Chapter Text
Godric’s Hollow
The house at Godric’s Hollow held that restless calm that only appears when the whole world is waiting for a storm. Outside, the wind rattled the windows; inside, Harry’s soft breathing was the only thing that brought James peace when the isolation and the war made him feel restless.
James was on edge, his wand always in hand. He only managed to lower his guard once Lily went upstairs to the nursery.
Left alone in the living room and not knowing what to do with himself, he soon found himself rummaging through an old trunk marked with the initials F.P. (Fleamont Potter). It was an absurd jumble of things: opened envelopes, crumpled maps, vials of expired substances, and a heap of artifacts he had never seen in use. The Potters, it seemed, had a strange knack for hoarding old objects because they "might come in handy one day" or simply because they were "antiques."
"Come on, Dad, give me something useful..." James muttered, pushing aside a Seeker’s helmet that looked like it was from the 1920s.
Then, something made a metallic click—something small, shiny, and heavy.
James picked it up.
"And what’s this...?" he whispered to himself, examining the device with curiosity.
It was a Time-Turner, that much was obvious—or at least it looked like one. But it didn't shine like the ones he’d seen in books. This one looked ancient, dark, with multiple gears and an inner hourglass that didn't glow gold, but held a strange, almost opaque, dark color.
Lily came downstairs just then.
"What did you find?" she asked, drying her hands on a towel.
James shrugged.
"A weird Time-Turner, I guess. Though... I don't know, it looks old. Ring a bell?" James held the mysterious object up toward Lily.
Lily frowned and stepped closer. She took it carefully, turned it over, examined its sides, and suddenly her eyes widened.
"James... this isn't an ordinary Time-Turner."
"No?" James asked with a confused look.
"No. Modern Time-Turners only have two external gears and a closed structure. This one has..." she pointed to the sides, "...three layers of mechanisms. And the sand is... different." Lily continued to stare at it, intrigued. "I think it’s a prototype."
James raised an eyebrow. "A prototype of what? What do you mean, love?" He stood up to get closer to Lily, who held the strange object in her hands. She exhaled.
"Before the Ministry regulated Time-Turners, the Department of Mysteries experimented with more complex versions. Prototypes that didn't just go back hours, but..." she waved her fingers in the air, searching for the words, "...well, they manipulated temporal bifurcations. Alternate timelines. Like branches."
James’s eyes went wide. "And how do you know that?"
Lily looked at him as if the answer were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Because I read, and because I was bored during my Prefect rounds," she replied, clipped but with a small smile. "Besides, they always intrigued me. The library had essays and research on 'forbidden magical items.' Some of those parchments spoke of 'Bifurcation Turners.' They’re supposed to be extinct..." She paused to look at James. "It's believed the Ministry destroyed all the prototypes in the fifties, after the accident in the Department of Time and Space. They were considered dangerous and unstable." She looked at the device with a mix of fascination and fear. "James, this is extremely dangerous. We don't know what it actually does."
He stared at it like someone looking at a missing puzzle piece.
"Lily... what if this device helps us defeat him?"
She looked at him intently. "What do you mean?"
"We can't leave this house, we can't look for information, we have contact with almost no one," James said, his voice thick with frustration. "Voldemort is getting stronger every day... What if there’s a timeline where they already beat him? Where they found his weakness, where he made a mistake—something we don't know here?"
He looked at Lily with eyes full of a sort of hope. She looked down for a moment.
"I’m not saying it’s impossible," she admitted, looking back up. "But it’s broken. It's unstable. I couldn't tell you which part does what because it isn't built like the ones we've seen before. I can guess a few things... but that’s it."
James smiled with that determination that made her fall in love with him and irritated her in equal measure.
"Well. Then I’m going to fix it."
"James..." she warned. "It's not a toy."
"I know. But if there’s even a slight chance this could give us an edge... a chance for Harry... I have to try."
Lily looked down, sighed, and nodded, knowing there was no stopping him once an idea took root in his head.
Forbidden Magical Items (Hogwarts, 1976)
Lily was on her prefect rounds, walking through the corridors of Hogwarts and muttering to herself in annoyance because Remus hadn't joined her that night. Who would have thought someone could end up in the hospital wing over a spoiled sweet? At the time, Lily didn't link Remus’s constant absences from his prefect duties to the full moon—something that, once she learned about her friend’s lycanthropy, would make her reconsider just how oblivious she could be.
