A redheaded girl with steely eyes that seem to see right through him marches in, shrieks "Good RIDDANCE!" as she flings a book at the toilet beside him, then turns around and runs back out of the bathroom.

...weird?

Weird.

He takes out his wand and Levitates and dries off the book. What... is it?

It's a diary. The pages are blank, but the back is stamped Tom Marvolo Riddle and there's a note on the inside cover that it was purchased in Vauxhall Road in 1942.

Well.

That's...

Deeply confusing?

Why would Tom have a diary. Why would he proceed to stamp it with his name and not write anything in it. How was it purchased two years from now. That sort of thing.

Lacking a better idea of what to do with it, Edmund slips Tom's diary(???) into his pocket and steps out of the stall. Is there anyone in the loo who seems less confused than Edmund and less confusing than the girl who is throwing impossible books into the toilet.

There's the ghost of a teenage girl! She stares at him through giant ethereal glasses and says accusingly, "What are you doing here? This is a girl's toilet. Did you come to yell more mean things at me?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't-"

Wait. The glasses, the unfortunate nose, the skin - she's taller, a bit heavier-set, but -

"Myrtle? Myrtle Warren? What happened to you, why're you - you can't be dead, I saw you at lunch!"

"Has someone replaced me? Not good enough to have the real Myrtle, she's too ugly and dead! You need someone else pretending to be me!"

"That - that doesn't make sense," Edmund says, mostly to himself. (Myrtle has never been very useful when she's in a mood, or so his sister told him - he's never had the dubious pleasure of her company.) "Polyjuice doesn't work with dead material. Even if we grant that someone was trying to infiltrate Hogwarts, you don't make sense. What are you really? I know what my Boggart looks like, and it isn't you."

"I'm a ghost, you idiot!" She sticks her arm through her own head in illustration.

"...this is not going to be productive," Edmund realizes. "I apologize for the intrusion, and I'll be going now."

"Goodbye." She dives back into the toilet, creating much less of a splash than a fully solid entity would but more than you'd expect from looking at her.

Well then.

He'll... head for the door... not that he really expects that it'll let him out where he came in. This is clearly some really high-grade Hogwarts bullshit.

It lets out to a second-floor hallway that is at least one that usually has bathrooms on it. Three Gryffindors not much older than he is give him the side-eye as he exits.

"Hi. Um. I'm going to be perfectly honest, I have no idea how I got in there."

"That's odd. Hogwarts is usually pretty good at keeping the bathrooms stable."

There's a muffled sobbing noise from the loo.

"What's bothering Myrtle?"

Oh, Merlin. "Um. She - either something very weird is going on or that's her ghost, but to be perfectly honest I think something very weird is going on. I mean, it's - I don't see how she could've died since lunch without anyone noticing! I was actually going to head to Ravenclaw and see if she's there?"

"Are you taking the mickey? She's been dead for ages!"

"I saw her at lunch."

"No, I really don't think you did. What's your name, anyway, I don't think I've seen you before."

"Edmund Pevensie, and - I don't think I've seen you around either... which... is strange... you're Gryffindors, right, I'm Peter's brother."

"I don't think I know a Peter either--wait a minute, do you mean to say you don't recognize any of us?" her eyes flicker to the boy with messy dark hair standing beside her, who looks back at her and then at the floor.

"Oh, no, have I completely forgotten someone - I'm sorry if I'm, um, supposed to know you - what're your names?"

"Hermione Granger."

"Ron Weasley," says Ron Weasley, suspiciously.

Messy hair kid looks like he's found a bush that grows chocolates and is debating the wisdom of eating one. ". . . Harry Potter."

"Well, nice to meet you all - Weasley, Potter, good old names. Granger I haven't heard, but I must say I like it. Weasley, though - how close are you to Septimus?"

"My granddad? He's fine, I saw him last summer, why do you want to know?"

"Oh."

Edmund looks somewhat poleaxed.

"He's my brother's friend. Um. This seems to put forth a hypothesis."

"Oh, of course--but I've never heard of anyone going that far all at once--we should tell professor Dumbledore or professor McGonagall."

"You think he's traveled in time? Like on Doctor Who?"

