Scorpius hesitated. “That’s not ‘tweaking.’ That’s tearing out a page and rewriting the whole book.”
“We don’t have to do this,” Scorpius said, his pale hair plastered to his forehead. “My father said these things leave scars on time itself. Like cutting a living creature.”
Cedric frowned. “Who are you?”
He understood that Harry Potter hadn’t been trying to erase Albus’s flaws. He had been trying to protect him from a world that punishes difference. That love isn’t about fixing the past. It’s about sitting with someone in the broken present.
Scorpius grabbed Albus’s sleeve. “The Shard. We have to go back—stop ourselves from ever speaking to Cedric.”
And three thousand miles away, in a quiet bedroom at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, the present-day Harry Potter woke from a dream of drowning. He walked to Albus’s empty room, sat on the unmade bed, and for the first time in years, he didn’t think about Voldemort or Cedric or the Ministry.
Albus smiled—a real, aching smile. “Then let’s not go. Let’s stay and fight.”
