Tag-Team Fic, Chapter 18
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Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
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Title: The Other Turn
Author: lotus_lizzy
Chapter: 18
Rating (this chapter): PG
Pairings (this chapter): Harry/Draco (oh yeah)
Warnings: none
Word Count (this chapter): 1,100
Author’s Notes: We’re reaching the home stretch! If you want to continue this, sign up now!!!
’You know how it is with Slytherins and Gryffindors,’ he replied vaguely. ‘We just don’t get on.’ Harry looked up as he finished speaking, and found both Ron and Malfoy staring at him with puzzled expressions.
‘What’s a Slytherin?’ Malfoy asked finally.
Harry dumbly looked between Ron and Hermione for answers, forgetting that they were not his Ron and Hermione. Ron just stared at Harry blankly, as if he had grown a second head, and Hermione had turned her back on the proceedings, desperately attempting to use her phone to call for help, and failing.
Malfoy’s earlier easy smile was gone. He slowly edged towards Ron, away from Harry, his face turning into a mask of suspicion. While Malfoy was acting more like the Malfoy Harry was used to, he felt the loss of their earlier camaraderie more than he should.
‘Well, Harry,’ Draco began, his tone firm, ‘you brought us here for a reason. Let’s hear your grand plan.’
Ron crossed his arms and stood beside Malfoy, his face also growing hard. ‘And none of this talk of not being friends with Draco. I’m not sure what’s wrong with you, Harry, but I won’t have you speaking to one of your best mates that way, especially considering how he feels.’
Draco hissed a panicked Ron under his breath and elbowed him in the stomach.
‘Enough!’ Hermione roared. She stormed towards Harry, grabbing his shirt in her two fists and pulling him close to her face. ‘Take me back, now. You’ve had your fun, but the joke is over. If you’ve made me miss my Physics final, there will be hell to pay.’
Ron chuckled. ‘She’s a pleasant swot, isn’t she?’
Hermione turned and barrelled towards Ron. ‘What did you say?’
Ron’s tender face, which was about to be slapped raw by Hermione’s hand, was saved by the emergence of a worried Helga between them. ‘Children, please. I fear time is running out. Harry, do you believe your friends would know what is happening with Salazar and Tom?’
Draco stepped forward. ‘Harry told us they both collapsed after performing an unknown spell.’
‘We believe it was some sort of disinheritance spell,’ Rowena interjected. ‘But the power and effect of the magic was more than any of us have seen before. I fear Salazar may have stumbled upon something in his studies that he couldn’t fully control.
‘Will you be able to help them?’ Helga pleaded.
Draco stared pointedly at Harry, looking very much like he would before a Quidditch match, threatening Harry with his eyes that he would catch the snitch first.
‘I believe I might. But, I will need all your help. Even hers.’ Draco pointed at Hermione, who lifted her chin. ‘She’s untrained, but she’s been practicing spells on her own. I saw her perform a wandless Accio on her Muggle object after she threw it on the ground.’ Hermione huffed. Draco winked back. ‘Someone should have vouched for you. You clearly would have been a talented witch.’
‘You mean she’s a Muggle?’ Godric asked, staring at Hermione as if she was a foreign object.
Hermione bristled. ‘You need to mind your manners,’ she replied, huffing away to follow Malfoy and Rowena, who were debating inheritance spells, leaving a confused Godric in her wake.
Harry, Ron and Helga followed the group, Ron shaking his head at the interchange.
‘She’s quite a woman, Harry. Remind me to never ask you to find me a bird. You clearly have rotten taste.’
~*~
‘One of my ancestors performed a spell similar to this a while back on a very distant cousin of ours. I stumbled upon his diary during my last holiday home while researching our family line. While he failed to mention how to reverse the spell, he did speak about how to do it. Perhaps, with that information, we can figure out what went wrong.’
Draco, Rowena, and Hermione were surrounded by old tomes. While it was good Hermione was being included, she was clearly lost and confused, but engrossed nonetheless. The Hermione of Harry’s time would have given her right arm to debate magic with the founder of Ravenclaw, but sadly the historical moment was lost on this Hermione, who seemed perfectly happy to sit and listen to the magical theory, unable to provide anything new.
Helga fussed around the bodies, making sure Salazar and Tom were comfortable. Salazar, grey and haggard, looked as if he had added a decade to his age, while Tom looked like a pristine china doll sleeping soundly on the wooden pallet.
It would be so easy to end things now, Harry thought, to wrap his hands around the boy’s throat and squeeze. Salazar had been right. There was a large part of Harry, a rapidly growing part, that considered removing Tom from the time line altogether.
‘I’m so stupid!’ Draco cried out, throwing his hands in the air. ‘It’s been right in front of my face the whole time, and yet I refused to see it.’
Draco ran towards Harry, grabbing his arm and dragging him out the door.
‘I know in your time we aren’t friends, and you have no cause to trust me, but I need you to. Will you? Will you trust me?’
Harry looked around wildly, unsure what was going on. ‘Trust you? What do you want me to do?’
Draco wrapped the gold Time-Turner around his and Harry’s necks. Harry began to struggle.
‘We can’t undo the spell Salazar placed on Tom, but we can go back and make sure it never happens in the first place.’
Harry sputtered, ‘But what about the others?’
Draco began to twist the pendant forwards over and over again. ‘If we do things right they won’t have come here in the first place.’
Harry began to shout, but was cut off with a pair of firm lips on his that held while the world around them spun.
Harry pulled away from Draco violently, but the damage had already been done. They had moved forward in time, but Harry was unsure as to when.
‘What have you done?’
Draco pointed to a small dilapidated house near the side of the road.
‘That distant cousin my ancestor disinherited? She lived here after the spell was completed. The reason for her disinheritance? She had run away to marry a Muggle and given birth to a child, a half-blood child whom she named Tom Riddle.’
TBC