Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all associated names, concepts, etc are the property of JK Rowling. My name is not JK Rowling. That means Harry Potter, et. al are not mine.
Author's Note: I'm only too happy to talk about "author's note-y" type stuff, but I won't put them in the chapters. When view a chapter, by golly, you want to see a story! But feel free to drop me a line at milroy42 [at] yahoo.com and ask. Also, I was by no means sure of what to rate and how to categorize this story. I probably over-rated it, so if you're looking for more juicy stuff or more violence...sorry. And if you don't think it's angsty at all, sorry again. Hopefully you like it anyway.
Barely Extended Summary: Harry, hopelessly obsessed with the archway from the Department of Mysteries, messes (as usual) with things he can't handle—and Ron appears to pay the price. He finds himself ten years in the future, but it's a future when everyone thinks he died. He's not thrilled by what he sees there, so he tries to find a way back—only everyone tells him he can never go back.
Chapter 1
-OR-
"Today"
"What do you reckon it is?" Ron asked. Silence, for the moment, answered him, as his two friends, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, peered intensely at the...whatever it was in front of them.
"Well..." Hermione started.
"It's a machine of some sort," said Harry.
"Well, I can see that," retorted Ron, "but what do you think it does?"
"It must be important, if Dumbledore wanted to keep it here, at Hogwarts, instead of at the Ministry," said Hermione. She bit her lower lip in concentration.
It was the middle of the trio's sixth year at Hogwarts--a surprisingly low-key year considering the most powerful Dark Wizard of all time was lurking and plotting an all-out war in the wizarding world. Now that the Ministry of Magic had "officially" recognized Voldemort's return, Hogwarts had taken on an air of a military academy. Kingsley Shacklebolt, a member of the Order of the Phoenix and the newest Defense against the Dark Arts teacher, had been taking an approach to class not unlike that of the DA of the year before. The heads of the Houses posted daily news reports in the common rooms, for the benefit of those that did not subscribe to or trust the Daily Prophet. Students occasionally caught glimpses of Members of the Order--still Dumbledore's most trusted allies against Voldemort and his Death Eaters--in the halls and in the offices of the teachers.
Even with the bustle, however, the three friends got bored.
Thus, when they got word of a mysterious contraption hidden in the castle, they immediately began a search for it. After a few days of fruitless searches, the three stumbled across the Room of Requirement. It was in that room Harry, Ron, and Hermione found themselves, with the enormous machine looming in front of them. Unlike the year before, when "Dumbledore's Army" had used the room as a training ground, the Room of Requirement now took the form of a cavernous stone chamber. From a raised platform in the middle of the circular room, the device threw its shadows over the entire room; it was so dusty and cobwebbed that the three friends had the impression that it had been there for ages and was not likely to move again. It did not have the sleek, metallic look that most fancy Muggle machines had; rather, it was a hodgepodge of parts thrown together. Were it not for a few tubes, wires, and rods connecting the various component parts, an observer might have simply taken the machine to be a pile of discarded magical junk. The three friends started to circle around the device.
"Wait a minute!" cried Ron, "look there. It's the Mirror of Erised! I knew some of this stuff looked familiar!"
"And my time turner--from third year!" added Hermione. The small, hourglass-shaped trinket was no longer on a necklace, but rather hooked up to a number of other pieces of the machine with a great many wires. Harry was still pacing around the entire device, hoping to glean some insight into its function. Suddenly, he stopped, eyes widening.
"The arch," he said, his voice barely audible, "it's the arch." Hermione and Ron ran around to see the object of Harry's awe. As he claimed, it was indeed the crumbling arch from the Ministry's Department of Mysteries.
In the months following Sirius's death, Harry had become obsessed with finding ways to resurrect him. Hermione had to drag him away from the restricted section of the library when she found him poring over texts describing necromancy--a Dark Art governing life and death. Ron had confided to Hermione that Harry occasionally woke up screaming, then fell back asleep, muttering Sirius's name. Neither of those experiences, however, showed Harry's mania as much as his obsession with the archway, though. Both Ron and Hermione had listened countless times to Harry's frantic theories on the enigmatic arch: "The light that hit him--it wasn't green! It wasn't the killing curse! Whatever it was just knocked him into the arch and he's on the other side. I'm sure of it! If we could go back and get a better look...I know we could get him out of there! I just know it!" Now that the decrepit arch was here, in front of Harry, he was all but mad with the desire to fling himself through it to find his godfather.
