Chapter Text
“There is a way.”
It took time for the words to register.
He had spent the last twenty minutes in the fog of his own mind, trying to sort through the numb terror that had taken over him after the doe Patronus had dispelled, its final message spelling their doom.
“I’ll admit I don’t see how we can survive this but if anyone can find a solution it’s you, Hermione,” declared Ron, his previously hollow gaze gaining a feverish light. “What is it, then? Leaving the country, forming a counter-attack? An obscure spell that would rip You-Know-Who to pieces from a distance? A poison slipped into his drink? I’m not picky.”
Harry stayed mute, still battling the knowledge that Voldemort knew he was a Horcrux, the certainty that nothing would stop him from taking advantage of this fact. After the news of Seamus and Ginny’s deaths at Hogwarts, this was the worst thing he’d ever been told. The Order was dwindling, the people losing hope and they still hadn’t found a way to destroy the last Horcruxes beyond the Sword of Gryffindor. Seeing as the goblins had dismantled the enchantments that tethered it to the Hogwarts students in need of it, there was no way to access it anymore. That added to their failure to access the basilisk fangs in the Chamber of Secrets made them realise that they had very few options left.
When Voldemort had announced in retaliation that he’d kill one member of the DA at a time until Harry surrendered to him, they hadn’t taken him seriously enough. They regretted it now.
They were stuck with the locket, the cup and the diadem —and him, though it was best not to think about that— with no way to destroy them.
His hands trembled even as he clenched them into fists.
“There is a ritual,” said Hermione softly. “It’s… Dark Magic, requiring the sacrifice of the soul of your greatest enemy. I found it in the Black library while we were at Grimmauld. The array has to be traced on cursed soil with blood mixed with the sand of a Time-Turner and the tears of a phoenix.” At those words, she fished a vial out of her pocket. “When we left the department of Mysteries, there was a broken hourglass stuck to my robe. I kept it because I thought I might like to study it once the war was over. Repair it, maybe.” She bit her lip and shook her head. “Anyway. Fawkes will come if you call him, Harry.”
She was stalling, both Harry and Ron could tell. The green-eyed boy knew he would be the one encumbered with the burden of asking. So he did.
“What does the ritual do?”
His voice was raspy from disuse, drawing a startled blink from his friends.
“It will send you back into the past. You’ll be reincarnated into your family bloodline, though you’ll keep your memories of this timeline.”
His breath caught. “So I’d, what? Become my own older brother? My parents were too young to have me at that age and I’d be a toddler. How could I stop him?”
“Or your father’s brother. A cousin, an uncle. According to my calculations, you wouldn’t be able to go back further than You-Know-Who’s birthdate. So you’ll be able to stop him.”
“You wouldn't be able to kill him in the crib but you could stop his ascension to power,” murmured Ron, evaluating the implications. “At worst you’d fight in the First War but with a significant advantage.”
Harry thought about it. He’d be taken from everything he loved but he’d be able to protect his and his father’s friends.
(And he’d have a family, though he tried not to dwell on that. Best be practical for now.)
“What about you? Can you come back with me?”
Hermione shook her head. “We’d have to sacrifice two other souls, people we hate as much as we do You-Know-Who.”
“I can think of a few,” grunted Ron. The twist of their friend’s lips showed she agreed. “But you’re right, it’s too risky. We don’t have much time as it is, if You-Know-Who finds us before we get everything ready we’ll be fucked.”
Harry ached at the thought of going through this alone. His friends had been there since the beginning, half a step behind him through all the dangers he had been thrown at by professor Dumbledore. He’d tried to protect them from it but in the end, they were the ones who had his back. The thought that he’d never get that friendship from them again was excruciating.
He blinked back his tears and took a deep breath.
“Let’s do it, then. Where do we find cursed soil?”
Ron and Hermione walked up to him, placing a hand on each of his shoulders. The warm touch soothed something in him he couldn’t quite name.
His friend looked at him with a familiar exasperation. It was a look she reserved for when she thought he and Ron were being especially dim for failing to notice something obvious to her yet cryptic to anyone else.
“A land becomes cursed after being saturated in Dark Magic, either due to a ritual being performed there without cleansing it afterwards or due to the death of an innocent. Or both.”
“Er, where would that be then?”
She rolled her eyes.
“At the cemetery of Little Hangleton.”
“It’s done,” murmured Hermione, looking over her handiwork.
