would need the latter, but better save than sorry).

Then, in the year 2042, I said goodbye to my parents and colleagues. Needless to say my parents weren’t happy to loose me, but realized that their other selfs would prefer not to have one and a half years worth of memories missing and thought of all the other people whose lives had turned sad after they had lost someone they loved. In the end, they finally agreed to let me go, but not without making me promise to try and find a way to contact them after everything was done. (To this date, I don’t think that they know, what “being in two different universes” means in regards to sending a letter).

On the first of July, I gathered all of the ingredients, performed all of the rituals in a forest clearing, near my home town. I very much hoped, that no muggles in the new village saw the flash of light as I went, but, even if they did, it would not be a problem for me, since I had by then left this timeline altogether. I wished, that I would make the journey unscathed.

Chapter Text

I could not believe what had happened! One moment, I had defeated the worst dark lord of our time and the next second, I felt a brief moment of slight pain, after which I saw my body falling limb to the ground. At the same time, my vision was floating upwards, towards the ceiling of the great hall. I realized that, with each passing moment, I could feel less and less of my body. As I looked down for the final time, I saw, that the elder wand I had caught flying through the air after Voldemort's death and my invisibility cloak were fading into nonexistence. Somewhere in the forest, a ring with a too large stone fused into the metal was probably disappearing as well.

Only a few seconds later, I found myself in a seemingly infinite queue of all sorts of beings. There were, of course, humans like me but also creatures that looked slightly like jellyfish but were shimmering in all kinds of colours, others, that consisted just of a two meter hight shell with way too many black slimy legs sticking out underneath and some beings, that could vaguely be categorised as giant lobsters, but that description really doesn’t do them justice. The path, that everyone was waiting on, was transparent like glass with the two edges glowing slightly and wound itself in big loops, twists and turns through some version of outer space. The difference to ordinary space was, that everything was way smaller (with galaxies being only a few hundred feet in diameter) and way tighter together.
Since the queue seemed to be endless, I thought that it would be convenient to have some sort of distraction while waiting. Just as I finished the thought, I noticed a book materializing in my hand. Opening it and skimming through the first couple of pages, I noticed that it was about a boy who was left alone in a place for pain and despair by someone, who really should not have meddled with the boy’s live. Deciding that it would be worth a try and, given that I had nothing else to do for the next time, I started reading it completely.

After what felt like an eternity, I noticed some arch, that was shaped like an ellipse, going around the whole path two turns ahead of me, with the area in the middle covered by something that looked like a soap bubble, only that it seemed sturdier and completely unfazed by people (for a very loose definition of people) walking straight through it. The strangest thing about that gate was that once someone walked into the bubble, they never seemed to exit at the other site, as indicated by the path being completely empty from this point on forward.

After stepping through this portal as well, he found himself in an infinite hallway with a person with a clipboard eying him as though she had already once seen him, but could not quite place when and where.
“Hello! You must be”, she said before looking at her clipboard ”Harry Potter. These are the offices of… I know you already! Ohh. Stefanos is not going to be happy at you dying already!”
She turned around and signed me to follow her as she started walking down the corridor, ignoring all of the doors leading off to rooms on either side that looked like they belonged to some office building and not to what was apparently the workplace of death. After a short walk, we finally stopped walking at a door labelled “Stefanos Tothius” which the woman promptly opened. Pointing towards the open door, she said “Here you go!” , turned on her heels and went back to the direction we came from.

Not wanting to be rude, I knocked on the side of the door to get the attention of the person inside. After he looked up and allowed me to come in, he could not contain his groan. “Okay, Harry. We need to stop you from always dying too early!”
Confused by what the man had said, I demanded for clarification: “What do you mean? I noticed, that I have died but what do you mean by ‘always’?”
“I mean”, my Reaper explained “that you have already died four times. Once when you were set on that doorstep in the freezing cold covered only by a thin layer of cloth, once by being fried to a crisp in that bloody tournament, once when you were, again, attacked out of the blue by Malfoy and finally when you drank the poisoned butterbeer in Slughorn’s office. Now I get to add ‘almost achieving his destiny but getting cursed in the back at the last possible moment’ to my list!”

“Hey!”, I exclaimed: “I wasn’t at fault for any of those deaths!" After a thought, I added: "Now that I think about it: Every one of those deaths was caused by Dumbledore or could have been prevented by him.

”Exactly! The bearded bloviator was the bad guy all along! Now let us see, what we can do to make you not die the next time.”
I thought about it for a minute then said: “If only there was a way for me to keep my memories. Now, I know a bunch of information that I never had access to. We could even make plans for what to do different the next time around!”

My Reaper thought about my idea for a few seconds, then responded: “Usually, I would be unable to do that. But you are a special case! Since you picked up all of the deathly hallows, I’m given a lot more options. I need you to succeed next time or I will get an inspection by the board.”

The man wrote something on a piece of paper, although it was written in a language that I didn’t know, and then, after folding it, he slipped the note in a slit in his table.
“I asked my boss, whether sending you back with your memories was something that we could do. He should respond any second now…”, my Reaper explained.
After about a minute of waiting, a new sheet of paper, written in that strange language, popped up from the aforementioned slit. As Stefanos explained, sending me back with my memories would be possible and Death had even allowed a few advisors during our planning session. Dead advisors, of course.
Just as he said the last word, the door opened and people started to enter the office. These were my parents, the four Hogwarts founders, and even Merlin himself! At the snip of the Reaper’s fingers, the office enlarged and a conference table appeared with nine comfortable looking chairs around it. I apparently was quite surprised at seeing all of those persons because the next thing that I remember is that I was being hugged by my mother with my dad hugging me right afterwards.

After we had hugged for quite some time, Salazar asked for us to get seated in order to begin the meeting. After we had sat down, Stefanos started speaking: “Alright. Today we are gathered to try and make this young gentleman here not die too early his next time around. Firstly I will tell you, what he did and then i'll tell you what he should have done.”

“At first, everything went (somewhat) perfect. He went to Hogwarts, got his education and, along the side, fought a couple of battles. Some mistakes he made were that he completely ignored all pureblood customs, which made classmates like Drako Malfoy hate him, and that he almost never asked for help.”

“Hey!”, I interjected: ”I were never taught those customs! I grew up in the muggle world. And whenever I did ask for help, my teachers never helped me.”
My Reaper responded: “I’m just saying that you could have done it differently. What exactly you could have done, we will tell you later. If we have the time, ” everyone except for me chuckled, “we will try to teach you how to act in various situations according to pureblood customs.”

Stefanos continued: “Anyway, on with what he did:
Instead of going to Hogwarts for his seventh year, he went on an adventure to try and find Voldemort’s Horcruxes, which he managed. At the end, he surprisingly succeeded and killed Voldemort in a battle that too many innocent persons unfortunatly died in. As some of you might know: There is a prophecy about him saying, that he would ‘vanquish’ Voldemort. Not ‘kill’ him! He didn't finish his task, because the dark lord's believes were still shared, as indicated by you being cursed by one of his followers, and thus Voldemort was not truly vanquished.”

After Rovena had me explained the subtle difference between these two words, Stefanos told us what I was supposed to do: “According to your destiny, what should have happened is, that you should have killed Voldemort a bit earlier, you should have made everyone realize that his believes were dumb, thus truly vanquishing him. In the process of doing so, you should have gotten engaged to your soulmate (some Granger girl, I think). Eventually you should have passed away peacefully in your sleep at a healthy 185 years, two years after she had passed away.
Now... Does anyone have any ideas on how to make all of this happen?”

After the brainstorming had been done (I think it took around two days but time is really not relevant in death’s territory), I said goodbye to the important figures of british magic history I had conspired with and hugged my parents for my hopefully final time in around 174 years.

Right afterwards, Stefanos made me sign a contract that (as far as I read) allowed me to keep my memories and sent me through a door, behind which only bright white light seemed to be there. I wholeheartedly wished for all of the plans we made to come to fruition.

Chapter Text

Hermione opened her eyes. The first thing she did was to look at her alarm clock. As she expected, the date showed that she had returned to a day before Harry’s eleventh birthday. She had planned to return to this date, because she now had a day to convince her parents let her to go to Diagon alley tomorrow, on Harry’s birthday because this day was the one date she knew where to find him before the start of the school year.

She got out from her bed, almost fell over once because she wasn’t quite used to her new (or was it old) body height and quickly got dressed before walking down the stairs into the kitchen, where her parents were already preparing breakfast. After being told by her parents that they were surprised to see her awake already, she helped them put the last plates and cutlery on the table, before sitting down. A couple minutes into their breakfast, Hermione asked: “Mum, Dad. Could we please go to Diagon alley? I already read though all of the books we bought last time. Please!”
Her mother responded by saying, that they could of course not go there today, because the Granger parents had to go to work today, but tomorrow would be fine since the parental Grangers always took a day off on Wednesdays. The family decided that Hermione would just have to contact Professor McGonagall so that Hermione would not be alone in the wizarding shopping street while her parents would just do their weekly grocery shopping in the middle of London instead of their local shopping center in Hampstead, where they lived.

Before leaving for work, Dan and Emma kissed their daughter and told her to remember that she should send her letter to the deputy headmistress.
About ten minutes later, Hermione had finished her letter to her future professor. It read:

Dear Professor McGonagall,
Given that I have already read though all of the literature we got during our last visit to Diagon alley, I would like you to accompany me to Diagon alley tomorrow. There, I would also like you to answer some questions I have asked myself about Gringotts that I could not answer with just the books.
Kind regards
Hermione Jean Granger

She folded her letter and put it in an envelope and then sent it to the Gringotts Royal Mail address with ten sickles as a fee and instructions for the goblins to owl-post it to the deputy headmistress as this was the only way for muggleborns who didn’t have a postal owl to send letters to the magical world.

When the Hogwarts professor received the letter, she thought about it quickly and, as she had nothing planned for tomorrow, sent a reply letter to Hermione, stating that she would escort Hermione to Diagon alley from a park near the Leaky Cauldron assuming she would be there around 10am.

Harry opened his eyes. At first he was confused as to where he was. After a second, all of the memories streamed back into his mind and he recognised where he was. Just as they had planned in the afterlife, he was in the Railview Hotel in Cokeworth. He remembered that Vernon had driven the ‘family’ there in an attempt to avoid Harry’s Hogwarts letters. Assuming that these events had played out the same in this timeline, he had arrived almost one day before he had been introduced to the wizarding world by Hagrid.

Just like last time, the hotel’s owner came over after they had finished breakfast. Like in his last life, she demanded to know, whether one of them was “Harry Potter” but this time, Harry didn’t even try to grab one of the hundred letters because he knew that Vernon would not allow him to get it.

After the day-long travel to the Hut-on-the-rock by car and the small boat provided by the old man, Harry once again could not sleep but this time around not because of his birthday the next day but rather because he was hoping that all of their plans for Harry’s introduction to the wizarding world would work out fine. The fact that he was forced to sleep an the floor with minimal cushioning was certainly not helping his attempts to sleep.

Harry counted the seconds on Dudley’s glow in the dark wristwatch and, just like last time, at precisely midnight he once again heard the knocks on the door.
Once again Hagrid entered the shed by hitting the door so hard that it fell out of it’s frame, squeezing through the doorway and fitting the door back into the frame. Once again Hagrid presented Harry with his (slightly squashed) birthday cake although Harry this time did not let Dudley get his hands on the present. After a night spent under Hagrid’s coat, Harry was awakened by an owl carrying the daily prophet tapping on the window in the morning. He had to play dumb and pretend that he didn’t know what to do with the bird so that he would not make the half-giant suspicious. Soon after, the two left for Diagon alley.

When they finally got there, Harry did plan to work on some of the tasks they had written on the list they had composed during their planning session. But before he even could get started on that, he was startled by something he didn’t expect.

