Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As Harry stared Voldemort in the face for one final time, he didn’t fear death. In its place fostered a morose guilt. That he’d be leaving everyone.

That he’d be leaving Ron and Hermione.

Blinding green fills his vision, and they’re the last desperate, clinging thought in his mind— don’t take them away.

The very next sensation is a thudding, sharp pain in his forehead. But it’s not his scar. Something rough and solid and strangely real had collided with his head, and he opens his eyes to a cramped cupboard that has him squinting in the dark. He doesn’t need to see, though; he’d recognize the terribly familiar scent of dust and rough wooden floorboards anywhere.

“Up, up!” Aunt Petunia’s shrill voice cuts through his confusement, and a kick on his little door sends spiders and dust rattling off of the stairs. “Up, you lazy dunce! Honestly…”

Harry rubs his eyes, grapples for his glasses, all while his mind races beyond measure. This is the afterlife? Not heaven, because being anywhere near Pivot Drive again cannot be heaven. But if this is hell, then it’s rather mundane.

“Get up!” She shrieks, and the cupboard door threatens to fall off of its hinges. An all too familiar lump forms in his throat, one that Hermione had once looked so heartbroken about when he’d described it to them.

“Coming!” he calls in his squeaky eleven year old voice, muffled with sleep and bemusement.

As he’s scrubbing away at dirty dishes, the sponge in his hands too large and the sink far taller than he’s used to, Harry tries desperately to grasp at a sense of reality.

The water trickling down his elbows is hot, and the ceramics solid on his skin, and when he pauses to pinch the back of his hand, it hurts. It’s safe to say he’s alive, at least for now. How, though, is anyone’s guess. Hermione might know.

And that’s another thing: Hermione. Ron. There’s nothing to suggest that they remember anything, nor that they even exist. A small, doubtful part of him thinks it might have all been some insane dream. He pushes it to the farthest corner of his mind, because a world without those two is not a world he wants to live in. He aches for the distance stretched between them.

“The mail, boy.” Uncle Vernon’s dangerous grumble startled him from his reverie. He knows this. Vaguely, but how could he ever truly forget? Harry scrambles to dry his hands, only one thought on his mind: that envelope, sealed with the Hogwarts symbol.

It’s all he can do not to run outside, and there it is, insurmountably more beautiful than he’d remembered.

And just like the time before, it’s gone from his grasp almost as quickly as it had come. He lets it happen; there’s no use in fighting his aunt and uncle, not as a malnourished eleven year old who has not yet gotten hold of a wand. And anyway, he needs Hagrid to take him to Diagon Alley. He sees no reason to change the course of events just yet.

He watches as Uncle Vernon grows redder and Aunt Petunia more frantic with each letter, and this time doesn’t even need to argue. It’s almost laughable, if he hadn’t spent the days leading up to Hagrid’s visit in a flurry of emotions.

So many people haven’t been killed yet. Dumbledore, Cedric, Snape, Fred, Lupin, Sirius. God, Sirius is still in Azkaban, isn’t he? Harry won’t let them die again— he can’t. He spends nights staring at the bottom of the stairs in his cupboard, wracking his brain for ideas. Some outlandish, some crazy enough that they just might work.

The night Vernon drags them out to that frankly horrifying cabin— did he really think being out here on a precarious rock in the middle of a storm was better than being safe at home with a magic letter?— Harry’s giddy with excitement, but also, strangely, anxiety.

He lets it play out exactly the same as before, letting Hagrid find out just how little he knew of the wizarding world and flip on Petunia and Vernon. This time, he’s calm enough to appreciate the sight of Dudley with a pig tail and Vernon’s red faced outrage.

At Diagon Alley, he finds Hedwig exactly where she’d been all that time ago. His heart leaps in his chest, and he leaves the store with the biggest grin he’s had in years. Hagrid laughs, jovial, and delighted to have made the boy so happy.

At Platform 9 and ¾, he finally finds who he’s been waiting for. The Weasley’s red hair is visible from anywhere.

“Now, what’s the platform number?” The last time he’d seen Mrs. Weasley, she’d been hunched over her son’s body, wracked with grief. And now, seven years earlier, her hair is significantly less gray, and the wrinkles around her pinched brows softened.

“Nine and three quarters!” Ginny supplies helpfully, her face still round with baby fat and shining with eagerness. “Mum, why does Ron get to go without me? It’s not fair!”

“Oh, chin up, Ginny, you’ve only got another year’s wait.”

“Right,” either Fred or George grins down at her. “Not to worry, Gin. We’ll send you a Hogwarts toilet seat!”

That brightens her considerably, though Mrs. Weasley quickly snaps, “You’ll do nothing of the sort. Now, in you go! Percy first.”

Harry watches each Weasley child filter through, until it’s only Ron left.

“Um, excuse me.” He goes to tap her shoulder, voice young and meek. “Do you have any idea how to get to Platform 9 ¾?”

Naturally, she softens to see him. “Your first year, isn’t it? It’s Ron’s first year, too.”

She pulls him up, and Harry could cry right then and there, because it’s Ron, it’s really Ron, and he hasn’t seen his best friend in months, and it takes every ounce of will in his body not to bound forward and pull him close, close enough to feel his heartbeat and his chest rise and fall and know he’s really alive, that they’re both really alive.

Ron only stares, in what he can only assume is an “I just met Harry Potter” type stare, and yet his eyes don’t linger for even a moment on his forehead.

That’s the first sign. Harry doesn’t want to believe it; the fact he’d miraculously come back with all of his memories was difficult to believe, but to think Ron knew too? He couldn’t risk being wrong. Couldn’t risk getting his hope crushed. Instead he holds out his hand, and forces his voice not to strain. “Hi. I’m Harry.”

Ron takes it, gripping tighter than he maybe needs to be. He’s almost dazed. “Ron Weasley.”

“Alright now, Ronald, you go first. Show Harry here how it’s done.” The moment’s broken as quickly as it had come, with Mrs. Weasley rushing Ron through the wall. “Your turn, dearie. Best to go at a bit of a run if you’re nervous.”

The moment he steps through, the charcoal smell of train tracks and the chatter of loving goodbyes hits him all at once. Ron is nowhere to be found, and so he settles on going to put away his luggage.

“Need a hand?” He’s pretty sure it’s Fred who had asked— bloody hell, he’d taken George’s lost ear for granted; it had made differentiating the two easy. He nods, grateful. The two are lifting the impossible weight of his luggage from his arms with perfect ease. Being eleven again and severely malnourished can be frustrating at times. “I’m George Weasley, that’s Fred.”

So it is Fred, then. They’d only ever called themselves by the other’s name. He smiles, despite himself. “I’m Harry Potter.” That stops them in their tracks.

“Harry Potter?” George gapes, dumbfounded.

“Like, the Harry Potter?”

“Are you sure?”

“Blimey, he’s got the scar and everything!”

Harry only rolls his eyes. The disbelief has long since gotten old. “Uh, yeah, I’m pretty sure I know my name.”

“Woah.” Somehow, they’re too shocked to even finish each other’s sentences.

Harry, content with leaving them to let it sink in, grins cheerfully, taking Hedwig’s cage up in his arms. “Well, thanks for the help! See you on the train!” He’s still got Ron and Hermione to find, anyway. The very thought fills him with nerves and has him bounding up the train steps.

He glances in every compartment, restless energy gnawing in his stomach. Finally, Ron’s. He’s sitting alone, looking rather forlorn for a new first year. His head snaps up as soon as the door slides open, with a kind of cautious speed that Harry convinces himself he’s looking too much into.

“Oh, Harry,” he deflates, relieved. “It’s you.”

“Don’t know anyone else here,” Harry mumbles, sliding into the seat beside him, with Hedwig’s cage opposite. The nagging urge to get as close as he can get to Ron is all consuming.

“Yeah,” Ron mutters, taking furtive glances at the compartment window. “My brother Percy’s in the prefect compartment, and I’m sure Fred and George are already out there finding ways to cause trouble.”

Harry’s almost certain, now, that Ron knows. The compartment falls into awkward silence, and both boys pretend to watch the scenery outside fly by. It’s this strange game they’re playing, one that Harry isn’t really even sure Ron knows of. Maybe he’d been remembering it wrong, that Ron had really been this quiet on their first day. Or maybe something else had happened to subdue him. The thing was, Harry couldn’t be sure. And he couldn’t bear the thought of being wrong about this.

The compartment door swings open without warning, making both boys jump. Harry’s hand instinctively flies for his wand, but then, to his utmost delight, it’s—

“Hermione,” they say in unison, barely a breath. And he hadn’t meant to say it, he really shouldn’t know her name yet and he ought to keep his head on straight, but all at once her tensed shoulders drop, and her face falls. The door slams shut behind her and she’s falling into the two, pulling them close into a haze of bushy hair.

She clings, like a lifeline, buries her head in their shoulders and shakes with sobs. There’s no what if this time— she knows. He looks over at Ron, and there’s tears welling up in his eyes, and he knows.

And there’s no words to describe this kind of relief, this kind of desperation. All Harry and Ron can do is stare, at each other and at Hermione, wedged between them, still wracked with sobs. Her cries are silent, save for each sucked in breath, which she takes from the air like it’s choking her. He can feel her chest rise and fall desperately, her nails digging into the back of his shirt.

He pulls his arm out from the entanglement of limbs, and carefully drapes it around her shaking form. And Ron does the same, rubs her back and lets his knuckles brush up against Harry’s.

When her grip on them only grows tighter, and her breathing more erratic, he knows she won’t calm down on her own.

“Breathe, ‘Mione. In and out. We’ve got you.” He looks over to see Ron’s red rimmed eyes, and he knows his own voice is thickened with tears.

Eventually, her shoulders aren’t shaking so much, and she pulls back, rubbing her eyes furtively and staring like they’ll disappear if she looks away.

Then, she shoves them both.

“You idiots!” she hisses, the sentiment somehow not distilled by her round, eleven year old face or her stuffy voice. “You absolute imbeciles! No calls? No letters? I thought I was alone!”

“I thought it was just me,” Ron answers, sheepish.

“Me too,” Harry replies only for Hermione to turn on him.

“And you!” even watery, her eyes flash dangerously. “Where were you? One minute you’re there, and the next you’re not, and me and Ron are shouting for you, and then we’re separated, and— God, Harry, we thought you’d died!”

In a small voice, Harry admitted, “Actually, I did.”

Ron pipes up in an even smaller voice. “Someone got me. Dunno who— just saw that awful green light, then I’m in my bed at home, all sweaty and screaming.” He looked positively ill. “You know who got to me first? Fred.”

Now, Hermione’s face has grown pale. “Me too. It was a misfire, I think. It didn’t— didn’t even kill me, not right away. I bled out, in the end.”

Harry sighs, woefully resigned. His eyes bore into the floor, preferring very much not to meet their eyes. “I’m the last Horcrux. When Voldemort killed me, he got rid of it.”

The two can only stare at him, pale and scared. It aches to see his best friend’s young faces so haunted. Hermione is the first to speak. “So, does that mean—?”

“I need to die. Again.” His throat is uncomfortably dry and tight.

“We won’t let it happen,” Hermione declares, and even through its impossibility, she says it in such a tone that you have to believe her. “We’ll— I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”

“So,” Ron sucks in a breath. “We all died?”

“I suppose so,” Hermione falls back into her seat between them, looking rather put out at the prospect.

“But we’re not anymore,” Harry says, stubborn. “And everyone else isn’t, either. We can fix this. We just need to—“

The compartment slides open for a third time, making all three nearly jump out of their skin. In the doorway stands Neville, all teary eyed and small. It’s amazing to think how small they’d been, with soft, round cheeks and the lack of the weight of the world on their shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” he starts, looking indeed rather regretful for startling them. They’re all too well aware of how strange this must look: the three of them huddled into one seat when there’s a perfectly good one just across them, faces all puffy and red and scared. “Have you seen a toad? I’ve lost mine.”

Harry opens his mouth to say no, sorry, but Hermione’s already melting into a smile. “Neville, right? Come on, I’ll help you look.”

The very moment she steps out, Harry can already feel the tension return to his shoulders. It’s just that he’d spent the last year with these two, always by his side, always in arm’s reach. And the last few weeks without them have been nothing short of hell, and maybe it’s melodramatic— no, it definitely is— but a part of him leaves with her.

“You really think we can do this?” Ron turns to him, haunted in the way that only the three of them will ever be able to understand. “All over again?”

“We’ll make it,” Harry says, hoping that having the audacity to believe it might be enough. “We always do.”

Chapter Text

Ron wakes up screaming.

His death hadn’t been glorious, or even dramatic. No, he was one in hundreds of bodies that littered the Hogwarts grounds, a mere number in the staggering death toll. The spell hit him before he even knew what was happening, before Hermione even noticed him slip from her grasp.

He wakes up throwing the covers off of him, reaching for a wand that isn’t there. But he’s not in Hogwarts, and he’s far from the battle that had been raging on not moments ago. He’s… at home. struggling under the nauseating orange bed sheets that he’d remembered to be far more ragged.

“Ron?” George’s head peaks through his door— or maybe Fred’s? But it couldn’t be, and anyway his ear is still attached— and his voice is tinged with worry. An identical face pushes through the doorway. No missing ear. Neither one of them dead.

But that’s not true, because he had seen it. He’d seen the color drained from Fred’s face, felt his hand cold and stiff.

“What’s the matter with you?” This one’s Fred— he’d always been quicker to catch onto these kinds of things. Ron takes one look at his face, years younger, and fuller, and alive, somehow, blessedly alive.

“Fred,” Ron breathes, barely above a whisper, and before he knows it he’s hurling himself into Fred’s arms, nearly knocking him and George over in the process, but none of that matters because it’s Fred, and he’s alive and warm and there’s not a single spec of dirt or blood on his cheeks. “Fred!”

There’s footsteps now, frantic, and his mother is there, closely followed by the rest of his family. Hadn’t they been fighting, just moments ago? He hides his face in Fred’s shoulder and tries very hard to stop shaking.

“What’s wrong with him, mum?” Ginny’s voice comes out high and wary, scared not in the haunted way she’d been before, but in an uncertain, childish way. Ron realizes, with a jolt, that he’s younger, too; he’s shorter than the twins again, and small enough to hide in Fred’s arms.

He peeks out to see his whole family watching him, concern written all over their faces. Ginny’s face is round and her cheeks are still rosy with youth, and his mother’s hair isn’t nearly as gray as it once was, the wrinkles around her brows having smoothed over. Percy, too, looks younger, not nearly as burdened.

He’s in the past. Which sounds impossible, but it’s happened before. Then again, the hours that Hermione’s Time Turner had given them in their third year has nothing on the years he’d gone back.

“I… had a nightmare,” he mumbles, because everyone is looking at him expectantly, and what else is he supposed to say? That he’d died in war and come back years later, where everything was still okay?

(Speaking of which— he still isn’t quite sure when this is, leaving for a rather disorienting situation.)

“This is nice and all, Ronniekins, but you’ve got the wrong twin. That over there’s Fred.” This, however, is only confirmation that he’s got the right twin; Fred and George only ever called themselves by the other’s name.

