Harry Potter 1. A Stranger's Offer

**Disclaimer: This is my first attempt at writing fiction of any kind so obviously I'm not JKR and the only thing that belongs to me is the character of Virgil Hunter.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 1: A Stranger's Offer

Harry stood as still as a statue, completely oblivious to the driving rain. He looked down at the grave at his feet and a single tear fell, lost in the rain. After what seemed like hours he finally found his voice "Why did it have to be this way?" he whispered as he looked up at the marble headstone, the last gift he had bought for a dear friend.

_Hermione Jean Weasley_

_September 19, 1979- February 7, 2000_

_Beloved Friend and Daughter_

_Gone too Soon_

Harry wondered how things had gone so wrong, his best friend murdered by her husband in a fit of rage only six months after their wedding. His own wife acting like this was no big deal, like Hermione had gotten what she deserved, and that the worst thing about all of this was that her brother Ron might go to prison for "killing the ungrateful little know-it-all". Harry hadn't spoken to Ginny at all in the three weeks since Hermione's funeral, and strangely he felt free, free from a relationship that had long since ceased to be exciting or even enjoyable. He had purchased the headstone for the woman he realized had been the greatest friend he had ever known because no one else would. Hermione had sent her parents away to Australia with no memories of her when the war had gotten dangerous and had never been able to restore their memories. The Weasley family had been completely unwilling to pay for the funeral arrangements, so it had fallen to him to take care of her final resting place.

A flash of lightning followed shortly by a crack of thunder brought him out of his musings, he was about to say his goodbyes and go home when he was startled by a voice. "It didn't have to end like this, for you or for her," Harry spun around to look at the source of the voice, a man dressed all in black stood a few feet away. He had long, dark blonde hair and a neatly trimmed beard, he wore a long black coat that would not have looked out of place in either the magical or muggle world. "But it isn't too late."

Harry was shaken by the man's last statement "What do you mean? She... she's dead, there's nothing I can do to bring her back. She's gone and I never told her..." Harry's voice broke, unable to admit his final failing. Even though she was gone he couldn't admit his feelings for her.

"That you love her? If it is any consolation she loved you too. But this is all beside the point, as I said it isn't too late. True there is no magic that can raise the dead, but there is magic that can make it so that she never had to die. A way that you and her can be happy together, and you can save others as well."

"What are you talking about? The only way to save her would be to change history... but you can't do that, can you? Hermione said that you couldn't use a time turner to change things that you saw happen, that it would cause a paradox... and something about that killing you or something."

The man chuckled at this "Even after all these years you remember a conversation you had with her about a purely theoretical concept, or at least well enough to get the important points. Most of that is true for time turners, but time turners are a cheap imitation of time travel. A time turner doesn't actually cause you to move back in time it only folds your personal time line so that there are two versions of you running around simultaneously, as a result if you change something your second time through the magic of the time turner can't change your original actions, so instead it just kills you. What I'm talking about involves actually stepping outside of the time line and moving back to a time of your choice."

"Why me though? And who are you anyways?"

"Ah, yes, I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Virgil Hunter, Master of Time. As to why you, well it isn't just you is it? The results of your actions will change the lives of millions. The future that I have seen is not a place anyone wants to live in, and from what I have pieced together you are the key to making the world a better place. So here is what I am going to offer you, I will transfer all your memories of your life to your past self so that you can change your fate, I will help you figure out what to change and what not to change."

Harry considered what Virgil had to say for a few moments be fore he asked "So when would I go back to if I agreed?"

"The best option would be right before your first year. This will allow you to begin making small changes that will have a cumulative effect on the time line."

Harry thought about this and then something Virgil had said earlier came back to him "You said that I could save other people. So I could save Sirius" Virgil nodded "and Cedric" nod "Fred, Remus, and Tonks" nod "and Dumbledore"

"NO" Virgil all but yelled "You cannot under any circumstances save that bastard, if the option presents itself you should probably help him shuffle off this mortal coil sooner rather than later."

Harry was shocked by this response "What do you mean? What's wrong with Dumbledore?"

Virgil just looked at Harry and sighed "Alright, I need you to think about a few things, really think about them and then ask that question again. Dumbledore was responsible for you being placed with the Dursleys, why place you with them? Why not with a wizarding family? Why did he have Hagrid bring you to him personally, there was an entire Ministry department devoted to relocating orphans during the First Blood War."

"He said that I was protected there, that it kept the protection my mother gave me alive."

"Is that what he told you? I knew he was good at lying to people but that is a good one. If that were even true it still wouldn't justify what happened there. First even if there were protections there that can't be put anywhere else they would only be able to protect you at that house and nowhere else, so it wouldn't be safe for you to leave except to go directly to Hogwarts. Also the protection your mother gave you is in your blood, but it's powered by your magic it will always be a part of you even if you had never met your Aunt. But moving on to more recent actions, why did he send Hagrid to bring you to Diagon Alley? Every other muggle raised student was introduced to magic by a professor, but you get Hagrid. Don't get me wrong he is a good man but he was probably the worst person to answer any questions you had. Why did Dumbledore move the Stone to Hogwarts in the first place? Why were the protections so simple to overcome? How did Dumbledore not realize something was up with Quirrel?"

"I... I don't know, there isn't any real reason I can think of... except maybe..."

"Maybe he was setting you up even then to be a martyr, to throw away your life for his plan, because that is what he wanted. He wasn't supposed to die, and you weren't supposed to survive. It was a fluke that you did survive, if you hadn't already been the master of all three hallows, you would have died, and more importantly, you would have died for nothing."

Shocked didn't even begin to describe how Harry felt at this revelation, trying to buy himself time to think it through he asked a question he thought would throw Virgil off long enough to do some thinking "But what about the horcrux? I had to die to get rid of the one in me." Virgil just looked at him for a second and then he did something completely unexpected, he laughed, and he kept laughing. Harry stared at him "What is so damn funny!"

"Did you ever even stop to think about that, not before he killed you obviously, but afterward. Did you ever mention it to Granger?"

"Yes I mentioned it to _Hermione._ Why does it matter?" Harry snapped emphasizing the fact that his friend had a first name and that he didn't appreciate the way Virgil talked about her with so little respect.

"And she never pieced it together? Hmmm, even with it over I would have thought she would have looked into it... unless... that would explain a lot. The old man must have put a delayed compulsion on her not to question your being a horcrux, and why she went along with that stupid horcrux hunt. If you were a horcrux how did that piece of soul survive so long in your head? Look what happened to Quirrel when you touched him, and that was with your body and his body insulating the shadow of Riddle from your mother's protection. Even with a body designed as the perfect protection from that same effect trying to possess you in the Ministry nearly killed him. Even if a piece of his soul tried to attach itself to you in '81 your magic probably ate it, which would actually explain you being a parselmouth, and if it didn't it would have found itself in the most hostile environment imaginable, there is no way it could have survived, and even if it somehow had it would have been so weak a kiss from Granger probably would have killed it."

"Wait.. what do you mean? I-I wasn't a horcrux? Okay assuming you are telling the truth, why was the horcrux hunt a stupid idea? We needed to destroy all of them to beat Riddle."

"Yes you did, but you didn't need to find them all to destroy them all. If Granger had done any extra research into it she would have easily found a much easier way to destroy them all. In two of the books she did read about horcruxes one of the references was to a well respected guide to destroying dark objects, the Codex Venator, she could have easily obtained a copy of the book through the owl order service she used for most books. That book would have told her something that neither Dumbles nor Riddle ever figured out, the real reason why no one until Riddle was stupid enough to make more than one horcrux. All horcruxes made by the same person are connected to each other, get your hands on one horcrux and with a simple ritual you destroy all of them, so why bother creating more than one, you just leave more opportunities for your enemies to get their hands on a chunk of your soul. But enough of that, clearly you can't trust Dumbles, but he wasn't your only enemy hiding as a friend, watch out for the Weasleys as well, specifically Ron, Ginny, and Molly."

"But they were... they were my..."

"Friends? Sorry to break it to you, but they were your handlers, keep you under Dumbledore's control and they got what they wanted out of it. Ginny got to be Mrs. Harry Potter, Molly got money, and Ron got money and Granger."

"Her name is HERMIONE! And what do you mean Ron got her? I thought they were in love."

"In love? Look where you are standing kid. What kind of man murders his own wife, especially if he actually loved her? No she never loved him, they gave her some weak jealousy potions to make her think she might like him, then some weak love potions to make her fall for him, that was part of why she was so upset when he left during the hunt. The potion almost made her leave you and go with Ron, when she overcame the potion she started to question everything that happened with Ron, she needed a sounding-board, she needed you to listen to her thoughts and either confirm or deny her suspicions, but you were a stupid angsty teenager and you left her to stew in her own thoughts, and then when you stopped her from attacking Ron when he came back it was a confirmation that she had made it all up, and then Ron started giving her potions again. They did the same thing to you as well. It worked quicker on you because you didn't think Ginny was a disgusting and contemptible excuse for a human being."

"You make them sound like Slytherins, how did they all end up in Gryfindor if they were that bad?"

"That is actually a funny story, I'll tell it to you some time if you take my offer. So what do you think? Once more into the breech?" Virgil asked extending his hand to Harry.

"You'll be there to help me finish this better than last time?" Virgil nodded "Alright then, let's do this." Harry shook the offered hand and with a quiet pop the graveside was vacant.

**Next chapter: the finer details of time and the journey back.**

**Please Review.**


	2. The Journey Back

**Disclaimer: I'm still not JKR so I still don't own Harry Potter.**

**Thanks to everyone who reviewed the first chapter.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 2: The Way Back

Harry suddenly found himself in a comfortable armchair next to a roaring fire, sitting across from him was Virgil Hunter, the self proclaimed 'Master of Time'. Virgil settled back into his own armchair and spoke to Harry "Now that introductions and preliminaries have been dealt with, we need to get down to work."

Harry was still a little surprised by the change in location "How... Where... When?"

Virgil chuckled "I apparated us to somewhere more comfortable to have the rest of our conversation. As dramatic a location as your soul-mate's graveside provides for a life changing conversation, it simply lacked in acceptable seating arrangements."

Harry's mind seemed to get stuck on just one thing Virgil had said, but he managed to find his voice long enough to verbalize what had gotten to him so deeply "Soul-mate? Does that mean our souls are connected or something? Were we fated to be together?"

Virgil snorted at Harry's apparent line of thought "Slow down kid. There is nothing quite so life changing as that going on. Two peoples souls being connected by fate and magic, honestly it's simply ludicrous. Does this look like a cheesy romance to you. No all it means is that your magic and hers are highly compatible. If you were in an intimate relationship with her your magics would begin to resonate with each other so that the further in the relationship you went the stronger both your magics would become, at least while you are in close proximity to each other."

"But won't that be kind of weird, me being in a relationship with an eleven year-old Hermione? I mean I'll be almost a decade older than her."

"Don't worry about that, for one thing no one said anything about you doing anything that quickly, and it won't matter because you won't be older than her, because we are not sending your personality back, only your memories. Here is how it is going to work," Virgil reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a round metal disk about an inch and a half in diameter "We will be sending this medallion back in time. It will contain a copy of your memories in this diamond in the center" he said pointing to the clear stone embedded in the center of the disk "while a copy of my personality and knowledge will be stored in the platinum of the medallion. There are runes engraved in it that will allow me to communicate with you, project an image of myself to communicate with others, and if necessary create a physical body temporarily to save your ass from the trouble you will inevitably find yourself in. I will make sure the medallion gets into your possession and when you first touch it your memories will begin to transfer to your younger self. Any questions?"

Harry sat taking this in, only really understanding the most basic idea of what was being told to him "Why are we doing it that way?"

"Because it is a hell of a lot easier to send back a relatively simple object than a person."

"When, specifically, will we be going back to?" Harry asked trying to get himself mentally ready to travel back in time.

"The easiest time to get you the medallion would probably be when you first went to the Leaky Cauldron. With that many people bustling around trying to shake your hand it will be easy to slip it into your pocket. If there is nothing else we can get started." Virgil placed the medallion on a table that suddenly appeared between the two chairs.

Harry looked down at the medallion, gulped and then asked "What do I need to do?"

"Just take out your wand and touch it to the diamond, then state your name."

Harry did as he was directed, as he spoke his name the diamond flashed and turned the same green as his eyes.

Virgil then took out a silver knife and holding the blade in his left hand pierced the pad of his right thumb, let a couple drops of fall onto the medallion and then rubbed it in so that the silvery metal took on a red hue. He then took out a stick of chalk and drew a circle around the medallion. He then proceeded to draw a series of runic symbols and clusters around the circle. Then, taking his wand, he touched each cluster and intoned "V_enti tempore, redire hoc ad praeteritum_". As he did so each rune cluster began to glow. Finishing this task he looked up at Harry "Good luck Harry James Potter. May your future be better than your past." With a final flash of blue light Virgil pointed his wand at the circle and cried "_Tempus_"

***HP&MoT***

If the medallion were capable of conscious thought it would most likely have been amazed by the swirling colors dancing around it as it was being thrown back through the time stream. Alternatively if it was prone to motion sickness it may instead have felt violently ill.

When the medallion was reinserted into the time stream it would most likely have wanted to scream in agony at the feeling of its molecular structure being reestablished. Luckily it lacked both the sensory capabilities to perceive the excruciating pain it would have been in, and the vocal chords, lungs, throat, and mouth necessary to vocalize its discomfort. After all a metal disk screaming as though every nerve ending had been lit on fire, while lying on the floor of the Leaky Cauldron would most likely have drawn at least a little attention. As it was no one noticed the medallion's arrival, they also didn't notice the mist that rose out of the medallion and coalesced into the form of a young man with blonde hair and a beard and wearing a black coat. The main reason no one noticed these things is because at that very moment the barman had realized the identity of the scrawny, raven haired boy that had just entered with a rather large and hairy man. "Bless my soul, it's Harry Potter" at this pronouncement the pub erupted into chaos as everyone present tried to shake hands and introduce themselves to the young boy. In all this commotion it was easy for the manifestation of Virgil to pick up the medallion and slip it into the pocket of young Harry Potter.

Harry didn't notice the added weight of the medallion in his pocket until he entered the main hall of Gringotts. Harry reached into his pocket wondering what this new object was and how it came to be in his pocket, the moment he touched it he felt a tingle of energy flow up his arm. He shivered at the sensation and quickly withdrew his hand from his pocket, he then proceeded to nearly jump out of his skin when a man suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Harry looked like he was about to panic until he recognized the man, his name was Virgil, he was some sort of time traveler, and he had sent the medallion currently residing in Harry's pocket back in time. At the look of recognition on Harry's face Virgil sighed in relief "Good your memories are returning at an acceptable rate. Don't say anything until we can speak somewhere more private. For now all you need to do is ask Griphook to convert a few galleons into muggle money when you get down to your vault." Harry just nodded and continued to follow Hagrid to the counter.

After taking a mine car down into the depths of the bank they finally got out at vault 673, Griphook the goblin walked over to the vault door and unlocked it before handing the key to Harry. Harry looked into his vault for the first time, again, and was amazed by the piles of gold, silver, and bronze coins. He began filling a money bag with some of each of the coins while Hagrid explained the different coins. "Um... Mr. Griphook would it be possible to convert some of this into muggle money?"

"That is easily done Mr. Potter, we can handle that when we return to the lobby." After that they went on to another vault which Hagrid emptied by taking out a small oddly shaped package, the philosopher's stone Harry remembered. They then returned in the cart to the lobby where Harry changed ten galleons for one hundred pounds sterling.

Hagrid told Harry to go ahead and get his uniform while he ran down to the Leaky Cauldron to recover from the cart ride at Gringotts. When Harry entered Madam Malkin's he was shepherded to the back of the shop where he saw a face that he knew from his new memories he would grow to hate, _Draco Malfoy_. Virgil reappeared, snickering he pointed at Malfoy. "How about we have a little fun with the Princess of Slytherin? Just repeat after me." Malfoy proceeded to make a few boring statements about brooms, to which Harry nodded politely, then ask about Quiddiitch, to which Harry gave monosyllabic, noncommittal answers. When he brought up houses Virgil rubbed his hands together and grinned evilly. "...I know I'll be in Slytherin, all our family have been – imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?"

"Would you really? Do you really think that being considered a loyal, hard-working person would be that much of an insult that you would throw away your entire future? I guess we can all but guarantee you aren't Ravenclaw material then." Harry said laughing at the stunned look on Malfoy's face.

"When my father hears about this..."

"Well if your father is anything like you he probably won't understand half of what you tell him about what just happened anyways, so I'm not all that concerned." Malfoy's mouth snapped shut and he spent the rest of the time that Harry was in the shop just glaring at him. Harry left shortly after finishing this conversation, he then continued on to buy the rest of his supplies with Hagrid. The trip was almost identical to his previous trip to Diagon Alley with Hagrid, he spent a little more time browsing at Flourish & Blott's bookstore, and he had an easier time finding all the necessary ingredients at the Apothecary. His visit to Ollivander's took just as long and he bought the same wand as before. Hagrid then bought him a beautiful snowy owl as a birthday present before they left the alley and Hagrid took Harry home. On the way home Virgil reminded Harry to ask about how to get onto platform 9¾ at King's Cross.

When Harry got up to his new room at Number Four Privet Drive he finally could wait no longer to get some answers "Alright Virgil, we need to talk. What exactly is going on, I vaguely remember a conversation we had but what exactly is happening?"

"Well Harry the simple version is that you just gained access to memories of the next nine years of your life. You have these memories because without them you will be pushed around until you are forced into a final confrontation in which your survival depends on a fluke, all so that a delusional old man can gain a little more glory. I'll try to explain everything I can eventually but for right now we need to make a few decisions. Tomorrow we are going back to Diagon Alley to buy you a few more books. But before we go you need to decide if you want to be in Gryfindor, or if you want to try a different house instead."

"Why wouldn't I want to be in Gryfindor, all my friends were in Gryfindor. You told me that Hermione Granger was my soul-mate and she is going to be in Gryfindor."

"Which friends are you referring to? The littlest weasels made sure you didn't have many friends outside of themselves and their family, and they will most certainly be in Gryfindor, after all that is the Weasley curse. Hermione went into Gryfindor because that is where she thought you would go because even back then she could see that you would be a great friend, and possibly more. If you talk to her more before the sorting you could pretty much tell her which house to be in. In fact you probably should, she'll have a much easier time at school in Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw."

"Okay maybe it would be better to be in another house, but when am I going to be able to convince Hermione that she should be in a different house with me?"

"Ah, you are doing much better at this than I had hoped. It is good to see you questioning what you are told, even when you are questioning me. As for when you are going to talk to her, that is one of the reasons why we are going book shopping tomorrow." Virgil said while looking around the little room for a place to sit down.

Harry perked up at this news "You mean Hermione will be there tomorrow?" Virgil just nodded and decided to sit down on the bed, the bed didn't shift at all under his weight. Seeing this Harry threw himself down on the mattress only to find himself sinking into the mutilated mattress much further than he thought he would have.

Virgil chuckled at the little yelp of surprise from Harry. "Sorry probably should have mentioned that I'm not actually here, I'm just a projection in your mind."

Harry mumbled a few choice words at Virgil while he repositioned himself on the bed "You said that was one of the reasons we're going tomorrow, what other reasons are there?"

"Well the only other reason is that we need to get you a few more things, and we don't want Hagrid reporting those purchases to Dumbledore."

"We could have just asked Hagrid not to tell anyone."

Virgil snorted at that thought "Hagrid is a wonderful person, but I wouldn't trust him to keep a surprise party a secret if it was in an hour. The man is completely incapable of keeping a secret."

"Why did you want me to ask how to get onto the platform when we already know how to get there?"

A grin split Virgil's normally stoic face "I'm glad you are paying attention, I did that so Dumbledore wouldn't get suspicious when his set-up falls through."

"Set-up?"

"Yeah, the Queen Weasel shouting about muggles and asking about the platform number. She has been on that platform fifty times easily, how could she have forgotten the number, she isn't as stupid as Ronald and he has no problem remembering the platform. Right now though you need to make a decision on which house you want to be in."

Harry nodded at this suggestion and then lay back to think through the possible choices. Slytherin was a definite no go, knowing how many people in that house would end up joining the Death Eaters when the war got going he would never feel safe in that house and Hermione would have to sleep with one eye open in Slytherin. Thinking about what Virgil had said he realized that he was absolutely right about Gryfindor, it wasn't worth the trouble that would come with being in the house of the brave. Just being a Lion brought animosity from even the better snakes, and he could still be friends with the few people he would have missed anyways. So that left being a Badger or an Eagle. Ravenclaw would be perfect for Hermione, she was definitely smart enough, but when he thought about how the 'Claws had treated Luna Lovegood, he realized that they were closed minded and cruel. Hufflepuff would probably be best, in Hufflepuff Hermione and he could develop strong friendships with good people who wouldn't jump to conclusions about one of their own, and with what was coming he would need that.

Having reached his decision he sat up and looked over to where Virgil was still sitting "Okay, I've thought it over, and I think Hufflepuff is probably the best choice, but how sure are you that the Weasleys won't follow me?"

Virgil was glad that Harry had been able to make a decision as quickly as he had, if he could continue to be so decisive this whole venture might turn out beautifully. "I am absolutely certain that they will not be able to follow you, the Weasleys are cursed to always be in Gryfindor."

"Really? Who comes up with a curse like that?"

"Godric Gryfindor himself cursed the descendants of his youngest son Henry. When Henry abandoned his father in battle Godric is reported to have disowned him, but said that he and all 'the weasels that would spring forth from his loins' would always be in his house at Hogwarts so that all would see how far they had fallen, until the family had redeemed itself. And so it is that every Weasley has been in Gryfindor where they truly don't belong, thus their complete lack of success in every endeavor, after all no one trusts a cowardly lion. You should probably go to sleep now you have a long day tomorrow."

**A/N: I hope you have enjoyed this story so far. In response to the review about not liking Dumbledore as a bad guy, I totally agree turning him into a villain is to some extent lazy writing, what I am trying to do in this story is to present Dumbledore as a highly flawed individual who has become obsessed with trying to rationalize and justify what he did in his youth, while believing to much in his own legend. Also I hope no one has a problem with my comment about soulbonds belonging in cheesy romances, I enjoy good soulbond fics, but I prefer when it develops completely by accident as this makes a much more interesting story. I don't write ahead and I'm posting as soon as I finish a chapter so hopefully the next chapter will be up soon.**


	3. Old New Friends

**Disclaimer: I'm a guy, I live in California, and I have ten dollars in my bank account, so obviously I'm not JKR and I don't own Harry Potter. If she is interested I have a rather nice collection of bottle caps I would gladly trade for Hermione or Luna.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 3: Old New Friends

Harry woke up early the next morning, went downstairs, and, upon seeing that none of his relatives were awake, left a note saying that he was going to London to pick up some books for school, before he left the house for the day. Harry stopped for breakfast at a small cafe before he caught a bus into London. On the ride into London Virgil gave him a run-down on what he hoped would happen in Diagon Alley.

Upon reaching the Leaky Cauldron Harry went into the pub at straight through to the back, luckily no one noticed his passage so he avoided a repeat of the day before. Taking out his wand he tapped the proper brick and walked through the archway into Diagon Alley. He made his way to the bookstore where he would be waiting for his opportunity to meet his best friend for the first time. While he was waiting he looked around the store and picked up a couple of books, first he grabbed a copy of _Hogwarts a History_, then he picked up a book entitled _Modern Magical History_, he picked up both of these books because he knew that Hermione had read both of them before starting at Hogwarts. He also picked up a book on defense, Virgil had recommended the specific book because it would give him an excuse to go with Hermione down to Ollivander'safter she was done in the bookstore. Harry was debating with himself whether he should pick up a book on becoming an animagus when he finally saw a head of bushy brown hair entering the store. He grabbed the book on the animagus transformation and then started to wander randomly through the shelves waiting for an opportunity to introduce himself. It turned out that he really didn't need to think that hard to create an opportunity, as he turned around a shelf he walked right into the girl he had been trying to introduce himself to.

Both of them had been carrying a small pile of books so when they collided with each other they were both knocked off balance and books flew everywhere while they both fell to the ground. Both started to apologize to each other at exactly the same time. This caused both of them to laugh a little at the absurdity of what had just happened. Harry regained his feet first and immediately offered Hermione a hand up "I'm so sorry Miss..."

"Hermione Granger. And it's okay I really need to pay more attention where I'm walking. I'm just so excited about all this you see. No one else in my family is magic so this all so new and exciting, there's so much to learn and discover and I just can't wait to get started. I'm really sorry, first I nearly run you over and now I'm giving you my life story."

"Don't worry about it I know how you feel I only found out about all of this yesterday. I'm Harry by the way. Here let me help you with these." Harry offered while reaching down to help her recover her scattered books. When both of their piles had been recovered Hermione looked at the books Harry had been carrying.

"Are you starting at Hogwarts this year?" She asked.

"Yeah, I am. I can't wait." Harry responded with a genuine grin on his face.

"You do know none of those books are on the list of books we need right?"

"Oh I know, I got all the textbooks yesterday, but after looking through them a little last night I decided to come back and pick up a few other books." He explained to the curious witch.

"Oh that does sound like a splendid idea. I was thinking about picking up a few extra books myself. Why did you pick these two though?" She indicated the defense book and the animagus book.

"Oh... well I got this one because... well I got bullied a lot at the school I was in, and I really don't want to have to go through that again at Hogwarts, so I just figured..." he left the sentence unfinished while holding up the defense book.

"You figured you would learn how to defend yourself before you started school. I know how that feels, being bullied. At my old school people made fun of me because I liked to read so much, and I never really had friends." She said giving him a comforting smile.

As Hermione finished her explanation and looked at the other books that Harry had, as though waiting for him to explain the other book she had asked about, another witch who Harry would recognize anywhere walked around the shelf. Professor Minerva McGonagall stopped when she saw Harry and Hermione "Ah there you are Miss Granger, are you finding everything, or do you need some help?"

"Oh, no I'm fine Professor. Oh, Harry this is Professor McGonagall. Professor this is..."

"Harry Potter. It is a pleasure to finally meet you Mr. Potter, I knew your parents quite well before they died. They were wonderful people and I hope you do them proud." McGonagall said. Harry was surprised by her words. He had never heard her say anything quite so... nice. From the memories he had of his other life he had gotten the impression that she was always very strict, sure she could be polite and courteous, but she was always very professional. Of course he had never really interacted with her outside of school in his future.

Hermione was confused that h the Professor appeared to know this boy who had just told her that he was also new to the wizarding world "But Harry, you just said that you only found out about magic yesterday." she stated with a slightly confused look on her face.

"I did." Harry told her. "I was raised by my Aunt and Uncle, and they never told me anything about magic. I only found out about it when I finally got my Hogwarts letter yesterday. Apparently I'm famous here or something... I really don't understand exactly why though."

McGonagall looked shocked at this revelation, well she raised an eyebrow which was roughly equivalent to anyone else standing there with there eyes bugging out and there jaw on the floor. "Mr. Potter is famous because when he was just a year old a dark wizard killed his parents, but when he tried to kill Harry something happened and the dark wizard died. I am surprised that your relatives never mentioned that you were a wizard though." By this time a man and a woman who Harry dimly recognized as Hermione's parents had joined them.

Hermione then introduced Harry to her parents and they all continued to look through the store for Hermione's books. While they were looking Harry and Hermione talked more about their experiences growing up. They told each other about the different incidents of accidental magic that they had caused. Harry picked up a book on dueling and it was at this point that McGonagall noticed the books he had chosen. She, like Hermione, was curious about his choice of reading material. From the what she had heard of their conversation she understood the defense and dueling book, and the two history books made sense for someone who was new to the wizarding world, but she had to wonder about the fifth book he was carrying.

"Mr. Potter might I ask why you picked up a book about becoming an animagus?" McGonagall asked Harry.

"Oh well it seemed like an interesting topic and I kind of like the thought of being able to transform into an animal." Harry responded

McGonagall smiled at the obvious enthusiasm in his voice "Well I hope you are as enthusiastic about your schoolwork. I should warn you though that becoming an animagus is a long and difficult process, it can take years to master and most witches and wizards lack the discipline to see it through."

"Well I have plenty of time to try and master it both at school and during the holidays, and it will be something to do with any free time I have."

"Well if you are going to try the least I can do is offer to help. If you have any trouble with understanding the process come speak to me and I will see if I can help."

"That's okay Professor, I don't want any special treatment."

"It isn't special treatment Mr. Potter. I am the Transfiguration Teacher after all, so it is directly related to the subject I teach, and if you aren't careful it can be dangerous. Since there are no rules against students attempting to become animagi it is my job to make sure that they at least do it safely and properly." Harry thanked the Professor for her offer and continued his conversation with Hermione.