Casually strolling down the wizarding shopping alley, there were Hermione, accompanied by professor McGonagall. Assuming that his Reaper had made them visit the alley to help him with his plans, Harry tried to steer his companion subtly in their direction. He did that because during their planning, Helga had thrown in the idea that Hermione should get back her memories as well. After a consultation with Stefanos’s boss, they found that the best way to make that happen was to return her memories of her past life to her the instant Harry and Hermione touched each other.

When Hagrid also noticed professor McGonagall, he shouted: “Hello, professor McGonagall! Fancy seeing you out here.” The addressed witch turned around replied “Well, I am taking Miss. Granger here on a shopping trip since she has already read all of the reading material we got her before! Now that I see you here, I’ve got something I quickly wanted to ask you…” Because the two started talking about some administrative business regarding the school, Harry somewhat nervously approached Hermione although he didn’t officially know her name yet. “Erm… Hello! I’m Harry.”, he introduced himself to which she replied “I’m Hermione. Hermione Granger. You must be Harry Potter! I’ve read about you in Modern Magical History, The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth century!” and held out her hand to shake his head which he took and shook.

This was the moment when most of the plans made in the afterlife collapsed or, at least, had to be seriously altered. What neither of them knew however was that the other one had found a way for themselves to get their memories back. However neither of the two rituals had expected the target to already have their memories so the complicated arithmancy worked out to make them perfectly just went absolutely haywire. The two rituals intermingled and formed together a new ritual that nobody had expected to ever exist.

This resulted in several unforeseen consequences. First of all, because the two sets of memories were mixed up in the new ritual’s very core, the to participants got ‘gifted’ the memories of the other, which does, contrary to popular belief, they didn’t only benefit from that because the other one was also given their embarrassing memories and Hermione also received all of the memories of the times the Dursleys had hit him.

That would have normally been all that the combined rituals cold do, but as a result of one of the rituals being performed by a servant of death, the magical power that the ritual had at it’s disposal was not simply added but rather multiplied. And because there already was a lot of magical power in each of the two rituals the combined one had even more excess power.

This power obviously had to go somewhere. Otherwise, Harry and Hermione would just spontaneously combust right there because their magical cores could only absorb a portion of the released magical power. All the energy that could got absorbed into their cores but there was still enough energy left to for example send out over a thousand patronuses.

Now a bit about magical bonds: (I promise that I will try to keep it short and it will be important soon) [A note from later me: I’m sorry but it isn’t as short as expected.]

There are two major kinds of bonds in the magical world. They are called the soulmate bond and the soul bond.

Soulmates are way more frequent. In fact every magical person in the whole world has another one as their soulmate. However, because there are so many wizards in the world, it unfortunately is unlikely but still possible to find one’s soulmate. When one somehow found their soulmate, then (once the two kissed) they would their soulmate bond would form. If two soulmates decided to have a romantic relationship it would make said relationship be perfect and make them both unable to love anyone except for their soulmate which has the side effects of making the soulmated couple way less likely to cheat on each other but unfortunately making almost impossible for the two to decide not to have a relationship but that they rather wanted to be with someone else.

The second kind of bond is way more rare. On average, there is only one soul bonded couple each generation however they somehow always meet. This bond is more restrictive but also more rewarding than the soul bond is. In comparison to a soulmate bond, a soul bond is a lot more individual and always different, depending on the two bonded ones. Mostly there are only two parts of the bond that are common across all of the strongly bonded couples. These were that, once one of the partners died, the other one died at the same time and that the two would afterwards have a stronger mental connection to each other and would for example always somewhat know what the other one is feeling. A strong bond would usually also have different effects that were way more powerful but those varied from case to case.

If one considers the probabilities of the two bonds, it is not unimaginable that the last strongly soulbound couple had existed in the Babylonian time and thus the phenomenon wasn’t that well documented although many researchers had theorized what would happen in such a case.

With that explanation out of the way, we can get back to what to Harry’s and Hermione’s excess energy.

Given that the situation of a ritual with two persons involved and a lot of unused magical energy was only seldom given, Magic decided to do something it had never yet done. It made a soul bond also form between Harry and Hermione in addition to being soulmates to start with. No one had before had a soul bond come into effect in the middle of their life instead of existing since their birth. In the forming of the bond, most of the energy left over in the ritual got used up so no magical explosion completely consuming the soon-to-be classmates happened but instead only a small flash of light went off as the two touched. The wizards who noticed probably thought, that it was just an errand spell hitting something it wasn’t intended to or a strangely powerful of accidental magic by some wizarding child.

Harry and Hermione were at first confused by what happened but then, by using each others memories of their past they both quickly figured out what had happened. Because of Hermione’s studies in theoretical magic, they were both easily able to do the arithmancy on the rituals and on how they could have combined and figure both out quickly that some energy had to be missing as it couldn’t have alle been used to give their memories to each other but they unanimously decided that there was a more pressing concern as the two adults, who previously had been talking to each other, were now looking at them as they had noticed the brief flash of light.

The transfiguration professor however seamed to somewhat understand that something important had happened and decided that she wanted to have the two eleven year olds explain it to her privately. So she asked the gamekeeper of Hogwarts, whether he didn’t have something else to do, hoping that the half-giant would notice her intention. He against all odds actually did, mumbled something about “having to do some important business for Dumbledore” and then left the trio alone. Then he left, going for a pint in the Leaky Cauldron before performing his mysterious task.

Now, alone with the two children, she decided that the best place to visit first was probably Gringotts as Hermione had told her in her letter that she had a question about the Bank and Harry probably hadn’t yet gotten his money. As she told her idea to her two companions, Harry for some reason looked relieved. Almost as if he had been hoping for her to choose to go there

Chapter Text

When the three entered the wizarding bank, Harry leaned over to his two companions and whispered: “I know what I’m doing. Please just let me do what I need to do. I will explain later.” Following that, he walked over to the goblin at the counter and spoke formally: “Greetings, teller. May your vaults overflow and may your enemies die at your blade.”

Although the goblin looked slightly confused by receiving the old formal greeting, he replied: “May your riches be ever increased and may the blood of your enemies stain your sword. I am impressed because not many wizards know our traditional greeting. What is your business at Gringotts today?” “I would like to see the Potter account manager today.” , Harry replied. “Should he not currently be available, I ask for a room to wait in with my advisors until he is likes to meet us.”
The teller was slightly taken aback because usually, when wizards wanted to see a goblin, they demanded him to be at their disposal immediately. Shortly after, the group was taken to an empty conference room deep inside Gringotts but not so deep that it was anywhere close to the vaults. There, Harry, Hermione and professor McGonagall were left alone until Gormuck, the goblin in charge of the Potter accounts, had returned from his shift in a silver mine in southern Wales. He had worked there in the time that no one had needed a Potter account manager. Gormuck would need approximately five minutes to get to Gringotts’s main branch in the United Kingdom from the mine via a goblin portkey and another ten minutes for him to make himself presentable for such an important customer of the bank since he currently was covered in dust and grime from supervising the mine’s operation.

Once they were left alone, the professor demanded more information: “Mr. Potter, Miss Granger, I want to know what happened to the two of you when you just met. I noticed the small magical explosion and now, you are practically radiating magical power, unlike you did before you touched.” The two addressed wizards shared a brief look and, in doing so, decided that Harry should be the one to explain it, because he had experienced the more unbelievable events although Hermione also had the memories of that moment.

“Please, just call us by our first names. After all, we are not yet your students!”, Harry asked before actually starting to explain: ”We both come from the future. From a future we would like to avoid. In that future Voldemort came back in slightly less that four years. He overtook the Ministry of Magic because then Minister Fudge ignored that there was a dark lord on the loose. At the end of our seventh year in Hogwarts, I was killed just after I had defeated Voldemort, which sucked. After my death, my Grim Reaper, me and a few others planned how to make me survive the coming years because I was to be sent back to yesterday morning.”

Professor McGonagall interrupted his speech at this moment by asking whether there also was a prophecy about him. At their confused looks, she explained: “You probably don’t know this, but before I went to Hogwarts as a teacher, I actually worked for the Department of Mysteries. There, I learned about the whole time travel by dying. Now what had happened to you, Hermione?” After she had explained her part in the story, the two told her what each of them had planned to have happened when they met today and what they presumed to have happened. As the transfiguration teacher also had no idea on where the excess magical energy went, she asked them if she was allowed to run a few diagnostic spells over the two of them. At their permission, she performed a couple of diagnostics on the two of them that they wouldn’t have been able to cast, because they cannot be cast on oneself.

She told her soon-to-be students what she had found out: “According to my charms, your power levels are way higher than they are supposed to be at your age, they are almost at Dumbledore’s level. And you haven’t even reached magical maturity yet. I wonder how strong you will be in a couple of years. Otherwise everything seemed fine except that you have too many memories, which we already knew and that the two of you seem to have two bonds.” “We already know that we are soulmates, because my Reaper told me, but what is the second bond?”, Harry interrupted her. The professor explained: “The other bond is a soul bond. It was, in contrast to the mating bond already sealed by you, meeting. The soulmate bond will only be sealed by you kissing and everyone will be able to know that the bond has been sealed because the ministry automatically gets notified as soon as it gets sealed. So do try to keep yourself from doing that as it would immediately get you two married, also because you probably don’t want to do that… yet.”

After the two had been explained what such strong bond meant, the two suddenly realised where the leftover energy from the two combined rituals went. Hermione explained it to her future professor: “In the last timeline, Harry died but I lived way longer. If you say that the soul bond was sealed by us touching, then we could not have been soul bonded in the last timeline. Magic just gifted us the bond and thereby ensured that we would not explode because of magical overload.”

Having realized that the two were no ordinary students but rather already adult in their mind and thinking that it would be in her best interest to be on their side in the coming conflict, professor McGonagall offered the two something she had never before offered to any of her students: “I think that it would be more convenient for you two to call me ‘Minerva’ in private as well.”

Harry decided that the little time they had left would be best spent solving an issue they had been unable to find a solution for in the afterlife: “Could we please try to find a way to not make me go back to the Dursleys? They really are abusive and I always have to work like a house elf whenever I’m there.” Hermione nodded because she didn’t want her apparent soulmate to have to go back to this hellhole she already knew from his memories. Suddenly, she got an idea: “I might be able to convince my parents to allow you to stay at our house till school starts. Especially if you tell them how his life was like in Little Whinging, Minerva.” Just after she promised to help, a goblin knocked on the door and showed them the way to the office of the Potter account manager.

When the three stood inside Gormuck’s office, Harry greeted the goblin: “May your vaults overflow and may your enemies die at your blade.” He responded the same way that the teller had: “May your riches be ever increased and may the blood of your enemies stain your sword. How can Gringotts help you today?” “I would like to hear my parents wills and, if possible, claim the Potter heirship or even lordship.” Gormuck signed a younger goblin, who had previously just stood in a corner of the office, to come to him and spoke a few sentences in Gobbledegook that made the goblin sprint out of the office and quickly come back with two scrolls of parchment and a little box. He handed all three to Gormuck who first read a small note placed on the two scrolls. He explained: “The wills of James and Lilly Potter have been sealed by the chief warlock Albus Percival Dumbledore just after they had died, thus making it illegal for anyone to read the wills.” At Harry’s concerned look, he continued: “Luckily for you, Gringotts is sovereign territory and these regulations by the ministry don’t apply here. Do you want me to read the wills to you in front of these witches?”
At Harry’s approval, the goblin started reading James’s will:

Last will of James Potter, Lord of house Potter
All previous wills are to be considered null and void.

Dear Harry,
I sincerely hope that you will never have to listen to this but if you do, I’m apparently dead. That sucks! I hope that you will have a fun and fulfilling life, even if I can’t be there to watch you grow up.