“Stop that,” Ron snaps, and only clings to Fred tighter. He’s seventeen and far too old to be hiding in his big brother’s arms like a baby, but the war had proven to him how quickly any moment like this could be taken away. And anyway, they don’t need to know the truth.

“Huh.” He and George share a look of bemusement, before adding, with a grin, “You know, Ron, I think your Hogwarts envelope came in the mail today, if you care.”

It’s supposed to make him feel better. And if he were eleven, it would cheer him up, so he rubs his eyes and tries to smile. “Really? Can I see?”

“Oh! Oh! I’ll get it!” Ginny’s already bounding down the stairs, definitely more excited at the prospect than he is. He wills himself not to cry anymore, if only to relieve the tension in the room. At least now he knows when this is.

The summer that passes by is a blur, a combination of both ease and incredible difficulty. Gone are the nights spent on watch duty, or the long days on the move. He has as much food as he needs on the table, every day, without even having to steal for it, unless you count fighting Ginny for the last cookie.

He’s not a soldier anymore. Not at risk of dying with every turn. But it still follows him. Every night, he steals his father’s wand to cast a quick Muffliato on his bedroom, so it’s not an alarm when he wakes up screaming, which happens far more often than it probably should.

But quite possibly the worst part about it is the absence of Harry and Hermione by his side. Every mealtime he thinks of Harry, left hungry at Pivot drive, and whenever his dad rambles on about the rubber duck and the phellytones, he thinks of Hermione and the little Polaroid she kept on her, with her parents smiling big and motionless.

Every night, he stares up at his ceiling and tries, desperately, to fall asleep without the sound of their breathing nearby. And it’s torture. The distance seems to stretch like an impossible chasm between them.

Harry had told them, before, what the Dursleys’ house was like. On those long nights in the Gryffindor commons room, huddled up close to the fireplace, Harry used to whisper horrible stories as though it were an admittance of guilt. While Hermione would get silent and teary eyed, Ron seethed with righteous anger. That was his best mate in those stories, and Harry hadn’t done a thing to deserve what had happened to him.

To think he’s suffering that same fate now, while Ron sits perfectly comfortable in his safe, loving home, is downright torturous at best.

“Ron, dear,” his mother startles him from his thoughts one day at dinner, a sort of desperate strain in her voice. “Aren’t you hungry? I made your favorite.”

He looks down to a full plate. More than he’d ever eaten on any given night on the run, which he really shouldn’t be thinking about anymore; that life is long behind him.

It’s also far more than he knows Harry is getting right now. A little voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Hermione is telling him that he really should just eat, Ron. And he misses her, and he misses them both like a phantom limb. And he’d thought that the weight in his chest would go away after it was all over, but it’s only ever gotten worse, and he can’t quite remember a time where it was just normal.

“Ron?” Everyone at the table is watching him now. Even Fred and George have gotten quiet. He can’t pretend to be eleven years old and carefree, at least not tonight. Tonight is impossibly suffocating in a way only two people would ever understand. And, well, he isn’t even sure they would anymore.

“I’m really tired, Mum,” he feigns a yawn and pushes his plate back. “Can I save this for tomorrow?”

“Of course, dear, but—“

“Right, then,” he stands up a little too suddenly, but makes up for it with a toothy grin. “‘Night, Mum!”

He can feel their eyes on the back of his head as he bounds up the steps. But no matter, because the tightly wound tension in his shoulders is already easing into a bone deep exhaustion.

He finds himself staring at his chess board, not particularly enthralled in the game, but rather by his own thoughts.

The first time, the war had ended in death. So much of it. He thinks of sitting next to that damned radio every night, praying to whatever deity exists out there that they wouldn’t hear a familiar name. He thinks of the nights they did hear someone they recognized, how Harry pointedly avoided their gaze and Hermione’s face got all pale. He thinks of the bodies he’d stepped around for those hours of the battle he’d been alive for.

And he can’t let that happen again. He won’t. Ron Weasley has seven years to stop this war before it can even begin. It’s an impossible task, especially for an eleven— or seventeen? It’s complicated, he supposes— year old, but Ron is nothing if not a strategist.

Six Horcruxes. The dairy, they’d take care of in their second year. After rescuing Sirius, they’d find Slytherin’s locket in Grimmauld Place. As for Hufflepuff’s—

“Ronald?” Somehow, he doesn’t hear the footsteps and nearly jumps out of his skin when his door creaks open to Percy’s apologetic form standing just outside. Internally, he chastises himself for letting his guard down in such a way, despite the safety he knows the Burrow provides. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to give you a scare.”

“It’s alright,” he whispers, eyes trained on the chess board in front of him. It’s weird to have Percy at home again. Not necessarily bad; he’d never forget the way his mother cried in his absence. But every once in a while, Ron thought of what he’d be doing years in the future, and can it be helped that he’s a little resentful?

Percy walks right up and sits opposite of him, as though it were that easy.

Maybe it is that easy. Being normal. Speaking to your family like there isn’t years of distance between you and them. Not being horribly codependent on your two best friends. Maybe he’d do well to remember that.

“Mum’s worried, you know.” I’m worried too, is left unsaid, hanging trepidatious in the air between them. Ron, anxious for something to do with his hands, starts to rearrange the chess pieces.

“I know.”

“And, you know— sometimes it helps to… talk about these things?” Percy suggests, looking very much like he’d rather be holed up in his room than here trying to pry information out of Ron.

But he’s trying. Which is more than his past self could say. (Then again, Ron had never been very observant as a child.)

“I’m scared,” he admits, inadvertently curling in on himself. He’s desperate for someone to understand. “I thought Fred died.”

But he hopes Percy never understands this. He hopes none of them ever understand what it’s like to look around at your brothers, so young and fragile and free, and know that it’s your responsibility to fix this.

“I don’t want anyone to die,” he whispers, quiet because his voice will break if it’s anything more. In the corners of his vision, Percy’s face falls.

“Oh, Ron, it was just a dream.” It really wasn’t, but he can appreciate the sentiment. “We’re perfectly safe here at home. Mum makes sure of that. And you’ll be just as safe with us at Hogwarts, okay?”

“Yeah.” Ron manages a strained smile. Percy’s words are even emptier than he realizes, but, well, he’s never truly grown out of needing his brother. “Thanks, Perce.”

“Of course.” Percy reaches to ruffle his hair as he stands up, an affectionate gesture that Ron rarely got from him. Just before leaving, he turns and pauses. “Goodnight, Ron.”

“Goodnight, Percy.”

September 1st could not have come sooner. All around him, Muggles push their way through a crowded King’s Cross. Ginny is tugging on their mother’s sleeve, her mouth moving a mile a minute, and Ron ignores them in favor of looking for Harry.

“Um, excuse me.” That voice has Ron nearly straining his neck with how fast he turns.

There he is. Harry Potter, seven years younger than the last time they’d met. His glasses are still held precariously together with a scrap bit of tape. Ron remembers admiring the ingenuity of it the first time; his mother would have simply put it back together with a wave of her wand.

He’s looking up at Mrs. Weasley, smiling shyly and asking for directions. Ron’s legs are carrying him without his own volition, and then he’s being ushered forward to Harry.

Harry falters then, if only for a fraction of a second, and when he holds out his hand it’s already shaking. Ron wonders, vaguely, if he remembers. But it’s too much to hope for, and Harry’s smiling big now, so that you can see the empty space where one of his teeth is growing in. And he’s waiting.

Ron grasps his hand and tries to match his smile. Mrs Weasley all but pushes him through to Platform 9 ¾, and he loses Harry once more in the crowd.

After asking Percy to keep an eye on Scabbers while he looked around— he hadn’t been able to stomach being around that damned rat any longer— Ron finds a lone compartment, in hopes that Harry will come find him. He doesn’t feel much like talking to anyone else anyway. Fred and George try and fail to bring him out to go look at Lee’s tarantula. Even after facing many more nefarious creatures, Ron could just never get over those spindly little monsters.

Harry does find him, though Ron could’ve sworn he didn’t look nearly as tired, nor as forlorn as this on their first first day.

His suspicions are confirmed when Hermione appears breathless in the doorway, and they unanimously say her name.

She barrels into them, crumpled in their arms, all pretense of normalcy forgotten. And Ron is so, so relieved, because there’s absolutely no way he’d have been able to do this by himself.

Harry whispers something soothing into her ear, and Ron rubs circles into her back, throat too tight for words.

The ride to Hogwarts is the first time in… well, the first time in a very long time that he feels at peace. They stay in that quiet compartment for a long time before going to find Fred and George, who have thankfully already put away the tarantula. They try, unsuccessfully, to get Percy out of the prefect compartment, and eventually settle for sitting with Neville and a few other first years.

“My gran wants me to get Gryffindor, but I think they’re gonna put me in Hufflepuff.” Neville looks glumly down at Trevor. Hermione had helped him look until eventually giving up and summoning him while no one was looking. “What about you guys?”

“One of the older boys told me you’ve got to fight a dragon to get Sorted,” Seamus whispers like it’s a secret. Neville blanches.

“Oh, it’s nothing like that,” Hermione says hurriedly, because Neville looks close to vomiting. “You just put on a hat, and it’ll tell you.”

“Woah,” Lavender’s eyes go wide. Evidently, Hermione’s made a much better impression than the time before. “How’d you know that?”

“Oh! I read about it. In one of our books.” Hermione’s hands fly up to her hair, pressing the strands between her fingers, a nervous gesture that’s so Hermione that it actually aches.

By the time they reach Hogwarts, the sun is already dipping under the Black Lake. Harry, Ron, and Hermione pile onto a single boat, knees pressed close and peering into the water below.

“This is nice,” Hermione whispers and nudges them both. Harry’s breathing slow and deep in a way Ron hadn’t even realized he’d stopped doing.

He grins. This is nice. Sure, they’ve got the entire Wizarding world to save— but right now he’s huddled in a little boat with his best friends, and the cool evening breeze is biting at his fingers, and they can take this night for themselves, surely. One night to be eleven or seventeen or whatever they are now. One night to be Harry and Ron and Hermione, and nothing else besides that.

When the Sorting Hat is placed on Ron’s head for a second time, he isn’t nearly as nervous. He’s one of the last few to go; Harry and Hermione are already waiting for him in Gryffindor.

“Quite a situation you’ve found yourself in, eh?” Somehow, Ron isn’t even surprised by the hat’s strange omniscience. “Six Horcruxes. One of whom being the very boy you’d sworn to save.”

We’ll make it work, Ron thinks back stubbornly.

“That’s quite some ambition there.” If he didn’t know better, he might have said there was a smile behind the Sorting Hat’s words. “I never took you for a Slytherin.”

Ron internally groans, and the Hat continues on, this time in a hushed whisper. “You shouldn’t have died. Neither you nor the girl. Still, you’re very lucky to have a second chance. Don’t let this one go.”

Neither you nor the girl. What about Harry? Before he can further question, the word “GRYFFINDOR!” explodes from his head.

“Well done, Ron.” Later, at the feast, Percy claps his shoulder, pleased even though he really hadn’t done anything besides put a hat on his head.

Still, he grins. Hermione and Harry press against him on either side, and Harry eagerly shovels food onto his plate, clearly famished. Across from them, a disgruntled Nearly Headless Nick earns a round of “oohs” and “aahhs” by tugging his head off.

Meanwhile, a gaggle of children, mostly first and second years, but a few older students as well, form around them, desperate to meet the famous Harry Potter.

Immediately, he’s bombarded with questions, ranging from “What’s your favorite color?” to heavy hitters like “Do you remember your parents at all?” Ron’s seconds away from telling them to back off before Harry shoots him a warning look.

“Yes, my scar is real, and no, you can’t touch it, sorry,” Harry tells an overeager Susan Bones before turning back to his food.

Ron glares. “Why do you put up with them, anyway? Seriously, just say the word and I’ll get them to go away.”

Harry merely shrugs. “I’m hoping they’ll leave me alone if I answer all their questions. Besides, they got over it the first time, didn’t they?”

Hermione looks affronted by his flippant mention of their… situation, per say, but the chatter of rambunctious children and the clinking of hundreds of utensils drown them out.

“Ron, you aren’t going to go picking fights with a bunch of children just for being curious,” Hermione sighs. “Even so, Harry, you don’t need to answer all their questions if you’re not comfortable. They’ll get over it.”

Ultimately, Percy herds them off, muttering something disgruntled, and Ron shoots him a grateful smile in return.

Later, after the first years are taken up to Gryffindor tower, Harry and Ron bid Hermione goodnight and separate into their own rooms.

The boys get ready for bed quietly and contented, having had their fill of conversation during dinner. Neville sets a potted plant by his bed, and Ron smiles to remember that it had sat there though all six years.

Then the lights are off, and everyone falls asleep rather quickly, exhausted from a long trip and a hearty meal.

Everyone except Ron. Instead he stares up at the dark ceiling, wide awake. He remains like this for a long, long time.

“Harry?” He’s half expecting not to get an answer. Seamus is snoring on the other side of the room, and across from him Neville’s expression is slack and peaceful.

A wavering voice emerges from somewhere nearby. “She’s fine, Ron. She’s just in the other room.”

They’d slept in that tent together every night for a year. Among the death and tragedy and numbing adrenaline, Ron had grown accustomed to falling asleep to the sound of their breathing. He hasn’t slept the same in a long time. Not having them within arm’s reach just doesn’t feel right.

“Yeah,” he whispers, if only to convince himself. His throat feels very dry. “It’s fine. She’s okay.”

The exchange dies, but he knows Harry’s not asleep yet. He can hear it in his breathing.

Ron’s nearly going to give up with sleep when the door creaks open. In the light stands Hermione, the fabric of her pajamas bunched up in her fist, looking quietly embarrassed.

“I can’t sleep.” Ron realizes, not for the first time, that no one else would ever understand this. A devastatingly lonely sentence.

But Harry and Hermione understand. He watches relief wash over their faces, and well, isn’t that what this is all about? Here, falling asleep with his best friends is a matter of choice rather than circumstance.

It isn’t nearly as lonely here as he once believed.

Chapter Text

Hermione is fucked. Totally, irrevocably fucked.

And it’s all Ron’s fault. Ron, for insisting they dropped everything in lieu of finding Harry. And maybe a little Harry’s fault, for being absolutely impossible to find.

“Harry!” Now she’s lost them both in the chaos. Besides her, someone screams, a guttural sound. She steps around Collin’s dead body and thinks she’s going to be ill.

Just keep fighting. Just keep fighting. Keep fighting, because there are people counting on her. Because Harry and Ron are counting on her. Her next spell hits a cloaked Death Eater squarely in the chest.

Just keep fighting, but all around her lay the kids she saw in the halls between periods, and the one Ravenclaw boy she used to see curled up in the library every day is now crumpled lifeless on the ground, and it could just as easily have been Ron, Ginny, Harry—

It’s a misfire, ultimately, that gets her. Someone’s desperate attempt at survival sends sparks flying the wrong way. Hermione screams and clutches her side. Her hands come back hot and sticky and red.

Somehow, she staggers into a wall. Her knees give out and she sinks to the ground. Something in her stomach tears with each movement. She grits her teeth.

