***
It was as though Harry had been pinned down by a crushing weight on the centre of his chest. Opening his eyes, he tried to focus on the room, but all he could make out was a mishmash of hazy shapes. He automatically groped around for his glasses and was surprised to find he was no longer sitting on carpet but on a bed. Had Remus or Tonks moved him there? He couldn't remember. In an attempt to sit upright, he pushed with his arms, determinedly ignoring the sharp flares of pain through his ribcage, but he didn’t succeed in getting more than halfway before his head started to spin. With a sigh, he slumped back on the bed and figured that he would be better off closing his eyes for a while and waiting until he didn’t feel so rough before he tried to move again.
Harry drifted off into an uncomfortable sleep. When he woke, the pain in his chest had subsided, but he was still feeling groggy and his head throbbed. Being woken by someone shouting at him certainly didn’t help.
“Oi! Get up you lazy oaf. Transfiguration starts in a few minutes.”
Harry cracked open one eye and gasped. He had to be hallucinating. Standing in front of him was his father, his teenage father.
“Sirius, move! You’re already in McGonagall’s bad books after the stunt you tried to pull last week. If you’re late, she’ll come down on you like a ton of bricks.”
It took a few seconds for Harry to realise that James had just called him by his godfather’s name. Then Harry noticed that he was in the dormitory at Hogwarts, but it wasn’t the room he used to sleep in: the view through the window looked out over an entirely different part of the castle grounds. He guessed the translation could have done with being a little more accurate.
“I must be dreaming,” he said with a slur. If he wasn’t dreaming, then it meant he was stuck in the past looking like Sirius, which could not be a good thing.
“Then wake up you daft bugger.”
“I wish I knew how to wake up. Perhaps I’m going mad.”
“I thought we decided a long time ago that you couldn’t be anything but completely nuts, not with your in-bred family.” James took him by the hand and yanked him upright. “Let’s get going.”
Not knowing what else to do, Harry followed his father out of the room. James stopped at the top of the stairs and gave him a look of impatience.
“What about your bag?”
“My bag?”
“Yes. Bag. You haven’t been hexed by Snivellus, have you?”
“No. I, er, I’ll just get it.”
Shuffling back into the room, Harry saw that there was a black rucksack leaning up against the bed he had been lying on. With no other bag in sight, Harry grabbed it.
As they made their way to the Transfigurations classroom, James ranted about Snape and kept giving Harry sidelong glances, as if considering that Snape really had hexed him. He didn’t seem to require any response, and Harry was grateful for this, because it left him free to think about what had happened.
Obviously, the spell he’d attempted had gone wrong, but he was at a loss to explain why he had been sent here. Whatever the reason, he had to reverse the spell, which was easier said than done. He couldn’t remember the correct incantation and the book was still in Grimmauld Place, in the future.
“Peter had the idea of transfiguring him into a gargoyle. A few days stuck on the roof of the castle should sort out Snivellus a treat. What do you think?”
“Huh?”
“Sirius, what is wrong with you today? No. Don’t answer that. I really don’t want to know what’s going through that thick skull of yours at the moment.”
They turned a corner and Harry saw two Hufflepuffs coming from the other direction. James lowered his voice to a whisper.
“Hexing Snivellus into a gargoyle. Are you up for it?”
“Of course! The Stone Gargoyle,” Harry exclaimed in relief. Dumbledore was still alive; it would be unsettling to see him again, but surely he would be able to help.
“Sirius, keep your bloody voice down.”
“I’ve got to go. I’ll…I’ll be along later.”
Harry turned and left James in the corridor looking bewildered.
“Fine,” James called out after him. “You get yourself another detention. See if I care.”
The only worry Harry had about seeing Dumbledore was if he tried Legilimancy and found out something about the future. Harry had been practicing his Occlumency skills over the past year, but the most he could do was to keep his mind closed off for a few seconds and even that took all of his concentration and willpower to do. He would just have to hope that there wouldn’t be any attempts at mind-reading before he had explained the situation. Then he could borrow Dumbledore’s Pensieve, get the counter-spell through his memory and he would be able to go home.
If only it was that easy.
The first problem was that he did not know the password, and so he was forced to wait beside the Stone Gargoyle for Dumbledore to come down from his office. Waiting had never been one of Harry’s strong points—if it had, he would not have been in this mess in the first place. He started to pace back and forth along the corridor, fiddling with the straps of Sirius’s bag and wondering for the first time where the real Sirius Black could be.
“Oho!”
He jumped at the unexpected voice and whipped round on the spot to see Professor Slughorn approaching. Just like the one he had seen in Dumbledore’s Penseive, this Slughorn had thick, shiny, straw-coloured hair and a gingery-blond moustache, except that his hair was starting to go grey in places and the bald patch was wider. He had also taken to sweeping some longer strands of hair across his head in an effort to hide the baldness. Harry tried his best not to stare, or laugh.