About the distribution of my assets:
-Harry James Potter: I hereby grant you heirship of house Potter. Should you not be of legal age when I die, you are to be emancipated as Potter tradition states. You are gifted a trust vault with G5,000 refilling every year from the Potter coinage vault until you are of legal age.
-Lilly Potter: I want to gift you G100,000 and the property in Godric’s Hollow.
-Sirius Orion Black: I know that you already have enough money so I will instead gift you a collection of items that might be of sentimental value to you. You can collect them at Gringotts London.
-Remus John Lupin: I know that you will try to refuse but I gift you G1,000. Get yourself something nice (or perhaps a new set of robes). I have commanded the goblins to force you to take the money and I think you might need it.

Should my wife Lilly Potter also have perished, Harry’s guardian shall be chosen based on the following list:
-Lord Sirius Orion Black, godfather and practically my brother
- Alice Longbottom, godmother
-Professor Minerva McGonagall, friend of family and teacher
-Remus John Lupin, friend of family and unofficial replacement godfather
-Augusta Longbottom, friend of family

Should all of these be unavailable, the choice on his guardian is given to Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore with the conditions that the guardian may neither be a Death Eater nor are Vernon and Petunia Dursley suitable candidates for the position.

Signed Lord James Potter.
Witnessed: Lilly Potter, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

After James’ will had bee read, the goblin read Lilly’s will. It was practically the same but she couldn’t give away as much as James, because she didn’t posess much outside of her personal vault.

When the wills had been read, everyone in the room was angry at Dumbledore if they hadn’t been before. “He sealed the wills without reason, violated them and, in doing so, put you through ten years of torture.”, Gormuck exclaimed “I think we can put him behind goblin bars for that. In comparison to the Wizengamot, a goblin court is not corrupt!”

In accordance to James’s will, Harry prepared to take lordship of house Potter by donning the Lord Potter ring, because he was heir Potter and emancipated. After asking the goblin for permission, Harry and Minerva pulled out their wands. Or at least tried to, because Harry had not yet bought his wand. “Would you mind giving me my wand? I know for a fact that you have it in your pouch.”, he asked Hermione.

The girl pulled a small beaded handbag out of one of the pockets of her coat, from which she extracted Harry’s wand. ‘I knew that you had it with you!’, Harry told her silently. ‘How did you get into my mind? Legilimency?’, she requested, also non-verbally. Harry responded in the same way: ‘Probably a side effect of the soul bond! I don’t know how I know how to do it, it just felt correct.’

Once Harry had been given his wand, he pointed it to the ceiling of the office and spoke: “I, Harry James Potter, claim my title as Lord Potter following my predecessor’s will. I shall try my best to keep house Potter strong and make it endure whatever is happening in the wizarding world.”
Minerva, acting as a reputable magical adult, also raised her wand: “I, Minerva McGonagall, confirm his claim to the Lordship of house Potter. So mote it be!”
“So mote it be!”, Harry finished before opening the little box Gormuck held out to him and putting on the ring contained inside. As soon as he donned the ring, he felt something inside him rip. It was like a dam holding back his magic had suddenly vanished. At the same time, Hermione also gasped. The ring had noticed that there were blocks on Harry’s magic and freed him from them. The bonds that he and Hermione had seemed to have linked their magic together so that the increase in his available magic also resulted in an increase in hers.

Gormuck told Harry, that the assets of his family would be checked and, as soon as the goblins had catalogued everything, Harry would be told what he possessed.

Immediately following that, Harry also spoke: “Professor McGonagall. Even if I may be emancipated, I still need a guardian, if only to not make Dumbledore suspicious.” Luckily for him, the professor agreed and they both spoke the oaths necessary to give her that title.

As a last bit of business with Gringotts today, Harry asked for G200 to be removed from his trust vault and put into a moneybag with expansion charms and featherlight charms on it, that Gringotts sold. After that had been done, Harry said goodbye to Gormuck in a similar way to the traditional goblin greeting and asked him to escort them out of the bank, since they didn’t know the way out.

Once outside the Wizarding bank, Hermione explained Minerva what they had just found out: “You won’t believe it! Harry and me have a telepathic connection! We can talk to each other without actually saying anything!” The usually stern professor decided to tease the at least physically young witch: “So we on the Hogwarts staff have to come up with measures to keep you two from cheating on tests. Brilliant!” Hermione played shocked that the teacher thought so lowly of her and exclaimed: “Please! Don’t think that I would risk getting lowest marks on a test just to help this idiot!”, she playfully punched Harry’s shoulder, “I thought you knew me better, professor!”

Harry also told the transfiguration professor the other bit of information, they had gotten about their bond: “Our power levels seem to be locked to each other, by the way. When the head of house ring released me from my core bindings, Hermione also got a magic boost. Might be useful to know.”

The three spend the next one and a half hours gathering Harry’s school supplies. They didn’t really follow the list contained in Harry’s Hogwarts letter. For example, they didn’t buy a pewter cauldron but instead one made from silver since it would be more resistant to whatever ingredients he would put in his cauldron. The only other notable occurrence happened when Harry was trying to buy a new wand, because he didn’t want anyone to get suspicious when he used his old wand, that Hermione had brought with her, since it didn’t have a trace.

The wandmaker looked up when someone entered his shop. He immediately recognized professor McGonagall because she always took the muggleborns to his shop. He also recognized the young witch at her side. She had bought her wand almost one year ago. She was holding the hand of a boy, after a few seconds, he noticed who was standing in front of his counter. “Good afternoon”, he said “I thought I’d be seeing you soon. Harry Potter. And who have you brought with you? Professor McGonagall, fir wand with a dragon heartstring core. Nine and a half inches, stiff. And you are I think Miss. Granger, vine wand, also with a dragon heartstring core. Ten and three quarters inches. I presume that you are here to get a wand for Mr. Potter.”

When he started his strange measurements however, he muttered something they didn’t expect: “Oh, I see… You are not from now… And you managed to bring your wand. That makes the decision easier…” Afterwards, he went to one of his shelfs and pulled a box out (and somehow managed not to make all of the boxes on top fall out as well). “This one should be yours!”, he said as he opened the box for Harry to look inside. “Indeed. That is my wand!”, Harry confirmed, wondering how the old man knew but he decided not to ask him. The only comment they got from the wand maker was, that he would have to mark his old one to ensure that he didn’t switch them up. Needless to say, the wand worked perfectly for him and when he whooshed it, it spewed out a whole lot of sparkles.

It was needless to say, that Hermione bought quite a few books on magical bonds, advanced magical theory and professional combat magic, so that she and Harry would have something to study during the time before they had access to the library of Hogwarts. Obviously, she put them in her beaded handbag so that her parents wouldn’t notice them being so much ahead of their curriculum.

It was obvious that Harry wanted to go to Eeylops Owl Emporium and buy a snow owl that he soon named ‘Hedwig’.

When they had finally finished their shopping trip and exited Diagon alley, they found Daniel and Emma already waiting for them in the Leaky Cauldron, trying their first pumpkin juice. Hermione stormed ahead and threw her arms around her parents. Once the other two also arrived, they heard Hermione already asking her parents: “Mum, Dad? Look who I met in Diagon alley! Could you please say hallo to my parents, Harry?” “hallo to my parents, Harry!”, he answered. In reply, she swatted his arm “Prat! I met him when he was taken here today by Hagrid, the school’s groundkeeper. Min… Professor McGonagall offered to help him get his school supplies when we met.” Then she too tried to wordlessly communicate with him: ‘Don’t you dare tell them that we are bonded and will probably be married before we end school or… or I will let my dad have his way with you.’ ‘Wasn’t even planning to!’, he replied.

Meanwhile, professor McGonagall was explaining his situation to her parents: “I want you to know that he had a troubled childhood as far as I know. He was placed with his relatives who abused him and punished him for everything he did. I won’t even go into the details now, because I don’t yet know everything and because I presume that he will tell you when he feels comfortable with it. This brings me to what I want to ask you: Could you please let him stay at your house until they both leave for Hogwarts in a month. As far as I could tell, he and your daughter are coming along very well and, should he be too much for you, you know how to contact me.”

The Granger parents turned their heads towards each other and quietly conversed before asking their daughter: “Would you be okay with him, staying with us?” As one who knew the two for longer then a month could have guessed, she replied: “Of course! He’s the first person of my age that neither seems to think that I am a bossy know-it-all nor that I’m a weird crazy idiot! Please let him stay with us! I don’t know what his uncle will do to him, when they know that he’s a wizard.” After another quick round of discussion between the dentists, Daniel announced their decision while Emma stood up: “So, Harry. Welcome to our family!” As he said that, Emma hugged Harry. In that moment, he realized that Hermione got her hug strength, that he quite well remembered from his last life, from her mother, as she hugged him with a strength Hermione would have been proud of.

Chapter Text

While the Grangers and Harry drove to the Granger’s house, Minerva volunteered to take Harry’s possessions from 4 Privet Drive and then apparate to where Harry intended to go for the rest of summer.

By some miracle, everyone arrived at the Granger residence at the same time. There, they put Harry’s belongings into his wardrobe in his room, which coincidently was just across the corridor from Hermione’s room. During that time, Hermione noticed that Harry didn’t have enough properly fitting clothes. Technically, she had already known that from seven years of going to the same school and sharing Harry’s memories but she obviously couldn’t give this away. She planned to make him buy some new ones soon.

After that, the adults told them to wait in Hermione’s room until dinner was ready. When entering it, Harry told Hermione: ‘Looks just as I remembered!’ to which she replied ‘Please refrain from talking like this when there’s someone else nearby. I just almost got a heart attack, thinking that my parents have heard you.’ Harry then explained how he differentiated the two: ‘If you listen closely, you will feel that my voice is coming from about your temples’ “and now it seem to come from my actual position. At least that’s how I feel it.”

Now understanding, Hermione gave in. ‘Okay. I see your point. With a bit of getting used to it, I hopefully wont get a shock every time you talk about some future knowledge.’ Speaking from experience, Hermione told Harry, that her parents would call them in about half an hour for dinner. Until then, the two sat on her couch and updated the plans they had made in the afterlife by combing them with Hermione’s own plans. To do that Harry said the word “Anakohulthrod” that they had agreed on during their planning session and a small stack of paper with their notes appeared in his hands. Hermione on the other hand just pointed her trace-free wand that she had also brought along in her handbag and summoned her notes.

Actually only fifteen minutes later, Emma knocked on Hermione’s door. The two quickly cast a wordless and wandless Notice-me-not charm on the notes and then went out of the room to eat dinner.

Once they arrived downstairs, they saw the reason that it had taken her parents shorter to make dinner. Minerva was also sitting at the table, having apparently helped by preparing parts of their dinner with magic.

After dinner, the deputy headmistress quickly left because she had to ‘help’ Dumbledore with some of his business, better known as practically running the school while Dumbledore worked of his other responsibilities as Chief warlock and Supreme Mugwump. And of course his most time consuming duty was to slowly remove all evil from the world. ‘All evil’ in this case is a metaphor for sherbet lemons. It turns out that having three full-time jobs (and one half-time job) was ever so slightly time consuming. Not that he would change anything as this would mean losing either power or sweets, none of which he wanted.

Two days later, Harry received a letter from Gringotts via Royal mail. After he had read it, he explained to his best friend: “So, apparently, the goblins were trying to send me a letter, but it was somehow blocked. I don’t know how, but someone”, he mimed stroking a beard, “has blocked all of my owl mail except for Hedwig. To get that fixed and for that other business they originally wanted to contact me for, I should go to Gringotts ‘as soon as convenient’. Would tomorrow work for you?” She replied: “I don’t think it will. My parents have to go to work tomorrow and Minerva mentioned that she can’t come here until school starts because she has got a school to run and disappearing again would probably raise suspicions with the headmaster.” ‘However we could still do it.’, she added after summoning a book out of her handbag, ‘Look at this schematic!’