Everything is… loopy now. And distant. So distant, in fact, that she can scarcely hear the war raging on right in front of her. Another kid drops. She took Arithmancy with him last year. He lended her his notes once, when she was ill. Now he’s dying.

Oh, she thinks blearily. I’m dying.

She tries to adjust herself and makes a strangled noise in between a scream and a whimper. There’s blood all over the stone now, all over her hands, and then in her hair when she pushes it away from her face.

The gash on her stomach is burning hot, too hot. She wills herself not to look down, unable to stomach it.

The weight of the world is heavy on her. So heavy, in fact, that she can no longer lift her arms to press against the wound. She slumps over, horribly dizzy.

“Hermione!” Someone’s screaming for her, but the sound is underwater and far too distant for it to be any of her business. Ginny’s face wavers in her vision like a mirage. She’s crying. Is Hermione crying, too? She can’t tell. Her face is all hot, like she’s been sitting right in front of the common room fire.

“Hermione! No— please—“ What had she been doing? Finding Harry… she’s got to go find Harry. But her eyes are so, so heavy, and the corners of her mind are slipping away from her.

Ginny’s wails are the last thing she hears.

-

Hermione wakes up gasping. She’s dying. Her chest heaves and yet no air comes to her. She can’t breathe. She’s dying, she doesn’t want to die—
Her hands clutch the gash at her stomach, which is strangely numb. She squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn’t want to see it. She pulls her hands away and they come back… clean?

Her fingers run over the smooth skin over her stomach, and now she has a new thing to panic over.

Because Hermione is dead.

Or at least, she should be. She has to be, because the very last thing she remembers is bleeding out on Hogwarts grounds.

“Honey?” Her mother is calling outside— her mother. That’s not right. She gasps fruitlessly, erratic in a way that would make Ron tell her to describe the room.

That’s exactly what she does. Three things she can see: her alarm clock that had broken years ago, the faded polka dot sheets she’d loved as a child, her dresser. She smells the lavender in her shampoo and her laundry detergent her mother used and a disturbing absence of metallic blood.

“Hermione—“ the door creaks open, and her mother is there, wide eyed and a little shrill, and she looks at her daughter with familiarity. “Are you alright, baby?”

She’s anything but. Hermione stares, tries to memorize each line on her mother’s face; it could all be gone so quickly. She hears herself say, faintly, “Nightmare. I’m okay.”

“Alright, then. Get dressed and come downstairs.” Her mother pauses and chews her lip, like she’s conflicted. Hermione had forgotten that gesture. She’d forgotten many things about her parents. About home. “Try to hurry.”

In a daze, she trudges out of bed and when she looks in the mirror, a child stares back at her, with full, rosy cheeks and awful bangs and too big teeth.

She pulls on a sweater and furrows her brows in thought. She’s not dead— or, well, she could be. A hard pinch to her arm confirms she’s not dreaming.

Somehow, she’d been sent back. Her mind thumbs through every bit of relevant knowledge. Time Turners wouldn’t be of help; going back this far would have caused irrevocable damage. And besides, she doesn’t even have her’s anymore.

Her feet are carrying her out of her room, down the steps of a home she hasn’t seen in a year. She takes deep gulps of air to prevent the tears from spilling.

Professor McGonnagal sits opposite of her frazzled parents on the couch, the lines around her brows not nearly as deep as when Hermione had seen her last. Her eyes twinkle upon spotting her at the end of the staircase. “Ah, Miss Granger, you’re awake. Have a seat, dear.”

“Now, this may come as a shock…” Her explanation goes in one ear and out the other. At least Hermione must look decently surprised, with all the gears in her brain turning furiously. Her parents reach for both her hands, and she can’t bear to meet their eyes. They don’t know what she’ll do to them in seven year’s time.

Her head is spinning. She finds herself desperately wishing for Ron and Harry’s company. They’d know what to do.

She’d lost Ron in the battle. One moment he was right behind her, gripping her hand like a lifeline and shouting Harry’s name like the sound was torn from his throat. The next, she’d been alone.

She needs to find them, no matter that they’re mere overeager eleven year olds at this time. Hermione has been thrust into a past where she’d been entirely on her own, and she now realizes that she finds it impossible to operate without them.

But maybe she does have to do this without them. Ron and Harry are eleven now, and she’s seven years in the past with the memory of each and every horrible thing that’s happened to them.

The war can’t end the way it’s shaping out to be. She won’t make Ron and Harry and countless others go through what they did the first time around. She needs a plan.

“Any questions, dear? It’s a lot to take in at once.” Hermione’s thrown from her thoughts by McGonnagals’s expectant smile.

“Oh— no, Professor,” Hermione stutters, still unused to the way McGonnagal looks at her with very little recognition.

“Very well, then,” she stands and dusts off her robes. Here, her eyes are kinder, or maybe simply less tired. Hermione had never realized how weary her Professor had grown over the years. She can’t stop staring. “I’ll be around about noon tomorrow to take Miss Granger to Diagon Alley for her supplies. The two of you are welcome to come, if you’d like.”

“Isn’t that great, Hermione? A witch!” As her mother is seeing Professor McGonnagal off, her father turns to her, grinning. “I never would’ve guessed!”

She melts into a smile, reminded of how enthusiastic her father had been. They really should’ve guessed; there was no other explanation for the way the girls that teased her in class came back the next day with angry red acne all over, nor how the cavities in her mouth would disappear before her mother got a good look at them.

When her mother comes back, they hug and smile and her mother muses about going out to dinner to celebrate. And Hermione could cry, right then and there. Instead she falls back into her mother’s arms and takes a breath that doesn’t feel shoved into her lungs.

Soon, she’ll be meticulously planning for a war that she maybe shouldn’t have ever needed to fight in the first place. In a few years, she’ll inevitably be thrown back into the horrors that will never truly leave her.

But right now she’s eleven years old, her father is still raving about “magic, Jean! Isn’t it crazy?” and her mother’s arm is around her. She’s got time, and that’s more than any of them could ever hope of saying before.

The summer that follows is, quite possibly, the longest and most torturous one of her life. Most of it is spent laying in bed, racking her brain for a simple solution. Or, at the very least, the one with the lowest risk. There are a million factors to consider, one of them being she is most definitely thinking about this too hard in the desperate hope of taking her mind off of Harry and Ron.

It’s just that she’s spent the last year with them right by her side, and if Ron were here he’d pull her out of bed and tell her to quit moping around, and Harry would tell her she’ll get wrinkles with her brows pinched together the way they are, that she can’t live in her own mind.

It’s just that— well, she can’t do it without them, can she? Every room is far too silent without Ron’s bickering and Harry’s sarcasm. She misses her boys dearly.

The rest of the summer is spent next to her mother and father, both of whom are reluctant to send their dear girl across the country to a magic school they’ve never seen nor heard of prior. In these moments, Hermione smiles big and eleven years old and tries very hard not to flinch or reach for her wand or let the artificial light leave her eyes.

The miserably hot days drag on, and every day Hermione crosses off her calendar. 20 more days until Hogwarts. Then 19. Then 18. It’s slow, terrible work. All the while, Hermione wants nothing more than to be next to her best friends, or at least in the Hogwarts library, where she can do some true research on what the hell happened to her.

Then, finally, September 1st. Hermione hadn’t slept at all last night. She’d instead tidied her room before leaving, reread Hogwarts: A History, and tried to keep her father awake with her by telling him Wizarding fun facts. All in all, a productive night.

Getting onto Platform 9 ¾ is significantly easier than it had been the first time, with Hermione’s prior knowledge. (Seriously, they need to start warning Muggleborns about this.) She’d “accidentally” stuck her hand through the concealed walkway and found the entrance.

“Be good at school, all right? Keep your head down. Make sure you’re still brushing and flossing every day, young lady, I mean it! And write often, and—“

“Mum, the train is probably already leaving now!” Hermione whines in the most petulant eleven year old tone she can muster.

“Alright, alright,” her mother laughs, a lovely sound that Hermione always tries not to think about how close she came to never hearing it again, and pulls her daughter in close. “We’ll miss you, love. Take care.”

Her father joins them, so that she’s enveloped by their arms. She tries to discreetly look around them for a glimpse of shocking red hair or bright green eyes. “Keep yourself out of trouble, and write as much as you can, yeah?”

“Bye Mum, bye Dad.” She gets on her tiptoes to press a kiss to either of their cheeks. Then she turns a little too hastily. “I love you guys!”

They watch as she leaves, her father’s arm around her mother, who’s looking very much like she’d rather her daughter stayed with them. Hermione doesn’t look back. She’s far too eager for what’s in her future.

Her shoulders relax the moment she’s on the Platform. For the moment, there’s no one watching her, no one to perform for. Her hand idly thumbs the wand in her pocket, a habit she’d picked up over those warring years. It’s easier to be in a crowd; much harder to be spotted. This gives her comfort.

Harry and Ron aren’t outside the train, nor in the first few compartments she checks. She pointedly ignores the urge to run, to call their names and find them as quick as she can.

They’re near the end of the train, huddled together and looking younger and smaller than Hermione had ever remembered. All the air is pulled from her lungs.

She doesn’t have a plan. She doesn’t know what she’s going to say, nor what she’ll do. The desperate, clawing urge to see them, to be near them, has her pushing open the door before she can think about why this might be a bad idea.

“Hermione,” they breathe unanimously, and she knows it’s them. Not just unblemished, eleven year old them, but them. She knows, because they say her name like it’s the most natural sound on their lips.

All at once she breaks, and she’s falling into their arms and pulling them close, as close as she can get, because she’s not alone.

Because she could’ve never done this by herself. Not without them. Never without them.

“Breathe, ‘Mione. In and out. We’ve got you,” Harry mutters into her ear, and Ron’s hand rubbing steady circles into her back helps to ground her.

Then, she shoves them. Hard. Harry almost falls out of his seat, which would be funny if it weren’t for the massive amount of stress she’d built up over a month of waiting. “You idiots! You absolute imbeciles! No calls? No letters? I thought I was alone!”

Ron looks at her, sheepish, and Harry thoroughly guilty. The expression on their little eleven year old faces almost has her regretting her outburst, until she remembers that it was these boys that left her to bleed out alone almost a month ago. Idiots, both of them.

She doesn’t quite understand how, or when her distress curdled into anger, but it’s here now and both boys shudder under her fierce glare. Even when she sniffles and pushes the tears from her eyes.

What she learns next, in hindsight, makes perfect sense: all three of them had died that night.

Equipt with a little more information, Hermione’s eager to jump into time travel research once they’re at Hogwarts. By Christmas they’ll have Harry’s Invisibility Cloak, which will no doubt make sneaking into the Restricted Section much easier.

The next, more horrifying bit of information: Harry is the last Horcrux. That in itself is daunting, but when have they ever shied away from doing daunting tasks?

When Neville appears in the doorway next, all teary eyed and small, it’s a far cry from the brave seventeen year old boy who took up Gryffindor’s sword in his hands during the war.

Hermione’s heart aches, and she can only hope that Neville, or any of them for what matter, will ever need that kind of bravery in this timeline.

The rest of the night is easy. She still isn’t quite used to easy, not after the years they’d spent on edge. There’s no one imminently trying to kill them. No more running.

Hermione watches Harry pile food onto his plate and Ron grin wide and knows this moment will be snagged into the branches of her memory. She’ll never forget this, not when she’d come so close to losing it.

Dumbledore’s speech drags on, because she’s heard it six times before, all progressively darker than the last. Finally, they’re guided to the Gyffindor common rooms.

Harry and Ron retreat to their own room, and then she’s alone. This, somehow, is much worse than she’d expected. It’s as though a bit of her heart has been pulled away, and without the two of them watching her back, she can already feel the tension winding in her shoulders.

Lavender and Parvati fill the room with chatter, which doesn’t bother her nearly as much and she remembers it doing the first time around. Periodically, she pipes up with a fact or comment.

This is okay. She can do this. She’s survived a month without her boys, and she can survive one night.

But then the lights are off, and now sleep is the furthest thing from Hermione’s mind. See, everything is worse when it’s dark. Her bed isn’t placed at the most optimal position from the door, and it’s difficult to sleep now without Harry or Ron keeping watch.

This isn’t a recent problem; Hermione hasn’t slept properly since coming back. As much as things are the same— she isn’t the same, and the more time passes the more she thinks she might never be.

It should be easier to sleep now, when they’re only a little ways away. She shouldn’t need them to fall asleep at all.

She tries to remember a simpler time, when she’d slept easily.

It’s late when she tugs herself out of bed, blinking back frustrated tears. She slips silently out from the cracked open door.

Harry and Ron’s room is dark and silent. Obviously. This is stupid. She should turn around and try to go back to bed, or at least spend the night researching in the library. Regardless, she shouldn’t be here.

But Ron exhales softly, a breath he’d been holding in, and through the sliver of light beaming in from the cracked open door, Harry stares like they’d been waiting for her.

She steps up to the foot of their beds. “I can’t sleep.”

That’s how the trio finds themselves piled on onto the couch next to the common room fireplace. Hermione rests her head on Harry’s shoulder and lets Ron put his arm around the both of them.

She wishes this is how it could always be. The codependency is probably a little unhealthy, but she figures that the years of trauma probably wasn’t that good for them either.

“I’m thinking, since we already know where all the Horcruxes are, we can just get rid of them before Voldemort comes back in Harry’s 5th year,” Ron is telling them. “Hufflepuff’s Cup is what I’m worried about, though. A Gringotts break in will be a lot more risky when we’re not already on the run. Though, if we do get caught, maybe they’ll take pity on a bunch of little kids.”

It’s obvious he’s done research on this. Hermione is thoroughly endeared by the thought.

“I wanna spend some time researching time travel before we make any rash decisions.” She’s all too aware that this won’t stop her boys from inevitably doing something stupid, but it’s worth a shot. “If our choices can make our outcome better than the first one, then we can assume that it’s also possible to create a worse timeline. I don’t want us to make a situation we can’t handle.”

Ron snorts. “We’ve confronted a convicted mass murderer, killed a basilisk, nearly defeated Voldemort once with our then limited knowledge on the Horcruxes, and survived Snape’s lessons for a whole six years. What can’t we handle?”

“Sirius isn’t a mass murderer, though,” Hermione reminds him with a glare that’s enough to shut him up. “And I’d rather not find out the answer to that question.”

“We’re gonna have to survive a total of fourteen years of Potions classes.” Harry’s voice is strained, and it’s not just from that, albeit dim, prospect. Hermione and Ron share a look.

“There’s got to be a way to remove Voldemort’s soul without killing you.” Hermione reaches to put her hand over Harry’s. She’ll tear down the whole library looking for some kind of loophole. “There’s got to be.”

“Yeah!” Ron nudges his best friend lightly. “And if we can’t, we’ll, like, trap him in one of those fancy jars we used on Rita Skeeter. Right, ‘Mione?”

“He’s a bit too large to fit in a glass jar, Ron.” Hermione can’t help but roll her eyes.

“Then we’ll make the glass jar really big,” Ron grins. “We can trap him like a spider! That fool won’t know what hit him.”

Ron’s words, although ridiculous, have its desired effect. Harry tips his head back and laughs, a soft sound that Hermione hasn’t realized she’d missed so badly. There hadn’t been much reason for laughter in the past year.

