Three Times Seven – Part 2 – Keny972

Reading Time:
19 Minutes

The second Harry crossed the boundary of Hogwarts’ wards, he Apparated directly to the back of the Leaky Cauldron.

From there, instead of tapping the code for Diagon Alley (three up and two across), he tapped the one for Vertic Alley (two up and three across), which was less known than its larger neighbour, especially among the Muggle-raised and schoolchildren, but ideal for any and all stationery needs.

Sure, he could have gone to Scribbulus and Amanuensis in Diagon, but he needed high-end parchment for the letters to both Lord Greengrass and Arcturus Black, and neither man would have looked twice at any second-tier parchment bought at Scribbulus. The ink Filius had said Harry needed for the spell was also best acquired at Vertic’s Calamus & Charta.

He quickly checked the date on a Daily Prophet littering the street, and he could feel the tension leave his shoulders at the sight of it: 27th September 1986. It had worked, exactly as they had planned, with twenty-one years travelled to the day. Harry had not doubted Filius’s work, but seeing was believing, after all, and as far as they were aware, such a large leap in such a fashion had never been attempted before.

Of course, he did not have the time to stop just because he was relieved, or because it was the first time in years that he had been surrounded by so many people and so much noise that it was almost deafening.

Everywhere he looked, magic was simply being used, carelessly and abundantly, for floating parcels, charmed shop signs, and children’s sweets that hopped out of their hands, as though there were no end to it, and somewhere beneath the tension, Harry felt the ache of remembering that there had once been a world where there was not.

So, once he had checked the date, and ignoring how tense the crowd was making him, he moved on and quickly made his way to Calamus and Charta.

The moment he entered, a somewhat plump witch with bright blond hair streaked with red welcomed him. “Hello, sir, and good afternoon. Welcome to Calamus and Charta. How may we be of assistance today?”

Well, there went his guilt-free conscience. He had hoped that, Charta being a shop for a wealthier clientele, his overall attire (dragon-skin trousers and a robe in sturdy material, cut in a somewhat modern style reminiscent of a Muggle waistcoat on top and flaring past the base) would have made whoever worked there treat him less nicely than was polite. Not that Harry wanted to be treated like garbage or anything, but it certainly would have made defrauding them less guilt-inducing. As it was, he and the others had debated at length whether he should try withdrawing actual 1986 money from Gringotts and risk even more scrutiny, or defraud a few merchants of very little money as the one he brought would disappear with him. In the end they had decided that, in this case, that the end justified the means.

Did knowing he was doing so to save their hide make him feel better? Not really, but things were as they were, and there was not much he could do about it.

“Hello, madam, I am looking for parchment for my correspondence. In the course of my work, I sometimes find myself needing to notify people likely to sit on Wizengamot sessions and the like. Not much, but I do need the parchment to be up to snuff, if you please. I have been told this would be the best place to acquire it.”

She smiled at him, seemingly amused but polite. “Oh my, you have indeed come to the right place, dear. Please, this way.” She showed him to a veritable wall of parchment. “I’d say you don’t need to ruin yourself just for parchment. Vellum would be wasted on correspondence, I think, so I would go for the middle of the road, and this hippogriff-hide parchment would work well for your purpose. Or perhaps you could try this one, made without any animal at all? It has become more and more popular among our younger clientele.”

Harry slowly shook his head. “I think most of my letters will be addressed to the older crowd for now, so I’ll take a dozen sheets of the hippogriff one, please. And if you sell in bulk, I could also use about three hundred sheets of something less high-end, your choice, madam. It’s for a manuscript, so I don’t need anything specific.”

She nodded. “Of course, dear.” She bundled up his purchase and added what looked to be a large packet of plant-based parchment, then asked, “Anything else?”

Harry nodded reluctantly, less and less disposed to all but steal from her, though he did not have much of a choice, and perhaps he could ask Amelia Bones to reimburse her in his stead later. “Yes, I need southern magical oak ink, as magically neutral as you have.”

She brightened at that. “Oh, preparing some heavy charmwork, are we? I’ve got just the thing. Wait a moment, dear.”

She left him standing there as she went to the back to look for the ink, and it was then that Harry noticed a few other customers giving him sidelong looks. Why couldn’t she have looked at him the way they were? He had no idea. Those holier-than-thou purebloods had the right idea, madam, really!

He held back a sigh and ignored them, and in less than a minute she was back. “There you are, dear. I forgot to ask how much you needed, but for such purchases our customers generally require at least a couple of ounces, so that’s what I measured. Would that do?”

Harry nodded. “Yes, thank you, madam. You’ve been a godsend.”

She blushed, honest-to-Merlin blushed, and swatted his arm, and Harry wondered whether she was flirting. “Think nothing of it, dear. Let’s ring you up, eh?”