She showed Harry a diagram of the inner workings of some sort of ward. Using her memories, Harry realized that it was from a book she had ‘borrowed’ from the library inside the Department of Mysteries. According to the title of the page, the ward would alert the wizarding authorities when some who had not yet gotten their apparition licence apparated. Harry noticed after a minute of studying the ward structure that there was a ‘flaw’ in the system. He grinned: ‘So, if I understand this correctly, the ward checks for your memory of passing the test and as a last failsafe it looks at whether you are of legal age. Now that I think about it, it actually makes sense. Otherwise, they would have to store every person who has ever passed their apparition licence.’ Hermione continued his original line of thought: ‘However, we pass all of these checks! It appears as though, when they designed the ward, they didn’t account for time travellers that had their apparition licence, returned underage and got emancipated. Silly fools!’ She giggled.

Then, the two decided to test whether their theory was actually true and if their telepathy was distance dependant. Harry decided to be the guinea pig and apparated to just outside the town where Hermione lived. ‘Base, this is scout one, please come!’, Harry transmitted to Hermione to which she replied: ‘Prat! Please remind me to smack your arm when you come back!’ As they repeated the test with increasing distance, they found that neither did their mental connection break nor did any aurors try to arrest Harry. Ten minutes after he had left, Harry returned to Hermione’s room from the Orkney islands in the north of Scottland. His friend welcomed him with a high five because the tests were successful and then smacked his arm as she had promised she would do.

They also sent a letter to Minerva via Hedwig, explaining their plan for tomorrow and then went back to studying advanced magic although they tricked Dan and Emma into thinking that they were only preparing for this years classes. In a way, it was actually true because they had Voldemort as their teacher.

The next day, after Hermione’s parents had left for work, the two put up a ward to notify them if her parents arrived from work earlier that expected so that they quickly could apparate back home. Then they disapparated to Diagon alley under notice-me-not charms so that no one would notice the two underage wizards apparate.
In Gringotts, Harry once again greeted the teller formally and asked to be escorted to Gormuck’s office. The goblin only asked whether he wanted Hermione to come with him, to which Harry replied that definitely wanted to. There, he only had to wait for two minutes before the goblin arrived.

“I presume, Mr. Potter”, he said as he entered the office, “that you weren’t consciously ignoring our letters.” Harry replied apologetically that he hadn’t received any letters from Gringotts and asked whether he could be checked for a owl-redirecting ward and, if one was found, for the ward to be removed.

The goblin who had luckily previously worked in the Gringotts curse braking department, waved his hands across Harry’s chest and murmured a few words in Gobbledegook. As he told Harry later, he had redirected the letter redirecting ward to a Gringotts post box where dangerous letters would be sorted out and the rest would be sent to Harry. The fees for the processing of the letters would taken from Dumbledores vault, because Gormuck could sense his magic in the ward although he had hidden his magical signature and his meddling thus couldn’t be proven.

Then, the goblin told Harry the actual reason for his visit. The categorisation of the House Potter assets was finished.
“As far as we know, there are G2,452,586 in the Potter coinage vault. You also have G27,685 in investments in a few muggle companies. Here is a list of those. As for what’s in the Potter Heirloom vaults, I can’t tell you in a reasonable amount of time so here is the vault ledger instead.” So saying, he handed over a book of what seemed about one hundred pages. At last, the goblin dropped a bombshell: “House Potter also has several properties such as the Potter holiday home in Corsica and the main Potter mansion in Wales. For the first, getting a portkey is difficult because it would go to another country but if you want, we can visit the manor today.”

Although they were surprised by that revelation, Harry and Hermione looked at each other for a few seconds and decided to give it a go. As far as Hermione was concerned, the place probably had a library so she definitely wanted to go there. Harry also wanted to go there, if only to see the place where his father had grown up.

‘Hermione… You think that we could ask him to get rid of the Horcrux in Bella’s vault?’, Harry asked. ‘Probably!’, she replied, ‘I think that I read in Goblin traditions explained to wizards by Denemod Dunuelos that they hate them. And it might improve our reputation with the goblins if we don’t break in and smash the whole entrance with a dragon we steal, but I’m not really sure about that…’

Harry held up a hand and said: “Before we leave, I have something that you might want to listen to. I cannot tell you how I know, but there is a vile device in the vault belonging to one of your customers.” At Gormuck’s interested look, he continued: “In the vault of Bellatrix Lestrange, there is a vessel for Voldemort’s soul.” At this point, the goblin got angry. He bellowed an order to the young goblin standing in the corner of his office who then sprinted away and came back, escorted by a Goblin in fancy armour and five guards.

Having been taught goblin traditions, Harry and Hermione immediately rose, then lowered themselves to their knees and bowed. ‘This is Ragnok, isn’t he?’, Harry asked his best friend. ‘Yes, he is. He’s the king of all goblins.’ Ragnok allowed them to rise again and spoke: “You told us, that there is a Horcrux in the Lestrange vault. Would you please explain how you know? Otherwise, I won’t send out a search team because I don’t want to make it seem as if we weren’t trusting our clients.” “I am very sorry”, Harry replied, “that I cannot disclose this information because I swore an unbreakable vow not to do so. I instead offer oath that there in fact is one of those devices in her vault.” He waved it off, saying: “Your stated intention is sufficient.”

The goblin king held up his left hand with his palm facing the ceiling and curved his fingers as though he was holding up a sphere of fifteen centimetres. Suddenly, a bright blue sphere of light appeared, hovering just above his palm. After speaking a couple of phrases in Gobbledegook to the light, he threw it in the air, where it hovered for a second and then zoomed off towards the door.

He told the two wizards in the room, that a goblin course braking team would be on their way to search for Voldemort’s piece of soul.

After ten minutes had passed, the team returned to Gormuck’s office. With them, they had some wooden boxes and one lead box. The apparent leader spoke a few words to the goblin king that the two wizards couldn’t understand. ‘Hermione. We should learn Gobbledegook! It would make working with goblins easier and could surprise them.’
‘I think that there should be some books on it in Hogwarts. Or maybe in Potter manor?’, she responded.

As they expected, in the lead box, there was Helga’s cup. After the Horcrux had been destructed and Ragnok had gone back to his office, Gormuck handed Harry and Hermione a piece of rope. When the two had grabbed it, he spoke a passphrase and the three were whisked away to just outside the wards of Potter manor.

There, Harry walked towards the seemingly empty plot of land and, when he passed over an invisible border, the manor popped into view. At the same time, he felt something change in his magical core. Because he was lord Potter, he had been given control over the wards the moment he stepped onto the property.

After mentally adjusting the settings of the wards to allow Gormuck and Hermione in, he turned around and walked out of the ward’s perimeter. He signed the other two to follow him and went back towards Potter manor.

Once Inside the manor, Harry and Hermione were told that great damage had been done to the east wing of the manor during the first blood war. Luckily for Hermione, the library was located in the west wing, so all of the books were in perfect condition.

Just as they prepared to leave, Harry felt three beings enter the wards. He was, however, not concerned that they could be Death Eaters because he soon saw their heads peeking in the room. “Hallo, master Harry!”, one of them said. “We’s be hoping that you would find here!”

As they explained, they were the Potter house elves. They had just taken so long to arrive because they were magically weak, but Harry could fix that problem in no time by sending magic from his core to theirs.

Finally, the goblin, the wizards and a couple ancient books in Hermione handbag left the property.

For Harry and Hermione, the rest of the summer was not really exciting. They went to an amusement park once and also watched two movies in the local cinema, but they spent most of their time by studying the books Hermione bought in Diagon alley and the ones, she had taken from the manor at home. Yes, Harry had finally, after more than one lifetime, found a place that he could truly call home.

In contrast to his last life, Harry arrived on platform nine-and-three-quarters on time. Unfortunately, Dan and Emma couldn’t come on the platform with them because they were not magical and thus couldn’t enter Diagon alley. Before he passed through the barrier, Daniel held up Harry: “Please, Harry: Keep an eye out for Hermione. Try to keep her from danger. And could you please send us letters about your time at Hogwarts, because I doubt that my daughter will write us about the more dangerous stuff you do.”

After entering Hogwarts Express, Harry and Hermione found an compartment for themselves and sat down. Harry used a bit of magic that they weren’t officially supposed to know by levitating the trunks on the luggage rack.

A few minutes after the train had started rolling, someone knocked on the compartment door. ‘Ron or Draco?’ ‘Nah, they wouldn’t knock! That would be polite.’ As Harry opened the door, he saw a helpless looking Neville standing outside. “Greetings, heir Longbottom!”, Harry spoke, shaking the other boy’s hand. “Greetings, heir Potter!”, he replied. “Have you seen a toad anywhere, I think that I lost it.” “What is his name?”, Hermione interjected. “Trevor.” “A know a spell to show us, where he is. Point Me Trevor”, she spoke confidently with her wand laying on her flat hand. It turned around to point to under Harry’s seat. In fact, the toad could be found, hiding underneath the bench. Hermione invited Neville to sit with them for the rest of the journey.

Half an hour later, the door opened again, making the three jerk up from their reading. “No, none of you is Harry Potter, he wouldn’t be such a Ravenclaw. If you see him, tell him that I searched the whole bloody train for him. Mum said, that he would need a good mate!”, the redhead outside the compartment mumbled and left. Harry, Hermione and Neville could not keep themselves from laughing at the boy’s antics.

Surprisingly, Draco didn’t visit them during the train ride.

After they had gotten off the boats carrying them over the great lake and the group had walked the immensely long flight of stairs leading up to the actual castle, the first-years were greeted by professor McGonagall who discretely waved at Harry and Hermione.

Then the sorting ceremony began. ‘Please, try to convince the hat to put us both in the same house. Otherwise, hiding our skill in class would be way more complicated.’, Harry told Hermione after she had been called by Minerva.

‘Oh! A time traveller.’, the hat exclaimed surprised.
‘Yes, I came back to fix what was wrong during my first try. Once here, I found out that Harry also travelled back. If you want to, you can take a look at our memories. And yes, I have his as well.’
Then, all of the memories of their previous lives passed through her mind at a ridiculous pace.
‘I see! Yes, he was correct. You should go to one house together. Otherwise, your future relationship will be much more complicated’, the hat teased.
‘I think that I know, where to put you however.
You better be in…’

Chapter Text

The hat spoke: ‘I think that I know, where to put you however. You better be in…’
“…RAVENCLAW!“

Hermione smiled and walked over to the table, where most of the older students where clapping and sat down. A few minutes later, Harry also was sorted into Ravenclaw.

After Dumbledore had finished his silly speech “Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!” and they had eaten all that could fit in their bellies, they were lead to the Ravenclaw common room. This time, the riddle was: “In the morning, it walks on four legs, at noon on two and in the evening, it walks on three legs.” Once there, Harry didn’t even have time to wish Hermione a good night because they were instantly sent to bed.

On the next day, Harry woke up, only to find Hermione talking to a girl Harry didn’t recognise. Once she noticed Harry, Hermione stood up:
“Good morning, Harry!”
“Morning. If I may ask, who are you?”
The girl replied: “I’m Lisa Turpin. Do you want to go to the great hall? I read in Hogwarts: A History that breakfast was served there.”

On the way there, Lisa was surprised to see Harry casually using the secret corridors. At her question, he replied that he had just prepared for school and had read a few books about the school.

After breakfast, the new trio had their first class. This class was the first introduction to magic to the new wizards and witches and was taught by a special teacher, who was only at the school for this one day. There, they learned about their magical core, how to draw magic from it, about the different power levels and about the general nature of magic. They were also told about the dangers that could arise when drawing too much magic from their core in too little time.