"Blimey!"

"Um. Yes, let's talk with Dumbledore, I like to think he'd remember my siblings but he'd certainly remember working with my uncle for several decades. May I ask what year it is, this morning it was 1940."

"1993. Wow, there's a lot of history you need to hear about."

"But we should bring him to Dumbledore first. I know where his office his." 

"Lead the way. Is he still teaching Transfig?"

"No, he's the headmaster now. Professor McGonagall teaches transfiguration."

"Wow. Headmaster Dumbledore. And - you don't mean Minnie McGonagall? Some other, less frightening namesake, maybe?"

Harry and Ron both make a sort of shocked sporfling noise at "Minnie."

"No, I think you're thinking of the right one."

"Did she already know how to turn into a cat fifty years ago?"

"Wow. No, but she was very quick with a Bat-Bogey Hex if she thought someone deserved it. Her sense of justice was very keen. Girl lost a lot of House points for vigilantism."

"McGonagall, losing house points? Things have changed."

"It sounds like she had good reasons." She sticks her hand into what looks like a broken bit of stonework and pulls; the section of wall folds out into a doorway. "Do you have any idea how you could have come forward in time? What were you doing when it happened?"

"Um, I went through a doorway that hadn't been there before... which admittedly sounds like a great way to get dumped in the lake but Hogwarts has always been pretty nice to me, so I thought it was worth a try."

"At least it wasn't a three-headed dog?"

"Honestly I think it might be worse. Unless it turns out Dumbledore can send you back."

"A three-headed dog! Really?!"

Not engaging with that statement, Granger, nice try.

Ron launches into a description, complete with dramatic hand gestures. "And we had to sneak past it to save the Philosopher's Stone from--"

"Oh look here's the gargoyle, hey Ron help me guess the password. It's probably some kind of sweet."

"Turkish Delight?" Edmund tries.

The gargoyle springs to life and jumps out of the way, revealing a low door onto a spiral staircase that turns and rises so that each step follows the one in front of it up the spiral.

"Good guess." Harry steps onto the stairs, concealing his nervousness mostly by facing away from everyone else.

...what. Is Dumbledore actually... was that a message? It has to be a coincidence, right? He's not a bloody Seer.

If Dumbledore were a Seer, no one would know about it except Dumbledore.

Edmund shakes his head vigorously and joins Harry. "You don't happen to know if Dumbledore is fond of, um, sending people very obscure messages through his door password, do you? Or other similarly bizarre methods?"

"He does do some very strange things, but I think all great wizards do."

"Some of the things are definitely bizarre messages." The stair Harry is on gets to a door, and the spiral obligingly comes to a stop. He raises a hand to knock but is interrupted by a "Come in". 

Edmund nods; in retrospect he's not sure what he expected. He'll follow these three in, they seem to know what they're doing.

Inside the office is Dumbledore, now with grey hair and about 300% more Archetypal Wise Old Wizard.

"Hello mister Potter, mister Weasely, miss Granger, and I suppose you are the conundrum you are all here to ask me about? Nobody ever seems to ask me easy questions, lately, and I for one think it would be a nice change of pace. Would you like a sherbet lemon?" 

Edmund boggles slightly. But half a century would make an old man out of anyone, he supposes. "I'd love one. Um. Hi, this morning it was 1940 and I appear to be very lost. Name's Edmund Pevensie, son of Henry and Ianthe, nephew of Digory Kirke? I'm hoping for an 'ah, yes, the boy who vanished without a trace, I recall immediately' but I'd take a 'no, Edmund Pevensie was minister for magic from 1950 to 1968'."

"I'm afraid I don't recognize any of those names. This is indeed very curious; I must consult the Hogwarts records." Dumbledore peers at him like he's trying to read something written in fine print on Edmund's eyeballs and does a surface-level legilimency probe to see if this is in fact an eleven-year-old human child who believes himself to be Edmund Pevensie of 1940.

- snow. Snow is what he sees, and feels, and what fills his mind, freezing him, whirling in his mind's eye, an endless blizzard in which a man could lose himself -

Edmund blinks forcefully, severing the nascent connection, and puts a hand to his forehead only slightly theatrically. "Ow! Sorry - headache - I think I'm allergic to you, Professor, that's the second time that's happened."