He followed her to the till and absently asked for an invoice as well.

“Of course, dear. That’ll be a total of sixteen Galleons and thirteen Sickles.”

Harry quickly handed her the money, his guilt growing as he did, then gathered up both his purchases and the invoice. He kept telling himself it was for the best as he waved goodbye and made his way to the photography shop Dennis had recommended, ready to steal some more from the good people of 1986.

Those purchases would normally have been his most active undertaking of the first seven hours, and… bloody hell!

He knew he had forgotten something. He quickly retreated into a side alley and, with a quick swish and flick of his wand, cast the spell Filius had invented for this very purpose, Ter septem horae numerandae. 

A slight bout of desorientation followed, then a countdown of the twenty-one hours he had been granted settled into the corner of his vision, unobtrusive and visible to no one but himself, and because Filius had woven it to draw on the ritual’s own magic rather than on any ordinary clock, it already knew exactly how much of that time had been spent, which spared him the arithmetic he would otherwise have needed and simply did not have the time for.

Once that was done, he added the accompanying spell, which placed a second countdown beneath the first, tracking the seven hours of the current window, and this one was already thirty-eight minutes down from its total.

That done, he continued on his way to Obscura’s Optical Oddities, which, according to Dennis, had opened in the late sixties and so should do for his purpose.

When he got there, he almost walked past it, so discreet was the place, and so small, since the door was not of the standard size but perhaps half of what one would expect.

Once inside, however, it became evident that the proprietor had either a very good contractor or a very good grasp of the spells needed to enlarge wizarding spaces, as the shop looked about as big as, say, the Magical Menagerie.

That said, despite the enormous noise the bell above the door made when he entered, nobody seemed to be inside, and Harry really did not have the time to spare.

“Hello, anybody in?”

There was a moment of silence, then a loud crash from the backroom behind the till, followed by some very creative cursing, and a very tall wizard emerged, with some kind of potion residue on his blouse-like robe and evidently still cursing like a sailor. “What the bloody hell do you want?”

Harry raised an eyebrow at this, uncharitably cheered by the welcome. “Hello to you too, sir. I need four rolls of 120 medium-format film and enough developing potion for them, and make it quick, will you? I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

The man humphed and grunted, but he turned toward one of the shelves, presumably grabbed what Harry needed, and set it on the till. “Anything else?”

“Yes, I need photographic paper, obviously enough for all of the rolls, and a protective case for them.” The latter was something Dennis had not been able to find without endangering himself, so Harry needed to procure it here and now.

The vendor heaved a great sigh, which managed to lift Harry’s spirits even higher, and he wondered why the woman at Charta could not have behaved the same way.

Nonetheless, the man nodded, went to two other shelves, and came back with both the paper and the case. “Anything else?” This was said in an almost pleading tone, and Harry could have been wrong, but he thought he almost heard please get out beneath it, if he made the effort.

“Nope. What do I owe you, old chap?”

The man grunted again and made the calculation as he bundled everything up. “Eighteen Galleons and two Sickles.”

Harry hummed. “I don’t suppose I could bother you for an invoice, could I?”

The glare sent his way had Harry smiling cheerfully as he grabbed what he had “bought” and left without one. Nobody could say he had not tried.

Once outside the shop, Harry Apparated to Hogsmeade and made his way to the Shrieking Shack. It should be deserted by now, as nobody had used it since Remus’s graduation, and it would be a good place to set up camp without being bothered, even if any noise or movement were noticed, since it was haunted, after all.

Once there, he quickly Transfigured some bits and pieces of what appeared to have been a chair at some point into a sturdy desk. He took four of the plant-based sheets, cast a quick spell to Transfigure them into a single larger sheet, and then got out the book and the pen, along with the ink he had bought.

Using the ink and pen, he quickly copied the diagram on the book’s first page, which had a space made specifically to secure the book and the parchment sheets to be used for the copy, along with another for the inkpot.

After placing everything where it needed to go, he cast the spell Filius had taught him for this and watched as the pen started, first dipping into the ink and removing the excess, then writing directly onto the parchment.

He stayed until the pen reached the end of the first page, which essentially meant recreating the diagram itself, something Harry found inordinately funny, and then the first sheet lifted itself off and to the side, the book’s first page turned itself, and the pen carried on.

Harry stayed for the next four pages, just to be sure that both the recto-verso mechanism and the turning of the pages worked.

Then he tentatively cast the other spell, which should, in theory, “lock in” the book, so that even if Harry took it off the spelled parchment and turned the pages by hand, the pen would keep going without being disturbed in its work. That one could only last about an hour, so he quickly grabbed the book, turned to Daphne’s addition towards the end, and copied it with a goose quill onto one of the hippogriff-hide sheets.