Harry and Hermione noticed that some of the information they were given actually was incorrect. They could however obviously not point this out, because their corrections had only been discovered by Hermione in the last timeline and no one in this timeline knew about them.

Generally speaking, the class was interesting for the new students, although Harry and Hermione were slightly bored, but this was only because Hermione had studied this subject for more then ten years.

Their next class was transfiguration, which was their first practical lesson (unless you counted their exercise of drawing magic from their core and having it float in front of them as a glowing cloud as a practical lesson).

It was a happy coincidence that their first class was with professor McGonagall, so that, if they would fail at hiding their skill, no one would get suspicious.
After being explained the basics the students were given one matchstick each and then told to transfigure it into a needle.

Harry and Hermione, who had sat down on a table together, put up a notice-me-not so that their classmates wouldn’t notice them (hence the name of the charm).

After she had looked at the other students’ work and had given them tips for improving their transfiguration, Minerva walked over to Harry’s and Hermione’s desk, intending to see their skill, thus voiding their charm.

“Now to the two of you. Can you also transfigure it to a needle?”
“O course! Hermione? On the count of three:”
“One…”
“Two…”
“Three…”
Harry and Hermione simultaneously waved their wand and flawlessly completed their task.

“Perfect,” said the professor: “Would you two mind doing a quick representation of what you can actually do?”

Hermione replied: “Before we do that, I found out that, if you use the correct technique, you can transfigure easier when doing it wandlessly. Should I give you my book on the topic? I researched it in my time as an Unspeakable.”
“Please do! Now, would you mind showing what you can do?”
Hermione told Harry non-verbally, what she intended to do and then the two laid their wands on the table.

After mentally connecting, they held their hands over their needles (or were they still technically matchsticks?) and elongated them, before joining them together.
The metal wire bended and twisted and squished and at the end the two students formed the piece of metal into a replica of the Eifel tower.

The professor clapped: “Very impressive indeed! Could you please reverse the transfiguration and drop the notice-me-not?”
After they had done so, professor McGonagall asked: “Please, Mr. Potter. I have already seen you almost succeed! Please show the class.”

Harry picked up his wand and transfigured the matchstick back into the needle, although he put in much less magic than he otherwise would have, trying to obscure his power and skill.

“Come on! You can probably do it even better than me!”, he told his friend. That, she truly did. She put a bit more energy in the transfiguration, thus making the process take less time than Harry had taken.

Afterwards, McGonagall told them to go around the classroom and help the other students. With their help, Lisa and Nerville managed to turn their matches into needles as well, although theirs were neither as pointy nor as shiny as Harry’s and Hermione’s.

When it was time for the Ravenclaw first-years to have their first potions lesson Harry and Hermione were prepared for it.

Once professor Snape had made his overly dramatic entry, he once again gave his “I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death” speech and then started asking Harry his questions:
“Tell me, what would I would get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”
Harry replied: “Probably some kind of sleeping potion. If you were to add Valerian root, a Sopophorous bean, a Sloth brain, Moondew and a Flower head, you would get the Draught of Living Death.”

“Where would you look to find a Bezoar?”
“A Bezoar is stone that is found in the stomach of many animals that saves you from any poison that you have in your bloodstream. There actually is a goat named after it. It was like Bezoar ibex as far as I can remember. Technically it is no real stone. It is rather a ball of undigested material such as wool. I don’t think that anyone would want to have such a ball of vomit shoved down their throat, but it’s still better than dying, isn’t it?”

Now leaning forward, the potions master asked: “What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?”
“What a trick question, professor! As written on page 169 of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, they are two different names for the exact same plant. When the romans first discovered the plant, they called it monkshood. When it was found again in England a few centuries later, they called it wolfsbane. It also has the scientific name of Aconitum”

“Well… It seems, as though one of you dunderheads actually bothered to open their books before going to school.”

He then assigned his class to brew a simple boil cure potion. As one might expect, Harry and Hermione once again worked together.

Almost halfway through the brewing of the potion, Harry got distracted by Justin’s cauldron melting and so added too much of the crushed snake fangs which lead to the potion turning a bright yellow colour, instead of the green they were expecting.

Using all of the knowledge that they had gathered from six years of potions lessons, they figured out, that the potion was by always very unstable at this point in the brewing process and the additional snake fangs were slightly too basic, which had thrown off the potion.

To hopefully fix this, they added a drop of lemon juice, to get the pH-value back to the target and added fine copper powder to make the potion more stable.
In the end, this resulted in a potion that was actually better at curing boils than the original recipe would have been, because the instability of the latter made it slightly fail at a later step.

Much to his distain, Snape had to award points to Ravenclaw, because the potion was way better than the ones his first-years had produced before.

The flying lesson went, as expected, better than their first one. Hermione wasn’t scared of hights any more (after a year of constant fear while on the run, she got good at ignoring this feeling).

In the evening, Harry and Hermione heard the news of the chaos that had occurred during the flying lesson of the Slytherins and Gryffindors. Malfoy had taken Nerville’s Remembrall and flown off to the castle’s roof with it.

Fortunately for the Gryffindor boy, professor McGonagall saw the whole debacle and rescued the glass ball by summoning it to the ground. She also gave the boy one week worth of detention for stealing another student’s possessions and for defying madam Hooch’s order not to fly.

This lead to the Slytherin idiot, being away in the evening and so he couldn’t challenge anyone to a duel. Harry couldn’t help but feel relieved as he wanted to drag out meeting Drako for as long as possible.

On Halloween, everything went perfectly. As perfect as it could on such a cursed date. Since Hermione wasn’t in the charms class with the Gryffindors, Daphne Greengrass had to help Ron. Although she usually wasn’t like this, Ron’s comments made her storm off to the bathroom to cry.

Harry and Hermione weren’t told about that and so just thought that, because Hermione wasn’t in the class, no one had bothered to help Ron. This assumption was proven false, when Hermione cast her own variation of homenum revelio to find out whether everyone who was supposed to be at the feast actually was there.

‘Fuck,’ she exclaimed ‘Daphne isn’t here’
‘Who?’
‘Daphne Greengrass. Slytherin first-year.’
‘Well Fuck!’
‘I already said that.’
‘So: are we just going to go to the third-floor corridor?’
‘Just if Quirrell comes with his Troll in the dungeons speech.’
‘Okay!’

Right on queue, the DADA professor stumbled into the great hall a few minutes later.
“Troll – in the dungeons – thought you ought to know,” he informed the teachers before fainting (or at least pretending faint).

As the students were ushered out of the great hall, Harry and Hermione told Lisa Turpin – they had befriended over the beginning of the school year – that she shouldn’t worry about them and that they would be back in the Ravenclaw tower soon.

The two arrived in the third-floor corridor even before the troll did. They pulled out their wands and waited heavily panting for the creature to show up. During this time, they banished all of the furniture out of the reach of the troll’s club.

Soon enough, the beast showed up.
It smelled like rotten eggs mixed with the smell of mud.

Harry and Hermione did their best to hold it back from the bathroom using the spells they knew. But they didn’t quite manage.
About one minute in the fight, Harry told Hermione:
“We’ve got to finish this not, or the teachers will come because of the noise we make!”
“I’ve got an idea! It is technically out of our magical strength, but we can probably explain it away easier than, say an Avada Kedavra.”
“Come on! Do it! We don’t have unlimited time.”
“Okay. Levitate it’s club in front of him!”

While he was doing so, she put away her wand and then thrust her hands forward, towards the club hovering in front of the gobsmacked troll.

Pulling forth all of her magical power, she turned the log into a dagger of two meters in length and wordlessly told Harry to shove it through the heart of the vile creature, which he did.

The troll then dropped dead on the floor, screeching, the transfigured weapon had cleanly pierced though it’s chest.
Smiling at each other, the two high-fived and quickly hugged, although they had to separate quickly because the teachers were walking around the corner of the corridor.

Minerva, who was first to arrive, exclaimed:
“Holy goodness! You two did that? Quite the impressive display of transfiguration!”

Chapter Text

Minerva, who was first to arrive at the body of the dead troll, exclaimed:

“Holy goodness! You two did that? Quite the impressive display of transfiguration!”

“I didn’t do anything! The whole transfiguration was done by Hermione.”

“For sure! You only levitated a one hundred kilogram heavy sword and shoved it straight through it’s heart. Easy stuff.”

Now, the other professors came to stop by the three.

“Potter! What did you do? The table over there is completely obliterated!”, professor Snape asked.

Hermione stepped in front of Harry: “He didn’t do this. As you might see, there is a troll, lying right in front of you. The monster had a club with it and destroyed that table, before we could kill it. You also could see, that we pushed all of the other furniture out of the way, so that it wouldn’t be destroyed.”

“Anyways, we should probably go to that bathroom over there, “ Harry interjected, “After all, there is a girl hiding there.”

“What?” Professor McGonagall exclaimed whilst walking over there with a pace usually unseen on her: “That at least explains why you were over here.”

Once in front of the bathroom, Minerva knocked. After a reply by the girl inside, the professors, Harry and Hermione entered the room.
Hiding in the far corner of the room, under a sink, a girl in green and silver robes sat.

“Miss. Greengrass!” The girl’s head of house strode over to her. “Are you hurt? Did Potter do anything to you?”

“What?”, the Slytherin asked: “He didn’t do anything. I was just hiding in this room because of a dumb remark of Weasley. Then, I heard wood smashing outside the door and I hid in this corner. After a while, there was a loud scream and then it was silent. What happened?”

The headmaster thought that this was the perfect moment to interrupt: “Miss. Greengrass, it was delt with. You do not need to concern yourself with it.” He twinkled.

“I’m sorry? I won’t be told what did that? What put me in danger?”
“Well, the headmaster surely  didn’t mean it as such.
Somehow, a troll had made it’s way into the school. Luckily, Mr. Potter and Mrs. Granger here killed the beast before it could reach you.”

Then, the Greengrass girl stood up and straightened her robes, before curtseying to the two other first-years.
“I, Daphne Greengrass, heiress Greengrass, want to formally thank you two for rescuing me. House Greengrass will do what it can to repay you.”

Harry and Hermione looked at each other, slightly surprised, before deciding what to respond:

“We, Harry Potter, heir Potter,”
“and Hermione Granger of new House Granger,”
“thank you for the offer, but we do not require anything of your house.”
“We just ask for a friendship, in spite of the different house we are in. After all, you seem nice, but we probably wouldn’t ever talk to each other.”
“Your counteroffer is accepted and I will try to fulfil it.”

“Potter, why did you force one of my students to be friends with you? She doesn’t even like you.”, professor Snape complained.

“Severus!”, professor McGonagall rebuked him, “Didn’t you see that this was a house matter and not a, well… house matter. Even though you’re her house teacher, that doesn’t give you the right to interfere with family politics.”

“And besides,” Daphne added, “your statement was just wrong. I, in fact, do not despise him. I would have liked to befriend him, although that would have made me hated in Slytherin. Him forcing (she put two finger of each hand in the air, miming quotation marks) me to befriend me gave me a reason.” She turned to face Harry and Hermione: “So in fact thank you for that. You’ll just have to deal with the reaction of your house.”
“Oh, we will somehow manage that.”

“Professors, may we go back to the great hall? I have gotten quite hungry over the day.”
“Of course! The feast has been moved to the common rooms though, so you probably don’t want to go to the great hall. We professors will have to figure out, how the troll got into the castle.”

As the three were walking past the carcass of the troll, Daphne turned to the two others:
“You did that? Remind me to never anger you guys.”

The rest of the feast was quiet; no one had really noticed the two missing. Hermione had to explain their adventure to Lisa when they were laying in their beds in the evening. Honestly, she didn’t tell her friend the true story, but rather a cover-up story she made up with Harry on the fly, using telepathy.