The array was an intricate thing. A mix of runes, arithmancy and the kind of blood magic his best friend would never have thought to touch before the war had taken everything from them. The three of them had poured every ounce of their magical cores into stabilising it. The exhaustion coupled with the severe blood loss had Harry feeling faint as he stepped towards the ritual ground, preparing to lie at the centre of it. Fawkes trilled next to his ear, a comforting presence. He petted the phoenix with an unsteady hand.
“Thank you, my friend,” he whispered as Fawkes extended his wings to take flight. “I hope we’ll meet again.”
He watched his friends blearily as they talked to each other in hushed tones, wondering what was keeping them from saying their goodbyes. After a minute or an hour, he blinked his eyes open to find Hermione and Ron kneeling at his sides.
“We’re sorry, mate. I wish—”
“We can’t come with you,” repeated the greatest witch of her time with a mournful tone. “But you can take something of us to your next life.”
Both of them pointed their wands at him and intoned. “Expecto Patronum.”
The otter and the terrier danced around each other in a whirling pattern, their glow intertwining until their shapes blurred to form a core of light.
“Amicus Vita Sequenti.” A friend in the next life, he translated.
The core whizzed around him like a snitch before bumping into the corner of his jaw. He chuckled at the fuzzy feeling. As his mouth opened, the magic flew inside of it before dispersing into his body. Harry watched in amazement as his veins lit up from the inside and the memories powering the Patronus spell appeared within his mind.
His first meeting with Ron. The morning after the troll incident. Their first Christmas. Days in the library spent researching mysteries. Adventures and quiet moments. Gifts given and gifts received. Deep love and loyalty.
“Our magic will protect your memories,” explained Ron, his voice quiet and his eyes damp. Hermione was sobbing at his side, clutching at his arm. “The sacrifice will build upon it to make your mental shields unbreachable by intent alone.” Like his mother’s spell, he could hear in what wasn’t said. “And that way we’ll be with you, always.”
“Thank you,” he said, choked up. “I’ll miss you.” He paused, searching his words. “I’ll save us all, I promise.”
“I’ve no doubt you will, Harry, that’s who you are,” replied Hermione between hiccupping breaths. “But don’t forget to live.”
“Yeah, mate, what’s the point of getting another chance if you can’t be happy?”
Harry chuckled. “Alright. I’ll try.”
It took them a few minutes to recollect themselves. After a too-long moment that felt all too soon to the three of them, Ron and Hermione stepped back and left him at the centre of the array. Harry gathered the magic he had left and poured it into the soil beneath him. He looked to the sky and pronounced the spell that would defy the laws of the world.
“Renato ad preteritum.”
“Harry Aster Evans!”
He stepped forward. As the Sorting had barely begun, most in attendance were still paying attention to the first-years, though Harry could see a few glazed-over looks and sneers from students who had already written him off for his status as a muggle-born. He saw James Potter perk up from the Gryffindor table, which had him fighting a smile. No doubt his father from another life was excited to meet his crush’s little brother.
He gave quiet thanks to the deputy headmistress when she put the Hat on his head and sat down on the stool.
“Oh my, oh my. It’s been a long time since I’ve had one of you under my Hat,” murmured the enchanted object. “Though it hasn’t gone how you imagined it would, has it?”
“I expected to be reborn a Potter,” he confirmed with a wry quirk on his lips. He supposed he and his friends had held some level of bias towards muggle-borns without realising. They shouldn’t have assumed that only a magical line would support the ritual of reincarnation. In fact, they should have expected it. What he and his friends had done could be considered antithetical to the bloodline of the third Peverell brother. Not only had he cheated Death and refused to greet it like an old friend but he had done it by rewinding the entity’s work and spiting Fate. “It’s not so bad, though.”
He’d been dismayed when he’d seen Petunia hovering over his baby crib but she had turned out to be a surprisingly good older sister. Five years his senior and four years older than Lily, Petunia Evans was just as prim and proper, gossip-loving and judgemental as Harry Potter’s aunt had been, but that was overshadowed by a deep possessiveness she felt towards her family that Harry understood all too well. She hoarded their parents' and her siblings’ affection like a dragon hoarded gold and took offence to any attempt to take any of it from her.
It had taken Harry a lot of effort to convince her that Lily and him having magic didn’t mean they would leave her behind. He wasn’t as successful as he would have liked but she had at least agreed to read his letters. Small steps. Lily and Petunia’s relationship would take a lot more than that to mend, though.
Loving Lily was a trial sometimes, he thought to himself. He’d imagined she’d be his favourite thing about returning to the past. Harry already loved her as his mother, he didn’t think it would be so difficult to pour that love he’d never be able to give into a sibling bond. And for a while it had. But then they found out about magic.