Lily walked the halls, keeping watch until she reached the massive doors of the library. She decided to use her prefect privileges (like entering the library after hours) to pick up a book for later. Instead of going to her usual section, she drifted toward the ministerial document archives, dusty and forgotten. Among the History of Magic volumes, she found a scroll bound in scaly leather that looked like it hadn't been touched in decades: "Protocol for the Destruction of Temporal Bifurcation Prototypes."
Intrigued by the dramatic title, she opened the dusty parchment. It was written in the archaic, formal ink typical of the Department of Mysteries.
"...this office’s attempt to create temporal travel with the nullification of the 'Native Self' has resulted in catastrophic instability. Many theorists have concluded that there is no guarantee the traveler could ever return to their original timeline. The intent—allowing the traveler to take the place of their counterpart in a chosen era, granting the ability to 'change' events—has failed."
Lily frowned. So, it wasn't about traveling through time alongside your past self, but replacing them entirely. A dangerous and incredibly ambitious concept, even by her standards. She read on.
“The prototype, unable to guarantee the uniqueness of the timeline, reacts by forcing a dimensional branching. Instead of moving backward within one’s own timeline, the user is transported to an alternate, compatible timeline, chosen at complete random.”
“The greatest danger lies in the state of the traveler’s 'Native Self.' The individual who is replaced remains suspended in a state of Temporal Fissure, trapped between dimensions until the traveler returns or the prototype stabilizes. Therefore, the use of these Time-Turners is strictly prohibited; all resulting prototypes must be destroyed immediately, as they are classified as Class A Dark Magic due to the risk they pose to the space-time continuum and the native individual.”
Lily closed the scroll, feeling a shiver that had nothing to do with the night's chill. She placed the parchment back where it belonged, still somewhat shaken by the dangers of unchecked magical ambition.
The Accident of James Potter
Days passed—locked away, tense, and silent. Lily did everything she could to maintain a routine, to ensure Harry felt peace. James, for his part, spent hours hunched over the artifact, dismantling parts, testing minute adjustments, and undoing residual spells. Sometimes they argued softly about how it might work; Lily compared its structure with what she knew from books, while James improvised, tested, and adjusted.
And he became obsessed.
Because every night, after Lily fell asleep, he kept going, and going, and going. Not because what he was doing was showing results, but because it was the only thing he could do. One of those nights, Lily was sleeping on the armchair with Harry against her chest. The house was in absolute silence.
James, with deep dark circles under his eyes, held a tiny piece between his fingers.
"Come on... cooperate with me..." he whispered, until he finally managed to snap the gear into place.
The Time-Turner vibrated. Just barely. A short pulse. A flicker of light.
"That’s it!" James smiled, relieved. "We’re on the right track."
He adjusted another piece. And another. Until, without warning, the Time-Turner sputtered. A bluish light in the hourglass rapidly turned into an iridescent purple, and a high-pitched sound filled the room.
"What the hell...?"
The sand began to move upward, defying gravity.
"No, no, no, stop!" James pressed his hand against it, trying to keep it from spinning. "Not yet!"
But the device didn't listen.
The trapped, unstable, and forbidden magic released like a dimensional lash. Sparks of purple and white light. A sudden wind that whipped up papers, quills, everything. James tried to let go, but he couldn't; the Time-Turner clung to him like a magical magnet, pulling him toward another reality.
"LILY!" he screamed, desperate.
On the armchair, Lily startled awake, clutching Harry and grabbing her wand. She looked up, her eyes wide with terror.
"JAMES!"
The light engulfed the entire living room. The Time-Turner vibrated so violently it seemed to scream, and with a sharp crack, James Potter disappeared.
The Time-Turner fell to the floor, cracked and smoking. Lily ran, stumbling, screaming his name over and over again.
But all she found was the broken artifact and a house that, for the first time since they had arrived... felt truly empty.
Without the scars of war.
The sensation upon waking up was wrong. James bolted upright, reaching for the weight of his wand under the pillow, only to feel a lightness and the total absence of the chronic ache in his back—the result of a fall a year ago. His body had always carried a persistent tension in his shoulders and knees, subtle marks from dodging curses and sleepless nights. But this body felt light, stripped of the heavy strain brought on by the war.
