How Fate Intended by hoboheartache on ao3

Harry had noticed a shift between Daphne and Blaise, of a closeness that came seemingly out of nowhere. He watched with mild amusement during classes and meals as they plotted away at something, their heads bent together conspiratorially over notes or food as if they were speaking of normal things and not some plot or another. Going against his better judgement, he left them to it, instead focusing inwards onto himself as midterms approached at a speedy pace. Weeks seemed to bleed together, and as he went about the daily passing's of life, Harry managed to get quite the curious picture of what was going on behind the scenes.

Granger had woken up the day after he drugged her with the potion, and had almost immediately had complications with her injuries. Along with a rather nasty phantom leg, she went nearly catatonic with shock at the reveal of not only her missing limb, but the rest of her injuries, which ranged from the nearly healed scar that had once been the spot in her abdomen where she was impaled, to deep gashes and long-healed broken bones. What made her the most agitated however, was the knowledge that she had been in a month-long coma, and had very little time to prepare for the ensuing exams.

Of course, her agitation grew to monstrous amounts when it was finally realized by both her and the teachers that her time turner was most certainly missing. It had been assumed that, with the rest of her luggage, it had been moved safely from her dorm with the rest of the house's things when all of Gryffindor tower was being evacuated of personal items, and the realization that it had likely been destroyed in the catastrophe was one met with a considerable amount of stress. Time turners weren't handed out all willy nilly by the ministry after all, and considering how much time and effort went into creating them, the Department of Mysteries would be far more than a little cross with the idea of having to replace it.

It seemed to Harry that Dumbledore had first tried several avenues of brushing the 'destroyed' time turner's lack of existence under the rug, but all seemed to fail quite quickly. It likely didn't help matters that Granger was being forced to either drop a few classes in order to gain a manageable schedule that wouldn't make a time turner necessary, or request a second one herself. Naturally, the irrationality-curse ladened girl was quite firm on the latter option, and had seemed to have caused the teachers endless nights of arguments and drunken rages over the idea. Considering that several cloaked ministry officials had been seen going in and out of the hospital wing, Harry could only assume that the government had eventually found out about their lost artifact, and were in the process of questioning Granger about it. Harry deeply hoped that she would get expelled for the whole mess, but severely doubted it, she was too far up Dumbledore's ass for that concept to even leave the planning phase.

Regardless, Harry himself was using the time turner itself to its full potential, spinning about the place for various exploits and generally feeling very smug while doing so. With his memories of Halloween fully restored, he had taken several days to rewrite his plans for the third bloody time, going over what had happened and the realizations that he had had with thinly veiled disgust in himself. It was getting exhausting, trying to figure out how to do things while also knowing that there were gods out there that knew exactly what he would eventually do, who were only a word away but unlikely to say a peep.

He had decided though, that Dumbledore would have to go much sooner than anticipated. Harry would have preferred going up against the bastard when he was much, much older-an adult, preferably-but he was slowly realizing that he wouldn't survive to see his twenties if he went with that cautious of an approach.

"Blast it all..."

"Wot?"

He glanced in Draco's direction. "Nothing, sorry."

The other boy shrugged, going back to his charms homework.

He and Draco had seemed to patch things up well enough after the 'shrieking shack incident' as it was being called, and while the shorter boy had been snippy with... well, everyone, he wasn't burning down buildings, so Harry considered it a step in the right direction. Regardless of that though, the soul bond was becoming more and more of a problem for them, and Harry severely doubted now that Draco even knew about it. The constant itch at his magic was incredibly annoying, and he was sure that Draco was receiving the brunt of the discomfort-considering it was his side of the bond that wasn't connected. However, Harry had no idea just how to go about telling Draco about it, as he was not one for emotions in the first place and believed that he would just make a bigger mess of things. Hilariously, he had actually gone to Theo for advice on it, and the bastard had laughed at him.