He hadn’t expected her friendship with Severus to be so… discomforting. He’d been prepared to like the boy, even. After all, he’d sacrificed himself to tell the Order about Voldemort’s next plans. But seeing him sneer at his oldest sister and watching Lily giggle at it like it was all a game had been a rude awakening.
She was so enthralled by her special magical friend that she refused to believe he was callous rather than awkward. Lily wasn’t a bad person, she was just… self-centred. It was mostly harmless, the way only a child’s inconsiderateness could be and yet it had had devastating effects on her relationship with their older sister.
Their parents stayed neutral on the topic, hoping they would sort it out themselves. Their father, Richard Evans worked with Tobias Snape at one of the town’s factories and he pitied the man’s son for having to deal with his horrible father. As such, he advocated for a more understanding approach. Their mother, Rose Evans nee Flannagan thought it would do them good to learn how to resolve conflict without needing intervention.
“You’ll be facing a lot of adversity in this life,” she’d told them. “We cannot make choices for you. If you want to fight with each other, so be it. It will make you tough. But remember that you would be stronger together than you are alone.”
Harry was still in awe over the very concept of having parents. Rose and Richard were very good ones. They both emigrated from Ireland at a young age, in the middle of a resurgence in Anti-Irish sentiment. They believed in being kind to those who deserved such thing and resilient in the face of those who didn't, and taught their children to be the same.
They had both been very no-nonsense about magic; although relieved to have an explanation for his and Lily’s inexplicable accidents, they primarily considered their gift a tool that they should not rely on too much. They had a serious discussion about accepting their letters to Hogwarts or staying home for a primarily muggle education coupled with basic classes meant for muggle-borns who never took up wands to help them control their power. It was administered by the same bureau that took care of assimilating squibs into the muggle world, a department as understaffed and underpaid as Arthur Weasley’s work had been.
They discussed the pros and cons until it became clear that Lily and his love for magic superseded their wariness of the new world they were about to enter.
Harry was secretly glad his parents had never seen him as anything but a uniquely precocious child, for he believed they would have hated to know how his first experience of wizarding schooling had gone.
It was bittersweet to be given a choice. And tempting to leave all it all behind. The violence, the danger. But he needed to be here to protect this world he loved and hated. So the sacrifice of his future would be worth it. So the ball of light still nestled between his ribs would be sheltered, his friends’ last gift to him nurtured.
“You are deep in thought, young man.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I got lost in my head for a bit.”
The Hat huffed. “An easy place to be lost in. You’d do well to organise that mess. Your friends’ magic might protect it from hostile intent but it won’t stop you from losing memories as time goes by.”
“I know. I’ve started learning Occlumency.”
“I can see that. Well, I hope it will serve you well. Now, onto business. Slytherin would be an uphill battle, considering the blood running through your veins in this incarnation. But you have mastered the art of lying to preserve your identity and you strive in adversity. More importantly, I haven’t met someone so ambitious since Tom Riddle himself, though his goal completely opposes yours. Your heart is full of bravery and loyalty. You work towards a kinder future and have the soul of a hero, working tirelessly to save your friends. You would do well in both Gryffindor and Hufflepuff. On the other hand,” the Hat chuckled, “you never seek knowledge for its own sake so Ravenclaw would not suit you. That leaves you three options. What will it be?”
Harry glanced at the table draped in red and gold, where Lily was staring at him with a tense expression. He could hear murmurs around him, all too aware that his time under the Hat was getting longer than a Sorting usually took. He ignored it. He had heard much worse whispers in his first lifetime.
He glanced at the Marauders who were snickering between themselves, though Sirius sometimes stole glances between him and the Slytherin table. Harry blinked, following his gaze. There sat Regulus Black, slightly taller than his peers. His expression was blank and the reincarnated wizard couldn’t tell if his natural complexion was this pale or if his nerves were betraying him. He remembered Kreacher and the bravery of a boy deemed a coward by all sides.
He glanced away.
His primary goal wouldn’t change no matter the House he would be in. In his experience, good people came from all banners.
But maybe he could make his choice matter to people other than him. It would be difficult. As Harry Evans, he was a nobody. He didn’t have a known last name to ease the way, nor an inheritance to at least keep the worst roadblocks off of it.
“I don’t regret my first choice,” he said. “I made wonderful friends and I built myself a home in the tower. But I think I’d like to try something different, this time.”
“Is that so? Then I wish you good luck in… SLYTHERIN!”
Silence echoed in the Great Hall.