"Harry, NO!" cried Ron, blocking Harry's path to the arch with his entire body.
"Harry, it's not the same!" exclaimed Hermione, "See? There are controls here, and the arch itself is supported by some of the other parts of the machine..."
"Then maybe it's to get Sirius back!" cried Harry, "That's got to be it! We have to try!"
"It could be dangerous..."
"Look," Harry said, with only barely controlled fury in his voice, "We're in the Room of Requirement, aren't we? I need to use this thing. It's here for us to use. It's obvious!"
"But how, Harry, how?" pleaded Ron, "I mean, y'know I'd do anything to help you out and get Sirius back, but maybe Hermione's got a point. Maybe we could wait for someone to help, like Dumbledore or someone..."
"NO!" bellowed Harry. "You haven't had dreams like I have...for two summers, all I've seen is people dying. We can save Sirius NOW, and we are going to do it." Shoving Ron aside, Harry strode up to the controls and studied them.
"Stop him, Ron!" said Hermione. Ron moved to pull Harry away from the control panel, but Harry spun around, brandishing his wand.
"STAND BACK!"
"Hold on, mate!" stammered Ron as he backed away quickly. The now maniacal Harry turned his attention once more to the arch and the control panel next to it. Upon closer examination, he found--exactly one button in the middle of the stone tablet. It was level with the rest of the surface, with a circle of stone cut out around it. As he tried to discern what the button was for, Hermione and Ron looked at each other with worry.
"Ron," she hissed through clenched teeth, "we've got to stop him. Somehow...we've got to get him away from that arch. It could be dangerous..."
"And how, exactly, do you propose to do that?"
"Well..." started Hermione. Before she could finish, Harry's voice croaked out across the chamber.
"Hermione, Ron, please. Help me," he begged. He turned towards his friends. The Harry that a moment ago had threatened his best friend with his wand was gone; instead of a raging, raving lunatic, Harry seemed to be much smaller than he had been before. His shoulders sagged, his voice was cracked and broken, and instead of a manic look in his eyes, all that Ron and Hermoine could see was defeat. He blinked his teary eyes before continuing. "You don't understand. You can't. I hope you never can." He paused again, trying to swallow tears or a sob. "Everyone I've ever cared about--everyone but the two of you--suffered. My parents, Sirius. They died. They died because of me. Now, maybe, I have the chance to get one of those people back. You want me to wait? I can't. Please. Help me."
"I'm sorry, Harry," said Hermione, in a voice even smaller than Harry's. "It would be a bad idea. I just know it..."
"ERRGH!" roared Harry, back to his berserk self. He whipped around back to the controls and pushed the button. Nothing happened. Furious, he repeatedly tried to jam the control panel, but Ron leapt towards Harry and tackled him to the ground. Twisting around on the ground, Harry drew his wand and tried to aim it at Ron.
"Expelliarmus!" shouted Hermione, desperately trying to disarm Harry.
"Stupe--" Harry managed to say before his wand flew from his hands. The wand, though, reacted already to Harry's partial command, and a thin stream of reddish light leaked out of the end of the twirling wand. The light hit not Ron, but the myriad of wires surrounding the archway, which began to spark. The raised platform shook a little bit, and soon the entire room began to tremble slightly.
"We've got to get out of here!" cried Hermione, heading for the door. Ron started to follow, but stopped when he saw that Harry was frozen in place, eyes fixed on the stone archway. Each time the room shook, pieces of the arch came loose. As it collapsed, Harry tried desperately to get through it. Ron dove and tried to knock Harry out of the air, but as the two flew off the platform, the entire machine exploded. There was a deafening bang and a brilliant flash of blue light...
