Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Harry lay in the musty-smelling bed, in the dingy old room he was sharing with Ron, in Grimmauld Place, and tried to tell himself that he should go to sleep. He was certainly tired enough. He wanted to sleep. But some part of him was terrified to even close his eyes.

The horrible vision he'd had as the monstrous snake, attacking Mr. Weasley was still fresh and burning the back of his eyelids, and his mind was terrified that if he fell asleep, he'd become the snake again and attack someone else.

After waking Ron with his horrified screams and then alerting the Headmaster that Mr. Weasley was laying in some hallway, bleeding to death from a deadly snake bite, all of the other Weasley children had been gathered, and they'd been portkey'd to Harry's godfather's old house.

The whole lot of them had stayed up into most of the night waiting for word from Mrs. Weasley on Mr. Weasley's condition. He'd been taken to St. Mungo's, and they had finally gotten word that he was being treated and expected to survive. Then they'd all been forced to go to bed, and thus, now Harry found himself laying here, staring at the ceiling, and wondering how in the name of Merlin, Ron could sleep. It was his father that Harry had taken a chunk out of his neck – no, not Harry. That great bloody snake. But no matter how many times he told himself that, Harry still felt guilty and confused and horrified. He felt like he was loosing his mind. His world was too damned confusing, and the one source that seemed to have the answers – Dumbledore – was avoiding him like the plague and Harry had no idea why.

Harry continued to lay in bed, tossing and turning for a great deal longer, before he threw the blankets off his legs and climbed out of bed. Perhaps some milk would help calm his stomach, and a short walk, clear his mind.

The house was even creepier at night than it was during the day – and the damn house was already pretty creepy in daylight. Even after they'd cleaned the house from top to bottom over the summer, neglecting only a few rooms where Sirius had apparently stored away the more dangerous family heirlooms that refused to be binned because of fetching charms that always seemed to bring them back.

Harry went and got his milk, drank it slowly while standing in the dimly lit kitchen and trying not to think too much on the awful vision and what it meant. His mind kept wondering back to Dumbledore, though. How the man, even now, had refused to look Harry in the eye for more than a scant second, and when he finally did, Harry felt himself filled with the most all encompassing hate and loathing. It was a foreign hate and it had scared and horrified Harry.

Heaving a heavy sigh, Harry climbed back up the stairs and began to make his way towards he and Ron's room. He paused at the door, grimacing as the sound of Ron's snores permeated the door. That was another thing keeping Harry from sleeping. Not that he wasn't used to Ron's snoring – he shared a dorm with the redhead, but there were muffling charms on the bed hangings that reduced the intensity of snores and other noises, making it a bit more bearable. There were no such charms here.

Not quite feeling up to going back to bed, Harry turned and wandered quietly down the hall. He intended to go to the drawing room, but paused in front of a different door instead. 'Regulus Arcturus Black' labeled the door and Harry just stared at it for a moment. He'd never been in that room. It was one of the few spaces that Mrs. Weasley hadn't had them clean – apparently Sirius hadn't wanted the room touched and so it had been spared.

Feeling curious, and more than a little desperate for a distraction, Harry reached out and tried the door.

At first, he was sure it was locked, but a second later, he heard a light click and the door handle gave. He turned it and pushed the door open. A few wall sconces in the room came to a low glow as soon as he entered the room, which he was grateful for since he couldn't use his wand here to cast a lumos. Not that that fact stopped him from having it with him. He just didn't feel right leaving his room without his wand, so it was presently lodged in the back pocket of his pajama pants.

He closed the door behind him and made a lazy perusal of the room. It was tidy, but also had the look of having been lived in, and then left untouched. Harry didn't know much about Sirius' brother, truth be told. He'd apparently died during the war – just up and vanished, really.

In contrast of the timeless, dust-covered state of most of the room, one wall was filled with several stacks of boxes. Harry suspected that this was where Sirius had been dumping the family heirlooms that refused to be tossed out. A box, about chest height, was open, and only about half full of things – no doubt whenever Sirius came across another old object he wanted to store away, he'd just add them to this box until it was full and he added another.

Curiously, Harry peered inside. Harry knew it was entirely likely that some of these things could be cursed and it was not wise to just go rummaging through it by hand, but his curiosity got the better of him. He pulled his wand out of his back pocket and used it to poke around, shifting things to the side so he could see what lay beneath.

He didn't know what he might of touched, or how he might have activated it – probably wasn't the smartest move using his wand to poke around in the box, in retrospect – but something happened all of a sudden and Harry felt himself flash with dizziness as the room went black and his world began to spin. There was light and color, but it was like a twisting vortex of nonsensical sights and sounds. His body felt as if it were an old dish rag being rung out and stretched at the same time – pulled and twisted – and he felt sick and disoriented.

The sensation of falling, or maybe even flying and then falling, overcame him, and just didn't seem to want to end. On and on this all went – long enough that his mind managed to escape from the shock and confusion of the initial shift, into fear and worry that this just wouldn't end.

And then it did.

He crashed to the ground, his legs giving out from under him, and the world still spinning around him, although it was no longer quite so colorful, and the swirl of indistinguishable sounds was now silenced. The room smelled different too. No longer dusty or moldy, but clean and sort of homey. Harry tried to stand up, but he was still too dizzy, and part of him was still quite sure he was about to throw up. He reached for something to grab hold of and seemed to bump into a small table of some sort and knock several things over and onto the floor.

The room was dark, but he could see gentle early-morning light coming in through a window somewhere in whatever room he was in.

Distant voices and shuffling caught his attention and Harry tried to steady himself for a minute to let his head clear and the dizziness to abate. A door opened and the glow of a wand filled the space. Harry squinted his eyes against the harsh light, bringing his hand up to shield his eyes.

A small surprised intake of breath came from the direction of whoever was holding the blinding light.

Harry heard a muffled voice from the room beyond say something, although he couldn't make out what it was.

“Don't worry about it. Go back to bed,” the person with the light said, and Harry frowned at the weirdly familiar, yet not, quality of the voice. The person holding the light closed the door he'd come out of and walked over towards Harry, who was just now starting to feel stable enough that he could stand up a bit straighter.

His eyes finally seemed to adjust to the light and he focused on the figure that was approaching him. The figure in question, flicked the object in his hand – a wand – and the lights in the room came on, blinding Harry all over again – although not nearly as badly this time since his eyes were already mostly adjusted to the light.

Finally, he got a good look at the person with him, and jolted with shock and confusion.

“W-what?” Harry stuttered, staring in disbelief at... his father.

“I know what you're thinking. But I'm not James,” the man said right off, giving Harry a rather apologetic look.

Harry flinched, wondering if this man had somehow read his mind. “Then... w-who?”

The not-James heaved a sigh and ran his hand through his messy black mop of hair. “Let's go downstairs, we can talk about it there.”

Harry wanted to object, and insist that they talk about it right here and now, but as he looked around he realized that 'here' was a hallway with a few closed doors, a couple narrow side tables with trinkets and photo frames – some of which he noticed he'd knocked to the floor – and a banister behind him, over which stairs could be seen clearly leading to a lower level.

Harry reluctantly shrugged, because he was too bewildered to know what else to do, and the man who looked just like every photo that Harry had ever seen of his father, nodded and lead him down the small stretch of hall and around to go down the flight of stairs.

The house was clearly not Grimmauld Place. As they came to the base of the stairs, they rounded a corner, passed an open archway that lead into a kitchen, and into a large room that was half breakfast room, half sitting room. The not-James led him into the half that was arranged like a living room – long sofa, two squshy-looking arm chairs, and – Harry frowned in confusion at the large, flat, black rectangle that seemed to be mounted to the wall. He almost suspected it was a telly, but he'd never seen a flat telly before. It was also quite large.

The house was clearly muggle, and yet there was also lots of magic about as well. Every photo on the wall or mantles were moving, and a clock reminiscent of the one at the Weasley's house was hanging above the large fireplace. A fireplace that was clearly also a Floo, if the size of it was any indication.

The not-James motioned for Harry to sit in one of the arm chairs and he sat down in the other one, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. He scrutinized Harry for a long minute with a look of almost awe and wonder on his face. Harry fidgeted, feeling awkward and confused.

“You know... there were times when I almost convinced myself I might have hallucinated the whole thing... I knew it was real, of course... but I had wondered if I'd really see you. If you'd really come...”

Harry scrunched up his face, frowning in bewilderment. “What – ?”

The not-James gave a small, tired-sounding chuckle. “It's weird being on the other side of this conversation... I still remember it from your point of view. Okay, I know I'm just confusing you further, so I'll stop rambling. I'm not James. I'm you.”

“Me?” Harry blanched and the older wizard chuckled.

“Yes. I'm you, at age thirty. You've been pulled forward in time. Don't ask me how or why, I never did figure it out, but it's true. You'll be here for about a fortnight before whatever sent you here will pull you back, automatically. So you don't have to worry about being stuck here or anything like that.”

“Whoa, wait – forward in time? You've got to be kidding!?” Harry exclaimed.

“Not kidding. I'm you, fifteen years in the future.”

Harry sat there, staring at the older wizard with a gaping, dumbfounded expression on his face. “But – but that's impossible! Isn't it?”

“Apparently not,” the older-Harry said, with an amused smirk curling the corner of his mouth. “I remember when I was in your shoes, and I got sucked into the future for a couple weeks, and the older me from then said the exact same things I'm saying to you right now... which is really weird, honestly. It's not like I memorized what he said but... yeah. Guess he's me now and you're me from then... or whatever. Sorry, I'm probably just confusing you more.”

Harry continued to gape for a moment longer before he snapped his jaws shut and shook his head. “Okay... uh... right. So you said I'd be here a fortnight? And you don't know how this happened?”

“That's right. And, nope; no clue. I went back and searched the box in Regulus's room – emptied out the whole thing and had Sirius and then later on Remus, go through the thing with me to try and figure out what the heck could have caused all this. People had a lot of trouble believing that it'd even really happened – I think that a lot of them were just humoring me... that was rather annoying, honestly.”

“They didn't believe you?” Harry asked, somewhat caught off guard.

“Yeah, well, from my point of view, two weeks passed with me in the future. But when I went back to my own time, it was that same night as the whole thing started. No time had passed at all. Ron thought I just had a really elaborate dream, and he was a bit preoccupied with his dad having been bitten by Nagini, to spare much concern for my weird 'hallucination'.” Harry said, making quotation mark signs with his fingers and rolled his eyes.

Harry grimaced, absolutely hating the idea that this whole thing was going to give everyone else one more reason to think he was absolutely nutters. With everything else going on in his life right now, it was the last thing he needed.

“But, look on the bright side,” his apparent older-self said, sounding annoyingly chipper, “I'm going to tell you how to kill Voldemort, and make sure you're life doesn't suck nearly so much in the coming years. So, having a few people doubt your sanity for a brief time is worth it.”

Harry's head shot up, eyes wide and mouth once again gaping. “Wait, what?”

The elder-Harry leaned back in the armchair and crossed one leg over the other lazily, clearly getting relaxed. “It's going to take the next two weeks to go over all the details – and we'll go over them several times, just to make sure you're clear on everything you need to do – but by the time you go back, you'll know everything you really need to know to make sure Voldy is dead within a year – and permanently this time.”

Harry really didn't know what to say to that. It had always seemed like certain people always had this expectation that Harry was somehow supposed to be he one to deal with Voldemort, but he couldn't reconcile that notion with the fact that Voldemort was supposed to be the most powerful wizard there is, aside from Dumbledore, and Harry was just... Harry. He wasn't even all that good of a student. He was a bit better than his peers at Defense, but that was mostly because he'd crammed so hard last year in preparation for the third task, combined with the fact that they'd had rubbish Defense teachers again and again. Besides, his peers were teenagers – not 70-year-old Dark Lords.

“You... you really think that I can defeat Voldemort?” Harry asked, disbelievingly.

“I did it,” his elder self said with a shrug. “Actually, what I did was destroy the pieces of his soul and made him mortal. When we dueled, his own spell backfired on him, so technically he destroyed himself.”

“Wait... okay... what?”

“I'll go into a lot more detail later, but here's a simple summary. Before we were born a prophecy was made that said that we were the one who could 'Vanquish the Dark Lord'. One of Voldemort's spy's heard part of it – only the first three lines, but it was enough to identify us as the person it talked about – so he set out to make sure we never lived long enough to pose a threat to him. This prophecy is the reason mum and dad went into hiding, and it's the reason he came after us. But he didn't know the whole thing back then.

“Right now, back in your present time, he's trying to find out what the whole prophecy says because he thinks that if he knows the whole thing, he can circumvent it or use it to figure out a way to kill you without getting blasted, or having a weird glowing field appear or whatever. The dreams you've been having about a door at the end of some hallway? That's the entrance to the Department of Mysteries where a copy of the prophecy is being held. He wants it desperately, and you're getting visions of it because of that desire.

“But anyway, onto another matter. Voldemort should have died the night that he killed mum and dad. Anyone else would have died – seeing as how his body was utterly obliterated. The reason that he didn't die is because he created these things called Horcruxes. The horcruxes are objects that hold a piece of his soul and act as an ancher. They tether his main soul to the world of the living, so even if his body is destroyed, he can't 'move on' because the horcruxes keep him here. That way, he can float around as a spirit, possess defense teachers, snakes, and build himself a new body to resurrect himself.

“So long as any horcruxes still exist, he can't really die. What I'm going to tell you over the next week, is where each of his horcruxes are, how to get them, and how to destroy them. Once they're all gone, he'll be mortal and anyone can kill him. It still ended up coming down to him and me though...” he trailed off, making a face before shrugging.

Harry's eyes were wide and he remained motionless for a long moment before he managed to start wrapping his head around that.

“Okay... so I just have to destroy these objects and he'll be mortal?”

“Right.”

“How'd you find out about them?”

The elder wizard chuckled. “My older-self told me when I was fifteen. It's sort of one of those weird temporal loop things. A causality loop, I guess. The whole 'chicken and the egg' thing. Which came first? How can one exist without the other, but you know – not literally. Anyway, I guess it's just sort of one of those weird mysteries of time travel. How could our older self have known if not for the fact that when he was younger, his older-self told him? It's a loop with no real explanation.”

“Oh... okay,” Harry replied, someone blankly. It made sense in the way that it didn't really make any sense at all.

“Right, now, like I said, we've got two weeks, so there's plenty of time for me to tell you about the prophecy – which really doesn't matter, but I know you'll want to hear the whole thing and Dumbledore's never going to come clean on it unless you confront him with it. Secretive, lying old coot that he is – and we can discuss the horcruxes and what you need to do about them later. There's one more revelation that I'm afraid we should probably deal with first, however.”

Harry didn't exactly like the sound of that and braced himself, wondering what could possibly be worse than finding out that his parents had died because he had been prophesied to be the one to vanquish Voldemort.

His older self sat forward, staring him right in the eye and took in a deep breath. “You're gay.”

Harry blinked. “What?!”

“You – me – we're gay. I know this probably doesn't seem like nearly as 'huge' a deal as all the other stuff, but we need to get it out of the way first because my husband is upstairs, and he wakes up early and is going to be down here in like – an hour – and I want to get all the questions out of the way on that matter first.”

Harry sputtered. “But – but I'm not! I – I like girls! I fancy Cho!”