It took him about thirty minutes to get it all down, and as Harry put the book back on the parchment, he watched, a little fascinated, as it magically turned itself back to the page currently being copied. Even after so long in the wizarding world, magic still found ways to amaze him.

He quickly checked the sheets already copied, just to be sure the work had continued as expected while he wrote out Daphne’s research for Lord Greengrass.

After that, it took him about ten minutes to prepare the letter that would accompany the research, along with a note for Lord Black, since the man would have to be told of his presence whether Harry liked it or not, and another for Amelia Bones. He would have to send them all in the second window, but writing them now was a good way to save time he might not have later.

Harry then took the time to load the camera with two of the rolls he had bought, since he would need it soon enough. Dennis had personally modified this camera to hold two rolls at a time and switch from one to the other at the end of the first, so, logically, Harry would only need to change films once. He also made sure the protective case was in his bag.

That done, and after a quick check of the time remaining in this window (four hours and forty-seven minutes), Harry Apparated to Cumbernauld, a small town near Glasgow, and looked for the health centre Ron had researched.

From there it was easy enough to find the names of the many therapists available, all two of them. Still, Harry needed to decide on one quickly, so, with few scruples, he cast both a Notice-Me-Not Charm and a Disillusionment Charm on himself (for a moment he regretted having left the Invisibility Cloak behind, even knowing what a bad idea it would be to have two versions of a Deathly Hallow in the same period of time) and entered the first therapist’s office.

The man was already in a session, so, doing his best to ignore what was being discussed, Harry sent out a small Legilimency probe to try to gauge him. He repeated the action with the other therapist, a woman. 

The man’s mind had been warm and well-worn, like an armchair that had held too many people for too long, patient and kind but tired in a way he was no longer aware of, and beneath his careful questions to the young woman in front of him, Harry had caught the steady hum of a list, the next appointment, the paperwork, the train home. The woman’s mind had been altogether different, quick and orderly, almost clinical in the way it sorted what it heard, and colder for it, but there had been something stubborn underneath, a refusal to let a patient talk around a thing instead of through it. Albert was a scientist who had spent years building his grief into a structure he could live inside, and Harry was not sure whether he needed someone gentle enough to be let in, or someone stubborn enough not to be kept out. 

He would need to think about what he had found, but he had to decide which of them would be best for Albert in less than… four hours and twenty-six minutes, so that he could pencil in the appointment first thing in the second window.

It would probably be easier to book it now and not have to come back, but he could not do too much in the first window, or he would not have enough strength left in the second for the big change. Every action he took that affected the timeline significantly would rebound on him at the boundaries between windows, so he needed to economise as much as he could in the first.

Still, Albert was, arguably, the whole reason he was even here. Albert Wright was, to all appearances, an ordinary Muggle. He was also a remarkable, if unrecognised, chemist, and the brother of Amanda Wright, Muggle-born witch killed along with her parents in a Death Eater raid on the 28th of October 1981, three days before the end of the war.

Albert was also the man who had invented the virus that killed magic, and who had somehow, despite being as introverted as he was, managed to become a minor politician with a loud enough voice, by the time the second war ended, to push the Muggles into war.

Dumbledore could praise the great magic of love all he wanted, but Harry had always been struck by how far hatred and grief could push people.

By now it was almost four in the afternoon, and Harry still needed to get to the Dursleys’ while his counterpart would reasonably still be awake. So, with a last look at the health centre, he Apparated to Little Whinging, forcibly suppressing the unease that being back there stirred in him.

He did not, strictly speaking, need to help his younger self. Harry Potter having a shitty childhood had no bearing on whether the second war happened, nor on the decision the Muggles would one day make to wipe out magic, so it did not need to be acted upon. But it was also Harry Bloody Potter who was quite literally sacrificing his existence to stop all this, so he would buy himself a better childhood while he was at it, and damn the consequences. 

He was still hidden by the charms, so it was easy enough to approach the kitchen windows, through which he could clearly see six-year-old Harry Potter, barefoot and in oversized clothes, scrubbing the floor while Petunia Dursley berated him from her seat at the kitchen table, where she was sipping her tea and reading some housewives’ magazine. In the background, the Dursley men watching television in the living room made an equally damning picture.

During the next hour or so, Harry followed his counterpart around as he lived what was essentially the life of a particularly lucky house-elf, and even captured on film Vernon manhandling a six-year-old for the sin of breathing too loudly and disturbing his television time. At that point Harry had a moment of worry for the camera, so tightly was he holding it in an effort to stop himself from cursing the swine.

And when he slipped inside to photograph the interior of the cupboard, with its Harry’s room inscription, he had to stop for a moment just to keep himself from hunting down the cow who called herself normal and demanding from her what the hell was normal about keeping a child in a cupboard with the cleaning products.

