Out of Place
Prologue: Sands of Time
Twenty-five year old Harry Potter ran a hand through his hair as he peered closely at the grains of pure white that sat on a scale. He very carefully measured another quarter gram onto the brass plate and then stood back a slight bit and performed a small power measure spell to determine the potency of the amount of grains. He raised his eyebrows at the result and jotted down a note.
It was a tedious process, finding out the correct balance of power for it to be usable but stable. A certain amount of instability was necessary, that was the entire point, but it had to be at a level that was contained. Harry had found that very odd amounts of the fine substance produced rather...unpredictable results.
A knock on the door interrupted him and he sighed, "Come in," he called turning towards the entrance. The door opened to reveal a smiling woman with hair so big it looked like she should fall over any second because it had to be so heavy. Harry let out a guffaw at the sight saying, "What does your department have you doing right now, casing out a muggle disco?"
Tonks just grinned and entered.
"I was wondering if you were going to take off for lunch today. Bill and I were going to eat in the Alley. He mentioned inviting Fred and so I wanted to know if you'd join us too."
"I'd love to, it sounds like fun. What time and where?"
"One-thirty, meet at the Leaky Cauldron."
Harry smiled, "I'll be there, thanks for inviting me." He turned back to what he was doing and measured out the next little bit of the sand onto the scale.
"Doesn't that get boring?" queried Tonks, hanging back a moment longer to see what he was doing.
"Not really, this stuff can sometimes be very volatile—keeps me on my toes."
Tonks walked forward to get a better look at the substance in the highly magical insulated container which he was drawing it out of, "What exactly is this?"
Harry held up a finger and motioned her to step back a bit as he did so as well. He once again measured the power but this time the substance reacted. With a loud boom it obliterated the brass scale and settled on the table.
Tonks' eyebrows rose as Harry calmly jotted down the result. "Does that usually happen?"
Harry shrugged, "Often enough, when the levels are not balanced." Harry leaned over his parchment and started jotting down a few notes. He then drew his wand and duplicated the scroll and then flicked his wand to send the items to their appropriate places. As he turned back however he noticed Tonks was about to touch the now powder that was spread across the table. Just as her finger touched it he lunged, "No!" he yelled, forcing her away from the table. As she fell to the floor a crack resounded through the room and the table split in half and disintegrated. The powder, now very fine indeed, slowly fell onto Harry.
Harry moved slowly away from Tonks and tried not to disrupt the particles on himself. He knew they would be inert for precious few seconds before they become even more energized than before. That had been the difficulty he had been dealing with. In certain amounts the substance would continually breakdown into increasingly more powerful doses that had to be handled with the very greatest of care. Harry was not sure what he should do. The particles would be at full power by now. Should he try an apparate out of his robes? No, that interaction of magic might set off an even more powerful reaction. He very cautiously started to place his wand on the floor (it was still in his hand from before) however the movement forced his wand to spark connecting with the fine grains.
Tonks looked on in horror as Harry Potter disappeared without a sound.