When they finished in the bookstore Hermione told Harry that all she had left to get was her wand. Harry asked if he could join them as he wanted to ask Ollivander a couple of questions about something he had read about. When they reached the wand shop Ollivander was surprised to see Harry "Back again so soon Mr. Potter? I hope nothing happened to your wand."

"No Mr. Ollivander, I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions, but I can wait a bit." Harry said motioning toward Hermione who looked ready to explode at the thought of finally getting her wand.

Harry watched as Hermione was measured, he found it quite amusing to watch especially when the measuring tape moved on to seemingly random measurements, including the circumference of her left pinky and the height of her ear. Hermione only had to try a few wands before she found one that worked, vine wood and dragon heart-sting. With Hermione finished Ollivander turned to Harry "Now, what was it you wished to ask me about Mr. Potter?"

"Oh I was reading a book on basic defense and the author recommended getting a wand holster. I was wondering if you sold them or if you knew where I could get one?" Harry said showing Ollivander his new copy of _A Beginner's Guide to Defensive Magic_ by Alastor Moody.

"Ah yes. I can help you out with that just give me a second to go get one from the back."

"Mr. Ollivander do you think I could get one of those too?" Hermione asked, hearing that the author of a book on defense suggested getting one, she thought it sounded like a good idea.

"Certainly Miss Granger." Ollivander then walked through a back door. A few moments later he came back into the shop with two small boxes. He handed one to Harry and the other to Hermione "These are two sickles each. I only sell basic holsters here, but that is all you will probably need in school."

Harry and Hermione payed for their holsters and thanked Ollivander before they exited the shop with the Grangers and Professor McGonagall. Having completed her task of helping Hermione get her supplies McGonagall excused herself before returning to Hogwarts. The Grangers invited Harry to lunch and he gladly accepted their offer. While they were waiting for their food to be brought out, at a nice little Italian place not far from the Leaky Cauldron, Harry and Hermione were both reading their own copies of _Hogwarts a History_. Hermione was reading her copy because she couldn't resist the opportunity to read something new, Harry on the other hand was looking for the evidence he would need to sell Hermione on Hufflepuff.

When the food arrived Harry and Hermione began talking about Hogwarts. When the conversation turned to houses Harry knew that it was time for his sales pitch. "Honestly if I had a choice, I would go with Hufflepuff."

"Really? Why Hufflepuff? From what I read most people don't seem to have that high of an opinion of Hufflepuffs."

"I think that mostly comes down to the fact that the characteristics that are common in Hufflepuff are so broad, so people assume that if you are in Hufflepuff you must completely lack the traits the other houses want. The main reason I want to be in Hufflepuff though is because it leaves you with more options when you get out of school. There is a section in _Hogwarts a History_ about famous alumni of each house. Slytherin produces a lot of politicians, Ravenclaw produces a lot of researchers and spell-crafters, Gryfindor produces a lot of curse-breakers and aurors, but Hufflepuff has produced leaders in every field."

"But some of that just comes down to what people need to be in a house."

"True, but more of it comes down to reciprocal determinism." Virgil had provided some of the points for his argument, but Harry understood all of the points he was making. "You will be spending most of your time with people from your own house, as a result most of your friends will be in your house. To keep them as friends you will continue behaviors that they like, thereby making those behaviors more prominent. Over seven years Gryfindor, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin will change how you think about situations, changing how you look at the world and what you want to do with your life. Hufflepuff is known for being the most open-minded and accepting house, if you are brave or smart or cunning when you start you will still be that way when you finish, probably more so than when you started because Hufflepuff nurtures whatever makes you unique. Also it seems like the best place to make some good friends."

Hermione considered everything that Harry had said. It all made sense. Sure, she was smart enough for Ravenclaw, but if she was in Ravenclaw everyone would just expect her to be smart, she would just be another brainy 'Claw. She didn't want to be in Slytherin under any circumstances. Even if she really was brave enough to be in Gryfindor like she wanted to be, others in Gryfindor would expect her to be braver and her intelligence might not be as appreciated. "You're right, Hufflepuff would be a good house to be in. Maybe if we're lucky we could be in Hufflepuff together." Hermione finally said, with a small hopeful smile smile on her face.

Harry returned her smile "Yeah, that would be great, but as long as we're in the same house. It will be good to know I'll have a friend at Hogwarts."

At his response Hermione broke into a big smile, which Harry thought was perfect. They spent the rest of the meal in pleasant conversation. And when it was done Hermione gave Harry her phone number so they could talk before they saw each other again on the first of September, before giving him a hug goodbye. They both felt an electric tingle when they hugged but only Harry knew what it might be. On his bus ride home Virgil confirmed that the tingle Harry had felt was the result of his and Hermione's magic beginning to interact. Even if it never went further they would be slightly better at magic when they were near each other, and they would have an easier time understanding each other as their magic would pick up the fluctuations in the others magic that resulted from emotional changes.

**A/N: I hope you are all enjoying the story so far. I plan to have both Harry and Hermione become animagi, if anyone has a good idea for an animal form leave it in a review, I really want to see what people can come up with for them.**


	4. Of Weasels and Ferrets

**Disclaimer: Still not JKR, still don't own Harry Potter.**

**A/N: I am thrilled with the response to this story. Three chapters up and already over 5,500 hits and 50 reviews, with 89 favorites and 158 alerts. You guys really know how to make a writer feel appreciated.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 4: Of Weasels and Ferrets

Harry spent the month leading up to his departure to Hogwarts studying and calling Hermione. Ever since they had met in Diagon Alley the pair hadn't gone more than a day without talking to each other. They were both either on the phone, reading ahead in their textbooks, or doing both at the same time for most of the month of August. Harry even had lunch with Hermione and her parents every Saturday, during these lunches Harry would drop subtle hints that his home life was less than congenial. Hermione's parents, David and Jean Granger, were concerned by some of the comments that Harry made about his relatives, but when they asked for more details he would simply evade the questions and change the subject. David and Jean had both seen cases of child abuse in their work as dentists and they had privately agreed to ask certain acquaintances in Child Services to have Harry's relatives looked into while he was away at Hogwarts. On the 31st of August, which was a Saturday, Harry found himself at the Granger house having dinner with the family of his best friend. After Harry had made a comment about how his Uncle would probably be furious that he had to take Harry to King's Cross earlier in the week Hermione had asked her parents if her new friend could spend the night before they both left for school. Virgil was pleased with these developments, because it was with his coaching that Harry had given just enough information to ensure that someone would be investigating the Dursleys in the muggle world, well outside the control of Albus Too-Many-Names Dumbledore.

Harry awoke the morning of September 1st in the most comfortable bed he had ever slept in, including the one he remembered from his dormitory in Gryfindor Tower. Thinking about it he realized that it wasn't that this bed was somehow the most amazing bed in the world, he had just never had a comfortable mattress. After a hearty breakfast Harry and the Grangers loaded his and Hermione's trunks into the back of David's Mercedes and drove to King's Cross. They arrived at the train station at five minutes to ten, they loaded the two trunks onto trolleys, Harry had sent Hedwig off to Hogwarts so she wouldn't have to wait in her cage for the entire train ride. In fact he intended to get rid of the cage completely if he had to return to the Dursleys the next summer, they couldn't really lock her in her cage if she didn't have one could they. Harry and Hermione said good-bye to Jean and David at the barrier to platform 9¾, Jean gave both children a hug good-bye and Harry, at Virgil's suggestion, made sure to tense up when Jean first hugged him, after all one last nudge towards the Dursleys couldn't hurt.

Having arrived an hour before the train was due to depart, Harry and Hermione found the platform much quieter than Harry remembered it being the first time he had taken the Hogwarts Express. The pair made their way onto the train and headed for the back, hoping to find a quiet compartment where they wouldn't be disturbed. At Harry's suggestion they had already changed into their robes, taking advantage of the relatively empty train, before sitting down to read and talk like they had been doing over the phone all summer. Harry was nowhere near as fast at reading as Hermione, but he had already finished reading through _Hogwarts a History_, _Modern Magical History_, and _A Beginner's Guide to Defensive Magic_, he had also read through most of his textbooks, so he was now getting started on reading _Journey to Your Inner Beast: A Guidebook to the Animagus Path_. He found the book to be quite interesting, it detailed the basic steps of becoming an animagus while pointing out the most common errors that witches and wizards made while attempting the transformation. He had just finished the first chapter, which served as a general outline to the entire process, when Hermione finally asked the question she had been dieing to ask since she had first learned what Harry was planning to attempt.

"Do you think you'll actually be able to do it Harry?"

Harry looked at her for a second before realizing that she was talking about the animagus transformation "I don't see why I couldn't do it. The book says it's a slow and tedious process, and that the reason most people don't accomplish it is because it is taxing on their determination, not on their magic or skill."

Hermione seemed to be considering her next question for a moment before asking "Do you think we could try to do it together?"

Harry was delighted that she had asked, he had been trying to think of a way to suggest that she join in "I think that would be great, this way we can both help each other out and keep ourselves from giving up if it starts to go to slowly. The first step is just meditation, the book says that this should be done outside if possible as it will help you focus on your instincts better. It also has tips on how to do it if you are having trouble clearing your mind."

"How long does that take?"

"According to the book it depends on a few different things, the more often you meditate and the longer you do it for the faster you will finish the first step, the fastest anyone has ever completed the first step was in two months, but he apparently meditated for ten hours every day. It also depends on how in touch you are with your instincts, and how in control of your thoughts you are. From what the book says if we can meditate for at least an hour three times a week, we should discover our forms within six months to a year."

While Harry and Hermione were having their conversation a troop of redheads were searching the muggle side of the station for Harry Potter. Molly Weasley was growing frustrated, they had been looking for almost twenty minutes and had seen no sign of the boy. Fred and George had been highly confused by their mother's behavior and had continued onto the platform after the first circuit of the train station. It turned out that Dumbledore had just assumed that Hagrid would forget to tell Harry how to get onto the platform, and hadn't bothered to ask him to be certain before sending Molly to ensnare the boy. At three minutes to eleven Molly gave up and told Percy and Ron to hurry up and board the train. Ginny was quite put out at not getting the opportunity to meet her future husband, and would most likely sulk for the next couple of weeks. As the last two redheaded passengers got on the Express pulled away from the platform beginning its journey north.

Harry had hoped that by taking a compartment at the back of the train he and Hermione would avoid drawing attention, unfortunately it was not meant to be. Minutes after the train started moving the compartment door slid open to reveal two people that Harry truly had no idea how to deal with, Virgil had said that in the end they had been on his side, but with what he already planned to change he wasn't entirely sure how to get them on his side.

"This ones a no go brother mine."

"Right you are, got a couple of firsties here."

"Well you know-"

"-It would be rude-"

"-If we didn't introduce ourselves."

"This is Fred,"

"And this is George"

"And we're the infamous Weasley twins." They finished together.

"Whatever you may hear about us-"

"-It's probably true."

"But enough about us-"

"-Who might you be?"

Harry couldn't help but smile at the antics of the loveable twin terrors. "This is Hermione, and I'm Harry."

"Blimey-"

"-It can't be-"

"-I think he is-"

"-Are you?"

Harry looked at the two with a confused look masking his inner smile "Am I what?"

"Harry Potter." the twins answered in stereo.

"Oh... last time I checked I was."

"Hmmm, I thought you'd be taller."

"Funny, I thought he'd be shorter."

"Oh well, it's been a pleasure meeting you-"

"-but we have business to attend to."

With that the twins exited the compartment, closing the door on their way out. Harry turned to Hermione "That was certainly interesting."

With the first conversation with the twins under his belt Harry settled back into his seat hoping that those two were the last redheads he would see on the train ride. For the next forty-five minutes Harry was beginning to believe that fate was going to stop fucking with his life and let him have some peace. Moments later all his hopes and dreams were destroyed by the arrival of yet another redhead. Harry had reviewed all the memories he had received about Ron, because the memories felt as though they were from someone else he was able to view them without the emotional bias he had clearly developed about Ronald Weasley. He had come to a conclusion about Ron, Ron was like a puppy, he had an adorable tenacity about things he wanted, he always seemed to have a helpless look about him, and he really could be fun to have around, but just like a puppy he had a number of bad habits that he didn't seem to realize were unacceptable in civilized society. It didn't matter whether it was his chronic jealousy, his tendency to be an insensitive ass-hat, or his human garbage-disposal impersonation, the biggest problem that Ron had was that he just didn't want to change for those around him, you either liked him when you met him and would overlook his horrible behavior, or you would see him for what he was straight away and he would completely ignore everything you say to him.

"Do you mind if I sit in here, my brothers kicked me out of their compartment." not waiting for a reply Ron took a seat on the bench across from Harry and Hermione as the two had taken up one entire bench with themselves and their books. Harry just shrugged his shoulders and went back to his book, hoping against hope that Ron would take the hint and stay quiet. "I'm Ron Weasley by the way. Are you really Harry Potter?" Harry nodded "Do you have really have the... you know..." seeing that Harry wasn't going to finish the sentence for him Ron plowed on "Scar" Harry nodded again "Can I see it?"

Harry just looked at him with a look of complete and utter annoyance at the redheads total lack of tact for a good minute "Why on earth would you want to look at my scar?"

"Well it's famous, you're famous. If I were you-"

"-You wouldn't be all that happy about people wanting to gawk at the constant reminder that your parents were murdered by some psychopath on a world domination kick." Harry cut him off before returning to his book. Hermione patted him on the arm trying to comfort her clearly hurting friend. Ron just sat there unsure how to respond to Harry's pronouncement, possibly because he couldn't understand someone not wanting to bask in their own fame, or possibly because he couldn't understand most of the words Harry had used.

The three sat in silence for half an hour, with Harry pointing out an occasional passage in his book to Hermione. At this point Ron again tried to strike up conversation by showing them is rat, when Ron pulled the rat from his pocket Harry had to suppress the urge to attack the treacherous animagus in the redheads hand. As much as he wanted to see his godfather released from prison, Virgil had insisted that it would arouse suspicion unless he could say exactly where he had learned about Sirius Black. Harry had begrudgingly accepted this reasoning and simply hoped that someone, probably Hagrid, would let Black's name slip so he could go about getting a trial for his wrongly accused godfather under the pretense of wanting to hear what the man who had supposedly betrayed his parents had to say about what he had done. Until then attacking the rat would serve no purpose and would most likely cause more problems than it would solve.

Eventually Harry had to face the one confrontation he had been almost certain would occur no matter how much he tried to avoid attention. The blonde ponce walked into the compartment as though he owned the entire train, trademark sneer firmly affixed to his face, and his personal neanderthals flanking him. "Is it true? They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in this compartment. So it's you is it?"

"Well it certainly isn't her." Harry said indicating Hermione, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Harry could see the small grin that came to Hermione's face, though it was unlikely that anyone else saw it as she was still hidden behind her book.

"This is Crabbe and this is Goyle" Malfoy said indicating his unnecessarily butch entourage "and my name's Malfoy, Draco Malfoy." Ron snickered at Malfoy which brought his attention to the redhead "Think my name's funny, do you? No need to ask who you are. My father told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles and more children than they can afford." turning back to Harry he continued "You'll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there." He finished offering his hand to Harry.

Harry watched the blonde's face carefully, he didn't want to miss a second of his reaction, while answering "Hmmmm, well based on your not so subtle attempt to imply that you are _somehow_ better than everyone else would suggest an almost pathological need for recognition from others. The fact that you are walking around with what appear to be trained gorillas with you, you obviously feel the need to over-compensate for your own inadequacies. So if it's all the same to you I have enough problems without taking on your emotional issues as well, thanks but I think I'm good for now. So if you wouldn't mind taking Tweedledee and Tweedledum with you, it is getting rather crowded in here." Harry absolutely loved watching Malfoy's expression change from one of confusion into one of anger as he slowly realized he was being insulted.

"You better watch yourself Potter. If you don't learn some manners then-" Harry never found out what would happen if he didn't learn manners, because while Malfoy had been beginning his threat Harry was drawing his wand and casting a simple knock-back hex to push Malfoy and his goons out of the compartment before slamming the compartment door in their faces.

Ron was clearly amazed by what Harry had just done, even if he only understood a handful of the words Harry had used. "That was bloody brilliant Harry. You'll be amazing in Gryfindor."

"Why would I want to be in Gryfindor? All that will accomplish is drawing me into more unnecessary confrontations. No I really think Hufflepuff will be the better house to be in" Harry said before once again returning to his book. Harry prayed to whatever gods might inhabit the higher planes of reality that there would be no further interruptions.

For once in his lives Harry's prayers were answered as the rest of the journey passed without anymore excitement. Ron eventually left the compartment to change into his robes. And when the train finally stopped at Hogsmead Station Harry and Hermione got off the train and made their way over to where Hagrid was gathering the first years. After a brief hello to Hagrid Harry and Hermione found themselves sharing a polite conversation with Susan Bones. When they got to the boats they would take to the castle Harry and Hermione were joined in their boat by Susan and a boy who Harry vaguely recognized as Terry Boot.

When they entered the castle Hagrid handed the first years off to Professor McGonagall, who gave the same speech about your house being your family. Harry placed his hand on Hermione's shoulder to calm her down while they waited for the sorting as she was getting overly nervous at facing some unknown challenge. They were shown into the Great Hall where the Sorting Hat sang exactly the same song it had in Harry's memory of his sorting. Hermione breathed a sigh of relief when she realized all they had to do was put on a hat. McGonagall began to call names and the sorting proceeded as Harry remembered it until McGonagall got to Hermione's name, the hat spent a little longer on Hermione than last time before it shouted out "HUFFLEPUFF" Harry smiled as he watched Hermione make her way to the Hufflepuff table.

The sorting continued until McGonagall called out "Potter, Harry" the entire hall grew quiet and everyone's undivided attention was focused on Harry as he sat down on the stool and placed the Sorting Hat on his head.

_Hufflepuff please_, Harry immediately thought toward the hat _Hold your horses Mr. Potter, let me take a look first. Yes you definitely would fit in Hufflepuff, very loyal to your friends, ah, so you are the one who suggested Hufflepuff to the charming Miss Granger. But you have a good mind, plenty of courage, and you certainly are quite cunning, Slytherin would be a better fit_. _Why would I want to be in Slytherin? If I am as cunning as you seem to think I am then Slytherin would be the last place I would want to be, after all what good is being cunning if everyone knows you are cunning and ambitious_. _Very well Mr. Potter, I know when to give up better put you in_ "HUFFLEPUFF"

**A/N Hope you all are enjoying the story. Next chapter we see how people react to the Boy-Who-Lived in Hufflepuff.**


	5. Let the Games Begin

**Disclaimer: I am not JKR and I don't own Harry Potter or any related characters.**

**A/N: A couple of reviewers raised questions about how Harry is treating certain characters. I thought I should clear some of this up. The way Harry is treating Ron will be explained shortly, as for Snape and Malfoy, well it doesn't really matter that he knows that they aren't evil, because he also knows that they are vindictive, petty bigots. Also while I will agree Draco was not evil it mostly came down to him being a coward who couldn't put his money where his mouth is, he would be all to happy to just be a facilitator for murder and torture as long as he didn't get his hands dirty. Snape on the other hand was just looking out for himself, he could have given Harry the memories to tell Harry what he needed to do before he fled the castle in DH, but instead he doesn't take a side until he gives Harry the last information he needs to beat the guy _who had just murdered him_.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 5: Let the Games Begin

"HUFFLEPUFF" As the hat shouted on Harry's destination a lot of people had very different reactions to the placement of the Boy-Who-Lived in the "House of the Badgers". The Hufflepuff table broke out into enthusiastic applause, said applause was only a little louder than it had been for the other first years who had joined Hufflepuff, though this was mostly due to the fact that Hufflepuff was enthusiastic about every new student, and only slightly due to the fact that most of the 'Puffs were still in shock that they had gotten Harry Potter.

Hermione Granger's face currently sported the biggest smile that had ever graced her face in her short life, bigger than when she had received the Encyclopedia Britannica for her eighth birthday, bigger than when she had found out she could do magic that summer, and even bigger than when she had first walked into Flourish & Blott's. Her best friend was going to be in the same house as her, they would have classes together, they could study together, and they could just hang out together for the next seven years.

The Ravenclaws clapped politely for the Boy-Who-Lived, they hadn't expected to get Potter, so they weren't really disappointed to see him go somewhere else. The Slytherins also applauded politely, though there were also a few stifled laughs at the thought that the supposed savior of the wizarding world was "_with the rest of the losers in Hufflepuff_". Gryfindor was probably the quietest, after all it is rather hard to applaud when you are using both hands to pick your jaw up off the floor where most of the jaws at the Gryfindor table were currently residing. Everyone in Gryfindor had simply assumed that Harry Potter would be in Gryfindor, after all his parents had both been in Gryfindor, and he had already defeated a dark lord. The few Gryfindors who actually managed to clap for Harry were probably the only ones who had thought about the fact that Harry hadn't been raised by his parents, and therefore wouldn't have automatically become what they were, not to mention the fact that he probably hadn't needed to be all that brave to defeat Voldemort, it wasn't as though he had dueled the bastard.

Albus Dumbledore's mind was racing, had the Dursleys actually managed to completely break the boy? Albus had sent him there so he would be beaten and lonely, but to be so downtrodden as to end up in _Hufflepuff_. Albus realized that he would need to adjust his plans he couldn't trust Hagrid to let enough slip to draw a Hufflepuff into a search for the stone. And he couldn't assume that some misguided Gryfindor courage would lead young Harry to explore the off-limits corridor. No he would need to push Harry along the path, after all it was important for Tom to see Harry as a continued threat if he was to ensure a final confrontation to fulfill the prophecy.

Severus Snape smirked to himself, it would seem that the spawn of Potter was as useless as his arrogant father. Snape was going to enjoy this immensely.

The shadow of Lord Voldemort currently hiding under a garlic smelling turban was laughing to himself the boy was in Hufflepuff. He had allowed himself to get worked up over nothing, the boy would obviously not be a threat. All he needed to do now was complete his plan to regain a body and the wizarding world would bow before his might.

Harry made his way to the Hufflepuff table smiling at Hermione, he gave her a big hug before sitting down next to her and looking around at the other first years. Harry was seated between Hermione and Ernie McMillan, Susan Bones was on the other side of Hermione, Hannah Abbot was across from Susan, next to her was a boy Harry vaguely remembered was named Wayne Hopkins, next to Wayne and directly across from Harry was Megan Jones, whom Harry had apparently never spoken to in all his years at Hogwarts, and next to Megan sat Justin Finch-Fletchley rounding out the Hufflepuff first years. Harry then looked back up toward the staff table, when his eyes passed over Dumbledore he felt a tingling sensation in his head which signaled an attempt to probe his thoughts. He immediately snapped his eyes shut and shook his head to break the connection, silently thanking Virgil for insisting that he learn enough Occlumency to be able to detect a passive Legilimency probe, like the one that Dumbledore had just launched. Virgil had agreed that it would probably take years for Harry to be able to actually stop an attack, but for now all he needed to do was break away from any attack before the attacker could get any useful information. Virgil had said he would be able to create a work around once they had an opportunity to visit the room of requirements, so until then Harry just had to avoid eye contact with Snape and Dumbledore.

The sorting ended with Weasley being put in Gryfindor, Harry thought Ron looked rather put out with that he wouldn't be in a house with him, and Blaise Zabini going to Slytherin. When Dumbledore had said a few words and the food had appeared Harry loaded his plate before starting a rather enthusiastic conversation with Hermione and Susan about classes. A third year sitting next to Susan offered some advice about some of the different teachers and their classes, Harry had to do a double-take when he looked at the boy, it was Cedric Diggory. Seeing Cedric brought forward memories of the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and Harry made a silent promise that he would make sure that Cedric didn't die this time through.

The rest of the feast passed without incident, Dumbledore made the same speech as he had the first time, and Harry and the other first years were soon being led down to the Hufflepuff Common Room by the fifth year prefects, Max Thompson and Emily Watkins. To get to the Common Room they had to go down the flight of stairs that led to the kitchens then walk all the way to the southern end of the castle where the entrance was hidden behind a painting of a large, jovial man dressed up like the god Bacchus, who asked for the password "hyperbole". The one concern that Harry had about Hufflepuff when he had made his decision, was that he had never seen the Hufflepuff common room. He had plenty of memories of the comfortable Gryfindor Tower, one of the stuffy and scholastic Ravenclaw common room, and even one of the creepy subterranean snake-pit of Slytherin. The moment Harry stepped into the common room he had no regrets about his decision to go with Hufflepuff. The entrance was on the northern side of the large room, the room was three floors high, so even though the entrance was underground two thirds of the southern wall was made of windows that would allow in plenty of sunlight during the day. The first floor had soft sand colored carpet, there were two large marble fireplaces, one each on the eastern and western walls. Around each fireplace was a semi-circle of comfortable looking yellow chairs and lining the walls were a collection of couches and scattered throughout the room were tables with more comfortable chairs surrounding them. The room was probably twice the size of the Gryfindor common room, with a lot more seating as well, and that was just the first floor. In the south-east and south-west corners were spiral staircases that led up to the second and third floors which each extended twenty feet out from the north, west and east walls. The prefects explained that the dorms were off the second floor and the third floor was reserved for people doing homework and studying. Harry hugged Hermione good-night before heading to his dorm.

When he got to the room he would be sharing with Justin, Ernie, and Wayne he found out that his bed was the only one with a window next to it. He was glad that he would still be able to look out over the grounds from his dorm. He then climbed into his four-poster bed, closed the curtains, and cast a simple privacy charm before finally releasing a loud groan he had been holding back ever since the Weasel had entered his compartment on the train "Ronald Weasley must be the most annoying and thick person to ever walk the earth. Can't the boy take a hint, why the hell couldn't we just kick the stupid bastard out of the compartment?"

Virgil appeared at that point to explain to Harry why they couldn't more actively distance themselves from the 'Red Menace' "If you had been rude enough to Ron to kick him out of your compartment it would have raised questions. For the time being you need to appear to be a shy and timid child who only opens up to a few close friends, specifically Hermione at this point and maybe a couple more people over the next few weeks, perhaps Susan. She and Hermione really hit it off at the feast tonight, and she is a wonderful girl. With the way you handled Ron on the train it simply looks like you had no common ground for conversation with the twit. The worst thing you could do right now would be to arouse suspicion from Dumbledore, wait until after he gives you the cloak, so that way he loses all chances of becoming the master of the Hallows."

"I realize that but the nitwit was just so annoying." Harry said with a sigh.

"I know, I was there. Luckily you won't see too much of him over the next few months."

Harry just sat there in silence for a few minutes before he brought up something that had been bothering him since he had gotten on the train "I want to tell Hermione about what happened."

"I agree, Hermione is a bright girl, if you want to be able to use your knowledge of the future without making her suspicious she needs to know the truth. And the sooner you tell her the better. Saturday you can take her up to the Room of Requirement and explain what is going on, at the same time we can get your Occlumency shortcut, and we should get one for Hermione as well."

"I guess I can wait that long" Harry said through a huge yawn "if there's nothing else I'm going to bed."

"Good night then Harry." Virgil said before disappearing.

Harry soon fell asleep, and for once he was not haunted by dreams.

The morning of September 2nd dawned brightly in London and David and Jean Granger were awake and getting ready for their day. They had awoken earlier than usual and had rescheduled the early morning appointments for the day at their dental practice. The reason they had done these things was that they had a meeting with a friend who worked in Child Services scheduled for breakfast. They met their friend, Larry Mitchell, at a cafe near his office and once they had ordered their food Jean began to tell Larry about how they had met Harry Potter and to finally voice their concerns about his home life. None of the three people sitting at that table in a small cafe in London realized just how far reaching the consequences of their discussion would be.

Albus Dumbledore was very concerned about what he had discovered during and after the feast the night before. When the ancient Weasley owl had arrived with Molly's letter minutes before the sorting Albus had been worried that Harry might have missed the train. He was relieved when he saw Harry enter the hall, but it did raise a question as to how Harry had managed to get on the platform. A short and aborted mental probe of the boy revealed something much more disturbing that could easily disrupt his plans. Somehow the boy had developed rudimentary occlumency shields, the shields were nowhere near strong enough to stop him from accessing the boys mind, but they were enough to alert him to any invasion of his thoughts. Hopefully Harry did not even realize that he had these defenses, otherwise he might have already done serious damage to his relationship with the boy. After the feast a similar probe on Hagrid had revealed that Harry had simply asked Hagrid about the platform, and now that Albus thought about it he probably should have asked Hagrid if he had told Harry before now. He was also concerned when Minerva had told him about her meeting with Harry when she had taken Miss Granger to Diagon Alley. Harry was clearly concerned for his own safety and survival, how was he supposed to convince Harry to die willingly if even at eleven the boy was trying his hardest to survive. The fact that the young Weasley boy had been unable to get into Hufflepuff meant that Albus would need to find new handlers for Harry outside of school.

