Changed times

Headmaster
Snape eyed the young boy in front of him. He had definitely changed over the
summer. He had grown a few inches taller, but was still short for his age. He
was muscled and slim, not skinny anymore and he had grown his hair out.
Apparently his hair was not just jet-black as everyone always thought it was,
no it was a really dark red, with natural lighter red streaks in it. He still
wore glasses, but the ugly round ones from the year before had been replaced
with a modern frame. He also had his bottom lip pierced twice, in a way that
muggles called a snake-bite, on the left side. And Snape could see the
outlining of a tattoo disappear on the short sleeves of the tight black
band-shirt of some strange muggle band. The boy also had his tongue and both
his ears pierced. Besides the band-shirt, he wore tight black denim pants and a
pair of red sneakers. The boy had grown into a young man, and even Snape could
admit to himself that he had changed for the better.

“Mr.
Potter.” Snape said and Harry nodded to him to just get this over with. “Well,
I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you, but currently we are at the losing
side of the war. The Order has had to many casualties over the last 2 years and
the Deatheaters are multiplying as we speak.”

Harry
nodded, and his eyes got a hard glint in them, as he remembered the many deaths
off his friends and those he called his family.

“I have
discussed many ways to develop a new strategy in which we would win. We thought
about it, and we have only found one solution.”

Harry
frowned. He knew this was the sole reason Snape had called him up to the
Headmasters office.

“I’m going
to be blunt, because there is no simple way to tell you this.” Snape paused to
gather his courage.

“You’re
going to have to travel back to the first war, so that you can destroy
Voldemort there.” Harry’s mouth fell open.

“I… I have
to what?” Snape didn’t bother to answer.

“You’re
going to travel back in time to my seventh, and your parents seventh, year.
You’re going to school there, and you will try to do everything you can to save
your parents, and as many other people as you can.”

Harry sat
there dumbfounded.

“Why me?”
he asked eventually while Snape waited for him to process the thought.

“Because
you’re the only one that can stop Voldemort.” Snape stood up from his desk and
glanced at Dumbledore’s portrait as if to gather some strength from the
deceased Headmaster. “And because we… because I believe that you deserve it. To
meet your parents, to be able to fight without the whole world wanting you to,
to have a choice.”

Snape
turned around to face Harry again.

“You are
the only chance we’ve got. I admit that. But you are also the only one that I
would give this opportunity to.” Snape looked serious and Harry understood what
Snape was trying to say. In Snape’s eyes, he was the only who deserved the
opportunity. At first he was loathe to go, because it would only mean one
thing, that the world expected to save them again, but the words Snape said,
meant so much to him, that he would gladly go. Just to take the opportunity to
meet his parents.

“Harry,
there’s one thing I haven’t told you yet.” Snape looked sad for a moment before
he drew his mask again.

Harry
gulped, he could tell it wasn’t anything good.

“You won’t
be able to come back. Once you’re there, you’ll live in that time. With the
changes you will bring, it’s impossible to tell what’s going to change here. You
can’t come back. And it’s even possible that you won’t be born in that time,
with the changes you’re going to make.” Snape looked him in the eyes.

“Do you
understand Harry?” Harry nodded, he did. But he wanted to go anyway. He didn’t
have anything left in this time to live for.

“I’ll do
it.”

Snape
nodded and started the arrangements, formed a strategy with the young man and
set a date for the travel.

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So a Slytherin
Harry or a Gryffindor one?