"How many people are we waiting for?" Sirius asked, feeling a little uncomfortable, he didn't like being thought of as a danger to his godson, someone he would love regardless of what circumstances Harry experienced.
"There's mum and dad, maybe Bill and Charley, Remus, uh..." Ron said, hoping that someone else would continue for him.
"Zizi e le mie zie are coming too. No, they don't remember, but I tell them about all my visions too." Lexsaidh said where she was sitting, looking very pale as her head was resting on Killian's shoulder.
"That's Nico and their partners, right?" Sirius asked, perking up a little.
"Yes, the three of them raised us." Killian said, gripping Lexsaidh's hand a little more tightly.
"I know my vision of zizi's death is after Harry's, but can you tell me if we managed to either stop their death or prove it was Dumbledore?" Lexsaidh asked, looking at Sirius desperately.
"You didn't, either." Draco answered in Sirius' stead. "We'll do our best to this time, I promise."
"Of course we will, I swear we'll find a way to save them, I believe you." Sirius said, fiercely. He hadn't exactly known Nico well, even though James had pretty much adopted them as a younger sibling and they had ended up becoming close to every member of the Black family and helping their relationships. When he saw they had died he felt guilty for not staying in contact.
"Hey, we're here, is everything okay Lex?" Lydia asked as she, Raelyn, and Nico came out of the fire.
"I'm fine, we're here to figure out a way to stop Harry from dying," Lexsaidh said, before mumbling. "Hopefully stop zizi's death too."
"Okay, are we the last to show up?" Raelyn asked.
"Nico?" Sirius asked, looking somewhere between heartbroken and hopeful, approaching the much shorter adult two years younger than himself and hugging them.
"What's this about? You're the one who stopped talking to us." Nico asked, a little confused but accepting a hug from the man.
"I know, and I shouldn't have, I'm sorry about that too." Sirius said, still not letting go.
"By too you mean-"
"They came back in time, sounds like the same one as my vision." Lexsaidh said, her face looking grim as she spoke.
"So you're sorry about allowing me to die? Don't be, it's not like you killed me. Do you happen to know the reason for my murder?" Nico asked, voice surprisingly calm for someone talking about their own death, though there were undertones of anger.
"Honestly I found it difficult to even get out of bed after Harry died, and hearing about your death didn't make it better. I have no clue what happened, but I do trust what actual witnesses saw." Sirius said, Nico now trying to remove themself from his grip, his arms still smelling very bad.
"It's fine, if you couldn't then you couldn't," Nico said, patting Sirius somewhat hard on his shoulder as they got out of his arms. "We still have time."
"Nico?" Remus asked from where he stood, just slightly in front of the fireplace, looking like he saw a ghost.
"Oh for fuck's sake, I'm not dead yet, stop acting like I am." Nico said, throwing their hands up in the air, though they still let the tall werewolf hug them. "Is there anyone else shocked about my future demise who wants to hug me?" Nico spun around slowly, their arms outstretched for another hug before they stopped, seeing Draco. "You're Narcissa's kid, right?"
"Yeah, my parents are Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy." Draco said, though his eyes weren't on Nico, but Raelyn.
"Narcissa and I were friends at Hogwarts, I'm sorry we couldn't keep in contact, but you know, had to go into hiding." Nico said, though Raelyn seemed to know what Draco's eyes meant and was definitely avoiding them. "Will your parents be coming?"
"Mother doesn't blame you, she understands. Father was tricked into becoming a Death Eater anyway, you wouldn't have been safe if you had kept contact." Draco said, turning from Rae to look at Nico. "And no, they won't. You're the only people who are coming who don't remember, and my parents don't."
"Shame, I miss her." Nico said, plopping down on one of the sofas a little further from the fire, Harry sleeping in the best seat.
"If you write to her it would make her happy." Draco said, Voldemort wasn't back yet, they had a few years where it would be relatively safe. "She misses you too, she doesn't say it, but she does show it."
"I'll do that, thanks." Nico said, looking at Draco gently.
"Sorry we took so long, mum had a bit of a meltdown about Bill's hair." Ginny said completely nonchalant as she walked out of the fire, sitting down on the sofa Harry was lying on, though he didn't take up enough space to stop people from sitting there. "It feels weird to see how small he was."
"What does she think is wrong with his hair?" Ron asked, rolling his eyes slightly, she had loved all of them having long hair before Ginny realised she was a girl, he couldn't understand why she was always trying so hard to cut Bill's hair now.