Harry awoke happy and well rested, he got up and ready before heading out to the common room. On his way down the hallway to the common room he ran into Hermione and Susan who had apparently been coming to wake him up. "Oh good, you're already up Harry. Susan said her Aunt Amelia recommended getting to breakfast early the first day so we would have time to come back and get our books after we get our schedules." with that explanation out of the way Harry, Hermione, and Susan made their way up to the Great Hall for breakfast. The three Hufflepuffs were already done with breakfast when Professor Sprout came around with their schedules. When she handed them their schedules she told them that she wanted to speak with all of the new Hufflepuffs in her office before dinner. Harry looked through his schedule, he had pretty a good morning, with Transfiguration and Herbology before lunch, but his afternoon was going to be torture, Potions _and _History of Magic on a Monday. Harry pocketed his schedule and the new trio made their way back to their dorms to pick up their books.

The first Transfiguration lesson of the year was very similar to the one Harry remembered from the original time line, except that Hermione, while still the first, was not the only student to successfully turn their match into a needle, Harry managed it a few minutes after her, and Susan accomplished it a couple minutes before the end of class. McGonagall was impressed by their progress and gave ten points to Hufflepuff for each of the three. After Transfiguration the Hufflepuffs walked out to the greenhouses for Herbology with the Gryfindors. Herbology was mostly uneventful, with the exception of a minor scuffle between Ron and Ernie when Ron tried to take a seat at the table Harry was sharing with Hermione and Susan. After Herbology was lunch, and the trio joined the other Hufflepuffs on the march back up to the castle. After a quick lunch Harry suggested to Hermione that they use the twenty minutes they still had before potions to find a place on the grounds to do their meditation. When Susan asked what they were talking about Harry explained about their plan to become animagi, and Susan asked if she too could join in. Harry and Hermione saw no problem with this so ten minutes later the three of them were sitting under a tree while Harry explained the first step of the process to Susan.

"The first couple of months of meditation are just about clearing your mind, pushing away your conscious thoughts until you are simply existing. When you have accomplished that you should feel some kind of primal rhythmic pulse, this is a representation of your inner beast and its instincts. You then focus on reaching down inside yourself and finding your inner beast so that you can draw it closer to the surface until eventually you can perceive it fully during your meditation, when it comes before you and names itself to you, then you can move on to the next step."

"So we don't have any control over what our form is? What if our form is really stupid?" Susan asked with a worried look on her face.

Hermione handled this question "Your form is controlled by your personality, so odds are your form won't be anything too bad. And even if it was you could simply choose not to continue after you learn your form. Meditation has been shown to have a significant effect on improving mental ability, so even if none of us decided to continue the meditation would still be worth the effort." This answer eased Susan's worries and she was now just as excited as Harry and Hermione to get started.

"We have an hour and a half between classes and our meeting with Professor Sprout, we can begin our meditation then, but right now we need to get to Potions." Harry said while standing up, he then offered the girls a hand up before they set off for the dungeons.

Harry had been dreading Potions, he had to some extent hoped that Snape wouldn't be quite as vindictive if he wasn't a Gryfindor, but he knew that was just wishful thinking. Snape started off the class with the same speech about how much he could teach if the students weren't incompetent, Harry had to try really hard not to laugh at the fact that the poor performance in potions was more on the incompetence of the teacher than the students. Harry had nothing but respect for Snape's ability as a potion maker, but just because you can do something doesn't mean you can teach it. Having finished his speech Snape decided to begin his favorite activity in the world, terrorizing students.

"Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood"

Harry waited a moment before hesitantly answering "Well sir, if you added a proper stabilizing agent and base liquid, you would get a sleeping potion known as the 'Draught of Living Death'."

Snape glared at Harry before asking another question "Very well, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"

Harry had to bite his tongue to keep answering with as much sarcasm as he felt the situation deserved _'I would probably look in the supply cupboard.'_ but while antagonizing Snape may have been cathartic it would not be worth the trouble it would cause so he gave the answer that Snape wanted "I don't know."

Snape sneered at him but Harry didn't notice because he wasn't looking at Snape's face, he didn't want to give the bat a chance to look into his mind. "Thought you wouldn't open a book before coming, eh Potter? What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

"There is no difference, those are just two names for the same plant, sir." Harry replied quickly.

Snape was clearly furious that he hadn't been able to make Harry look like a complete fool "15 points from Hufflepuff for being unable to answer a question asked by a teacher." Harry just ignored this, arguing with Snape wouldn't help any and it would only hurt his case that Snape was unfair and unreasonable.

The rest of class passed without incident, as this class was with the Ravenclaws no ones cauldron exploded and Snape wasn't given any excuses to punish Harry further. History of Magic was as boring as ever, but Harry was proud of himself for not falling asleep in the class. After Binns had finished droning on about people who had died sometime in the 1200s Harry led Hermione and Susan back out onto the grounds to begin their first meditation session. After an hour of sitting quietly they headed back inside for the meeting in Sprout's office, none of them expected any progress, but the fact that they had all managed to sit silently for an hour was a good sign. When they arrived outside of the office, which was off the corridor that led to the Hufflepuff common room, they were greeted by the other Hufflepuff first years. Five minutes after they arrived Professor Sprout invited them all into her office and asked them to take a seat.

"I am glad you all made it here on time. As you know I am the head of house for Hufflepuff, and every year I have a meeting just like this one to introduce myself to my new first years. My job as your head of house is to handle any problems you have with other students, or with the faculty. If you feel that someone has wronged you, please bring it to my attention rather than settling things on your own. Now I'm sure none of you have had any problems yet as we have only been here a day, but if there is anything you want to bring to my attention, please feel free to do so at any time." Professor Sprout finished her little speech with a kind smile on her face.

At this point Harry made his first visible move in what would be a very long game. "Actually Professor I do have a problem."

A look of concern crossed the Professor's face "Who with Mr. Potter?"

"Professor Snape, ma'am. During Potions class he singled me out by asking three questions that were not even covered in the required textbook, and then took points because I could only answer two of them."

Professor Sprout looked to the other first years for confirmation of these facts, when they all corroborated Harry's story she turned to Harry "Very well Mr. Potter, I will speak with Professor Snape about his unprofessional conduct towards you. Until then, twenty points for bringing this to my attention rather than attempting to argue with a Professor. If this continues, please let me know. You may all go, have a good evening." And with that they all went to dinner.

The rest of the week passed quickly and soon it was Saturday, the trio had found time to meditate almost every day after classes and they all felt that they were making good progress. After lunch on Saturday Susan said she needed to write a letter to her aunt and that usually took her a couple hours as her aunt insisted on receiving as many details as possible, so Harry and Hermione were alone for the afternoon.

"Well since we have nothing else going on why don't we work on that essay for Charms? I know it isn't due for a week, but the sooner we get it done the better." Hermione suggested.

"Maybe in a bit, but first there is something I need to show you first." Without another word Harry led the way up to the seventh floor. When he showed her to the Room of Requirement Hermione was in awe.

"What is this place? How did you find it?" The room had taken on the appearance of a small stretch of tropical beach, Harry had decided to start off with something truly spectacular to give Hermione some idea of what the room was capable of.

Harry smiled at the look of wonder on Hermione's face. "This is the Room of Requirement, whatever you want or need the room to be it becomes that." at these words the room began to change until it resembled a small sitting room with three chairs and a table in the middle. Harry sat down in one chair and gestured for Hermione to sit in another. He pulled the medallion out of his pocket, placed it on the table and then continued "As for how I found it, well... that is a long story."

**A/N I hope you like how I handled the first potions lesson, I kind of think that if Harry had been able to answer all three questions then Snape would have moved on to more and more difficult questions. For those of you who may be wondering, yes Susan is going to be a permanent replacement for Ron. All three will become animagi and their forms will be; a fox, a small dog, and a raven ten points to the first person to match them up correctly. If anyone has suggestions for Marauder nicknames they would be appreciated.**


	6. Explanations and Trolls

**Disclaimer: If I were JKR and owned Harry Potter I wouldn't have to preface every chapter with a disclaimer so I don't get sued, but I'm not, so I do.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 6: Explanations and Trolls

"Well... that is a long story." Harry began, he was nervous about revealing this truth to her, but there was no backing out of this one, after all it had been his idea to tell her. "The short version is that in the year 2000, someone helped me send my memories of everything I experienced starting with my eleventh birthday."

Hermione just stared at him with a look of shock on her face, it was at this point that Virgil decided to join in the conversation "I think you broke her kid."

Hermione's attention immediately snapped to the new arrival in the room "Who are you?"

"Oh that is Virgil, he isn't really there, but he is... kinda. Anyways he is the one who helped me."

"So you're serious about this. But how... why..."

"Ah yes well, how would be my department and the simple answer is, it's complicated. Basically we took this medallion here and downloaded Harry's memories, and then I put a full copy of my personality in as well, I am a projection of that copy. I then did some really complicated math to calculate a four dimensional launch trajectory for the medallion and knocked it out of the time stream so that it ended up where and when it needed to."

"But what about creating a paradox, you could have destabilized the time-space-continuum that was really-" Hermione was actually taking it a lot better than Harry had expected her to, of course they hadn't gotten around to the why portion of the evening so the worst wasn't over yet.

"Don't worry yourself over it kid, a paradox is impossible because it can only occur with linear causality, and once you start working in non-linear time causality becomes non-linear. Once you travel back in time everything between when you arrive and when you departed never happened. And most importantly time is far to squishy to ever sustain permanent damage without that being your intention. Harry can field the generals of the why while I see if this room will respond to my thoughts" Virgil then walked away from the chairs as the room expanded to include a small workbench Virgil then proceeded to put the room to the test in order to see just how far the room could get with his plan before someone would have to finish.

Meanwhile Harry was telling Hermione about everything that had happened that had led up to the decision to change history "So like I said it's a long story, if someone were to write it down it would probably take like seven books."

"Or eight movies." Hermione replied.

"So do you believe me? I promise that I would never lie to you." Harry asked hopefully.

Hermione gave him a reassuring smile before answering "Yes Harry I believe you. I mean if you were making all this up why on earth would you say that we were friends with _Ron Weasley_, the boy is insufferable, he has no manners, he says hurtful and insensitive things just because they pop into his head, and isn't all that bright." as she finished her statement she couldn't help but laugh at the thought of being friends with the redheaded idiot.

"Hey don't laugh apparently other me was blinded by the fact that he was his first friend his own age." Harry said defensively.

"I'm sorry Harry I know what it's like to not have any friends, but neither of us is going to have to deal with that ever again because we have each other. Now we just need to decide what to do about all of the stuff that is going to happen over the next seven years."

"Well Virgil and I have talked about it pretty extensively, and we agree that we can't destroy the horcruxes until after Dumbledore dies. Dumbledore is to much of a threat to everyone and if he survives the war then we will be right back where we started from, all the Death Eaters will get away with everything they did while Dumbledore keeps playing god with innocent lives."

"The only thing I don't understand is why Dumbledore is doing this. Why bring the stone here, why even let Voldemort come back before destroying all the horcruxes, why force you to grow up with your awful relatives... Oh Harry I'll write a letter to my parents to see if we can't have you move in with us, you should never have gone to those monsters and I won't let you go back." Hermione nearly broke down at the thought of what her best friend had gone through.

Harry moved to hug Hermione "Shhhh, don't worry I'm sure your parents are already working on a way to get me away from my relatives. You see I have no intention of returning there, and if I tried to do something about it Dumbledore would try to stop me, so Virgil figured that if I dropped a few hints around your parents they would look into what my aunt and uncle had done to me over the years. That way by the time Dumbledore becomes aware of things it will be to late for him to do anything."

Little did Harry know that the investigation that the Grangers had begun was going to come to a much more high profile end a lot sooner than he had anticipated. Shortly after Mr. Mitchell had begun his investigation a stack of files that had been kept by the primary school Harry had attended found it's way to the desk of a clerk whose job it was to log every file that came though the office. At least that was her official job. Doris Allen was a muggle born witch who had worked at the London Office of Child Services for the past fifteen years. In the office she was just a clerk, an extremely efficient clerk but a clerk none the less, but she was also paid by the Ministry of Magic to watch for unexplained events that could be indicative of accidental magic. So when Doris saw the file about the time Harry Potter had ended up on the roof a number of red flags were sent up in her head. From what she had read Harry had somehow managed to apparate with no training at the age of eight, generally speaking the power and complexity of accidental magic was proportionate to the intensity of the emotional state of the child that created the effect. Accidental magic that involved moving the child generally only occurred as an escape mechanism, so if Harry had apparated at eight years old, he had to have been scared for his life. The only thing mentioned in the file which could account for his fear was a mention that he claimed to have been running from his cousin Dudley when he had suddenly ended up on the roof. She contacted her superiors on both sides immediately. To Doris it was unacceptable that Harry Potter had lost so much only to find himself scared for his life at the hands of his own relatives.

When Hermione had calmed down Harry returned to his seat and began to explain what seemed to be Dumbledore's problem "Virgil thinks that Dumbledore spent to much of his young life being told he was brilliant and not enough time being challenged to prove he was right about things. Then his mother dies, and his sister dies, now his mother's death was an accident, but his sister's death is his fault, either directly or indirectly. To make himself feel better he developed a view of the world that allowed him to escape the blame, his mother and sister died because people are ignorant, good people are better off in the afterlife and so you should be okay with dieing and should never kill someone who isn't good, even if it will save lives. After dealing with Grindelwald no one questions his choices, even though he made a lot of really bad choices that cost thousands of innocent lives. And the result is that he feels that it is his right and duty to tell the ignorant masses how to live their lives, while using his followers as disposable pawns to push his agenda."

"Okay but why is he a bigger problem than Voldemort?"

By this point Virgil had come back over, he had been thoroughly impressed by the rooms capabilities "Because Voldemort just wants to kill people, Dumbledore wants to take away your free will bend you to his will and force you to live life according to what he thinks is best. C. S. Lewis put it pretty well 'Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.' Dumbledore would gladly take away everything that makes you human and he would have no qualms about it because he would be doing it for his vaunted 'Greater Good'. Anyways you two should probably put these on" He handed each of them a pair of contact lenses. "These will cause anyone who attempts to read your mind to get a serious headache, the harder they push, the worse it will hurt."

Hermione sat and considered everything she had been told her mind clicked on something that had been briefly mentioned, but she had ignored it at the time as there were more important subjects. As she put on the enchanted lenses she finally brought it back up "Virgil, what exactly did you mean when you said Harry and I are soul-mates? I've done a lot of reading, and I've seen references to people having soul-mates, but there wasn't that much information available."

"At this point it doesn't mean much, you two will both be slightly more powerful when you are together and you can get a slight feeling of the other persons mental and emotional state. That is probably why you accepted Harry's story as fact so easily, you sensed that he wasn't trying to deceive you so you were more trusting. You will both probably notice that you won't be able to lie to each other very well. The more time you spend with each other the more noticeable the difference will be. _If _you two developed a... romantic relationship there would be other effects, but you don't need to know about those right now. I think you two should probably go find Susan, go be kids for a change, hang out with your housemates." With that Virgil disappeared.

"He's right, we should probably get going." Harry said standing up from his chair. Hermione also stood up and they both left to find their friend.

The next few weeks passed quickly, and a sort of schedule emerged; every weekday after classes and before dinner Harry, Hermione, and Susan would meditate outside for an hour, then after dinner the trio would go up to the library to work on their homework. They spent their weekends with the rest of the first year Hufflepuffs and were occasionally they were joined by a couple of the older 'Puffs. A hierarchy had developed, as is natural in any situation where more than a handful of people get together, Harry was the leader due to his natural charm and Hermione and Susan were his inner circle while the others happily tagged along with whatever they decided to do. Harry discovered that with Hermione as his best friend he could actually achieve a lot in classes and soon enough, much to the annoyance of the Ravenclaws, Harry and Hermione were competing for the first and second spot for their year in every class, with Susan taking a close third due to the benefits of having brilliant friends. While Harry and Hermione helped Susan with schoolwork Susan taught them about wizarding law and customs, something Harry really wished he had known about before. Harry and Susan had also helped Hermione get over her fear of flying, after their first flying lesson everyone could see that Harry was a natural at flying, unfortunately without Malfoy around he hadn't had the opportunity to show his skills as a seeker so he would have to wait until second year to join the quidditch team.

By late October all three of them had progressed quite well in their meditation and all were hopeful they would be able to feel their inner beast by the beginning of the winter holidays. There were only a few real problems the first two months of term. Snape had at first been bearable after Harry had mentioned his behavior to Professor Sprout, but he had slowly become more vicious towards Harry and his friends, if he continued Harry felt he would soon have grounds to make a formal complaint to the board of governors and possibly the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Draco Malfoy had been a mild annoyance for most of term, but Harry had grown quite adept at verbal sparring and most times Malfoy stormed off because he had no response to Harry's comments. When Malfoy had challenged Harry to a duel at midnight in the trophy room Harry had countered with an offer to duel him in front of the entire school, Malfoy obviously refused as he hadn't intended to show up to the duel in the first place. The behavior of Ron Weasley had not improved at all, if anything it had grown worse, the redhead had been persistent in his attempts to cozy up to Harry, and as the weeks went by his attempts became more forceful. Ron finally crossed a line on Halloween, the last class of the day was Herbology with the Gryfindors and Ron made his usual attempt to sit next to Harry.

"Harry why would you want to sit next to these losers? You're famous surely you could find cooler friends." Ron said while trying to get Susan to move so he could sit down between her and Harry.

"Ronald I am perfectly happy with the friends I have. Why don't you go sit with someone who actually wants to be your friend instead of harassing my friends and me?" Harry said as politely as he could manage while resisting the urge to strangle the insufferable git.

"Come on Harry you don't mean that, we're friends aren't we?" At this point Susan lost her battle to retain her seat and was forcefully pushed face first into an unknown plant. When she hit the plant a large yellow pod on the plant exploded in her face, filling her eyes with a noxious sap. Professor Sprout used a charm to remove most of the sap while assigning Ron a weeks detention and taking twenty points from Gryfindor, before asking Harry and Hermione to escort Susan to the hospital wing.

While this was occurring Susan's aunt was sitting was sitting in her office reading a very thorough report about the home and relatives of Harry James Potter. Normally the DMLE would not get involved in cases of child abuse and neglect when the family in question were muggles, but because the Dursleys had been aware of magic, and Harry's probable status as a wizard, when they had willingly become his legal guardians their interactions with Harry fell within the DMLE's jurisdiction. Based on what she was reading she was determined to make sure that the Dursleys were held accountable for what they had put Harry through.

Madam Pomfrey took one look at Susan's face and immediately set to work cleaning her eyes. The sap hadn't done any lasting harm and when Madam Pomfrey shooed Harry and Hermione out of the hospital wing she informed them that Susan would most likely be able to join them at the feast that evening. Harry and Hermione shared a look of concern as they exited the wing, if things stayed true to form Susan would be having a run-in with another troll today, and this next one wouldn't be a pushover like Weasley.

Three hours later Harry and Hermione were sitting at the Hufflepuff table, not eating anything due to anxiety about what they both knew was about to happen, when Professor Quirrel burst into the hall shouting about a troll before fainting. Had the situation been less serious Harry and Hermione would have found Quirrel's complete lack of acting skill humorous, as it was they could only chuckle about the fact that he had fallen backwards and Voldemort probably had a broken nose as a result. While the panicking students made their ways to their respective common rooms Harry and Hermione slipped away and took the most direct route to the hospital wing.

"You know I have to wonder why he actually let a real troll in in the first place. The distraction would have lasted longer if the staff had been unable to find the troll, because there wasn't one. With an actual troll the moment the staff found it the threat is over." Hermione mused as they walked briskly down the corridors, Harry had realized that running to a fight was a bad idea as it put you at a serious disadvantage while you tried to catch your breath.

When they found Susan she was running down a hallway, which is a perfectly rational thing to be doing when you are being chased by a twelve foot tall mountain troll. "Right on schedule." Harry grumbled as he pulled out his wand and took note of his surroundings. As he looked he came up with a plan Susan was running past a downward staircase and the troll would charge blindly past it in a few seconds, all that was needed was the proper timing. As the troll passed in front of the staircase Harry yelled at it to get its attention, he then hit it with the same knock-back hex he had used on Malfoy on the train, because the troll had spun to look at the source of the loud noise it had heard the slight push of the hex was enough to send the troll tumbling tail over tea-kettle down the stairs. As an added bonus at the exact moment that Harry knocked the troll over Professor Snape was passing the foot of the staircase. The troll landed on Snape knocking him out, after having received a good deal of head trauma itself on the way down.

"What is going on here?" came the voice of Professor McGonagall.

"Oh, Professor McGonagall, good thing your here. Hermione and I were concerned that Susan would be on her way down from the hospital wing and wouldn't know about the troll so we came to warn her. When we found her she was being chased by the troll, so I knocked it down the stairs with a knock-back hex." Harry quickly explained before Hermione or Susan tried to make excuses.

"Well Mr. Potter, you did an admirable thing trying to look out for a friend's safety, so ten points to Hufflepuff for yourself and Miss Granger. Also for eliminating a danger to the whole school, and for a display of excellent thinking while in danger, another twenty points. I must say Mr. Potter you seem to have learned quite a bit from Mr. Moody's book, he would be proud to know that it has helped you so much. However next time please inform a teacher rather than charging off on your own, you are all extremely lucky to have survived, you may return to your common room." Professor McGonagall dismissed them and called Professor Dumbledore for help extricating the stricken Potions Master from under the troll. Yes old Mad-Eye would indeed find this quite amusing and Minerva decided that she would write him to tell him about it in the morning.

**A/N: Congrats to ****ElldenStorm**** for being the first to guess correctly. Harry will be a Raven (Ravens are known to be clever and improvise to find solutions, plus they are considered bad ****omens and Harry has horrible luck) Hermione will be a fox (Clever, curious, and tenacious) and Susan will be either a Jack Russel Terrier or a Dachshund (Cute and loyal). Before anyone asks, I think that the main reason McGonagall only gave Harry and Ron five points in canon is because she knew that Hermione had lied to cover for them and they didn't own up to what they had done.**


	7. You Have Me Right Where I Want You

**Disclaimer: Still not JKR, Still don't want to get sued**

**A/N: Something came up in a review, I hadn't thought it would be confusing but some people might have missed it. The reason McGonagall mentions Moody is because the book on defense that Harry purchased in chapter 3 was written by Moody. Sorry if anyone was confused by that.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 7: You Have Me Right Where I Want You

Albus Dumbledore was pleased with the outcome of Halloween night. Harry Potter had rushed off to save a friend rather than go somewhere safe, there was hope that the boy could be properly honed into a weapon. For now though the most important thing was pushing Harry toward the stone, it was of the utmost importance that Harry confront Voldemort down in that chamber.

Harry Potter was also pleased with the outcome of Halloween, the entire school had heard that he had taken down a troll, Dumbledore was most likely preparing to move forward with his plans without a clue that Harry was completely aware of his plans, and after how Ron had acted during that Herbology class not even Dumbledore could blame him for any hostility toward the Weasel.

When Amelia Bones learned of the events of Halloween she redoubled her efforts to see justice done for Harry Potter. The Dursleys were going to pay for what they had done to that wonderful boy, and anyone who got in her way was going to burn.

Alastor Moody smiled to himself as he read about the exploits of Harry Potter in a letter from his old school friend Minerva McGonagall, apparently Potter had a good head on his shoulders. If what Albus kept hinting at turned out to be true about Potter, well they might just stand a chance. Taking down a full grown mountain troll at eleven, with the right help the boy could be a force to be reckoned with.

November passed quickly with little of note occurring, Harry, Hermione, and Susan had all managed to feel their inner beast in the last week of November. Snape continued to grow worse and Harry had to bring his actions to Professor Sprouts attention three times in one month.

The result of Harry's reports to Professor Sprout was a meeting that was held in Dumbledore's office, all of the heads of house were present and it was clear from the start that Sprout, Flitwick, and McGonagall were out for blood.

"Severus your behavior toward Mr. Potter is unacceptable. I am deeply concerned that you see no problem with the way you treat the boy." Professor Sprout stated plainly, she was upset that any teacher could treat any student with the unveiled cruelty that Snape heaped so casually on Mr. Potter. The fact that something like this was being done to one of _her_ kids, she really did think of all the students in Hufflepuff as her children, was too much.

"Potter is as arrogant as is father, I treat him no worse than he deserves." Snape all but snarled at the little woman who had dared to question his teaching methods.

"Severus Snape you are as petty and vicious as you were when you were a student here. Mr. Potter has done nothing that could be characterized as arrogant, he is a kind, intelligent, and determined boy. I cannot believe the levels you would sink to, just to continue a schoolboy grudge against a man who was murdered a decade ago. And worse it isn't just Mr. Potter, every student I have spoken to says you have tried everything you can to cause them to fail, you show blatant favoritism towards Slytherins and even encourage antagonism between the houses. If you don't shape up I will be forced to bring this up with the school governors." Sprout all but yelled at Snape.

"Now Pomona, surely it isn't all that bad. I am certain that Severus has a very good reason for-" Dumbledore began.

"Albus when Pomona called for this meeting I asked some of my Ravenclaws about Professor Snape's teaching methods, and I must say if even a fraction of what I have been told is true I am deeply concerned about the direction the school is heading. I am in complete agreement with Pomona, Severus needs to shape up or leave. His behavior is far from acceptable and the fact that you are willing to defend it raises some questions about your priorities." Flitwick spoke up for the first time since entering the Headmaster's Office.

"Very well, Severus you need to consider whether you wish to remain at this school. You have until the end of this school year to shape up or I will have no choice but to replace you." With that said Dumbledore dismissed everyone. He sincerely hoped Severus would change his ways, the man was far to useful to lose, but he couldn't risk his position here. With Lucius Malfoy on the board of governors defending Severus would be easy, but Lucius would gladly throw his old friend in front of the Knight Bus if it meant removing the Headmaster.

Around the same time that meeting was being held another meeting was occurring at the Granger household outside of London. Amelia Bones had been looking into how the file on Harry Potter had finally made its way into the proper hands when she came across a piece of information that would vastly simplify the legal nightmare that Harry's relocation would otherwise have been, because Harry's case was first brought to light in the muggle legal system in order to move him to a new home they would need to work within the muggle laws concerning such things. However when she discovered that the people behind the start of the investigation were the parents of a mutual friend of her niece and Harry the solution presented itself. In the muggle system the Grangers could apply for legal guardianship, they were in a respected profession and obviously cared about the boys well being, and because they were already aware of the magical world it wouldn't be too difficult to get it dealt with on the magical side. All she needed to do was convince the Grangers that this was the best option for young Harry. It was for this reason that she was currently explaining the finer legal details to David and Jean. Both had been receptive to the idea, especially after they were told about some of the things that had been uncovered about the Dursleys treatment of Harry. They agreed that they would discuss the situation with Harry over the Christmas break, either at the Granger home or in Hogsmead, depending on what Harry decided to do for Christmas.

At the end of November Harry, Hermione, and Susan found themselves running down an abandoned corridor with the Weasley twins. The reason they were running was that they were being chased by Mr. Filch the caretaker. After the events of Halloween the Twins had approached Harry about teaching Ron a lesson for his treatment of Harry's friends, Harry had immediately agreed, all he had asked was that they include Draco Malfoy in the prank, while the blonde had been less annoying than Ron he had still been extremely rude and insulting toward Harry and Harry felt it was only right that he also be taught a lesson. It was during the final preparations for their prank that they found themselves in their current predicament. They had been setting up the trigger for two delayed sticking charms which would have seen Ron and Draco attached at the hip for three hours when Mrs. Norris had come across them. Abandoning their plan the five had made a run for it. They heard Filch getting closer as they turned a corner and ran down a new corridor then cursed their luck when they found the corridor was a dead end, with a locked door. One of the Twins cast a quick "_Alohamora_" and they all moved into the room on the other side of the door before closing it quickly. They immediately regretted their decision directly in front of them was a giant three-headed dog, luckily it was currently taking a nap and had not noticed that it had visitors. All five students stayed absolutely silent while they listened for Filch, hoping against hope that the caretaker would leave before the dog awoke and decided it was hungry. Just as they were about to leave Susan accidentally kicked a loose floor tile and it went skipping across the floor and hit the great beast in one of its noses. The five students forced there way through the door before the beast could express its displeasure, all five of them deciding they would rather face Filch.

"Blimey." said Fred, or maybe it was George.

"What is a great bloody beast like that-" Said George, or was it Fred?

"-Doing in a school?"

