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2019-08-08
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2021-02-20
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6/?
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Harry Potter and the Rabbit in the Weeds

Summary:

“So,” Hermione begins, with a tone that belies her nervousness ever so slightly, “it’s 1994. As far as the three of us know, we are the only ones from the future. Our present.”

“It’s madness,” Ron says.

“Bonkers,” Harry adds.

Or, the Golden Trio find themselves with the chance to make things right.

Temporary Hiatus

Chapter 1: Chapter One: The Untimely and Unexpected Traipse Through Time

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Harry Potter, all of seventeen and aching heart, stands alone. It’s an empty courtyard, save for him, the ash of deadened fires, and his prophesied enemy, who is most certainly dead. It is very quiet and a quiet of the unnatural sort. He hears the thump of Voldemort’s corpse distantly, as if muffled by cotton stuffed in his ears. He hears the thump thump of his own heart, the thump thump thump of footsteps, the thump thump thump thump of beating wings, of harsh winds, of —

Time slows. The world grows fuzzy at the edges, a haziness threatening to push in, to take over. No, he thinks to himself strongly. No. Stay back. He trips over his own feet but stumbles forward. In a single step it seems he has reached Tom. He near falls to his knees. The ground is rough, and the gravel bites his skin warningly. Tom’s eyes are open. Red, wide with disbelief, with pain. Harry reaches out a hand and brings Tom’s eyelids down. His skin feels very thin, papery almost, and warm still. Very warm. Hot even, like the Killing Curse had burned its way through the now very dead and very mortal man.

The fuzziness hasn’t abated. It pulls at him, urgent. If he could close his eyes for just a minute… No. No. Stay awake. But the thought of rest is tempting. His eyes droop.

A hand appears on his shoulder, and abruptly the world spins into clarity. It is a loud reality. Come to think of it, maybe Harry did prefer the muted awareness. This is near too much. 

It’s Ron. His best friend’s hand slides off of him, and Harry finds himself missing the warmth and the clarity, so he takes Ron’s hand in his. Hermione is there too, so Harry takes hers, finding that the pair were already linking their fingers. They stand together. But still it doesn’t help.

Harry drinks them in. Dusty, gleaming with sweat, red from exertion, pale from fear, smiling with relief, Harry loves them — but he doesn’t feel the same sweet relief he craved, craves. Something is not right. A chill sets in.

The wind picks up, scattering ash into the air. In the near distance there is cheering, but soon the people leave too, perhaps seeing that the trio needed it, perhaps seeing to their dead. Perhaps they did not want to be near the body. The fires have been put out, but the sky over them remains a dampened grey. 

Harry sees Hermione speaking, but for some reason, he can’t hear her. He can hear the scruff of footsteps, the breaking stone, the laboring pants of the injured, the cries of the survivors, but he cannot hear Hermione. Ron is waving their joined hands at him, in front of his face. 

What? Harry asks. He feels his mouth move around the word, but no sound emerges. His best friends begin to look frantic. Why can’t he hear them? Ron grabs his shoulders, shakes him lightly, but that brings the fuzziness back. He wants to lay down. Harry bends his knees as if to squat, but the two hold him up with shaking limbs. They attempt to drag him forward. Towards the Great Hall, Harry thinks. But no, he is where he needs to be. He plants his feet and stays. No, he says to them again, but his mouth his dry. 

The world goes dark for a second before it’s wretched back into place. Ron and Hermione look pale and faint, blurred somehow, like figments from a dream. He reaches for them, but his hands go through them like water. He tries again and latches onto them tight. They might turn to ash in his hands otherwise.

For some reason, Harry still doesn’t feel anxious or worried. Maybe I’m dying, he thinks. 

Harry, they are saying.

Harry Harry Harry —

“Harry!”

“Harry Potter.” 

He opens his eyes. 

He’s sitting in the Great Hall, and all eyes are turned towards him. He feels sluggish and hot, like all the atoms in his body are vibrating into place. He might pass out, he might collapse on the floor. How did he get to the Great Hall? Where is Voldemort —

“Harry!” Hermione hisses, and nudges him. 

“Harry Potter,” Dumbledore repeats. Wait — Dumbledore? His head hurts terribly. 

