Harry nibbled on the stale piece of toast, intent on taking as long as was humanly possible to eat it. If he gulped it, like his aching stomach obviously wished him to, he would just vomit it up again and then where would he be? In his room, with a pile of smelly vomit and no food at all. No, it was better this way, he decided as he stared mournfully at Hedwig's empty cage. Thank Merlin that he had had the foresight to sneak her out of the house.

Finally finishing with his piece of bread and seemingly no less hungry than he had been before, Harry lay back down on his bed, peering at the grimy sheets and wondering vaguely if Aunt Petunia would allow him some clean ones. Of course not. He lay down anyway, lacing his fingers behind his head and staring at the ceiling, his eyes following the familiar lines of the cracks in the plaster. There was the one that looked like Dudley. Or an odd hippopotamus-flounder hybrid. And there was the Dumbledore crack, though that 'beard' was a bit long.

His contemplations were interrupted by a crack! that he had only heard once before and, by now, had no desire to hear again. Dobby. He sat up in bed and glared at the little creature. "What do you want?" he spat. Or attempted to. What came out was more of a rasping croak. "See what you've done to me?"

Dobby looked devastated. "Dobby is sorry, sorry sorry sorry!" he wailed, grabbing the desk lamp and beating himself over his head. "Dobby only wished to protect Harry Potter and Dobby has hurt him instead. Oh -- bad Dobby!"

Harry absently wondered if he should perhaps take the lamp away from his head, but he found that he simply could not muster up the energy to do anything about it. "Stop that," he muttered, collapsing back on the bed. "I told you I had to go to Hogwarts. See? They're trying to kill me."

Dobby froze, the lamp about half a meter from his head, and his eyes grew very wide. "Bad muggles try to kill the great Harry Potter?" he asked. He dropped the lamp on the floor and scampered up to sit on Harry's chest. "Dobby cannot allow Harry Potter to go to Hogwarts," he said again. "Harry Potter is in great danger--"

"But I'm in danger here!" Harry exclaimed, his outburst dislodging the house-elf, who fell to the mattress with a squeak. The shout drew another bout of coughing from his tortured lungs. "Just go away already. Let me die in peace."

"Harry Potter must not die," Dobby declared, poking Harry in the forehead with one long finger to emphasize each word. "Harry Potter's house is not safe for Harry Potter. Hogwarts is not safe for Harry Potter." He got a crafty look on his face. "Dobby knows how to keep Harry Potter safe."

Dobby placed one hand on Harry's forehead, smiled, and said, "Harry Potter will be very safe." Then he lifted his other hand and snapped his fingers. The world flashed blue, then black, and Harry slept.

Harry opened his eyes and found himself in a strange room. It was circular, with rich reddish-brown colored wood paneled walls. He was lying on some sort of matress-like surface that was just wide enough for him to lay comfortably upon.

"Greetings."

Harry turned his head and saw the man who had addressed him. His robes were entirely black and trimmed with red, his hood pushed back so that Harry could see his face. He was tall, though not quite as tall as Professor Snape, and had brown hair and beard that blended splendidly with the woodwork.

"Where am I?" Harry asked. The sound of his voice surprised him -- it was no longer raspy. For that matter, he didn't feel hungry, or empty; it was a feeling that he hadn't felt in a long time. "Who are you?"

The man laughed in reply. "My name is Amer Razt. I am a member of the Temporal Transportation Division of the Department of Mysteries. Taking that into account, the best question might be 'when am I?'"

Harry stared at Razt, who laughed again and continued. "As an officer of the TT Division, it is my duty to welcome you to the time -- today is August 31, 1971 -- and perform the initial interrogation," he said as he pulled out a spiral bound notebook. He tapped his foot twice and a desk and chair grew out of the floor. "You can get off of the bed if you'd like," he added as he took a seat. "Just imagine your favorite type of chair and tap your foot."

Doing as he was told, Harry was delighted at the neon green arm chair and accompanying purple ottoman that appeared.

"Right," Razt continued as Harry made himself comfortable. "Now the first thing we have to establish is your origin -- what was the exact date and time that you left your time?"

