FicWad

A/N: I own none of this. I do not own Harry Potter or any rights to his image or personality. I do not own the moon or the stars. I don’t have any claim on any of the concepts or characters of a television show named Quantum Leap. This is all a coincidence. Nothing to see here, move along. Honest. Nope, not me. I most certainly do not own the rights to a billion dollar literary work.

Harry Potter and the Clockwork Leap

"After hearing Hermione Granger theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Harry Potter stepped into the Department of Mysteries’ Time Turner Acceleration Chamber and vanished. He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Luna, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of an Astral Projection that only Harry can see and hear. And so Harry Potter finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the one that allows him to kill Voldemort."

CHAPTER TWO

Harry launched himself across the room, his borrowed invisibility cloak falling from his borrowed shoulders in midair.

The sight of Mundungus Fletcher suddenly appearing in mid air shocked Selene Lovegood into immobility, her silver grey eyes growing large in her amazement. Harry’s body block knocked the woman away from the unstable slug of magic that the Spell-Crafter had been working just as it discharged.

The wild magic burst from its rune generated containment field and blasted Harry across the room. Harry impacted on the wall next to the fireplace and slid slowly to the floor, feeling his life slipping away. His only thought was wondering if this was how his adventure was to end.

Selene Lovegood climbed to her feet and sparing only the slightest of glances to confirm that her hysterical nine year old daughter was alright, she rushed to examine this stranger who had saved her life. The news delivered by her wand’s medical diagnostic charm was not good, not in the slightest. She hurriedly cast a partial stasis charm on the man, and then rushed to the hearth to floo for help.

Nine year old Luna Lovegood knelt next to this strange man who she somehow knew was not who he appeared. With a trembling hand she reached out to touch the unshaven face of the man almost, but not quite frozen in time.

“Thank you Harry Potter.” She said simply

The astral projection of seventeen year old Luna Lovegood knelt on the man’s other side as a now familiar spectral aura flared around Harry before he was replaced by an unconscious Mundungus Fletcher. “Yes,” She said, though no one except her younger self could hear her. “Thank you Harry Potter.”

Selene turned from the hearth to see her daughter kneeling next to the man who probably saved her life. On the other side of the man knelt… a spectral older version of her daughter?

“Luna?” she gasped.

“Yes Mummy?” the two girls separated by almost ten years chorused.

That was when the spectral mirror in the hand of the ghostly girl started screeching.

HPCL * HPCL * HPCL

~ discontinuity ~

Harry was surprised to find his face in cold water. He experienced a split second of panic until he realized that the water he was face down in was cupped in his own hands.

What had he been doing?

Oh, yes. Leaping. Jumping between lives did something to his memory. Harry continued to wash his face, using the cool water and the mindless act to calm himself. It was somehow relaxing to suddenly become aware while doing something so… normal. Not suddenly appearing in a newlywed’s body just as his wife was coming to him for the first time, not suddenly waking in a pitched battle, not coming to standing over a dead man. Just washing his face. After dozens of leaps into dozens of lives, combined with that was happening to his memory, somehow something so ordinary actually gave him hope.

That was when he spotted the Dark Mark on his left forearm.

All thoughts of normality vanished as Harry panicked and tried to scrub Voldemort’s mark from his body, to no avail. Staring down into the basin with the tap still running, his arm all but scrubbed raw, Harry risked a glance up into the mirror.

A young Peter Pettigrew stared back.

Harry gaped at the image in the mirror. “Oh Boy.”

HPCL * HPCL * HPCL

“Well, this one should be interesting.”

Harry spun to face a smiling Daphne Greengrass.

That made no sense, the Peter Pettigrew in the mirror was barely in his twenties, but Daphne was… well Daphne. The Slytherin looked just like he remembered her, just over eighteen. Her mother maybe? No that was ridiculous, while Harry ‘looked like’ his father, the young woman WAS Daphne Greengrass, or at very least her identical twin.

“Uh, hello.”

“Hello? Is that anyway to greet your girl friend Potter?”

She knew who he was. Wait. Girl Friend?

“Uh, what?”

