Part 3: Time-Turner
Harry, April 1996
Minisinoo

However speculative, Cho's theory that Cedric had harbored a crush on Harry plunged him into a quagmire of confused feelings.  He found it almost too incredible to believe.  Even assuming Cho was right and Cedric had liked boys, what would popular Cedric Diggory -- prefect, Hogwarts Champion, Quidditch captain and O-student -- see in him?  Harry was none of those things.  It was beyond absurd to think about.

Yet he couldn't stop thinking about it.

Ron asked him what was up, but he couldn't tell Ron.  Hermione asked too, and he considered telling her, but held his tongue.  This felt too intimate.  He needed to work it out himself, the mix of flattery and confusion and curiosity -- even the fact he wasn't repulsed.  Shouldn't he be repulsed by the idea that another boy might have dreamt about him the way he sometimes dreamed about Cho?

But he wasn't.  And that confused him more than anything else.

Thoughts of Cedric, and what he might, or might not, have felt were abruptly dismissed in early April when Dolores Umbridge discovered the D.A., and Dumbledore took flight.  Harry felt a sort of frozen dread creeping over him.  He studied hard over Easter holidays, and avoided Cho.  Even if things hadn't fallen apart between them over Cedric, Marietta's betrayal -- and Cho's defense of her despite it -- drove a final wedge between them.

Harry was working in the library the last weekend of the holidays, prowling through the stacks for a particular book Hermione had recommended, when he overheard two older boys talking.

"Ced would've known where to find it."

"Fat lot of good that does us," came the sharp reply.

Harry peeked between the shelves and spotted two boys in Hufflepuff robes -- clearly seventh years -- on the other side.  He recognized them from the little crowd who'd followed Cedric around during the Tournament -- the ones who'd taunted Harry with the badges.

"I was just saying," the first boy replied now in a Midlands accent.

"Yeah, well, I'd rather not be reminded."

"Peter -- "

"Drop it, Scott.  I don't want to talk about him.  He's gone."

Harry frowned and knew he should quit listening in, but curiosity drove him.  After half a minute, the first boy, Scott, said, "It's all right to miss him, you know, even now -- "

"Fuck you!  I said drop it."  And the second boy, Peter, stormed off.

Harry wasn't sure what gave him away.  Maybe an indrawn breath, maybe the squeak of his shoe, but abruptly the boy on the other side snapped, "Who's there?"

Instinctively, Harry tried to flee, but the boy caught him at the end of the stacks as he was emerging, hand like a vise around Harry's wrist.  "It's you," he said with distaste.  Harry found himself looking up at a tall boy with dark hair and angry blue eyes.  "Why were you eavesdropping?"

"I wasn't!"

"Don't lie."

"I wasn't -- honestly!  Just . . . you were talking about Cedric, and I'm really sorry.  I'm really sorry for what happened to him."

Scott let him go, but the blue eyes were still cold.  "I'd've traded you for him any day, me."

It was deliberately cruel, but Harry felt better for the other boy's honesty.  "I don't blame you," he replied.  "You were his friend."  Then he added, because these boys had a right to know what he hadn't wanted to tell Zacharias or Ernie.  "He tried to defend me.  At the end.  He drew his wand and got in front of me."

The other boy sucked in breath almost as if struck.  "He would've.  He was so bloody worried about you competing, like you were his personal responsibility or some such shite."  Then he paused and his voice changed.  "Did he suffer?  No one would ever tell us afterwards."

Harry shook his head.  "I don't think so."  He didn't say anything about Krum using Crucio on Cedric in the maze.  His friends didn't need to know that.  "It was the Killing Curse.  He died instantly."  Harry could still recall staring at Cedric's dead face -- it had shown surprise, not pain.

The other boy nodded once with a simple jerk of his chin.  "We believe you, by the way," he said, "about You Know Who.  Ced was too smart to die in some stupid accident."

"He was," Harry agreed.  "And he didn't."

Scott nodded again, then spun on his heel and stalked away.  Harry stared after him, still hearing one sentence echo in his head: He was so bloody worried about you competing, like you were his personal responsibility .  .  .

Had Cho been right?  Had Cedric fancied Harry?

He was thinking about it all again as April tiptoed into May and Umbridge strengthened her crushing grip on Hogwarts.  His plan began on impulse because of a chance occurrence in the week following Fred and George's departure.  Harry had stopped by Professor McGonagall's office to ask her some further questions about Auror training, but in the middle of their discussion, a bug-eyed Dolores Umbridge appeared at McGonagall's door, demanding her assistance in repairing the damage done to Pansy Parkinson.  Apparently someone had briefly Transfigured the Slytherin prefect into a deer, then inexpertly returned her to her natural form, leaving her with a pair of antlers sprouting from her brow.  Sighing in exasperation, McGonagall said, "Potter, wait here.  This should take only a moment."  And she followed Umbridge.

Harry waited.  And waited.  Whatever had been done to Parkinson, it clearly required more than a moment to undo.  Growing restless, he got to his feet and paced around the cluttered room, studying the titles on book spines on the shelves and examining knickknacks.  He wouldn't have taken the businesslike McGonagall for a hoarder, but she had a surprising array of gadgets and other paraphernalia.  It was while examining some painted tiles and a bronze figurine that looked vaguely Greek that he stumbled over the small, silver sphere with the spinning sand-clock inside.

Hermione's Time-Turner.

He snatched it.