Ron is pale next to him, and he’s looking at him with wide eyes. Hermione grips him strongly and forces him to stand, and Harry stands, confused. This feels eerily like deja-vu. Is he dreaming? Merlin, he had forgotten how young they all were. He wants to linger, to stare a little longer, and says, “I don’t understand,” but Hermione gestures with her head towards the front with a look in her eyes that promises a talking to, and unsteadily, Harry makes his way towards the dream Dumbledore, who gives him a long searching look. Something strange is going on, and Harry can’t remember if that was how Hermione and Ron acted in reality. 

“Did they need us back out there?” Cedric asks when he sees him, and boy, Harry must really be dead or in his head again. He must look crazy, just staring at Cedric. At Fleur, who looks so young? And at Krum, who looks just as grave as he did last Harry saw him about a year ago.

Mr. Crouch goes off about rules, and Madame Maxine and Professor Karkaroff are touting about the injustice of it all, but Dumbledore leans into him close. 

“Did you put your name in the Goblet of Fire, Harry?” he asks. 

This is what this is about? Harry is looking into Dumbledore’s eyes with a startling amount of emotion piling in the back of his throat. It was not so long ago that he held a conversation with this man on the other side of the train station. Blinking, he looks away to focus. He forces himself to speak. “I —”

“Very obviously he didn’t,” Moody growls. “I say it’s a conspiracy. Too many nasty shadows lurking in the castle, wouldn’t you say, eh Igor?” 

This is startlingly real, and Harry can’t exactly remember how it all went down, but it ends the same. He is entered into the Triwizard Tournament. He is swept out of the room, a room full of unhappy faces, and if Harry didn’t feel so unhappy himself, he would laugh at all the frowning, as if this is the greatest cause of concern at present. 

“So we’re playing against each other again!” Harry gets the feeling Cedric had noticed the rather dull expression on his face and was attempting to add some cheer. 

“It seems so,” Harry says, thoughts whirring. He attempts to sear the face of the Hufflepuff seeker into his brain; the soft hair, the warm flush of life in his cheeks, the curve of his nose. The last Harry had seen of him was his cold and grey body, lifeless and stiff beneath him as he brought him back to Hogwarts grounds. Eyes open. 

“How’d you do it?” Cedric asks him as they walk away. 

“Cedric,” Harry says. “I didn’t do it.” He doesn’t know Cedric well enough to make him listen, but his gut feeling is that this here, for some reason, is important. Cedric is important. Obviously, he knows that, but there is another layer of mystery here that he can’t yet address or put a name to. “You probably don’t believe me, and I won’t overstate the point,” he continues, voice feeling odd, tongue like sandpaper in his mouth, “but I really didn’t.” There’s not much else he can say at the moment. Trying to prove that he has all the fame and attention he could ask for seems self-explanatory and unnecessary, and if Cedric is as smart as Harry remembers, then he should realize for himself that Harry has no want nor need for the prizes of the Triwizard Tournament. Either way, something in his voice makes Cedric stop walking and look at him in the face. Lips pressed together, he looks at Harry, who doesn’t say anything more. 

Cedric’s eyes are a striking grey. Like starlight, Harry knows, when the light filters through them, like rings of liquid silver. His face is very friendly, but his eyes are sharp. Cedric was not champion for his grades or handsomeness or friendliness alone. There was a wit about him that perhaps Harry was too young to catch before. The seventeen year old before him knows nothing of his future, and that makes Harry sad and relieved at once. 

“Good night,” Cedric finally says not unpleasantly, but not wholly friendly either. 

They part at the stairwell junction, and while Gryffindor common room is just on the third floor, Harry’s instincts lead him up and up to the seventh, not quite ready to face the crowd and needing answers he knows await him should he look. He runs his hands along the walls, letting the cool stone calm his head. Even if this is all a dream, a standing Hogwarts in all her quiet glory in the moonlight is able to steady the rapid thump of his heart. 

He sees their shadows first, illuminated by the flickering torches on the walls. He rounds the corner and comes face to face with Ron and Hermione, who both look equally as perplexed and unhappy as he feels. There is no anger present. Just confusion and worry and a healthy dose of fear. Before he even reaches them, Harry can tell that these are not the fourteen year olds of 1994. These are his Ron and his Hermione, from the time he is from. Perhaps this is not in his head after all. 

He takes the time to study them. Ron, without scars lacing up his arms. Hermione, without her forearm proudly bearing her scarlet letters. Both of their faces so young and not yet having lost their healthy glow of being well-fed and fearing death and failure at every step.