"It's long and messy, plus he has some charms tied into plats that she doesn't understand. He says it's for work and won't let her do anything to it." Ginny said, rolling her eyes as Bill himself came through the fire, looking a little sheepish.
His red hair was indeed a mess, the ends were singed, likely from one of the curses he ran into rather than the flu flames. His long hair had was messy and had random braids throughout, each one having a different charm attached, some seemed muggle, some seemed magical in nature, and some looked very old. Bill and Charley always seemed to be wearing very nice clothes, though the whole family knew that they were very money conscious, so it was probably just that they could find them for cheaper around where they were staying or they saved for them. They had more ability to save than Molly and Arthur after all, they had higher paying jobs and didn't have to feed so many children.
"Sorry, I didn't think these would cause a delay, I usually take them out before going home, but this time it's just a two day visit, including today." Bill apologised, looking sheepish.
"William Weasley! You will either remove those things or tell me why you refuse to!" Molly boomed as she came through the flames, Harry making a small noise in complaint in his sleep, his face wrinkling up in displeasure at Molly's anger disturbing his sleep.
"Mum, quiet, Harry is sleeping." Ginny said, her glare one that could match her mother's as she stared the woman down.
"Sorry Ginny, dear." Molly said, much more quietly as she looked at Harry with a soft expression, he was obviously relaxing now it was quieter.
"You don't need to whisper around him, though yelling will probably wake up. It was designed to be a deep natural sleep, not a magical sleep you can only wake up from with the potion waring off." Draco cleared up for the people in the room.
"You gave him a potion you made?" Mme Pomfrey asked, sounding disapproving.
"Yes, while I obviously don't have any of the paperwork now, it was recognised by St Mungo's after several safety checks and retries. I also tried it on myself in this timeline before Harry took it." Draco said, his eyes flicking to Lexsaidh as he spoke, though not for long enough for most people to take any intention from it.
"When I finished telling everyone about my vision may I have some?" Lexsaidh asked, clearly exhausted, but interested in the potion Draco talked about.
"Of course, unlike other sleeping potions it doesn't build up, so just ask whenever you need some." Draco said, smiling more brightly than he usually did, looking almost relieved about something.
"Mr Malfoy, I would like to discuss this potion with you more, come to the Hospital Wing when you are free." Mme Pomfrey said, nodding to him.
During that conversation Arthur and Charley had also come through the fire into the room, being much quieter than Molly, Ginny and Bill. Arthur had very obviously come wearing his work robes, the smartest he owned, though they were still shabby and patched. Charley, on the other hand, was wearing dragon hide clothes that looked more muggle than wix, a red jacket and black trousers with black ankle boots. His hair was still on the longer side, but significantly shorter than Bill's.
"Shall we get started then?" Hermione asked, getting murmurs of agreement from the others. "Lexsaidh, could you tell us about your visions of Harry's death first?"
"Sure, after that I want the sleeping potion though. I saw his death in detail that I will not be going into here, because of it both being a lot and impossible to describe in words all the details I saw. He was killed by his muggle relatives and specifically the man, though his cousin wasn't home at the time. He was in trouble for something unreasonable, I don't quite remember what. After he died Dumbledore came to the house, he was annoyed that he had died, though it seemed he was more annoyed Harry died without magic involved that he could label a Death Eater's. They strung him up so it would look like he did it to himself, then the muggles and Dumbledore paid the muggle police and aurors to say it was a suicide." Lexsaidh explained. "From Sirius' response to seeing Zizi I think it's the same timeline as the one he killed them. I didn't see what happened after Nico died though."
"That lines up with what we found out about his death, we didn't have specifics, but we did find out that it was the muggles who killed him, but we didn't know about the bribery or Dumbledore." Hermione said as Draco searched through his bag for a second vial of the sleeping potion.
"Here you go, thanks for helping us." Draco said, his expressions somewhere between shy, hopeful, and embarrassed as he gave it to her.
"Thanks." Lexsaidh basically gasped as she toon the potion, immediately taking the cap off and gulping it down as though she hadn't had a drink in days.
"Careful Lex, don't choke." Rae chastised slightly as Lexsaidh leant more on Killian, falling asleep very quickly, though significantly slower than Harry did.
"I can't believe we trusted Dumbledore." Remus spat, trembling along with his voice as he tried to keep himself as calm as possible, not wanting to start yelling and wake the two sleeping students up.
"We should be saying that more than you, we basically sold our family to him to solve our debt." Molly said bitterly, a smile on her face that could send chills down even Voldemort's spine, if he even had one.