"Well I doubt it was here for the great academic opportunities here." Joked Hermione, she really had come a long way since befriending Harry, before she had never been very good at humor.

"Well," said Harry "in Greek mythology a Cerberus guarded the entrance to the underworld, maybe it is here to guard something."

"But Harry," Hermione brought up, playing along with Harry's obvious plan "what could possibly be so important to need that thing to guard it?"

Harry was glad that Hermione had caught on so quickly, now that they had run into Fluffy it was time to get started on the hunt for the stone. "Well it is probably whatever that hing was Hagrid was getting from Gringotts on my birthday. I mean what are the odds that Hagrid retrieves something for Dumbledore that is so important that it needs to be in a high security vault at Gringotts, and then an entirely different thing is now hidden in the off-limits corridor here?"

Susan was intrigued by this thought "Maybe we should ask Hagrid about it?"

Fred and George were also getting interested "Yeah even if he won't tell us what it is if we can get him talking he might let slip a couple of clues we could use to figure it out. He isn't exactly known for being tight-lipped." Harry and Hermione agreed to the solution and they decided to speak with Hagrid on Saturday.

So it was that on Saturday morning Harry, Hermione, Susan, and the Weasley Twins found themselves drinking tea and talking to Hagrid. The conversation was mostly innocuous with the occasional leading question from one of the students, which led to a couple of revelations, first was that Fluffy was guarding something belonging to Nicholas Flamel, many of the teachers had protections placed around whatever the object was, and that Fluffy could easily be put to sleep with some music. Leaving Hagrid's hut for lunch all five agreed that they would need to do some research into Flamel to figure out what could be hidden in the school. Harry and Hermione secretly agreed to tell Susan and the Twins that it was the Philosopher's Stone after Christmas break.

Harry had decided to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas, despite receiving an invitation from the Grangers to spend the break with them, his main reason for this was that he was concerned that Dumbledore wouldn't give him the cloak if he couldn't keep an eye on Harry's early uses of the cloak. Agreeing with Harry, Hermione informed her parents that she would be staying as well since many of her friends were going to be there for Christmas. Susan had also decided to stay for Christmas though she did tell Harry and Hermione that her aunt wanted to meet with them over the break, and that she had already made arrangements with Professor Sprout for them to meet her in Hogsmead the first Saturday of break.

When the snow outside had made it impossible for them to meditate outdoors they had begun meditating in one of the many unused rooms in the castle. One day a week before break began Harry made his first discovery about his form. "I think I'm a bird of some sort!" Harry exclaimed unable to contain his excitement. Susan and Hermione were impressed, they had all gotten good at pulling on their inner beast, but neither of the girls had managed to learn anything unique enough to give them a real clue what they were. Both knew they were warm-blooded quadrupeds with tails, but that really didn't narrow it down much. They had spoken with Professor McGonagall about their work on the transformation, she was very impressed by their progress. By her estimation they would have discovered their form by March or April, if their excellent progress continued they might complete their transformation by the end of their second year.

Snape had actually been bearable during the month of December, the Hogwarts rumor mill did its usual job of finding the true story right away and then quickly distorting it so that it bore no resemblance to the truth. As a result by December 1st it was common knowledge that there had been a meeting with all the heads of house in which Snape had been given an ultimatum, by the 8th the accepted truth was that Snape had been put under the imperius curse.

Harry, Hermione and Susan were escorted by Professor Sprout down to The Three Broomsticks on the day of their meeting with Amelia Bones. When they arrived Madam Rosmerta showed them into a private room in the back, inside were three people waiting for the kids.

"Mum, dad, what are you doing here!" Hermione said as she ran to hug her parents.

David and Jean both hugged their daughter "Perhaps it would be best if Madam Bones explained why we are here." Jean said letting go of Hermione "Hello Harry, I hope you have kept Hermione from spending too much time studying."

"Hello Mrs. Granger" Harry said as he too received a hug "I have been trying, but you know how she can get." This comment earned Harry a mock glare from Hermione.

"Mr. Potter, Miss Granger, it is a pleasure to finally meet you, Susan has told me quite a bit about you. However today I am here in an official capacity as the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. If we could all take a seat I can explain the situation." Amelia Bones said gesturing to the chairs that were set around a circular table. Everyone took a seat at the table and Amelia continued "Harry I am here because while you have been at Hogwarts certain facts about your life with your relatives have come to the attention of the DMLE. Normally the Dursleys would be outside our jurisdiction, but because they willingly and knowingly took in a wizard as their ward, their treatment of you falls squarely within our laws. They will be put on trial next week and regardless of their sentence you will not be returning to their home."

"Thank you Madam Bones, I can't tell you how much it means to me to know I'll never have to go back there. But how did the DMLE get involved?" Harry asked the beginnings of a smile on his face. He had expected to get the Dursleys arrested in the muggle judicial system, but this was poetic justice. After they had spent years abusing and neglecting him because he was a wizard they would now find themselves at the mercy of witches and wizards.

"Well apparently the day after you left for Hogwarts Mr. and Mrs. Granger asked a friend in Child Services to begin an investigation of your relatives, because they were worried about how you were treated. As a result a number of files that had never been seen by anyone outside of the school you attended found their way into the hands of a Ministry of Magic employee, whose job it is to look through all the files that pass through Child Services and look for signs of accidental magic and subsequent abuse of the magical child by their family or peers. This employee passed your files up the chain of command and they eventually made it to my office. Normally the solution to a problem like this would simply be for a magical family to take you in, however because you are who you are there would be concerns raised about every potential family as everyone would want to take you in so that they could get a little of your fame. Also the fact that your case has gotten pretty far through the muggle justice system means that we would need do quite a bit of Obliviation in order to make your case go away. Luckily because of the fact that the Grangers are the ones who initiated all of this we are presented with a much simpler solution. The Grangers could become your legal guardians, this would eliminate the need to obliviate so many muggle civil servants, and using this as an excuse would undercut any objections that might be raised by the Wizengamot." Amelia finished her explanation and looked Harry directly in the eye "What do you think Harry? Is this an acceptable solution?"

Harry didn't trust his voice enough to speak so he simply nodded a huge grin on his face. Upon seeing him nod Hermione engulfed him in a massive hug.

Amelia was glad to see that Harry would be more than happy to live with the Grangers "Well it has been a pleasure meeting you Harry and Hermione, but I am afraid we must be going. There is quite a bit of paperwork that needs to be finished." With that they all said their good-byes and went their separate ways.

**A/N: Okay finalized species for animagus forms: Harry- Common Raven, Hermione- Red Fox, and Susan- Irish Terrier. Check out the wikipedia pages for these if you want some good pictures for visualization. A reviewer asked if memories alone would account for the behavior change in Harry, well here is my thinking; Harry's change in behavior is mostly due to a massive infusion of confidence, he gained that confidence because he can see from the memories he received that he will become a total BAMF over the next few years,, he lacked that confidence in canon because is transition to BAMFism was gradual and he really didn't notice it until the end.**

**Next Chapter: A Very Harry Christmas (working title)**


	8. A Very Harry Christmas

**Disclaimer:If you haven't already guessed, I am not JKR and I don't own Harry Potter.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 8: A Very Harry Christmas

Harry and his friends spent most of the weeks leading up to Christmas in the common room with their fellow Hufflepuffs, though they did occasionally meet up with the Weasley Twins to do research in the library. Most of this research was toward finding a reference to Nicholas Flamel but there was also quite a bit of research into new forms of magic that could be used for pranks. The Twins were delighted that they had managed to so thoroughly corrupt the three first years, and Harry and Hermione were pleased that Susan and the Twins were so interested in finding Flamel. When they weren't in the library or the common room Harry, Hermione, Susan, and the Twins would come up with ideas for pranks to pull on those people that they generally agreed had it coming. The Twins had discovered just how good the three first years were at pranking when they had decided that they needed to teach one of the Slytherin fifth years a lesson after he called Justin a mudblood. The Slytherin in question learned just how awkward sticking charms could make a simple situation like picking your nose. Susan was very imaginative when it came to designing 'object lessons in humility' as they called them, while Harry and Hermione were always able to find some obscure spell that could make even her more outlandish plans work.

Christmas morning found Harry being forcibly dragged from his bed by two very excited witches who had grown tired of waiting for Harry to wake up so they could open their presents. Harry was surprised by the number of presents he had waiting for him, there were the expected presents from Hermione, Susan, Hagrid and Dumbledore, though of course he wasn't supposed to know it was from Dumbledore, but there was also a present from Amelia Bones, David and Jean Granger, many different first years who Harry, Hermione, and Susan had avenged after they were picked on by a Slytherin, and perhaps most surprisingly _Mad-Eye Moody_. Hermione had gotten him a box set of _The Lord of the Rings_, her parents had sent him a nice Swiss pocket watch, Susan had given him a book on the history and traditions of the Wizengamot, Amelia had sent him a book about using different types of magic in duels, Hagrid had sent him the same flute he had last time, and most of the first years had sent some kind of candy. When he opened Moody's present he was not entirely surprised to find a collection of books on practical defense, along with the books was a small box which contained an enchanted wand holster that was immune to summoning charms, could turn invisible, and would launch the users wand into his hand with a thought. Moody also sent a note stating that he had heard from a mutual friend that Harry had taken down a troll with a spell he had learned from Moody's book, which he said he was glad had actually managed to teach at least one person something, and had decided to recommend some other books he thought were worth actually looking through. Harry was extremely pleased that he had received the cloak from Dumbledore, one of the primary concerns with the plan was that Dumbledore might have withheld the cloak until he could be certain of controlling Harry.

After they had finished opening presents and thanks had been exchanged they made their way up for breakfast. When they reached the Entrance Hall they met Fred and George who showed them into a secret corridor.

"Merry Christmas you three-" Fred started

"-We got you a little something-"

"-It is the secret to our success-"

"-And after watching the work you three have done-"

"-We have decided that you are worthy successors-"

"-And partners in crime-"

"-Now you won't be getting this immediately-"

"-But in a couple of years we will gladly pass it on to your keeping-"

"-We present to you, the Marauder's Map." they finished together and with a flourish George drew a piece of parchment from a pocket, tapped it with his wand and said "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good". Immediately lines of ink crisscrossed the parchment forming words.

_Messrs. Wormtail, Moony, Padfoot, and Prongs proudly present the Marauder's Map_

Then the lines formed a map of Hogwarts complete with little dots that showed the name and location of every person in the castle. Harry, Hermione, and Susan all gave appropriate exclamations of awe, though Harry's was more due to the ease with which he had gained access to the map, and they all thanked Fred and George for their trust and generosity. All five of them then made their way to breakfast while discussing the other presents they had received, Fred and George were amazed that Harry had received an invisibility cloak and begged him to let them borrow it on occasion. After breakfast they went back to the Hufflepuff common room where Harry began reading the book Susan had given him. While he was reading the book he came upon the name of House Potter on a list of the _Most Ancient and Noble Houses_.

"Susan, what exactly does it mean for a house to be 'Most Ancient and Noble'?" Harry asked, not wanting to take the time to scan the rest of the book for an answer.

Susan looked up from the book she had been reading "Oh, well in 1628 many of the smaller houses wanted to restructure the Wizengamot, mostly they wanted to eliminate the practice of taking seats by conquest. In order to get the reforms through they needed to grant some concessions to the more powerful houses, the Most ancient and Noble Houses were the result. The main points of difference are that you, as the last heir of House Potter, can take up your position as head of House Potter at thirteen, which would grant you the title of Lord Potter, and you can take your hereditary seat on the Wizengamot at fifteen instead of seventeen like the other houses with seats."

Harry was intrigued by this development "So if I chose to at thirteen I could take up the title of Lord Potter. What would that do for me?"

Susan giggled at Harry's obvious enthusiasm "You could insist that people call you Lord Potter, most of the other advantages have been stripped from the position over the years. I mean you could demand a trial before the Wizengamot for someone who you feel has wronged your family, but there isn't much point to that because most of the things you could claim that for are already illegal and would see someone put on trial anyways."

Harry thanked Susan for the insight, not letting on how useful that option might be to him in future. That night Harry convinced Hermione and Susan to join him in a test run of the invisibility cloak to head down to the restricted section of the library. Shortly after they arrived in the library Filch made his way past the library, the trio quickly hid themselves under the cloak and made their way out of the library as stealthily as possible. While they were making their way back downstairs Harry began to feel the first pull of a subtle compulsion charm, had he not been waiting for it he might have simply followed it without noticing, but as it was he knew exactly what was going on and followed the charm to find what he already knew to be at the other end. He led the girls to what should have been an empty classroom, only it wasn't inside the room, sitting in full view was the Mirror of Erised.

"I wonder what this mirror is doing here." Harry asked aloud, stepping out from under the cloak to stand in front of the mirror. When he stepped in front of the mirror and looked into it he gasped, and it was only partly for show. He was not alone in the reflection in the mirror, but he had expected that, what he had not expected to see was himself and Hermione as he knew they would look nearly a decade from now. Mirror-Harry turned to face Mirror-Hermione and gave her a loving look before drawing her into a passionate kiss before returning to look out of the mirror. Behind the future version of himself and Hermione were his parents and other relatives. "I-I can see my parents in here." Harry said, stepping back from the mirror.

Susan moved to look into the mirror "Whoa, I can see myself, but I'm sitting at a desk. The nameplate on the desk says I'm... the Minister of Magic."

While Susan was looking into the mirror Hermione was examining the frame of the mirror. "Look at this" she said pointing to the words engraved at the top of the mirror "The words are backwards, but it says 'I show not your face, but your hearts desire'. The mirror must be enchanted to show our deepest desire." Susan had moved out from in front of the mirror so Hermione moved to look into the mirror, when she looked into it tears formed in her eyes and after only a few seconds she looked away.

"What did you see?" Harry asked her gently, moving to stand next to her.

"I-I don't want to talk about it. Can we get out of here, please." Hermione said moving away from the mirror.

"It's alright, you don't have to say anything about it." Harry said pulling her into a gentle hug. She relaxed into the embrace returning Harry's hug. While this exchange was occurring Susan picked up the discarded cloak and handed it to Harry. Ten minutes later all three were in bed, but only Susan was asleep, Harry and Hermione were both kept awake by what they had seen in the mirror.

Harry felt no desire to look into the mirror again, but it was important that his meeting with Dumbledore occur. It was time to begin his plans against Dumbledore, and this was an important first step. So it was that Harry found himself looking past the mirror for an hour the next three nights before Dumbledore finally made his presence known.

"Mr. Potter." Dumbledore said from behind Harry.

Harry smirked inwardly to himself, spun around quickly to face him, drew his wand and, as if on instinct, muttered "_Expeliarmus_". Dumbledore who had not been expecting anything of this sort from Harry was caught unaware and found his wand flying into Harry's hand.

"Oh, Professor Dumbledore. I'm sorry about that, you really shouldn't sneak up on people late at night. You never know how they might react without thinking." Harry said as he handed Dumbledore back his wand. If Harry hadn't known just how important it was to maintain his composure he would have been jumping up and down shouting in joy as he felt the Elder Wand transferring allegiance away from the old man.

"Do not worry about it Harry. You are right I should be more careful when making my presence known." Dumbledore's grandfatherly smile barely hiding the sense of dread he felt at losing total control of the Elder Wand to the boy he had been trying so hard to control. He could only hope any spell work he did with the wand would still work on Harry, because as far as he knew he wouldn't be able to win the wands allegiance again until Harry reclaimed the wand, and that was unlikely since he wouldn't know that he could do so. "I see you have discovered the wonder of the Mirror of Erised." Harry only nodded "I trust you have figured out what it does?"

"I show not your face, but your heart's desire." Harry quoted to Dumbledore

"Quite true, remember though it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. The mirror will be moved tomorrow and I ask you not to go looking for it." Dumbledore said looking into Harry's eyes. He immediately regretted it as his mental probe was met with a splitting pain in his head.

"Of course Professor, good-night." Harry said before slipping out of the room and putting his cloak back on.

Harry spent the next couple of days playing chess against Susan, Hermione and the Twins. Under normal circumstances Hermione would have begged off playing chess, but she understood that Harry was deciding who would need to go through the trapdoor with them in order to beat McGonagall's giant chess set. After what became a week long chess tournament Susan was the clear winner and Harry and Hermione agreed that they would definitely put her in charge of the chess set.

They spent the rest of their break relaxing and it was during one of those lazy afternoons that the opportunity to push the hunt for the stone along presented. Harry had been slowly working his way through the candy he had received for Christmas and he was currently working on the chocolate frogs, when he found the exact card he needed, Albus Dumbledore.

"I found Flamel. Listen to this Albus Dumbledore is best known for... his work on alchemy with Nicholas Flamel." Harry said showing the card to Hermione and Susan.

"Let's go find Fred and George, they'll want to know we finally found Flamel." Susan suggested.

"And now that we know what subject to work in we can find out more about him in the library." Hermione added.

The trio set off to find the Twins so they could relate their discovery. They found them in a classroom on the fifth floor that they commonly used as a meeting room. As soon as they entered the room Susan blurted out "We found Flamel, we're headed to the library, we'll explain on the way." And with that the Twins joined them in the hallway and they headed to the library with Harry explaining how he had come across the information. They were in the library for all of fifteen minutes before Hermione had found the reference they were looking for.

"Nicholas Flamel is the only known maker of the Philosopher's Stone." Hermione read from the book, she then proceeded to read an excerpt about what the stone was capable of.

"Well I think that settles it." Said George.

"Dumbledore has hidden the stone under the third floor corridor." Finished Fred.

"He must be really concerned about someone trying to steal it if he is going to all this trouble to protect it." Susan pondered out loud.

"Someone has already tried, I think. Twice if I'm not mistaken." Harry added "There was a break in at Gringotts this summer, and whoever let that troll in at Halloween probably wanted a distraction to have a go at the defenses around the stone."

"They probably didn't get in though or there would be no point in keeping the defenses up. Though given enough time whoever it is probably figured out how to get past all the defenses. So they'll probably try again." Hermione said "But who could it be?"

"Well if we're right and they did let that troll, we can be sure they don't have good intentions if they think unleashing a troll on a school is an acceptable distraction." Susan added helpfully

"But who would be stupid enough-"

"-To try and steal it-"

"-Right out from under Dumbledore's-"

"-distinctive-"

"-though rather crooked-"

"-nose?" The Twins bounced back and forth.

"Well keeping Dumbledore busy in the school obviously didn't work, so they'll probably wait until he is out of the school." Harry supplied.

"We should warn a teacher. Someone should know that the stone isn't safe." Susan said.

"Well we could, but how do we explain how we know about the stone? They'll probably go after the stone the next time Dumbledore leaves the castle, we just need to stop them when they go after it." Harry said

No one could come up with a counterargument so each of them nodded in turn.

"So we're agreed, when Dumbledore leaves we go down the trapdoor and stop whoever is going after the stone." Harry said and they all nodded their agreement.

**A/N: Hope you liked this chapter. Next Chapter goes to right before the confrontation with Quirrel. Please review.**


	9. Through the Rabbit Hole

**Disclaimer: I'm not JKR and I don't own Harry Potter**

**A/N: I should have the first year done by the end of the week and then I'll probably take a short break before moving on to second year.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 9: Through the Rabbit Hole

January and February passed without incident while Harry and his friends fell back into the same schedule they had followed before Christmas. All five of them kept an eye on Dumbledore's seat at the high table so they would know immediately if he left for any reason. They set up plans on where to meet and even convinced a few portraits to carry messages so they could contact each other if they were in their common rooms. Snape had apparently found his rhythm, he would be totally professional while teaching his class, he even explained the reasons why potions were made in specific ways, outside of the class he was a ruthless disciplinarian who regularly handed out the strongest punishments allowed by the school rules.

March brought with it great excitement for the three Hufflepuffs, in the second week of March while they were meditating Hermione felt a change in the tension on her inner beast. She suddenly found herself sitting in a forest clearing, while she looked around wondering how she had gotten there a small brown fox walked out of the forest. It walked up to her looked her straight in the eye and she immediately heard a voice in her mind "_Welcome mistress, I am _Vulpes_, the fox. Join with me and we shall run far and learn much._" She awoke to find herself sitting under the same tree she had been under before with Harry and Susan looking at her. Two days later Harry had a similar dream, He found himself sitting on a rock near a small stream a raven landed on his arm and he heard a voice in his mind "_Welcome master, I am _Corvus_, the raven. Join with me and we shall fly from here and find what you seek._" A week later Susan also found her form a small reddish dog that spoke "_Welcome mistress, I am _Canem_, the hound. Join with me and we will hunt down those who would harm our friends._"

McGonagall was impressed when they told her that they had completed the first step and found their forms. She offered to help them with the second step of the transformation and they gladly accepted her offer, after all this step was the one that had the greatest number of potential mistakes. And of course each of those mistakes had dangerous consequences. The second step was forcing a transformation, it involved creating a ritual circle and empowering it under the full moon. Once they had forced the transformation they would remain in their form for five minutes before returning to their normal body, however their senses would immediately be improved by achieving their first transformation. The next full moon was in two weeks so they would all meet Professor McGonagall then in the Entrance Hall.

The night of the full moon arrived and the three children were waiting eagerly for McGonagall to arrive in the Entrance Hall. She arrived ten minutes later carrying three leather pouches and a small camera, she handed one of the pouches to each of the Hufflepuffs before escorting them out onto the grounds. By this time the full moon was high in the sky and provided plenty of light to see by, they made their way to an flat open patch of grass and each of the three students took up a spot where they would have plenty of space to work. McGonagall went over the process with them one last time to make sure they all understood it and they set to work.

First they each withdrew a small silver dagger from the pouch and used it to carve a circle with a seven foot diameter into the soft ground. They then took a bag of fine white sand and poured it into the circular trench they had just carved. Next they carved a series of runes just inside their circle, filling each with sand as it was carved. Finally they withdrew a small jar of gray-green paste and used it to paint a rune on their forehead, the paste had a strong but pleasant herbal smell to it which helped them not focus on what it was made of. At this point McGonagall went around and double checked their work, finding no problems she told them all to proceed. They began a long quasi-Latin incantation slowly making their way around the circle, as they passed each rune it seemed to take in the light cast by the moon until it glowed just as brightly as that celestial orb. Then they returned to the center of their circle and intoned "_interius anima regat corpus_" and upon completing those words each of them began to change into their forms.

Anyone who has ever asked an Animagus how that first transformation feels has gotten a similar response, it is perhaps the most unnerving sensation they have ever experienced. The process is not exactly painful, but that is not to say that anyone who goes through it would willingly repeat the process. The first transformation is all about teaching your body how to take that new form, but at this point your body isn't designed to make that transformation and must be dragged kicking and screaming, sometimes literally, into that new form. Those who have undergone this process and taken polijuice potion have made comparisons, both give you the feeling that your body is melting into a new form, but with polijuice it is both faster and much more painful. That is to say nothing of the visual to which any observer is treated, which is easily as unnatural as the sensation the person undergoing the transformation feels. With a fully trained Animagus the transformation is both swift and elegant as the body slides fluidly from one form to another. The first transformation is anything but elegant, the body is being forced into a new and wholly unnatural form and it fights that as hard as it can, the result is a jerky transformation which happens piecemeal across the entire body, different body parts flicker unevenly between their old shape and their new one, while the whole body pulses changing size either becoming larger or smaller depending on the final form.

After three extremely disturbing minutes the transformation and there before the Scottish professor stood a raven, a fox, and an Irish terrier. The raven was over two feet in length with striking green eyes and its plumage looked slightly ruffled as though it had been in a strong wind. The fox had chocolate brown eyes, and instead of the red one would usually associate with this species of fox it was instead a very bush light brown. The terrier had passionate blue eyes and beautiful red fur which was a little long and wavy between its ears. Professor McGonagall took a picture of each of them with the camera she had brought with her, the wizarding version of a Polaroid, and waited for them to transform back. When the students returned to their human form McGonagall handed each of them the picture of their form and a small stack of forms.

"Now that you have completed your first transformation you are required by law to register your form with the Ministry. I expect all three of you to bring me these forms, completed, within the next week and I will take care of filing them with the proper authorities. I am very proud of you three, not many have the dedication to reach this stage of the transformation, especially not at such a young age." Having said her piece McGonagall then escorted them back to their common room.

As Harry was saying good-night to the girls he reached up to scratch his head, brushing some hair off his forehead in the process. Hermione immediately reached out and grabbed his arm a look of shock on her face. "Harry, your scar... it's gone."

"Well the book did say the transformation would get rid of any scars we had." Harry pointed out.

"Yes but not _curse scars_. Those kinds of scars never go away and can't be hidden." Hermione said biting her lower lip.

"Well I guess it was just an ordinary scar, and nobody bothered to check so everyone just assumed it was a curse scar." Harry shrugged before heading to bed.

Over the next couple of days all three of the new animagi were sore, once this soreness passed they would be able to begin the final stage of the animagus transformation. Now that their bodies knew what the transformation should feel like it was simply a matter of training their bodies to do it more easily. They would spend the next year transforming one part of their body back and forth, essentially stretching their metaphorical muscles until there was no resistance to the transformation, at which point they would be full animagi.

March turned into April and April into May with nothing of any significance happening. Ron Weasley apparently hadn't realized that Harry had no interest in being his friend as he had returned to his behavior from the beginning of the year. Malfoy grew bolder taking every opportunity to belittle Harry and his friends, he apparently couldn't make the connection between his inappropriate comments and the embarrassing situations he always found himself in within the next three days. Hagrid got caught with a dragon in his hut, but Dumbledore managed to keep him out of trouble with the Ministry. One day a couple weeks after Hagrid had lost his newest pet he mentioned in passing that some of the unicorns had been killed and the centaurs said that whatever had killed them was drinking their blood. Dumbledore would occasionally leave the castle, but he would always return before dinner the same day. Harry was already pretty certain when Quirrel would make his attempt, but one could never be too cautious when dealing with dark wizards. Harry had somehow convinced Hermione that they didn't need to reread all their notes for the entire year to review for exams, instead they spent that time helping their fellow first years review in the library. These review sessions soon grew beyond just the first year Hufflepuffs, it was not uncommon to find many of the first year Gryfindors, though on the occasions when Ron showed up he was asked to leave by everyone when he became too disruptive. Many Ravenclaws also showed up for these sessions, and most surprisingly Daphne Greengrass, Tracey Davis, and Blaise Zabini of Slytherin also made regular appearances though they didn't need as much help as many of the others. When Harry inquired why those three chose to study with them instead of the other Slytherins Daphne explained that with the possible exception of Theodore Nott none of the other Slytherin first years were all that bright and they really gained nothing from studying with them.

June began and with it came final exams, Harry and Susan were confident with their preparation, but Hermione was her usual nervous wreck leading up to exams. When Harry made a comment to Hermione, in private, that he knew from experience that she would do just fine Hermione accused Harry of cheating because he had memories of the classes from before. Harry pointed out that it really didn't count because he had never actually paid attention to most of his classes originally.

The day finally came that Harry knew they would have to go after the stone, they had just finished their last exams and Hermione had to finally admit that Harry was right and she had gotten far to worked up over them. As they sat down to dinner they were approached by every first year who had showed up to one of their library sessions with thanks for all their help. Harry looked up to the High Table and nudged Hermione directing her attention to Dumbledore's empty seat. She nodded and alerted Susan to Dumbledore's absence while Harry made contact with the Twins, they were all agreed, tonight was the night. The Twins were going to use the map to make there way down to the third floor while Harry, Hermione, and Susan used Harry's cloak to make their way there.

Shortly before midnight they all met up at the top of the third floor stairs, the Twins moved under the cloak and they made their way to the forbidden corridor. They all froze when they heard Peeves the Poltergeist "Who's there? Know you're there even if I can't see you. Are you ghoulie or ghostie or wee student beastie?" Peeves squinted in their direction trying to find them "Should call Filch, I should, if somethings a-creeping around unseen."

Without warning the Twins stepped out from under the cloak and bolted in the other direction, drawing Peeves away from their companions destination "Good luck" they called as they ran. Harry hoped they wouldn't get caught but as it was they didn't have time to worry. When they reached the room that Fluffy occupied they saw that a harp was sitting near its feet.

"Well I guess that proves someone is using this opportunity to go after the stone." Hermione said pulling a wooden box out of her bag. She opened it and a soft melody came out of the music box she had asked her parents to send her from home. As soon as the sounds of the box reached Fluffy all six hungry eyes closed and soon the room was full of rumbling snores. Harry wanted to make a comment comparing those snores to those of a certain redheaded Gryfindor, but it would have confused Susan, so he held his tongue.

Harry opened the trapdoor and looked in "Alright, I'll go first and call up to you if it's safe" and with no further comment he jumped down the trapdoor. He landed in what seemed like a patch of soft vines and quickly climbed out of them, he waited a few moments to maintain appearances before calling up to the girls "Be careful when you get down here, there's some devil's snare. Just get out of it quick and you'll be fine." Hermione and Susan joined him at the bottom of the shaft a few moments later.

