THE DEVIL'S WHITE KNIGHT→h.p

chapter 10

Harry swiped his hand across his brow, having broken out into a cold sweat. Part of him was sure this was a dream. It had to be a dream. How could this be happening. To his left, Ron groaned and punched his pillow, burying his face in it.

"Bloody hell, where's the fire?" Ron mumbled. "It's too early."

Gulping, Harry scrambled from the bed, staring down at his skinny legs in pyjamas he'd never seen before. Were it not for the searing cold of the stone floor beneath his feet, he would have thought this wasn't reality. This was...

What?

He closed his eyes, sucking air in through his nose and letting it out through his mouth. "Okay," he breathed, ignoring a groan from his left which looked—from the blonde, touselled hair—to be Neville Longbottom. "Okay," he said again. He just had to think. His brain was fuzzy, like he'd been sucked through a straw and spat back out again, but he'd been doing...what? Something?

Malfoy.

He'd been waiting for Malfoy.

He'd been...

The fob watch!

Harry scrambled back onto the bed, tearing at the sheets and duvet until his hand clasped round the cool metal. He flopped down, turning it to the back and prodding it with his fingers, but the little depression in the casing had gone. However he'd opened it before, it wasn't working like that now.

Clutching it tight in his hand, he squeezed and opened the front. The face was the same. Everything about it was the same, except it no longer held the secret compartment with the other bits.

Swallowing, he glanced round and tried to work out what was happening. He was in Gryffindor Tower. Neville was there, and Ron. Dean and Seamus as well. So was he back home? Had the watch somehow thrown him back into his time?

"What the fuck," he muttered to himself.

At that, Ron lifted his head. "Mate, I swear to Merlin's saggy left one I will hex you stupid if you don't shut up. We don't have classes today, and I want to lie in!"

Harry blinked, babbling the first thing that came to his mouth. "Why don't we have classes?"

"God, did you get into the firewhiskey again?" Ron complained over a groan from Dean's bed. "The second task. We all get to skive off and watch the tasks."

Harry licked his lips, realising the date he'd set. Fuck. Fourth year. The Twi-Wizard tournament. The twenty-fourth had been the day he'd gone into the lake to rescue Ron. Which meant he wasn't in his own timeline because Ron was in his bed, and Harry wasn't being pounced on by Dobby. It meant he wasn't even a champion.

Scrambling from his bed again, he fumbled round for robes, finding a rumpled set along with his trainers near his bed. His trainers fit perfectly, meaning there was a damned good chance he was in Other Harry's timeline. The watch had just what...? Sent him back?

But it wasn't a time turner. Time turners sent people back as they were so this had to be...?

Bloody fuck, he had no idea.

But he had recalled one, very important thing about this timeline—Remus and Regulus were both professors. They wouldn't know about him, wouldn't know about the timeline alteration, but they might believe him. If he had the watch, if he had some sort of proof...

Swallowing and saying a prayer to every deity he could think of, he rushed out into the common room, bypassing a few people near the fire, and out the portrait hole. He got halfway down the fifth floor corridor when he realised he had absolutely no idea where Remus or Regulus was actually staying. Regulus was Slytherin Head of House—or so he hoped and assumed he was by now, and he knew where the dungeons were, but he had no clue where the professors actually slept.