His older-self gave him the sort of look an adult might give a child when they were just humoring them. “Do you really?”

“Yes!” Harry said with a mixture of indignation and defensive panic in his voice. This was craziness! He couldn't be gay! He'd know that sort of thing – right?

“What's her favorite class?”

“Huh?”

“Cho. What's her favorite subject? Name three of her friends? What are her hobbies – besides Quidditch?”

“I – I don't know that,” Harry said, slightly annoyed by the barrage of questions. He could name one of her friends. That Marietta girl was friends with Cho. They always came into the DA meetings together... “We don't exactly get a lot of chances to talk – I only really see her at the DA meetings and I'm usually busy then,” Harry added defensively.

“You don't fancy Cho – you fancy the idea of her,” his older-self said gently. “Have you ever fantasized about her when wanking?”

Harry flushed and sputtered. “What?! No!”

“Have you ever fantasized about any girl when wanking?”

“No...” Harry said, feeling mortified and embarrassed beyond belief.

“Have you ever fantasized about cock when wanking?” his older-self asked with a knowing gleam in his eye and a grin.

Harry flushed and pressed himself back into the chair he was sitting in. “W-what!?” Harry stuttered.

“Ask yourself, Harry – why did you start waiting, hanging behind on the Quidditch Pitch after practice?”

“Huh?” Harry said weakly, as if he didn't know what the elder wizard was getting at.

“You kept getting aroused during the communal showers after practice. You couldn't keep your eyes from wandering. It made you embarrassed and you were terrified the other guys would notice. So you started offering to help Angelina put the equipment away so that you'd be able to shower solo,” his older self stated gently. “And that started in third year. There was no Quidditch in fourth, and with the Tournament you didn't exactly have a lot of time to worry about those things. Compound that with all the pressure that surrounded the Yule Ball debacle and it's no wonder you were left confused. I didn't even fully accept it until, well... I guess this event right here with the time-travel. That was when I finally started to analyze all of this stuff for myself. I suppose that was also when I realized that the reason Cedric's death had effected me so strongly was because I had a bit of a subconscious crush on him. I think that might also be why I latched so strongly onto the idea that I 'fancied' Cho. She and I had that in common – we both lost Cedric. Only she'd actually had Cedric, while I'd just had to watch him die...” he trailed off, shook his head and let out a small sigh.

Harry's jaw floundered in horror and denial, but he had no words. He didn't know what to say or what to think. All his mind could manage was the insistence that this couldn't be true. It just couldn't.

His elder self gave him a few minutes to sit there and stew in denial before he spoke again. “So, like I said – I'm married – well, that's not technically true. Technically I have a 'civil partner' which has all the same legal consequences of a marriage, but isn't called the same thing because people in general are all wankers. My husband and I have been legally 'partnered' since 2005 when the whole 'civil union' thing was first recognized here in Britain.

“There is an exciting bit of news though - as of September of this year the British government announced it's intention to introduce same-sex civil marriages in the next general election. I'm a bit hopeful about that. It's not like there's a huge amount of opposition left these days. I saw a poll not too long ago that showed more than 60% of the people surveyed were in favor of it, so I'm optimistic that it'll pass. Not that Dr– my partner really cares. He says the muggle government can just go hang themselves and he doesn't give a damn what they want to call us. Er... I've gotten off track again, haven't I? Sorry 'bout that.”

Harry's mind was still in stunned denial mode, so it seemed intent on latching onto the most random, unimportant detail. “Wait, so what year is it?”

The elder-Harry chuckled. “It's 2011 – although it's December, and by the time you leave here it'll be 2012.”

“Oh... Wow, that's –”

“Fifteen years in the future.”

“Er... yeah.”

“So you get to spend Yule here with us, and then go back and do Christmas at Grimmauld Place with Sirius and the Weasley's back in your own time.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess so... wait – Yule?”

“Yeah, my er, partner, was raised pagan, and I wasn't really raised anything at all, as you very well know, so what do I care? It's basically the same thing, as far as gifts and food and family is concerned – just called something different. It's not like the Dursley's ever took me to Christmas service or church.”

“Oh,” Harry replied, dumbly. “So, uh, other than your er... partner – who else...?”

“The whole family shows up for Yule. Sirius, Remus, Tonks, and Teddy will probably drop by on New Years too,” elder-Harry mused. “Actually, I know they will because I know they visited when I was fifteen and did this the first time. Er, what else – well, I know that Hermione and Ron won't be able to make it for Yule or Christmas this year. Sometimes they join us for a Yule feast, and then hold a Christmas thing at their place on the 25th, but this year Hermione is out of town until the 23^rd for her work in the International Affairs office and they're going to the Burrow for Christmas. I usually find it's safer to not bring uh... my partner, to the Burrow. It's just simpler to keep the peace that way,” he chuckled weakly and shrugged. “But like I said, we can usually do the split thing with them here for Yule and then us there for Christmas since Yule is usually several days earlier than Christmas. This year it starts the 22^nd, which is tomorrow by the way. It doesn't have a locked in date since it's a lunar thing.”

Harry was entirely overwhelmed by that bit of information overload and was also starting to get a rather foreboding feeling about who his elder self's 'domestic partner' was. He couldn't help but notice that the older-Harry hadn't yet said this mystery guy's name, even once. Then Harry's mind latched onto something else.

“Ron and Hermione's place?”

“Er – yeah. They're married,” elder-Harry said with a lop-sided grin.

Harry's eyes bugged out, yet again. He worried that if this kept up, they'd pop right out before he ever got back to his own time. “Married?!”

His elder self laughed, and nodded. “Yeah, they didn't really hook up till seventh year though, and sitting around, waiting for them to finally get on with it was such a pain. Ron went through this phase in sixth year with Lavender Brown that was just...ugh... it was hard to watch, let me tell you. I mean, I knew they'd end up together, because of this whole wonky time travel thing, but there were times when I seriously doubted things would come together. And they bicker so much, but Ron insists that the make-up sex is great... which I really don't need to know.”

Harry slapped his hands over his ears. “I don't need to know either!” he yelped and his older-self had another good laugh.

Finally Harry just sighed, leaning forward in his seat, bent over his knees with his face buried somewhat in his heads. “This is all just way too mental. I almost hope that I am dreaming.”

His elder self made a sympathetic humming noise.

“The bit about knowing what to do about Voldemort is nice though. The knowledge that it works out in the end also takes off a lot of the pressure and uncertainty.”

Harry made a bit of a grumbling concession sound and shrugged one shoulder. He would admit that, yes, that probably was nice, assuming this all was actually real and not just a hallucination, but right now his brain was a bit too overloaded to fully appreciate the upside to all this, just yet.

His older-self let the silence hang for a few moments longer before letting out a forced sort of chuckle. “Well... if you're hoping this is all a dream at this point, you just might be thinking it's a nightmare here in a minute.”

Harry raised his head slowly, looking at his older-self with a growing sense of foreboding. “Why?” he asked with slow caution.

“I er... ought to tell you who it is that's sleeping upstairs in my bed right now.”

“Oh god. Who is it?” Harry asked.

“Let me preface this by saying that a great deal of how he acted in school was a mask. I never got to know the real him back then because we both put on these fronts that everyone else expected of us. I forced myself into a role because everyone expected me to be the 'hero' but everyone also expected him to be a spoiled prat, and a miniature version of his father, so...”

“Who?” Harry said again with a sense of dread growing ever stronger.

“I mean, his family had all these expectations for him, and when he first started at Hogwarts he'd never really interacted with other kids his own age outside of these playdates that his mother would setup every few months, so he was just a socially awkward, spoiled child who just idolized his father and wanted to be just like him, even though he didn't actually understand at that age what his father was really like. And by the time he started to understand just what sort of person his father really was and started to develop some actual personal decency, he felt trapped in the role he'd created for himself. Everyone just expected things from him, and he didn't know how to break out of that –“

“Just tell me who it is,” Harry ground out.

His older-self heaved a defeated sigh and nodded.

“Draco. Malfoy. Although he's a Potter now. Shocked the hell out of me when he offered to take my name. But I guess I shouldn't be too surprised since his father was a monumental prick and disowned him and they haven't spoken in more than a decade...”

“M-Malfoy!?” Harry sputtered, cutting his older-self off.

“I know that as far as you're concerned right now, he's the biggest prat on the planet –“

“That's because he is!” Harry exclaimed.

“I mean, he did hop on board with Umbridge's inquisitorial squad, and it's basically his fault that you and the twins got banned from the Quidditch team, and –“

“Malfoy!? Bloody Malfoy!? Seriously?!”

“Yes, but like I said, he has masks. He puts them on as a defense mechanism, more than anything else. They're like roles he felt obligated to play because of family expectations, and the expectations of his housemates and friends. He's really a seriously brilliant actor. He's actually been in a number of plays for the local playhouse the last few years, and he's even gotten a few roles as minor characters in a some television shows. He just got an agent a couple years ago, and he's got a couple commercials lined up for next month and a pretty big part in an episode of bloody Dr. Who scheduled for filming in early February. He –“

“You know what? You're right. This is a nightmare. You're mental! I've got to be dreaming or hallucinating, or something!” Harry yelled, standing up and cutting his supposed-older-self off mid-sentence. “You're trying to tell me that not only am I gay and didn't even realize it, but I'm going to end up married to Draco Malfoy?!”

“Great Merlin, Harry. I forgot how scrawny you were when you were fifteen,” a tired, but amused voice said with a yawn and Harry twisted around to gape, open-mouthed at the shirtless man standing in the doorway to the entry hall he'd come from earlier.

“He's not scrawny!” the elder-Harry said, with mock indignation, but with a clear tinge of amusement to his voice.

“Not to mention, easily riled up,” the older version of Malfoy said, walking lazily forward before he draped himself over the back of the elder-Harry's chair and leaned in for a kiss.

Harry felt a crawling sensation shoot over his skin and his stomach twist up in confused, horrified knots, as he watched an older version of himself kissing an older Draco Malfoy, before the older-Malfoy stood upright again and leaned against the side of the chair with lazy grace.

“Don't think I don't know what that was about,” the elder-Harry said with a slightly reprimanding tone to his voice. “Come on, Drake, don't try to rile him up. He's had a shitty day. I told you about how badly the Nagini vision effected me back then. That was today for him. Not to mention how overwhelmed and confused he is by this whole time travel thing.”

Malfoy seemed to heave a put-upon sigh and rolled his eyes. “Fine. Take away my fun. But you were so easy to tease back then.”

“Yeah, well the last thing he needs is you riling him up, so behave.”

Malfoy pouted before making an over dramatic sigh and walking towards the breakfast nook and the archway there that led into the kitchen. “Fine, fine. I know it's still a bit early, but seeing as how we're all up, shall I make breakfast?”

The elder-Harry smiled warmly. “That'd be great love. Thanks.”

Malfoy made a humming sort of acknowledgment as he disappeared into the other room.

Harry gaped at the spot where Malfoy had disappeared from, wondering at which point he'd entered the twilight zone.

“This has got to be a dream,” Harry said, shaking his head in disbelief as he slowly sank back down into his seat.

“I think it took me like a whole day or two before I finally believed I wasn't about to wake up at any moment and discover I was dreaming the whole thing,” his elder self mused. “It is real, though,” he went on with an apologetic grimace and a shrug.

Harry continued to shake his head in slow, dumbfounded disbelief for several long minutes after that. Finally he turned to scrutinize his older self, who was just sitting there, patiently waiting for... something. Harry, he supposed.

Upon closer inspection, Harry realized that his earlier assumption that this individual looked just like every picture he'd ever seen of James Potter, was a bit inaccurate. The green eyes, were a dead give away, but it was still dark outside, and Harry didn't often look close enough to notice eye color.

This person was also older than any picture Harry had ever seen of his father. But he supposed that made sense, since his father hadn't lived to see 30. No, this person really did look like a carbon copy of Harry... just older. He had broad shoulders and a stocky-looking build. He was wearing a sleeveless white shirt and gray flannel pants – obviously his sleep attire, and while the clothing was loose for comfort, Harry could still easily see that his older-self had not slacked off on his fitness. If anything, he was in considerably better shape than Harry himself was.

His arms were well muscled, but not bulky. Harry wondered what his older self did for a living to result in such a build at age thirty.

“How did you end up with Malfoy?” Harry asked, suddenly, still feeling totally bowled over by the mere idea.

“Well... honestly? Because of this,” he said, making a motion with his hand, indicating the two of them sitting there.

“Huh?”

“I suppose it's sort of one of those self-causing loops,” the elder-Harry said, twisting up his face in thought. “I mean... I can't imagine any way that I would have started thinking that way about Drake if it hadn't been for the time I spent in the future, watching how he and my older self were together. I got to see another side of him during that time, and my older self... which I guess is me, to you, insisted that he'd gotten to see another side of Draco and had fallen in love with him... I don't know. The 'how' is a sort of weirdly twisted set of circumstances that never would have happened, if not for the time travel. But it's the part I'm most grateful for.

“I mean, I'm definitely grateful that traveling to the future allowed me to avoid Voldemort's traps and destroy the horcruxes and make him mortal – the war never got to escalate very far because of the things I did, and it was all over pretty quickly and with very few casualties. So I know that that's probably the most universally important thing to come out of the time-travel accident, but as far as personal impact goes? I'm most thankful for the opportunity it gave me to see another side to Draco.” The elder-Harry smiled softly and gave a small shrug. “I mean, the Voldemort thing was over before I even turned seventeen. I've been with Draco... well, about fourteen years now, I guess.”

Harry found himself once again staring at the other wizard with stunned parted lips, simply lost for words.

The sound of sizzling and the alluring aroma of bacon managed to distract Harry and he turned his head towards the entrance to the kitchen. He had an inexplicably difficult time imagining Draco Malfoy cooking, but apparently it was happening right that moment, just a room away.

Cooking shirtless.

Harry frowned at himself and shook his head to clear it of the image that now seemed intent on filling it.

“Come on. Let's go see if Drake needs any help in the kitchen,” Harry's older-self said, standing up and jerking his head towards the open archway.

“W-whuh?” Harry sputtered, but his counterpart was now walking towards the breakfast nook and motioning for him to follow. Harry didn't really know what to do, so he found himself standing up and following despite himself.

Harry followed cautiously and approached the kitchen with an obvious air of trepidation. His older-self ignored him and walked right in, looking over the stove before going to an opposite counter and grabbing a bagged loaf of bread.

Harry took a cautious step inside and his eyes were drawn to the older version of his arch rival. Malfoy was still shirtless, and Harry couldn't help but think he was barmy to be standing in front of a skillet filled with sizzling bacon without a shirt on, but he was too off balance by the whole thing to voice such a thought. His mind was still buzzing with his older-self's proclamation of his sexuality, as well, and he found himself questioning everything and second-guessing everything he thought he knew about himself. It was a subject that he usually, quite firmly, avoided thinking about, but it was as if his ability to not think about it had vanished utterly with the rather firm and decisive declaration from his older self about his own sexuality.

“So it really happened,” Malfoy said, glancing over at Harry with a curious lop-sided smirk on his face.

“I told you it'd be soon,” the elder-Harry said as he put four slices of bread into a large toaster and pulled out a tub of margarine from the refrigerator.

Malfoy made a small scoffing sound. “Even you weren't convinced it was going to happen.”