“Harry,” Ron says into the silence, and his voice holds just the amount of desperation to make his insides twist. “How — how are you feeling?”

Harry breathes deep and tries to pinpoint it exactly. Something led them here, to this strange dream. He wonders what kick will wake them. “Like my head’s full of butterbeer,” he says slowly. “The world’s covered in foam.” It isn’t quite right, but will do. 

Hermione cracks an exasperated smile and paces the hall — her body language enough to remind them that the walls have ears. The door that forms takes the familiar shape of the Burrow. Heart burning but slowing all the same, Ron opens the worn wood to the warmth of the sitting room. The lumpy but comfortable chairs and loveseat (even the one with the tendency to bite the arse of whomever sits on the middle cushion) are there, arranged around the fireplace, which smokes lightly. They all sit, avoiding the unfortunate loveseat, close enough that if any one of them moved their knees, they would touch. 

Glancing to check that the door firmly shut behind them, Hermione goes and adds the standard wards they used when Horcrux hunting. “So,” she begins, with a tone that belies her nervousness ever so slightly, “it’s 1994. As far as the three of us know, we are the only ones from the future. Our present.”

“It’s madness,” Ron says.

“Bonkers,” Harry adds, but neither of them are particularly enthused.

“Never heard of anything like it,” the redhead continues with a frown. “We don’t even know the cause.”

“Ron and I talked about it a bit while you went in,” Hermione explains. “We eliminated the possibility of a curse or hex hitting any of us. The only circumstances of note are two things: the first being the death of You-Know-Who, and the second being you, Harry.”

“Me? What did I do?”

Hermione rolls her eyes, but it’s fond. “Most things happen because of you, Harry. For some reason, the universe tends towards chaos around you.”

Harry grimaces, but both Ron and Hermione look as if they have long accepted this fact. “So —”

“So we’re stuck here for an unforeseeable amount of time,” Ron says. “Wherever this is.”

“Whenever, you mean.”

“Er, right.”

“Unless it is a dream or vision,” says Harry. “I’ve had weirder maybe, I think.”

Ron squints at him. “Weirder maybe, you think.”

He shrugs. “Possibly.” His companions crack a smile. “But I admit the two of you aren’t normally this present nor sentient in dreams, and while my visions are real, this feels like an odd thing to see, considering the circumstances.”

They all pause. “You-Know-Who isn’t dead,” Ron puts in, almost hesitant, a topic they haven’t wanted to breach, but a necessary one. It’s 1994, the year Voldemort becomes the very opposite of deceased. 

They take a moment to think about it. Hermione laughs, but it isn’t from any light humor. “Everything that happened…” Gone is the unspoken word. Her face morphs into one of terrible loss, but she presses on. “But if we do assume that this isn’t some dream and is, in fact, our new reality, regardless of how we got here, everything we’ve checked so far is exactly the same as when we first lived it. That means that we’ve got a chance to make things right, and we know where the Horcruxes are and how to destroy them. We can finish this before the war breaks out.”

“But if we change too many things,” Ron interjects, “we lose our advantage. We lose our foresight because then everything is different.”

Hermione looks grave, an expression that shouldn’t have been so commonplace on such a young teenager, Harry thinks, but this life has not been kind to any of them. “Yes. Which means we have to be careful about everything we do and which changes we make.”

“Cedric lives,” Harry says. “That’s the first big one, I think. Cedric’s got to live. And then Sirius. Him too.”

“Obviously,” Hermione says rather gently. “Those are definite changes we should aim for. But we also have to keep in mind that the smallest changes make differences too. For example, none of us are in the common room right now.” 

“Past curfew too, I’d wager,” Ron laughs lightly, taking a glance at the clock above the mantelpiece. “Getting in trouble is one change that’s the same as our usual.” It is, in fact, past curfew, and they know their house mates are most likely wondering where they are, exuberant or upset or jealous, but with most of what needed to be said immediately, out of the way, they lapse into quietude once more. 

“We should also look into getting back,” Hermione says. “I don’t know how or even where to begin, but… It’s worth a shot.”

“A part of me, a big part,” Ron starts hesitantly, “is glad to be here. For Merlin’s sake, we haven’t been more prepared ever, and maybe this way, we can prevent things like. Like —”

Like Fred. Like Colin. Like Tonks. Like Remus. Like so many people. Like everyone who suffered.

