"Tell me the story of the battle, Mum!" begged Louis, red curls bouncing as he sat up in bed. The middle-aged woman beside him sighed, a faint smile appearing on her perfect face as she leaned forward to kiss her son, her blonde hair falling into a sheet in front of her eyes.

"All right, Lou," she said, an exasperated tone to her voice. "When Voldemort attacked 'ogwarts, 'arry Potter was looking for somet'ing, somet'ing zat would 'elp 'im defeat Voldemort. Zat was what 'e 'ad been doing for months and months beforehand. But at last 'e came to 'ogwarts. Your father and I were part of ze people trying to 'old off ze Death Eaters so 'e could find it."

"But he never did, right Mum?" asked Louis, his blue eyes bright.

Fleur Weasley shook her head, and now her eyes were clouded with sadness. Her English had improved over the past twenty years, but there was still a faint hint of an accent. "'e never did. 'e had just come out of ze Room of Requirement, when suddenly zere was an explosion. 'e and Fred were killed. Ron Weasley--'arry's best friend--and 'arry's girlfriend 'ermione tried to keep fighting. But zey were both killed by Death Eaters."

Louis's eyes were sad now, but they glimmered with hope as he looked up. "But we're going to defeat Voldy-mort someday, right?" he asked, smiling.

Fleur nodded. "After 'arry, Ron, and 'ermione died, Ginny gazzered 'er old school friends--Luna, Neville, Dean, Seamus--and ozzers who would be on ze run when Voldemort won ze war. Zey brought zem back 'ere, to ze Burrow and cast spells so ze Death Eaters would never find us. We formed a group called Dumbledore's Army, and we're going to fight off Voldemort someday."

Louis grinned. "I'm going to join the D.A. when I turn seventeen, right?"

Fleur nodded, stroking his hair. Then she stood up. "Well, better get some sleep. Goodnight, Louis.”

"Bonne nuit," Louis said sleepily, and Fleur flicked the light switch. She stretched, and then turned to see her daughter, Victoire.

"You tell him about the battle like it is a child's bedtime story," Victoire snapped, placing her hands on her hips. Though all three of Bill and Fleur's children were part Veela, Victoire looked it the most. She had a sheen about her pale skin that looked as if she glowed, and her eyes were wide and blue. But there was a Weasley like strawberry tint to her blonde hair, and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

Fleur looked disapprovingly at her daughter. "'e enjoys 'earing eet."

Victoire frowned, brushing a stray lock of her hair out of her eyes. "But, it's the reason I can't go to Hogwarts...neither can Teddy! The D.A. hasn't found a clue about what Harry was doing before he died--and it's not like the Daily Prophet's going to talk about that when they write articles about him. They call him 'The Boy who Died!'. The battle isn't something to tell to Louis. Or Dominique, for that matter. What happened that night sealed our whole fate. That's why we're stuck in this house. Because Harry Potter died!"

Fleur narrowed her icy blue eyes, and opened her mouth, but suddenly the door banged open. Ginny Weasley stood in the doorway, arms crossed.

Her brown eyes were cold and unfeeling, her hair, once bright and fiery, hung dull against her back. She was an empty shell, hollow and violent. She wanted revenge--she had wanted it for twenty years. Everyone knew she was the most affected by Ron's death, of all her brothers it had been he she was the closest to. She had never gotten over it.

"Don't talk that way about Harry," she said, her voice strong and stable.

Victoire felt her heart pounding. "Sorry, Aunt Ginny," she said weakly, and the woman went back into her room. Fleur looked troubled and distant, but snapped out of it when she saw her daughter.

"You 'old your tongue," she said, and walked out of the room, leaving Victoire standing uncertain in the hallway. Aunt Ginny was the leader of the DA, but she was moody, and liked to be alone. Sometimes Victoire felt that she was missing something. Something important, about Ginny's story that she didn't already know.

"Are you okay?" a kind voice asked, and Victoire turned to see Luna Longbottom floating dreamily next to her. Her blonde hair hung just beneath her shoulders, her wide, protruding eyes sweeping over Victoire.

"Yeah, fine," Victoire said glumly as Luna put a hand on her shoulder.

"Ginny's been through much. Do not take it personally. At sixteen she had lost three of her closest friends, and an older brother," Luna said, her voice sounding far-off. "She believed she could have saved them."

Victoire shrugged. "I bet Grandmum and Grandpa felt the same way. But they got over it."