“Well, I knew if it was going to happen, it'd be soon. I knew it was the last week and a half of December and the first few days of January, and it happened the year I was thirty, which puts it... well, now. So I wasn't really all that surprised by it.”

Malfoy nodded, and made a slight humming sound as he flipped the bacon in the pan with a wave of his wand. “I was a bit worried when you didn't come back to bed,” he said airily after a moment. “Almost wondered if we had a burglar and you decided to sit him down on the couch and lecture him until he saw the err of his ways,” he drawled before turning his head to grin teasingly at Harry's older self.

Elder-Harry snorted and rolled his eyes. The toast popped out and he started buttering the slices with a knife.

The older Malfoy then grabbed a plate from one of the cupboards, laid a paper towel down in it and waved his wand, sending the sizzling bacon from the skillet and onto the plate where they continued to sizzle for several seconds longer. Another wave of his wand and the fridge opened and a carton of eggs came over to rest on the counter beside him.

“Scrambled okay with you?” he asked, glancing over at Harry and catching him off guard.

“Huh? Oh... er, yeah,” Harry said, feeling utterly disoriented.

“It's his favorite,” Malfoy said, jerking his head in the direction of the older Harry who was watching them with a grin on his face, “but for all I knew you preferred them some other way when you were a kid. I don't think I really started paying attention to his breakfast preferences until after we'd left Hogwarts and moved in together” he trailed off as he began to crack the eggs over the skillet, creating a big puddle of eggs and stirring it with a spatula quickly before it started to cook itself too much with the heat that already permeated the pan from the bacon.

Harry was once again speechless and opted to not respond at all, rather than say something stupid. Instead, he stood there and watched as this older, more polite, and still shirtless version of Draco Malfoy cooked breakfast for him.

His eyes began to wander, much to his own frustration. He was trying, pointedly, to not look at Malfoy, because he was Malfoy for Merlin's sake – even if he was fifteen years older than the Malfoy Harry was more accustomed to – but despite his best efforts, he found himself observing the man's tall, lean form. He had muscle definition, but he was slimmer than Harry's own future counterpart. Harry felt his face heat up with what was undoubtedly a bright red flush, when his eyes were drawn to the trail of hair going from the wizard's navel, disappearing into his low hung black satin sleep pants that left very little to the imagination. Malfoy's stomach was smooth with some mild definition – not chiseled abs by the strictest of definitions, but still –

Harry cut the thought off and turned around, looking out the window instead. He pointedly ignored the quiet snickers he heard behind him, feeling mortified that the other two in the room seemed to see right through him.

This was only happening because they had him all confused! His older-self had twisted up Harry's mind with all this insanity about fancying men and being married to Draco Malfoy.

“So it's fifth year for you, right?” Malfoy's voice asked, drawing Harry's attention again. Harry looked over his shoulder and saw that Malfoy was scooping the eggs onto three separate plates he had waiting on the counter.

“Yeah, fifth year,” Harry said a bit coolly.

Malfoy grimaced before pulling his wand out again and sending the three plates through the air and out the open arch to set themselves on the table in the breakfast nook. He picked up the plate loaded with bacon while the elder-Harry now held a plate with buttered toast. The two made their way to the table, so Harry followed along.

“Fifth year sucked,” Malfoy said, still grimacing as he sat down at the table.

“Doesn't seem to be sucking for you,” Harry grumbled, glaring at the blond.

“You think I enjoyed kissing that disgusting toad's arse? I hated her. I hated all of her bloody decrees, and her sitting in on all of the classes, sticking her nose into everything. I can't tell you how many times in the beginning I complained to my father about her, but he just kept telling me to toe in line and stay on her good side. Said she was doing us all a service,” Malfoy sneered before stabbing a forkful of eggs. “Worst of all was that the other Slytherins had all learned by that point to look to me for what to do, so when I had to start sucking up to her, they all did too. So I couldn't even hope that one of the others might do something about her.” He shuddered exaggeratedly.

“At least you haven't been getting detentions with her,” Harry growled and reached over to pile some bacon onto his plate and grab a couple pieces of toast.

Malfoy's face darkened and Harry's hand paused mid-reach, surprised by the sudden intense expression on the man's face.

“You're not putting up with that rubbish any longer,” he said with determination and a firm look in Harry's direction.

“What?” Harry replied in confusion.

“Her detentions. They stop now. She's using an illegal dark artifact on you. A blood quill is forbidden outside of use in legal documents and then it's use has to be monitored by a certified official. I couldn't do anything about the toad when I was fifteen because Lucius refused to help, and I was too afraid of him to disobey his directive, but you can still do something about her. You need to report what she's doing.”

Harry scoffed. “Report it to who? The Ministry is on her side, and the Prophet has everyone believing that I'm an attention-seeking liar.”

“Tell bloody McGonagall for one! You don't honestly think she knows and is turning a blind eye to something like that, do you?”

Harry blanched. As a matter of fact... he did think that. He looked over to his older-self with a questioning look.

“She doesn't know,” elder-Harry stated firmly. “You also can't say that the whole 'Ministry' is on Umbridge's side because that's not true at all. Fudge has loads of political enemies, not to mention those in the Ministry who don't give a damn about the politics and are honestly dedicated to doing a proper job – of course, they're a rare breed. You need to write a letter to Amelia Bones, she's the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in your time. Her niece is Susan Bones; she's in the DA, so you can ask her for help there and she'll put you in touch with her aunt.”

“What will that do?” Harry asked, sitting up straighter.

“It'll get Umbridge out of Hogwarts,” elder-Harry said with an accomplished smirk. “It takes a bit of time since Madam Bones has to work around Fudge in the beginning, but it will get Umbridge out of Hogwarts, and under criminal investigation, by the end of February. There are other students that she's using that quill on, and you need to get them in on it too. She got cocky after she got away with using it on you for so long, and started using it on others, which will really be her downfall. She was also the one who sent those Dementors after you during the summer.”

Harry blanched. “What!?”

Elder-Harry nodded solemnly. “She ended up admitting to it under Veritaserum during her trial. Said she did it for the Minister, although he didn't technically know about it, and for the 'good of Magical Britain',” he said with a sneer.

Harry scowled, feeling his anger build inside, indignant and furious that such a thing could be allowed to happen. That these were the people running things, and it was their fault that no one was preparing for Voldemort.

“It's crap... I know,” his elder-counterpart said gently and Harry looked back at him, blankly. “It's going to be hard for a while longer... real hard at times, but it is going to get better. Things turn around after Hogwarts. For you, that is. The wizarding world and it's politics are probably eternally doomed to be overrun by insipid, pandering wankers, but I sort of got as far away from all that as I could manage and still stay in Britain. I'm actually really happy with where my life is, and I've been that way for a long time now. Just... just wanted you to know that. Give you something positive to look forward to. I know it helped me keep going at times when things were especially rough.” He gave a little shrug and an embarrassed grin before sitting back in his seat some.

Harry nodded, somewhat blankly. It did somehow help him feel a tiny bit better, but it was a very hesitant feeling. He was still a bit too consumed by the notion that this was all a bizarre dream of some sort, and allowing himself to feel any kind of hope or positive emotion at all because of something in a dream, was just stupid. If anything, he felt sort of detached from his emotions. Too shocked and confused to know how to process them.

Discussion was light after that while the three focused instead on their breakfast. The elder-Harry cleaned up when they were done, although it involved little more than a few wand flicks for the plates to float over to the sink and start washing themselves.

Malfoy then yawned and stretched – an action that earned another blush from Harry, as the sight of the muscles stretching and flexing over the lean, cut, man's torso had been unexpectedly and confusingly appealing to the fifteen year old, which then resulted in a smug smirk from Malfoy, as he'd clearly seen Harry's confused interest. The blond then declared that he was heading upstairs to get dressed, and Harry heaved a small sigh of relief. Harry's elder counterpart then offered to take Harry upstairs and show him to the guest room he'd be staying in for the next two weeks. Seeing little else to do, Harry quickly accepted.

The elder-Harry gave him a quick tour of the house as they went. He pointed out the door to the library on the first floor down the hall at the base of the stairs, then pointed out the door to the 'office' that was at the top of the landing after climbing the stairs. Next was the door to the loo across from that, at which point the elder-Harry informed him that 'he and Drake's' bedroom had an en-suite so Harry would have this bathroom to himself. Finally, he opened the door to the guest room and motioned Harry inside.

The room was decently sized – bigger than Dudley's primary bedroom back on Privet Drive, and far more tastefully decorated. It was also clearly a guest room. While it was neat, had very nice furniture, and an appealing color scheme, it didn't have the 'lived-in' quality of a room that ever got used on any regular basis. There was a queen-sized bed with wooden end tables on each side of it that were stained so dark, they were nearly black. A dresser beside a desk and chair the same color and style as the end tables were placed along the wall opposite the bed. Along the wall with the door was a bookshelf but it only had a few books on it, accompanied by a number of random meaningless trinkets to fill out the space, and a few framed pictures.

The room's over-all color scheme was done in desaturated blues, with wallpaper combining vertical stripes of a darker shade with a ligher, grayer shade, in varying thicknesses. The bedspread was the same colors, but with a diamond 'harlequin' pattern on it, and solid, dark-blue sheets that had a sheen to them that told Harry they were probably satin or silk.

“Erm, it's nice,” Harry said awkwardly.

“Yeah – I know it's kind of sterile and overly neat, but our only really frequent guest to use it is Cissy, and she likes it that way,” his elder self said with a mild grimace and then a dismissive shrug.

“Cissy?”

“Er, Naricssa. Drake's mum.”

Harry blanched. “Narcissa Malfoy?! Malfoy's mum?”

“Well, technically she's Narcissa Black again. She went back to her maiden name after she divorced Lucius.”

Harry blinked one, two, then three times before exclaiming, “Wait, what?! Black?”

“Yeah, she's Sirius' cousin. Huh, I thought I knew that by this point... well, no, I guess maybe it hadn't really registered back when Sirius first showed me the family tapestry.”

“Malfoy is related to Sirius?” Harry said, feeling more caught off guard than actually upset. “And hold on – Malfoy's parents got a divorce?”

“Yeah, but it took a while for it to come to that. Lucius disowned Drake shortly after we graduated from Hogwarts because he refused to break it off with me. Lucius officially disowned Draco on the grounds that he had broken the marriage contract that the Malfoys had with the Greengrass', but we all knew it was because it was me that Drake broke off the marriage contract for. Well, that and because I'm a man, and we arguably wouldn't be able to produce a proper heir for the Malfoy line or whatever. But anyway, after that, Lucius cut off all ties with Drake, but Narcissa refused to do the same. She kept contact and would send him money and things. Apparently this royally pissed off dear Lucy and they had many a great and grand fights over it.

“But it wasn't until Lucius got charged with tax evasion, attempted bribery of a Ministry official, and being in possession of a large stash of banned magical artifacts, that she finally divorced him.” Elder-Harry paused, grinning rather smugly and chuckled, “She took half his estate when she divorced him, too. He served a couple years in Azkaban, and now he's on his own. We don't ever hear from him. He spends most of his time these days in France, I think.”

“Oh... wow,” Harry said weakly, not really sure what else to say. Malfoy had always pissed him off to great lengths by being an annoying bothersome prat, but it was Lucius Malfoy's actions that had led to the whole awful mess and Harry's near-death at the fangs of a giant basilisk, back in his second year. Despite the fact that Harry quite literally despised Lucius Malfoy, he realized he really didn't know anything at all about Malfoy's mother.

“She's a bit fussy and overly proper about some things, but all things considered, she's really a pretty nice and supportive mother-in-law,” his older self continued on with a shrug as he walked over towards the closet and pulled the door open to reveal a walk-in wardrobe. “She supports Draco and his choices, even though we're about as non-traditional as we could be, and her whole upbringing was all about traditionalism.” He disappeared into the closet and Harry walked closer to peer inside, while trying to wrap his mind around the idea that Narcissa Malfoy would supposedly end up as his mother-in-law.

“Ah – lucky. Looks like Teddy left behind a few t-shirts and jumpers the last time he was here,” the elder-Harry said from within the closet. He emerged a second later holding up a couple hangers, one with a dark burgundy jumper on it, and the other with a black t-shirt. Harry hesitated a moment before pointing at the t-shirt, which was promptly handed over. “Most of the things in here are muggle-style clothes for Cissy. Outside of when she visits us and we go out and do things, she never really needs to have any muggle clothes, so she just leaves them here. Just ignore all that.”

He came out again, having put the jumper back into the wardrobe, and then walked over to the dresser and pulled out each drawer before closing them again. “Doesn't look like Teddy left behind any trousers,” he said with a frown. “Shouldn't be a big deal, I'll just shrink down a few pairs of my jeans. I should have bought some clothes in prep for this, but like I said, part of me wondered whether or not you'd really show up. Oh well – my older-self said the same thing to me, now that I think about it. That really is weird, you know...” he trailed off and then shrugged. “Kind of like a weird sort of deja vu, only it's been fifteen years, so the memories are a bit faded from time. Anyway, be right back with some trousers,” he said then, before disappearing from the room.

Harry stood there, feeling exceedingly disoriented before sighing and letting himself sit down on the end of the bed, holding the black t-shirt in his hands. He wondered who 'Teddy' was for a moment. His older self had mentioned this 'Teddy' earlier as well when he'd said that Sirius, Lupin and Tonks would be by for new years. Harry wondered why Tonks was included in that group because it seemed a bit odd, but he just shrugged it off. He could always ask later.

After a moment of mental blankness, Harry reached over and pinched his arm. He flinched and grimaced slightly as the action proved to be rather painful. He heaved a sigh and fell back onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling, and attempting to wrap his mind around the insanity he seemed to have found himself in.

He twisted up his face and then rolled somewhat to the side and reached back to pull his wand out of his back pocket, since it was now jabbing him in the back.

He held it in front of his face, relieved that, at the very least, he still had it with him.

“You'll be able to perform magic while you're here,” the voice of his elder-self said suddenly from the doorway and Harry sat up with a jerk as the older wizard walked back into the room holding a couple pairs of blue jeans.

“I will?” Harry asked in surprise.

“Well, so long as you're within the house and either Drake or I are here. Honestly, you can get away with it in Grimmauld Place back in your own time, too. Underaged witches and wizards living with magical adults are expected to be kept in line by their parents. The Weasley's all grew up with the strictly enforced idea that no magic is allowed before seventeen, but the Ministry actually has no way to detect whether or not you're performing the magic or if the nearby adult wizards are the ones doing it. The Trace detects magic being cast, but can't tell who actually cast it. So if the trace detects magic, and you're within range of a magical adult, it doesn't alert the Office for Underaged Wizardry. Conversely, if it detects magic, but no adult witch or wizard around, it assumes that you did it, and you get a notice – that's why Dobby's magic got you in trouble back during the summer before second year – because he's a house elf and they don't count.

“In addition to all that, the file that records signals from the Trace for Harry Potter no longer exists in the Ministry because I'm obviously no longer underage, so I don't think your Trace would have anywhere to report spell use to. I know I used magic the whole two weeks I was in the future, back when I was fifteen, and nothing ever came of it.”

“Oh,” Harry said, only really getting the general jist of what his counterpart had said. Basically, it seemed to boil down to 'you can perform magic' and that was probably all he really needed to know. Although it also sounded like 'you can perform magic, even when you get back to your own time, so long as Mrs. Weasley doesn't catch you', and that was definitely an intriguing prospect.