Unnoticed to the two of them, a student used the evening to explore the castle. No one could stop him, because the teachers were running around the castle, trying to find out, how the troll had gotten in.

He walked down a corridor, in a room, fell and then made his way further.
He found something that no one was supposed to know about, that no one was supposed to find. He thought that it looked shiny and took it with him.

The next morning, everyone seemed to have forgotten, what had happened the last evening. As usually, everyone had breakfast and then went to their classes for the day.
When they visited the site of the battle, everything was cleaned up and the body was vanished. The only reminder of events was the slight disposition of the furniture in the vicinity.

After the Ravenclaws had had Herbology with the Slytherins, Draco decided to annoy Harry.

“Potter”, he spat, “What did you do yesterday in the evening?”
“Well… I ate dinner, I went to bed, I - ”
“Not that! I saw you two sneak off while we were escorted to our common rooms.”
“Oh that: You see… Me and Hermione went out, and searched the troll, because I wanted to die; we found the troll and battled it for a while; I levitated it’s club out of it’s hand; Hermione transformed the club into a two meter long sword. In the end, I stabbed it with the sword.”
“Impossible! A mudblood could never do such a transfiguration.”
“Another possibility is, that I had to go to the toilet and Harry just went with me to protect me from any potential trolls.
You can decide, what you want to believe.”
“I don’t care. Either way, you broke the rules! For that and your attitude towards me, I challenge you to a duel. Tonight, if you want. Wizard’s duel. Wands only – no contact. Midnight all right? We’ll meet you in the trophy room, that’s always unlocked.”

‘Oh crap! What shall we do?’
‘If you can play down your skill, you might want to do it. Winning against him might be a good way to keep everyone away from us.’
‘Change the rules?’
‘Definitely’

“Malfoy, I accept your challenge. I demand a change of rules, however. As tradition dictates, the challenged may set the rules. Here they are:
- None of that midnight business: Tomorrow at one o’clock.
- We will duel in the great hall; a teacher will be the judge.”
He looked around where they stood and saw their charms professor listening to their conversation.
“Professor Flitwick?”, Harry said to the teacher, “Would you please?”
“Of course, Mr. Potter.”
“So, Malfoy, do you accept my rules or are you afraid?”
“Yes? Yes, I do!”

The next day, after Lunch, the charms professor transfigured the Hufflepuff table into a duelling platform. It was two meters wide and twenty meters long. Three meters from the ends, two lines were drawn over its surface, which the duellists were not allowed to cross. The space in between was so long, that it would take a spell exactly one second to traverse it.

Professor Flitwick stepped up at the platform by a small staircase in the middle. He read the exact rules of the duel: “Welcome to the duel between Harry James Potter, the challenged, and Draco Lucius Malfoy, the challenger. The rules are the following:
- No spells may be cast nonverbally.
- No spells may be cast wandlessly.
- No lethal spells.
- Only magical attacks.
- A point is scored by stunning or disarming the opponent.
- The duel shall stop when one of the duellists hits ten points.
- The duel may be stopped by Madam Pomfrey.
- The duel is lost unhonourable when stepping over the line or off the platform.
Note: If you are magically pushed over the edge, it does not count.

Here come the duellists: Harry James Potter of house Potter.“
All non-Slytherin students watching and a few Slytherins, who didn’t like Draco, cheered as he stepped on the wooden stage.
“And Draco Lucius Malfoy of house Malfoy”
This time, only the rest of the Slytherins clapped.

As he stepped back off the platform, professor Flitwick made two big glowing blue zeros appear behind him.
He put his wand on a rune on the side of the platform, which made a force field appear around the contestants.

Harry and Malfoy bowed and Flitwick started the duel.
Draco made the first move.
“Lancia”, he shouted.
Harry easily stepped out of the hex’s way and send his response.
A simple gluing spell aimed at the floor to make Draco’s immovable and a disarming charm, aimed at one of the now stationary feet.
The “0” on Harry’s side changed into a “1”.

After Harry had reversed the spell and Draco had gotten up, he glared at Harry.
“You will pay for humiliating me, Potter!”
He shot out three Lancias towards Harry, who dodged them all, just by laying on his back. Laying on the ground, he shot a very underpowered blasting curse at the floor and levitated the pieces of wood that had come loose to sting Draco’s wand hand. Repeatedly.
The Slytherin tried to wave them away, knocking his wand out of his hand in the process.
Another point was awarded to Harry.

While Draco squished the annoying splinter-inducers, Harry got up and secretly pulled a vial out of his pocket.
Draco went for a different curse this time: He cast a leg locking curse at Harry.
This time, the Ravenclaw decided to have fun and to provide something for the audience to see.
Just before the curse hit him, he made a front flip over it. Obviously, this was completely necessary and definitely not just done to flex.
After he was on the ground again, he threw the potion towards Draco.
The glass shattered and a thick deep purple smoke appeared on the stage.
Through it, Malfoy had no chance to see the muttered “Expelliarmus” heading towards him.
Another point for Harry.

And so, the duel went on after Flitwick had vanished the smoke. Draco shot one of a very limited number of curses at Harry, which he dodged and then responded with a creative attack. In the end, Harry had never used the same way twice and Draco had never managed to hit Harry even once.

Chapter Text

The days following the boys’ duel, Harry was given a few strange looks, as though the others didn’t really know what to think about him and his skill level.
Yes, Harry had tried to hide his skill, but some of his spells were actually not taught until second year.

Over the next few weeks, everyone started forgetting what had happened during the duel, they all must just have assumed that he had learned a few prank spells from someone older than them.

The only student who asked Harry about it was Lisa. As he and Hermione had decided to head to bed after a long day, she intercepted the two.

“Harry, you know that I know that you know more than you pretend to.”
“What if I did? As a fellow Ravenclaw, you should know that learning is one of our goals in school, isn’t it?”
“Yes, of course. But you don’t actually learn more than the rest of us.
In fact, you never practice your spells. You just try it once or twice and then, you just do them.
So I’m sure: you know more than you pretend to. And you’re actually quite terrible at pretending that.”
“Lisa!”, Hermione interjected quietly, “Please don’t talk about that so publicly. Yes, Harry and me both already know everything we will ever learn here, but why and how we know, we can’t tell you. We signed a magical contract on it and our souls would be permanently removed from existence if we breached that contract.”
“What?”, Lisa exclaimed surprised.
“It’s true. And we would appreciate you not telling everyone in the school about our secret.”

The next day, everything seemed perfectly normal. The trio went to breakfast and had a double lesson in potions, one lesson in Theoretical Astronomy and one lesson in Herbology. Then, after lunch, they went to Defense Against the Dark Arts. Or they at least tried to. After waiting in front of the classroom for ten minutes with no professor in sight, Anthony Goldstein went over to the headmaster’s office to find out, where their professor was.

After the headmaster had went over to the classroom and had reassured himself that professor Quirrell was not there, he waved his wand and a blue glowing rectangle appeared.
Harry and Hermione instantly recognised what it was:  It was the direct interface to the wards of the school. There, the headmaster could change the wards to whatever he desired and also find any person inside the wards’ boundaries.
After tapping his wand on some of the runes, a string of text appeared in front of the headmaster, although it was spelled in a way to make in unreadable to anyone except for him. To others, it all seemed like a mess of constantly changing characters.

After he had read the text, the headmaster’s expression showed concern for just a brief second. Nonetheless, he said: “You do not need to worry! Your professor is completely fine, he is just… occupied. Enjoy your free lesson! You do not need to tell others about his absence. He will be there for his next lesson.”

While the students went back to their common rooms, Harry and Hermione discussed what they thought had happened.
‘Mione, do you think what I think?’
‘I think so…’
‘Can we stop Quirrell from getting the stone?’
‘Might be able to. Want to go down there?’
‘Yeah, let’s just try that.’

The two excused themselves from having to go to the Ravenclaw tower by saying that they had to go to the library, but instead, they went to the forbidden corridor on the third floor.

‘Why do you think that Quirrell is getting the stone so early?’, Harry asked Hermione  while they were walking towards the great staircase.
‘How should I know? He must have gotten the information against Fluffy half a year early.’
They came to a stop at the staircase, waiting for the stairs to align so that they would have a clean path.

At the door in the forbidden section, they saw that the door was not completely shut, but rather just slightly ajar. After the two had completely opened the door, Hermione cast a music playing charm which she caused the tuned of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to sound from the tip of her wand.
Then the students waited…
and waited…
and waited…
and waited…
for Fluffy to fall asleep.
Then, they stepped over to the trapdoor, opened it and stepped forward, thus falling down the newly revealed chute.

A quick Lumos Solem took care of the devil’s snare they had landed in.

Then, they came to the room of the floating keys.
“Can we just Accio them?”
“Can’t hurt to try.”
“Accio the key to this door.”
“That did not work. We’ll just have to use the brooms.”
“No. You’ll have to use the broom. I would probably just crash into one of those pillars.”
He mounted his broom.
“You’re not remotely as bad as you think.”

One minute later, the key had been caught and put into the keyhole.
Though the door, the first real obstacle awaited them. The giant chess board.

“Are you good at chess?”
She gave him a scrutinizing glance.
“Honestly? We literally share our memories. You’d know if I were good at chess, because you then would be good at it a as well.”
“So: how about we cheat?”
“What do you mean exactly?”
“Well: We can’t walk over there. But if we flew…”
She facepalmed.
“I can’t believe that we didn’t think of that the last time. Whoever designed this obstacle course must have had no common sense at all.”

All in all, the ‘first real obstacle’ was not so much of a problem, when you could just fly over it.

After walking past the dead troll, they came to the potions riddle.
When Hermione was about halfway through finishing it, Harry pulled her off to the side of the room and quickly cast a notice-me-not charm on the two of them. Although at first startled, she quickly found out why he had done it.

Their DADA professor stepped through the doorway that had previously been filled with black flames and instantly started undoing the purple flames as well.
Once he had done that and he had gone out of the room, they heard the sound of explosions and, judging by the image they saw two rooms before them, Quirrell was letting his apparent anger out at the chess pieces.

They went to the other room either way, but there was nothing there except for the mirror of Erised. Harry looked at the it’s shiny surface, interested in what he would see.
At first, he saw just their reflection, then it shifted to show an older him and an older Hermione, hugging and holding a small child in their arms.
Another two children of maybe four and five years respectively was running around their legs.

He quickly glanced at his classmate and, seeing her also looking fondly in the mirror, he took her hand in his. They stayed this way for almost half a minute, then they forced themselves to get back to work, trying to figure out, what Quirrell had done.

When Harry had tried to get the stone out of the mirror, nothing happened.
Thinking that he had just not tried hard enough, he tried again and failed again.
Then, Hermione cast a spell at the mirror, which in the end told her, that the Philosopher’s Stone no longer was in the mirror.

A quick spell detection charm later, she told Harry that Quirrell had used the exact same spell. It seemed as though the professor had also been unsuccessful in his endeavour, which explained his extreme anger.

Whilst he was walking around the room, trying to find out, what had happened, he noticed, that one corner of the room was no longer in the bounds of Hogwarts’ wards.
After they were reasonably certain that nothing could be learned from this room, they both stepped into this corner, one after the other, and apparated to the surface.

After they had walked back towards the Quidditch pitch and thus  into Hogwarts’ wards, they actually went to the library as they had told their friends almost half an hour before.

The rest of the day passed as usual, the only thing that was slightly unusual was that Professor Quirrell was looking across the great hall as though he was searching for someone. Harry and Hermione suspected that he was trying to find out, who had the stone.

During the next week, they also tried to find out, who had the stone but they were just as successful as Quirrell was; they didn’t find the thief either.

During the next DADA lessons, Quirrell also observed all students carefully and sometimes muttered spells in a foreign language that even Hermione didn’t know.