"That was way to easy, you don't even need to know about devil's snare to get past it, you just need to be cautious about sitting on strange plants." Susan pointed out.

"Hell you just need to be in a rush and the stupid plant won't have time to react." Harry added.

"If this is any indication of the defenses, its a good thing we're here or the stone would be as good as gone." Hermione huffed.

They walked through a door which led into a tall chamber, the chamber contained hundreds of winged keys. "Huh, this one seems pretty straight forward, just get the right key and unlock the door." Hermione said.

Susan walked over to the other door and examined the handle "It's probably a big, old-fashioned, silver one like the door handle here."

It only took Harry a couple of seconds to find the key with his newly improved eyesight, he actually hadn't needed his glasses since they had made the first animagus transformation and he had even greater clarity on distant details. "There it is, it even has a busted wing." He drew his wand aimed at the key and called out "_Diffindo_" the cutting charm sliced through the wounded wing and the key dropped to the floor.

As he was doing this Susan had finally noticed the brooms in the corner "Hey we can use these to... or we could just do that." She shrugged when she saw Harry take down the desired key with a single well-placed spell. Harry unlocked the door and they all continued through to the next chamber. As they entered the chamber lights appeared from nowhere to reveal a giant stone chess set.

"Chess, why did it have to be chess. I HATE chess." Hermione said, getting a chuckle from Harry.

Harry made a drum-roll sound "I present to you yet another obscenely obvious challenge." adopting a more serious tone "Now all we have to do is beat a giant chess set in a game, no problem. Susan it's your show."

Susan looked at the chess set for a moment and then made her decision "Alright Harry, you replace the king, Hermione you take the queen's spot. I'll take the king-side rook." They all moved into position and the game began. The game continued as Susan made move after move slowly maneuvering the other side into a position it couldn't win from. "Oh, crap. We can win in two moves, but I'll have to sacrifice myself." Susan finally said.

_Fucking deja vu_ thought Harry but what he said was "If your sure there isn't another way Susan go for it. Based on Dumbledore's record against the Death Eaters I doubt he could bring himself to put up a lethal defense, even around something as important as the stone."

Susan nodded "Alright I'll make my move the knight will take me, and then you tell our bishop to move forward-right three spaces, and that'll be checkmate. Good luck you two." She then moved forward to await her fate. The white knight moved and struck her with its sword before dragging her off the board and returning to where she had been stand. Harry gave the bishop the final command and the white king threw its crown onto the board admitting defeat.

Harry and Hermione checked on Susan, who was unconscious but definitely alive, before continuing through a room with an unconscious troll and into the last challenge before the mirror.

"Alright, originally this was the right bottle to go forward, but I can't remember which one will send you back so you might as well double check everything before I drink this." Harry told Hermione pointing to the smallest bottle.

Hermione read through the scroll provided then spent a couple minutes studying the bottles on the table "Alright, that one is still the one you need to drink, and this one will send me back. Harry these bottles are probably charmed to refill, I can go with you."

At this point Virgil decided to make his first appearance since Christmas "Not a good idea Hermione, for one thing this is the actual Voldemort not just a chunk of his soul, he will remember this encounter. If you are there it will draw the worst kind of attention on you the moment he comes back. Not to mention there is no way of knowing how Dumbles will react to someone going with Harry to face the final challenge, he wants a reckless lone wolf type, not a general."

Hermione looked like she was about to argue but she decided that Virgil was probably right. "Alright, I'll go back. Just be careful Harry, your my best friend, my first friend, I don't know what I'd do without you."

Harry looked her right in the eyes "I know exactly what I am doing. I will be fine and I will come out of that room alive. You are not going to lose me."

"Okay." Hermione hesitated for a moment before continuing "Harry before you go, there's something I need to tell you. When... when I looked into the mirror... at Christmas, I saw us and... I want a chance..."

"I know Hermione, I saw it too." For the rest of their lives, neither of them would ever be able to say who had initiated it, but they found themselves sharing a kiss. Without another word Harry gave Hermione a tight hug, picked up the small bottle and drained it before walking through the wall of fire between him and Voldemort. As he prepared to face the Dark Lord he fingered a small iron rod in his pocket and went over the plan one last time in his head.

He stepped into the chamber containing the Mirror of Erised and said to the man standing before the mirror "Professor Quirrel. I'd say I'm surprised, but I'm really not."

**A/N: There we go. Good job to those who guessed what Hermione saw in the mirror. If you think you know why he has an iron rod in his pocket keep it to yourself so you don't ruin it for anyone else please. Hope you like what I did with the animagus transformation, the thing with the scar I did because it was a complete inversion of something that happened in one of my early favorite fanfics "Harry McGonagall". I usually don't like when authors answer reviews in notes, but the review by opopanax had some points I had considered but dismissed while thinking through the story. With regards to Sirius Black: the name Sirius Black might be infamous, but the fact that he did not receive a trial would not be common knowledge, after all that fact surprised Hermione when she learned that in GoF and if it was in a book she would have found it. Voldemort is an arrogant megalomaniac, of course he would fall into the stupid trap of underestimating the House of the Badger. With the Dursleys being an exception to DMLE jurisdiction, for most muggleborn witches and wizards the parents didn't willingly enter into the magical world any treaties between the two worlds would protect muggles from magical justice, that isn't to say that there isn't a department that just relocates abused muggleborns, they just can't prosecute in most cases.**


	10. Confrontations With Madmen

**Disclaimer: I'm still not JKR and therefore I still don't own Harry Potter, if I did Ron Weasley would have been eaten by something big and nasty, maybe a dragon.**

**A/N: This chapter is the end of First Year, hope you have enjoyed the story so far.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 10: Confrontations With Madmen

"Professor Quirrel. I'd say I'm surprised, but I'm really not."

Quirrel just smiled at Harry speaking calmly, not a hint of the fear that normally covered his face "I wondered if I'd be meeting you here tonight, Potter. Though I must say I would have thought you would suspect Snape and not p-p-poor, st-stuttering P-Professor Quirrel."

Harry looked at the man he knew was about to die with a mocking grin plastered on his face "Well you see, if I were an idiot I might have suspected Snape, but if you think about it he was far to obvious a choice. The man was a Slytherin, if he was up to something nefarious he would be bright enough not to engage in such petty acts of viciousness. You on the other hand, well your acting skills are about even with your teaching skill, that is to say they suck."

Quirrel glared at Harry "It doesn't matter, I'm going to kill you tonight." He snapped his fingers and Harry was suddenly bound tightly by conjured ropes. "You're to nosy to live, Potter. Scurrying around the school on Halloween like that, for all I knew you'd seen me coming to look at what was guarding the stone."

"So you did let the troll in." It wasn't a question, but that seemed to escape Quirrel.

"Certainly. I have a gift with trolls- you must have seen what I did to the one in the chamber back there? Unfortunately, while everyone else was scurrying around looking for it, Snape, who already suspected me, went straight to the third floor to head me off."

Harry looked as though he was thinking for a moment before he replied "I'm guessing that gift with trolls comes from having a similar level of cognitive ability. Why even bother letting a real troll in, it took a pair of first years five minutes to find and eliminate it. With only a theoretical troll every teacher would have spent hours searching the castle without finding it. And if anyone was suspicious you just say you must have over-reacted to a Halloween prank."

"Silence, Potter. I need to examine this interesting mirror." Quirrel turned his back on Harry to examine the Mirror of Erised "This mirror is the key to finding the stone, trust Dumbledore to come up with something like this... but he's in London... I'll be far away by the time I get back... I see the Stone... I'm presenting it to my master..."

"Ah your master, I knew you weren't bright enough to come up with this on your own. Let me guess it's Voldemort, isn't it. Hell, with my luck who else could it be. How did he win you over? Did he give you a speech about how morality is just some societal construct designed to control you, that all that really mattered was power?" Harry could see Quirrel's grimace reflected in the mirror. "He did didn't he. Well even if that were true, you still got screwed. From where I'm standing all I can see is just another dumb-ass sucker who fell for the honeyed words of a half-dead psychopath. Oh and Voldy, why don't you say hello, I can feel you're there."

A raspy voice answered from under Quirrel's turban "Hello... Harry Potter."

"It really is funny that you fell for it Quirrel, he promised you power, but just having him here is literally killing you, isn't it. You've been killing unicorns just to push off death by a few more days, but in the end you are still going to die tonight, either by my hand or by the hand of your precious master, because once he has the stone- you are nothing but a loose end."

Quirrel was quickly losing his temper "What does this mirror do? How does it work? Help me, Master!"

And once again the raspy voice spoke "Use the boy... Use the boy..."

Quirrel clapped his hands and the ropes binding Harry disappeared "Come here, look in the mirror and tell me what you see"

Harry walked in front of the mirror, slipping his hands into his pockets. He looked into the mirror and saw himself holding the stone and putting it in his pocket, and when the reflection did that he felt the stone materialize in his real pocket. He immediately touched the iron rod to the stone and pushed a little power through it to activate the stone... and nothing happened, just as Virgil had suspected, the Philosopher's Stone at Hogwarts had been a fake.

"Well," Quirrel demanded impatiently "What do you see?"

"I see me kicking your ugly ass Quirrel." As Quirrel was about to respond Harry cut him off "Quirrel you just don't get it, you aren't in charge here, so why don't you just shut up and let me talk to your boss."

"Let me speak to him... face-to-face..."

"Master, you are not strong enough!"

"I have strength enough... for this..."

Quirrel undid his turban and turned around, the hideous face of Voldemort looking straight at Harry "Harry Potter... See what I have become?" the face said. "Mere shadow and vapor... I have form only when I can share another's body... but there have always been those willing to let me into their hearts and minds... Unicorn blood has strengthened me, these past weeks... and once I have the Elixir of Life, I will be able to create a body of my own... Now... why don't you give me that Stone in your pocket?"

Harry just stared at him defiance etched into every line of his face.

"Don't be a fool," snarled the face. "Better save your own life and join me... or you'll meet the same end as your parents... They died begging me for mercy..."

"You're lying."

"How touching..." it hissed. "I always value bravery... Yes, boy, your parents were brave... I killed your father first; and he put up a courageous fight... but your mother needn't have died... she was trying to protect you... Now give me the Stone, unless you want her to have died in vain."

Harry stared Voldemort right in the eyes and asked "What is it about me, that scares you so much? First you make the biggest mistake of your life trying to kill me as a baby, and now you push the hard sell on me while I'm the one with all the cards. You couldn't kill me ten years ago when you were at the height of your power, what makes you think you'll do any better now as nothing more than an ugly ghost?" And with that he reached out and grabbed Quirrel's head with both hands. Quirrel and Voldemort screamed in agony, but the pain Harry expected didn't come. He had been expecting a burning pain in his forehead, like he knew he had experienced when he had done this before, but instead he just felt a tingling sensation and it felt like Quirrel's head was coated with some kind of Slime. He could still sense the presence of Voldemort, but it was no longer painful. Maybe Virgil had been right that kissing Hermione would destroy any traces of Voldemort that remained. The shadow of Voldemort fled the dying body of Quirrel and on its way out it took the opportunity to steal as much energy from Harry as it could. Exhaustion overwhelmed Harry, and soon he collapsed into darkness. The last thing Harry saw before the darkness consumed him was the stone falling out of his pocket and shattering upon the ground.

Harry awoke in the Hospital Wing to the smiling face of Albus Dumbledore "Good afternoon, Harry."

"Professor, what happened, the stone... and Quirrel..."

"The stone is gone, and Quirrel is dead Harry. You did a good job stopping Voldemort from getting the stone." Dumbledore told Harry in a calm tone.

"Yes, I suppose I did, of course it isn't like it really mattered, the stone wasn't real." Harry said while reaching into his pocket and withdrawing the iron rod he had been carrying since he had grabbed his invisibility cloak. "And don't try to deny it sir, I brought this along because I thought that you might have placed fake stones so that any thief wouldn't know which one they really wanted, and I might have needed to test the stones to find the real one. When the stone appeared right next to it, I decided to test it, after all why turn down a free pound of gold. Imagine my surprise when it didn't work. It raises a question though of why you set all that up..."

"Now Harry," Dumbledore began in his best soothing, grandfatherly voice "surely you can't be suggesting..."

"That it was a set-up, sir? That is exactly what I am suggesting. The only thing I want to know is why?"

"Harry there are some things you simply are not ready to understand. Perhaps when you are older..."

"And how many times will you have maneuvered me into a confrontation with a murdering psychopath before you tell me?" Dumbledore didn't respond "Very well, let's move on to other topics then. I know you sent me my dad's cloak, is there anything else that you have been holding onto that should have been given to me before now?" Harry gave him a couple moments to respond before moving on "I guess I'll just have to make inquiries at Gringotts about my parents' wills. Is that why you sent Hagrid to take me to get my stuff? Any other teacher would have known that I had no knowledge about any inheritance I might have and would have suggested I ask the very same questions I intend to ask the next time I am at Gringotts. Sir if you have nothing else to add, could you please leave, I would really like to be able to speak with my friends, I'm sure they've been worried." Having politely dismissed the Headmaster he lay back to look at the ceiling. After a few moments Dumbledore left.

Harry managed to convince Madam Pomfrey that he was well enough for his friends to come visit him. The moment Hermione saw him she ran up to him and kissed him before giving him a tight hug "Oh Harry, I was so worried."

"Dammit" said George pulling a couple of sickles out of his pocket and handing them to Fred.

"What was that about?" Harry asked the twins.

"Just a friendly wager about whether you would end up with Hermione or Susan, though I must admit, I didn't think you would move this fast." Fred explained.

Susan giggled a little at the thought "That was a sucker's bet George. I never had a chance against Hermione."

"So what happened down there?" George asked "There are rumors flying around but half of them are just ridiculous."

Harry explained what had happened down in the chamber, being careful not to give away anything that he couldn't just explain away. "So in the end Quirrel died because he backed the wrong horse, and the stone was a fake, it was only there as bait to draw me into a confrontation with Voldemort. It makes sense I guess, Voldy can't be the first idiot on an immortality kick to get it in his head to steal Flamel's stone, but no one else has succeeded. Why move the stone at all, whatever was protecting it before has worked perfectly so far."

"We should tell someone about this." Susan said "He put a lot of people in danger for his little game. He's acting like the school is his own little world. Someone needs to stop him."

"No Susan. We need to let him play his games. He has to much power to be easily stopped, and if we try anything there's no knowing what he'll do. For now we just watch and wait, at least when he's here we can keep an eye on him." Harry said and everyone nodded their agreement.

Harry got out of the Hospital Wing the next morning. He packed his trunk and spent the afternoon with Hermione sitting and talking by the lake.

"So what are we going to tell your parents?" Harry asked Hermione

"About the stone and Voldemort? We should tell them the truth, they'll understand, and I don't think they'll over-react." Hermione said

"I meant about us. We're together, and I'll be living with you and your parents now." Harry had received a letter from Amelia while he had been unconscious informing him that his guardianship had been transferred to the Grangers. Unfortunately the Dursleys hadn't been convicted by the Wizengamot because Dumbledore had stepped in, however that didn't save them from facing criminal charges in the muggle courts and their chances didn't look good.

Hermione thought about it for a bit "The answer is the same. They'll understand, and we are a bit young for them to be worrying about us doing anything."

With that settled they lay back and looked up at the sky. _I love you, Hermione _Harry thought to himself.

"I love you too, Harry."

Harry was startled by this _Hermione can you hear me_ he thought.

"Of course I can, why wouldn't I be able to hear you?"

_Because I'm not talking_.

"Oh I knew I had forgotten something." Virgil suddenly said "When you kissed for the first time down in the potion chamber it strengthened your connection. Now you can hear each others thoughts, unless you consciously decide to keep them a secret. You shouldn't have to worry about the connection changing again for a few years now."

"Virgil, I think you need to explain what else will happen with this connection. You have been avoiding giving us details since you first brought it up." Hermione said.

"Alright I'll tell you what I can. There are two more levels to the connection, the next sage will happen if you two ever have sex with each other, and the last will occur if you got married. I can't tell you what will happen with those two stages because if you know what will happen it could corrupt the whole process if you do things for the wrong reasons." Hermione was a little upset at the lack of details but accepted the reason given.

Before the End of Year Feast Dumbledore took Harry aside and tried to convince him that he should return to the Dursleys for the summer. After listening to Dumbledore spend five minutes explaining how it was the best thing for his safety Harry simply pointed out that he couldn't legally return to the Dursleys as they were currently on trial for abusing him for ten years, and that even if there were a way for him to go back there he would use every resource at his disposal, including his apparent fame, to avoid returning. He didn't give Dumbledore a chance to respond before leaving his office.

Due to Harry and Hermione's stellar performance in class, and Snape's inability to blatantly favor Slytherin, Hufflepuff won the House Cup by a wide margin. As a result Dumbledore couldn't swoop in and hand them a last minute victory by giving points to Harry and his friends. Dumbledore was furious, not only had he been unable to convince Harry to return to his relatives, the boy had somehow begun to unravel the beginnings of his plans, and now he was clearly in a relationship with the muggleborn Granger. This wouldn't do at all, the Weasley girl wasn't really an option now, but perhaps the Bones girl could be convinced to help, after all it was for 'the greater good'. While he was at it he decided that there was no point in continuing to pay Ronald for his attempts to befriend Harry, it clearly wasn't worth the investment.

Harry enjoyed the train ride back to London with Hermione, Susan, and the Twins, they talked and joked, played a few muggle card games Hermione showed them, Harry Hermione and Susan practiced their transformations. The Twins were impressed and asked to borrow Harry's book on becoming an animagus, Harry gladly lent them the book, after all there wasn't much the book could tell them about the last step that they didn't already know. All to soon they were pulling in to Platform 9 ¾.

"Come on Harry, let's go home" Hermione said giving Harry a quick kiss before pulling him off the train.

The Grangers saw Harry and Hermione exiting the barrier holding hands and David surreptitiously handed Jean a five pound note. "Hey kids" said Jean hugging them both in turn "How was your year?"

"Well" said Harry.

"It's a long story." finished Hermione. And it was, the story lasted all through the car ride to the Granger home.

**A/N: And there we have the end of the first year. I hope you all enjoyed. The next two years will probably be just as short, but starting with fourth year they should be getting a little longer.**


	11. Goblins and Elves

**Disclaimer: I'm not JKR and I don't own Harry Potter, if I did Harry Potter would have come out a lot more like Harry Dresden.**

**A/N: And now I present the first chapter of Year Two. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, I'm really pleased with the reception this story has received so far.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 11: Goblins and Elves

It had only been a week but Harry was already having the best summer of his life. He and Hermione had spent the entire ride to the Granger house from King's Cross telling David and Jean about their year at Hogwarts, the only thing they didn't mention was that Harry had access to memories from his future. David and Jean had been concerned about how safe it would be for the kids to return to Hogwarts, but Harry told them that he and Hermione would be fine, because they had each other and their friends watching their backs, and Hermione convinced them, in true Hufflepuff style, that they couldn't just abandon their friends if Hogwarts really was as dangerous as it seemed from their experience that year. After that discussion it was significantly easier to tell Hermione's parents about the change in their relationship.

Harry and Hermione were currently walking hand-in-hand down Diagon Alley toward Gringotts accompanied by David. Harry had mentioned that he wanted to inquire at the bank about anything his parents had left behind and David had immediately volunteered to take Harry to meet with the Goblins. When they entered the bank Harry walked up to the nearest open counter, glanced at the name plate in front of the goblin and said "Greetings, Teller Crushfang, I hope you are having a profitable day. I would like to make an inquiry about the estates of the late James and Lily Potter."

The goblin, who's name was apparently Crushfang, looked up to see who had addressed him. He was shocked to see that the person who had addressed him so formally and respectfully was nothing more than a small boy. "May I ask your name? If you have a legitimate claim to access I will be more than willing to assist you." Crushfang said with a small smile.

"Of course, my name is Harry James Potter." Harry answered returning the smile, being sure to not show his teeth.

Crushfang was impressed, this boy was quite possibly the most famous wizard in Britain, and yet here he was without a touch of the arrogance that most wizards had when dealing with goblins. "Very well Mr. Potter, if you will follow me I will take you to see Senior Accountant Bloodclaw. He is in charge of estates for the more prominent families." Crushfang then led Harry, Hermione, and David through an ornately carved wooden door and down a long marble hallway. A good distance down the hallway they stopped at a door, Crushfang knocked on the door "Senior Accountant Bloodclaw, Harry Potter is here to inquire about his parents' estates."

"Send him in." a voice growled from behind the door. Crushfang opened the door and gestured for Harry and his party to enter. Inside of the room was a large ornate desk, which appeared to have been carved from a single block of solid granite, behind the desk sat a goblin, apparently Bloodclaw. The goblin looked Harry up and down before speaking "Mr. Potter, welcome. I am surprised it has taken you this long to come and have your parents wills read. I had assumed you would come last summer when you were shown to Diagon Alley."

Harry inclined his head slightly as a show of respect to the goblin "Good day to you Senior Accountant Bloodclaw. I was not aware at the time that my parents had left anything behind other than the money in my vault. The events of the last year have led me to believe otherwise, it would seem that those individuals whose duty it was to inform me have either neglected their duties, or have purposefully attempted to deceive me."

Bloodclaw dug through his desk before finding a small scroll "Very well Mr. Potter, I have here your parents' Last Will and Testament. It is mostly legal jargon that comes down to this, aside from a few charitable donations you have been left all of the assets of the House of Potter. Your liquid assets currently total 3,762,915 galleons. Here is an itemized list of the objects and materials currently stored in the Potter vault. Feel free to look through this at your leisure, if you have any questions let me know." he handed Harry a small stack of parchments.

Harry and Hermione began to look through the inventory of Harry's new vault. David would have helped, but as most of the things on the list were magical he agreed that he would be out of his depth. After a couple minutes of browsing Harry found something of interest "This sheet seems to be enchanted weapons and armor." He said showing Hermione the parchment in question "You know with the kind of stuff that happens at school some of this armor might come in handy." he added, only half joking.

"Actually Mr. Potter, if you want armor to protect yourself at school I would recommend something more practical. Dragon hide armor can be tailored to be skintight so that it can be worn under robes, unfortunately armor quality hide can be quite expensive to obtain in sufficient quantities." Bloodclaw offered. Normally a goblin would not offer unsolicited advice to a wizard, however Bloodclaw knew from the way that Crushfang had knocked on his door that young Mr. Potter had shown, and therefore deserved, respect. Most people were unaware that the Goblins of Gringotts Bank had an entire system of nonverbal cues and signals by which they informed each other how their customers had behaved, and therefore dictating how they should be treated. In most banks tellers were the lowest level employees, but in Gringotts they were specifically chosen from amongst other positions because they were considered to be good judges of character. The result of this was that from the moment a wizard stepped up to a counter in the lobby he was being judged and only those few who were courteous to the goblins were treated with anything other than disdain.

At Bloodclaw's comments Hermione flipped back through the parchments she had already looked at "Well according to this page here, the Potter vault contains large quantities of many different kinds of dragon hides, along with other magical textiles. I'm assuming that this notation is some type of quality grade. Senior Accountant Bloodclaw, what grade of dragon hide would you recommend for the type of armor you suggested?"

Bloodclaw was impressed by this young girl, she had a good head on her shoulders, while most witches and wizards would just ask for a price here she was examining the available resources to see if they could avoid wasting gold. "I should think anything above grade four should work perfectly."

"Look Harry, according to this you have close to one thousand square yards of grade five Hungarian Horntail hide in your vault."

"Well if we have that much we should definitely put it to good use. Senior Accountant Bloodclaw, if we provided the hide do you know where we could get it made into armor, and how much it would cost to get five suits made?" Harry asked, now that he was really thinking about it armor they could wear under their robes really did sound like a good idea, it might not defend against the basilisk he knew would be roaming the school the coming year, but giant snakes weren't their only worries.

"I happen to know the perfect place to get the work done, we commonly contract them to outfit our curse-breakers. As for price I wouldn't be surprised if you could convince them to do the job for a portion of the hide, grade five hide is rather hard to come by." Bloodclaw informed Harry, he then wrote down the name of a shop in Diagon Alley and handed it to Harry.

"Harry, are you sure that is a good idea? From what I've understood this dragon hide is quite valuable, surely there must be a better use for it?" David spoke up, while he liked the idea of Harry and Hermione being better protected he really didn't want to see Harry just throwing money around.

"Actually sir, grade five dragon hide can really only be used for armor, it is only expensive because of its relative rarity. In the quantities present in Mr. Potter's vault it would flood the market, completely destroying the value. If he wanted even a reasonable return on the hide it would probably take ten years to sell of just the Horntail hide." Bloodclaw assured them. The Potter account promised to be very profitable now that it was once again active, and Bloodclaw wanted to be certain that Harry would be as safe as possible to insure the account remained active for as long as possible.

Harry and Hermione went through the rest of the list, finding nothing else of immediate interest they said their good-byes to Bloodclaw before leaving the bank. Harry checked his watch, they still had plenty of time before they needed to return home so he asked if they could go to the store Bloodclaw had recommended. _Harcorn's Armor and Leather Goods_ was a small shop tucked into the back of the alley, between an abandoned store that had apparently sold flying carpets and a magical antique store.

Samuel Harcorn looked up from his ledger when he heard the bell above the entrance chime. He examined the three people who had entered, _probably want some dragon hide shoes _he thought to himself. Samuel hated making shoes, but it was the biggest source of business he got so he never complained aloud. "Welcome to my store, how may I assist you today?" he asked, fixing a smile on his face.

Samuel was surprised when it was the young boy who answered him, not the tall man who accompanied him. "Your store was recommended to me by Gringotts, I understand that you specialize in making dragon hide armor. I have recently discovered that I am in possession of a large quantity of grade five Hungarian Horntail hide, and I would like to commission some armor."

After some back and forth between Harry and Samuel a deal was worked out, in exchange for twenty square yards of hide Samuel would produce five self-fitting, self-repairing armor shirts. The work would take approximately three weeks and then the shirts would be sent to Harry. Harry wrote out an access form for his vault, granting Samuel Harcorn access for the sole purpose of taking out the required amount of dragon hide. Having completed his business Harry left the shop followed by Hermione and David.

The next three weeks passed quickly and soon Harry's twelfth birthday arrived. Harry and Hermione had already finished all their homework for the holidays and were planning a trip to Diagon Alley to buy some books on advanced magic. They had not received any letters from their friends, Hermione had been hurt that no one had written until Harry explained his suspicions. They had received the dragon hide armor that Harry had ordered, each shirt was skin-tight with a high neck and ran to right above the elbows.

Harry and the Grangers had just returned from having a nice dinner to celebrate Harry's birthday when Harry finally spotted what he had been looking for all day. There, staring at him from the hedge that marked the boundary between the Granger house and their neighbors, was a pair of big green eyes. _Hello Dobby, you crazy little bastard _Harry thought before mentally pointing out the eyes to Hermione. Harry and Hermione had been experimenting with their new connection when they were bored and had gotten to the point where they could have a complete conversation, including gestures and other nonverbal cues, and had started to experiment with sending each other images using the connection.

Later Harry had gone up to his room, after kissing Hermione good-night, when he closed the door he looked at his bed and there, sitting on his bed, was Dobby the house-elf. "Um, Hi. Who are you?" Harry asked, already knowing the answer.

"I is Dobby, Great Harry Potter sir, Dobby the house-elf." Dobby replied jumping to his feet and bowing to Harry.

"Nice to meet you Dobby, have a seat." Harry said gesturing to the bed where Dobby had been sitting moments earlier, while sitting at the chair he used at his desk.

At Harry's words Dobby looked to be on the verge of tears "Dobby has _never_ been asked to h-have a seat by a wizard- like an _equal_"

Harry knew that the current line of conversation would become very loud so he decided to get Dobby to come to the point of his visit "Look, I've had a long day, and I really just want to get to sleep. So, could you just tell me why you are here?"

"Dobby has come to protect Harry Potter, to warn him, even if he does have to shut his ears in the oven door for going behind his master's back... _Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts_." Dobby told Harry.

"I have to go back to Hogwarts, I need to continue my education. Not to mention all my friends are there." Harry responded trying to decide how best to get rid of Dobby without the little elf doing anything drastic.

"Friends who do not even _write_ to Harry Potter?" Dobby asked.

"Ah, so you're the one who has been blocking my mail. Hm I thought it was Dumbledore. Speaking of which, whatever your concerns are I'm sure Dumbledore will keep me safe. After all, that man has an unhealthy obsession with my life, and my death would probably leave him quite put out."