"I do apologize," he says lightly. "You are a very curious case. Hmm. Can you list the names of some other people you remember from your original time, ones I would be likely to have known or who were prominent enough that records of them would be available?"

"Sure! Um, I'm told Minnie Mcgonagall's teaching Transfig now, almost would've pegged her for Defense but I'm told she's an animagus so who knows... um, Slughorn was head of house naturally, old Merrythought was on Defense, I could've got that from the records though... Septimus Weasley, I'm told he's a patriarch now and I quite believe it, randy b- begging your pardon sir... it's hard to think of people who would predictably do something interesting unless you mean like -"

- like. Well. Tom Riddle. Who... Merlin only fucking knows. Would he say Tom Riddle, and I bet he's discovered fifty spells for the Department of Mysteries or Tom Riddle, and I can only imagine he's gotten himself killed or tossed in Azkaban, and good riddance?

"Um, my siblings. Who. I'd rather not think too hard about." There, that's not a lie. 

"All names I remember. So it seems that only you and your direct relatives have mysteriously vanished from history. Perhaps the school records will shed some light. Please wait here for a moment."

He disappears into another room for a minute and comes back, still looking faintly bemused as though Edmund is an interesting brain-teaser. "The records agree with me that neither you nor your relatives ever attended this school before now. However, they have added you as a current first-year student as of less than an hour ago. And I find it is generally wise to do what the castle wants. If I thought it was possible to return you to your own place and time, I would do so, but this appears to be somewhat more complicated than mere time travel."

"...alright. Um, I was a Slytherin, my time, is that alright or are you going to want to pull out the Hat?"

"I can hardly imagine the Sorting Hat deciding to disagree with himself, but if you would find it helpful I could attempt to rouse him."

"Um. It might be... interesting?"

He very much doubts he's become any less Slytherin since his Sorting, but. It might be nice to have someone in Dumbledore's office who can vouch for him not being secretly Morgana le Fay returned to life under Polyjuice or something.

"Well then. Curiosity is a hard temptation to resist, and in this case I see no reason to." He opens the glass-fronted cabinet in which the Sorting Hat is quietly snoring, and says, "Pardon me."

The hat straightens up and opens his mouth. "That time already, eh Albus?"

"No, we have been blessed with a new student in the middle of the year."

"I'm not going to sing. I haven't got the scansion worked out; it'd be horrendous."

"And you need not."

"Alright, then, you know which end the head goes in."

"Indeed I do." Dumbledore picks up the Hat by the point and drops him on Edmund's head.

Edmund immediately hears a voice muttering in his ear. "Hmmm, you have come a long way, haven't you? I've forgotten a lot of things but I never forget a brain, and yet you remember me and I don't remember you. Sounds like a lot of fuss and bother. At least you're an easy sort, under all that. No quibbles with the other me's judgement, no indeed."

...no comment on my being properly twenty-five, then? Not your jurisdiction?

"It's very odd and no mistake, but no, not my jurisdiction. If you want to skip a year or six you'll have to talk to whoever runs the classes; I just sort people."

Rather not, actually, I'm going to need a lot of leverage and there's no better place to get it. Cheers. And, um, if you wouldn't... mention... that I'm properly twenty-five, if Dumbledore asks? Or about Narnia. Do you have some kind of confidentiality oath you can lean on?

"I never talk about what's in students' heads, except in general terms. For example, STILL SLYTHERIN!"

"And that, it would appear, is that," says Dumbledore, retrieving the hat and returning him to his perch. "Your dormitory is where you left it and your bed is at least close, but I expect you will need a trip to Diagon Alley today or tomorrow to purchase replacement supplies and updated spellbooks. Your head of house is professor Snape, the potions master; he should be able to escort you there and back."

"Thanks, sir. Should you call him, or should I just make my way over?"

"His office should be right where you left it, provided you left it on a Thursday." He takes a metal sphere with a bunch of little rods sticking out of it off a shelf and busies himself in pushing some of them in, which causes others to pop out in no obvious pattern.