"Er," Harry stalled, trying to remember. "It was around 8 o'clock at night. Um, a Saturday I think. Yeah. Late August, 1992."

Razt didn't even blink when Harry told him he was from twenty years in the future. "Can you be more specific?" he asked, scribbling away in his notebook. Harry shook his head and Razt made another note.

"Will telling me your full birth name cause, in your opinion, a paradox?" he asked, flipping pages in the notebook.

"Yes," Harry replied. He concentrated on a fluffy pillow and tapped his foot, grinning when the bright canary-yellow monstrosity plopped into his lap.

"Will telling me your first name do so?"

"No -- it's Harry." He wondered absently if the foot-tapping mechanism could modify the ambience of the room as well.

"How old are you? What school do you attend?"

"12. Hogwarts." Two taps and the walls were suddenly polka-dotted. Another two and the floor was covered in a thick, red shag carpet.

"What was your purpose of travelling back in time?"

"Er, it was an accident?"

Razt glanced up, a faintly amused look on his face. "Harry, you transported yourself back in time nearly 21 years exactly -- a feat which I must point out requires no small bit of ability and research -- and you are trying to claim it was entirely an accident?"

"Well it was," Harry humphed defensively. "I didn't even want to come, but that insane house-elf sent me!"

"Now we're getting somewhere," Razt replied, turning back to his notebook. "This house-elf, what was his name and who was his owner?"

"His name was Dobby and I don't know who owned him." Harry thought a bit and tapped his foot. The walls and floor disappeared and they were sitting in the middle of the African savannah. "He said that I couldn't go back to Hogwarts because it was too dangerous and he was sending me somewhere safe."

"Obviously this house-elf believed the past was safer, though why I don't know." Razt made another few notes in the notebook. "Are you sure you can't tell me your full name?"

"Yeah." Harry tapped his foot twice more. The floor started to tremble. In the distance, a herd of stampeding antelope appeared, heading right for them.

"Do be sure to remove those before they reach us -- I've no desire to become roadkill at this point in my career," Razt remarked absently as he chewed on the end of his quill. His expression was thoughtful. "I have some bad news for you, Harry."

After tapping the antelope into a peaceful herd some yards away, Harry turned his full attention back onto the official. "Since you were not the actual caster of the spell and the Department of Mysteries has never actually had a case of time-travel-by-house-elf, it is going to be impossible to send you back to 1992," Razt told him. "As such, you're going to have to grow up here in 1971. In order for this to happen we need to accomplish three things. First we need to give you a name, a home, and money. Second, you need to have your memories contained. That way, while you'll still be able to remember certain aspects of your previous life and of the future, you won't be able to impart any harmful information which will damage the timeline. Third, you need to get enrolled at Hogwarts."

Harry stared at Razt. "I can't go back?" he exclaimed. "Why? Can't you do a spell, or something? I don't know, a ritual?" What was he going to do? What about Ron and Hermione and Dumbledore....

"Harry, this is so far beyond our abilities that we're going to actually have to create a new taskforce to study the extent of house-elves' powers of time manipulation," Razt replied gently. "As of ten minutes ago, we were unaware that house elves actually had that sort of power at all."

The room went back to normal with another tap of Harry's foot. "Can I talk to them?" he asked. "Send them a message somehow?"

Razt closed his notebook and tucked it back into his cloak. "Only if you live to see them again," he replied. "We do, however, allow for victims of irreversible time travel to place a sealed, time-delay message into the archives to be opened after you've left." He stood up. "Come with me. We need to get you settled down."

His head was itching again, a little negligible itch that seemed to migrate elsewhere every time he moved to scratch it. Rubbing irritatedly at his ear, he grumbled, "Does it ever stop itching like this?"

Razt, who had pulled his hood up after they left the Department, shrugged. "It's a side-effect of the spell. It'll wear off, I hear, after a day or so."