All of this quietness was broken about one month after the trip down the obstacle course.
At dinner, Quirrell suddenly stood up and drew his wand.
He pointed it at the Gryffindor table, waved his wand and spoke the curse: “Avada Kedavra”

Chapter Text

At dinner, Quirrell suddenly stood up and drew his wand.
He pointed it at the Gryffindor table, waved his wand and spoke the curse: “Avada Kedavra”

As the spell raced towards the third years Gryffindors, time seemed to stop.
Almost all of the students in the great hall were shocked. How could a professor attack their students? Especially with such an dark spell? No one who wasn’t evil could cast it. It made no sense at all, how their timid defence professor could be the one to do it.

Fortunately, not completely everyone was in stupor, one of the Weasley twins managed to cast out a charm that would save a life: “Wingarium Leviosa” A plate rose into the air, colliding with the curse, just before it would have hit it’s target. The plate burst into thousands of tiny shards of porcelain, as it absorbed the energy of the killing curse.
The boy, who had been just moments away from his death, fell off the back of his bench, having fainted.

Harry and Hermione did not notice that however, they were already standing up, letting their cloaks fall off their backs, as they would only hinder them. The two students drew their wands and stepped in the pathway between the Gryffindor and the Ravenclaw table so that they both had a clear view of the high table and especially Quirrell, who was still standing there.

They both returned fire with overpowered Cutting hexes, aimed at his chest. Unfortunately for them, he realized what they were trying to do and ducked behind the table, avoiding the hexes that just cut through the banners hanging behind the teachers.

With surprising agility, the man jumped over the high table and in front of Harry and Hermione. Judging by the length of his leap, he must have used magic because not even a trained athlete could ever jump this far.

Knowing that soon, a battle would emerge, Harry tried to protect the students, while Hermione started distracting the possessed teacher.
He cast an area banishment charm, pushing all students away from the combatants.
Fortunately, none of them were hurt by this action.
Then, he conjured a knife and cut open his palm. With the blood dripping out of the wound, he began drawing runes on the floor of the great hall. Once he was finished, he touched the runic cluster with his wand, pushing magic into it until the ward activated a translucent blue dome with a radius of ten meters appeared.
Strengthened by his sacrifice, it would serve to protect the students from most spells although it couldn’t stop any unforgivable curses.
With that done, Harry healed his cut and joined the battle.

Using their mental connection, the soulmates timed their attacks perfectly. Hermione stood on one side of Quirrell, Harry on the other. This way, he was trapped in a constant crossfire and, if he focussed on attacking either one, he could not see the other, who would just cast a potentially lethal curse at him.

He only saw one option for what to do. Although it would allow his big secret to be revealed, the professor used a small pause in the incoming spells to throw is turban off. The watching students shrieked. Another face, one usually hidden under the fabric, appeared. Some of the wizard raised students recognised whom this face once belonged to:
You-know-who

Quirrell now turned around by a quarter of a full turn and, using his two fields of vision, he responded to both Harry’s and Hermione’s spells. However, he was only one man and he fought against two war veterans with over one hundred years of knowledge.

After he had tried a few Avada Kedavras, he realized that they were useless, as they would just get blocked by a conjured pebble. In response however, the cursed aimed at him were getting more vicious as the duel progressed. The Cutting hexes were getting replaced with Entrail-Expelling Curses and Sectumsempras.

Since he was slowly draining his magic, his counterattacks stopped as he was forced to focus on defensive casting.

After the duel had gone on for a good minute, the shields of the possessed man broke and he was hit by a Lancia, aimed at his heart. Before Harry could even lower the wards he had erected, the former teacher had bled to death.

When the students’ protection had been removed, professor McGonagall was the first to come to her two favourite students.
“Mr. Potter, Mrs. Granger! Are you hurt?”
“No, we are mostly fine. Just a few cuts from exploding stones and Harry has a broken left arm.”
“Nothing to worry about. Who was Voldy trying to kill?”
Hermione and Minerva answered at the same time, causing Harry not to be able to understand anything:
“Nothing to worry about? Honestly, Harry? By that you mean that you are only mostly dead and not completely? I swear: One day, I will kill you myself for such comments!”
“For your information, Mr. Potter, the student who was attacked was Lee Jordan.”

After the two had repeated what they had said, so that Harry could actually understand what they each had said, Madam Pomfrey was called. She would have taken Harry to the Hospital wing to fix up his arm, but Minerva convinced her to just do it here, as the two would have to explain what had happened to the rest of the ‘audience’.

Before that, however professor Babbling came over and asked Harry to explain the ward he had used to protect the rest of the student body.
The teacher was impressed that a first-year student could create such a ward on the fly, while also knowing that there was a battle beginning right behind him.

Because the headmaster started making his way over to where they were, Harry, Hermione and professor McGonagall went over to the still unconscious Lee Jordan, laying next to the Gryffindor bench.

A quick wandless Rennervate took care of the problem that the two Weasleys were trying and failing to solve and soon, Lee was being checked over by Madam Pomfrey.

After the boy had been explained what had happened and he had admitted to having stolen the philosopher’s stone which had been the reason for Quirrell to attack him in the first place, Harry and Hermione decided that they had to talk to the headmaster. After all, they had to talk to him eventually and it was better to talk at a time of their choosing.

Unfortunately, this plan did not work out well. In fact, as Harry’s plans only rarely did.
Right when they were walking past their teacher’s body, lying in a big puddle of his own blood, they heard a disgusting sound from their left.
It sounded as though flesh was ripping and bones were breaking.
Quirrell’s head had started to turn and just kept on turning, so that in the end, Voldemort’s face was on the front of the body.

Although they wanted to look away, Harry and Hermione realised, what was happening:
Voldemort had managed to take over Quirrell’s dead body.

“Professor Babbling! Reactivate the ward!”
Harry hoped that his future teacher would manage to do so. Thus keeping the students save because he could not take his attention away from the dark lord, who was currently standing back on his feet.

His skin had lost all of the colour it had previously had, because now, it was completely bloodless.

“Harry Potter,” the walking corpse spoke, “You dare attack my servant?”
“No! He didn’t attack you. We did!”
“Have you come to battle me again? You do know that you two cannot defeat me, do you? My host had only a fraction of the powers I possess.”
“We, in fact do know that.”
“Now: bow before your final battle.”
Harry looked him in the eyes and said calmly: “No, I don’t think we will.”

BOW!

“Honestly? Imperius? That’s just boring! Come on! Or are you too afraid to fight?”
Just as he said this, the shield surrounding the three combatants flared back to life, now even more reinforced with Harry’s magic and blood and the professor’s magic.

Voldemort started the fight with an Avada Kedavra, launched at and blocked by Harry.
Harry and Hermione responded with an overpowered Bombarda Maxima each.

The battle was way more heated than the one just before.
Voldemort was more magically powerful and knew way more spells than Quirrell did.

No spells were cast verbally anymore, to an outside observer, it would have looked like a bunch of colourful flashing lights, while everywhere around the combatants explosions were going off, although fortunately, the barrier, protection the rest of the castle’s inhabitants was still holding strong.

Meanwhile, professor Babbling was busy construction a new ward around the already existing one. This one would not let any spells out either, but spells could enter the ward nonetheless. She figured that Mr. Potter would have probably been able to create such a ward as well, but he probably had wanted to join the fight as soon as possible.

Mere moments before the runes prodigy was able to power her wand, she was hit in her back by a Cutting hex, fired by Marcus Flint, who was immediately stunned by Daphne Greengrass, who sat a little further down the table, while Madam Pomfrey was coming to aid her colleague.

Inside of the bubble, the brutal fight was still going on.
Voldemort was still spewing out curses like a machine gun and Harry and Hermione were still defending themselves and often also attacking the dark lord back.

However, the two were beginning to be exhausted and Harry made a crucial mistake.
His attention slipped for a brief moment, as he saw his future professor be attacked.
In that moment, one of Voldemort’s Cutting hex hit his left leg, causing a huge gash to appear in his limb.

“Fuck!”
His leg gave out under him, he fell on the rubble covered floor and passed out.

Hermione tried to non-verbally contact him, while stepping in front of him, so that Voldemort couldn’t harm him any further.
‘Are you okay?’
‘What do you expect? I’m bleeding out and currently can only think with the part of my mind that I share with you.’
‘I see what you mean. Should I just get this over with, so that I can get you some help?’
‘That would be greatly appreciated.’

Now fuelled by even more anger at Riddle, she began casting the most deadly spells she had ever learnt during her time as an unspeakable. Feeling that she had nearly depleted her magical core, she tried to draw magical power from Harry’s unconscious body behind her. To her great surprise, it actually worked! She combined the newfound power, her remaining power and her hatred for Voldemort to cast a curse that had never before been cast in this timeline since the times of ancient Rome.

“Alhermond Venfrathious”

The curse caused Voldemort’s body to explode, scattering tiny pieces of flesh all across the dome and over the two Ravenclaws.
From where the man had stood, a black of smoke cloud appeared and circled around the top of the dome.
Hermione however didn’t notice this as she too passed out as she had used all of her magical power and fell on her back, landing halfway across Harry’s bloody legs.

After the ward had once again been brought down and the black smoke had flown out of the great hall’s chimney, Madam Pomfrey walked, again, over to Harry. “Mr. Potter. Can you please stop being injured so often? Twice in a single day is just way too much.”

Chapter Text

A white ceiling.
People, talking in the distance.
By the sounds of it, Headmaster Dumbledore was one of those.

After Harry had regained consciousness, he sat up, still in a kind of haze.
This of course didn’t go unnoticed by the other people in the hospital wing who started to cluster around his bed until they were shoed away by Madam Pompfrey.

“You’re awake! How do you feel?”
“Fine, I just feel a bit dizzy.”
“That is because you still don’t have enough blood in your system. I would have used blood-replenishing potions but you were too magically exhausted and they would have drained your last bit of magic. Now that you are awake, you may take them. Here.”
“Thanks, Madam!”

After the nurse had left, an unwelcome visitor appeared at his bed.
“Professor Dumbledore, why are you visiting?”
“Harry my boy, I just wanted to ask you where you learned to fight like that? Those skills are way beyond a usual first-year student’s skill level.”
“Oh, I just picked a few bits and bobs here and there. I, too, have a question: How did you get the Cerberus, deadly chess pieces, and strangling plant into the school? And how did a dark lord get in as well? Don’t you, as headmaster, have complete control over the wards of the castle?”
“My boy, I’m afraid, you are too young to understand the answers to these questions.”
“But I was old enough to be dropped at the doorstep of my abusive family who treated me like a slave when I was only one year old? I was old enough to have to learn all of the wizarding traditions, all by myself, because my magical guardian didn’t even bother to tell me that magic existed? I was old enough to have to fight a dark lord at the age of eleven, because no one else, except for my twelve-year-old classmate, bothered to care about the students’ wellbeing?”

As he spoke, he got louder and louder, attracting the attention of the other students in the room. One of them, a red-haired Hufflepuff girl who was in Harry’s year, started whispering to the button on her shirt after the boy had finished his rant.

“Harry,” the headmaster replied while shaking, “you surely don’t mean all of that? When you are completely healed, we need to have a thorough conversation about your manners.”

So saying, he left the hospital wing without even letting him reply to his question. The nurse made all of the spectators leave too, emphasising that Harry needed rest.

As soon as the last student had left and Madam Pomfrey had left for her office too, Harry was attacked by a flurry of curly hair.