She nestles closer into his side and picks her legs up to drape them over Harry and Ron’s. “I missed this.”

“You miss us, or not having to risk your life every other day?”

“Both,” Hermione says, then pauses. “But mostly you guys.”

“Awww,” Ron leans over Harry, beaming teasingly. “You hear that, Harry? Hermione loves us!”

Hermione pushes him away, rolling her eyes. She has to bite back a smile. “Of course I love you guys. That’s not new information, Ron.”

They spend the rest of the night like this, holding one another close and giggling over Ron’s stupid jokes. Hermione doesn’t know how she ever survived without the light these boys bring.

Her eyes grow heavy watching the crackling fireplace, and this time she isn’t worried. They’re safe and next to her and one of them will wake her up when something happens.

She feels someone’s lips press onto her forehead. This time, her mind slips away to the gentle lull of their voices.

Chapter Text

Harry wakes up to soft murmurs all around. He shifts, rubbing his bleary eyes, just in time to hear the familiar click! of a camera.

“Got it!” George beams down at them. Angelina Johnson steps up from behind them to take a look. “Awww, Fred, look at our little Ronniekins.”

“Come on now, don’t embarrass them,” Percy admonishes and steps forward to rouse Ron. Harry, in turn, nudges Hermione awake.

Hermione, who’s always been a light sleeper, lifts her head from Harry’s shoulder without much coaxing. Somehow, her hair has only grown over the night. She blinks, taking in the scene.

“Sorry,” Harry looks up at Percy as Hermione rushes to get dressed for the day, blushing furiously. In the corner of his eye, Parvati and Lavender follow her inside. “I’m just so scared for classes today. I couldn’t sleep, so Ron went out here with me to keep me company. That’s when we found Hermione.”

“Yeah, Percy!” Ron butts in, voice still heavy with sleep. “Did you know Harry’s family didn’t teach him anything about magic? He doesn’t even know what Quidditch is!”

“Don’t be mad, please,” Harry says shyly, trying to match Ron’s puppy dog eyes. Percy’s expression melts, if only a little. “Ron was only trying to help us.”

“…Well, that’s very kind of you, Ron.” Percy concedes after a moment’s hesitation. He reaches to pat his cheek in a brotherly affection. “Now, you boys better hurry and get dressed before breakfast.”

And they’re off, Harry giving a quick, appreciative smile and Ron shouting “Thanks, Perce!” over his shoulder.

Ron’s shoulders fall the moment the door closes behind them. They’re the only ones left in the room; everyone is already on their way to breakfast. “Man, being eleven years old is difficult. Back in the day, we’d fall asleep in the common room and no one would even bat an eye.”

“Back in the day, we fell asleep in the commons because we had homework,” Harry reminds him, tugging on a fresh shirt and searching for his tie. “And it’s only the first day, so we don’t have any. Also, you sound like an old man.”

“I sure feel like one. ‘An old soul,’ as Mum puts it.” Ron fishes his wand out from where it’s fallen between the cracks of his bed. “Now, hurry up, I’m starving!”

This morning, his fellow first years are much more receptive to him. Apparently, nerves are a common struggle among his peers. Neville smiles kindly when Harry goes to sit down between him and Hermione, Ron on her other side.

“I’m sure it can’t be that bad,” Lavender is telling Neville reassuringly. This shared sense of comradery is different than how it had been the first time. It seems they’re already making some waves in the timeline, and Harry turns to see what Hermione thinks about this. Her brows are pinched tight.

“I’ve heard Professor Snape is the worst,” Neville pokes at his food glumly. “Someone told me he turns misbehaving students into mice.”

Harry tries not to snigger, and Ron groans. “Was it Fred or George?”

“Don’t listen to those boys,” Hermione advises sagely. “I’m sure they’re just trying to scare us.”

Of course, potions just has to be the first class of the day. After breakfast, Harry drags his feet all the way to the dungeons while Ron makes valiant attempts to cheer him up.

“Don’t worry!” Ron grabs his hand and tries to pull him ahead. “He’s gonna die in seven years anyway.”

“Ron!” Hermione smacks his arm sharply reproachfully, earning a shout of indignance. “We’re trying to save him, remember?”

“Oh, so now we can change history?”

“No, I still need to research,” Hermione glares. “What if we’ve already thrown off the timeline?”

“I thought that’s what we were trying to do?” Ron concedes in pulling Harry along and instead moves to push him forward. “You know, change the future and save a bunch of lives and all that?”

“Well, yes, but—“ Hermione stops herself before she can get too caught up. “Oh, nevermind. Let's just go to potions.”

“Oh, come on…” Harry remembers a time when they were younger, and Hermione and Ron’s bickering annoyed him endlessly. “We should keep discussing this. It’s important! You know, just conveniently for the same length of time as our potions lesson.”

Ron laughs. “As much as I enjoy pissing off Snape, he’d have our heads if we skip on the first day.”

Hermione pulls open the door for them while Ron pulls a suffering Harry inside. Due to her insistence, they’ve arrived early enough to find three consecutive seats.

Class begins and Snape drones on and on, with threats that have each and every other student squirming with nerves, but Harry is merely a little sleepy. It only just now hits him that he’s going to have to survive an entire year of classes designed for eleven year olds. This in itself might be more of a challenge than saving the world.

“Potter!” Harry nearly flinches out of his seat. He’d always been a bit jumpy, and the years of war only heightened that particular instinct. “What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”

Hermione’s gaze darts from Snape to him in his periphery, and Harry glares defiantly, wishing very much that Snape was still dead.

He wracks his brain for an answer. Not knowing was acceptable in his first first year, but Harry’s seventeen now and it would be an embarrassment, even if only to himself.

“Draught of Living Death, sir.” He vaguely recalls making it his sixth year. Why Snape thinks it fitting to ask him questions years above his own grade level is beyond him.

He’d hoped that would be enough to get Snape off his back, but he isn’t done. “Where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?”

Harry honestly has no idea. All eyes are trained on him and he can feel his face heat up angrily. He grits his teeth. “I don’t know, the ingredients cupboard?”

Snape’s eye visibly twitches, and at the very least he earns a few sniggers from his classmates.

“Ten points from Gryffindor for your cheek.” Now he’s the one red faced in anger. “What, Potter, is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?”

Harry knows this. At least, he should know this, by the way Hermione’s staring at him expectantly. It’s just that even with six extra years of experience, it’s difficult to learn much with Snape breathing down your neck the entire time.

“They’re— they’re the same plant.” He tries very hard to sound sure of this. Snape looks surprised. He glares down his nose at Harry, scrutinizing. For a moment, Harry fears he might try to use Legilimency.

Finally, he backs off with a stiff, “Very well. At the very least, you’re not entirely incompetent.”

“Asshole,” Harry hisses the moment he’s out of earshot. If looks could kill, Snape would be writhing. Miraculously, he doesn’t turn at Hermione and Ron’s quiet sniggers.

The class is then split into groups of two. Harry and Ron pair off while Hermione pairs with Neville, which is probably for the best. He vaguely remembers some kind of Neville related incident on their first day.

“I thought you said we weren’t changing anything yet?” Ron complains for about the hundredth time while they’re leaving.

“Well, it’s not just like I could just let him get himself hurt!” Hermione defends even as she wrings her hands in uncertainty. “And anyway, I don’t even remember who I paired up with last time.”

“The two of you had better stop arguing about the future before people start thinking I’m schizophrenic again,” Harry grumbles, still quite put out by Snape.

Well, he knows now why Snape is the way he is. And Harry understands all too well what it’s like to spend your life being pushed around.

But he remembers Neville, and his Snape boggart and the scared look on his too young face, the one he wore just a little while ago. Snape had taken his lot in life and with it made Harry’s school days marginally worse, and will no doubt do it again. He thinks of his own lot in life and silently prays not to turn out resentful like his Professor.

“You’re right, I suppose.” Harry’s almost surprised; he so rarely hears those words from Hermione. “Come on now, both of you. We’re going to be late.”

As it turns out, being seventeen in classes designed for first years is extraordinarily easy, as well as dismally boring.

In Transfiguration, Ron’s brought “Scabbers” in as a test subject. Harry doesn’t quite understand rat expressions, but he can hazard a guess by his shrill, piercing little shrieks that Peter isn’t exactly thrilled.

McGonagall walks past, beaming at her new little prodigies. All three have managed each spell on their first try.

Hermione tries valiantly to make it look like she’s struggling, but ultimately can’t bring herself to do the spell wrong.

Harry does the same, making himself look a bit of a fool by confidently saying wing-garden-ium leverosa to mess up his spell.

Ron merely screws his face up in concentration, but otherwise makes little effort to put up a struggle. It’s not only that he can’t be bothered, but Harry remembers how the two of them had struggled the first time around. It is cool to be seen as a genius with very little effort.

The Ravenclaws gape and listen in close to their pronunciation and the meticulous wave of their wands as though to extract a bit of their knowledge. Hermione is quick to offer her help, and Ron seemed pleased at the prospect of admiration.

Defense with Quirrel, however, doesn’t bring the same luck. Harry’s only met with the dull but increasingly persistent ache in his skull reminding him that Voldemort’s deformed face is right underneath that turban.

Come to think of it, how does the man breathe under there? It’s extraordinary what questions can arise from very little boredom. He resolves to ask Hermione about it later.

Harry’s rubbing his at his temples and trying very hard to ignore the pungent smell of garlic when Ron pushes a torn bit of notebook paper towards him— Hermione had insisted upon bringing notebook paper and pen, and often lends it to the two of them— and on it bears scrawled writing: “Quirrelmort.”

Harry snorts, a sudden noise that has heads turning their way. Quirrel nearly jumps out of his skin. The act, now that Harry understands what it is, seems a bit excessive. Flustered, he continues on about vampires or whatever after regaining his bearing, in that same awful stutter. Seriously, it’s annoying by now.

Hermione shoots the boys a glare— somehow, she still finds it worthwhile to take notes— but Ron pushes the slip of paper towards her, and the corners of her mouth quirk up in amusement.

This continues in most classes: Harry and Ron diligently paying no attention to any of what their teachers tell them, while Hermione tries to at least look interested. Harry’s dreading the day, perhaps sixth or seventh year, when he’ll have to start paying attention again.

They’re reprimanded, naturally, but then they’ll get to a quiz or real practice and suddenly their teachers are beaming down at them in awe.

Flying classes roll around, something that’s been debated among the trio for many a night.

“We’re not letting poor Neville break his wrist again just so you can go play Quidditch,” Hermione reprimands. Her insistence to stick to the original timeline has been painstakingly weathered by Harry and Ron’s combined efforts, as well as a number of afternoons spent researching.

She figured that if any small action could change their outcome, they might as well do it purposefully.

Which he’s regretting now that they’re actually planning to change things, one night in the Gryffindor common rooms, long after everyone had gone to sleep.

They’ve been okay so far, sleeping separately. Hermione, away in the girl’s room, has had the worst time of it. But, if she’s to be believed, it’s been quite a while without another nightmare. Harry and Ron are proud to say the same, though he still sees Ron casting a discreet “Muffliato” around himself once the other boys have fallen asleep. Harry does the same, more often than not.

“The youngest seeker in over a century, Hermione! How will we win the Quidditch Cup without him?” At least Ron’s on his side.

“Come on, Hermione,” Harry sinks back into the plush cushions under him. “Neville wasn’t even hurt that bad. What will Gryffindor do without their Seeker?”

She reaches to smack his arm in a way that would be reproachful, but merely comes across as fond. “They’ll find another Seeker for a year, that’s what.”

In the end, with Harry and Ron’s persistence, it’s agreed that they’ll let things play out the same as before, though Hermione plans to cast a quick cushioning charm to break his fall.

Just like before, they trot out to the Quidditch pitch among their fellow first years. Harry’s elated at the prospect of being back on a broom again, and Hermione far less nervous than she was the first time.

Just like before, Neville kicks off a second too early, and, just like before, plummets to the ground. Beside him comes Hermione’s quick words and the ever so slight movement of her wand, and though Neville still hits the ground with a bit of a thud, he stands with nothing more than a nasty bruise.

But he’s still ushered off to Madam Pomfrey’s, because he looks positively ill with fear, and Draco’s got the Remembrall in his hands and laughing with so much cruelty, for a child.

And while he follows Draco into the air, Harry’s viscerally reminded of his pale sixteen year old face alight with horror in that Astronomy tower, realizing he did not have it in him to kill Dumbledore. Harry thinks of all the people he wants to save and for the first time thinks that Draco can be one of them. Even if he is an asshole.

He looks down at the mass of Slytherins, and they aren’t yet the cold blooded killers who shot curses as their own teachers and classmates during the Battle of Hogwarts, nor are they the angry, vicious children he remembers from his past. They’re just that— children, children who seem rather new and afflicted by the novel idea of cruelty.

He doesn’t have much time to ponder, because the Remembrall is sent hurtling towards the cold hard ground, and Harry follows it with a light, joyful feeling swelling in his chest. The air whips at his robes and his hair and he can’t possibly articulate how much he’s missed this.

He’s not nervous like he was his first time; he’s faster now, and even takes a moment to let the Remembrall slip a little further away before eventually grasping it mere inches off of the ground. Hermione’s rolling her eyes at his dramatics, and Harry grins at her.

A shocked and flustered McGonagall grabs him by the elbow, pulling past the gaggle of Slytherins. Pansy wrings her hands and Theodore Nott bites his lip in a way that’s vaguely guilty. Even Crabbe and Goyle look unsure. He hadn’t noticed this the first time.

It’s a sharp contrast to the seventeen year old Crabbe who cast Fiendfyre without a moment’s hesitation, and the Nott who he watched throw the Killing Curse around with ease in the chaos of battle.

They are softer here, and Harry understands now that children are impressionable things.

This time, he feels a jolt of sympathy for these kids whose only crime is being born in the wrong family, sorted into the wrong house. It’s easier now, not to hold these people accountable for the crimes they haven’t yet committed.

He walks past Ron and Hermione, who both grin and shoot him discreet thumbs up. They’re softer here, too. It’s nice, to see his best friends round-faced and happy and young. Hermione smiles with too large front teeth, so nostalgic it makes his heart ache, and Ron’s fiery hair hasn’t yet darkened with age.

He offers a little smile in return before being pulled away, and he tries to look guilty, then surprised when Oliver walks in the room. He readily agrees to playing Gryffindor Seeker, and has to prepare himself for yet again having Oliver Wood as his captain once seeing the familiar manic glint in his eye.

He finds Ron and Hermione in the Great Hall for dinner that night, an elated glow in his chest. He’s swarmed from the very moment he sits down.

“Harry, that was incredible! How did you do it?” Seamus is nearly exploding out of his seat. “What’d McGongall say? Did she give you detention? Did she expell you?”

Lavender leans over a flustered Hermione to add, “Yeah, Harry, it was crazy! We all thought for sure you were gonna die.”

“You told us you’ve never flown before, Harry.” Dean narrows his eyes accusingly.

“McGonagall wants me to play Gryffindor Seeker,” Harry says slowly, in hopes of sharing just enough to appease them. It doesn’t have the desired effect.