The oddly decorated hand mirror in Daphne’s left hand chimed, and the raven haired beauty raised it to her face. “It sounds like his memory is more mangled than usual.” A voice Harry recognized as belonging to Tracy Davis issued from the mirror. “And I’m his girl friend.”

Harry waved his hand through Daphne’s form.

“Copping a feel off an astral projection is a bit pointless Love, though I appreciate the effort.” Daphne said with a come hither look.

“Daphne, if you’re quite done with your feeble attempt to distract my Harry? Harry, Millie says that the highest probability is that you are supposed to prevent your parent’s deaths.” Tracey said over the mirror.

“Wait. Where’s Luna? And why can I understand Tracey over the mirror? Where’s Hermione?”

A look of concern crossed Daphne’s face. “You’ve always been able to hear Tracey.”

“Since your first leap four months ago when you stupidly jumped into the Acceleration chamber.” Tracey agreed. “And if by ‘Luna’ you mean Luna Lovegood, she’s probably in the Hufflepuff dorms just now in ‘real’ time, why?”

“Luna’s the only one who could astral project.” Harry said, sitting down on the toilet. “Why would she be in the Hufflepuff dorms? She’s a ‘Claw.”

“Luna Lovegood a Ravenclaw? How do you figure that Harry?” Daphne said, her expression shifting from concern to worry. “I’ve been your contact since you made your first jump.” She lifted the mirror to her face again. “I think his memory is worse than ever Tracey, you’ve got to get him out of this stupid situation.”

“Wait, I’ve got a theory,” Tracey said. “Harry, what do you remember about your last leap?”

Harry concentrated for a moment. “I think it had something to do with keeping Luna’s mother from being killed.”

“It’s possible you changed reality by doing so. When Selene Lovegood took over the Arithmancy Professorship our first year…” there was a pause while the unseen Slytherin witch thought. “What house are you in?”

“Gryffindor.”

“Yeah right,” Daphne snorted. “Harry Potter in Gryffindor.”

“I’m not?”

“Harry, love, we met the night we were sorted into Slytherin.”

“Sorted into Slytherin?”

“Look, as interesting as this all is, the clock is ticking.” Tracey said from the mirror. “Harry it’s October fifteenth, 1980, today is the day that your mother cast the Fidelius with Pettigrew as the Secret Keeper. You are in the upstairs bath of your parent’s home in Godric’s Hollow Wales. Since you’re here, and you’re Pettigrew, you must be here to prevent it, either by not becoming the Secret Keeper or doing something to ensure that Pettigrew never reports back to Riddle.”

“What if I kill him? Kill me I guess.”

“Then the Fidelius would fall. It would survive a while after the Secret Keeper died, but it would fall.”

“Then what do I do?”

“Sirius was supposed to be the Secret Keeper, you know that Harry,” Daphne pointed out. “Perhaps he actually should be.”

“That is the best suggestion I’ve heard Harry,” Tracey added. “Millie is telling me that getting them to use Sirius is the most likely key to get you to jump again.”

“Maybe home this time Harry!”

Harry wasn’t sure what shocked him more to hear Millicent Bulstrode’s voice, or to hear the breathy wistful tone she used. How the hell had he managed to get Slytherin groupies?

“Ok, so I head down stairs and somehow convince my parents and Sirius that they shouldn’t use me for the secret keeper.”

“Yes,” Daphne said with a smirk. “And you better hurry; they’re going to think you fell in.”

“Right,” Harry crossed to the door, and then stopped. “What happened to Hermione Granger?”

Daphne looked puzzled. “Who?”

“Oh, I think I remember her,” Tracey said via the mirror. “She was that Muggle born girl who was killed by that Troll first year.”

“Ron Weasley and I didn’t save her?”

“Weasley?” Tracey snorted. “Weasley was the reason she got caught by the monster. You were busy arguing with Dumbledore when the ass tried to send us into the path of the Troll. No, we didn’t know she was out of the Great Hall until her body was found.”

Harry leaned his head against the door. Did he want to live in a reality where Hermione was dead and Luna was a stranger?