He opened his eyes. Light filtered through the crimson canopy of an unfamiliar bed. It wasn't Godric’s Hollow; it was his old dormitory at Hogwarts. With trembling hands, he felt his face. His fingers searched for the stubble, the familiar roughness he used to shave, but found only a smooth cheek. He searched for the small scar above his left eyebrow—a souvenir from an encounter with a low-level Death Eater—but the skin there was perfectly soft.
He rushed to the mirror. The boy looking back at him was young, his face free of the deep dark circles and the lines of weariness that constant fear had etched into him. It was a face a stranger to the exhaustion of being a father to a newborn.
The realization that he had traveled too far back in time hit him as the image of Lily and Harry flashed through his mind.
He pulled on the Gryffindor uniform that was neatly folded nearby. The room was strangely empty; Gryffindor banners still hung on the walls and there were Quidditch magazines, but James failed to notice the things that were missing—his friends' books and records.
His mind was locked in desperation; he was in the past, and he had to find his friends. They would be able to help him.
He ran down the stairs to the Common Room, but it was empty.
"Sirius? Remus?" he called out. His voice, youthful and clear, echoed back without an answer.
Urgency drove him to the Great Hall. James scanned the Gryffindor table for a familiar face, without success. He spotted a fourth-year student and approached him.
"Hey, have you seen Sirius?"
The boy looked at him with a strange expression.
"Sirius Black? I... I don't think he’s come down yet."
The ambiguous answer gave James no time to question the odd tone. Just then, he heard a familiar laugh—clean and loud—dominating the murmur of the Great Hall.
Remus Lupin's Furry Little Problem
He spun around quickly, and the sight hit him like a physical blow. Sitting at the Ravenclaw table, dressed in blue and bronze robes, was his friend.
Remus was surrounded by a dense circle of students—mostly girls from different houses, but especially Ravenclaws—all of them laughing at whatever Remus was saying. It wasn’t the personality that stunned James, but the confirmation of his position: the center of attention, a status the Remus Lupin he knew had always avoided.
James stepped closer, mesmerized, and managed to catch fragments of the conversation.
"Don’t worry about the essay, Remus. We’ve got you covered for Ancient Runes. But the Charms exam? Flitwick is a sadist for scheduling it right after the next full moon."
Remus smiled, his voice calm. "I know, but Madam Pomfrey said that with the week off I’ll be able to catch up. I’ll be in the hospital wing until Tuesday for sure."
The air left James’s lungs. Not only was Remus a Ravenclaw—everyone knew. His "furry little problem," as they used to call it, was a known fact, accepted, and even openly managed by his classmates. It was a world where Remus didn't have to hide.
Panic seized James.
It’s not the past.
It’s a bifurcation.
He remembered Lily’s warning: "Alternate lines. Multiple universes." His life, his struggle, his family—they had all vanished.
And then came the final blow, the one that stole his breath and left him trembling.
From the Slytherin table came a sound—a dry, arrogantly familiar laugh, followed by a voice James would recognize anywhere. A voice that now lacked its playful warmth, possessing instead a sharp edge of authority.
The Heir to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black
James turned his head, and the impact was so unexpected that he was left breathless. Sitting at the green and silver table was his best friend. His long black hair wasn’t rebellious; instead, it was neatly combed, though it maintained that characteristic side-swept fall, albeit with an unnatural rigidity. His Slytherin robes were perfect, and his face wore a cold arrogance—an expression of sheer superiority.
But even worse, Snivellus was sitting right beside him, eating breakfast while they conversed with a casualness that made James’s stomach churn.
James managed to overhear the dialogue.
"Severus, you need to focus. Don't let the time you spend... socializing... distract you from your true ambitions." Sirius’s voice was heavy with condescension.
"She’s my girlfriend, Sirius, not a distraction," Severus said without even looking at him, as if he were well-accustomed to these comments.
"Of course," Sirius said with a laugh that sounded like a mockery. "I’d call it more of a phase, Severus, but call it what you like."
Severus rolled his eyes.
"We all have hobbies," Sirius continued. "But when the time comes to make serious decisions, to build a future, you know you’ll have to choose something with more... class. Either way, don’t worry, you’ll grow out of it."
Sirius spoke, but Severus made no further remark.
This wasn't Sirius. This was the cold, cruel incarnation of the person his best friend had fought so hard to avoid becoming. Sirius Black—his friend, his brother by choice—would have rather died than become this version of himself.