Not that he'd really risk it right now, though. Not with all the trouble he'd been in with the Ministry back during the summer. He'd rather avoid another trial before the Wizengamot – thank-you-very-much.

“I'll leave these here. I'm gonna run back and get dressed too,” his older-self was saying, pulling Harry's focus back on the man as he set the pants down on the bed.

“Okay... thanks.”

His older-self smiled at him in a sort of reassuring way before leaving the room and closing the door behind him. Harry sighed and let himself fall back on the bed for a moment before groaning, sitting back up and unbuttoning his cotton sleep-shirt. He slipped the black t-shirt on, removed his sleep pants and put on the jeans.

They were too big at first, making Harry scowl in annoyance at them, but a moment later he felt a zap of magical energy and the pants shrunk in just the right places until they were just barely snug, but not uncomfortably so.

“Hn,” Harry made an impressed sort of noise and moved around a bit to test out the fit. It was perfect. Obviously his older-self had put some sort of sizing charm on them. Harry made a mental note to find out what it was and how to cast it so that he could do it to all of the over-sized hand-me-downs he still had from Dudley.

He put the remaining pairs of jeans into one of the dresser drawers that was empty before poking his head into the wardrobe. Just as his older self had said, it was mostly filled with the sort of clothes you'd expect a well-to-do muggle woman to wear. There were a few nice dresses, but mostly it had slacks and blouses. Along the back, however, was a small selection of t-shirts and jumpers. One of them was in in Hufflepuff colors, which bewildered Harry for a moment before he remembered his older-self saying that these were left behind by someone named 'Teddy'.

He shuffled through them out of bored curiosity and wondered if they'd even really fit. They were a bit on the small side, to be honest. With this in mind, he went back out into the bedroom and picked the black tee off the bed and slipped it on. He supposed one could say that it 'fit' in that, he could move freely and it wasn't uncomfortable, but it was definitely a more snug fit than he was accustomed to. Of course, what he was 'used to' were all ridiculously oversized, so he supposed it was the extreme contrast more than anything else that was putting him off.

A knock came at the door and Harry turned to look at it. “Come in.”

The door was pushed open a bit and a blond head popped in. “Hey, brought you this,” Malfoy said before tossing a plastic bag of something through the opening towards Harry. He jerked and caught it more on reflex than anything else. The older incarnation of Malfoy grinned cheekily at him. “I knew Harry wasn't going to think to buy anything for you, so I, unlike him, actually prepared.”

“Huh?” Harry said before looking down and opening the bag that turned out to be from some muggle clothing store. Inside were several packages of pants and socks, and a brand new toothbrush, tube of tooth paste, deodorant, and a pair of gray cotton sleep pants. Harry blinked at the bag in surprise before looking up, just as confused as ever, at the grinning blond standing at the door. “Uh – thanks?”

Malfoy chuckled. “No problem. I figured that if this whole thing turned out to not happen that Harry and I would just make use of them anyway, so it was far from a wasted purchase. I figured clothing wouldn't be that big a deal since we could just shrink down any of Harry's old stuff. He complains that I'm obsessed with shopping, but he's the pack-rat. Never throws anything away.” He sighed fondly and smirked.

“Oh, well, I er, appreciate the thought,” Harry said, awkwardly. He shuffled for a moment and an uncomfortable silence filled the space between them for far longer than Harry would have liked. He huffed slightly, frustrated with the extremely weird situation and ran his hand through his hair roughly. “So er... you knew this was coming then?”

Malfoy chuckled. “Harry told me fairly early on about the whole time travel thing. I was convinced in the beginning that his sudden shift in attitude towards me had to be some sort of trick, or a trap. It didn't make sense that Harry bloody Potter suddenly wanted to stop being bitter enemies and wanted to try being my friend. When he did tell me about his time-travel thing, he tried to warm me up to the idea of us being more than just friends in a subtle manner, so of course, he sucked at that and eventually just flat out told me that when he went to the future, he found his future self married to me. Of course, in the beginning, I was convinced he had to be absolutely delusional, but he was persistent,” he grinned.

Harry laughed weakly. “I can see that. So er... when did you finally start to believe him?”

Malfoy came into the room a bit further so that he was now leaning back against the door frame in a relaxed pose, hands in the pockets of a pair of black denim jeans with a dark blue button-down shirt draping over his front and back, but bunching up over his wrists. He hummed in thought, tilting his head to the side slightly. “It's hard to say, really. I guess the idea just slowly grew on me because Harry so thoroughly believed it. At some point, it became clear that he hadn't made it up, and if it had been a delusion, it had apparently been a very detailed one, and he certainly believed it. I mean, I was really just humoring him in the beginning – I acted like I believed it was real, but honestly, still thought he'd just dreamed the whole thing up, but at some point, I wasn't pretending anymore.” He shrugged.

“Oh...” Harry said, not really sure what else to say. His mind searched for a moment to come up with something else to say. He glanced down at the bag of under things and then over towards the wardrobe. “Oh hey – whose Teddy? I'm apparently wearing his shirt and er... my older-self? – he mentioned that Teddy would be here for New Years, I think?”

“Teddy is Harry's godson, and my cousin's kid. He's in his third year at Hogwarts.”

“Godson?” Harry echoed in surprise. He wondered who the heck Malfoy's cousin was and why this person would name Harry the kid's godfather and not his or her cousin, Draco, the kid's godfather. “Who...?

“The parents? Remus and Tonks,” Malfoy replied in an off-handed sort of tone, as if what he'd said wasn't anymore significant than discussing the weather. His eyes, which were filled with expectation and mirth, told an entirely different story, however.

Harry coughed out in shock. “Wait – wha? Remus and Tonks?! Wait... who – is Tonks your cousin?”

“Yeah, her mother is my mother's older sister. They'll probably all be here for Yule, as a matter of fact.”

Harry's mouth floundered before he glanced around the room worriedly. “Er, are they going to need the room?”

“Oh no – they won't stay the night. They'll all just floo in and stick around for dinner and an exchange of gifts. Aunt Andy apparently raised Dora with a mix between Yule and Christmas traditions, since her husband Ted is muggleborn. Dora and Remus do the whole Christmas thing on the 25^th, of course, but I think that Teddy likes the fact that with us celebrating Yule, he gets two separate days for gifts and food – and technically Yule is spread out over three days. When he was younger, he was always trying to convince his parents to give him all his gifts on the first day of Yule since he thought it was pointless to have to wait for the 25^th when we were exchanging presents several days earlier. It was always an amusing confrontation to observe,” he said with a smirk.

“So – wait, who all is coming?”

Malfoy raised his gaze towards the ceiling as if making a mental tally. “Let's see... my mother will be here, Aunt Andy and her husband Ted, Dora – er, she still goes by Tonks by the way, so only call her Dora if you want her to hex you,” he paused and smirked widely, “Remus and Teddy, of course... let's see... that should be it. Sirius has come a few times, but he still shies away from the whole 'Yule' thing, since he says it reminds him too much of his childhood. The Potters celebrated Christmas, but the Blacks were always heathens,” he said this with a smug, wide, grin, “and stuck to the old traditions. So he associates Christmas with the time he spent living with Harry's dad, and Yule with the miserable winter solstices he had at home. Personally, I think he's just stupidly stubborn. It's not like we're sacrificing animals before a bonfire. Personally, I think he's still just uncomfortable being around my mother during the holidays since that's when she gets all weepy and clingy.”

“Oh,” Harry said again, feeling suddenly rather overwhelmed by the idea of being surrounded by such a large group. “Er... do they know that I'm uh.... I mean, aren't they going to be weirded out by me being here?”

“Well they all know about Harry's time-travel thing, and how it supposedly happened this year during the holidays. The question as to how many of them honestly believed that you'd really show up, is up in the air though. I'd say that even those that fully claim to believe in the whole thing, will still be a bit surprised to see you here in the flesh.” He grinned widely, “I'm actually looking forward to their reactions. Teddy will just be excited. I don't think he'll be surprised at all. He's always believed Harry, and I think he's honestly expecting you to show up. But, of course, he grew up with the idea from early childhood, so he didn't have any preconceived notions about time-travel of that sort being 'impossible'.”

“It's so weird to think that Lupin has a son,” Harry said a bit dazed. “And that he married Tonks. I didn't even know they were close.”

“I think it happened because they worked together a lot for the Order there at the end of the war,” Malfoy said dismissively.

“Are there any more big surprises like that? I mean, tell me that Sirius doesn't have a kid, does he?”

“Sirius?” Malfoy said with a laugh, “Oh no. I think he's the ever-eternal bachelor. I'm not honestly convinced he's sane or stable enough to hold a steady relationship, even if he wanted one, but I'm sure Harry – er, my Harry – would disagree.”

“Oh, well, I guess that's not too surprising.”

“Although 'Mione and Weasley have kids. Not sure if you'll get a chance to see them while you're here.”

Harry made something of a choking sound before looking wide-eyed at Malfoy. “They've got kids?” he said and his voice actually cracked a bit in his surprise.

“They're thirty and have been married since two years out of Hogwarts – you really think that a Weasley could go that long without procreating at least a couple times?” Malfoy said with a smirk. “Honestly, I'm amazed they don't already have multiple sets of twins or something. Perhaps Hermione's genetics have squashed the tendency for identical gingers in the family's line.”

Harry's mind didn't know how to take that statement. He wasn't sure, but he thought that Malfoy might have complimented Hermione – or suggested that Hermione's genetics – muggleborn genetics – were superior to Ron's. And Ron's family was actually pureblood, even if Malfoy had always sneered down at them and called them bloodtraitors.

Instead of actually addressing the issues causing his confusion, Harry opted to latch onto a different point. “So how old are their kids?”

“Well, Rose is five I think. Or is she six? No, she's five. Hugo is four. How awful a name is that? Who names their kid Hugo? I pity the poor child when he comes of school age. His middle name is James though – so he can at least fall back on that.”

“They used my middle name for their son?” Harry blanched.

“Yeah, but I think it was mostly because it was convenient with the pattern they were going for,” Malfoy said airily. “They were matching their own initials. Rose's middle name is Beitris so her initials are R. B. like Ronald Billius. Hugo is Hugo James so he's H. J. just like Hermione Jean.”

“Oh. I see.”

Malfoy shrugged, his expression showing how little he thought of their naming practices.

Conversation basically died, once again, at this point as Harry once again found himself completely lacking any ideas for what to say. Part of him was still utterly unbalanced by the notion that he was having a very civil chat with this twilight zone version of an older Draco Malfoy.

Finally, after fidgeting awkwardly in silence for several long minutes, Harry's head jerked up and he found he did in fact have something he wanted to ask the other.

“Hey erm... how uh... how did my other self approach you, you know... back in fifth year? When he came back from the holiday break, how did that all work out?”

Malfoy's face took on a wide, rather smug and somewhat annoying smirk at that point. “Not telling,” he said crossing his arms over his chest and tipping his chin up defiantly.

“Whuh? What? Why not!?”

He chuckled. “You have to figure that out on your own. Even Harry – my Harry – said this. He said that when he went forward in time that they all refused to tell him how to deal with it because it was something he was going to have to work out on his own – so that's what I'm telling you now. If we told you how it all played out, then you'd just be following a script. It wouldn't be as real and there'd be no risk in it. You're already saved a lot of the worry by knowing that in the end it all works out. That already takes a load of the pressure off, but I'm not about to make it too easy for you.”

Harry scowled at him in annoyance, which only seemed to make Malfoy's grin grow wider.

“Hey you two, sorry I took so long, got a phone call from a client and had to deal with it,” the elder-Harry said as he poked his head into the room and looked between the two – Malfoy grinning cockily and the younger Harry scowling in obvious annoyance – and chuckled. “I'd be worried if it weren't for the fact that I remember what you two were just talking about.”

Harry turned his scowl onto his older counterpart, but it only seemed to amuse him too.

“Come on, you. Let's head downstairs and start going over some of that Voldemort stuff I mentioned earlier,” his older self said, effectively wiping the pout off Harry's face. “Yule is tomorrow, so we'll be way too busy with that to talk about any of it then. May as well get started laying the foundation now so that you've got the rest of your time here to ask questions and make sure you've got it all clear in your head.”

The three made the move back downstairs to the living room and the older-Harry wasted little time in delving into a lengthy lecture on Voldemort's creation of the objects known as 'horcruxes'. He did go over some of the history – when Voldemort made them in his life and how he came by the objects he used – but he didn't really spend a lot of time on those details. He said that it did give a little background story to them and potentially made them easier to remember, but that for the most part the information wasn't really important at all in actually finding the destroying them.

He covered, in detail, exactly what options were available for destroying horcruxes since they were apparently exceedingly hard to destroy. Despite this, there were several options available to Harry.

They took a break after a few hours and Draco suggested they visit to the back garden for some fresh air while he worked on lunch and Harry's elder self had practically beamed at him before leaning in and giving Malfoy a quick chaste kiss on the lips before standing up and dragging younger-Harry with him.

While outside, the elder-Harry explained that Draco generally didn't like cooking food for other people. He was fine cooking for Harry, so long as Harry kept him company in the kitchen while he did it. But cooking alone was not something he did on any regular basis.

From the back garden Harry could tell that they were obviously in a muggle residential area, but couldn't tell much more than that. His counterpart explained that they had only lived in the house a few years. He and Draco purchased it together. When the realtor showed them into the house during their house-hunt, Harry had taken one step into the entry hall, recognized it, and turned to the woman to inform her that they'd take it.

Draco had sputtered apparently, but as soon as Harry managed to get the message across to him that this was the house, the blond had shrugged and agreed that they'd take it.

It wasn't too long before Draco was calling them back inside with a selection of sandwiches and soup. Little stories and anecdotes went around as the two older wizard reminisced on various events while Harry just ate and listened in silence, occasionally interjecting with questions.

Afterwards, they returned to the living room and an apparently significant subject was broached for the first time.

“Wait... what do you mean that I'm a horcrux,” Harry asked, a horrified sense of denial sweeping through him.

“I know how awful the mere concept of that is,” the older-Harry said gently, raising his hands palm out in a calming gesture. “I still remember quite clearly how contaminated I felt, just thinking about it,” he gave a small shudder. “But we'll be dealing with that while you're here, so by the time you go back, the soul piece will be gone and the connection severed. That also means that those weird dreams you've been having about the door to the Department of Mysteries will stop.”

“Wait, how exactly are we going to deal with it? How's that going to work? You said the only way to destroy the soul pieces was to destroy the vessels they were in! But what about me being the vessel!?”

“Hey – I'm still here, aren't I?” the elder-Harry asked rhetorically. “And Voldemort has been very-much-dead since I was sixteen, so obviously we got rid of it. The thing is that you being in the future like you are is actually going to give us the avenue we need to destroy it more easily.”

Harry frowned in confusion. “How so?”

“The connection between the individual horcrux soul pieces and the main, central, soul-piece is very essential in providing the horcrux the power it needs to protect itself. Without the central soul-piece there, the horcruxes are weakened and vulnerable to attacks that they wouldn't normally be. The power-source for the protective magic comes from the central piece. Well, right now – here in this time – the central soul is long gone. So the spell that we're going to use will work here in this time, but wouldn't actually work once you go back to your own time. But it will work now, and you won't be harmed at all – you'll just be really tired and a bit sore for a few days. Just standard magical exertion. Nothing more.”