HPCL * HPCL * HPCL

Harry looked around in wonder, he was actually in the same room as his parents, he had a chance to make right what had once gone wrong, he could save his parents.

"Something wrong Peter?" James asked wondering why Peter was looking at him like that.

“No, nothing at all,” Harry stuttered, hoping that he at least sounded like Pettigrew. “It’s just a wonderful day.”

“It is,” Lily said, taking Harry’s hand. “Peter, we have a huge favor to ask of you.”

"What?" Harry asked, dreading the answer.

"We were just talking about how you should become the secret keeper instead of Sirius," James explained.

“Peter, we all know that I’m the obvious choice, “Sirius said. “Everyone knows how close James and I are. So I lead them on a wild chase across the country side, mean while no one is looking for you. It’s perfect.”

"Oh . . . right, I can see that, that’s really a great plan, but I don't think that's such a good idea." Harry said.

Lily blinked. Since when did Peter disagree? "Why not?"

"Well..." Harry said, rolling up his shirt sleeve, exposing the Dark Mark.

"You're a Death Eater?" Sirius shrieked.

"It showed up after I woke up from a night of heavy drinking about two weeks ago," Harry said, trying to come up with a convincing story on the spot, "at first I thought James and Sirius put it on me like that time they had the words 'insert here' and an arrow pointing down tattooed onto my lower back." Sirius had told him that story over Christmas fifth year, who knew it would come in handy?

"Sirius, did you do that? Are you pranking Peter?"

“Lily!” Sirius said in an offended tone. “Would I do that? That thing on his back was funny, but this…”

"I for one hadn't completely ruled that possibility that it was a Padfoot special," Harry said quickly thinking it sounded in character for Peter Pettigrew, "but after I got called to a meeting yesterday I stopped thinking that it was a fake."

"How could you kill innocent people?" Lily demanded.

"Not sure I could," Harry admitted, "and as far as I know I haven't."

"Why didn't you tell us about this?" James asked.

"I just did." Harry noted.

"Oh . . . right."

“I would suggest that you actually do make Sirius the Secret Keeper, but Sirius should mention it to someone like Mundungus that it was just a ruse and that I am the actual Keeper,” Harry said quickly. “That would have the baddies chasing me, and even if they do find me, I can’t tell them anything, but they wouldn’t believe me.”

“A double blind,” Lily breathed. “That’s ingenious.”

“No, a triple blind.” Harry said as he spotted Daphne entering the room. “As soon as the spell is cast and Sirius and I leave, get the hell out of the country, or don’t either way don’t tell us.”

“Harry! Daphne shrieked. “No! You can’t change that much, who knows what effect that will have?”

“Take the Longbottoms with you. Head for Australia or Canada, or somewhere else where you can blend in and don’t surface until the Dark Lord is defeated.”

“Harry, you can’t do this.” The Raven haired beauty said, trying to distract him from his efforts. “Think of everyone we know, this could change EVERYTHING!” The woman was crying. How odd. Harry thought who knew that an astral projection could cry. “Harry, please! Everything changed for you after your last leap; I don’t want to lose you!”

“Thank you Peter.” Lilly drew him into the only hug from his mother that he could remember.

“Sirius, I’m going to have to start running, but you need to tell Dumbledore, Voldemort is using Horcruxes.”

“No!” Lily gasped.

“What are Horcruxes?” James and Sirius asked simultaneously.

“It doesn’t matter; just tell Dumbledore he’s made them. I don’t know how, but they’ve all got to be found and destroyed.”

“How do you know these things Peter?”

“Lily, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Take Harry; force Frank and Alice to come along with Neville. Run, hide, until you hear that the bastard’s dead. Please? Just do it.”

HPCL * HPCL * HPCL

It was four days before the Dark Mark began to burn, the snake writhing on his forearm moving in and out of the skull. Harry took to moving daily, using Muggle methods of transportation, and staying in Muggle Hotels. Both Sirius and his father had been generous with the funds to finance this chase, so Harry made sure to take care of himself.