“Seeker? For Quidditch? But I thought—“

“But you can’t! First years can’t play!”

“Why do they want a first year on their team anyway? Surely they’ve got someone better…”

“We’re not very good, though, are we?”

Harry turns, horrified, to Hermione. She merely shrugs in a way that so clearly means to figure it out himself. He then turns to Ron, who looks almost as helpless as he is.

“Well— Harry’s dad was really good at Quidditch too, I heard,” Ron tries after a moment’s hesitation. “Maybe Harry got it from him?”

“You really think it’s inherited like that?” Parvati scrunches her face like she’s trying to wrap her mind around it.

Ron shrugs, trying to look convincingly indifferent. “Could be.”

“Are we hearing this right?” George, who Harry hadn’t even noticed approaching, snakes an arm around his little brother.

Fred reaches to ruffle his hair. “Is ickle Harry going to be flying with us?”

“Fred and George are on the team, too, as Beaters.” Harry briefly wonders why Ron is telling him this before it strikes him that he isn’t supposed to know that yet.

“Though, you’re awfully young to play Seeker, aren’t you?” George’s eyes are oddly piercing. “Wasn’t Ron telling us just this morning about how you’ve never flown before?”

“Right you are, Fred.” Harry tries very hard to smooth his features into something not guilty. “Do you know how to play Quidditch, Harry? Because I thought—“

“Ron taught me how to play,” Harry blurts, a little too hurriedly and a little too loud. Ron, it seems, is much better at this lying on the spot thing. The twins look at him appraisingly, then to each other. Harry is certain this surprise interrogation did not take place the first time.

“But I’m not that good,” he adds when they seem unconvinced. “I think you guys just really needed a Seeker. Or something.”

“That’s strange, though, isn’t it—“

“—Because I could’ve sworn we heard Professor McGonagall saying it was some of the best flying she’d seen in years.” Harry gets confused every time they do their twin-speak thing. And now’s not the time to be confused.

“For a first year, of course,” Ron supplies. “I’m sure he won’t look as impressive next to all of you lot.”

Harry doesn’t have time to cast an offended glare at Ron, because in front of him Fred and George hold a silent conversation. He swallows hard.

“Alright, then—” George unwraps his arm from Ron’s shoulder. They’ve seemingly come to a consensus.

“—We’ll see you at practice, Harry.”

With one final nod, the twins disappear into the mass of red and gold just as suddenly and easily as they’d come. Harry and Ron share bemused looks, and Hermione glares at the boys like this is all their fault.

Which— okay, it kind of is. He knows they’ll likely spend another night curled up in the common room, discussing what’s happened, or more accurately, getting scolded by Hermione.

But tomorrow night, he’ll be in the air again, on a team again, and the summer’s evening chill will feel so good against his skin. Oliver will sing his praise, and Fred and George will put aside whatever they have with Harry at the moment to rave about how they’re going to crush Slytherin in the next game.

And when he comes back, windswept and heavy with nostalgia, Ron and Hermione will be waiting for him by the fireplace, and he’ll understand, not for the first time, what they’re fighting for.

Chapter Text

To say Hermione is frustrated would be an understatement.

Of course, she blames Ron. Ron and Harry, for being the two biggest Quidditch fanatics in the world and putting their entire timeline in danger to get Harry onto the Quidditch team.

The words told you so were out of her mouth the very moment she’d gotten a chance. She hadn’t missed the calculating look in Fred and George’s eyes. Those boys are sharp and clever, and more importantly, Ron’s brothers. They know something’s up, and what on earth can she begin to do about that?

So if she’s not feeling her best, if her eyes are heavy and fogged and her head consistently dizzy, that’s the least of her worries. She blames it on the lack of sleep; it’s just so quiet in her dorm room.

There’s something else, too; a low, deep set ache somewhere intangible inside her, like a festering bruise. It’d appeared a few times over the war, when all three of them would spend days recovering from whatever stupidly dangerous situation they’d either put themselves in or been thrown into.

“And you’re sure you’re okay?” Ron asks tentatively, while they’re sitting in Transfiguration. She rubs at her ribs, even though that’s not where the ache is. It’s a slow morning, and yet Hermione still can’t seem to keep up. She’d been nearly winded by the walk here.

“I’m fine, Ron,” she snaps, harsher than she’d wanted to be, and turns her attention back to the mouse sitting before her.

Harry and Ron each succeed in transforming their mice into fantastical, sparkly jewelry boxes on their first tries. No surprises there. Hermione copies the spell and tries to ignore the wave of lightheadedness setting in.

“Excellent work, all three of you,” McGonagall pauses at their table approvingly. “Ten points to Gryffindor each, and do be so kind as to give your classmates a hand.”

Ron bristles at the praise, but Harry gives her a curious look. She bites her lip, feeling very suddenly as though nothing is okay.

“It still has the whiskers on it,” she says quietly, after a bit of nudging. It’s not right. She spares a glance at Harry’s and Ron’s perfectly pristine boxes.

“You still got it on your first try,” Ron rebuts, so gently that it hurts.

“Obviously.” She scoffs. This sounds conceited until you take into account the fact that she’s seventeen and has been turning mice into jewelry boxes since stepping foot into Hogwarts. It’s just embarrassing.

“Hermione—“ She stands abruptly, and decides she doesn’t care that her box still has whiskers. She doesn’t. She instead goes to help Neville, who’s still dropping his wand every time he tries to swish it. The world sways a little when she does so, and the pressure in her head builds.

It’s safe to say she’s not having a good day. She’s exhausted beyond measure; her eyes are burning with the effort to keep them open, and her muscles unusually sore with what she tells herself is the common cold.

Her classes now are, tragically, useless. And it is a tragedy; just think of all this time wasted, time she could spend researching, or even listening in on seventh year classes. The classes she should be taking, if the war hadn’t taken that away from her. If she hadn’t been thrown into the past.

So, naturally, the rest of the day should be easy; mind numbingly so. And technically, it is. Professor after Professor repeats information she already knows by heart. Snape gives them a pop quiz that Neville’s sweating nervously about, but of course she aced it.

But in Charms, they’re working on levitating again, and while Harry and Ron have moved on to stacking their books in the most precarious way imaginable, Hermione’s doesn’t get an inch off of the table before falling with a lame thunk.

Something withers inside her when Flitwick smiles kindly and hands her a lighter book. That, in itself, feels like a sort of punishment. When she turns her focus solely on the task in front of her (she shouldn’t need all of her focus, not when her book is nearly lighter than Lavender’s) it’s as though her energy is being pulled out of her, murky and stringlike, through to the unnaturally heavy book.

Class ends with a flurry of noise and chatter of children relieved to be over with the day. Hermione leaves holding Ron’s arm, merely an affectionate gesture and definitely not because her vision is blurring around the edges.

“For the hundredth time,” she insists, because Harry’s watching her face carefully, like she’s about to break. Which is stupid, because she isn’t. “I’m fine, you guys. I just caught a cold.”

“Of course you are,” Harry says in a slow way that makes it clear he doesn’t believe her. It takes all of her energy to pull away from Ron and stand upright, but she does it anyway, if only to prove her point. And it doesn’t make her sway where she’s standing, either, not at all.

She doesn’t have time to be sick and miserable. Not when they still don’t know what brought them back here, and certainly not when the consequences of changing the past are still unclear to her.

They’d gotten sick a few times on the run. Usually Harry first, then he’d spread it to the two of them, no matter how they tried to stay away. There was only so much you could do for it in the cramped little tent, and they made it work, stealing cold medicine from the stores and staying up to care for one another.

So it really is fine. She’ll manage.

She makes a beeline to the library, with vague promises of not spending too much time in there while the boys run off to the field for Quidditch.

The library, it turns out, has an astonishing little number of books on time travel. Even for wizards, it’s a risky practice. Hermione grabs what she can find and retreats to her favorite corner of the library.

The words blur stubbornly into the off white pages, and she has to rub her eyes over and over again to see clearly. The few strains of information that she does read slip easily from her memory like sand through an hourglass. Like the energy that’s sucked from her every time she raises her wand.

The next time she summons a book to herself (because standing is a monumental task when her head’s already light and dizzy) it merely topples over, startling a few students into looking up at the noise. She blushes crimson.

But there’s something important here, something on this page that she knows is here but her mind can’t quite grapple with.

She squints and squints and her head pounds, but the thought that somewhere, on one page, one paragraph of a certain book in her pile, might hold an answer, an explanation or even just a snippet of relevant information is enough of an agitator to keep her eyes open.

She chews her lip and tugs strands of hair around her fingers, desperately rereading the same sentence for the fifth time. Her limbs are impossibly heavy. Her head is pounding, drilling into her skull. The fabric of her sweater rubs her skin in an awful way and the cool table makes her shiver.

She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. Only to rest her burning eyes for a short minute. Her mind slips away easily, with none of the stubborn grasping she’d been doing all day.

Her dreams are the vague, feverish kind, of a clock tick tick ticking and someone screaming, and they are little and smiling big one moment and ashen and decaying the next, all while the clock ticks and rain pours in from their little tent.

“Hermione? Hermione!” She realizes with a jolt that it’s Ginny screaming, calling her name from underwater, but when she pushes herself up she’s met with blue eyes and sharp features: Ron.

It takes her a moment to place the situation. In the library, with Harry and Ron looking down on her with matching expressions. The imprint of a book pressed into her cheek. Her arm still tingling from cut off circulation.

Her headache comes back in full force, as well at the unidentifiable bruise, and she’s not entirely certain she hadn’t been hit with a Bludger.

“What are you guys doing here?” Her voice comes out hoarse and strained. She has to squint to make out the details of their faces.

“You’ve nearly missed dinner, Hermione.” The boys cast an uncertain look at the pile of books strewn across her table. She blinks. “Have you been in here all afternoon?”

“…No?” Hermione tries, because it seems like the right answer.

Harry lets out a puff of air. He’s annoyed, because of course he is; who wouldn’t be annoyed by her? Shame creeps into her throat. “Right, then. Let's get you to bed.”

He pulls her to her feet, and immediately the world tilts. She all but crashes into Harry’s arms.

“…Get her other side, Ron,” he’s saying something and she can’t quite bring herself to pay attention, not when all of it is focused on the monumental effort of being upright.

Harry shifts just right so that she can lean her weight onto him, and without meaning to her head falls into the crook of his shoulder. Ron’s arm encircles her waist and someone’s fingers push her hair back to press against her forehead.

Another bout of shame surges within her as they begin the careful, painstaking trip to Gryffindor Tower. She lurches with every step up the winding staircases and is hit with another wave of devastating exhaustion every time she tries to carry her own weight.

At some point, Ron mutters something she doesn’t quite pay attention to, and then they’re stepping through the painting, an awkward struggle that Hermione tries and fails to amend by stepping through by herself. Her foot snags on the bottom of the frame and she would’ve fallen right over if it weren’t for Ron’s anxious hovering.

When Ron finally lays her onto the couch, she sinks unceremoniously into the soft cushions and curls her knees up to her chest, embarrassed and uncomfortable and miserably tired.

The boys speak in low mutters above her. “Should we take her to the hospital wing?”

“Might have to, if it gets any worse.”

“I’ll bring dinner up, at least.”

“You think she’ll eat any?”

“Hope so.”

It reminds her of a time, once, on the run, when she’d been gravely injured, the side of her shoulder slashed open and she can’t quite remember how, except that it burned and stung like hell.

And she remembers, too, the hush that fell over their little tent as Harry and Ron cleaned the wound and coaxed her to eat. In the midst of that godforsaken war, she’d laid there for hours, her shoulder positively killing her, but a sense of calm had washed over her with her boys to keep watch.

A hand brushes up against her temple, tucks a few strands of hair back. A low groan escapes her throat in protest. The idea of food makes her want to vomit, so instead she focuses on Harry’s presence besides her, a grounding sort of concern.

She can feel him hovering, even with her eyes squeezed shut against the light of the room. Her words come out a bit garbled. “Stop that, Harry.”

A hand on her arm, thumb brushing her skin. He’s soft in the way only they are privy to. “You’re making us worry, you know.”

“I do,” she concedes after a moment, a little guilty. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” is all he says, and she would keep going but her head is so heavy, and sleep becomes a welcome reprieve from the ache in her bones. It comes to her easily, partially due to sheer exhaustion and the other part due to Harry’s steadfast presence beside her.

Her consciousness drifts in and out, a light, fluttery sort of thing. Somewhere in front of her a plate is set down with a quiet clink, and she doesn’t respond or move at all except to push it haphazardly away.

She’s half awake, too, when people trickle back into the common room after dinner, and is vaguely aware of the hushed voices around her.

“Is she alright?” Percy’s voice. Another hand on her forehead, feeling for temperature. She fights back a discomforted noise and tries to sink further into the cushions.

Now he’s saying something about no magical remedies, which might have piqued her concern had she been a little more awake, but as is she hardly wraps her head around the thought. Then Harry’s offering to look for Tylenol in her bag, which he’s correctly guessed she’d brought with her, though she doesn’t have the energy to tell him where it is.

She’s roused not long after, with a pill and a cup of water pushed into her hands. She takes it quickly, not even bothering to make sure they brought her the correct dose. If they have, she’ll be fine in the morning and if they haven’t then she’ll just die, which she feels like doing anyway. A win-win situation.

She immediately slumps back down. There’s more murmurs, more gentle touches, and when she opens her eyes for a quick moment, familiar, concerned faces line her vision.

It’s nice, to be taken care of like this. But it’s nice in a suspicious way, like she could blink and it’ll all be gone. Good things can’t all come at once, she thinks; only in small measures, lest the bad things pile up similarly. There’s a part of her still searching for the hole in the silver lining.

There’s a few more suggestions of Madam Pomfrey, but they seem to understand that they won’t be able to get Hermione cognizant enough to bring down to the hospital wing, and she’s grateful that they leave her be.

The next time she wakes up, her head is much clearer, and the common room is dark and empty.

Harry’s slumped over right above her, and by turning her head up, their faces are so close she can feel his breathing, slow and rhythmic. Ron, too, has his head somewhere near her stomach, arm propped onto the couch in a way that will most certainly hurt in the morning.

His hand clasps her’s, and she untangles them for a moment to smooth his hair, a careful, meticulous gesture. He shifts a little, mutters something unintelligible. She looks up at Harry again and they’re so contentedly peaceful, so her’s that she smiles, despite still partially feeling like shit.

If it were wartime, she’d gather these boys in her arms and hold them close, as close as she could get, even if it meant waking them and even if it’d been nearly falling off the couch in attempt to get closer. Things could be taken so easily from you then, and all it took was one sweeping moment.

But as it is, the Hogwarts wards are a heavy, protective blanket around the castle, one that she hadn’t noticed the first time but is easily detectable now, with the familiarity. No one is trying to kill them, at least not imminently.

She laces her fingers with Ron’s, and shifts just so that her and Harry’s foreheads brush together. They’re going to be questioned again, but she’ll worry about it when the sun’s up. Maybe she’ll wake them up before anyone gets down here.

For now, she lets her mind slip away into blissfully dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

“It’s no surprise,” Percy tells them in the morning, a hint of admonishment on his tongue. “With the spells she’s teaching herself, I suppose her magic was bound to burn out.”