Harry looked dubious but was cautiously hopeful. The whole thing was horrifying to even think about, and he realized that all of his fears and worries that had been consuming his thoughts for the last several months really were tied back to this piece of Voldemort's Soul that was apparently lodged in his forehead.

Never before had he loathed his scar as much as he did right now. It wasn't just a symbol and reminder of his parents death, and the miserably unfortunate event that led to his unwanted fame, it was also the visible mark of Voldemort's taint upon him.

He shivered in disgust, feeling the sudden urge to take a very hot shower with a harsh scrub brush.

An unexpected, warm hand suddenly appeared on his knee and Harry's head snapped up to see that it was Malfoy who was connected to the hand. He even had a concerned expression on his face that Harry thought was an entirely foreign expression for that face to feature. The face was wider with a slightly stronger jawline and more filled out than the pointy-faced boy from back in his own time, but it hadn't changed that much. He was still Malfoy.

The distinct lack of derisive sneering was unsettling enough, but this sympathetic, caring Malfoy was just too bizarre to wrap his mind around. How could Malfoy have changed so drastically over the years?

“We'll get it out. I promise,” Malfoy said in a firm, determined tone. And oddly enough... Harry thought he believed Malfoy when he said it.

By the end of the day, Harry felt like his brain had been crammed with far too many details to make sense of it all, and he was quite entirely exhausted. The idea that the very next day, the house would be over-run with people – several of whom he didn't know, and the rest whom he did know – only fifteen years older, now – was not entirely an appealing one.

His two hosts had insisted that there would be plenty of time to go back over the horcrux details in the coming two weeks, so he didn't really need to worry about not having fully comprehended everything that they'd gone over that day.

Also, apparently Harry would require some recovery time from the spell that they would have to use to remove the horcrux, which was why they were waiting until the day after Yule before making a move on that particular issue. However, now that Harry knew about the bit of Voldemort's soul that he was carrying around, he couldn't quite think of anything he'd like to address sooner than the matter of getting rid of it. However his elder-self said it just really wasn't an option unless he wanted to be bedridden and randomly nauseous while the house was filled with guests.

Harry wasn't particularly sure he wanted to interact with the other guests in the first place, so the idea of being isolated up in his room wasn't entirely unappealing, but his older-self insisted that the event would be better than he feared and not to worry so much.

When Harry woke the following morning, he lay in bed, awake, but not quite, for nearly twenty minutes before he managed to get himself out from beneath the exceedingly comfortable blankets. It took about that long for him to remember everything that had happened the previous day, try to make some sense of it in his mind, and convince himself that he hadn't imagined it all.

He grabbed a change of clothes, ran across the hall to the loo, showered, dressed, and then peaked his head out wondering if his two hosts were awake. Sounds from down the stairs caught his attention almost immediately, so he quietly crept downstairs to investigate. If the sound of pots and pans weren't enough of a give-away, the smell of cooking food certainly was. Harry went directly into the kitchen hesitantly and came up short when the person within it was neither his older counterpart, nor Malfoy.

Er – well, it was a Malfoy... or at least, she used to be, he supposed. Narcissa Black stood next to the counter beside the stove and appeared to be basting what appeared to be a large goose.

Harry froze, wanting to turn right around and run away, but finding that his feet refused to pay him any attention. The woman apparently noticed him out of her peripheral vision because she paused and turned to look his way. She began to smile warmly but then the expression froze on her still-quite attractive features, her lips parted and her eyes widened in obvious shock.

“Great Merlin! You really did come!” she gasped in a near-whisper.

“Er... yeah,” Harry said awkwardly, shuffling from one foot to the other.

“How long have you been here?”

“Oh – just since yesterday morning.

“Harry had said it would be this year... I must admit that part of me was still skeptical. I supposed I should know better by now not to doubt him,” she said, grinning warmly now. “I can only imagine how disorienting this must be fore you. Oh, dear. Where are my manners?” She set the baster down and wiped her hands off on a towel. She was wearing robes, but they were still rather casual-looking – although still of obvious quality – and she was actually wearing an apron of some sort over top of them. She looked so... domestic. Harry would admit to himself that he hadn't exactly seen a lot of Narcissa Malfoy, and didn't really know much of anything about her, but domestic was still not a word he would have expected to ever think in association with her.

She took a step forward and offered her hand. “I'm Narcissa Black. Draco's mother. I don't think that you and I have actually met yet at the point you came here from – correct?”

“Er, yeah,” Harry said, feeling utterly out of his element. He quickly and awkwardly wiped his palms on his jeans and then accepted her hand. At first he'd been thinking she meant for him to shake it, but her weak grip made it slip into a loose hold that suggested he was expected to kiss the back of her hand or something. He really wasn't sure and felt like an utter idiot as he fumbled with her hand for a moment before dropping it.

Mirth sparkled in her eyes, but she kept her amusement otherwise to herself and just smiled at him.

“Would you be willing to assist me with a few dishes?”

“Oh uhm, I can try. I'm not sure how much use to you I'll be.”

“You're older-self has always been quite brilliant in the kitchen and tells me he gained the experience in his youth, so I suspect you'll be more than satisfactory an assistant.”

Harry flushed slightly, shrugging because he really wasn't sure how to respond to that. She wasted little time in assigning him a few tasks while she continued to see to the goose before slipping it into the stove. She waved her wand, apparently activating a cooking charm of some sort that she then explained would guarantee a faster cooking time while still getting even and cooking it all the way through.

“So uhm... what sorts of things will we all be doing today?” Harry asked hesitantly once there was a lull in the food preparations.

“Ah, yes. You're still unfamiliar with the Yule traditions, aren't you?” Narcissa said, turning to face him and leaning against the counter behind her.

“Er, yeah.”

She gave him a reassuring smile. “Nothing to be worried about, dear. Now, everyone should be here by noon, and shortly after that, we will prepare the Yule log. Of course, now that Teddy is getting a bit older, and seeing as how you're... fifteen, yes?” Harry nodded, “Seeing as how there won't be any young children, I rather doubt we'll spend quite as much time with decorating the Yule log as we have in years past. After that, The Yule Log will be placed as the center piece of the table and we'll begin the Yule Feast. The feast generally lasts the entirety of the afternoon and into the evening.

“After the first serving has passed we'll probably gather in the sitting room and Andromeda or I will tell the story of the Holly King versus the Oak King, and probably the story of Frau Holle. Draco is quite fond of telling the story of Mistletoe, so he'll probably cover that one.”

“After that, we'll exchange gifts, probably eat some more, and finally, after the sun sets, we'll perform the Yule Log ritual. I'll be sure to have Teddy help you prepare for that since you and he will have to perform the children's section together.”

Harry must have made a face at the suggestion that he would be performing in the 'children's' section of the ritual, because Narcissa made something of a twittering laugh, obviously amused, and waved a hand at him. “Oh, don't be that way. Anyone under the age of majority would be put into the group. Obviously we all know you're no child.”

That appeased Harry a little, but he still had that niggling worry in the back of his mind that he was going to make a total idiot of himself during this yule log ritual thing. What exactly where they going to expect him to say? He didn't know anything about Yule.

“Erm, are you really sure... I mean, that it's okay for me to really participate in all this? Or even be here? The other's won't mind?”

She looked at him with a bewildered expression gracing her refined, aging features. “Why ever would they mind?”

“Well, you know – because this is a family gathering,” Harry said with an embarrassed shrug, looking down at his feet.

“Oh, don't be silly dear. You're still Harry. You're a part of this family just as much as your older-self. We're your family too. Don't even entertain such ridiculous thoughts. Of course you're welcome.”

Harry's head snapped up and his eyes widened a bit. For some reason, that had struck something of a cord in him.

Your family.

This was... his family? When he thought about it... he supposed it really was. Well, not his – but his older self's. The closest thing he'd ever had to a 'family' was the Weasley's, and even when he was with them, it was more in an honorary member sort of role. He was a guest more than anything else. They treated him like a part of the family, to some extent, but he would always know that he wasn't really a part of the family, no matter how badly he wished he was.

But... well, this was different, wasn't it? In this bizarre Twilight-Zone future, his older-self was married to Draco Malfoy. Narcissa Malfoy – er, Black, was his mother, so she was Harry's Mother-in-law. Tonks was Malfoy's cousin, and her mother, Andromeda was Malfoy's aunt. Lupin was apparently married to Tonks, and their son was Harry's godson. They were legitimately tied together. Not necessarily through blood, but legally and through marriage, they were family. In this bizarre future, Harry had somehow legitimately become family with both Tonks and Remus. The man wasn't just his dead father's friend, and Harry's former teacher, but... something more. And while Harry had really only met Tonks a few times over the summer, he had liked her quite a lot. She was fun and interesting.

Harry pulled in a slow breath, blowing it out just as slowly as he tried to calm down his irrational emotional reaction to such a stupidly small thing.

“You must still be so disoriented to find yourself here,” she said, pulling Harry out of his internal struggles. “Only here a day and you suddenly find yourself thrown into some big family gathering. Was it the holiday season back in your own time?”

“Oh, yeah. The dates pretty much the same. My uhm, older-self said that when I go back, no time will have passed, even though I'm supposed to be here for two weeks.”

She hummed and began messing with a bowl on the counter that she'd been prepping earlier. Harry thought it was going to eventually be plum pudding, but he wasn't sure. “And it's your fifth year, right now, correct?” she asked as she flicked her wand and charmed a wooden spoon to stir the mixture in the bowl.

“That's right.”

“Draco was so miserable the first term that year,” she said with a sad sort of sigh before turning back and giving him a coy smile. “His spirits rose considerably during the second half though. Of course, at the time I had no idea why. He kept it secret for quite some time, not that I can blame him. His father did not react well...” her expression hardened some for a moment before she sighed.

Harry blinked and then blushed slightly, although he really didn't know why. It wasn't like he'd done anything yet in regards to Malfoy. This was stuff that his older-self had done, not him.

“Er, why was Ma– erm, Draco, so miserable first term?” Harry asked cautiously, honestly curious. He knew that he'd been miserable all first term, but Malfoy seemed to be riding the high life, getting away with anything and everything, and kissing Umbridge's overly-pink bum.

“Oh, he despised that awful woman, of course. And he hated having to act as if he didn't. His father was putting on so much pressure that year, since He was back. I think that with His return, a lot of things truly began to hit home with Draco. He told me once – and of course, this was years later – that around third or fourth year he truly began to hate the person he was becoming. The person that Lucius wanted him to become. But he told himself that he only really needed to be that person until he hit his majority and got out from underneath Lucius' control. That, once he was done with Hogwarts, he could be free to be himself, to some extent.” She trailed off, her eyes unfocused on some distant point.

“But after He returned, Lucius began making plans for Draco. Plans for our son to follow in his father's footsteps in more permanent ways. Namely, he hoped for Draco to earn the honor of baring that foul creature's mark upon his arm, just as Lucius himself did. And Draco realized that if he allowed that to happen, he would never be able to escape it. He would be trapped, with no way out. Even Lucius was trapped, although he was too stubborn to admit it. He was so pig-headed, he was determined to take what was an awful situation and force it to be something meaningful or honorable or whatever other nonsense he convinced himself of to save his wounded pride at realizing he was little more than a slave to a madman. And of course, saving his pride was more important than saving his son from the same fate.”

Her voice was filled with bitter resentment and Harry could tell that even all these years later, she was still angry with her now-ex-husband. She paused and waved her wand, stopping the stirring spoon and then sending in some other ingredients that had been simmering in a pot on the oven.

“The first term of Draco's fifth year, started with quite a few letters of complaint to Lucius, demanding that something be done about the awful woman, but when Lucius responded with harsh demands of his own that Draco pull back and toe in line, Draco retreated, as if wounded. I could tell from his letters after that, that he was growing ever-increasingly depressed. He kept it hidden from his father, of course, but he wrote to me, alone, far more often and I saw more of how he truly felt, even though he remained tight-lipped, even with me.

“He wrote very few letters during the months of January and February, which was unusual for him, but by March, he was writing regularly again, and I could tell that his mood was very much improved, although I had no idea why. Then, of course, we got word that Umbridge had been removed from the school and was under criminal investigation. At first I attributed Draco's improved mood entirely to that, but it later became clear that there was something else, that was cheering him up.” She turned and grinned at him rather slyly, and Harry felt himself flush again, which was still quite ridiculous since he hadn't done anything... yet?

Harry still had trouble wrapping his head around this idea that he was going to go back to his own time and... and what? Woo Draco Malfoy? How ridiculous a notion was that?

It was then that they were joined by Draco Malfoy himself – the older-incarnation, of course. He walked in, greeted his mother and Harry. Paused by Narcissa just long enough for her to lean in and kiss his cheek and give him a hug, and then he made his way over to the refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of orange juice while summoning two glasses from the cupboard.

A yawn from just beyond the room was quickly followed by the entrance of Harry's own older-counterpart, and he too, received a kiss on the cheek and a hug from Narcissa, which made Harry's eyes bug out a bit in surprise.

“Oh, Cissy – I can't tell you how grateful I am that you're willing to do this,” Harry's older-self was saying as he leaned over a baking dish that appeared to have candied yams in it, waiting to go into the oven at a later time. “The Yule feast wouldn't be nearly was spectacular if you weren't here to do all this.”

“Oh, I'm sure that you'd manage more than sufficiently, Harry dear. We all know how wonderful a cook you are,” she said, grinning at him over her shoulder as she waved her wand at several other dishes that had been preparing themselves over the last few minutes.

“Yeah, but even after all this time, Harry still falls back on old habits and does most things in the kitchen the muggle way,” Malfoy said as he turned around and handed a glass of orange juice to the older-Harry before taking a drink form his own. “The food would never be done on time if he were doing it,” he smirked over at the elder-Harry, who pulled on an expression of obvious-mock offense.

“I'd be perfectly capable of getting it all done, and perfectly time for when everyone showed up too... I'd just have to wake up at four in the morning to do it, and that would be rubbish.”

They all chuckled, and Harry just stood there, watching them all interact, once again feeling as if he had stepped into some bizarre alternate reality where nothing was what he expected.

He supposed that the foundational idea of any Malfoy's being domestic, was one of those things throwing him off the most. In fact, ever since he'd come downstairs and found Narcissa making food, he'd felt a bit off-kilter. He felt like there should be a house-elf around to do all this manual work while she sat on some fancy chase lounge, sipping tea with her pinky extended.

Heck, the same thought had entered his mind when Malfoy had cooked for them the day before, in fact. Of course, Harry knew that he would never really stand for owning a house elf and making it do all of the household chores. Memories of his own youth and being treated no better than your average house-elf left too sour a taste in his mouth to put up with any such thing in his home. Assuming that this were all real and not just a hallucination, and he really did end up in a relationship with Draco bloody Malfoy, he figured that if Malfoy ever made some request about owning a house elf, Harry would put his foot down right off. But the idea of Narcissa Malfoy, or, Black, doing this stuff – well, Harry couldn't quite make it fit within the ideas that his mind had established about the family up until this point.

He supposed that... well, maybe he really didn't know much of anything about them, after all?

After all, Tonks was pretty brilliant, and Narcissa was apparently her aunt. So Tonks' mum and Malfoy's mum grew up together. And Sirius was their cousin – but then again, Sirius said he hated his family, and that they were all lunatics and wankers.