Harry came to in the infirmary. He jerked up quickly then sank back in to his bed even more quickly as his entire body exploded in pain. His eyes frantically searched for some sign of his friends. As he opened his mouth to speak, Madam Pomfrey hurried over towards him and made "shhhhh"noises.
"No, no, Mr. Potter. You've had a nasty shock. Don't try to speak."
"Wh..." he managed to get out before she cut him off.
"Mr. Potter, please. Try to remain quiet." Madam Pomfrey bustled off to attend to the student in the bed next to Harry. He tried to turn his head to see who, exactly, that was, but his neck hurt too much. His efforts were again interrupted, but this time by Professor McGonagall, who did not look at all happy about the current situation.
"Mr. Potter," she began, in a very business-like tone, "you are lucky to be alive." Harry managed to groan in acknowledgement. She continued, "Professor Dumbledore will want to speak to you personally when you are able to leave the infirmary. Until then, do exactly as Madam Pomfrey tells you to do when she tells you to do it. Am I understood?" Harry managed to groan again.
Suddenly, McGonagall's face softened. "I don't know how you survived that blast, Mr. Potter, but I'm amazed you did. You have a remarkable ability to survive..."
"Professor," he managed to croak, "Hermione...Ron....are they okay?" He was not encouraged by the fallen expression on McGonagall's face.
"Your friends..." she started, "Hermione is doing well. She was far enough away from the explosion that she will be fine."
"Ron...?" Harry whispered.
McGonagall looked more distraught than Harry had ever seen her. "Mr. Weasley...is gone. There was no trace of him in the room. I'm sorry, Harry." She turned swiftly, but not swiftly enough to hide a tear from Harry. She marched out of the infirmary. Harry, too stunned to even speak, just sank back into his blankets and hoped harder than he had ever before hoped that he was having a bad dream. Ron...dead? he thought. No, not gone...not Ron, too. Not Ron, too.... This time, though, the finality of the words settled into Harry's soul and crushed him. Each sob shook his body and made him hurt.
Finally, he fell back asleep, and enjoyed the first of a new series of nightmares.
Author's Note: I'm only too happy to talk about "author's note-y" type stuff, but I won't put them in the chapters. When view a chapter, by golly, you want to see a story! But feel free to drop me a line at milroy42 [at] yahoo.com and ask. Also, I was by no means sure of what to rate and how to categorize this story. I probably over-rated it, so if you're looking for more juicy stuff or more violence...sorry. And if you don't think it's angsty at all, sorry again. Hopefully you like it anyway.
Barely Extended Summary: Harry, hopelessly obsessed with the archway from the Department of Mysteries, messes (as usual) with things he can't handle—and Ron appears to pay the price. He finds himself ten years in the future, but it's a future when everyone thinks he died. He's not thrilled by what he sees there, so he tries to find a way back—only everyone tells him he can never go back.
Chapter 1
-OR-
"Today"
"What do you reckon it is?" Ron asked. Silence, for the moment, answered him, as his two friends, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, peered intensely at the...whatever it was in front of them.
"Well..." Hermione started.
"It's a machine of some sort," said Harry.
"Well, I can see that," retorted Ron, "but what do you think it does?"
"It must be important, if Dumbledore wanted to keep it here, at Hogwarts, instead of at the Ministry," said Hermione. She bit her lower lip in concentration.
It was the middle of the trio's sixth year at Hogwarts--a surprisingly low-key year considering the most powerful Dark Wizard of all time was lurking and plotting an all-out war in the wizarding world. Now that the Ministry of Magic had "officially" recognized Voldemort's return, Hogwarts had taken on an air of a military academy. Kingsley Shacklebolt, a member of the Order of the Phoenix and the newest Defense against the Dark Arts teacher, had been taking an approach to class not unlike that of the DA of the year before. The heads of the Houses posted daily news reports in the common rooms, for the benefit of those that did not subscribe to or trust the Daily Prophet. Students occasionally caught glimpses of Members of the Order--still Dumbledore's most trusted allies against Voldemort and his Death Eaters--in the halls and in the offices of the teachers.