"Dumbledore is a great wizard, but even he cannot protect Harry Potter from the danger he will be in if he returns to Hogwarts. Harry Potter must promise he will not return to Hogwarts." Dobby implored Harry.

"Dobby I can't do that, if I don't continue my education I will be in more danger. Voldemort is still out there, and for whatever reason he wants me dead. If I want to live my life for very long I'll need to learn as much magic as possible, and that means returning to Hogwarts. I will promise to be careful, I will do everything I can to make sure nothing happens to me, but I have to go back." Harry informed the elf.

"Very well Harry Potter, if you insist on going back Dobby will have to stop you." Dobby said.

"Dobby, I don't want to get you in trouble, but if you try anything to stop me from going back to Hogwarts, I will report you to the Ministry. Now give me my letters, please." Harry warned Dobby before the elf could decide on a course of action. Dobby just nodded before he disappeared leaving behind the letters he had kept from Harry.

The next morning Harry and Hermione had immediately sent off letters with Hedwig to everyone who had sent them a letter so they wouldn't be left wondering why they hadn't received a reply. They were glad they had the moment they read the most recent letter from the Twins, in their letter they said they would take their dad's flying car to come see why Harry and Hermione hadn't replied within a week. The first few letters from Susan were friendly and discussed nothing of importance, but a letter she had sent two weeks into the summer had them concerned. The letter said that Dumbledore had approached Susan about Harry and Hermione, and had tried to make suggestions that had disturbed Susan, she didn't go into details but she said they needed to talk about it in person. Her letters after that were written in an increasingly worried fashion as she received no reply to her letters. They had also received letters from most of their Hufflepuff year mates though they had mostly been friendly greetings and thanks for their assistance on exams.

Harry and Hermione spent most of August corresponding with Susan and the Twins. Susan informed Harry and Hermione of her progress with practicing her transformation, while the Twins had apparently started meditating in order to join Harry, Hermione, and Susan as animagi. Harry was getting better with his transformation, he could make black feathers appear all over his body with no effort and had begun to actually change the structure of some of his body parts. Hermione was able to grow fur with ease, and had even managed to grow a tail, though she was only able to hold it for a few moments before her body reverted to its natural shape. Harry and Hermione went to Diagon Alley two days after their Hogwarts letters arrived, along with their letter had been a short note from Professor Sprout congratulating them on being the top two students in their year. Hermione had been concerned that Lucius Malfoy would give the diary to someone other than Ginny, but Harry had assured her that the Twins would mention if Malfoy picked a fight with the Weasleys, and that the background reasons for choosing Ginny hadn't changed.

Harry and Hermione arrived at King's Cross an hour and a half before the train was due to arrive, Harry figured that Dobby wouldn't be able to keep them out of the station for very long if other students needed to get through. Apparently Dobby had come to the same conclusion, or if Harry was uncharacteristically optimistic, maybe he had given up on keeping Harry from going to Hogwarts. They had no problem getting onto the platform after saying good-bye to the Grangers. They boarded the train and changed into their robes, making sure to put on their new armor first, then sat down to wait for their friends to arrive. They didn't have to wait long, Susan arrived twenty minutes after they did.

"Hey Harry, Hermione. How have you two been." Susan asked a smile on her face.

"We've been great Susan. We got you something, Give me a second to get it out for you." Harry told her while digging through his trunk to get another of the armor shirts. "I made some inquiries at Gringotts, and it turned out that among other things I am the proud owner of vast quantities of armor quality dragon hide. Here we go. So I got a few armor shirts made out of it, after all I wasn't doing anything with it and it would be a waste to sell it. So here is yours." Harry handed the shirt to Susan, it seemed a bit large at first look.

"It is self-fitting and self-repairing, so they use a lot more material than necessary so that it has plenty of room to grow, and extra in case of damage that can't simply be spelled closed." Hermione explained "You should probably put it on now and get changed into your robes while there are plenty of empty compartments."

"I-I can't accept this... it must be worth a small fortune." Susan managed to stammer through her obvious amazement.

"Susan you are one of my best friends, and if last year is any indication, that may not be a very safe thing to be. I protect my friends as best I can. If it makes you feel better then think of it as being property of House Potter gifted to you for the duration of your friendship with the next Lord Potter." Harry told her with a sly smile.

Susan couldn't help but smile "You read the book I gave you for Christmas."

"Of course, and if it works to present a bribe as a gift..." Harry told her.

"Then there is no reason why you can't present a gift as a bribe." Susan finished "You will be a force to be reckoned with if you go into politics. Before I put this on I should tell you, when Dumbledore talked to me earlier in the summer... the things he said, they essentially came down to the idea that... that some of the old families would be unhappy if 'The Boy-Who-Lived' was with a muggleborn witch instead of a respectable pureblood witch, and that if I were to separate you two that I could be that witch."

Harry was only mildly shocked at the old man's attempts at manipulating his life "Don't worry Susan, I know you wouldn't do something like that."

"You would think Dumbledore would know better than to look for someone that devious and disloyal in Hufflepuff. We watch out for our own, we trust you Susan but you won't be the last person Dumbledore will try to use. At least now we know what to look out for." Hermione reassured the redheaded witch.

Susan nodded her thanks before exiting the compartment to get changed. When she got back they settled in and waited for the Twins to get there. Five minutes before the train was scheduled to depart the platform was assaulted by the redheaded horde of Weasleys. A couple of minutes later the Twins made their way into the compartment.

"Hell hello, and how are our favorite 'Puffs doing on this fine day?" the Twins asked in stereo.

"We're doing just fine." Susan answered.

"Here I got you something" Harry told them throwing them the last two dragon hide shirts

"Harry, we can't accept these, they must be worth more than everything else we own combined." George said while gazing at the shirt in his hand.

"Look, with the amount of trouble you two get us in I want to make sure nothing happens to you. I would be very upset if you two got killed pulling one of your hare-brained schemes, because then I wouldn't get to hex you into oblivion for getting us into whatever mess you created. So don't accept them for yourselves, accept them for me." Harry said, barely able to contain his laughter at the indignant looks on the Twins faces.

"Well if you're going to insist..." Fred said shrugging before he and George left the compartment to put on their new armor.

Fred and George returned a little later along with Lee Jordan. Lee fit right in with the group even though he didn't usually hang out with them during the year and soon all six of them were engaged in a very entertaining conversation. From snippets of what the Twins had to say about their trip to Diagon Alley Harry and Hermione mentally agreed that Ginny certainly had the diary. All too soon the train arrived at Hogsmead Station. When they exited the train and joined the throng of students waiting to board one of the carriages, Harry finally got an answer to a question he had been slightly curious about ever since he had gotten his future memories over a year ago, apparently a memory of seeing someone die was enough to be able to see thestrals, because he could see the great, reptilian horses pulling the carriages. Harry, Hermione, and Susan boarded a carriage and headed up to the castle to start their second year at Hogwarts.

**A/N: And here we have the beginning of year two. This one will probably come out pretty fast because I'm on Spring Break next week. If anyone has a suggestion for animagus forms for the twins please leave a review.**


	12. Why Idiots Shouldn't Play With Pixies

**Disclaimer: I'm not JKR, I don't own Harry Potter, and I'm not making any money doing this. (On an unrelated note if anyone wanted to make a charitable donation to my wallet, I am far too polite to say no.)**

**A/N: A response to some points raised in reviews; Harry isn't really doing the whole Dumbledore 'Greater Good' thing because he does have knowledge of the future and if he does things to save people from petrification now he may not be able to save people from death later. As far as concerns about me staying to close to canon, this is the last year where events stay close to canon, right now Harry is setting up dominoes to knock them all down in a few years. Luna will be a Ravenclaw, unlike Harry and Hermione who are so well rounded that they can fit in in any house Luna is an intellectual first and foremost.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 12: Why Idiots Shouldn't Play With Pixies

Harry, Hermione, and Susan entered the Great Hall and took their seats at the Hufflepuff table. While they waited for the new first years they greeted their fellow Hufflepuffs, sharing brief stories about their summers and discussing the upcoming year.

"I can't believe they got Gilderoy Lockhart to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts." Hannah Abbot said with a tone of admiration.

Harry couldn't help but snort at the obvious reverence Hannah had for the fraud. Hannah shot a brief glare at Harry. "Sorry, I will admit the man can write a good story, but if you take all his books as a whole he did all of those things within two years. His first book came out three weeks after he supposedly finished dealing with those vampires, but taking the books as a time-line he didn't have more than a week off between any of his alleged adventures. When the hell did he have time to write the damn thing. Also he apparently got from the Scottish Highlands to the Himalayas in one day." Harry explained.

"Not to mention the fact that most of the details he gives in the books are related to how he takes care of his hair, not how he dealt with the assorted dangers he is supposed to have faced. But I guess we'll see how good of a teacher he is soon enough." Hermione added.

Before anyone else could respond Professor McGonagall led the first years into the Great Hall for the Sorting. The Hat began to sing its usual drabble of loose rhymes and questionable rhythm all done in a voice that would have gotten the Hat fired from a silent movie. The Sorting proceeded and as far as Harry could tell the Sorting went the way it did in the original time-line, he had been slightly worried that Collin Creevey would have followed him into Hufflepuff, but that fear proved to be completely unfounded. Ginny Weasley still ended up in Gryfindor and Luna still went to Ravenclaw. After the Sorting Dumbledore introduced Lockhart, gave the usual warning about the Forbidden Forest, and gave his usual random comments, which now that Harry really thought about it may have been fueled by the old man's ever increasing senility, before starting the feast.

As everyone began to serve themselves food the conversation turned to Quidditch "We really need some new talent this year." Cedric Diggory pointed out "Most of the team graduated last year, we need a beater, two chasers, and if we don't get a good enough seeker I'll probably have to take that position and get a new keeper."

"Well I'll probably try out for seeker Cedric so hopefully you can keep playing keeper." Harry told him "At least the team won't change much since it'll be four years until anyone from the team graduates."

The conversation continued on as people discussed who would most likely try out for the team. When Harry looked around the Great Hall he caught sight of Ron Weasley, Ron was glaring daggers at Harry and his friends. Harry wasn't sure if Ron's menacing glare was hurt or helped by the fact that he was currently stuffing his face with every bit of food within reach.

After the feast Harry, Hermione, and Susan joined the rest of the Hufflepuffs heading down to the basement common room. They spent a few minutes talking in the common room before Susan went up to her dorm, just as Harry and Hermione were kissing good-night Susan came back down into the common room.

"Guys we need to talk, right now." Susan panted, she had apparently run all the way back down. "When I opened my trunk I found this, it's a note from Dumbledore, he wants to speak with me tomorrow after dinner." She showed them the note before collapsing into a chair "He probably wants me to help split you two up, and I don't... I don't..." She sputtered quickly becoming hysterical.

"Shh it's okay Susan. Harry and I both know you would never do that." Hermione reassured her friend.

"Susan, I want to ask you to do something. I want you to go to that meeting and agree to help Dumbledore, find out what kind of methods he is willing to resort to, and then I want you to stall him as long as you can before he does anything drastic." Harry said the gears clearly turning in his head "Meanwhile we use the time we have to come up with some way to keep him out of mine and Hermione's relationship."

"Actually Harry, when Dumbledore came and talked to me during the summer, I told my Aunt what he said and she agreed with my assessment. She came to the same conclusion as you Harry, we need to find a way to keep him out of your personal life. She had an idea, but we can't implement it until next summer, it would probably be best if you let her explain it to you, maybe over Christmas. Just be warned, you might not like her plan, and Hermione's parents would have to agree to it as well." Susan told them as she regained her composure. After Susan took a few more minutes to calm down they all went up to bed.

The next morning Harry was sitting next to Hermione at breakfast when Professor Sprout came around with schedules. "Damn! We have Potions with the Slytherins, and just about every other class with Gryfindor. How the hell am I supposed to avoid Weasley and Malfoy with this schedule. How can we not have a single class with the 'Claws?" Harry ranted after looking at his new schedule.

Hermione put a comforting hand on Harry's shoulder. _It'll be okay. Look we have Defense with Gryfindor this afternoon. Maybe the pixies will do something to Ron, and after a class with Lockhart hopefully some people will realize just how much of a fraud he is._

Harry mentally snorted at this _Hermione even you didn't believe he was a fraud after eight months of classes. I love you, but you are far to naïve when it comes to how blinded people can be by a pretty smile and slick hair. I will bet you anything that no one other than Susan and the Twins will believe us about Lockhart at the end of the week._

_Fine Harry, if I'm right you owe me ten foot massages._ Hermione thought with a mental smirk.

_Alright, but if I'm right you have to try out for the Quidditch team with me._ Harry countered.

_Harry! I can't play Quidditch, I'm no good on a broom, what position would I even play?_

_Hermione you are much better on a broom than you were our first flying lesson, all the work Susan and I did helping you on a broom really paid off, And with your hand-eye coordination you could be a great Chaser._

_Fine I'll try out if you win the bet._

_And if you make the team you can't back out._

_Alright, alright. We should probably get to class._ Hermione looked at the schedule for the first time "We have Herbology with Gryfindor in ten minutes." All of the second year Hufflepuffs took this as their cue to stand up and head outside to the greenhouses.

When all of the Hufflepuff and Gryfindor second years had entered the proper greenhouse Professor Sprout began her lecture on mandrakes. The lecture was the same one Harry remembered and he had no trouble answering Professor Sprout's questions. When it came time to put on earmuffs Harry made sure he ended up with the pink fluffy pair that he distinctly remembered Neville using. He was hoping that it had been a faulty pair of earmuffs that had been the undoing of the otherwise expert Herbologist as this might allow him to avoid the first DADA lesson with Lockhart, but his hopes were dashed when both Ron and Neville fainted, while he, rather annoyingly, remained conscious. After the class ended all of the students made their way back up to the castle for the Defense Against the Dark Arts they shared.

Harry, Hermione, and Susan bypassed their usual seats when they entered Lockhart's classroom, instead of taking seats in the front row they elected to seat themselves at the back of the room, while every other girl in the class fought tooth and nail for seats in the front row. After Lockhart gave a short, for him, introduction about himself he passed out the same asinine pop quiz as he had originally. Harry and Hermione had had a long mental debate over the summer about how to handle Lockhart's 'classes', they eventually came to the agreement that they would take every graded assignment seriously, so as not to hurt their standing at the top of the class. Luckily for both of them this test wasn't being graded, so they decided to have some fun practicing their creative writing instead. Harry and Hermione spent the next twenty minutes trading thoughts on the best answers they could come up with to the questions on the quiz, Harry was severely tempted to answer the question about Lockhart's favorite color with 'Obliviate Blue' but Hermione pointed out that doing so would draw far to much attention, so he settled for writing down 'Shit Brown, why else would he spend so much time shoveling it on the unsuspecting public in his so called books'. The only interruption to Harry and Hermione's fun was when Ron and Neville came into class shortly before the end of the test, _amateur mistake_, thought Harry,_ they could have easily missed the entire lesson by groaning when they woke up in the Hospital Wing_. When Lockhart collected the tests it was a very amused Harry that handed in a test which contained tidbits like; _What is Gilderoy Lockhart's greatest achievement to date? Tying his shoes. _Hermione's test on the other hand contained a myriad of responses that called into question everything from Lockhart's intelligence to his somewhat disturbing need to have a classroom full of twelve year-olds stroke his ego. Her answers would have been extremely insulting to Lockhart, if it weren't for the fact that she had used big words that were well beyond his comprehension, like 'pathological attention seeking'. When Lockhart looked through the returned tests he was apparently so hurt by the responses on Harry and Hermione's tests that he completely skipped going over the test in front of the class.

At this point Lockhart decided to move on to the next part of the lesson, and after making quite the show of announcing his little surprise revealed a cage full of pixies. After he gave a short speech about how tricky pixies could be to deal with, during which Harry had been hard pressed not to snark about how pixies might give a few problems, to a twelve year-old, Lockhart unleashed the little blue monsters upon the class. It was utter chaos in the classroom for the first ten seconds, Lockhart immediately regretted his decision of lesson plan, the moment his initial spell failed to disable even a single pixie he bolted for the door. Harry seeing Lockhart doing a runner pointed his wand at the door and intoned "_Colloportus_" When Lockhart reached the door he tried to open it but failed, panicking he looked around the room, spotting Harry pointing his wand at the door the blond idiot shot the raven-haired boy a frightened look.

"We can't let them escape into the rest of the castle." Harry said by way of explanation before he turned his wand on a pixie that was foolish enough to approach him.

Lockhart then spent a full minute trying to open the now locked door, failing thrice to cast the simple unlocking charm that Hermione had been able cast in her first week of school. Surrendering to the inevitable Lockhart abandoned his attempts to unlock the door and instead threw himself out of the nearest window. This may not have been the smartest thing that Gilderoy Lockhart ever did, after all the window was closed and the classroom was on the third floor, but neither of these facts entered his mind as he fled from a swarm of the most dangerous creatures he had ever faced.

While Lockhart was making a complete fool of himself Harry, Hermione and Susan sprang into action. First they backed into a corner, so as not to become surrounded, then they began firing hexes at any pixie they could get a clean shot at. Within a minute everyone in the classroom, except for Ron who was busy being smacked over the head with his entire set of Lockhart's books, had gotten behind the three Hufflepuffs. When they had dealt with every pixie but the ones that were busy 'entertaining' Ron they shared a quick glance to decide whether or not to save the foolish ginger from his plight. It was eventually decided, much to everyone's disappointment to end Ron's torture at the hand of his tiny blue adversaries. Ron shot Harry a furious glare before he muttered something that sounded like "had them right where I wanted them." Harry then unlocked the door and everyone left the classroom for lunch.

The rest of the week passed quickly, Harry and Hermione were once again competing for the top spot in every class, Binns was just as boring as ever, and Snape somehow managed to continue in a fashion that met the, what he considered to be unreasonably high, standard of acting with a shred of professionalism. True to Harry's guess no one was convinced by the obvious fact that Lockhart was an incompetent moron, and so it was that Saturday morning Hermione found herself joining Harry and Susan on the Quidditch pitch for tryouts. Susan hadn't originally planned on trying out for the team, but when Harry told her about the bet he had made with Hermione she decided she might as well join them on the off chance that they all made the team.

When everyone who wanted to try out was assembled Cedric, who was captain by virtue of the fact that he was the oldest player who hadn't graduated the year before, had everyone fly five laps of the pitch. He then had everyone who was interested trying out for Seeker step forward, normally the Seeker would be the last position filled, but because Cedric was concerned about having to take the position himself he had decided to get it out of the way first in case they needed a new Keeper. Harry and the three others who stepped forward were each given a Cleansweep 7 so that they would all be on an even footing to be judged on skill alone, Cedric then joined them in the air on his own Cleansweep 7 before telling Randy Harris, the returning Beater, to release the Snitch. After five minutes Harry spotted the Snitch and gave chase, after a full minute of chasing the abnormally wily ball Harry managed to get a hold of it. Cedric had originally planned to repeat the process a couple of times in order to see what everyone was capable of, but following Harry's display he made an executive decision and declared Harry the new Hufflepuff Seeker. The other three hopefuls didn't even complain at this as they all knew they had no chance of out-flying Harry.

Seeker trials were followed by Beater trials, in which Geoffrey Larson a fourth year was selected. These were followed by Chaser trials, Cedric put everyone through a series of passing drills and after seeing who was capable of getting the ball to a teammate they then took turns trying to score against Cedric. After these two trials the Chaser hopefuls were down to six, including Hermione and Susan, these six then took turns flying formation with James Stillman, the only remaining Chaser from the year before, to see which combination worked together best. After twenty minutes it was clear that Hermione and Susan worked together better than any other pair of hopefuls, and while some of the others worked a little better with Stillman Cedric decided to go with Hermione and Susan to round out the team.

Hermione was upset at the thought of losing so much study time for Quidditch practice, but Harry quickly pointed out that she had made a deal and couldn't back out now. However Harry assured her that they would still have plenty of time to study and keep on top of their classes, and if at the end of the season she decided she didn't want to keep playing he wouldn't hold it against her.

**A/N: Hope you have enjoyed the chapter. I would say that this chapter contains Lockhart bashing but honestly he is exactly as incompetent as in canon so it really isn't bashing. I really like the suggestions of making the Twins be raccoons, I will probably go with that. If people really have a problem with Hermione being on the Quidditch team let me know, I don't know for sure if I'll have her continue on the team into third year yet.**


	13. Why Did This Take Us a Year?

**Disclaimer: In case you missed it the first dozen times I mentioned it I am not JKR and I don't own Harry Potter.**

**A/N: A quick note on Cedric Diggory, as far as I remember the books never actually say that he is a seventh year in GoF, all we know is that he is 17 by Halloween of 1994 so I am assuming that he is a sixth year who has a birthday in September or October. Also I know a lot of people don't like that Harry didn't steal the Diary, but he can't explain how he knows what it is until after the Chamber is opened, and he needs Dumbledore to get confirmation that Riddle made horcruxes so he will get himself cursed by the ring.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 13: Why Did This Take Us A Year?

September and October passed quickly, Harry later found out that Lockhart had only spent a few minutes lying broken and bloodied on the ground before Lavender Brown made her way down to him immediately after Harry released everyone from class. Lockhart's classes were never again as exciting as his first class, most days he simply reenacted scenes from his book. He used Harry for the first one of these reenactments, but after seeing the look on Harry's face at being forced to participate in the farce he wisely decided to avoid using Harry in future reenactments. Quidditch practice with Cedric was much easier on their schedules than it had been with Oliver Wood, in fact as much as Harry hated to admit it Wood's style of leadership, while effective, was completely wrong for a school sport. Cedric on the other hand managed to get the most out of his team without becoming their enemy, where Oliver would yell at his teammates for making mistakes Cedric would just say he was disappointed. The result of this was that Wood had to enforce discipline constantly while Cedric only had to tell his team what he expected and they would do their best to make their friend and leader proud.

When Halloween came Harry was ready to collect the first piece of evidence he needed to deal with the Chamber of Secrets without arousing undue suspicion. Harry had asked the Twins if he could borrow the Marauder's Map for the evening, when they had asked why he had simply mentioned that every Halloween he had been in the Wizarding World for something bad had happened. So it was that Harry was sitting at the Hufflepuff table for the Halloween Feast taking an occasional glance at the Map under the table. He knew immediately when Ginny entered the Chamber and he was glad that everyone else was still in the Great Hall. Harry had wanted to steal the Diary from Ginny before she could cause any harm, but Virgil had insisted that at least one attack had to occur or it could seriously damage their plans. Luckily the first attack would almost certainly be against Mrs. Norris so Harry was only mildly worried about what was to come.

At the end of the feast Harry dawdled in the Entrance Hall talking with Hermione, Susan, and the Twins while the Gryfindors and Ravenclaws headed upstairs to where he knew they would find the petrified body of the caretakers cat. He didn't have to wait long before screams announced the inevitable discovery. Harry immediately ran to the stairs, followed closely by his friends, when he got to the source of the screams he immediately looked around to make sure nothing had changed in the presentation of the first attack. There was the same message in silver paint on the wall next to the same cat hanging from a torch, even the same inch deep puddle of water coming out from under the bathroom door.

"Enemies of the Heir beware, you'll be next mudbloods" Malfoy drawled, earning him a cluster of five stinging hexes from Harry and his associates.

Having seen all he needed he beckoned for his four friends to follow him as he disappeared into a secret passageway that ended near an empty classroom that they frequently used when they needed privacy. Upon entering the classroom Harry gestured for his friends to take a seat while he cast a few simple privacy charms.

"Fred, George, thanks for letting me borrow the map. Guess I was right about Halloween huh?" Harry said taking a seat between Hermione and Susan. "I was watching the map during the feast, but the only person I saw anywhere near that corridor, was Ginny Weasley."

"Why would Ginny do something to Mrs. Norris?" Fred asked.

"Granted Filch is an insufferable git, but Ginny hasn't been here long enough to hate him enough to do something like this." George added.

"I don't know why she would do it, but we need to figure out whether this is an isolated incident or not. That message seemed to suggest that this was just the beginning. Hermione you've read _Hogwarts: a History_ more times than I have, do you remember anything about the Chamber of Secrets?" Harry continued.

Hermione took her cue to go into full lecture mode "The Chamber of Secrets, according to legend the Chamber was built by Salazar Slytherin shortly before he left Hogwarts due to a disagreement about allowing muggleborn students admission to Hogwarts. Salazar is reported to have put a beast of some sort in the Chamber and when his heir returned to Hogwarts he would release the beast and it would 'purge Hogwarts of all those unworthy to learn magic'. No one has ever been able to find the Chamber or figure out what the beast is supposed to be."

Harry looked as though he were deep in thought for a few moments before declaring "It's probably some kind of giant snake, and Ginny is probably being forced to release it against her will."

"How do you figure that?" Susan asked looking puzzled at Harry's declaration.

"Well the first part is just thematically correct, Slytherin was the most famous parselmouth until Voldemort and myself" this statement was met by looks of surprise from Susan and the Twins, thankfully they chose not to interrupt "So obviously he would choose a snake of some kind and to work on the scale he wanted it would need to be freaking huge. As for Ginny being forced to do it against her will, well using a patsy is the most Slytherin way of going about it."

"If it is a giant snake it is most likely a basilisk, in which case all we need to beat it is a rooster." Hermione supplied helpfully.

"A rooster?" Susan asked incredulously.

"Yes the crow of a rooster is lethal to the basilisk." Hermione explained.

"Fred George I assume that your ingenious minds can come up with some method by which we could obtain a live rooster to accompany us into the legendary Chamber of Secrets." They both nodded in response to Harry's question. "Good, now as for Ginny, have either of you noticed if her behavior has been different lately?"

"Now that you mention it she has been a little off since we went to Diagon Alley." George said after considering his sisters behavior over the past few months.

"That lends some credence to the theory that she is acting against her will. Hopefully we can resolve this issue before she suffers any lasting mental trauma." Harry reassured the Twins.

"Normally I would say that we should go to a teacher, but all we could give them is speculation, and we couldn't even give them that much without losing the Map." Susan said.

Harry nodded in agreement, glad that Susan had saved him the trouble of coming up with an excuse to avoid informing the faculty until after the threat had been dealt with. With everything hashed out they all agreed to confront Ginny as soon as the Twins had managed to obtain a rooster just in case there was some sort of attack trigger in whatever spells might be controlling Ginny.

Unfortunately while the Twins may have been experts at smuggling firewhiskey and other contraband into the school, getting a live rooster was slightly more difficult. The result of this was that they had not been able to completely eliminate the threat before Lockhart's farce of a dueling club. The dueling club went almost identically to the one Harry remembered, except that when Malfoy summoned a serpent to attack him Harry used a series of well placed blasting hexes to corral the serpentine simulacrum back at Malfoy, at which point the Slytherin ran screaming from the room before Snape could vanish the snake.

Two weeks after the dueling club Fred informed Harry that they had in fact managed to finally obtain a rooster. Harry told Fred to bring George and Ginny to meet him in twenty minutes, Harry then found Hermione and Susan, made sure Susan had his invisibility cloak and the Map, in case Ginny made a run for the Chamber. He then led Hermione, and an invisible Susan to the empty classroom where they would confront Ginny. Two minutes later Ginny was led into the room by Fred and George.

"Ginny," Fred started "We know about what you did on Halloween. Harry thinks you didn't do it of your own free will, and if you just tell us what is going on we will do everything we can to try and help you."

As Fred was speaking the small piece of the soul of Tom Marvolo Riddle that had managed to worm its way into the body of Ginny Weasley began to assert control of the foolish girl who had poured her heart into an enchanted diary. Riddle had planned to wait until the end of the year to move on to the final step of his plan, but now the Potter boy was in the room he couldn't afford to take any risks. Having taken control Riddle raised the girls wand and cast a spell that would temporarily blind anyone in the room with a bright flash of light, before he ran for the one place where he could once again take physical form without being disturbed. After all no one else knew where the Chamber was, or how to open it.

Unfortunately for Tom Riddle Harry Potter knew exactly where the Chamber of Secrets was, and Susan wasn't looking at Ginny when the spell went of and was therefore able to watch her progress on the Map.

"Um, we have a problem" Susan said not taking her eyes off the Map "Ginny went into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and then she just disappeared off the map."

"That must be where the entrance to the Chamber is. Actually it makes sense, putting the entrance in a bathroom would give the basilisk easy access to the pipes that run through the entire school and from those it could get literally anywhere." Harry said rubbing his eyes to clear his vision.

"But Harry when the school was built there was no indoor plumbing, so Slytherin wouldn't have been able to give the basilisk access to the pipes." Hermione told him pulling him to his feet.

"Actually wizards have had indoor plumbing since the Romans invented it, they didn't lose it in the Dark Ages like the rest of Europe. Unfortunately they never quite understood water pressure so all the plumbing is gravity based, which means that the pipes would definitely be big enough for the basilisk to use." Harry explained while heading out the door.