“Sirius, shouldn’t you be in lessons?”
“I need to see Professor Dumbledore.”
“Well, you’ll be here a long time. He’s got some business to attend to in
“When’s he coming back?”
“In a couple of weeks—three at the most, I should think. Is it anything I can help with?”
“Er, no. But thanks anyway.”
Letting his feet scuff along the floor, Harry walked back towards the abandoned Transfiguration class, appalled that he would have to stay in the past for so long before he could get any help. He would have to pretend to be Sirius and not do anything that could change the future. Surely it would not be too difficult.
**
Remus was pacing back and forth across the rug in the Weasley's house, thinking about what Harry could have done to destroy the locket that could also have such an impact on him mentally. He felt as if he should know something, that there was a clue hidden in his own memory somewhere, but none of his recollections of the past few days provided him with any answers.
“You just lie back, dear,” Molly was saying, looking unsettled by Harry’s words and smoothing out her apron nervously. “I’ll look in the cupboard and see if I’ve got anything to help clear your head.”
While Molly was rummaging through bottles of potions, Arthur arrived by Floo from the Ministry. He had his arms full of paperwork, which he dropped in a haphazard pile onto the kitchen table.
“Oh, thank goodness you made it here,” he said as he hung up his coat. “The Ministry sent a couple of officials over to investigate, but the Dark Mark was already hovering over the house and they haven’t been able to get the front door open. Did you have any trouble getting out?”
“No,” Remus said with a shake of his head. Turning to Harry, he asked, “Can you remember how you destroyed the locket?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Harry replied defensively. “It was already like that. It wasn’t my fault.”
“But you must’ve done something.”
“I didn’t!”
“Here, drink this, Harry,” Molly said, and she handed over a vial of blue liquid. “It’ll help you to remember.”
“I’m not Harry,” he snapped, stubbornly putting the vial down onto the floor with a bang. “Stop calling me that.”
The room fell silent, and Remus mentally kicked himself once more for not being able to work out what happened. But he was at a loss to explain it, and the one person who could tell them now believed he was someone else.
“If you’re not Harry, then who are you?” Remus asked.
“Don’t you recognise me, Moony?”
Remus came to a halt mid-stride. The last person to call him by that name was Sirius, and it sounded alien coming from Harry’s mouth. Several moments passed before Remus could bring himself to answer.
“You look like Harry to me.”
“But I’m Sirius. Sirius Black.”
“That’s not funny.” It was Tonks who had spoken this time, sounding angry and hurt. She glared at Remus accusingly. “You said he didn’t know—that no-one knew.”
“Knew what, dear?” Molly asked.
But Tonks just ignored her and shouted, “How dare you do this to me—to us,” before storming upstairs with Molly following close behind.
“What is her problem?” Harry asked with an unsympathetic laugh.
Remus took a deep breath and walked over to the stove. There was no way he was going to elucidate on the matter in front of Arthur, and he really hoped that Tonks was not in the process of enlightening Molly.
“I’ll, er, I’ll make another pot of tea,” he muttered.
As far as practical jokes went, he thought this was pretty low, especially for someone like Harry. Even if he had found out about the relationship between Remus and his godfather, and hated the thought of them together, Remus found it hard to believe that Harry would react in such a bizarre way.
“Do you have any, er, proof that you are who you say you are?” Arthur asked.
"I know about Remus's furry little problem."
"Try telling me something that Harry doesn’t know," Remus replied stonily.
Harry didn’t respond immediately. His gaze flickered between Arthur and Remus, and then he smiled slyly, made his way over to where Remus was standing and whispered in Remus’s ear.
“I know you have a birthmark right next to your bollocks. It’s in the shape of a butterfly and you love having me lick it.”
To say that the evidence given was unexpected was to put it mildly. Remus swayed unsteadily on his feet, his head starting to swim, and the mug he had been holding fell to the floor and shattered. Mumbling an apology to Arthur, he sat down heavily at the kitchen table, resting his face in his hands. Unless Harry had become adept at Legilimancy or Sirius had previously confided in him, there was no way he could have known something so personal.
“You believe me, then?” Harry—no, Sirius—asked, seeming uncertain for the first time since they had arrived at The Burrow.
Remus nodded, unable to speak. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him for a second time. To have Sirius taken away from him twice, and now, this… well, it just wasn’t fair.
“What do you remember before I found you with the broken locket?” he said, willing his voice not to come out as an undignified squeak.
“I was at Hogwarts, catching up on some sleep during the lunch break.”
“What year was it?”
“Nineteen seventy-six.”
“Remus,” Arthur prompted when Remus didn’t say anything further. “What’s going on?”
“I think I know where Harry is,” Remus said with a wince. He hoped that he was wrong.