Even with the bustle, however, the three friends got bored.
Thus, when they got word of a mysterious contraption hidden in the castle, they immediately began a search for it. After a few days of fruitless searches, the three stumbled across the Room of Requirement. It was in that room Harry, Ron, and Hermione found themselves, with the enormous machine looming in front of them. Unlike the year before, when "Dumbledore's Army" had used the room as a training ground, the Room of Requirement now took the form of a cavernous stone chamber. From a raised platform in the middle of the circular room, the device threw its shadows over the entire room; it was so dusty and cobwebbed that the three friends had the impression that it had been there for ages and was not likely to move again. It did not have the sleek, metallic look that most fancy Muggle machines had; rather, it was a hodgepodge of parts thrown together. Were it not for a few tubes, wires, and rods connecting the various component parts, an observer might have simply taken the machine to be a pile of discarded magical junk. The three friends started to circle around the device.
"Wait a minute!" cried Ron, "look there. It's the Mirror of Erised! I knew some of this stuff looked familiar!"
"And my time turner--from third year!" added Hermione. The small, hourglass-shaped trinket was no longer on a necklace, but rather hooked up to a number of other pieces of the machine with a great many wires. Harry was still pacing around the entire device, hoping to glean some insight into its function. Suddenly, he stopped, eyes widening.
"The arch," he said, his voice barely audible, "it's the arch." Hermione and Ron ran around to see the object of Harry's awe. As he claimed, it was indeed the crumbling arch from the Ministry's Department of Mysteries.
In the months following Sirius's death, Harry had become obsessed with finding ways to resurrect him. Hermione had to drag him away from the restricted section of the library when she found him poring over texts describing necromancy--a Dark Art governing life and death. Ron had confided to Hermione that Harry occasionally woke up screaming, then fell back asleep, muttering Sirius's name. Neither of those experiences, however, showed Harry's mania as much as his obsession with the archway, though. Both Ron and Hermione had listened countless times to Harry's frantic theories on the enigmatic arch: "The light that hit him--it wasn't green! It wasn't the killing curse! Whatever it was just knocked him into the arch and he's on the other side. I'm sure of it! If we could go back and get a better look...I know we could get him out of there! I just know it!" Now that the decrepit arch was here, in front of Harry, he was all but mad with the desire to fling himself through it to find his godfather.
"Harry, NO!" cried Ron, blocking Harry's path to the arch with his entire body.
"Harry, it's not the same!" exclaimed Hermione, "See? There are controls here, and the arch itself is supported by some of the other parts of the machine..."
"Then maybe it's to get Sirius back!" cried Harry, "That's got to be it! We have to try!"
"It could be dangerous..."
"Look," Harry said, with only barely controlled fury in his voice, "We're in the Room of Requirement, aren't we? I need to use this thing. It's here for us to use. It's obvious!"
"But how, Harry, how?" pleaded Ron, "I mean, y'know I'd do anything to help you out and get Sirius back, but maybe Hermione's got a point. Maybe we could wait for someone to help, like Dumbledore or someone..."
"NO!" bellowed Harry. "You haven't had dreams like I have...for two summers, all I've seen is people dying. We can save Sirius NOW, and we are going to do it." Shoving Ron aside, Harry strode up to the controls and studied them.
"Stop him, Ron!" said Hermione. Ron moved to pull Harry away from the control panel, but Harry spun around, brandishing his wand.
"STAND BACK!"
"Hold on, mate!" stammered Ron as he backed away quickly. The now maniacal Harry turned his attention once more to the arch and the control panel next to it. Upon closer examination, he found--exactly one button in the middle of the stone tablet. It was level with the rest of the surface, with a circle of stone cut out around it. As he tried to discern what the button was for, Hermione and Ron looked at each other with worry.
"Ron," she hissed through clenched teeth, "we've got to stop him. Somehow...we've got to get him away from that arch. It could be dangerous..."
"And how, exactly, do you propose to do that?"
"Well..." started Hermione. Before she could finish, Harry's voice croaked out across the chamber.