As Harry led them all through the corridors George suddenly came to a realization "Harry you're heading the wrong way."

"No I'm not. I realized that it would be highly irresponsible to go chasing after a basilisk without a teacher, so we are going to get the teacher with the most experience dealing with dangerous creatures." Harry explained as he came to a stop in front of Lockhart's office door. Without so much as knocking he entered the room "Professor we know where the Chamber of Secrets is, there is a basilisk inside it and Ginny Weasley was forced to go down there, we need your help."

Lockhart was stunned, he had no idea what to do, the only thing he knew for certain was that he couldn't go face a basilisk, it could kill him, or worse _mess up his hair_. "Harry I'm sorry but I can't help you. I have an important appointment in... London, yes that's it London." I'm sure that everything will be fine."

"But sir what about all the things you did in your books, surely someone brave enough to do that wouldn't leave a poor innocent girl to die." Hermione asked, hoping to force a confession out of Lockhart.

"Ah... well you see, my books... you shouldn't believe everything you read. I... well I never actually did any of those things. I just researched the people who did do them and then erased their memories so I could take the credit" Lockhart admitted.

"Kinda figured, did you get all that Hermione?" Harry asked Hermione, who had gotten out a piece of parchment and was busy writing Lockhart's confession.

"Sure did Harry, here you go." She said handing Harry a copy of the confession.

"Alright then, I'm going to give you a choice here Gilderoy, you either sign this confession, admitting to everything you just told us, or you come with us into the Chamber of Secrets." Harry told Lockhart. The moment Harry finished his ultimatum Lockhart reached for his wand, unfortunately he had forgotten to take into account the presence of the Weasley Twins and Susan. Susan saw exactly what Lockhart was up to and disarmed him without a second thought.

"Alright, alright I'll sign the confession." Lockhart said, and with a grace and speed born from years of autographing pictures for gullible fans he signed the confession. Harry immediately stunned and bound him before casting a simple duplication charm on the parchment. He took the three copies of Lockhart's confession, rolled them up and handed them to Susan.

"Take these up to the Owlry, send one to your Aunt, one to the editor of the Daily Prophet, and one to Dumbledore." Harry told Susan, when Susan looked like she was about to argue Harry looked her right in the eye "Don't worry about us, if it is a basilisk we have the rooster, and if it isn't the four of us can easily handle it, but we can't let Lockhart get away with what he has done." With that Susan nodded before heading off to the Owlry.

Without another word Harry led Hermione and the Twins to the second floor bathroom. The moment he entered the room he immediately hissed out §_Open_§ in parseltounge as loud as he could, the sink that hid the Chamber immediately began to move. "I guess that is our way in." Harry said before jumping down the exposed tube. He was quickly followed by Hermione, Fred, and George.

When they had all reached the bottom they cleaned themselves off quickly before they started following the tunnel they found themselves in. When they finally reached the door at the end Harry looked at his friends "This probably leads into the main chamber, if the basilisk shows up I'll probably be able to hear it coming before we see it, so when I tell you close your eyes and unsilence the rooster." Harry told them gesturing to George's bag where he knew the silenced rooster was hidden. He then turned, commanded the door to open and walked into the Chamber of Secrets.

There standing before them was a tall dark haired boy and next to him was the body of Ginny Weasley. Fred and George immediately ran to pick up their sister, George leaving his bag next to Harry in his rush to get to his sister. "Fred, George, get her out of here." Harry told them and without arguing they immediately complied. The moment Fred and George were through the doorway Harry commanded it to close. "So, we meet at last Tom Riddle."

"How do you know my name?" Riddle demanded

"Oh, I know all about you Tom. Tom Marvolo Riddle, bastard son of a muggle and a squib. Raised in an orphanage where you were unloved and unwanted. The funny thing is Tom, you weren't unloved because of your magic, but because you were a fucking psychopath. Tom Riddle so brilliant, yet so foolish in your arrogance. You were so ashamed, so afraid of your heritage that you crafted a new identity for yourself, that of Lord Voldemort. It is pathetic really, how easily fooled your followers were. And what is really sad is that in your short-sighted fear you associated with the only people in the world who would have shunned you for your heritage. If you had applied yourself you could have accomplished so much, you could have outshone even Dumbledore, but in your fear of death you assured your destruction.

"You created your horcruxes so that you would never truly die, but in your arrogance did you ever wonder why no one before you had made more than one. You are a second rate psychopathic megalomaniac on an immortality kick, the only difference between you and every other idiot who made a horcrux in the last five thousand years is that you are the only one who didn't bother to do all the research. You see the way a horcrux works is by maintaining a connection between your soul and the fragment you sealed away, when you split your soul again that connection is maintained with both parts. The result of this is that if you pump enough energy into one horcrux it bleeds off into the other horcruxes, allowing you to destroy all of them without having to find more than one." Having explained to the shadow of the former head boy exactly what his mistake had been Harry couldn't help but laugh.

This was to much for Riddle it was bad enough that he had been insulted, but then this insolent child had gone on to point out the flaws in his plan as if it was so obvious. Riddle immediately called for the basilisk to destroy this boy and his friend, they would realize how wrong they had been to insult the greatest wizard to ever live!

The moment Harry heard the basilisk coming out of the mouth of the statue of Slytherin he shut his eyes and opened Georges bag. With a simple _finite_ the rooster, which had been crowing in absolute terror for the past hour could finally be heard. Hermione had realized immediately what was happening and also shut her eyes hoping that the rooster would work quickly. Riddle realized that he had been outplayed and before he could do anything he heard the basilisk shriek in agony before it fell silent forever. Harry opened his eyes, walked over to the giant snake and carefully removed a fang. Holding the fang he walked to where the little black diary lay on the ground and casually stabbed it with the fang.

"Goodbye Tom." Harry said and with that he took Hermione's hand, picked up the screaming diary and walked out of the Chamber, leaving the shadow of Tom Riddle to die in agony.

When they made it back up to the bathroom Harry immediately led the way up to the Headmaster's office. It took them nearly an hour to tell Dumbledore about what had happened, carefully avoiding revealing information that they all agreed Dumbledore didn't need. In the end Dumbledore let them go giving Harry, Hermione, Susan, and the Twins 100 points each.

Latter that day Harry wrote a long letter to Lucius Malfoy. In it he explained that he knew Lucius was responsible for Ginny getting the diary, and more importantly he had the evidence, connections, and most importantly resources, to make sure Lucius Malfoy died in prison. He went on to explain that he would be willing to keep his silence in exchange for the Malfoy house-elf Dobby. Three days later a very excited Dobby greeted his new master, he was overjoyed to be working for the great Harry Potter.

**A/N: And thus the Chamber is dealt with. Hope you guys have enjoyed. The rest of Second year will probably only take a couple more chapters, but that is what happens when you eliminate the threat early on.**


	14. Revelations and Plots For Christmas

**Disclaimer: Not JKR, don't own Harry Potter, not making any money**

**A/N: To clarify, no Harry hasn't destroyed all the horcruxes yet, it will involve a ritual and he is waiting until after Dumbledore gets cursed by the ring, even if he wasn't waiting it would have been to late to use the Diary as Ginny would have died before the ritual could be completed. And for those of you who had questions about the Susan Dumbledore conversation, just be patient, everything will be made clear in due time.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 14: Revelations and Plots for Christmas

The week after the closing of the Chamber of Secrets was full of surprises. On Monday the front page of the Daily Prophet sported a massive picture of Gilderoy Lockhart, in prison robes. The article explained that Lockhart had confessed to a group of students who wished to remain anonymous before he was apprehended by a small team of aurors while attempting to flee Hogwarts. Lockhart had apparently been unable to free himself from Harry's bindings and had been forced to hop away from his office only to be arrested after finally reaching the main gates. DADA classes were canceled for the week so that schedules could be rearranged in order to replace Lockhart. In the end it was decided to combine all the DADA classes for each year and have Flitwick, McGonagall, and Snape rotate through teaching the classes.

On Wednesday Arthur Weasley stopped by the school to thank Harry for saving Ginny from the Diary. With Virgil's coaching and the help of Susan's book Harry managed to get Arthur to extend the life debt owed by Ginny to the entire Weasley Family. Harry hadn't been entirely convinced that it was a good idea, but then Virgil had pointed out that he could call in the debt to force Ron to leave him alone if it became necessary and he had gone along with it. According to the Twins Ginny had become absolutely obsessed with Harry, she claimed that the fact that Harry had saved her proved that they were meant to be together. She conveniently ignored the fact that Harry had been joined by his girlfriend, and that he had only gone down into the Chamber to save the entire school from her.

When Dobby had made his appearance he took an immediate liking to his new master and "Master Harry's 'Mione". Harry decided that since Dobby would be unable to tell anyone any of Harry's secrets, not that he would want to even if he could, that it would be a good idea to tell Dobby the full story of what had happened so that Dobby would be able to actively help Harry. The conversation between Harry, Dobby, and Hermione quickly turned to house-elf rights once Dobby became aware of all of the facts.

"But Dobby why wouldn't house-elves want to be free?" Hermione asked

"Well Miss 'Mione, house-elves is liking to work, and we is needing to be bonded to a witch or wizard or we is losing our magic. It is how we is always been." Dobby tried to explain.

"How could wizards do something like that it's just so... so wrong." Hermione stammered out.

"Wizards is not doing it, house-elves used to have no magic, then we is discovering if we is working for wizards we is getting some of their magic. And when we is forming a stronger bond we is getting more magic. Some wizards, like Dobby's old masters is only making bond if house-elves is being unable to leave willingly, but most elves is not bonded permanently like that, and wizards like Dobby's old masters can't get new house-elves because other elves know how they is being." Dobby's explanation mollified Hermione for the time being, but she began coming up with ways to protect house-elves from wizards and witches like the Malfoys.

The rest of term went by quickly and soon Harry was sitting with Hermione and Susan on the Hogwarts Express heading back into London for the Christmas holidays. When they came out of Platform 9 ¾ they were greeted by the Grangers and Amelia Bones, they greeted each other and Amelia said that she had something that she wanted to discuss with all of them in private over the holidays so they made arrangements to have Susan and Amelia come over for dinner the next week.

When Amelia and Susan came over three days before Christmas the kids went into the backyard to practice their transformations. They had all gotten to the point where they could fully transform into their animal form, but they could only hold the form for a few minutes before they popped back, it would still be a few months before they would be able to hold their form indefinitely. After a dinner of lasagna, Harry had taught Dobby how to make lasagna on a whim and the excitable little elf made it at every opportunity, they all headed into the sitting room to talk.

"David, Jean, I don't know how much Harry and Hermione have told you about what has been going on with Dumbledore-" Amelia started.

"We filled them in on everything we know Madam Bones." Hermione supplied.

"Good, well as you know Albus Dumbledore has apparently taken an unhealthy interest in Harry's life, and is currently attempting to covertly end his relationship with your daughter. He claims, and he may be being honest, that he is doing it for political reasons. I think we are all in agreement that it is unacceptable for him to continue acting in such a manner." Amelia continued

"Can't we do something about him? You're in charge of law enforcement he must have broken some kind of law doing this." Jean asked, she hadn't seen Hermione as happy as she was with Harry since before she started school, and she was going to let some nosy old man ruin her daughters happiness.

"Unfortunately until he actually puts some of his more desperate plans into action he won't have actually done anything illegal. Were this anyone else trying to interfere with Harry's life we could take it to the press and they would tear them to shreds, but unfortunately this is Albus Dumbledore we are dealing with, he is far to well connected to be dealt with so easily."Amelia paused for a few moments to let this much sink in "Now while Albus has apparently chosen to use Susan to try and separate you two, he has not chosen to divulge any information on his plans to do so. For the time being Susan will continue to play along with Dumbledore while watching to make sure that neither of you shows any sign of being controlled either by spells or potions. Unfortunately that is only a temporary solution, Dumbledore will eventually catch on, the only permanent solution I have been able to come up with is a betrothal contract."

This pronouncement was met with a simultaneous "WHAT!" from Harry and all three Grangers.

Jean was the first to recover enough to speak "Surely you can't be serious?"

"I am serious, and don't call me Shirley." said Harry, Hermione, and David on instinct.

"I am quite serious" Amelia said, ignoring the poor attempt at humor "Any attempt to break up a betrothal is a serious crime, and because Harry is the heir of a Noble line it would constitute line theft which carries a life sentence. They are old laws and if Dumbledore tried anything he would find every one of the old families against him."

"But a betrothal it's just so... archaic." pointed out David.

"That may be, but this is the only way I can think of to protect Harry and Hermione from Dumbledore. Even without resorting to illegal measures he could cause serious harm. He could trump up charges and have Hermione expelled, then she would have her wand snapped, her magic bound and her memory erased, the three of you would have no knowledge of the existence of magic and Albus would be free to do whatever he wished with Harry."

"Very well, if we agree that this is the best course of action, what exactly would this contract involve?" David hedged.

"Well in order to be a legally recognized betrothal there needs to be a deadline for completion of the contract, Harry's twenty-fifth birthday should work nicely, and some requirement for the dissolution of the contract, in this case it can simply be that either Harry or Hermione chooses to withdraw from the contract, with a thirty day grace period during which time the decision can be reconsidered." Amelia explained, she hoped that they would all agree to this as she already had a copy drawn up just awaiting the necessary signatures.

"So no dowry or anything, no penalties for canceling, nothing like that?" David asked trying to cover all the bases

"Well Dad, a dowry or bride price is usually included and penalties aren't unheard of, but those are usually only included if one of the people in the contract is considered to be of higher value than the other." Hermione explained

Harry chuckled at this "What a great way for us to thumb our noses at the pureblood supremacists, if we signed a contract like the one Madam Bones outlined it would mean that everyone involved considered Hermione and I to be of equal value. Since I am famous, and probably one of the most sought after wizards in Britain we would be using their own laws to say that everything they believe in is a load of crap." Seeing where he was going with this thought everyone joined in on his laughter.

"If we all agree to do this when would we need to sign off on it?" Jean asked

"The earliest we could do it would be Harry's thirteenth birthday when he takes up his position as head of House Potter. Then he could sign off on it as his own Head of House, he would also sign it as one of the two involved in the contract, Hermione would also need to sign and one or both of you would need to sign." Amelia explained to Jean and David "I would also sign as an arbitrator to state that neither party is being coerced into signing. My only suggestions would be, only do this if you are all okay with it, and if you are going to do it do it as soon as possible." And with that she pulled the copy of the contract from her robes. "Thank you for dinner, we will see you soon. If you have any questions don't hesitate to contact me." and having said their goodbyes Amelia and Susan left to allow the other four in the room a chance to discuss the decision they had before them.

After ten minutes of silent contemplation, or conversation in Harry and Hermione's case, David finally spoke "I still don't quite understand this whole betrothal thing, what exactly does it mean to sign the contract?"

"Well Dad what it all boils down to is an agreement that marriage between the two parties is a possibility. Most of the time it would be done as the first stage of an arranged marriage, signed when one or both individuals is a small child." Hermione tried to explain as simply as possible "In this case though it is simply an understanding that, unless Harry or I change our minds in the future that the end result of our relationship would be marriage, though that would be years down the line."

"And is that where you two see this going?" Jean asked

"Yes." Harry and Hermione both responded without hesitation. Had it been any other twelve or thirteen year old answering both parents would have doubted their ability to understand the situation, but both Harry and Hermione were very mature for their age, and both adults had seen how they felt about each other. They all silently agreed that no more discussion was necessary, when the time came none of them would have second thoughts about signing the contract.

On the day before Christmas Eve an official looking letter arrived addressed to Harry. He opened it while he sat at the breakfast table and upon reading it he let out a small sad chuckle. Everyone looked at Harry wondering what the letter was to get that response from Harry, he passed the letter to David.

"If I think about, that really is the best Christmas present the Dursleys ever gave me." Harry said. The letter was to inform Harry that Vernon and Petunia Dursley had been sentenced to ten years in prison for child abuse.

Harry and Hermione had a wonderful Christmas together with the Grangers, they both received a number of books from different friends and many of their housemates sent them assorted candies, which they had to hide away from Hermione's dentist parents. Harry gave Hermione a small gold necklace with a fox on it while Hermione had given Harry a silver one with a raven. Harry and Hermione both got novels from David and Jean, over all they were very pleased with what they had gotten for Christmas.

The rest of the holidays were pleasant, Harry and Hermione fell asleep together on the couch when they tried to stay up until midnight on New Years Eve. At the end of the holidays Harry and Hermione once again boarded the Hogwarts Express, they were joined by Susan and they spent the whole train ride discussing the holidays. Susan asked whether they had made a decision about her Aunts' suggestion and they told her that while no one had actually said it out loud they were all probably agreed to sign it on Harry's birthday.

When they arrived back at school they were immediately cornered by the Twins, it appeared that the Weasley Twins had had an extremely interesting holiday at Hogwarts. They had completed the first step of becoming animagi by discovering their forms, they were both racoons. Hermione suggested that they speak with McGonagall about helping them with their first transformation. They had been resistant to this idea at first, but when Hermione had refused to help them, Susan had informed them of the potential penalties for being an unregistered animagus, and Harry pointed out that between the five of them they would almost double the number of living registered animagi, they relented and agreed to make plans with McGonagall for the full moon that was a week away.

On another note Draco Malfoy had been extremely vocal in his disappointment that no one else had been attacked following Mrs. Norris. Harry had been willing to leave Malfoy's object lesson in proper behavior until he heard that Malfoy had made numerous comments about how he had been looking forward to "that mudblood Granger learning her place", at that point it was decided that Malfoy needed to be put in his place repeatedly. It took them two weeks to come up with a way to do it, but on the first day of classes they turned Malfoy's head into that of a donkey, and for the next two weeks every time Malfoy used the word mudblood his voice immediately became the braying of a donkey for the next hour. Although everyone suspected Harry and his friends no one could actually prove that any of them had cast a single spell against Malfoy that would explain what had happened. The reason that no one could prove their involvement was that they had each cast a single portion of what Hermione had called a spell matrix, each part was appeared to be nothing but magical static but combined they had the desired effect.

**A/N: Hope you enjoyed the chapter, hopefully it answered a few questions. Next chapter will probably be up in the next couple of days, it will probably wrap up second year.**


	15. Matches and Exams

**Disclaimer: I'm not JKR and I don't own Harry Potter.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 15: Matches and Exams

Hufflepuff's first game of the Quidditch season was on a cold February morning against Ravenclaw. Cedric had insisted for the first time that the team have daily practices leading up to the game. As the team sat together at the breakfast table they all felt a quiet confidence, Ravenclaw's team was known for being erratic and inconsistent in their teamwork and their Seeker, Cho Chang, had only caught one snitch the year before, and that was against Gryfindor who were generally considered to have the worst Seeker in the school until Draco Malfoy had bought his way onto the Slytherin team.

Harry was glad that he was going to finally get to play Quidditch and he couldn't have asked for better weather for a game, the skies were clear, the winds were calm, and the air was cold enough to allow them to fly for hours. As the team was standing, waiting to walk onto the field nerves finally got the best of Hermione. Despite her initial reluctance about playing Hermione had quickly taken to the sport, her competitive nature pushing her to excel. She still couldn't understand people like Ron Weasley who talked about nothing but Quidditch despite the fact that they didn't play, but the moment she set foot on the field no one was more enthusiastic about the game.

"Harry, why did I have to do this? That bet was supposed to be a joke. I can't do this, why are you making me do this?" Hermione rambled pacing back and forth.

"Hermione you'll be fine. You know what to do we are just going to go out there and do it." Harry told Hermione, pulling her into a hug to stop her pacing.

The match itself was one of the shortest Harry had ever played in, he had been watching intently for the snitch, hoping to catch it before much scoring had been done by either side. He hoped that by removing most of the burden of play from the Chasers Hermione and Susan would be able to adjust to playing on the team so that they would be even better when they got to the more serious match-ups against Gryfindor and Slytherin. After fifteen minutes the score was 50-30 Hufflepuff, Hermione and Susan had both managed to score twice, when Harry finally spotted the snitch. It had been hiding in the shadows near the base of the Ravenclaw stands so as not to reflect any light which might have drawn attention to it, but thanks to his improved eye-sight courtesy of his raven form Harry was able to spot it easily. He immediately shot after it on the Nimbus 2000 he had purchased and before Cho even realized he had made a move he was already half way to his prize. At the last moment the snitch tried to escape by darting straight up, but Harry was ready for it and grabbed the wily ball with little difficulty.

After their first victory Cedric reduced practices to just once a week for the two months until their match against Gryfindor. The reduction in their schedules gave Harry, Hermione, and Susan plenty of time to finish mastering their transformations. So it was that the second week of March Hermione entered the Great Hall for breakfast with a raven on her shoulder. Once Hermione took a seat at the Hufflepuff table the raven flew up to the staff table where it landed directly in front of Professor McGonagall and looked her right in the eye.

"Well Mr. Potter, congratulations on your accomplishment, though I would suggest that you get some breakfast now." McGonagall said with a small smile on her face. Harry nodded before flying back to the Hufflepuff table where he transformed back before sitting down to eat.

Harry had been the first to hold his form indefinitely, but by the end of the week Hermione and Susan had also succeeded. Fred and George had performed their own first transformation and now Harry, Hermione, and Susan put their focus into helping the Twins with their transformations. In early April the second years were given information on the electives they could take the next year. Harry had to spend the entire week convincing Hermione that she shouldn't take all five available electives, as useful as a time-turner might have been Harry didn't want to see Hermione as exhausted as he knew she would be after a year of twenty-seven hour days. Harry had decided to take Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, and Care of Magical Creatures and Hermione was going to take the same classes. Susan had decided that she wanted to take Muggle Studies instead of Arithmancy since she fully intended to go into politics and taking Muggle Studies would give her a good basis for trying to bring the Wizarding World into the twentieth century.

As part of their course selection each student had a meeting with their head of house, Harry's meeting went almost exactly as he had thought it would.

"Good Afternoon Harry" Professor Sprout almost always referred to her badgers by first name when she was acting as head of house in non-disciplinary settings "The main purpose of this meeting is to discuss which of the elective courses you wish to take beginning in September. The choice is completely up to you, however every teacher is asked to give recommendations for which courses students should choose."

"Okay Professor, I'm pretty sure I know which classes I want to take." Harry told her.

"I'm sure you do Harry, and based on your performance in all your classes, you won't have any trouble with any of the classes. Everyone of your teachers that submitted recommendations for you included Arithmancy and Ancient Runes, and Professor McGonagall specifically recommended you not take Divination." This last part brought a small smile to Sprout's face. "Now this is unusual, but the headmaster has submitted a recommendation that you take Divination, but he did not provide any reason for his suggestion."

"Well, while I appreciate the headmaster's thoughts, I have no intention of taking Divination. As far as I know there are no careers that are helped by taking Divination. I would like to take Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, and Care of Magical Creatures." Harry informed her.

"Yes I thought you might choose to take the same courses as Hermione. I am very proud of you two, it has been a while since I could say that I have the top students in Hufflepuff, keep up the good work Harry." Professor Sprout said dismissing Harry.

Hufflepuff's second match of the season was soon upon them and this time the team was much more serious, they all knew that they were more skilled than the Slytherin team, but the Slytherins all had Nimbus 2001s courtesy of Lucius Malfoy, and the Slytherins played dirty. The faster Harry caught the snitch the safer the rest of the team would be.

The game got off to a quick start, within two minutes Slytherin had scored, but Hermione had already spotted a weakness they could exploit. The Slytherins were fast, but were not very good at changing direction rapidly. Hermione rapidly communicated her observation to the rest of the team and they quickly used it to gain the upper hand. By the ten minute mark Hufflepuff had managed to score three times while completely stopping the Slytherins from doing anything. At this point the Slytherins decided to start playing dirty, Stillman had the quaffle and was moving quickly down the pitch when Marcus Flint rammed into him, this caused Stillman to drop the quaffle but it also earned Stillman a penalty shot, which he made. In retaliation Harry decided to teach the Slytherins a lesson, making sure that Malfoy was shadowing him Harry turned into a steep dive, and just as Harry planned Malfoy followed him using his brooms greater speed to try and catch up, by the time Harry was within a few feet of the ground Malfoy had pulled up to just behind Harry's tail and had significantly more speed, so Harry pulled out of the dive at the last possible moment to watch Malfoy plow into the ground at top speed. Harry's Wronski Feint was far from perfect, and any halfway decent Seeker would have realized what he was doing, luckily for Harry Malfoy had a long way to go even be halfway decent. With Malfoy out of the picture Harry went back on the hunt, it was another ten minutes, with three goals by Hufflepuff and two fouls by Slytherin, before he finally spotted the snitch. Harry shot off after his target and before anyone even realized what he was doing he had caught the snitch winning the game 240-20.

When May arrived Hermione once again went into exam mode, once again Harry and Susan found themselves following Hermione to the library where they were joined by everyone who had studied with them the previous year for exams, with the exception of Weasley, as well as a number of first years who were bright enough to ask for help from older students. Harry and Hermione were spending most of the time going over what was expected on the exams with the second years while Padma Patil, Daphne Greengrass, and Tracy Davis helped the first years. Harry was surprised that Daphne and Tracy had been so easily convinced to help the first years, but then he realized that they were doing it in order to get on his good side. Unlike most Slytherins Daphne, Tracy, and Blaise Zabini were true representations of what Slytherin House was supposed to be, people of cunning taking opportunities to advance themselves, not bigots parroting whatever drivel their parents spouted. Whether Harry liked it or not he had become the central figure of his year at Hogwarts and was quickly drawing a following from the younger years as well. Harry could see now that it had been Ron that had caused him to be marginalized in the original time-line, Ron had pushed everyone away as best he could, monopolizing Harry and causing Harry to be an outcast. It was probably because of Ron that people had been so willing to believe every bad thing they heard about him, after all no one but Ron and Hermione had been allowed to get close enough to learn what he was really like.

Hermione and Harry were both glad that they didn't have to wait long before their last game of the season, Harry because he would get to play again, and Hermione because with the season over practices wouldn't get in the way of studying for exams. The game against Gryfindor would be its own unique challenge, Gryfindor had some of the best players, with the exception of Cormac Mclaggen the only person who had tried out for Seeker. Unlike the other matches this one was a long drawn-out battle in which neither side could get the advantage. After an hour and a half Harry had still seen no sign of the snitch and the score was 170-190 with Gryfindor holding a momentary lead. Harry was getting worried, Hermione and Susan could hold their own on the field, but neither of them had built up the endurance that Katie, Alicia, and Angelina had during Wood's marathon practice sessions, if Harry didn't end it soon Gryfindor would soon hold an insurmountable advantage. Gryfindor managed to score twice more before Harry finally caught a glimpse of the snitch, McLaggen was closer, but Harry had drawn him into so many feints already that he hoped the Gryfindor seeker wouldn't realize that Harry had actually seen the snitch until it was to late. Harry made a sudden sharp turn and shot straight toward the Gryfindor goal posts, putting as much speed on as he could, McLaggen watched Harry for a few moments before he looked toward Harry's destination where he saw the snitch, unfortunately he was already too late as Harry had closed the gap on McLaggen and was rocketing toward the snitch faster than McLaggen would ever be able to go. Everyone in the stands fell silent when they saw Harry tear off after the snitch, everyone could see that it was all over but the crying.

Hufflepuff House may have been looked down upon by most people, but living in the Badger's Den had its advantages, no one knew how to throw a party like the 'Puffs, and the party that followed the win against Gryfindor did not disappoint. While Harry knew that Gryfindor Tower had hosted its own share of raucous parties the entire atmosphere in the Hufflepuff common room was better. Harry knew that at some point he was going to have to bring Fred and George down to the Hufflepuff common room for a party, now that would be an amazing party.

With their victory over Gryfindor Hufflepuff was all but guaranteed to win the Quidditch Cup, the only way they wouldn't win it was if Ravenclaw beat Slytherin by at least 430 points. With another month before the Slytherin Ravenclaw match most of the school turned to studying for the exams. Unlike the year before Hermione was able to maintain composure as the exams approached.

Exams came and went, Hufflepuff won the Quidditch Cup and the House Cup and soon Harry, Hermione, and Susan were riding on the Hogwarts Express heading home for the summer. They were joined by the Twins, Neville Longbottom, Tracy, and Daphne. Tracy and Daphne had decided to spend more time with the three Hufflepuffs when they had learned that Harry and Hermione would be taking Arithmancy and Ancient Runes. Apparently very few people outside of Ravenclaw took both Arithmancy and Ancient Runes and since Harry, Hermione, Daphne, and Tracy were the only ones in their year they decided that they should get to know each other as they would probably have to spend a lot of time together the next year studying for what were considered to be the two toughest classes offered.