The first Death Eater didn’t find him for three weeks. The man immediately attempted to stun Harry which told Harry that Voldemort wanted Peter alive. That meant that the bait had been taken. Harry killed the man, leaving his body in the Foyer of the Daily Prophet, fully kitted out in his Death Eater regalia.

A week later, the second through tenth Death Eaters to find him seemed quite surprised when the ambush they planed turned out to be an ambush Peter had planned. That bit of surprise paled in comparison to the revelation that came to them when the assault team found that rather than the meek hanger on they had expected they discovered that Pettigrew was an unstoppable machine during the fight that ensued.

Of the nine, only one made it back to Voldemort, and his survival was measured in minutes because, quite frankly, the Dark Lord did not really handle disappointment terribly well.

The day after that battle was the last he had any contact with Daphne and Tracey, the brilliant pair of Slytherins couldn’t get the alignment right, he could see Daphne, but not hear her, and he could hear Tracey but she couldn’t hear him. Trace had told him that too much had changed in the time line and they were losing him. Daphne was crying throughout the odd conversation between a time displaced Harry and the pair. The last thing Tracey said before all contact was lost was that they understood why he was doing what he was and that they both loved him.

Today was the December 9th. Harry had lead Voldemort and his minions on a snipe hunt for more than seven weeks, but it ended today. Harry had chosen the place for his last stand with great care, a secluded farm house in the highlands of Scotland. The tiny building had a fairly substantial root cellar that harry had filled with more than a ton of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, now soaking in liquid nitromethane. Surprisingly, the blasting caps had been the hardest thing to come by, Harry had resorted to breaking into a quarry and lifting a few boxes from inside a locked room. Fabricating his ‘dead man’s switch’ had driven Harry crazy until it occurred to him that he could use practically anything because the Pureblood Wizards wouldn’t recognize any of it.

Voldemort himself was outside, probing for defenses. On several levels this amused Harry to no end. The link between the Dark Lord and The Boy Who Lived remained, despite the fact that said link had yet to be formed, and now it appeared might never be. Harry grinned as he settled into the chair in the center of the farm house’s small great room, leaning over to remove the cotter pin from the spring loaded switch that would detonate his makeshift bomb should he get out of the chair.

“Hello Harry Potter.”

The unexpected voice almost caused Harry to stand up, it was then he saw the speaker, an ethereal blond woman who appeared to be a ghost who had passed on in her mid 30s. Harry found himself wondering if she knew who he was because his state was so close to being a ghost himself. It was then he took in the line of her jaw, the way her hair hung, and her eyes… “Luna?”

The spectral woman laughed. “No, thank you though. It is surprisingly satisfying to be mistaken for my seventeen year old daughter.”

“Forgive my bluntness, but I’m expecting company. Why are you here?”

“I wanted to thank you for saving my life Harry Potter.” The woman said in a sing-song way that reinforced her resemblance to Luna. “I share Luna’s ability to see what isn’t readily apparent to most people. After your essence jumped out of the unfortunate Mr. Fletcher, I had the opportunity to speak with my Luna as she was at seventeen in your original timeline. It took most of two hours for the universe to settle into its new patterns, and Luna managed to remain and speak with me for the full time. It is you I have to thank for saving my daughter from her own eccentricities in your original timeline; your friendship meant everything to her.”

“Luna’s a friend.” Harry said simply. “I miss her.”

“Your intervention that prevented my death set up a series of circumstances that prevented her from becoming the young woman you knew. She has friends this time around; on occasion she has even been in love with various young men around the school. It isn’t the burning passion she felt for you, but she may still find that with someone. I did.”

Harry blinked. Luna had felt that way about him? “Good. Luna always deserved better than she got.”

“It is odd the effect my surviving had on you personally.”

“Really?” Harry asked. “How so?”

“I abandoned spell creation following the incident, and applied for the Arithmancy professorship here when Septima Vector mentioned that she would like to retire, but was holding off until a suitable replacement could be found. As the junior member of the staff, I was tasked to retrieve you from your relatives, and taking you to purchase your school supplies. During that day I told you tales of my time in Slytherin house, which you told me later, caused you to ask the Sorting Hat to send you to my old house. The Luna from your original time line told me that you had been a Gryffindor, I never expected you to go anywhere else.”