After leaving the receiving room, the two had gone before a council of Razt's superiors who had decided that the best guardian for Harry would be Razt himself. After a bit of initial grumbling, the official had agreed. The council had also performed the spell to restrict Harry's abilities to reveal information about the future, and had given him a new official name. So Harry James Potter, born 31 July 1980, became Henry "Harry" Garret, born 31 July 1960. His name was down on the registrar for Hogwarts as a first year, even though he had tried to point out to unsympatheric ears that he had already finished his first year.

"Stop dawdling," Razt barked, pausing in the middle of Diagon Alley to allow Harry to catch up. "At this rate you're going to miss the train."

Harry scurried to catch up. Walking alongside the ministry official, he was sort of amused by the fact that people scampered out of the way of the cloaked man, whispering about 'Unspeakables' and 'Department of Mysteries -- they'll come if you think wrong, you know. You just disappear--' and other such strange nonsense. It didn't take them long to gather his materials, which Razt was obliging enough to pay for after assuring Harry that he'd keep a tab so that his charge could pay him back when he got older.

They finally came to the Leaky Cauldron, where Harry was pleasantly surprised to see that Tom was still the barkeep. Walking over to the fireplace, Razt picked up a jar and asked, "Have you flooed before, Harry?"

At Harry's negative response, he quickly outlined the methodology behind the odd form of travel and offered the ceramic pot to Harry. "Remember," he cautioned. "Enunciate clearly -- Platform Nine and Three-Quarters."

Harry nodded, made sure his mineaturized trunk was securely in his pocket, and stepped through the flames into the bustling train station.

The platform was exactly as he remembered it from his first year. The scarlet train stood patiently in front of the hordes of parents hugging their children and wishing them well. Harry glanced around for someone he recognized before remembering that this was not his time anymore. His head itched and he scratched it absently.

Loud laughter drifted over to him from a group of boys standing off to one side. Drawing close, Harry saw that there were four of them clustered about a fifth who they seemed to be teasing.

"Aw, look -- he's got tears in his eyes. You sure you got your name right? 'Cus it seems to me it should be Snivellus!"

The jeering one was the biggest of the grouop, with a strong build that foretold a broad-shouldered form in adulthood. His back was to Harry, who immediately decided he didn't like this character. He drew closer anyway, trying to see exactly who these boys were.

To his utmost surprise, he recognized the boy they were teasing. It was Snape, his greasy, sarcastic, nasty Potions Master. But now he was not quite nearly so intimidating with tears rolling down his face and ragged, patched robes. Harry wanted to feel triumphant, to revel in the fact that these boys were accomplishing something that he had wanted to do ever since his first potions class, but instead he felt a strange sort of pity for the other boy. It was rather much like how Dudley and his gang had picked on little Harry.

Then the biggest boy, the one who had called Snape 'Snivellus' reached out and shoved his victim hard. Snape sprawled out on the floor. The boys laughed again. "Nice, Sirius -- send the trash right were it belongs. In the dirt!" called out the boy alongside the big bully. Harry's breath caught in his throat -- it was his father, James!

But his father wasn't good and kind like everybody had told him, he was a bully, like that Sirius character, like Dudley. It couldn't be. Harry stared at them numbly.

The train whistled a warning. Fifteen minutes until departure. Sirius turned to his companions and said, "Just leave the trash. Let's get on the train. I hear that Melanie Applegate actually got permission to bring a monkey as a familiar..."

As the boys walked away, Harry turned to look back at his future Potions professor. The boy was still sitting where they had thrown him, head bowed in humiliation, long hair masking his face, sniffling quietly. Harry thought about all of the times he had been left sitting in the dirt, when nobody came to comfort him after Dudley handed out his daily humiliation, and quickly decided upon a course of action.

He walked up in front of Snape, so the other boy could see the tips of his shoes and extended his hand in a friendly manner. Snape looked up and glared at him through his tears, as if trying to scare him off so that Harry would not tease him about his inability to be strong. Harry, however, smiled and said, "I'm Harry Garret. Would you like to sit with me on the train?"

They stared at each other, evaluating. The train whistle sounded a five minute warning. And Snape reached up, grasped Harry's hand, and allowed him to pull him to his feet.