“Draco dear, how about Harry – the older one, that is – stay to help me in here with the food, and you take the younger Harry out to the sitting room and have him help you put up the decorations?” Narcissa said while waving her wand to send several things into the upper rack of the oven and bringing a few other platters from across the kitchen to the counter in front of her.

Malfoy made something of a snort-like sound and looked mildly amused. “Of course, Mother,” he said politely and turned to grin in Harry's direction. “Coming?”

Harry floundered for a moment before shrugging and following Malfoy out of the kitchen and back into the entry hall. Malfoy went over to what Harry realized was a cupboard under the stairs. Harry frowned at it – it didn't really look too much like his old cupboard, but the fundamental structure of such a cupboard didn't exactly leave a lot of room for variation, so it was still similar enough to make him instinctively not like it.

Malfoy pulled the door open, reached in to pull the string and illuminate the small space before leaning in and looking around. “Ah, good, it is back there. I was afraid it might have ended up in the back shed,” Malfoy said distractedly before stepping back and drawing out his wand. A simple wave was then followed by the sight of two boxes floating out of the room and into the hall with them. Malfoy reached in to turn the light back off before pushing the door shut and walking towards the living room. The boxes floated behind him obediently, and Harry did so as well.

Once they were in the living room room Malfoy directed the boxes to the low square coffee table that was placed in the center of the main seating arrangements of armchairs and couches. The boxes opened themselves and Malfoy leaned over to inspect them.

“Looks like this is everything,” he mused and then gave a small nod before turning back to Harry. “You're old enough that you don't want to actually make any decorations, right? I mean, you're not hoping to do arts and crafts crap, right?”

Harry's face must have accurately portrayed his horror at the idea of doing 'arts and crafts' because Malfoy chuckled and nodded. “Good. Yeah, I'm not honestly keen on gluing ribbons to pine-cones or making home-made oils and potpourri. Glad you feel the same. Fortunately, or unfortunately... Harry is a pack-rat and nothing ever gets thrown away. Including every silly little trinket that Teddy and the others has ever made for Yule, so we're set for decorations. We just have to put it all up.

“Oh. Okay.”

Malfoy focused on one box, waved his wand and a small evergreen floated out of it and was promptly levitated towards the wall by the large hearth. It stayed airborne for a moment while Draco once again waved his wand and shifted a chair and a magazine rack out of the way to leave a wide open space. Finally the tree went over and came to rest on the floor. Then with an almost comical squashing and stretching motion, the tree grew in size until it was nearly touching the ceiling.

“Well, that's the tree,” Malfoy said with a smirk. “Much easier than going out to a tree farm, or using one of those awful fake ones.”

“So it's a real tree?” Harry remarked, moving closer and examining the tree, which it turned out, did appear to be quite real.

“Yeah, it's just under a stasis charm,” Malfoy said dismissively.

“So er... you put up a tree for Yule too?” Harry asked, honestly curious.

“Yeah sure. It's hardly like the Christians invented decorating evergreens during winter. Before the Victorian era, Christians didn't even decorate their homes at Christmas with ornamented pine trees and holiday greenery. That's a pagan custom. Because evergreen trees retain their needles even during the cold winter months, they symbolize the triumph of life over death,” Malfoy said as he went back over to one of the open boxes and began shuffling around inside it.

“The ancient Romans often decorated the trees and bushes outside their homes during the winter season and brought boughs of greenery inside to celebrate Saturnalia. And of course the early Germanic and Norse decorated evergreens with fruit and candles to honor Odin for the Solstice, and they also created the tradition of the Yule log,” he went on, and then paused, stood back from the box and waved his wand, causing a number of varied ornaments from within it to float up and start to order themselves mid-air.

“Oh, wow. Yeah, I really don't know anything about all this stuff,” Harry admitted sheepishly, running a hand nervously through his hair.

Malfoy turned and looked at Harry over his shoulder, grinning smugly. “Yeah, I remember.” He looked back at the floating objects and Harry did as well now. He could tell that quite a few of these really had been children's arts and craft projects. Quite a large number of homemade pinecone ornaments were in there, as well as some fairly lumpy-looking candle-holders made from clay, along with lots of baubles shaped like stylized suns.

“Suns?” Harry asked, curiously. Snowflakes he could understand, but suns?

“Yule is held on the winter solstice,” Malfoy explained as he began making simple little flicks of his wand, sending the ornaments to various places around the tree and magically affixing the candle holders into upright positions. “The solstice is the longest day of the year, which means that we are now celebrating the beginning of the sun's long journey back towards earth. We celebrate the knowledge that spring is on it's way back and that the dormant earth is on its way back to life.”

“Ooh,” Harry said, with dawning understanding. Now that he actually could understand.

“You want to help hang up some of this stuff?” Malfoy asked, looking back at him.

Harry shrugged and nodded. He wondered if he should do it by hand or have a go at doing it with his wand, like Malfoy had been doing this whole time. He was still hesitant to use his magic, despite his older-self's guarantees that it would be fine, but decided he'd may as well find out now, so he pulled out his wand and directed one of the little bundles of twigs and holly that was tired together with a red ribbon, towards the tree.

After they seemed to have gone through the whole box that the tree and it's decorations had come out of, Malfoy moved onto the other box that was apparently filled with things that would just go around the house in general and began placing things about the room. After he'd gotten things started, and Harry felt like he had the idea down as to what sorts of things should go where, Malfoy split off and went over towards the little dinning area / breakfast nook. A wave of his wand sent the chairs along one wall and then he transfigured the small table into a much longer one that now extended a ways into the living room.

After that he used what Harry assumed was some sort of duplication charm on each of the chairs, increasing the total number by double and then moving them so they once again lined the two long sides of the table. He conjured a table cloth and place mats in red and golden colors, and then levitated a number of candle holders out of the box that, by this time, Harry had determined was magically expanded because it obviously held a lot more things in it than it should.

“Very Gryffindor,” Harry remarked, and Malfoy looked back at him and chuckled.

“Red, green, white, and gold are all colors strongly tied to Yule,” Malfoy remarked simply and started summoning bits of holly from the box, placing them around the base of the candle-holders.

“I've always thought red and green were Christmas colors.”

Malfoy smirked at him. “Where do you think they got it from? Our customs are older than theirs. People convert to new religions, but giving up ancient traditions, celebrations, and holidays is always difficult. Instead of getting rid of them completely, they merely mutate and adapt them to suit their new needs.

“As far as Yule is concerned, the red comes from the holly berries and the poinsettia plants that turn red during this season, which were considered sacred by ancient pagans – wizard and muggle. Green comes from the evergreens as a symbol of life and rebirth and the promise that spring will come. The white is for purity, and, obviously, the snow. And the gold is, again, for prosperity, and as a symbol of the sun. It's all based on very old traditions steeped in ancient myths and customs.”

“Huh. Interesting,” Harry said.

After what Harry figured was a little over an hour had passed, they'd finished decking out the room with bits of evergreen, holly wreathes, various colored ribbons, and lots of candles. Malfoy had hung up several bits of mistletoe and grinned to himself as he stared up at the green plant with little white berries before moving on to the next thing. Harry had just made a face at it, not really sure if he was up to seeing anyone stand under it and kiss, least of all, his own older counterpart and Malfoy.

By the time they were done, the smells coming from the kitchen were really wracking havoc on his mostly empty stomach. He understood the point of not having breakfast on a day you intended to have a day-long feast, but it didn't change the fact that the house smelled wonderful and he was hungry.

He glanced at a grandfather clock by the sitting room entrance and was startled to see that it was just after eleven. He wasn't sure what time he'd woken up, but he certainly hadn't realized it was already this late.

“The guests should be showing up soon,” Malfoy mused, almost as if reading his mind, and Harry felt his nerves suddenly resurface. “You can go ahead and sit down. Do you need anything?”

Harry blinked at him before shaking his head. “Er, no, I'm fine.”

“Okay. I'm going to check on the food,” he said before disappearing into the kitchen.

Harry hesitated for a moment after that, unsure of what exactly to do with himself before letting himself sink down into one of the couches. He heaved a sigh and settled back into the seat and closed his eyes.

A moment later, he sensed as much as heard the sound of someone approaching him. He opened his eyes just as he heard the person sitting down and was slightly surprised to see that it was Narcissa. She'd removed the apron and was now holding up a small compact and tucking a few stray hairs back into the elaborate bun she had atop her head. She apparently finished because she put her hand down and turned to smile at him. “You and Draco did a lovely job on the decorations, dear.”

“Thanks,” Harry said, sheepishly with a shrug as he sat up a bit straighter, feeling awkward to be slouching so in front of the witch.

There was an awkward stretch of silence that followed that, although Narcissa did make several valiant attempts to make conversation with him. Harry was honestly touched by the effort she was making to make him feel welcome and comfortable, but he honestly didn't think that was really possible at the moment. He was still just too off-kilter.

After a bit, Harry decided that he really needed something to distract him and decided to go get himself something to drink from the kitchen. He excused himself from Narcissa and headed for the kitchen. He'd taken no more than two steps inside before he came to a jerking halt and gaped in shock. There, along the opposite side of the kitchen, were the older Malfoy and Harry's own older counterpart, in the middle of a rather heated intimate embrace. More specifically, Malfoy had Harry's older-self pinned against the refrigerator.

The older-Harry had one leg hitched up slightly and Harry flushed when he realized that this older-Harry was rolling his hips against Malfoy's and bucking slightly while Malfoy ground his pelvis against older-Harry's. The Harry doppleganger had one hand buried in Malfoy's white-gold hair while the other was blatantly groping Malfoy's arse; Malfoy's hands seemed to be doing much the same thing to the elder-Harry, if where his hands were disappearing to was any indication, and the two were kissing quite passionately.

A low, wanton moan from his elder-counterpart broke Harry out of his stupor and he turned and walked right back out of the room, flushing scarlet and trying to make some sense of the storm of thoughts and emotions swirling through his head.

Harry walked back over and sat down on the sofa again on some sort of auto-pilot, and only barely acknowledge that Narcissa now appeared to be sorting through a small stack of holiday cards across from him.

He felt utterly thrown by what he'd seen. Not because it was especially bizarre – even though it was – but because of how confused it made him feel.

With their faces buried together as they were, it was very difficult for Harry to honestly separate the two he'd seen snogging like teenagers from their actual teenage counterparts. Harry could have just as easily been looking at himself and his contemporary Malfoy snogging against the icebox.

The weirdest part was that the thought wasn't nearly as disgusting as it should have been. He'd only been in this bizarro future a bit over a day, and already it seemed like the idea of this irrational arrangement being possible, and even preferable, was effecting him. But then some traitorous part of his mind would remember that the Malfoy that Harry knew back in his own time was nothing like this polite, charming, older impersonation of him. At least... he certainly didn't act anything like him around Harry.

Was it really possible that this tolerable – even nice – version of Malfoy really was hiding somewhere inside the prat that Harry had waiting back in his own time?

And if he was... did Harry really want that?

Harry stewed uncomfortably as he wrestled with the memory of how the sight in the kitchen had effected certain other aspects of him. He crossed his legs and hunched over, trying to bunch of the bottom of his jumper to hid the partial erection he was sporting. It only twitched and got worse as that moan echoed through his mind.

It had been his voice. It was a little weird, hearing it from an outside source, rather than from in his own head – like hearing a recording of yourself – but he still recognized it as his own voice. And it wasn't just that. The passion that he could practically taste in the air from the two... it really was quite enticing. Exciting even. And they had looked... hot. Snogging, like that.

It had been... sort of incredible.

Harry flushed deeper and sank further into the couch, feeling embarrassed and confused, and desperately hopeful that Narcissa would remain focused in whatever she was doing and not look over at him.

“Uh, I'm gonna er, be right back,” Harry said as he suddenly stood up and walked out of the room, heading straight for the downstairs loo.

He wasn't going to do that – he told himself so, because that would be just wrong – but he needed to get out of the room and to some privacy. Sporting an erection because he'd just seen his future self snogging someone, while sitting in front of that someone's mother, was just not okay.

He closed and locked the door behind him and promptly sat down on the toilet seat, hunched over, and let his face fall into his hands. This was just ridiculous. This whole thing was just too surreal to be real. More than a day ago and it had never even occurred to him that he could be interested in guys – it just wasn't even an option for him, he was already so much of a freak, the last thing he needed was something that made him even more abnormal – and now he just didn't know what to think.

But he really and truly had never thought about it before. His elder-self had been right with all that stuff about the Quidditch locker rooms, and Harry knew that, but it had really never occurred to Harry that he might be reacting that way because he was... interested or something. It was just an embarrassing thing his body did. A weird, traitorous reaction of his hormone-driven mind. He was a teenager. Erections happened. Oftentimes, at very embarrassing and inopportune moments.

And as for his wandering eyes... well, it was normal to look, right? It was just curiosity. That was all. And was it really that odd for him to have an opinion on what made a cock attractive? Okay, maybe that one was... but no! Girls could look at other girls and have an opinion as to whether or not they were attractive and that didn't make them lesbians. Right?

And well... Harry supposed his older-self might have a point on the whole wanking thing. Harry had tried wanking to fantasies of girls. After sitting through some dorm-room talks with all the guys and hearing Seamus shamelessly detailing a few of his more graphic wet dreams, and sharing a small porn stash he'd gotten from an older cousin over the summer between third and fourth year, Harry had started to wonder why he didn't seem to find much common ground with his fellow dorm mates and their sexual fantasies. He wondered if maybe he just tried to force the issue, he'd find that common ground that the others all seemed to understand but somehow eluded Harry.

But it hadn't worked. Wanking to the image of girls. Girls doing things to him. Him doing things to girls. Specific girls, or just girls from one of Seamus' magazines. He'd even stolen one of the magazines on the sly in fourth year to give it a try, but he just couldn't...

But there was that one time. It was from that magazine, and it was a wizarding porn mag so the pictures moved, and the girl had been giving the bloke a blowjob, and the angle had been a real close-up. So close that almost the only thing you could see was the cock sliding in and out of her lips. It was thrusting up into her swollen red lips. It had been... hot.

But then Halloween and the Tri-Wizard tournament had happened, and Harry had become too preoccupied with his life falling apart around him, again, and forgotten all about his experiment in sexuality. It wasn't like it was really all that important in the grand scheme of things. He had bigger things to worry about, after all.

Harry had always sort of shied away from that sort of thing. Both thinking about it and doing anything about it. He only wanked occasionally, mostly because there were so few opportunities for privacy, but also because of a rather horrifying memory of his Aunt Petunia catching him touching himself when he was eight and then dragging him out of the cupboard and running his hand under the hot water tap until it was practically scalding; all the while yelling at him about being a dirty, vile little freak.

Harry shook the awful memory from his mind and tried to steady his breathing. This was all just too much.

Was he really gay?

How would he know if he was? Shouldn't he know something like that?

Was this all really real? He honestly couldn't imagine himself coming up with all this craziness on his own. The possibility that he was dreaming up the whole thing seemed less and less possible as more time passed. It was all so real – touch, sound, smell. Nothing was weird or illogical – well, outside of the being gay, and being married to Malfoy bits – like dreams tended to lean towards. And then there was all the stuff about Yule that Harry didn't think he'd be able to just make up in his own subconscious.