At the time, he had no rational explanation for why he did such at thing, and he certainly had no plan.  He just took the Time-Turner on impulse, fueled by a vague, dim wish.  He'd only ever heard of Time-Turners taking people back a few hours, or a day or two.  One turn per hour, Hermione had told him.  It couldn't possibly take him a whole year into the past, could it?

He'd been back in his seat for a whole ten minutes -- still stunned by the magnitude of the theft he'd just committed -- when McGonagall reappeared in the doorway.  It was only to say, "Potter, I'm sorry, but this is going to take a bit.  Come back tomorrow, all right?"

"Yes, professor."

Escape was a relief.  He wasn't sure how he'd have faced McGonagall with that Time-Turner burning a hole in his pocket while he tried to discuss his future career in law enforcement.  Back in Gryffindor Tower, he hid it behind a loose bit of stone he'd found under the window near his bed.  He couldn't risk McGonagall discovering her Time-Turner was gone and running a search of the castle only to have it turn up in his trunk.  Nor did he want anyone else to know he had it, even Ron.

His plans were still vague, but starting to form.

"How far back d'you think a Time-Turner could take a person?" he asked Hermione a few nights later.  There had been no hue and cry about the Time-Turner, so Harry supposed McGonagall didn't check her shelves often enough to see it was missing.

Hermione glanced up.  "Normally, it's used only for a few hours.  One turn equals one hour."

"I know.  But could it go back further?  Without, you know, standing there and turning it a couple of thousand times?"

Hermione rolled her eyes.  "I have no idea . . . "  Then she trailed off.  "Well, actually, now that you mention it, I do recall Professor McGonagall telling me there are spells that can make a single turn of the sand clock equal a week or a month or even a year."

"Do you know what they are?"

"No, Harry, why would I?"  Her eyes narrowed and she rubbed the side of her nose with the feathered end of her quill.  "Why are you asking me this?"

"Idle curiosity."

"There is no such thing as 'idle curiosity' with you.  You're not exactly a philosopher."  Her eyes narrowed even further.  "And since you couldn't possibly have a Time-Turner -- the Ministry keeps them all under lock and key -- this must be about something else.  So out with it."

"It's not about anything else.  Honestly," he lied.  "I was just reading something that made mention of them and I sort of wondered -- reckoned you'd know."

She preened a bit.  "Well, I did have to learn quite a lot about them . . . "

"So what would happen if you met yourself?  You told me, the night we rescued Sirius, that 'terrible things' happened to wizards who met themselves.  But you didn't specify."

She studied him thoughtfully, as if she still found his questions suspicious.  "They go mad," she replied.  "Or they die.  It's called the Doppelgänger effect."

"Oh."  That was, yes, pretty terrible, he decided.

He didn't dare ask Hermione more, but began his own research, sneaking into the Restricted Section after dark to find books on Time-Turners.  If he wasn't an especially good student -- not like she was -- he'd been watching her do research for the past five years and had learned a thing or two.  It took only three nights of hunting before he found the book -- and spell -- he'd been seeking.  He'd also formulated a plan, although he knew it highly theoretical and full of things that could go very, very wrong.  Hermione would tell him he was out of his mind.

Maybe he was, but even if he wasn't, he would be soon if matters continued at Hogwarts the way they had been.  He had to stop this somehow -- but to put an end Umbridge (and Fudge), he had to stop Voldemort from returning in the first place.  He couldn't go back and warn himself not to take the cup; he didn't want to end up mad or dead.  But he could warn Cedric, and Cedric could stop the younger Harry.

If that also meant Cedric would be alive and Harry could therefore find out if Cho had been right in her suspicions . . . well, he simply didn't let himself think too much about that.

He chose a Saturday afternoon to make the trip, and headed off alone after lunch.  Before he departed the Great Hall, however, he looked back at his friends sitting together at the long, Gryffindor table.  Red head and bushy brown bent close together, they were, as usual, quarreling about something that probably didn't matter, but it made him smile.  This was how he'd want to remember them.

Because one way or another, he wouldn't be coming back tonight.

If this worked -- if he did manage to warn Cedric and Cedric changed the past -- then Harry would cease to exist.  Not his younger self, of course, but now-Harry and everyone else in this godforsaken timeline.  If he didn't succeed, though, he'd be back almost a year, and would have to live forward to now.

But it had to work.  If it didn't, he'd go back again and again until it did.  He had to save Cedric.  And he had to stop Voldemort.  (He wasn't sure which of those he wanted most.)

So he removed the Time-Turner from where he'd hidden it in the wall and went out into the courtyard.  He could remember the night before the Third Task; he'd been unable to sleep and had wandered the castle under his father's invisibility cloak, not seeking anything, just needing to move.  By chance, he'd been downstairs in the classroom hallway when Cedric had come back in through the courtyard door -- rather late.  He'd looked windswept and upset.  On impulse, Harry had pulled off his cloak and stepped out where Cedric could see him.  "Are you all right?"

Cedric had spun in surprise, then glared.  "What are you doing up?"

"Couldn't sleep," Harry had admitted, "Same with you?"

Cedric's face had softened.  "Yeah, me neither.  But you should go to bed.  You'll need your rest, yeah?  That's where I'm going now."

Harry had done as Cedric had said -- and recollection of that brief encounter now told him where he'd find Cedric tonight.  He'd be in the courtyard before half past eleven.  To be on the safe-side, Harry decided to go back to ten o'clock that same evening.

"Here goes," he muttered beneath his breath as he pulled his wand and removed the Time-Turner, tapping it and muttering the spells that would make each turn count for more than just an hour.  Then he set it spinning.

Around him, time flowed into reverse.

Part 4: Virgin

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