“Your are awake!”, Hermione exclaimed grinning.
‘You definitely are as well. It feels good to have my body back. Not that I don’t like being in your mind, there is just so much going on there. I have no idea how you deal with that.’
‘I got used to it. I might have to knock myself out one day to experience this too. Seems interesting.’
‘That’s one way of putting it. How long was I out for?’
‘Only two days. I woke up yesterday, but you already know that, do you?’
‘How couldn’t I? Anyways, what are we going to do about the horcruxes?’
‘The one in school, we can get right now, the gaunt shack should be easily found and the one in your scar can be removed by goblin healers. I’m pretty sure that he didn’t corrupt the snake until 1994, so it shouldn’t even exist yet. We can get the one in Grimmauld Place if we ask Sirius to allow us in the houses wards. Do you think that we can send a letter to him? This only leaves us with the diary. I honestly have no idea how to get it.’
‘I would have told you to take time to breath but that’s not necessary. Stupid telepathy, always taking away my lines. But yeah, yes on all accounts. Also, did you see Susan? I think that dinner might be interesting today. If we’re lucky, we won’t have to deal with the old whiskers one for too much longer.’
‘I did see it!’
“Anyway, how are you?”, she continued by actually speaking, “After all, you don’t get a giant cut across your leg every day.”
“I’m fine, the potions made me practically fit again. When I move my leg, it still hurts a bit but it’s not too bad. How are you?”
“Not too bad either. During the fight, predominantly I was physically fine. I was simply magically exhausted.”

It took a lot of convincing but in the end, they managed to be released in order to go the great hall for dinner.

There, once again, action emerged, although it wasn’t nearly as dangerous as it was two days ago.
Instead, five aurors came through the doors of the great hall while the students were enjoying their last plate of food. The magical policemen walked straight up to the high table where the headmaster had already stood up to talk to them.

“Hello, what brings you onto the Hogwarts grounds today?”
“You do.”
The leading auror pulled out a piece of paper and magically made it float before her.
“You, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, are arrested for aiding and abetting child abuse, illegally assuming magical guardianship over a minor, namely Harry James Potter, failing to fulfil these duties, endangerment of magical children in 601 cases, not reporting a dark lord, and more.
Anything you say can and will be used against you in court.
You have the right to remain silent and you have the right for a lawyer.
Will you come with us peacefully?”
“Of course, I will. I’m sure that the Wizengamot can be convinced that all I did was for the greater good.”

As he was put in magic suppression handcuffs and led outside the great hall, murmuring erupted all across the student body.

The next day, before breakfast, Harry and Hermione began the first part of their Horcrux hunt.
They went to the Room of Requirement where they found the diadem within twenty minutes. Once there, Hermione pulled out a basilisk fang out of her beaded handbag and, after overcoming the temptations Riddle promised to her, stabbed the container with it.
All the searching has made the two hungry and they went to breakfast.

There, they were approached by professor McGonagall.
“Good morning, my two students. I suppose you need to go off grounds today to prepare for Dumbledore’s trial?”
“We would love to. Could you accompany us? After all, two first-years can’t really gain access to the information we need.”
“Of course. After all, it’s Saturday, so I don’t even have classes to hold. How about we leave in about an hour?”
“Sounds about good.”

After they had prepared and left the grounds of Hogwarts, all three apparated to the ministry of magic where they went to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and were allowed a meeting with director Bones.

“Good day, Lady McGonagall, heir Potter and Mrs. Granger, I think?”
“Good day to you as well and yes, I am Hermione Granger.”
“What’s your reason for coming here today?”
“A few things. First of all, we wanted to tell you that my godfather, Sirius Black, has been convicted unjustly…”
“What? Dumbles put Siri in prison for nothing? Damn Fudge for blocking my requests for an investigation. Are you all certain? Okay, go on.”
“We are currently trying to find some artifacts created by Voldemort so that he can be finally vanquished. To gain access to one of those, we would need to speak to Sirius. Could you get him transferred here?”
“Of course. Anything else?”

She wrote something on a piece of parchment which folded itself and flew out of the door after being tapped by her wand.

“Maybe you could get a few Unspeakables into Malfoy manor. There, Lucius is hiding a diary by Tom Marvolo Riddle, another one of those devices. They are the most likely to be able to destroy it”
“I could arrange that.”
“One last request: Could you gather as much evidence against Dumbledore as possible? We would really like to see him in Azkaban.”
“It seems like you really don’t like him.“
“No, we do not”, Minerva chimed in, “he has ruined the school. You don’t suppose we can get an auror as substitute teacher since our current DADA professor died.”
“I will see if I can find someone who is willing. You see, most of my men and women don’t really like Hogwarts.”
“I think I know who caused it. Before we go, I have one last question: Why didn’t you order your aurors to arrest Dumbledore earlier?“
“You see, Dumbledore was a big fan of public recognition. By arresting him, when the whole school was watching, he lost a lot of reputation, making it easier to hopefully get him convicted.”
“Oh, I see now!”

A paper airplane flew over to Madam Bones’ desk where it unfolded itself.

“Would you look at that: I’ll give you three guesses, which prisoner has just been put in one of our question rooms, straight from Azkaban.”
“Can we speak to Sirius right now?”
“Of course. I will lead you over there.”

Once inside the room, the four saw a dirty man in a standard prisoner outfit.
“Amy?”, he croaked.
“Yes, it’s me.”

The two guards at the entrance of the room pretended not to notice their director hugging a convict as that would be rather unseemly for her to do, even if the two had been dating before the latter had been imprisoned.

After greeting Harry, Sirius was introduced to Hermione and received a glass of water. He then asked Amelia—despite being a convict, he felt uncomfortable addressing his former girlfriend as "Madam Bones"—why she hadn't gotten him released earlier. She explained that Minister Fudge had blocked all of her requests for a retrial. As Chief Warlock, Dumbledore also did not grant her permission, and since there was no pressing emergency, she had no authority to intervene. However, she considered a trial of a person whose victim he had been as a pressing emergency in order to be able to, at least, interview him.

Then, the four talked about everything that had happened and would be happening, despite them not mentioning the time traveling. Sometime during that conversation, they had been allowed in Grimmauld place.
Unfortunately, it was soon time to leave again, although Amelia did promise to give him a trial right after Dumbledore’s.

Once they had been out of the Ministry of Magic, they went to the goblins at Gringotts.
At her question, Hermione explained to Minerva why they were going there instead of Saint Mungo’s.

“You see, the goblins have looted a lot of tombs in Egypt. These Pharaohs were, in fact, the first creators of Horcruxes. The arithmancy was reworked around 100ad by Hero the Foul. His transformation made them more effective but it now required a human sacrifice. Anyway, there are a lot of early Horcruxes in these tombs. If anyone knows how to remove Harry’s hitchhiker, it’s the goblins.”

As they walked through the front doors, the guards standing there were lifting their spears and saluting them; Harry and Hermione returned the salute.

“Greetings, teller. May your vaults overflow and your enemies die at your blade.”
His traditional greeting caused a whispering to erupt from the other goblins in earshot.
“May your riches be ever increased and the blood of your enemies stain your sword”, he replied. “What is your business at Gringotts today?”
“I wish to get treatment in the goblin hospital, here in Gringotts. I presume that goblin magic can help me with my problem whereas wizarding magic cannot.”
“I assume you know we do not normally offer this service to wizards?”
“Yes, however, this matter is about an evil… thing. Although I won’t say its name, I have directed the bank to another one. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do. He didn’t create more, did he?”
“In fact, he unfortunately did. Now, that Dumbledore is gone, I would like for the other one to be removed, although I won’t name the specifics here where other wizards could hear us.”
“Very well, I assume, you want these two witches to accompany you there?”

At his approval, they went down to the goblin hospital where Harry went through the most painful and most expensive hour of his whole life. Nonetheless, he considered every moment of pain endured and every Galleon spent to be worth it as it allowed him to aid in defeating Riddle.

Now they had only one Horcrux left to destroy. (They had received an owl from the Department of Mysteries that the Horcrux in the diary had been annihilated.) As Minerva stayed in Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour, the two children apparated to where they thought the Gaunt shack would be remembering the approximate location from the memory Harry had seen in his last lifetime.

There, they had to dismantle a ward although it had already lost most of its power so overcoming it was fairly trivial. Once inside, it took only a minute to find the loose floorboard under which they found the ring with the resurrection stone.

The wraith of Riddle was currently floating above Nocturn Alley watching two shady wizards haggle over the price of an amulet.
Then, from one moment to the next, the dark cloud collapsed into a bright pink spark.
Voldemort was dead, never to return again.

After joining back up with Minerva, the three apparated back to Hogwarts.
There, the rest of the week was fairly normal.
Although they went to classes like normal, they both had to visit the hospital wing each day so that Madam Pomfrey could ascertain that their injuries were healing correctly.

The only weird part was talking to their classmates who, of course, wanted to know how they got all of their skills. Over the week, they got pretty used to explaining it to the students coming up with a solid cover story in the process.
The only person who was told the truth was Lisa. After all, they had promised it a while ago.

Then Friday rolled around. Finally, it was time for Dumbledore’s trial, the time when they could hopefully get rid of the second pain in Harry’s life.
After breakfast, they left school accompanied by Professor McGonagall.

Once again, they made their way to the ministry although they didn’t go to the DMLE this time. Instead, they went to the lowest floor of the underground building, to courtroom ten.

When the session began, Amelia stepped up to the lectern and called out
“This is the criminal trial of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.
As he usually is Chief warlock, I request nominees for the position of temporary Chief warlock.”
Cyrus Greengrass of the grey faction in the Wizengamot won the vote and was awarded the position.
“The charges”, Amelia continued, “are aiding and abetting child abuse, illegally assuming magical guardianship over a minor, namely Harry James Potter, by not fulfilling the wills of Lily and James Potter although you were witness to them, failing to fulfill these duties, endangerment of magical children in 601 cases, not reporting a dark lord, and unjustly imprisoning the heir of an ancient house, namely Sirius Orion Black.
What do you have to say in your defense?”

APWBD put to trial and sent to Azkaban.

By Rita Skeeter
Yesterday, at 10am, the (former) headmaster of Hogwarts, Supreme Mugwump and Chief Warlock Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore was tried for, amongst others, child abuse, ignoring the last wishes of the Potters, and more than six hundred cases of child endangerment. During questioning under Veritasium influence, he also revealed that he actually had had a romantic relationship with Gellert Grindelwald!
(more details on page 3⅘)

Lord Black sent free.

By Rita Skeeter
Sirius Orion Black, heir to the noble and most ancient house of Black, was released from unlawful imprisonment in Azkaban. The newly confirmed Lord Black had been imprisoned without a trial and is thus entitled to ten years' worth of salary as well as compensation for the lost time. As soon as he was able to, he announced that Harry Potter, his godson, should be his heir.
(more details on page 3⅞)

Muggles to be tried by Wizengamot.

By Rita Skeeter
The two muggles V. and P. Dursley as well as their son D. Dursley are going to be tried by the Wizengamot. APWBD had placed young Harry Potter there after his parents’ death. During the following years, he was beaten and forced to do more manual labour than what is healthy for someone his age. More information is suspected to be revealed during the trial.

‘I can’t believe that Skeeter actually wrote something nice about you for once!‘
‘Neither can I, Hermione. Neither can I.’
‘So now, we are just supposed to have a normal teenage experience? I think I would need a bit of help with that. My last time, I didn’t really experience a year without any kind of extremely life-threatening situations. Won’t it get boring otherwise?’
‘Please don’t finish that thought… Otherwise, fate will throw a wrench in all such plans and suddenly give us another dark lord to deal with.’
‘Where should another come from? With Minnie as headmistress, all bullying based on blood status will hopefully be prevented at its roots. And all older blood purists have had their reign cut off in the Wizengamot. I think that we are safe for good.’
‘I could see many ways for one to come up but I won’t give fate any inspiration…’

Their nonverbal conversation was interrupted by Emma’s comment to Daniel:
“Isn’t it cute how they don’t realize they are a couple?”
“This is”, Hermione replied, “because we, in fact, are not a couple!”
‘At least officially.’
‘Prat’

(To be continued… Hopefully.)