"Who are you in debt to?" Draco asked, their family was rich enough and powerful enough that it may be possible for them to buy the debt, in which case they would be able to fee the Weasleys from whatever contract they had signed.
"To you." Arthur said, making Draco's eyes widen.
"You are? How much? And how does the debt connect to the deal with the dev- I mean Dumbledore?" Draco asked, though it was obvious his 'slip up' was deliberate.
"16000 galleons, it was money your family had given mine for my great, great grandfather's marriage to your great, great aunt, but it never happened as he ran away with another witch. The money had already been spent though. I only get to be the head of the family because I promised that I would pay back the debt myself for as long as I'm alive." Arthur explained to Draco, there was no way he could understand the difficulties of the old arranged marriages, and the price people would pay for breaking them. It was twice the amount they had to pay back, though they had only paid back a third of the necessary before signing the magic contact with Dumbledore.
"The contract lasts for as long as it would take for us to pay the money back, or until Dumbledore's death, whichever comes first. It doesn't matter even if the debt is forgiven, it's only when we could have paid it off." Molly finished answering Draco's question.
"I'm sorry." Draco said, looking at his lap.
"It's not your fault, it's my great, great grandfather's." Arthur said, his eyes fatherly and kind.
Raelyn also looked uncomfortable with the news that the Weasleys were tied to Dumbledore because of the Malfoys. Lydia saw her face though, and took Rae's hand, squeezing it gently.
"Harry can't stay with the Dursleys from now on in, not even for holidays. I think it would be easiest for him to go to the person he will stay with's house for Christmas this year to get used to it before moving in." Ron said, looking around the room. Sure, his parents' debts were important, but it couldn't be changed.
"We don't have room for him to stay at mine, and your family's contractual loyalty to Dumbledore means he wouldn't be allowed to and wouldn't really be safe." Hermione said, immediately cutting off the ideas of Harry staying with either of them.
"While my wife and I would love to take him in, it would be extremely unprofessional and we also have a strong forced connection to Dumbledore, so it wouldn't be safe either." McGonagall said sadly, she deeply cared about her students, Harry being in a special case as he was the child of two she had been close to; Lily from her many questions about the wizarding world throughout the years, James through family, his caring for younger years, and his and the other Marauder's questions about animagi.
"My family will take him in." Draco said over Remus offering his place for Harry. "With all due respect to the rest of you, my house has enough protection to stop him from being harmed by Dumbledore and we have no connections to the man so he can't force us to make him leave."
"I will not be abandoning him, I couldn't be in his life until this weekend, I will not be removed from his life again." Remus said from where he was standing by the fireplace, his hands in fists as he glared at a spot on the floor.
"I never said you couldn't see him, I'm just saying he should live with me. I'm not going to stop you from being in his life, but I assume there's a reason you weren't allowed to take him in those years ago, the Ministry could have forced for you to be allowed to take him in." Draco said, he was pretty sure he knew why Remus hadn't been allowed near Harry, however unjust it may be.
"The Ministry were the ones with the final say that I wasn't allowed to visit him at his house until he was old enough to make an informed decision about me." Remus admitted, he didn't see how Harry was supposed to make the decision to allow him back in his life if he didn't know anything about him, but he wasn't the one making decisions.
"What are we going to do about all the trouble he got into?" Fred asked, sitting on the back of the chair George was sitting on, though George was sitting on the arm rather than the seat, Molly was giving them disapproving looks, but they didn't care.
"It's his experiences, and he only went through the Triwizard tournament alone, we'll be there to keep him as safe as possible. We won't send him there, but if he figures it out I don't think we should stop him." Ron said, Harry didn't need them to come up with a new design for his life so he could only do what they wanted him to, he deserved to be himself.
"I know what spell was used to turn back time. It was cast on Harry, so only the people who care about him can remember what happened, except for the person who cast it. It's a very old spell, there's a copy in the Malfoy library, I don't know where else it is." Draco said, his eyes flicking over to Raelyn and Lydia for a moment.
"So how can we tell if someone didn't care about Harry or turned back time?" Nico asked.
"Apparently there is some residue that some people can pick up on until you get to when they cast the spell, but I have no idea how to detect the traces though." Draco said. "It shouldn't be too hard for us to figure out who definitely didn't care about Harry, Dumbledore obviously being one."
"Snape was practically celebrating his death, he's not someone who would bring him back or remember." Ron was angry about it, he hadn't expected Snape to exactly be miserable at Harry's death, but Harry was still a person, and a child at that.