Luna sighed. "You wouldn't understand. You weren't there." There was a pause, in which Luna looked up at the wall, where hung a peculiar clock. Each hand had a person's name on it, and each was pointing to, instead of numbers, places to be. The hand that said‘Neville Longbottom’ was now just switching from ‘Travelling’ to ‘The Burrow’. "Excuse me, but I believe Neville is home. I'll have to go greet him. He'd have brought the most recent issue of the Quibbler with him, too. I'll have to see if there's a follow-up story on the one about the Blibbering Humdinger yesterday."

Victoire tried not to roll her eyes as she went back into her room. It was a nice room--it had once been Ron's. It had a wonderful view of the fields beyond the Burrow. Victoire sometimes hated it though. One got tired of staying in virtually the same bedroom for the whole of her life. She asked herself yet again why Harry Potter had had to pick such an inconvenient time to die. Maybe the world would be better--he would have won the war, and she could have gone to school, to learn to be a proper witch, instead of the small lessons the D.A. provided to underage witches and wizards. She was almost of age, too. She would turn seventeen on August first. This would have been her last year at Hogwarts.

She flopped down on her bed, letting a sigh escape from deep within. She imagined Ron lying on the same bed, twenty years ago. He had been about her age, friends with Harry Potter; the Chosen One, the Boy Who Lived. They had all expected him to win the war, win the war that had happened just a year before she was born. A war that defined her whole life.

Victoire got up from her bed, sunlight pouring in from the window and onto the dull carpet. She opened the closet door, reaching for her wand. The closet was full of dusty boxes, stacked on top of her. Boxes of Ron's stuff. She grabbed her wand (Cherry and Veela hair, twelve inches, springy) and it tinkled to the floor. It rolled behind the boxes. "Stinksap," she muttered, getting down onto her hands and knees, and sneezing as dust went up into her nose. As she was reaching for her wand, she noticed a small envelope tucked behind the boxes. It was addressed to "Professor McGonagall, Hogwarts." Eyebrows raised, Victoire reached for it, and pulled it out. Forgetting about her wand entirely, she sat down on her bed and opened the envelope, and took out the letter. It was yellowing, but the words were still bold on the page. The letters were perfectly written, the whole thing shining, even though it must have been decades old.

Dear Professor,

I believe this is yours--I will not be needing it next year.

Have a wonderful summer!

Sincerely,

Hermione Jean Granger

Victoire's eyes widened. It was really from the Hermione Granger? She opened the envelope again, wondering what it was Hermione was talking about. Inside was a fine gold chain. She lifted it out. It was obviously a necklace of some sort. On the end of the golden chain was a small hourglass. Fine grains of sand sparkled in the bottom. It's so pretty! Victoire thought, and put it around her neck.

The necklace gleamed and caught the light, and Victoire didn't notice a slip of paper fall to the floor. If she had looked closer, it was a small tag, that read:

Time Turner #568
Extremely dangerous!
If found, return to the Ministry of Magic at once!

“That’s a pretty necklace,” Teddy remarked, and Victoire felt her face turn scarlet--which was stupid. Teddy had been her friend for as long as she could remember. But ever since she had turned fifteen, everything had turned much more awkward between them.

Teddy was an odd wizard, which was to be expected. His mom was a Metamorphmagus, and his father a werewolf. He was registered in the D.A. as a Metamorphmagus, but in Victoire’s eyes, was not quite a full one. He could control his appearance at will, yes, but his appearance had a will of its own; mostly his hair. It changed colours at random, varying from a dull brown to an eye-popping orange.

“Thanks,” Victoire mumbled, fingering the gold chain.

“Where’d you get it?”

“I found it in the closet,” Victoire gestured to the crammed closet in the corner of the room. They were both sitting on the bed, looking out the window.

Teddy nodded, and didn’t ask any more questions.

“Any more news in the D.A.?” asked Victoire, as she always did. Being nineteen, Teddy was part of the D.A. He wasn’t a major person in the organization, though he had gone on some trips investigating every spot where Harry Potter was known to be the year he was fighting Voldemort. But he had been very careful about leaving traces behind, and they hadn’t found much. There were a few snippets of information lying about, of course, but not many.

Teddy shrugged. “We’ve confirmed that Harry had visited Godric’s Hollow, but that doesn’t give us any new information. Just that he was visiting the place where his parents were buried.”

Victoire sighed, and got off the bed, walking over and looking out the window. Where were you Harry? What were you doing?

Teddy put a hand on her shoulder, which almost made Victoire flinch. This annoyed her. All her life, the two had been like brother and sister. That was as far as their relationship had ever gone, but she couldn’t help noticing him in a different light.

“We’ll figure it out someday, Victoire.”