"Hermione, Ron, please. Help me," he begged. He turned towards his friends. The Harry that a moment ago had threatened his best friend with his wand was gone; instead of a raging, raving lunatic, Harry seemed to be much smaller than he had been before. His shoulders sagged, his voice was cracked and broken, and instead of a manic look in his eyes, all that Ron and Hermoine could see was defeat. He blinked his teary eyes before continuing. "You don't understand. You can't. I hope you never can." He paused again, trying to swallow tears or a sob. "Everyone I've ever cared about--everyone but the two of you--suffered. My parents, Sirius. They died. They died because of me. Now, maybe, I have the chance to get one of those people back. You want me to wait? I can't. Please. Help me."
"I'm sorry, Harry," said Hermione, in a voice even smaller than Harry's. "It would be a bad idea. I just know it..."
"ERRGH!" roared Harry, back to his berserk self. He whipped around back to the controls and pushed the button. Nothing happened. Furious, he repeatedly tried to jam the control panel, but Ron leapt towards Harry and tackled him to the ground. Twisting around on the ground, Harry drew his wand and tried to aim it at Ron.
"Expelliarmus!" shouted Hermione, desperately trying to disarm Harry.
"Stupe--" Harry managed to say before his wand flew from his hands. The wand, though, reacted already to Harry's partial command, and a thin stream of reddish light leaked out of the end of the twirling wand. The light hit not Ron, but the myriad of wires surrounding the archway, which began to spark. The raised platform shook a little bit, and soon the entire room began to tremble slightly.
"We've got to get out of here!" cried Hermione, heading for the door. Ron started to follow, but stopped when he saw that Harry was frozen in place, eyes fixed on the stone archway. Each time the room shook, pieces of the arch came loose. As it collapsed, Harry tried desperately to get through it. Ron dove and tried to knock Harry out of the air, but as the two flew off the platform, the entire machine exploded. There was a deafening bang and a brilliant flash of blue light...
Harry came to in the infirmary. He jerked up quickly then sank back in to his bed even more quickly as his entire body exploded in pain. His eyes frantically searched for some sign of his friends. As he opened his mouth to speak, Madam Pomfrey hurried over towards him and made "shhhhh"noises.
"No, no, Mr. Potter. You've had a nasty shock. Don't try to speak."
"Wh..." he managed to get out before she cut him off.
"Mr. Potter, please. Try to remain quiet." Madam Pomfrey bustled off to attend to the student in the bed next to Harry. He tried to turn his head to see who, exactly, that was, but his neck hurt too much. His efforts were again interrupted, but this time by Professor McGonagall, who did not look at all happy about the current situation.
"Mr. Potter," she began, in a very business-like tone, "you are lucky to be alive." Harry managed to groan in acknowledgement. She continued, "Professor Dumbledore will want to speak to you personally when you are able to leave the infirmary. Until then, do exactly as Madam Pomfrey tells you to do when she tells you to do it. Am I understood?" Harry managed to groan again.
Suddenly, McGonagall's face softened. "I don't know how you survived that blast, Mr. Potter, but I'm amazed you did. You have a remarkable ability to survive..."
"Professor," he managed to croak, "Hermione...Ron....are they okay?" He was not encouraged by the fallen expression on McGonagall's face.
"Your friends..." she started, "Hermione is doing well. She was far enough away from the explosion that she will be fine."
"Ron...?" Harry whispered.
McGonagall looked more distraught than Harry had ever seen her. "Mr. Weasley...is gone. There was no trace of him in the room. I'm sorry, Harry." She turned swiftly, but not swiftly enough to hide a tear from Harry. She marched out of the infirmary. Harry, too stunned to even speak, just sank back into his blankets and hoped harder than he had ever before hoped that he was having a bad dream. Ron...dead? he thought. No, not gone...not Ron, too. Not Ron, too.... This time, though, the finality of the words settled into Harry's soul and crushed him. Each sob shook his body and made him hurt.
Finally, he fell back asleep, and enjoyed the first of a new series of nightmares.