Then, gently, to Hermione, “You’re a bright witch for your age, but you ought not to be attempting spells above first, maybe second year level. Understood?”

Hermione hadn’t caught the flu, or anything like that after all. Now that Ron thinks about it, it makes perfect sense. He, too, has felt the effects of exhaustion wearing on him, the unidentifiable kind they’d felt during the war but had been too preoccupied to particularly care.

Hermione nods, sheepish and still a little tired from magic depletion. Ron wonders how Percy knows all this.

“Don’t worry, my brother Charlie exhausted his magic once, too,” Percy says kindly, mistaking Hermione’s discomfort at being lectured by a fifteen year old as nerves. “It’ll come back to you with time, and a bit of rest. Come find me after breakfast and we’ll get you a note from Madam Pomfrey; I don’t wanna see any attempts at magic until you’re all well.”

Ron could kick himself for forgetting, but then again he couldn’t have been more than five when it happened. He has a vague, wavering memory of Charlie laid across their couch the beginning of one summer, looking downright miserable while their mother struggled to come up with Muggle remedies.

“It’s strange, though,” Percy says thoughtfully. “Generally it’s the older students who wear their magic out with complicated spells. For a young witch like you, well...”

Bloody fucking hell. Why can’t this just be simple? He narrowly avoids the impulse to share a horrified look with Harry. The expression Percy wears is sharp, deductive, and the same one that Fred and George had when they’d interrogated Harry the other night.

Charlie had exhausted his magic by overusing spells within his level. Hermione, a first year who, to Percy and everyone else, can’t conjure more than a simple Lumos, maybe a short Wingardium Leviosa, shouldn’t be able to wear herself out on such menial spells.

“It makes sense, though,” Ron fights to keep the panic out of his voice. “Because Hermione’s the best in our class, of course!”

“Hm,” Percy frowns, not entirely convinced, and Ron looks up at him with wide, innocent eyes that he desperately hopes hide the sheer panic underneath. His new height makes him feel so much smaller. “I suppose so, but—”

“We ought to get some breakfast, right guys?” Hermione stands suddenly, with much more energy than she’d had last night. “Thank you, Percy!”

And with that they’re off, Hermione pulling both of them by each arm and Ron turning to shout a quick, “Thanks, Perce!”

“Are you out of your mind?” Ron hisses the moment they’re out of the commons room, which might be a bit harsh considering Hermione still looks a bit pallid. “Do you know how suspicious we look right now?”

“I panicked!” The energy with which she glares back is far from diminished, if a little guilty. “He was going to back us into a corner, and then what?”

“I could’ve talked us out of it,” Ron grumbles, entirely confident in his ability to bullshit his way through a conversation.

“He’s your brother, Ron.” He hates to concede to that, even privately. The fact is that his brothers have been casting him strange looks ever since he got here, and Ron can only do so much to seem young and carefree. “We can’t just come up with excuses every time someone questions us.”

They bicker in hushed voices the entire way to the Great Hall, being periodically cut off whenever someone walks by. Harry trails behind them with an quietly amused expression.

At breakfast, Hermione sits next to Ron, with a smiling Alicia Spinnet on her right. Somewhere nearby, Oliver Wood is talking Quidditch strategy to a thoroughly disgruntled Percy. George and Fred are huddled together a safe distance away, undoubtedly planning something nefarious.

They’ve taken to sitting with the Quidditch team, who have practically adopted Harry as their little “firstie,” and consequently, Hermione and Ron. It’s easier sometimes, to sit with kids a little closer to their own age.

They don’t push and jostle, not the way that the first years do. Once, Angelia had wrapped an arm around Harry a little too fast, and he flinched, hard. No one said anything, but Ron doesn’t miss the way they make slow, careful movements around the trio. He’s quietly grateful.

In Charms, Hermione watches with an embarrassed tinge in her cheeks as Ron and Harry cast their perfect summoning charms. Neville casts them a curious glance. Lucky for her, but not so much for their bemoaning classmates, Transfiguration is only a written test today.

“Are you alright, Hermione?” Alicia asks during lunch, keenly watching Ron push food her way in insistence that she eat.

“Of course,” Hermione smiles, and he hopes no one else notices the pointed stiffness in her mouth. “I didn’t sleep well, is all.”

“Percy said you were ill yesterday.” Fred leans over the table, having taken a sudden interest in the conversation. George stops eating to cast Ron a narrowed sort of look.

“I was,” is all Hermione has in response, frowning slightly. It’s not suspicious to be sick, is it?

“He said you’ve burnt out your magic,” George says like it's an accusation.

Harry, who had been at the Hufflepuff table on a quest to befriend Tonks, suddenly appears behind them. His timing is immaculate, and Ron couldn’t be more grateful.

“I’ve just realized I forgot… something in the library. You guys wanna come with me?”

“We can’t keep running off every time they ask us a question.” Hermione nevertheless follows at Harry’s heels, slightly breathless. Ron hates to admit that she’s right.

“Slow down, they’ll think something’s wrong—“ Harry tugs Ron back a little. “I just saw you guys across the Dining Hall all wide eyed, and I panicked.”

Not wanting to risk another confrontation just to finish lunch, they elect to stay in the library. Hermione pulls out every book she’d had with her yesterday, and somehow ropes Ron and Harry into sifting through them with her.

“There’s nothing here,” Hermione bemoans under the Muffliato that Ron had cast around them, dropping her head onto an open book hopelessly. It’s certainly not a good sign that she’d given up before them.

Ron doesn’t miss the thoughtful way Harry eyes the Restricted Section. Their eyes meet and a silent understanding passes between them. First years undoubtedly won’t be let in, but when has that ever stopped them?

That’s how they find themselves stepping carefully through the castle, long after they should be in bed. They’d gone up to bed with the rest of their year, then quietly slipped out in the crowd of upper years catching up on work. Percy was blessedly preoccupied with yelling at Fred and George for something the trio hadn’t cared to pay attention to, and the commotion that had caused was enough for them to slip away unnoticed.

On the way down to the library, something creaks; another misbehaving student, or the wind, most likely, but the tension shifting in the air is undeniable. Hermione’s grip tightens on his arm, and all three share a look.

When the castle is awake, buzzing with magic and alive with bustling children, it’s sometimes even easy to forget the staggering number of people who’ve died in here. Who might die in here again.

There’s blood on the stone, shrouded in darkness but unmistakable. Ron’s heart drops. A Lumos flies from his wand in quick abandonment of any pretense of stealth.

And… nothing. Simply a dark spot. The light fizzles, replaced by a lump in his throat. Hermione doesn’t scold him. Doesn’t even say a word. Her face looks sickly pale.

On his other side, Harry’s hand intertwines with his own, close enough to be shoulder to shoulder and so that their hips bump together every few steps. He thinks that they both need this. Something tangible, something solid.

In the Restricted Section they pour over every book that seems to hold any shred of information, guided by the dim light of their wands. Hermione’s is still wavering.

“There’s a little bit here,” Hermione squints at the barely lit page, frowning slightly. “But it’s all theoretical.”

Harry leans over, with his own light to make the letters a little clearer. “Highly dangerous… months to years back in time… stuck in one’s old body… this is exactly what happened to us, isn’t it?”

“No one’s… done this before,” Hermione murmurs, more to herself. “Either we’re the only ones, or it’s never been recorded.”

He watches Hermione’s pale face, dawning realization, and Harry’s grim acceptance. He supposes it’s not untypical for them to endure things no one else has ever had to. It’s just what comes with being Harry Potter’s best friend.

“We’ll figure it out,” he says firmly, before either of them really start to panic. “We’ve gone through worse and been fine.”

“…I suppose so.” Hermione snaps the book shut, looking rather dazed. “I just wish we knew something— anything— about all this.”

He understands far too well. The dread of being cosmically alone in this is already beginning to set in. Instead of voicing it, though, he bumps Hermione’s shoulder.

“We’ve literally robbed Gringotts and escaped on a fucking dragon. Pioneering time travel? Light work.”

Hermione rolls her eyes in the way that makes it too obvious she’s biting back a smile, and Ron grins back. The tension in Harry’s shoulders ease. Success.

“Take the book with you, Ron. We can look over it again later.” Having had the moment to collect herself, Hermione’s already got a plan forming. “And I think over break, I’ll have my parents take me to some magical libraries. I’ve heard there’s a few really good ones in Britain— you guys can come with.”

He groans, head falling back in mock annoyance, but it is good that she’s not panicking anymore. On the enchanted ceiling, the moon is high above them.

“We’d better go back soon,” Harry, too, looks upward. “It’s getting late.”

It’s abundantly clear that none of them want to go back out there, through the dark halls teeming with horrible memories. But they can’t really stay here, so Hermione shoves the book into Ron’s bag and Harry leads them out, light extinguished to avoid being caught.

There’s no Invisibility Cloak now; Harry won’t get it until Christmas. Ron and Harry’s Disillusionment Charms are wavering at best and not something any of them are willing to attempt, with their magic the weak and flighty thing it is.

The fact only makes them all the more jumpy. Though Ron still grips his wand tight for protection, he knows there’s only so much he’ll be able to do if it comes down to it.

Harry stops abruptly, all color lost from his face. Their shoulders bump into him.

A gray tabby cat slinks around the corner, stepping light and purposeful. The square shaped markings around her eyes are just visible if you squint. Ron’s heart drops for a second time that night.

“What,” McGonagall stands in front of them, much taller than he’s used to and, consequently, much more foreboding. “In Merlin’s name do you three think you’re doing?”

Fucking hell.

The book is a heavy weight in his bag. What will McGonagall think to see a group of first years with a book on highly dangerous, and probably illegal magic from the Restricted Section? They need this.

Ron grasps for an answer, mouth hung open like an idiot, when a miserable cry cuts him off. To everyone’s great surprise, Hermione’s full on bawling, face hidden in her hands.

“Oh— I’m so sorry!” she stutters, rubbing her eyes so that under the dark and her hands, you can hardly tell they’re dry. “It’s just— Professor Snape’s essay is due tomorrow, and— and I needed one more book, and—“

“I just didn’t want to get in trouble! I— I just—“ She dissolved into a sobbing mess, head in hands and even managing a few tears. It’s honestly impressive.

McGonagall’s mouth sets into a thin line. She looks between the three children: Hermione’s hysterical tears, Harry’s eyes wide in shock, and Ron, who’s trying to look properly guilty.

It won’t work. It can’t, because when has McGonagall ever bent the rules for a couple of kids? He just hopes she won’t think to check their bag.

(Ron has no idea what she’s thinking. He doesn’t know that she looks at their little trio, and for a moment sees a group of kids who refuse to let their friend suffer alone. He doesn’t know that she looks at Harry and sees James Potter, before the war and before even the mischief, when he was young and a little nervous and wholly unprepared for the short life he’s yet to live.)

“That’s quite enough, dear.” To everyone’s surprise, her expression softens. She gently removes Hermione’s hands from her face, stopping to pat her cheek in the affectionate way you do for young children.

“The three of you had better run off to bed. Forty points from Gryffindor, I think, for tonight. And I’d better not find you out of bed again.”

Ron gapes. They’ve essentially gotten off scot free. (Gryffindor house points are probably in the negatives now, with how early it is in the year, but they’re far past caring about house points anyway. Blaming the loss on Fred and George would be far too easy.) Not wanting to push their luck, he gives a hasty thanks and pulls Harry and Hermione away before she has a chance to rethink anything.

“That,” Harry whispers, a little breathless, “was brilliant, Hermione.”

She smiles, pleased. It’s strange, because her face is still red and blotchy. “I just panicked, that’s all. I really didn’t think it was going to work.”

“Where’d you learn to fake cry like that?” Ron asks.

“I didn’t learn it, Ron,” Hermione says with a little laugh. “I don’t know, it just happened— Caput Draconis.” The Fat Lady opens one sleepy eye, and opens the portrait hole with a grumble.

“Well, whatever it was—“ Ron’s voice dies in his throat the moment he steps in. Behind him, Harry and Hermione stop abruptly in his tracks.

He should’ve known, the moment they entered the common room with the torches still blazing with light. He should’ve known, because when has luck ever been on their side?

On the opposite side of the common room, Percy, Fred, and George meet his eyes in utter disbelief.

Bloody fucking hell.

Chapter Text

Percy Weasley was five years old when his brother was born. Ron came out kicking, screaming, and— well, rather ugly. He doesn’t quite remember the twins as babies.

So when Percy sat on the couch with this tiny little thing in his lap, it was the first time he’d looked at someone and thought, that’s my baby brother, the same way Charlie and Bill had once done for him. He wouldn’t understand the significance of that until years later.

Admittedly, he’d thought less of this as the years progressed, and the wide eyed wonder at the strange new baby in their home was replaced with annoyance at the little menaces that took up space in his already crowded schedule.

But, suffice to say, Percy knows his baby brother. So when Ron woke up on that summer day screaming and inconsolable, then spent the rest of his time unnervingly contemplative (contemplative? Ron doesn’t contemplate anything—) Percy knew something was wrong.

He’d hoped that time would fix it. Then he hoped that his mother would fix it, and after that he prayed that the awkward, stilted conversation they shared would fix it.

And now his gaze drifts over to the now empty corner where the little trio spends most of their time, huddled together and conversing in hushed tones. And nothing has fixed it— whatever it is, anyway.

It’s strange. It’s all strange, really, in ways that he just doesn’t have time for, not when OWLs are looming ever so close, not when prefect duties consume half of his free time, and certainly not when the tantalizing thought of Penelope Clearwater consumes the other half.

But he does wonder. He keeps a careful eye on the distance in Ron’s gaze, and the way his hand doesn’t seem to relax until there’s a wand in it. He notices, too, the tiny portions of food on his plate, the way it’s been ever since mid summer.

And of course he sees the fast friendship he’s made with the two other children in his year: a sweet but pragmatic girl that reminds Percy vividly of himself, and Harry bloody Potter.

Who, by the way, almost matches Ron in their specific brand of strangeness. Harry is nice, but constantly wary, and nothing at all like you’d expect from the Boy Who Lived. He’s got a big grin with missing teeth, and knobby elbows and scruffy hair. He’s nervous for his first day at school and doesn’t tie his tie properly.

(If there’s one continuity, let it be this: Percy meets Harry Potter for the first first time and, seeing his ashen, scared face, his ratty clothes and the way he flinches when people come too close, and thinks, Merlin, that poor thing.)

Once again, Percy meets Harry Potter for the first time, except this time he stands a little taller. This time he grips his wand like it’s a weapon, because he knows it is, and though he no longer flinches, he does hold himself a little stiffer when incessant students press in on him in the Great Hall. Percy shoos them off, because Harry’s Gryffindor and one of his own now, and again, thinks, Merlin, that poor thing.)

It’s good that Ron has friends. Goodness knows that boy needs peers of his own age. At the Burrow, Fred and George had each other, and Ginny had her friend Luna from down the road, and Ron was like him: flying solo.

Even so, there’s something distinctly unusual about this trio. The very first morning, he’d woken up to find them curled into each other on the couch nearest to the fireplace, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Ron so peaceful.