"Well it's definitely not one of us as we all remember." Sirius said, looking around at the people in the room before stopping on Nico, Raelyn, Lydia, Killian, and Lexsaidh. "Well, you lot didn't really know Harry so you can't remember."
"We didn't exactly know him either, but we remember it too much for it to have been either of us." Charley said.
"Could it be Percy? He definitely knew Harry better than us, but doesn't remember." Bill suggested.
"No, I do think that he doesn't remember because he didn't care." Ron said, Ginny nodding in agreement.
"Yeah, the last time I saw him in that timeline he said Harry was an insane attention seeker who must have killed Cedric himself and that he hated all of us for still letting him in the house after knowing that. He also said a lot of incorrectly hateful things about Dumbledore, really harsh things about mum and dad, and insulted the rest of us. He then removed himself from the family and pretended he didn't even know dad, except for trying to get him fired every few weeks." Ginny said, Molly had been torn up and felt horrible about it, Arthur feeling the same way though less openly as he didn't want them to worry about him too, but the younger Weasleys were just angry at what he said and did. He didn't apologise even after Harry's death.
Even when Percy saw how Harry's death affected the rest of them he still just continued trying to get Arthur fired. He knew that even with their debts no longer an issue they were still too poor to fully support the family, and he knew that Arthur was the only one who could work. He had been old enough to remember the accident Molly had been in that prevented her from doing work out of the house, it was for the same reason that the house was always so cluttered.
"Shit, I didn't think he would do that." Bill cursed under his breath. Percy had always been spoilt, he was born early and was very weak for the first few years of his life, and Molly had always overcompensated for that. He had kept many of the privileges of being the favourite even as Ginny rose the ranks as Molly's long desired daughter.
"Neither did we, your mother spent weeks trying to get him to come back, even sending him gifts, but each was returned unopened or unused with the occasional letter saying he wouldn't accept anything unless it came with an apology." Arthur said, his voice gentle in a way to try to hide his hurt.
He understood that children would eventually move on with their lives, and would form their own opinions about everything, but it would never not hurt that the son they spoilt the most would go so far out of his way to hurt them because they wanted to support a traumatised child. He honestly doubted it was all because of them believing Harry, it's not even like they had done anything public at that point and Harry still had to stay with the muggles, but he would be hard pressed to find what it was that had made him so angry.
"Actually, I think I know who turned back time." Draco said, drawing all attention to him again. "Well, like I said, the only copy of the spell I know of is in my house, right?"
"Yes, but there are probably other copies, or are you suggesting that your parents cast the spell? Why?" Sirius asked, he knew that most of the books in the Malfoy library were also in the Black family library.
"No, I'm not suggesting it was my parents, but my father has an illegitimate sister he got back in contact with after her partner and adopted son's deaths. She would have access to the book through my father and have reason to turn back time. She was never on either side, so it's not like she was a Death Eater, nor did she support Dumbledore." Draco said, looking at Raelyn, who looked uncomfortable with Draco' looking at her.
"Who? If they're not on either side then why would they want to turn back time around Harry? If it's for their family wouldn't they turn back time around one of them?" Remus asked, not seeming to notice the pointedness of Draco's gaze.
"Because the deaths caused her adopted niece and acting daughter to be driven insane by her abilities. That's why I developed the potion, for her because there was a limit to how much St Mungo's could do and regardless of the variation of sleeping potions they would build up. The daughter's part seer, in one of her visions she yelled about Harry's death causing everything. In fact the last thing I remember of that timeline is her grabbing my shoulders and yelling 'Protect him'." Draco said.
"Adopted son and adopted niece that acts like a daughter who is part seer? That sounds like us." Nico said, more to themself than anyone else, before realising who Draco was looking at. "But I think this is enough for tonight. Harry will go to the Malfoy household for the Christmas holidays, if he likes it he will move in, if he doesn't Remus can try taking him in."
"Oh, right, Sirius, I have set up for a trial for you and Peter for a week's time, please be there, if you're not I can see them not even looking at the evidence and keeping you as a prisoner." Arthur said.
"I'll leave with Remus after his visit, I'll go to the Burrow from there." Sirius said, looking at Harry who was still sleeping deeply.
He didn't want to leave Harry, he still needed time to reassure himself that Harry was still alive and safe.
"I also want to give him a check up, so please get him to the Hospital Wing without giving him a serious injury please." Mme Pomfrey said, standing up as they all got ready to leave, Ron picking Harry up to get him to bed.
"We'll do our best." Hermione said with a nod.
"Oh, and Professor McGonagall, please let him onto the Quidditch team again, he loves it." Ron said, turning to the teacher in question.