Victoire sighed. “Even if we do, Teddy, we’ll never fix everything. There will still be Death Eaters, and the Ministry will be hard to fight. Defeating Voldemort isn’t enough. It won’t fix the past.”

It was Teddy’s turn to sigh. “The only thing that we can’t change is the past. We can only change the future.”

Victoire sighed bitterly. “I know,” she said, and looked at the necklace. The hourglass sparkled on the golden chain. She turned it over in her fingers, watching as the sand fell into the other side. If only the past could be changed....if only Harry didn’t die....

Teddy sighed, and took the necklace in his hand. His brow furrowed. “Funny...this reminds me of something.”

But before Victoire could ask what it reminded him of, the hourglass tipped one more time, and the world tipped with it.

Victoire wasn’t spinning, but she wasn’t falling, either. She was just standing still while everything else moved about her. Blurs of colour seemed to zoom around her, as if she was caught in an eternally moving painting. There were sounds, too, laughing and crying, words that mixed together and echoed in her head. She saw Teddy right beside her, still holding the necklace. She was surprised to see the hourglass glowing, emitting light, as if the grains of sand were on fire. And then everything stopped. They were in the same room, but it was different. The bed was no longer a faint shade of pink, but orange--very bright orange. There was a pattern of Bludgers on it, too--no, cannons.

There were similar posters plastered all over the walls, with Quidditch players diving and feinting and shooting Quaffles. They all wore orange, with cannons on it. Victoire decided it was a Quidditch team. That hunch was proven almost immediately, as she spotted the words, ‘Chudley Cannons’ spelled fancily on the bottom of a poster.

“Where are we?” she asked in amazement, looking around. There were cluttered robes and other junk that belonged to a teenage witch or wizard scattered about on the floor. Teddy seemed to be in shock, and he quickly let go of the hourglass-necklace.

He opened his mouth, but then there were footsteps coming up the stairs. Teddy grabbed Victoire and pulled her into the closet--her closet?--and shut the door.

“What’s going on?” she whispered.

“Victoire, you found the necklace in this closet?”

Victoire nodded. “Yes. There was a note attached to it too. It was from Hermione Granger, addressed to a Professor.”

“And you didn’t mention this?” hissed Teddy.

“Well...” Victoire trailed off. It was awkward enough to be this squashed next to Teddy, not to mention be lectured by him!

“Victoire, this isn’t a necklace! This is a Time Turner!”

“What’s that?”

Teddy seemed to be restraining himself--with difficulty--from yelling. “Victoire, a Time Turner takes you back in time. We learned about it in lessons. The Ministry’s stock was all destroyed when Dumbledore battled Voldemort in Harry Potter’s fifth year.”

“But if they were all destroyed, then how can this be a Time Turner?” asked Victoire in disbelief.

“Hermione Granger had a Time Turner in her third year--remember Aunt Ginny telling us about that? For classes, I think. Or something like that,” Teddy said, and his voice was becoming slightly panicked now.

“How do they work?” asked Victoire.

“As far as I can remember,” Teddy said slowly. “They take you back or forward in time, as far as you want. They’re very dangerous though. You can mess up time very badly if you’re not careful. They take you where you were last thinking of, dependent on how many times you flip the hourglass.”

“Now you tell me?” Victoire asked weakly, slumping against the floor.

“Well, how was I supposed to know that you had somehow acquired an extremely dangerous Time Turner? They’re not supposed to exist! It’s just like you, Victoire,” he added heatedly, and put his head in his hands. After a heartbeat, he seemed to calm down. “Okay. We just need to get back to our time.”

“You mean we’re in the future?” asked Victoire.

“Well, that depends,” said Teddy. “What were you thinking of right before we left?”

Victoire thought for a minute. “Well...I was thinking that maybe if we could change the past, make it so Harry didn’t die...then life would be better. He would have carried out his plan and defeated Voldemort.”

Teddy nodded as if his worst suspicions had just been confirmed. “We’re back when Harry was carrying out his plan. Probably around the time that he died.”

Victoire coughed as dust rose from the old boxes piled in the closet. “So...this room is Ron’s?”

Teddy nodded. “Yeah. But sadly, we’re not gonna be around her long enough to see him. We’re going home. Now.” He grabbed the Time Turner by the chain and lifted it off Victoire’s neck. His fingers brushed her neck, and Victoire flinched. Teddy peered at the dangling hourglass and took it in his fingers.

“Ow!” he cried, and promptly dropped it, rubbing his fingers as if they burned. But all that Victoire noticed was the hourglass shattering into a million tiny pieces, grains of sand flying everywhere.

There was a loud silence that seemed to ring in Victoire’s ears.

Then Teddy said, “Oops.”