Halfway through the train ride Luna Lovegood came into their compartment looking her usual spacy self. They offered her a seat and she joined them for the rest of the train ride without saying much. When they finally arrived at King's Cross they had managed to get Luna to open up a little bit, but it would take a lot of work to get her to trust them enough to talk about the problems she was having in Ravenclaw, but Harry was confident that they would be able to help her soon.

Harry and Hermione met David and Jean when they got off the platform, and after making plans to meet Susan and Amelia at Gringotts on Harry's birthday they loaded up the car and headed home. It had been an interesting year and Harry was surprised how much he could get done when he dealt with whatever annoying life-threatening problem the school was facing sooner rather than later.

**A/N: And there is the end of year two, sorry this chapter is a little on the short side.**


	16. The Game Picks Up Speed

**Disclaimer: I am not JKR and I don't own Harry Potter.**

**A/N: Sorry it's been so long since I updated, I was at a good point to stop for a little bit to think about where exactly I was going with this story, and the next thing I know I've been ambushed by a couple of rabid plot bunnies and it's been nearly three months since I stopped. I've updated the first fifteen chapters to fix a few minor mistakes and clean up the writing.**

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 16: The Game Picks Up Speed

Once again Harry found himself telling the story of another year at Hogwarts on the ride from King's Cross to the Granger house. This year though the stories of their misadventures were more in line with what the Grangers expected from a magical school. Harry and Hermione did tell them about the chamber of secrets, but with how easy it was to deal with it really became nothing more than an interesting side note, rather than an impending doom that colored the entire year.

Harry and Hermione spent the first two weeks of their summer doing all of their assigned summer homework. Most of the homework was easy enough, but Snape had given everyone an extremely nasty essay which required them to analyze the ingredients and brewing instructions of three different potions. Once they were done with their homework Harry brought up something that he wanted to discuss with Hermione.

"Hermione I've been doing some research, looking into exactly what benefits there are to being Lord Potter, and I found some interesting things. The one thing I wanted to talk to you about was this, apparently as a Lord I have the right to carry a weapon with me at all times, regardless of the current laws. The only real restriction being that to carry one in Hogwarts the weapon would need to be an heirloom that has been in my family for at least five generations." Harry told Hermione while they were laying out in the backyard.

"Well, you do have all those enchanted weapons in your vault. I'm sure one of them has been in your family long enough to count."

"That's what I was thinking, so I looked through the list and I found a pair of swords that were put into the vault in 1743."

"Why would you need a pair of swords? It's not like you could use both of them at once."

"No I couldn't use both of them, but as the Lord of a Most Ancient and Noble house I can grant an heirloom to a protectorate of House Potter. So for example I could give the sword to the betrothed of Lord Potter, and she would be free to carry the sword under the same rules." Harry explained with a smirk.

"But Harry, I don't know how to use a sword." Hermione told him with a frown.

"Me neither, but I figured, since we have so much free time this summer, we could take fencing lessons. Then by the beginning of school we should know enough to use them if we need to."

"Do you really think we'll need them? It's not like we have very many enemies at school, and the few we have are kind enough to stay away from us."

"True, but we are about to start kicking a hornet's nest, and there's no knowing how people will react. Sirius will break out some time next week, we'll be able to get him a trial as soon as my birthday. Once he's free he'll be able to financially cripple most of Voldemort's old supporters, and we'll be directly connected to that. Malfoy, Nott, Parkinson and a few others might try something monumentally stupid."

"Better safe than sorry I guess." Hermione said with a grim smile.

Two days later they had their first fencing lesson at a place a few blocks from the Granger home. Harry and Hermione were both very enthusiastic about their fencing lesson and they quickly improved over the next few lessons. On the morning of their third fencing lesson the _Daily Prophet_ contained the article about the Weasley family winning a prize drawing and going to Egypt. Harry knew it was only a matter of time before Sirius made his escape. Two days later the _Daily Prophet_ led with a headline about the escape of Sirius Black from the supposedly inescapable Azkaban prison.

Harry hoped that Sirius would be able to track him down at his new address, just as he had tracked Harry to Privet Drive in the original time-line. Harry kept an eye out for Sirius every time he left the house for the next few days. Unfortunately Harry did not see Sirius before his birthday, but there were other issues that still needed to be dealt with, so on the morning of July 31st Harry and the Grangers made the drive into London to go to Gringotts and meet with Amelia Bones.

Amelia met them on the front steps of Gringotts and lead them inside "I've spoken with Bloodclaw already so we can get everything finished quickly." Amelia informed them as a goblin met them just inside the doors and lead them back to Bloodclaw's office.

"Ah Mister Potter, Miss Granger, Madam Bones, what a pleasure to see you again. I went ahead and got everything ready for your business today, so if everyone could take a seat we can begin." Bloodclaw greeted them while gesturing to a number of chairs arranged around his desk. Once everyone was seated Bloodclaw took a small wooden box out of his desk and placed it in front of Harry "This box contains the Potter family ring, if you are able to put it on that will confirm your rightful position as Lord Potter, and all the correct paperwork will be filed with the Ministry automatically."

Harry took the box and opened it to reveal a heavy platinum ring with the Potter family crest, a phoenix with a scroll in one talon and a sword in the other. Harry picked up the ring and placed it on his right ring finger, the ring flashed gold and shrank to fit his finger.

"Excellent, now if you and Miss Granger will drink these," Bloodclaw said placing two vials of pale blue liquid "Then we can move ahead with signing the betrothal."

"What exactly are those potions Senior Accountant Bloodclaw?" Hermione asked while looking suspiciously at the vial in front of her.

"It is a love potion neutralizer. It is Gringotts policy to require that both parties take one before we will agree to witness a betrothal contract" Bloodclaw explained neutrally. Harry and Hermione nodded their understanding before each of them picked up a vial and drank the blue potion. "Good now if you all still wish to go ahead with this we can continue." Bloodclaw produced a copy of the contract and placed it on his desk next to a quill.

David quickly read through the contract to make sure it was the same as the one he had read through at Christmas before signing it. This was enough to alleviate everyone's doubts about the contract and soon everyone had signed in the proper place. Once all the humans present had signed the contract Bloodclaw signed as a witness and the contract flashed gold, this was immediately followed by another flash of gold around Hermione's right hand. When the light faded there on Hermione's ring finger was a smaller lighter version of Harry's ring.

"Good that cover's everything that I was informed of, is there any other business you wish to handle at this time Lord Potter?" Bloodclaw smiled when he saw the ring on Hermione's finger, he had been fairly certain that there would be no problem with the betrothal, but there had always been the possibility that some obscure family rule would prevent the Potter family magic from accepting a betrothal.

"Just a quick trip down to the Potter vault to collect a few things and get some money." Harry said.

Ten minutes later Harry and Hermione walked into the Potter vault. The vault was massive, the walls were lined with a myriad of treasures and artifacts stretching back hundreds of years. Harry let out an impressed whistle "Wow, that's a lot of stuff. Take a look around, see if anything looks useful while I grab the swords and some money." Harry said while walking over to a rack of ornate weapons.

He found the swords easily enough, a pair of elegantly designed blades, thin and functional. The swords were constructed in the style of early smallswords, they were double bladed, which was uncommon in later smallswords, with simple crossguards. The blades were about two and a half feet long and less than an inch wide, they would need to adjust their fencing styles for the swords, but not very much. Harry quickly affixed the scabbard to his belt using the built in sticking charm and went to find Hermione.

"Find anything interesting?" Harry asked as he came up behind Hermione and stuck her sword to her hip.

"A couple of books that might be worth reading, this one is on general magic theory and discusses methods to cast magic without incantations, wand movements, or even a wand. And this one is a self updating book of criminal law, might be useful getting Sirius cleared." Hermione told Harry as they walked out of the vault.

After leaving Gringotts Harry and Hermione made a trip to Madame Malkin's to purchase new robes for school. Instead of the typical black with a Hogwarts crest their robes were a midnight blue with the Potter family crest. As a Lord Harry was allowed to wear family robes instead of the prescribed school robes and as his betrothed Hermione was entitled to the same option. They didn't plan to wear the robes all the time, just enough to make sure that those people who would be paying attention would know that Harry was fully aware of his rights.

Three days after their trip to Gringotts Harry and Hermione were walking home from their fencing lesson when the spotted a large black dog following them. The dog followed them all the way home and when they opened the front door Harry turned to look at the dog and said "You might as well come inside Sirius, we need to talk." Harry had to chuckle at the look of surprise on the dog's face as it walked through the door before turning into his godfather as soon as the door was closed.

"How did you know it was me?" Sirius asked incredulously.

"It's a bit of a long story, for now all you need to know is that I know you are innocent, I know Petigrew was my parents' secret keeper, and I know he's still alive. For now though you need to get yourself cleaned up, we're going to have a meeting now that you've finally shown up and it would be nice if you didn't look like a deranged mass murderer." Harry said smiling.

While Sirius took a shower and got changed Hermione called her parents at work and told them that they would be having company for dinner and that there were some important things they all needed to discuss, and Harry sent a letter to Amelia Bones inviting her and Susan to dinner that evening. Two hours later Harry, Hermione, Susan, Amelia, Jean and David were sitting in the Granger's living room with two empty chairs, while Dobby prepared dinner in the kitchen.

"Now that everyone is here we can get started. Madame Bones if you could pleases leave your wand on the table for the moment I would rally appreciate it." Harry said politely.

"What is this all about Harry?" Asked with some concern as she placed her wand on the table.

"This is about a number of things, but first and foremost it is about seeing justice done. As you have all no doubt noticed we have a couple of empty seats, there are two more people who will be joining us, but they do require some introduction. First is Virgil Hunter," Harry began as Virgil appeared in one of the empty seats "his purpose here will be explained in a little while. Secondly we have Sirius Black." Sirius walked into the living room as his name was spoken and Amelia's hand went straight for where she normally kept her wand, by the time she had remembered that her wand was on the table Hermione had already placed her hand over the wand and Sirius was taking his seat. "Madame Bones I can assure you that Sirius has no intention of harming anyone in this room."

"Harry that man is a wanted fugitive, he murdered thirteen people and betrayed your parents." Amelia said looking at Harry for any signs that he was not acting of his own free will.

"Actually ma'am neither of those things are true." Hermione interjected "Sirius was not the Potters' secret keeper and he didn't cast the spell that killed all those muggles. Peter Petigrew did both of those things before escaping in order to fake his own death. As for him being a fugitive, well Sirius was arrested, detained, and incarcerated under the 1977 'Measures for the Reasonable Enforcement of Law and Order' which were repealed on November the sixth 1981. The measures allowed anyone law enforcement personnel to arrest and detain anyone that was suspected of being a Death Eater without a warrant and to imprison them indefinitely without trial. The legislation that repealed the measures stated that 'Anyone currently held in ministry custody under the aforementioned legislation may continue to be held per the guidelines of that legislation'. It was written that way so that people who had already been imprisoned wouldn't need to be given proper trials, but those that had been released after being arrested under the measures couldn't be picked back up without a warrant. Since Sirius is not 'currently held in ministry custody' he can't be arrested without a proper warrant, and he can't be returned to Azkaban or given the Dementor's Kiss without standing trial."

"As such Sirius Black is currently being granted the sanctuary of House Potter while the Ministry of Magic attempts to illegally abduct and murder him in direct violation of his rights." Harry finished for Hermione.

"Very well, I'll accept your second point, but how could Petigrew have escaped, and how could he have remained hidden all these years?" Amelia asked.

Hermione took out a couple of documents and handed to Amelia "Peter Petigrew along with James Potter and Sirius Black were all animagi, Peter's form was that of a rat. He transformed after cutting off his finger and escaped into the sewer pipes that were exposed by the explosion." Hermione told her.

"So they were all unregistered animagi?" Amelia asked in shock.

"Peter is, James was, but since he is dead he can't be punished for it, but Sirius Black is completely registered, I just filed his registration with the DMLE." Hermione told Amelia with a smirk.

Amelia looked down at the documents she had been handed, they were in fact a completed registration for Sirius Black. "Hermione as soon as you graduate I will gladly give you a job in the prosecutor's office." The girl had just admitted that her 'client' had been committing a crime for at least a decade, but had also managed to undermine any attempt to prosecute him for it.

"Thank you ma'am, but I already have a job as Harry's Chief of Staff, so unless you can afford to beat his salary offer I'm afraid I'll have to decline." Hermione said with a smile.

"And what exactly his Harry's offer?" Amelia asked not yet giving up the hope of hiring such a brilliant legal mind.

"My entire staff budget as a Wizengamot member." Harry stated simply. "But now we must move onto more important things. The main reason why you are all here is that it is time for certain secrets to be revealed. In the year 2000 with the help of Mr. Hunter here a future version of myself sent back his memories so that I would be able to change things." Harry's pronouncement was met with stunned silence. Harry proceeded to tell everyone assembled about the original time-line and bringing Sirius up to date on what had happened since Harry had received the memories.

"So we plan to set things up so that when Voldemort comes back he'll have little to no resources, even less political power and he'll be facing a larger and more competent auror force. We also need to eliminate Dumbledore so that he can't muck up our plans in favor of his 'Greater Good'." Harry finished.

"How can any one person cause so much trouble for everyone." David wondered aloud.

"What you fail to realize David, is that Dumbledore has spent his entire life being told that he is brilliant by everyone who knows him. He has spent so much time listening to people's praise of him that he has come to believe that he is completely incapable of making mistakes, but being human mistakes are inevitable, and even before Dumbledore started playing international politics he had a tendency to make massive and catastrophic mistakes." Virgil explained, despite his importance to the entire situation he had only made a few minor comments during Harry's story.

"We are talking about a man who can take a lot of the blame for World War Two, Dad." Hermione pointed out. Seeing the disbelieving look on her parents' faces she continued "The summer after Dumbledore graduated from Hogwarts he became friends with a man named Gellert Grindlewald, you would know of him as Heinrich Himmler, he was a wizard, and the only reason Hitler succeeded as long as he did." At this Amelia, Sirius, and Susan adopted similar expressions to David and Jean "Grindlewald was the nephew of a neighbor and spent the summer after he had been kicked out of Durmstrang for doing some questionable experiments with the dark arts."

"Which is something akin to being kicked out of the military for violent tendencies, it does not say anything good about the person." Harry interrupted.

"So anyways Dumbledore spends a lot of time with a man who is clearly extremely dark whose life goal is to conquer his own little chunk of Bavaria and set up his own magical government and Dumbledore turns him onto the idea of using the Elder Wand, and taking over both the magical and muggle worlds. He even helps him draw up plans and ways to sell it to potential followers and opponents. Then they have a falling out in which Dumbledore's little sister dies and they don't speak to each other ever again. Skip forward 30 years and there's dear old Gellert drawing a lot of international scrutiny by starting up the exact same plans that Dumbledore helped him make, but does Dumbledore tell everyone what is coming next? No he stays out of it for years, lets Grindlewald almost win, then waits until he's all but defeated and then finally steps in to beat Grindlewald before imprisoning him and not letting anyone speak to him ever again."

"End result, millions die so Dumbledore doesn't have to admit that he turned a few third rate thugs and a second rate wizard into a force that conquered most of Europe, somehow he even comes out of it with the most powerful wand in the world and a massive boost to his reputation for beating his friend." Harry finished.

"So now what?" Susan finally asked.

"For now we get the search for Sirius tuned down until they either drop all charges or offer him a trial, then once Sirius is cleared he uses his position as head of house to annul the marriages of Narcissa Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange, and then to call in every loan given to a Death Eater family. All told it will nearly bankrupt every single one of Voldemort's money sources." Harry laid out the beginning of the plan.

After dinner had been served as everyone was leaving Susan pulled Harry and Hermione aside "Harry, is my Aunt the only reason why you and Hermione became my friends? I understand if that's the case, I just wish that you had trusted me."

"Susan we do trust you, if we didn't you wouldn't know about this even now. I became your friend because you and Hermione became friends so easily, and Hermione didn't know about all of this until after we started first year. You are one of the best friends I have ever had. Besides the original plan involved an anonymous letter to the DMLE informing them of Sirius' innocence and Sirius offering to turn himself in if he would be guaranteed a fair trial." Harry reassured his friend before both he and Hermione pulled her into a hug.


	17. The Dog Days of Summer

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Harry Potter and the Master of Time

Chapter 17: The Dog Days of Summer

Harry was getting tired of waiting, what was supposed to be a relatively straight forward session of the Wizengamot had quickly gone off course. At Harry's prompting Amelia had informed the assembled members, including Minister Fudge, that due to the circumstances under which Sirius Black had been arrested the ministry had no legal right to arrest without new charges being drawn up. Before Fudge could demand that charges be brought against Sirius many members of the Wizengamot began questioning how the order to "kiss on sight" had been given to the dementors when the ministry couldn't legally arrest Sirius, let alone execute him. Many of Fudge's political opponents saw this as an opportunity to call into question many of Fudge's actions as Minister. Harry quickly came to the conclusion that Fudge had never made a good decision in his life, his political strategy was apparently to take the largest bribe on offer to make a decision, and then use the money he had received to purchase as many votes as he needed when the inevitable vote of no confidence came around.

Harry was sitting in his assigned place as Lord Potter, despite the fact that he could not vote in the body he was still allowed to take his seat. Next to him was Hermione in the seat generally reserved for the Lady Potter. Strictly speaking Hermione should not have been allowed to sit there, but the seat's designation was purely traditional and could technically be given to anyone who was a member of the family, and as his betrothed she qualified. Normally she would be seated on Harry's other side in the adviser's seat due to her status as Harry's chief of staff, but that seat was currently being used by Sirius, who was hiding under Harry's invisibility cloak.

Finally after an hour of people attacking Fudge's character and job performance a vote of no confidence was called for. The vote was taken immediately and Fudge won by a margin of seven votes. Fudge then called for charges to be brought against Sirius Black and the vote passed by a significant margin. Fudge then demanded that Sirius be tried in absentia immediately, this was exactly what Harry had been waiting for.

"Objection!" Harry called, standing from his seat.

"Mister Potter, you do not have the right to raise an objection in this assembly." Dumbledore said calmly from his seat as the Chief Warlock.

"It's Lord Potter, Chief Warlock, and I have every right to raise an objection, while I may not be able to cast my votes as long as I hold votes I have every right object and to take the floor. I am appalled that the Minister could even consider trying a suspect in absentia before an arrest warrant is even issued." Harry responded staring directly at Dumbledore.

"Very well, I call for a vote to issue a warrant for the arrest of Sirius Black on thirteen charges of murder." Fudge continued looking a little dejected. The vote carried easily.

"I believe it is still the policy for the Ministry to offer a reward of 50,000 galleons for information on the whereabouts of wanted criminals?" Harry asked and was informed that this was accurate. "Very well then, I have information on the whereabouts of Sirius Black, he is sitting right here." Harry pulled the invisibility cloak off of Sirius with a flourish.

"Aurors arrest that man!" Fudge nearly screamed, as soon as aurors had placed cuffs on Sirius Fudge started barking out orders for Sirius to be taken for questioning.

"Minister, you were willing to hold the trial today not five minutes ago, so if Mister Black is willing we should hold the trial immediately, after all the Ministry has had a dozen years to put its case together." Someone called from among the assembled members. Harry breathed a sigh of relief, there had been no guarantee that anyone would force the issue to make Fudge look even worse, and the alternative would have been for Amelia to push for the trial to be held immediately, and that would have stunk of collusion.

"I have no problem with that, in fact I will gladly submit to questioning under veritaserum." Sirius called from where he was being manhandled toward the door by two angry looking aurors. And there was the clincher, Fudge couldn't back out now with a fully cooperative defendant, and there was no legal basis for denying veritaserum questioning.

"Very well let's just get this over with!" Fudge barked. The trial went quickly after that. It immediately became apparent that the Ministry had not bothered to collect any evidence and had in fact obliviated every witness before even taking official statements. It came out that Fudge had been in charge of the crime scene and had used the notoriety of the case to push himself forward in the Ministry, and apparently he had been the one to make most of the serious errors in handling the case. When Sirius took the stand he was given a dose of veritaserum and asked a long series of control questions to make sure the truth serum was working before they began asking him about the events that had lead to his arrest.

"As all available evidence has been presented it is now time for us to come to a verdict." Dumbledore finally called out. The votes were cast and Sirius was cleared by an almost unanimous vote. Sirius was immediately released and quickly made his way to the official seat of Lord Black. Over the next few minutes the Wizengamot voted to bring charges against Peter Petigrew and an arrest warrant was issued. "I believe that is all the business for today so..."

"Actually Chief Warlock I would like to take this opportunity to officially take my seat as Lord Black." Sirius called out from across the room, cutting off Dumbledore's attempt to close the meeting before things could get further out of hand.

"Of course, the Wizengamot officially recognizes the right of Sirius Orion Black to take the seat of Lord of the Ancient and Noble House of Black." Dumbledore stated solemnly. "Now as there is..." Sirius cleared his throat loudly "Yes Lord Black?"

"Based on facts that have come to light today House Black calls for an investigation in to the past actions of Minister Cornelius Fudge to begin immediately. It is clear that Minister Fudge has made a habit of cutting corners and blatantly ignoring the law, and I for one find it hard to believe that these two events are isolated incidents."

As Sirius finished his statement Harry stood from his seat "House Potter seconds the motion, and grants proxy on this vote to Lord Black." It had turned out after extensive research that the only difference between Harry and every other member of the Wizengamot was that he could not be the one to cast the votes held by his House, every other right held along with those votes was completely t his disposal. Fudge's face was frozen in a mask of terror, with the addition of the four votes held by House Potter and the two held by House Black, assuming the voting went the same way as for the vote of no confidence he would only win by a single vote, if even one member had been swayed by the evidence of the trial, or had been unwilling to commit to ousting the Minister, but had serious doubts about his actions, he would be doomed.

"The motion has been seconded, all those in favor" Dumbledore said with a resigned look on his face. The vote came down against Fudge by a margin of twelve votes, better by far than Harry had hoped for. "Madame Bones as head of the Department for Magical Law Enforcement you are hereby mandated to begin a full investigation into the past actions of Cornelius Oswald Fudge, and to present all findings of said investigation before this body at the earliest possible time."

The rest of the summer passed quickly after Sirius was cleared. There were only three weeks left of summer not much to do, Harry and Hermione continued their fencing lessons, which they now supplemented with practice sessions with the swords they would be carrying with them everywhere. With Sirius's help they were actually able to fence using their swords by putting a temporary shield that was accompanied by a mild stinging charm along the blades. Sirius also disillusioned the swords so they could carry them all the time to get used to the weight.

Two days after Sirius had been cleared a letter arrived for Sirius from Remus Lupin, "Apparently he wants to talk, apologize for believing that I was a traitor. He also wants to know if I'd like to join him in a rat hunt as soon as he's available." Sirius said looking up from the letter he was reading at the Granger breakfast table. Sirius had been staying at the Granger home since the trial in order to put off returning to 12 Grimauld Place. Since Harry was taking up what had once been the guest room Sirius had to take the couch, though he had jokingly suggested that Harry could move into Hermione's room, too which neither teen had raised an objection.

"Is he still going to be teaching Defense this year?" Harry asked.

"Yeah, says he's doing it as a favor to Dumbledore. Seems Dumbledore asked him the day I escaped so that he would be able to keep you safe from me. Says he wishes he could get out of it, but it's already to late for him to back out." Sirius said looking through the letter.

"About as much as we suspected." Hermione said noncommittally. Remus had been a touchy subject between Harry, Hermione, and Sirius. Sirius wanted to bring his old friend in, while Hermione had been concerned that Remus's loyalty to Dumbledore would leave him conflicted and easily manipulated, and Harry was concerned that Remus's fatalistic attitude would only be reinforced by being left in the dark. In the end they compromised and agreed to feel Remus out and, if everyone was agreed, tell him everything, otherwise they would spend the year trying to bring him around.

"Might as well invite him over though, get everyone introduced. Who knows, we might get a better idea of where he stands." Harry finally said after a few moments of contemplation. With everyone's agreement Sirius sent a letter to Remus inviting him over to the Granger house the next day.

When Remus arrived the next day he was introduced to Harry and Hermione, and was shocked to discover that Harry and Hermione were betrothed. He was even more shocked to find out why they had become betrothed. "How could Dumbledore do something like that? He's done so much good, how could he go and try something so despicable." Remus asked as he flopped down into a chair.

"Dumbledore has done a lot of questionable things when it comes to Harry. First he leaves Harry with the Dursleys," Hermione started calmly, but Remus's face still paled at the mention of Harry growing up with the Dursleys "then he apparently made a habit of protecting the Dursleys from investigation, and when they were finally tried he pulled every string to keep them safe from the Wizengamot. Then when Harry finally comes to Hogwarts he puts a fake Philosopher's Stone to draw Voldemort to the school. Even after being called out on that he still tries to control Harry and force him back to the Dursleys. Then he tries to use our friends to screw up Harry's life, whatever good he may have done he has completely used up as far as I'm concerned." Hermione was almost shouting by the time she had finished listing Dumbledore's wrong-doings.

"Merlin," Remus finally muttered to himself, his face having gone far paler than was probably healthy "How could he do that, all these years he told me you were safe Harry, and all this time he's been lying to me and playing god with your life. If there is anything I can do to make up for all the years I let Dumbledore ruin your life I will do it."

Harry shared a significant glance with Hermione and Sirius, both nodded to him. "Remus, we have some things we need to tell you."

Remus took the news of Harry's knowledge of future events rather well, the news of what those events included he took slightly less well. The full story made Remus even more furious with Dumbledore, and further determined to help Harry however he could. They spent the rest of the afternoon talking about Harry and Hermione's experiences and friends at Hogwarts and then was introduced to Jean and David before they all went out to a local restaurant for dinner.

As Remus was leaving for the evening Harry called out to him "Remus, there's one last thing I need to tell you. No matter what others might want you to think, being a werewolf doesn't mean you don't deserve to be happy. So go out, find some nice girl who doesn't care that you're a werewolf, and have loads of kids."

Harry and Hermione didn't get a chance to talk to Susan again during the summer, but from the letters they had exchanged with her she made sure they knew that she understood why she hadn't been told everything, and that she would always be their friend. They got a few letters from the Weasley twins in Egypt, and in one they mentioned that Scabbers had run off and that Ron thought that the twins were responsible for the disappearance of his pet. The general thought was that since Petigrew had made a run for it in Egypt he wouldn't bother to return to England before seeking out Voldemort in Romania.

Sirius ended up staying the whole summer at the Granger house. Hermione was very interested to hear what Sirius had to say about the new classes they would be taking beginning in September. Harry could tell her what to expect from Care of Magical Creatures, but he had no real knowledge of Arithmancy or Ancient Runes. Sirius had taken Ancient Runes and told Harry and Hermione all about the applications for the class, from warding to enchanting. Unfortunately he had never taken Arithmancy and could only really tell them what Remus and Lily had to say about it, for the most part the first few months of Arithmancy were spent learning how to do the advanced mathematics involved, which were apparently equivalent to mid-level algebra, then they would learn how to analyze spell formulas to understand how they worked, and eventually they would begin to write spell formulas of their own.

Toward the end of August they made the trip to Diagon Alley to pick up their school supplies. For the most part they only needed to purchase new books, including one copy of the _Monster Book of Monsters_ as Hagrid had again sent Harry a copy for his birthday, though the book was much easier to handle knowing how to get it to stop biting. They also needed to pick up some basic rune carving kits along with replenishing their potion supplies. The last stop they made was to the magical pet shop where Harry reintroduced Hermione to an old friend.

"Hermione, meet Crookshanks." Harry said handing the ginger half-kneazle to Hermione. Crookshanks had been surprisingly docile when Harry bought him from the pet shop, and Harry suspected it was because Ron was not there. Hermione and Crookshanks got along just like they always had and Harry was glad he had taken the time to get Crookshanks. Hermione also made sure to tell Harry how thankful she was.

Eventually September first came around and Harry and Hermione boarded the Hogwarts Express and found an empty compartment. As eleven o'clock approached they were joined by Susan, and then later the Twins and Lee Jordan. A half hour into the train ride they were joined by Neville and Luna. The conversation in the cabin ranged from stories about their summers to the upcoming school year. Luna was evasive about answering any questions pertaining to school and after much coaxing by everyone in the compartment she had admitted to the fact that her housemates regularly tormented her. Everyone agreed that they would need to teach the Ravenclaws a lesson which really surprised Luna. When they neared Hogsmead Station they all changed into their robes, but Harry and Hermione put on their Potter robes rather than their black Hogwarts robes and made sure their swords were clearly visible before getting off of the train.

**A/N: Hope you all enjoyed, Third year will probably be only one or two chapters at most but it might take me a little while to get it written.**


End file.