Plus, if it were a dream, it should have ended by now, shouldn't it?

He was yanked out of his inner turmoil by the sound of the doorbell ringing down the hall. Her jerked to his feet with the shock, but remained frozen for several moments longer. He was minutely relieved to realize that his problem from earlier had deflated while he had his inner identity crisis. He debated between staying and hiding in the bathroom, but knew that was just stupid and they'd come looking for him soon enough.

Pushing out a rush of air, he unlocked the door and popped his head out into the hallway. Down at the end where the front door resided, just beyond the bottom landing of the stairs, he saw the older version of Malfoy emerge from the kitchen and quickly run his fingers through his disheveled hair. Harry flushed, knowing precisely why Malfoy's hair had been anything but perfect. A grinning elder-Harry strolled out of the kitchen and leaned against the entrance with a calm relaxed grace. His hair was still a crazy mess, but Harry's hair was always a crazy mess, so it hardly made a difference.

At that moment, the older-Harry turned his head and met eyes with his younger counterpart, smirked, and winked.

If Harry's face wasn't already beet red, it certainly was now. He had to fight the urge to retreat back into the bathroom, and it was only the fact that his older-self was now clearly laughing at him, that kept him from doing it.

Feeling embarrassed and indignant, Harry closed the bathroom door behind him and stomped out into the hall towards the front door just as Malfoy was pulling said door open. The sound of loud greetings filled the air and stopped Harry in his tracks as his indignation was dwarfed by the fear and discomfort of being faced with people he was unfamiliar with.

“Hey Uncle Drake! Uncle Harry!” a youthful sounding voice exclaimed and suddenly a figure with electric blue hair seemed to blur through the doorway and barrel into the elder-Harry, hugging him around the middle. The elder-Harry laughed and hugged the figure back.

“Hey, Teddy!”

“Hey! What am I? Chopped liver?” Malfoy said with mock indignation in his voice.

“'Ello Draco,” an amused and familiar female voice said and a moment later the familiar sight of Tonks appeared in the door. Only now she was obviously older – although she certainly didn't look as old as Harry suspected she should, which was probably emphasized by the fact that she was sporting neon pink hair.

That was when it first registered with Harry that 'Teddy' – Remus and Tonk's kid, and his future godson – was probably a metamorphmagus, just like Tonks.

“Oh come on, Uncle Drake! You know I love you too!” the teen – Teddy – said, grinning back over his shoulder at the blond who was smirking down at him. Teddy's face swiveled back towards elder-Harry with an expectant light in his eyes. “Did he show up? Is he really here?”

The elder-Harry laughed and nodded. “He did.”

“Really!?” Teddy exclaimed, clearly excited.

“Wait – really?” Tonks said, sounding legitimately surprised. Then the familiar – and now completely gray – head of Remus Lupin appeared in the doorway, only unlike the others, his gaze traveled straight down the hallway and landed on Harry.

“Great Merlin, it really happened,” Lupin muttered in apparent shock.

Both Tonks and Teddy followed his gaze. Tonks' eyes widened and her jaw dropped as a gasp escaped her mouth, but Teddy just whooped and pumped his fist in the air.

“Wicked!” He released the elder-Harry and raced down the hallway, coming to a stop in front of Harry, who backed up a step in surprise. “Wow! You really are Harry! But, my age!”

“Technically, he's two years older than you,” Malfoy corrected, smirking.

“Well, he's closer in age to me than Uncle Harry is,” Teddy said indignantly before looking back at Harry and grinning widely. Suddenly his hand was thrust out in offering. “I'm Teddy Lupin.”

“Er... Harry Potter,” Harry said, lamely, taking the hand awkwardly.

Teddy laughed and eagerly shook the hand.

Harry's gaze was drawn back up as the older-Tonks walked towards him, placed her hands on her hips and gave him a thorough one-over before pulling out her wand and pauseing to hold it in front of him. “May I?”

“Er... what are you gonna do?” Harry asked, hesitantly.

“Just checking to see if you're really you,” she said, eyeing him shrewdly.

“Uh, then, I guess that's fine.”

She gave a firm nod before waving her wand over him a few times. Teddy seemed to give his mother an exasperated sort of huff and rolled his eyes.

Some glowing letters appeared over Harry's head, but he couldn't read them from his vantage point and they vanished a moment later. Tonk's eyes were wide and her lips were now parted with apparent disbelief as she let out a rather stunned little laugh.

Then she turned back over her shoulder, looking at Harry's older-counterpart. “Well, I guess this means I owe you an apology.”

The older-Harry laughed. “Nah, it's okay, Tonks.”

“No, it's not. This is really real. He's you!”

“No, really, Tonks. It's fine. If you want to apologize to anyone, apologize to him for all the shit your going to be giving him in the next few years,” elder-Harry said with a chuckle as he jerked his head towards Harry.

Tonks turned towards Harry and gave him a sheepish grimace. “Er... I'm sorry that I might give you something of a hard time in um... the coming years?” she said, hesitantly.

“Uh...” Harry found he really didn't know what to say to that.

“Tonks never really believed me,” elder-Harry explained, grinning, apparently amused by Tonks' discomfort. “She always thought that on the off chance that what I'd seen really had led towards the things I knew that helped me finish off Voldemort and hook up with Drake, and not just a coincidence or a hallucination, that it was more likely that I'd had some sort of seer vision, and not actual time-travel. Obviously – she was wrong,” he concluded, smirking and motioning his hand towards Harry while looking over at Tonks.

She cringed, glared halfheartedly at elder-Harry and then looked back, apologetically, at Harry. “Erm... sooo... sorry?”

Harry chuckled weakly and shrugged. “Sure, fine. Whatever.”

“I told her that someday she'd be apologizing to me,” the elder-Harry said, smirking quite widely.

Tonks scowled playfully at him. “You're a smug little prick, you know that?”

“There's nothing little about it,” Malfoy drawled, smirking at his cousin.

“Ah! My innocent ears!” Teddy exclaimed, clapping his hands over his ears and earning quite a few laughs.

Harry felt himself flush something awful, and had to force himself not to gape openly at Malfoy's lewd comment. Both at what Malfoy had said, as well as the mere fact that Malfoy had said something like that at all.

“Hello everyone! Room for two more at this party?” a female voice called out from beyond the front door that was still partially open. Lupin stepped inside and out of the way to reveal two new figures – an older couple that appeared somewhere around the same age as Narcissa. The woman, in fact, looked vaguely similar to Narcissa, only this woman had darker colored hair.

“Andy, dear! I was beginning to wonder when you'd show up,” Narcissa said, smiling warmly at the woman.

“Hey mum!” Tonks said, turning around and grinning.

“Grandma!” Teddy exclaimed. “Look, look! Check out who's here!” he went on, waving his hands and pointing at Harry.

“Hmm? Oh! Goodness!” the woman said with a gasp, but at least looked more pleased than simply shocked. The man beside her leaned over and his eyes went wide, but almost instantly it shifted into a wide grin.

“Well, would you look at that? Good Lord, Harry, he could easily be your son. But of course he's not is he?” the man, Ted Tonks, Harry assumed, said with a laugh. “This'll be a real tricky thing to straighten out with the names. We've got two Harrys here!”

Things continued on in much the same vein for some time afterwards. The large group did finally vacate the crowded entry hall and enter the sitting room, pulling up, expanding, and conjuring any extra seating that was needed to accommodate them all. Presents had been brought in and piled high around the tree that Harry and Malfoy had decorated earlier, to be attended to later. Teddy sat himself beside Harry and enthusiastically explained anything to him that came up. Harry mostly felt overwhelmed, but it wasn't long before he started to feel strangely welcome as well.

Out of all of them, the strangest one to see was definitely Lupin, since other than Harry's own older counterpart, and the older Malfoy, Lupin was the only one that Harry had a lot of previous exposure to. Harry even called him Professor once, and sent the man into chuckles before he sighed and grinned over at Harry's older-self, remarking on how long it had been since Harry had called him that.

Harry did finally muster up the courage to ask Lupin if he knew what Sirius might be doing that day, and Lupin just chuckled and mentioned something about getting drunk and Sirius not being very fond of Yule. Harry wanted to ask what Sirius would be doing for Christmas then, not liking the idea of his godfather spending the holiday alone, but the opportunity was taken away when Teddy excitedly announced that they had to make the Yule Log.

Harry had gathered a few scant ideas as to what the 'Yule Log' was, but in all honestly, outside of knowing that it would act as the centerpiece to the table, and later be burned in the Yule log ritual, Harry really didn't know much of anything about it at all. It was Teddy, Andromeda, and Narcissa who participated the most in this activity – dragging him into it as well, of course – while the rest of the adults talked and caught up on things. The two older witches and the younger teen spent the next half hour explaining to Harry what they were doing and why.

“The tradition began with the Norse, long ago, on the night of the winter solstice,” Narcissa was saying in a very proper, almost lecture-quality tone, and yet not coming off as condescending as Harry would expect. “Since then, it became common to hoist a giant log onto the hearth to celebrate the return of the sun each year. The Norsemen, muggles and wizards, believed that the sun was a giant wheel of fire which rolled away from the earth each year, and then began rolling back again on the winter solstice. We sprinkle the log with libations of mead, oil, and salt. Once the log has burned through after the Yule Log ritual that we'll perform later, the ashes will be collected and scattered around the house to protect the family within from hostile spirits. It's also become common among wizarding families to save the ashes and make small amulets containing them to wear, or to hang over the threshold, or to use in certain protective potions.”

Harry blinked, fascinated by a tradition he'd never even known existed before.

“The type of wood that the log is made from is very important and dependent on what sort of blessing you are intending to make for your family and home. This one is oak, which is fairly common to use. Oak is connected with spells for protection, strength, fertility, money and success, so it's fairly easy to see why it would be popular,” she said, with a grin.

The preparation of the Yule log itself was a very 'arts and crafts-y' type endeavor and Harry felt a bit old to be doing it, and yet also found himself secretly enjoying it. They had several different colored ribbons – again, red, green, gold and white – that they wrapped around the log. Then they inserted bits of branch cuttings, feathers, pine needles, cinnamon sticks and berries into the ribbon or attached them with simple sticking charms. Mistletoe and holly were placed all over the thing and Andromeda explained that holly was a reminder of the immortality of nature, a symbol of masculine energy, and also a common wood used in weapons and protective amulets in the old days. It was said that wearing a sprig of holy as a charm would protect the barer. It was more common now to make holly water by soaking the leaves overnight in spring water under a full moon and then using it as a blessing on people around the house and for cleansing.

The mistletoe and holly were both symbols that Harry was very accustomed to seeing associated with the holiday season, so he wasn't surprised by them at all, but he was curious about the bright red, and very sharp looking hawthorn thorns that Narcissa was placing within the bindings of the Yule log.

When he asked, Narcissa just grinned a secret grin and her eyes sparkled as she glanced over at the elder-Harry and Malfoy who were sitting rather close together on one couch and deeply involved in a conversation with Remus and Tonks. Harry glanced their way as well, and felt himself flush as he realized that his older-self had his arm stretched around Malfoy's shoulder with his hand lazily playing in the blond's hair, and the blond had his own hand rested firmly on the elder-Harry's thigh.

Narcissa spoke, drawing Harry's attention back away from the embarrassing sight. “Draco's wand is made of Hawthorn, and of course, your wand is made of Holly.”

Harry blinked. He sensed that she wasn't telling him something, but the explanation seemed reasonable enough, if not for the twinkle in her sharp blue eyes.

Finally the log was completed and Narcissa disappeared into the kitchen while Andromeda took the Yule Log over to the table and set it in it's place as the centerpiece. Malfoy stood up and went into the kitchen to help his mother cut up the goose and Harry just sat there, grateful for the momentary breather.

Feeling his curiosity bubble up inside him, Harry turned his head towards Teddy Lupin who looked like he was about to start drooling over the smell coming from the kitchen, and ready to hop out of his seat at a moments notice, once they were all called to the table.

“Hey, Teddy?”

“Hmm?” Teddy said, turning his attention on Harry.

“Maybe I'm just reading too much into this but uh, is it normal for the Hawthorn to be put in with the Yule Log?”

“Oh! Not really. Well, I suppose if Harry and Draco were doing Yule by themselves without all of the rest of us, they might do a Yule log where the log itself was just Hawthorn instead of Oak, but putting Hawthorn thorns is sort of a special deal for Uncle Harry and Uncle Draco.”

“Wait, I don't quite get that. What's the symbolism or whatever, behind Hawthorn wood? Why would they use it if they were on their own, but not now?” Harry asked, sitting up a bit straighter.

“Er, lets see... Hawthorn is for the celts month of Huath, which is about mid-May through early June. It's considered a time of high male potency and is a symbol of fertility, masculine energy and fire. It's all magic related to masculine power and stuff. Which is why I said that they might use that if they were just celebrating on their own. It's a bit awkward when family is involved too though,” Teddy went a bit pink in the cheeks and chuckled.

Harry's eyes widened and his brows raised into his forehead. “Er, okay. But why use the bits of Hawthorn now?”

“Oh – uh... it's just for the wand thing. Like Aunt Cissy said,” Teddy said, diverting his eyes and looking entirely too guilty. Teddy, it appeared, was a bad liar.

Harry's eyes narrowed and he was about to call the younger teen on it when Malfoy called everyone to the table and the young wizard jumped up and raced across the room, calling back to Harry for him to hurry up.

Harry huffed slightly at being denied the opportunity to ask his questions but quickly found himself distracted as the entire group all found seats around the table with Harry being placed directly opposite his older counterpart, with Narcissa to his left, and Teddy to his right.

The goose looked incredible. It was also probably the largest goose he'd ever seen. You'd practically think it was a turkey by how large the thing looked. The rest of the food was all equally impressive, and a hefty amount of praise went around to Narcissa for her work on the meal.

Soon everyone was seated and goblets were filled with buttered rum – Harry and Teddy had been given buttered rum that had been brewed without the actual rum. Harry had never had buttered rum at all though, with or without rum, and rather doubted he would notice anything missing. Harry noticed as his elder-counterpart nudged Malfoy in the side, gave him a small questioning smile and nodded his head.

Malfoy raised his eyebrows as if surprised before shrugging, apparently having agreed to do whatever their silent conversation had just covered. He stood up, holding his goblet of rum and the table quieted.

“Well, I guess I'll do the blessing this year, since Harry here seems to expect it, even though I had nothing planned,” he drawled and sent a mock glare over at the elder-Harry who just grinned up at him. “That being the case, I'll just go with... one of my favorites.” he said after a moments pause when he looked at the elder-Harry beside him and grinned, warmly.

“Beneath the tree of light and life, a blessing at this season of Jul.

To all that sit at my hearth, today we are brothers, we are family, and I drink to your health!

Today is a day to offer hospitality to all that cross my threshold in the name of the season.”

He raised his goblet into the air and an echo of 'cheers!' went around the table before everyone took a drink. Harry took his first sip hesitantly before humming appreciatively at the beverage and taking a bigger gulp. It was basically some sort of apple cider, as best as he could tell.

Malfoy then waved his wand and the platter of sliced goose began divvying itself onto plates, while Tonks called out to it that she wanted dark meat, and her father laughed. Harry was mildly impressed when the next plate that was magically filled with meat, was filled with dark thigh meat and then floated over to Tonks.