The pain and exhaustion finally seems to sink in. Hermione breaks first, and she begins to sob. Ron wraps an arm around her tight, and Harry circles his arms around them both as they shake. There’s some empty space in his head, Harry thinks, where all his thoughts are just rattling around with no rhyme or reason. Angry, at fate for throwing them all back here, when they had only just accomplished the impossible, angry for all the lives lost, for all the fighting, for all the unfairness in the world, for the fight they have ahead of them. 

“I’m glad it’s the three of us,” Harry confides, when he is able to blink his tears away. They separate, but only just; the sit without space between them. 

“Always gonna be us,” Ron says, and it’s both a statement and a promise. 

“Oh this would be unbearable if any of us had come alone,” Hermione says about a possibility Harry had been avoiding thinking about. Had he not grabbed them, would he be here alone? Had he not grabbed them, would they have stayed and lived out life happily? Without him? Where even are they? How can this happen? Did Harry doom them to suffering by bringing them with him? “I love you both.”

Harry and Ron both smile. His best mates, here with him. A warm feeling bursts in his chest, and he nearly feels weepy again. Ron takes Hermione’s hand, and they all sit. “We love you too, `Mione,” Ron says strongly. 

When the fire begins to die down around one in the morning, they agree to return to the common room. Rather than trek down the staircases, and with the knowledge that this room can connect to real places, Hermione requests that they be dropped off right at the Fat Lady, and the room acquiesces without complaint. The Fat Lady harrumphs at them but lets them in without trouble. The common room lights are dim, and only a few straggler students are up, and they all stare when they walk in. 

Neville is one of those awake. He snaps his book shut and goes over to them with a false cheer, thankfully before any others can accost them. “Hey guys,” he says, stumbling over his words to make it sound easy. “Out late, huh?” He looks very nervous, and more than a little curious, but he pushes cheer into his voice.

Suddenly grateful for Neville and his silent strength and endurance and friendship all these years, grateful for who he will grow to be, Harry wants to cherish all these moments with the boy who still trips over himself and has the time to carefully tend to his plants. So, he smiles with all the fondness he can muster. “Well, it’s been a bit of a shocking night,” he admits. 

Hermione shakes her head, but bids them all goodnight, a see you at breakfast, and a hug each, even one for Neville, who is a bit stunned for a bit about it. She holds Ron for just a second tighter, and Harry wonders what they will do, now that they are all of fourteen and, by all rights, children. Then, Harry wonders about Ginny, and remembers that she is now thirteen and actually thirteen. Not like Harry who is now not actually fourteen. He grimaces. He puts those thoughts away. 

“If you wanna talk about it,” Neville says, shifting uncomfortably as they make their way to their dorm. “I mean, I know you have each other but —” He struggles. 

“Thanks, Nev,” Harry says. “Really. I really mean it.”

The three boys stop before the door. “You… didn’t do it, did you?” Neville wonders, half question half answer. 

“You kidding?” Ron laughs. “Harry could live in the middle of the mountains and trouble would find him.” Neville smiles at that, and when they enter their room, it’s dark, and the curtains to Dean and Seamus’s beds are thankfully drawn, sparing them the noise of excitement and envy.

Sleep evades Harry. He dresses into pajamas and listens to the rustling of sheets that eventually still, to the deep breaths and snores of the boys who he once roomed with. He feels the soft sheets beneath his hands and regrets not appreciating it past being grateful it wasn’t Privet Drive. At that thought, he grimaces, not enjoying the reminder that he must return there when summer begins. He thinks of Dudley, who, last he saw, had offered his hand. Maybe not a lost cause. But also not his responsibility on top of all he has to do. 

Dean sniffs loudly in the dark, and Harry fingers his wand absently. The silky cloth of his invisibility cloak rests under his pillow. He’s tempted to slip it on and go out, just to sit by the fire, or maybe take a small walk. But knowing the stress he will have to face tomorrow, he resists and makes a valiant attempt to meditate and clear his mind. 

It’s clear meditation isn’t working when the images of the battle keep cropping up unbidden to his mind. One step towards the end, only to find himself back at the beginning. He sighs. 

Somewhere close to three, listening to the gentle rustling of Neville’s plants by the window, Harry drifts off to sleep, exhausted, and half wishing he’d wake up next to the cold and deceased body of Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Notes:

Thanks for reading! Next chapter hopefully soon!

Edit: sorry lol that was not soon at all