“I’d wondered how that happened.”

“I must go Harry Potter. Your Luna told me how to contact you, but never explained how draining it was.”

“Wait!” Harry said. “Do I win? Does what I’m about to do make any difference?”

The ghostly woman smiled. “That would be telling Harry Potter. No man can know his destiny, not even a time traveling Savior of the Magical World.” Before he could reply, the woman faded from his sight.

HPCL * HPCL * HPCL

The door to the farmhouse disintegrated to dust falling silently to the floor. There was a short pause then Voldemort strode in followed by his entire inner circle. Harry recalled Voldemort’s features from ‘meeting’ the man in the Chamber of Secrets, but the once handsome man had sacrificed his looks in ritual after ritual until he appeared to be little more than a parody of his former appearance.

“Pettigrew. Did you think you could escape my punishments?”

Harry smiled and leaned back in his chair. “No, not really Tom, but it was fun while it lasted. You should be thanking me, I pruned what? Fifteen, twenty bits of deadwood from your organization. How many did you kill for not managing to capture me?”

“You will address me as your Lord or your Master.”

From his seat Harry snorted.

“You think this is funny Peter? Do you think I’m amused?”

“Tom, please. You’re one powerful bastard, true. Both the ‘powerful’ and the ‘bastard’ part, but you’re not a lord, or my master. You’re just a half blood with delusions of entitlement.”

“WHAT?” Voldemort screamed.

“Boo Hoo!” Harry said in a childish whine while pantomiming knuckling away a tear, “I’m Tommy Riddle; I had a hard life when I was a little kid and everyone should fear me because I’m such a powerful little bitch.”

“YOU DARE?” Voldemort’s wand was pointed directly between Harry’s eyes.

“Aren’t you paying attention?” Harry said hoping the idiot would blast him out of the chair. Sure he could do it by standing up, but what if dying that way hurt? “I’m saying it to your face Tommy; I really can’t dare anymore than that unless I tattoo it on Bellatrix’s bum. But then EVERYONE would see it.”

“I’m going to strip your mind clean Pettigrew, then I’m going to kill you slowly. It will take you weeks to die. And you’ll be begging me to finish you off.”

“Yeah, sure. You know Tom, about Bellatrix, you can do better, really you can. I mean, if you’ve got to have one of the Black sisters, at least Narcissa is a tasty piece, you know, but Bella? Come on man.”

“What are you talking about?”

Harry shrugged, wondering if Riddle was going to get this joke. “Women like Bella are like a sampler from Honeydukes, you know? They all look pretty good, but then you bite into one and it’s all green and oozey inside, you know?”

“Legilimens!” Voldemort barked as he dove into Harry’s mind. What he found there shocked him to the point that he couldn’t maintain the spell.

“Potter?” He whispered. “But how?”

“How else Tom?” Harry said standing up to hear a satisfying ‘click’ as the spring loaded switch engaged after being relieved of his weight. “Magic.”

HPCL * HPCL * HPCL

~ discontinuity ~

Harry became aware of the sound of a door slamming and locking behind him.

Something was wrong; his thoughts were coming so very slowly, he was so angry, angry and… hungry. But it was those wooden stalls that annoyed him. A whole row of wooden stalls. Their symmetry, their shiny parts infuriated him.

Harry looked into his large callused hand and found a huge wooden club in it. Good. That would show those stalls who the big one was. He swung the club effortlessly, and the stalls stopped being stalls and became splinters. Good!

A shrill scream pierced the air and there cowering on the floor in the wreckage of the stalls was a small bushy haired… girl?

Something wasn’t right. Something was… wrong. This was familiar, but the screaming hurt his ears, then something was on his back, and a sharp… something was stuck up his nose.

I know this. Harry thought. I know this, but I can’t remember…

He turned to find a miniature Ron Weasley waving his tiny wand at Harry.

Harry dropped his club as it all came together for him. From deep in his chest, a sound rumbled.

“Oh boy.”

HPCL * HPCL * HPCL