They’re always huddled close, always speaking lowly and smiling in a stilted way when people approach. They often stand guarded, in the corner of the room, sweeping the area as though looking for something. They move around each other as though part of a whole, and argue like the kind of friends who are more family than anything.

It’s only the start of term, and yet sometimes Ron speaks like he’s known these two children their whole lives.

Here are the facts. Percy scrawls them on the edge of his parchment paper, to keep them in order.

Ron hasn’t been the same since mid summer. Ron flinches when someone gets too close without warning, and stands as though prepared to run. Ron spares heavy, forlorn glances at his three brothers whenever he thinks they aren’t looking. Ron has already forgiven the twins for their often mean pranks on him before they can even ask him if it.

Ron sticks to his two friends like glue, and neither of them leave each other’s sides if they can help it. In the rare moments where he’s alone, he attaches himself to his brothers, particularly Fred. Ron knows how to differentiate the twins with far more accuracy than he once had.

“Nice list.” A set of hands clap down on his shoulders. and he might’ve yelped in surprise if not having been long weathered by the twins’ scares.

A shock of ginger hair in his periphery is enough so that he doesn’t have to look. He crumples the parchment into his hands.

“Hey, I was reading that!” George’s elbow digs into his shoulder.

“Aren’t the two of you supposed to be in bed right now?” Percy shuts his eyes for a moment, hoping that when he opens them, they’ll be gone. When this proves futile, he tries to wipe the only half dried ink from his fingers.

“So.” Fred plops down onto the couch beside him, decidedly ignoring Percy’s quiet annoyance. George follows, and it dawns on him that he’s not going to get them out of his hair tonight. “About Ron.”

Percy rubs at his temples, willing his headache to go away. “You know what I’m talking about. Ever since this summer, he’s been…”

“A bit of a lunatic?” Fred supplies helpfully, earning himself a pointed glare.

“Batshit crazy?” George earns a hard elbow to the rib.

All three boys share a look, and though it’s strange for Percy to be a part of the twins’ looks, he knows exactly what they’re thinking about. That horrible summer day, when they were supposed to go out to the fields for Quidditch but instead spent the day tip-toeing around a silent, pensive Ron.

“It’s like he knows something we don’t,” George mutters, more to himself than anyone else. “Like, when we hid your prefect badge and I could’ve sworn he told you where to find it.”

“So you did take—“

“Of course we did. Keep up. He told you where it was?”

“Yes, but—“

“See! That’s what I’m talking about!” Percy slumps down into his chair, forced to make peace with the fact that they won’t let him get a word out.

“He’s never had anyone on his side,” Percy mutters, and it’s a shock that he can get through an entire sentence without interruption. “We’ve ought to look out for him. Being a first year isn’t easy, on top of— well, whatever he’s got going on.”

“And that doesn’t include trying to interrogate it out of the poor boy every chance you get,” he adds pointedly, and to his great surprise, the twins actually seem to be thinking about it.

Fred bites the inside of his cheek, brows furrowed like they are when he’s trying to carry out a particularly difficult prank.

His voice comes out almost a whisper. “Do you think he’ll be alright?”

Their expressions are strange and uncomfortably familiar. He realizes, then, what they’re doing: looking to their big brother for reassurance.

Percy doesn’t remember the twins as babies, but he does remember them as tiny, screeching, delighted little toddlers.

You-Know-Who was still in power those days, and he remembers dark nights, when their parents would leave and Bill and Charlie were left in charge. Bill would check the wards with inexperienced but certain hands, and Charlie would keep watch. And the three of them would sit and wait, knowing nothing of where their parents were or what was to come next.

George and Fred would look up at him, twin expressions. And though he never saw them at thought, that’s my baby brothers, they are his brothers nonetheless. And once, he’d solemnly promised Bill and Charlie that he’d keep them safe, despite being five years old, a baby himself, in no position to do anything.

He smiles. Percy doesn’t understand these two, but at least he can succeed in this. “He’ll be fine. He’s got us, hasn’t he?”

“‘Course,” George grins, trying to put on a brave face. “We’ll make sure he doesn’t go crazy. Well, that’s assuming he hasn’t already—“

Percy’s about to scold him for calling their little brother crazy, when, in the corner of his eye, the portrait hole creaks open. This in itself isn’t unusual; in his short time as prefect, he’s already busted a dozen or so older students for sneaking out.

What is unusual is the little children that shuffle into the room. A shock of red hair presents itself as Ron, followed closely by his own little shadows. All three stop dead in their tracks.

Then, Hermione Granger— the small, bushy haired one— bursts into tears.

“Oh, please don’t be mad!” she wails while both boys stare in a vaguely guilty way. “Professor—“ she sniffles, “—Snape’s essay is due tomorrow, and I just—“

“We only needed this one book from the library,” Ron says quickly, eyes big and round in that sweet, apologetic way that shouldn’t be allowed. “Please, Perce? Don’t be mad, McGonagall already punished us…”

He heaves a long sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose. Why can’t things just be easy? Why didn’t he go to bed early?

Ron shifts on his feet, fidgets with the strap of his bag, looking positively terrified.

“Come here, Ron,” he gestures, and the three turn to each other with the same look that his mum and dad give each other sometimes, the kind when everyone is bickering about something or other and it’s loud and they want to present a united front. The kind that no one else but them can understand.

Harry wordlessly takes the bag from Ron’s hands, and guides a still sniffling Hermione back up to her room. Ron drags his feet and drops down into the couch opposite of his brothers.

Well, he hasn’t planned much past this. His only thought had been to talk to Ron. And now that he’s sitting there, leg bouncing up and down so that his sneakers squeak on the floor, what is there to say? Percy bites back the urge to stop him fidgeting.

“So. How’s school?” Percy falls back into the prim, often pompous tone of voice like it’s breathing. The exchange already feels more like an interview than a chat between brothers.

“My work’s all done, I swear,” Ron’s raised brows falter; whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t this. “Are you mad?”

“No, Ron,” he says patiently. “It’s fine. I just wanted to talk to you.” He knows all about Ron’s schoolwork. It’s possibly the only way he knows how to look out for him, in guiding Ron through the proper pronunciation and ensuring his homework is completed on time.

It’s also how he knows that Professor Snape’s essay is not, in fact, due tomorrow.

“How are you? Do you like Hogwarts?” He isn’t sure what he’s looking for in getting Ron to open up to them, but Fred and George have already spent weeks trying to corner him into an answer. Percy’s not about to follow in their mistakes.

“Made any friends?” The twins butt in with matching grins.

“Any enemies?”

“Anyone we need to hex for you?” George cracks his knuckles with an eagerness that makes Percy shudder.

Ron pauses thoughtfully. “No, not really.” While Percy certainly doesn’t approve of violence, he supposes he could look the other way if a kid who’d been messing with his baby brother had his hair hexed green, or whatever trick the twins are undoubtedly planning.

He says just that, a little reluctant but sure in the sentiment. Fred and George stare with newfound awe, but Ron looks quietly heartbroken.

(Ron looks at his big brother, who would break his beloved rules for him, and wonders why Percy couldn’t have the sense to do so in a few years. Ron looks at him, and doesn’t know where it went wrong. He doesn’t know anything about the life Percy had after he left, and he most likely never will. He doesn’t know anything at all.)

Has Percy said the wrong thing again? It wouldn’t be the first time, but he’d been so sure about this. This, he thought, he could get right.

Without warning, Ron stands abruptly from his seat and bounds into him. Percy automatically wraps his arms around the boy’s shaking form.

He wants to be alarmed, to demand to know what’s wrong and how he can fix it. But Ron is shaking and even Fred and George don’t have anything to say about it. Bill and Charlie have long since left, making Percy the oldest one here. Percy, with the responsibility to keep them together.

So instead he rubs her back in careful circles, the way their mother did when Ron used to come to her wailing about the twins’ tricks, or for Ginny when she was still little enough to cry about busted lips and scraped knees. His throat is too tight for words, and even then, what is he to say?

Ron doesn’t wail anymore, either. In fact, you wouldn’t know he’s crying, save for his shoulders shaking and the occasional sharp intake of breath. It’s horribly unnerving.

George stands wordlessly, only to sink into the spot next to Percy, and Fred follows on the other side.

Percy doesn’t know how to feel about this: Ron curled up practically on his lap, and the twins’ shoulders pressed up against his on either side, in a chair that certainly wasn’t made to hold all four of them at once.

George extracts a hand from the cramped space between them to run it through Ron’s hair. Percy decides that this is okay, despite the twins’ elbows poking painfully into his ribs and Ron’s knee dug into the side of Fred’s leg in a way that can’t be very comfortable.

“What’s the matter, Ron?” He schools his voice into something gentle and even and not at all scared. “What can we do to help?”

Ron pulls back a little, wiping his eyes. He frowns thoughtfully. “Anything?”

Now, anything is a very broad spectrum, and Percy’s about to voice his concern before Fred interrupts. “Anything.”

Ron’s head falls back onto Percy’s chest, a small gesture that almost makes him side with Fred. He lets out a little sigh.

“Yesterday in Charms, Hermione was telling me about a spell that could make a glass jar unbreakable.” There’s a distinct fondness in how he says her name. Though they’ve only been friends for a short while, it’s clear that Ron cares for the girl.

“Is that so?”

“I want one of those unbreakable jars,” Ron says hurriedly, as though he needs all the words out in a rush. “Please?”

“What’d you need something like that for?” This time, even the twins have the sense to ask about it.

He turns his face more towards Percy, as though to hide. “I just think it’d be cool.”

For a frightening moment, Percy thinks of all the pranks and tricks that could be pulled with something like that.

But he has to remind himself that Ron isn’t Fred and George. If he wants a silly little charmed jar, then Percy will get it to him.

“Alright. Done,” Percy says finally, and Ron positively beams at him through red rimmed eyes.

“Thanks, Perce.” He stops, then, turning stiff in Percy’s arms. He opens his mouth once, then falters. “… I love you guys.”

George grins with none of the usual ferocity. “‘Course you do, Ronnie.”

This is new, too, alongside the flinching and the quietness and the pensive looks. They don’t do mushy words. They do pats on the back and ruffled hair and incessantly annoying one another.

But it’s also not bad. Ron goes quiet, and Percy thinks he should make the boy go back to his room but can’t fathom getting up just yet. Instead he watches Fred’s fingers curl absentmindedly around Ron’s hair and George’s fond, thoughtful expression.

The next time Percy brushes some of his hair back, Ron’s eyes are shut, and his breaths slow and even in sleep. He looks more peaceful than they’ve seen him in a long, long time.

“Don’t,” Percy hisses before George can wake him.

Because here’s something else he knows, too: Ron hasn’t been sleeping. Too often this summer, Percy passed by Ron’s room in the middle of the night for water, and saw light streaming in from under the door.

Only once was the light shut off.

The door hung slightly open, and he stopped for a moment to check in. This is what he saw: Ron, bolting upright in bed, clawing at the fabric around his chest and arms as though it were choking him. And the gasping— it was a sharp, near animalistic noise that tore from his throat.

Percy had instinctively drawn back, feeling distinctly as though he were invading on something not meant for him. He didn’t know what to do. The gasping stopped for a moment, then came out all at once in a sort of choked sob.

He isn’t his mother, who has her own kind of magic in knowing exactly what her children need, nor his father, with his calm and steady hand. And really, any of his siblings would have been better equipped to handle that. (Well, maybe not the twins— but still.)

His throat burned with shame as he made the silent trek back to his room, socked feet wary of the creaking steps. The gasping had faded behind him.

So, naturally, he doesn’t wake Ron. He instead tries to adjust him in his arms with the intent to bring him up to his own bed, before realizing that Ron is eleven years old now and nearly as tall as him, and Percy is scrawny and thin, with no physical strength to speak of.

George snorts, amused, before standing and taking Ron in his arms. “Don’t wanna wake up our little baby brother?”

“Have you gone soft, Percy?” Fred elbows him with a mocking gasp.

But Percy just rolls his eyes, and watches George carry Ron to his room with a gentleness he didn’t know the twins could have. He trails behind when they disappear behind the first year room’s door, uncertain as to what he’s looking for.

But he lingers anyway. George lays him down into bed and ruffles his hair gingerly, like he isn’t eleven years old at all— like he’s still the small thing that toddled around the Burrow and stared up at them with big, blue, awestruck eyes. Like he still needs to be put to bed.

He doesn’t, but he is still their baby brother, and it’s clearer than ever that he still needs to be looked after. So, when George passes him on the way out, their eyes meet in the silent, shared promise to watch out for him.

Chapter Text

Harry, Ron, and Hermione, Neville has decided, are positively terrifying.

He’d stumbled into their compartment that first day on the train, nervous about talking to new people but mostly just desperate to find Trevor. They seem normal at first, if a little strange, and the two boys certainly don’t look happy when the girl, Hermione Granger, trails out with him.

She finds Trevor in record time. Neville doesn’t know if this is luck, or if the toad likes her better. He just might, because not long after dinner he’s gone missing again.

The three of them are strange in a way he can’t quite place. The first night, they sit in a huddle, and smile strangely and take to certain people quickly, while shying away from others. Neville can’t see a rhyme or reason for it, but he’s at least glad to be in the group of people that they like.

He asks them, at dinner, how long they’d been friends for, thinking of Hannah Abbott, who often Floos to his house on the weekends, and Susan Bones, who likes working in his garden with him when her aunt comes over for tea. Ron, the tall, freckled one, frowns like he’s said something wrong.

They say they met on the train compartment, same as everyone else, but Neville doesn’t think that’s true. He can’t see why they’d lie about it, though.

They orbit around one another with the air of people who’ve spent their whole lives together. During dinner, Ron piles food onto his friends’ plates without prompting, and Harry picks carrots off of their plates without a word of discussion.

They invade each other’s personal space like it’s nothing, with shoulder bumps and playful shoves and Ron’s arm slung around the both of them. Neville even sees Hermione reaching to kiss Harry’s cheek once, which is interesting because when they left to go sit with the Quidditch team during mealtimes, Lavender had knowledgeably proclaimed that Hermione had a crush on Ron. Neville decides that he wants nothing to do with this and leaves it alone.

That’s another thing. The switching tables. They’re the only first years to dare sit with the older students, and Neville feels a little burst of jealousy every time he spots them a little ways away. He isn’t sure if it’s towards them, for getting to sit with the cool older kids, or towards the students who get to sit with the trio.

Lavender sticks her nose up when they’re over there, as if to say she couldn’t care less. Seamus agrees very loudly with the sentiment, and slings an arm around Neville and Dean to prove his point.

But then they’ll come back to their little corner of the Dining Hall, and Lavender and Pavarti will pull Hermione down to sit beside them, and Seamus immediately wants to how Quidditch practice went, and how they think they did on Snape’s last quiz, and any topic he can get his hands on.

They can’t help it. Harry, Ron, and Hermione have the sure, easy demeanor of the older students while not being nearly as intimidating as those outside of their year. They’re immediately popular.