Still, so long as he was here, he took the risk, cost be damned, and cast a few cushioning charms on the cot, a few cleaning charms, and a glamour keyed to non-magicals, so that only little Harry would notice the difference.

Reluctantly, he added a small compulsion not to share his good fortune, so that the boy would not be punished for telling tales, hoping that little Harry’s ability to resist mind magic had not yet grown strong enough to shrug it off. He also made a quick jump to the nearest grocer’s, bought some cereal bars, and hid them in the cupboard. He could not help himself, quite literally, all that much, but he hoped to make the next few days bearable, and with any luck, by the time the charms faded or the food ran out, the rest of his actions would have caught up and the little one would be out of there.

By the time he left, he was fairly sure he must have cracked a tooth, so hard had he ground his teeth while watching. How he longed to visit some not-so-divine punishment on his so-called relatives, but he was not here long enough to do anything more, especially as he would already pay the price of what little he’d done. He just would have to trust the people actually living in this time to act.

Harry had little time left in this window, and he still needed about an hour (optimistically, but who was he kidding?) to develop the damn photographs, so, with a final look at his counterpart, busy preparing that night’s meal, of which Harry was pretty sure the kid would not get a bite, he Apparated as close to the Crouch property as he could without disturbing its wards.

Then he once again took out the camera and, hoping Dennis’s modifications and charms would work as intended, activated the zoom function along with the charm meant to help see through wards, and focused on the windows of what should be the dining room.

That he could see into the room at all was a success, less lucky was that it was currently empty of wizards. He could see Winky laying the table, though, and seeing her there, living her life and doing what she loved for the ingrates she called family, sent a quiet pang through him. He had come to love that elf, in the years after the war, almost as much as he had loved Dobby and watching her go about her day, when in his time she had been gone for years, was bittersweet at best. Still, he needed to focus, and with a bit of luck the Barties should be there shortly. Harry stayed there, simply watching the place, for about ten minutes before movement by the door caught his attention. 

There stood Barty Senior, his face set in the same stern look Harry had always known him to wear. A minute later the man sat down, and another chair nearby shifted. Senior barked something, and the next moment there were not one but two Crouches seated at the table, although Junior looked distinctly blank. Ah, the joys of living under the Imperius Curse.What an improvement over Azkaban, really; the man must be so happy with his lot.

Honestly, Harry hated both Crouches, the one for sentencing his godfather to a life in Azkaban without so much as a trial, and the other for being directly responsible for the start of the second war. However, Harry would not wish Barty Crouch Junior’s current lot in life on his worst enemy, not even Tom Riddle. Not that the Dementors were any better, but the wizarding world simply did not have a humane alternative to prison, and in the absence of a good option, a fair one was preferable. Let the bloke face what every other Death Eater did, and put an end to this nonsense.

Harry made sure to capture the scene as well as he could, knowing he would probably not get a much better opportunity, and then Apparated back to the Shack.

He checked on the copying, and everything seemed on track there, with about a third of the book already copied.

Then, with ninety-eight minutes left on the counter, Harry went into another room, Transfigured as much of it as he could to the specifications Dennis had given for an optimal developing room, grabbed the potion he had bought earlier, and went to work.

He finished developing the photographs with about fifteen minutes to spare. He then quickly made a small hunting trap, added the runes Fleur had devised to attract any small creature whose hide could be turned into leather, and sent it to the edge of the forest closest to the Shack.

With barely two minutes left on the counter of the first window, Harry put the Shack’s ramshackle bed in order with a few quick Reparos, then lay down on it, knowing the next few minutes would not be pleasant.

It felt as though, from one breath to the next, Harry had been struck by the Cruciatus Curse, cast by a Tom Riddle at the very top of his game. Harry did his best not to cry out, since, while the inhabitants of Hogsmeade would not care, he did not want to draw Dumbledore’s attention to his presence here.

Harry could not tell how long he lay there, writhing in pain, but when it stopped he had the fleeting thought that, if this was what came of relatively few interactions, he did not look forward to the second boundary.

His first act was to look at himself, or at his hands, actually. They were visibly trembling, and if you looked too long, you could see that they were almost translucent. Ha absently noticed that the whole ordeal already ate four of his minutes.

Harry heaved a sigh and shakily got up. As much as he did not want to, he still had a lot of work to do, since this was, after all, the action-heavy window, and he did indeed have an immense load to carry in it.

With a final sigh, he straightened and called for Kreacher. The elf appeared with a confused look on his wizened face.

“Lord Black called for Kreacher. You is not Lord Black, but, you is… Lord Black? Kreacher is very confused, Master who is not Master.”