"Um. Goodbye?" says Harry. Receiving no reply, he heads out, followed by the other Gryffindors.

Edmund follows.

"Well, that was informative. And also not very informative at all actually."

"Yeah, that's Dumbledore for you."

"So, was Slytherin also a bunch of pureblood gits in the 40s or is that new?"

"Ronald!"

"...no, it wasn't. I guess it is now? That's disturbing."

"Yeah. Also, you should know--someone claiming to be the Heir of Slytherin is attacking muggleborns. Petrifying them. You're probably safe, but--be on the lookout."

"The Heir. Of Slytherin. That's... bloody deranged, is what that is. The heir of Slytherin should be focusing on building up his connections and becoming Minister, not cursing people for stupid fucking reasons!"

"Well, if you find him you should tell him that! Or her I guess, nobody knows who it is."

"Harry, I'm sorry, but someone really is going to have to explain the last fifty years to him at some point. Better that he hear it from us than someone else, right?"

Harry scuffs a shoe against the floor. "Yeah. Yeah, alright."

"...I get the feeling you're more involved in that history than you'd like to be," Edmund says.

Gosh what interesting walls this hallway has. 

(In his defense, one of the walls does happen to have a portrait of several cats, all of which are currently asleep in a pile.)

"Well, the first thing to know is that the Allies defeat the Axis, and Dumbledore defeats Grindelwald, in 1945. So that came out mostly alright. Except the American muggles invented atomic bombs and dropped two on Japan and since then there's been a lot of worry that muggles will destroy the Earth."

"...that does sound pretty scary. Bombs worse than the ones they were already using?"

"They can destroy a whole city with one bomb."

"...You can't Protego that, I bet. Alright. So, anti-Muggle sentiment naturally rises... which is frankly a bit surreal, muggle-baiting was one thing but for sentiment to rise you almost have to think of them as people."

"Muggles are people."

"I guess some things never change."

"S'not what I meant. I was going to be Minister and put laws on the books about Muggle-baiting - I wanted to get rid of the Statute, even, so we could help them with their plagues and all. But the people who didn't want that, the people who wanted to keep Muggle-baiting, they thought of Muggles as... like portraits. Just something that can talk."

"Oh, I see! I'm afraid getting rid of the Statute would be even harder now, because Grindelwald wanted to get rid of it and some people think it was stopping You-Know-Who from being even worse. You-Know-Who was--is--a dark wizard who started trying to take over in the 1970s. He wanted purebloods to be in charge of everything and for muggleborns to be pushed out of society."

"Some things really do never change. - was that his actual nom de guerre?"

"No. He attacked anyone who said his actual name, so everyone is still scared to say it."

"It's Voldemort. So you know."

"...huh. Alright. Seems a bit odd to take a perfectly respectable pseudonym and then terrorize people into making up a different, sillier pseudonym, but what do I know. Um - and is he or isn't he still around?"

"It's complicated. Eleven years ago, he tried to kill Harry, and instead something happened and he disappeared. Everyone thought he was dead. But then last year his spirit was possessing the Defense professor. Harry, er, made him stop, and the new Defense professor is alright--"

"He's a git."

"is definitely not You-Know-Who. Anyway, Professor Dumbledore said his spirit is probably still out there somewhere."

"Euch. That sounds awful."

Edmund fidgets a bit, the diary bubbling to the forefront of his mind. "I might beg off for now and head to this Professor Snape's office, if you all don't mind? I've probably got some settling in to do."

"Better you than me," mutters Ron.

"Good luck with--everything."

And they can go their separate ways.

And Edmund, only slightly nervous, can meet his new Head of House. He knocks on the office door.

It's opened by a hook-nosed, greasy-haired man with an annoyed expression that turns into a confused one as he says, "What do you wa--who are you?"

"I'm Edmund Pevensie. I'm... new? And in Slytherin. Headmaster Dumbledore didn't tell you I was coming?"

"He did not. And you've already been sorted? Do you need a class schedule?"

"Yessir. He Sorted me in his office. I do need a schedule." Unless it's the same as it was in 1940. "And I'll presumably need the dormitory password."