And when classes start, their aptitude for magic is made abundantly clear. A crowd of Gryffindors and Ravenclaws sit down for Transfiguration, and Professor McGonagall reminds them not to expect much of their first attempts, only for Ron Weasley to turn a silver spoon into a ladle with a merely lackluster wave of his wand, as though he hadn’t even really thought about it. It is the first, and perhaps the only time they will ever see their professor’s mouth hung open in shock.

Neville doesn’t know what to make of this. He supposes that he should’ve expected it of the famous Harry Potter, but he hardly knows what makes Ron and Hermione special. There’s smart, and naturally gifted, and then there’s whatever the three of them have.

His Gran would want him to keep the trio close, to learn what makes them great and bask in their influence and invite them over for tea so that she can point out every way that they are different from him.

Instead, Neville keeps his distance. He’s not clever like Hermione, he’s not funny or charismatic in the easy way that Ron is, and he certainly doesn’t command the room’s attention in the way Harry does.

But also— and Neville won’t admit this to anyone but himself— the trio scares him. They remind him of the stories his Gran used to tell about Dark wizards: the ones who had too much power and too much influence, who wanted more than they could have. When he passes them in the halls, conspiratorial whispers turn to careful, stilted smiles far more often than should be normal.

Almost a week into school, Neville reluctantly follows his friends to flying classes, and he isn’t even surprised when he inevitably makes a fool of himself. He’s up in the air before anyone else gets to it, up up up— and down.

His life flashes before his eyes the whole way down. He cries when he hits the ground, though it’s more fear than real pain. When he’s ushered away to the hospital wing, all he can feel is burning shame.

Dinner that night features an enthusiastic, long winded retelling of what had transpired in Neville’s absence.

“We all thought for sure he was gonna die!” Seamus yells, eyes bright. Neville hopes it’s an exaggeration. He clutches his Remembrall tight, even as it glows red in his hands.

When Harry finally gets to joining them, his hair is still windswept, and the look he casts Neville is almost… nostalgic, in a way. Neville doesn’t get a word in, not with everyone vying to speak. Instead, his gratitude is whispered later that night, when the room is quiet and lulled just before bed.

“‘Course,” Harry grins then, and bumps Neville’s elbow the same way he sometimes does for Ron and Hermione. “What are friends for?”

A warm feeling swells in his chest. Friends. He smiles back in his shy, awkward way, and Harry doesn’t seem to mind one bit. For a while, he thinks that they might not be as bad as he had feared.

For a while.

It’s Halloween, and Neville misses his Gran. It’s childish, he knows, but he misses her food and her hugs and even the kisses she presses onto his cheek.

Gran loves Halloween. She says she always has, but she particularly loves Halloween because it’s the very day that Harry Potter vanquished the Dark Lord. She tells him the story every year, like a fairytale. And this is the first Halloween— the first holiday, in fact— that he has to have without her.

He wakes up and can’t find Trevor— not great. Then he can’t find his Remembrall. Also not great.

Then, in potions, he burns his hand and tears spring to his eyes, and everyone looks at him when he yelps, and Professor Snape glares in that way that makes him feel like nothing. And Draco snickers, which really just drives the point home.

He doesn’t go to dinner afterwards. He doesn’t want to hear what his friends have to say, and he certainly doesn’t want to risk running into Draco or his Professor.

Instead, he pushes his way out of class and finds the nearest bathroom, which is blessedly empty. A sob escapes unbidden from his throat, where it had been tightly lodged all day.

If his Gran were here, she’d click his tongue disapprovingly, but she’d still smooth his hair and dry the tears off of his cheek. And he misses her, he misses her frills and smile lines and wrinkled hands, he even misses the stern voice and constant reprimands.

He misses his room, with all the things he had to leave at home, and hospital visits and his box of candy wrappers that he’d been too ashamed to bring with him. He misses Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott. He sees them, sometimes, laughing with their new friends, smiling big, and they must be happier with these new people. They must not even miss him.

He cries and cries until his tears run dry, and then he thinks of his new friends laughing and chatting at dinner without him and he starts to cry again. His head falls as he tugs his knees closer to his chest, feeling small and miserable.

He hears it before anything else. A distant, heavy thump that’s almost enough to distract him from his misery. Then another. The footsteps grow louder, closer, and Neville has the sudden, strange urge to hide.

The bathroom door breaks off with a mighty crash. All the air is sucked out of his lungs, so that when he tries to scream it proves futile. There the troll stands, great and big bad ugly and so, so much worse than in the tales he’d grown up with.

Oh Merlin. Oh Merlin. He’s going to die. The troll trudges forward, leering over him. This is it. He presses himself against the walls, but it’s too late. It lifts its club, heavy and inevitable, and—

“Oi!” A flash of red hair appears in the doorway. The troll turns, wildly, for the noise. It lowers its club and almost smashes into Neville without meaning to. “Over here, you slimy git!”

Harry appears at Ron’s heels and rushes straight in with true Gryffindor bravery, not a moment’s hesitation. And where Harry and Ron go, Hermione goes too— she bursts in, sparks flying from her wand.

The troll changes directions then, forgetting Neville and instead lumbering towards the three in the doorway. Spells fly from their wands, and yet none of them have any real effect on the troll. It keeps moving forward, shrugging off the sparks that hit its thick skin, pulling its club heavily along beside it.

It gets closer and closer to them, and each spell proves horribly futile. It lifts the club, slow, and steady, and it’s going to kill them.

The realization shocks Neville into action. He grapples for his wand, drops it once with shaking hands, and stumbles forward with the few spells he knows. But his weak, flighty stunning spell isn’t even noticed by the troll.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Hermione cries, sounding more frustrated than anything else. Her jaw sets with a grin determination that in another life, Neville has come to know well. “Bombarda maximus!”

A streak of red light hits the troll squarely in the chest. A bright light and a loud, horrible boom shakes Neville to his core. The troll falls to the ground in a bloody heap.

The air is suddenly, irrevocably still. It doesn’t fill his lungs even when he gasps for breath.

There’s blood everywhere. Everywhere. It’s all that’s left of the troll, it’s on his arms and his legs, it’s even in Hermione’s bushy hair. She grimaces and tries to wipe it back from her face.

Ron gives the troll, which is now more of a lifeless lump, a little kick to ascertain that he’s dead. Blood on his shoe. Blood on Neville’s shoes. And his robes. The smell hits him all at once, putrid and acrid and uncomfortably metallic. He gags.

Hermione’s saying something dryly, clutching her ribs as though wounded, and Ron snorts a little in laughter. Neville doesn’t hear any of this. His ears are ringing. All he can see is the look in Hermione eyes that makes him blood run cold, and blood and blood and blood—

“Neville?” Harry’s in front of him now. His entire body is trembling now. Hot tears spring forth.

Harry doesn’t make fun of him like Draco. Doesn’t even scorn him like his Gran. He lowers Neville to the ground when his shaking knees finally give out, speaking lowly, “It’s alright, Neville, don’t worry.”

His breaths come out short and thin now, and he tries to speak but only manages a small, pathetic whimper. Harry stands up, grabs a few paper towels and wets them in the sink.

He then crouches down to be at Neville’s level, still speaking in that easy, gentle voice that you’d use on small children. “We’re fine, Neville, see? Hermione’s taken care of it.”

His eyes drift back over to the gorey, huddled lump that used to be a troll. Suddenly he can’t breathe again. He tries to wipe the blood off his face and only succeeds in getting more of it on his cheek.

Bits of flesh and rib stick out from the troll’s cracked open chest. He can’t take it anymore, and curls over, gagging and heaving, bile rising in his throat.

Harry shuffles back a bit, and Neville fears, for a horrible, sick moment, that he’s going to go away. Instead, he positions himself at Neville’s side, a steady hand on his back.

“Look at me,” Harry says firmly, and the cool paper towel he presses onto Neville’s face grounds him in reality. Harry wipes it across his cheek in small, careful motions. “It’s alright, Neville. We’re fine now, see?”

Hermione looks on in disgust at the mangled mess of troll, but not the horrified, what-have-I-done kind of disgust— rather, the kind when you see a particularly nasty bug. Her hand twirls her wand absentmindedly in fluid, deadly motions. Suddenly, Neville understands what his Gran meant in saying that a wand is a dangerous weapon to yield.

If the door was still on its hinges, it would’ve flung over in a dramatic display. Instead, a flurry of footsteps have all four children tensing in anticipation.

Professor McGonagall flies into the room, wand out and ready, but when she sees the bloody mass on the floor, her face falls in horror.

It’s quite the scene, Neville can imagine: him with Harry in the corner, tear stained and trembling like a leaf, Hermione wiping her brow and only succeeding in slicking blood onto her forehead, a darkness dancing in her eyes, and Ron crouched low over the scene of the crime.

The change is immediate. Hermione’s eyes widen in doe-like shock, her wand falling swiftly back into her pocket. Ron shuffles back from the body, and the paper towel that Harry was dragging across Neville’s cheek stops abruptly in its path.

Their Professor goes very pale in the face, and her wand falls limp at her side. For a moment, he thinks she might throw up. He certainly feels nauseous.

Instead, she holds her head high and her jaw set tightly, a formidable sight. Her voice holds no trace of unsteadiness, rather an unwavering command. “What is the meaning of this?”

Hermione breaks the silence, eyes wide and breathless, “Professor, please—“

“Potter!” Professor Snape and Professor Quirrel round the corner, and Neville feels like he’s going to start hyperventilating again. Snape falters for a short moment upon taking in the scene, before curling his lip into a horrible sneer. “Of course— of course he’d drag his friends down with him, just like—“

“That’s quite enough,” Professor McGonagall snaps in that clipped tone that leaves no room for argument. Neville involuntarily shudders. He catches sight of the look on Quirrel’s face: alarmed and queasy, and thinks he rather feels the same.

Their Professor then rounds on her students, eyes sharp and turned pointedly away from the bloody mass in the center of the room. “Explanations. Now.”

“We went to help Neville,” Hermione says in a rush that makes all the words sound like one. “He didn’t know about the troll, because of what Snape— I mean, he didn’t know. And I tried to—“

“Neville did it!” Ron blurts, cutting Hermione off. “I think he was really scared, because it was coming at him, and then, well…”

“Well, then…” McGonagall says distantly. “It’s a wonder no one was injured… a bout of accidental magic, I suppose…”

If Neville had been just a little more cognizant, he might have noticed that Ron was telling their Professor a bold-faced lie. He might have realized, too, what this means: that they have something to hide. But, as is, he simply drops his head down onto his knees and begins to cry anew.

“That’s quite enough, Mr. Longbottom,” Professor McGonagall tells him in that calm, pragmatic voice that reminds him so much of his Gran.

He only cries harder. Somewhere in the time he’d had his face hidden in his hands, she’d crossed the room, past the morbid troll remains, and knelt down in front of him with Harry. “Up you get now, dear. There you go.”

There are hands pulling him up, and he doesn’t object to it at all. McGonagall supports his arm, a little distantly and trying not to gag at the horrible smell of troll remains coating his robes. Harry, on his other side, puts a steady arm around Neville’s shoulder, guiding him past the dead body. He squeezes his eyes shut, unwilling to stand any more of the horrible sight.

“I’m taking my students back to their commons,” Professor McGonagall announces evenly. “Would the two of you be so kind as to clean up here?”

Professor Quirrel begins to stutter, and Snape makes another displeased face. “Surely, Minerva, these students must be reprimanded. Running off to defeat a troll, of all things…”

“I’ll see to it, Severus,” their Professor says in a tone that leaves no room for discussion. “Come along, you four.”

Neville lets himself be pulled along by Harry, still quite nauseous and dazed. Hermione and Ron hurry behind them, casting each other significant looks. Neville employs his recent strategy of staying as far out of it as he can (though, admittedly, that hadn’t been of much help today.)

When they reach the Fat Lady’s portrait, Professor McGonagall pauses, lips pursed in thought.

“Five points each, I think, for your bravery tonight,” she decides quietly. He hadn’t expected points. “I want you all to shower as soon as you get inside, and then you may finish the Feast with the rest of your classmates.”

After a hasty chorus of thanks, they head inside without discussion. Neville’s body moves on autopilot: into the tower, up the stairs, into the bathroom. Harry and Ron let him take the first turn. He doesn’t complain.

He scrubs and scrubs his skin raw under steaming hot water in a desperate attempt to get the horrible dirty feeling off of him. By the time he’s done, he’s scrubbed most of the foul odor away.

He eats with everyone else at dinner, taking little bites and trying to push the image of troll remains out of his mind.

Lavender presses into his side and demands to know where he’d been, and what had he been doing during the feast? And why did he come back to the tower with that horrible smell hanging off of him?

So, reluctantly, he admits to fighting the troll. He’d rather talk about anything other than this. Really, he’d rather talk about potions. Anything. Instead, Seamus nearly leaps up in excitement and demands to know every detail.

Maybe this is why Harry and his friends don’t sit with them at mealtimes anymore. Right now, they’re curled up in a corner of the common room, balancing plates of food on their legs and laughing and something Ron is telling them.

Harry looks up, and catches his eye. Neville wants to turn away, embarrassed, but Harry just grins and gestures for him to come over.

It’s easy to slip away from his fellow first years, who are deep into a discussion on whether or not it is possible to kill a troll. (It is. He just told them so.)

“Are you alright, Neville?” Hermione leans forward anxiously, eyes roaming as though checking for injuries. Ron pushes a plate of food into his hands. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

Her tone is the high, fragile kind that older teens use on little kids. And maybe he is just a little kid— he’d certainly felt like one, crying on the cold tiled bathroom floor. His face flushes in embarrassment.

“No, I’m fine,” he mumbles, and pulls back a little.

Ron frowns. “It’s alright to be scared, Neville. I know I was.”

He’s reminded of Ron running headfirst into the bathroom, wand out and ready, and highly doubts he was scared.

“I think,” he whispers, not really meaning to voice the treacherous thought out loud, “that the Sorting Hat was wrong about me. I wasn’t meant to be in Gryffindor.”

“Oh, Neville,” Harry breathes. It’s a mesmerizing, uncomfortable truth about the three of them that they always seem to have this acute understanding of those around them. He gets the feeling that even if he hadn’t voiced his feelings, Harry still would’ve known. “There’s lots of ways to be brave, you know.”

And Neville doesn’t know, so he just shrugs.

“Bravery, unlike what some people think—“ Hermione narrows her eyes at Harry and Ron, “isn’t just running headfirst into danger.”

“Like, you go to Snape’s classes every day, even though he’s absolutely horrible, and you keep doing it even though it’s hard.”

“And even today, with that troll; I saw you jump up to attack it, when it was coming for us.” Harry’s face glows with pride. “If that’s not Gryffindor bravery, I don’t know what is.”

“That’s not the same,” Neville mumbles, staring down at his food and feeling immensely pathetic. “I haven’t got a choice about Snape’s classes, do I?” And I was dead scared of that troll.” The mere mention of it is enough to make him feel ill all over again.

“Bravery isn’t the lack of fear, Neville,” Hermione admonishes in that wise, sensible tone. “Sometimes it’s doing things even though you’re scared.”

Neville blinks. He’d never thought of it like that before.

Still doesn’t change the fact that the three of them are utterly terrifying and he’s never again going to let himself be curious about what they get up to sneaking around the school, but… you know. It’s something.