Harry's eyes fell back on his older-counterpart and Malfoy at the precise moment that they happened to kiss, and he felt his face flush with that weird mixture of embarrassment, confusion, and intrigue. He dealt with it by sending his eyes anywhere else, which meant they ended up on Narcissa beside him.

She had a rather pleased smile on her face and was looking down at her lap as she placed a cloth napkin there. She then noticed Harry looking at her and she grinned at him and her pleasure was apparent on her eyes. “Are you familiar with that blessing?” she asked.

Harry blinked and then shook his head. “No... should I be?”

“Hmm... interesting...”

“Interesting? How so?”

“Oh, it's just that... I believe you – or rather, our Harry, sent a blessing card to Draco with that very blessing on it, during the holiday vacation of their fifth year.”

Harry's face took on an obviously incredulous expression and she twittered a ladylike laugh in response. “You look so horrified by the idea. You're still obviously not convinced of this whole thing yet, are you?”

“Er...” Harry grimaced, feeling bad. “I... I just don't know yet. Yesterday was the first time I'd ever even considered Mal – er, Draco, as anyone other than the annoying gi-uhh...” he trailed off, flushing, realizing that he really couldn't say what he'd intended to say in front of Malfoy's mum.

She grinned in apparent amusement.

“I remember how flustered Draco was the first time he admitted to me how his feelings for you had taken such a drastic shift in directions. The relationship the two of you had since you first met has always been a rather... intense one, I think. It honestly didn't surprise me nearly as much as I think it did him – the fact that he could go from apparently disliking you so intensely, to very much liking you.”

Harry gave her a rather incredulous look.

“How could you not be surprised by that?”

She twittered behind her hand, her eyes glittering with amusement. “Oh, even before the relationship between you two took its rather drastic turn for the better, I suspected that there was something more to his feelings for you.”

“How so?” Harry asked, utterly bewildered how such a statement could ever make sense.

“Oh, I cannot even tell you how many times your name came up in Draco's letters home,” she said. “Since first year, even. It was always Potter this and Potter that. He spoke of you far more than he ever spoke of his friends.”

“Yeah... but I rather suspect that the things he was saying about me weren't exactly all that nice,” Harry hedged and she laughed some more.

“Oh, no. Certainly not. But it was still clear to me that he had a rather strong obsession with you. It worried me at times, but I began to suspect the sort of direction Draco's feelings for you might be turning during his fourth year, after he came out to me. Of course I wouldn't dare suggest such a thing to him at the time. No doubt the explosion that would have resulted would have shattered windows,” she said with an exaggerated drawl that ended with a clearly amused glint in her eyes.

“He – he came out to uh... to you in his fourth year?” Harry sputtered.

“Oh yes. He was worried how Lucius would react and wanted my opinion on how he should handle the situation. Of course his father didn't care what Draco wanted or preferred so long as Draco never did anything that would publicly embarrass the family and understood that he was still expected to fulfill his obligation to the family and the contract that Lucius had arranged with the Greengrass family. Obviously that didn't work out – all the better, of course.”

“Mother, what nonsense are you filling his head with?” Draco drawled, eyeing his mother suspiciously as he turned his focus on them. He was sitting next to the elder-Harry, but on the end further from Narcissa so he was opposite Teddy who was on Harry's right. His plate was loaded up with food, so Harry figured that Malfoy must have been focused on that up until his point.

It was also at that point that Harry felt something nudging his hand. He looked down and saw a plate trying to place itself in front of him where his arm was presently resting on the table. Harry almost jumped back, removing his hands and allowing the plate a place to go.

The plate was completely loaded with food – all of which looked amazing – and Harry looked up to see his older self pointing his wand to levitate it, and grinning at him.

“We were just talking, Draco. Nothing that you need to concern yourself with,” she said, grinning innocently across the table at her son, who's suspicious glare only intensified, making the elder-Harry beside him chuckle and put his wand away in favor of a fork.

Harry hesitated before looking back down at the plate and giving into his hungry stomach. It was after several minutes of eating, when Harry paused in his meal that he turned back to Narcissa.

“You said something about me and sending that blessing to er, Draco?” Harry asked quietly.

Narcissa hummed and nodded her head before taking a drink from her goblet. She dabbed at her lips daintily before turning her gaze on him. “Yes, Draco showed me the card – which meant that he kept it for quite a while after receiving it since you sent it to him on Yule, and he didn't reveal to me how his relationship with you had shifted until the following summer.”

Harry frowned, slightly confused. “So... I sent him a letter with that er, blessing thing on it?”

“A blessing card, yes. After the meal, during the gift exchange, we'll also open several blessing cards sent by post so you'll see some then.”

“Oh.”

The two went back to their meal, with Narcissa conversing with several others at the table, while Harry sat and tried to wrap his mind around the concept that he was supposedly 'destined' to send off some card, basically, as soon as he got back to his own time. He shook his head, figuring he had nearly two whole weeks to work his head around this stuff and to just worry about it later.

Harry did eventually get sucked in to the lively discussions going on around him. The playful, happy, comfortable atmosphere that surrounded the whole table was wonderful and seemed to just suck him right in. Harry's elder-self, Malfoy and Lupin shared a few stories with Teddy and the others about Harry and Malfoy's third year, and then conversation morphed to Lupin and Narcissa talking about their own school days. Narcissa was a few years older than Lupin, but she had still been around long enough to see the early years of the Marauders and the havoc they caused.

This led conversation onto the topic of Snape, and Harry sputtered incoherently when he finally registered that his older-self seemed to have something of a positive relationship with the old dungeon bat now.

“Wait – Snape is your godfather?!” Harry sputtered to Malfoy, earning an amused smirk. “No wonder he always favored you so much in class!”

Malfoy laughed, quite loudly, while the elder-Harry beside him rolled his eyes.

After a few more comments from the younger-Harry and Malfoy, Harry's elder-counterpart dropped a bombshell on him.

“Snape was mum's best friend when they were kids.”

“W-whut!? That's rubbish!”

“No, it's true,” the elder-Harry said simply as he set his fork down and leaned back in his chair, heaving a satisfied sigh. “He and mum lived within a block of each other as kids – years before Hogwarts – and played at the same neighborhood park. That was where they met – Snape saw mum perform some accidental magic and went up to her and told her she was a witch,” Harry grinned and chuckled. “They became fast friends, much to the extreme disapproval of Aunt Petunia, and stayed close friends up until fifth year when they had a falling out.” At this point, he paused and glanced over at Lupin, who flushed slightly and ducked his head with a grimace.

“Hey, don't, Remus,” elder-Harry chided. “Even Severus has long-since forgiven you for all that.”

Lupin looked away with an unfocused gaze and sighed. “Yes, but I wonder if any of us deserve such forgiveness.”

Harry looked between them with a confused frown. “Wait, what are you talking about?”

“Ah, well...” Lupin began hesitantly, grimacing slightly before he sighed. “Your father, Sirius, Peter and I were not especially kind to Severus in our school days.”

“Sirius and dad, especially,” elder-Harry contributed.

“Wait, what'd they do?” Harry said, sitting up straighter and frowning even more than before.

“They bullied him relentlessly. Of course, he gave back as much as he got, but he was on his own, while they were able to gang up on him,” Malfoy contributed.

Lupin shook his head sadly. “I truly am ashamed of the way we treated him...”

“You shouldn't tear yourself up about it, still, Remus,” elder-Harry chided, “You were hardly the main culprit.”

“Perhaps, but I didn't do anything to stop Sirius or James, either. That's just as bad.”

Harry didn't like the sound of that, at all. “Hold on – what sorts of things, exactly, did they do?”

“Imagine how you and I treated each other,” Draco offered up then, “Only imagine that there were three of me, and you didn't have any of your friends to back you up – or any friends at all, really. That's how the Marauders treated Severus.”

Harry felt horrified just imagining such a scenario. The idea that his father could have ever been a bully on par with the way Malfoy treated him was just devastating.

Seeing that devastation, and no doubt understanding what it meant, Harry's older-self promptly began to console him, reminding that Harry himself had done plenty of rather rotten things to Malfoy, generally in retaliation, and at the time they always seemed justified, but were much worse in retrospect.

More consolations were tossed around but Harry still didn't feel much better. Fortunately lighter topics were transitioned to shortly after that and Harry managed to find himself distracted by them.

Finally, everyone was done enough with the meal – at least for now – and a general migration was made back to the sitting area while the food was placed under stasis spells and the dishes were sent to wash themselves in the sink by a charm.

Harry's elder-counterpart and Malfoy sat rather close together on one of the small sofas, and Harry found himself sitting on the short sofa opposite the center tea table beside Teddy. Narcissa sat down in one of the arm chairs holding a large, old-looking book. The general chatter died down and she opened the book, letting the pages flip open on their own for a moment before settling on a page about three quarters of the way through.

“Since we don't have a lot of young children to join us this year, I thought we might keep the storytime shorter, but since we have Harry's younger self with us this year, a few of the foundational stories seemed appropriate,” she began simply and there were a few nods from the gathered group. “Good. I thought I would tell the legend of the Holly King and the Oak King. Now you see, young-Harry, in the olden days, and even in some places today where Yule is celebrated in much larger groups as a community, it was quite common for there to be a traditional mummers play – a folk play – and would include a ritual 'battle' to act out the eternal battle between the Holly King and the Oak King. In our case, reading the story will have to be sufficient,” she paused and grinned playfully, “unless of course, Draco and Harry would be interested in acting out the parts?”

“Uh, no,” the elder-Harry said quickly, while Malfoy just arched a brow looking at his mother as if she were mad for even asking.

Still clearly amused, Narcissa then turned her attention on the heavy old book and began to read the story of eternal battle of the Holly King versus the Oak King. Two halves of one whole, in constant battle over the crown and the right to woo the mother earth, Lady Ceridwen, or as the Anglo Saxons called her, Eostre, the goddess of spring.Two battles happened each year, one at the summer solstice, Litha, and once again on the winter solstice, Yule. The Holly King, who was an evergreen, won at mid-summer, and grew strong through the fall, outshining the Oak King who was wounded in their summer battle and grew naked and frail. But when they met again, mid-winter, the Oak King came back with the promise of the sun, defeating his brother, and ruling the land once again, growing stronger and becoming full with life and leaves.

Harry thought the story was beautiful, but the way that Narcissa read it made all the difference. She had a passion to it, and a wonderful way with words that really drew him in. He'd never been part of any sort of traditional family gathering where old stories of this sort were shared, and he found himself somewhat awed by the experience.

Once Narcissa had finished, Andromeda took the book and read over another story that Harry had also never heard of before. But when she was done, the book went to Malfoy. He closed the book, saying he didn't need it, as this was a story he'd read enough times that he had it memorized. Harry's elder-counterpart chuckled at that.

“So, being a Malfoy wasn't all about blood supremacy and Dark Arts,” he drawled, “the Malfoy's were originally of Norse decent before moving into France and eventually England, and there were many books from the old Germanic and Norse wizards in our library. This is a story I heard every Yule from Grandmother Justinian until she died when I was twelve, after Grandfather Abraxas passed on from Dragon Pox. It was always one of my favorites.” He cleared his throat and sat a bit straighter.

“The second son of Odin is Baldr, and only good things are to be said of him. He is best, and all praise him; he is so fair of feature, and so bright, that light shines from him. He is the wisest of the old Norse Gods, and the fairest-spoken and most gracious; and that quality attends him, that none may gainsay his judgments.

But at one point, Baldr dreamt of his own death, and his mother Frigg, wife of Odin, had the same dream. Baldr fell depressed, and so his mother made every object on earth vow never to hurt Baldr. All objects made this vow, except mistletoe. Frigg had thought it too unimportant and nonthreatening to bother asking it to make the vow.

When Loki, the mischief-maker, heard of this, he made a magical spear from this plant. He hurried to the place where the gods were indulging in their new pastime of hurling objects at Baldr, which would bounce off without harming him. Loki gave the spear to Baldr's brother, the blind god Höðr, who then inadvertently killed his brother with it.

After the death of Baldur, it was decided that thenceforth mistletoe would bring love rather than death into the world, and that any two people passing under mistletoe would exchange a kiss in memory of Baldur. It was also said that ever should you encounter a foe beneath the mistletoe, that you had to lay down your arms and welcome them in peace. “

After that he just shrugged, almost awkwardly. “That's it.”

The elder-Harry was looking over at Malfoy with eyes only for him, and Malfoy looked back, grinning at the man beside him. They seemed to share something of a moment, and Harry felt strangely awkward watching it and diverted his eyes to his lap. He told himself it was because he was afraid the two were about to go and kiss again, but in all honesty, seeing Malfoy – older or not – looking at him like that, and seeing his own face returning the look... it was intense... and confusing.

That, it turned out, was the end of the story time because presents were passed around then, with Ted Lupin volunteering to be the one who passed things around.

Teddy bemoaned that there was nothing there for younger-Harry, but the elder-Harry explained that giving the other any gifts would be a bit pointless as he wouldn't be able to take anything back with him. Only that which he had on him when he came here would go back with him.

Teddy still pouted, but Harry certainly wasn't going to complain. Even with the supposed warning they all got, Harry hardly blamed any of them for not honestly expecting him to be there, and as such, have gifts prepared.

The rest of the afternoon and early even passed in a blur to Harry. There was lots of talking, lots of laughing, lots of presents and thanks, and of course, more eating.

The Yule Log ritual wasn't nearly as complicated as Harry had feared it would be. Basically they put the log into the hearth, lit it on fire, while the head of the house – in this case, older-Harry and Draco together – spoke a short ritual spell welcoming back the light and the sun. Then Harry and Teddy, as the only 'kids' present had a few lines to read, but it was short and simple enough that Harry only felt slightly stupid participating.

The evening finally wound down with Harry mostly talking with Teddy. The boy was a Hufflepuff, like his mother had been, and had a bit of a crush on a girl named Victoire, who Harry was stunned to learn was Bill Weasley's daughter with Fleur Delacour.

“Wait, how the heck did Ron's older brother end up with Fleur?” Harry had exclaimed at one point, apparently loud enough that others had heard.

“Fleur took a job with Gringotts after she graduated from Beauxbatons, in order to improve her English. Bill remembered her from the third task of the tournament and helped her get settled in,” Harry's older-self explained.

Harry blinked at him. “Oh. I guess I can see how that could happen." Harry was about to make note that Bill was probably a number of years older than Fleur, but held his tongue as he suddenly remembered that Remus and Tonks weren't exactly the same age either – in fact their age gap was probably quite a bit larger than Bill and Fleur's gap.

Finally, things were packed up, left-overs put into containers and handed out so that they wouldn't go to waste in Harry and Draco's refrigerator, and goodbyes were passed around. Harry, the younger one, found himself swept up into several unexpected hugs, and flushed scarlet as Narcissa kissed him on the nose and said she looked forward to, looking back on, the memory of their first real meeting.

He scrunched up his face and he tried to work that sentence out in his head, but managed to pull himself out of his confusion long enough to thank her and say goodbye. Finally he was left alone in the house with just his older-self and Malfoy. The silence was a stark contrast to the excessive noise level that had filled the house all day long.

The elder-Harry yawned and stretched dramatically before announcing that he'd deal with the mess in the morning and that he was beat. He and Malfoy told Harry he could stay up if he wanted, but Harry was just as tired as they were and opted to head to bed as well.