It starts as a question in a party game but it sticks with Harry.
If you could go back in time and tell your younger self one thing, what would you say?
It’s a silly hypothetical because everyone knows that time travel doesn’t work like that, no one has ever successfully gone back that far in time (not without accidentally killing themselves - which says so much about the magical world) and there are rules about speaking with different versions of yourself.
But the question gets asked and Harry gives a silly answer at the time but later, when he’s lying in bed next to Ginny, he gives it some thought.
Would he go back to when he was still living at the Dursleys and give his younger self hope? Would he tell the version of him that hadn’t learned about the wizarding world that it would get better? Objectively that’s true but there was a lot more bad (and worse) to wade through before it got better.
Would he go back to his Hogwarts days and give a warning about Voldemort? What about Sirius? Could he do something, say something, that would save Sirius? Because that was the point, right? Go back in time and give your younger self an edge that could prevent something bad from happening.
But Harry had a lot of bad in his past, too much almost.
And now he couldn’t sleep for thinking up stupid what-if’s but he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it.
Was still thinking about it when he went in to work the next day and so instead of saying hello like a normal person, the very first thing he said to Malfoy when they crossed paths in the lift was, “If you could travel back in time to when you were a kid and you could only tell yourself one thing, what would it be?”
They were alone on the lift and as weird a question as it was - he and Malfoy didn’t really talk much but they’d known each other for almost twenty years by this point, so, much like everyone else in Harry’s life, Malfoy just sort of rolls with the weirdness - Malfoy does give it some thought.
They arrive on Malfoy’s floor before he’s given an answer but just as the doors slide open he turns, expression serious and says, “I’d tell myself that falling in love with Harry Potter really is a bloody stupid idea but he should do it anyway.”
By the time Harry’s managed to form a vaguely coherent thought after that, the lift doors have closed and Malfoy is gone.
Harry doesn’t think about stupid what-if’s for the rest of the day.
He does think about Draco Malfoy.
