Black Blind Eyes.
Chapter 1: Familiar Places.
Only one pair was still battling, apparently unaware of the new arrival. Harry saw Sirius duck Bellatrix' jet of red light: he was laughing at her.
'Come on, you can do better than that!' he yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous room.
The second jet of light hit him squarely on the chest.
The laughter had not quite died off his face, but his eyes widened in shock.
Harry released Neville, though he was unaware of doing so. He was jumping down the steps again, pulling out his wand, as Dumbledore, too, turned towards the dais. It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall: his body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backwards through the ragged veil hanging from the arch.
Harry saw the look of mingled fear and surprise on his god-father's wasted, once-handsome face as he fell through the ancient doorway and disappeared behind the veil, which fluttered for a moment as though in high wind, then fell back into place.
Harry heard Bellatrix Lestrange's triumphant scream, but knew it meant nothing - Sirius had only just fallen through the archway, he would reappear from the other side any second...
But Sirius did not reappear.
'SIRIUS!' Harry yelled. 'SIRIUS!'
He had reached the floor, his breath coming in searing gasps. Sirius must be just behind the curtain, he, Harry, would pull him back out...
Within mere seconds, although to Harry it could have been hours, he had reached the dais, but a strong hand lunged out to grab his shoulder.
'Harry –', Lupin started, but received a furious glare in return, and found his hand empty as Harry, possessed with a desperate strength, tore himself free of the werewolf's grasp. Clambering onto the raised platform he found himself facing the veil, gently fluttering in an ethereal breeze.
Unthinking, uncomprehending, Harry thrust his hand deep into the archway, and knew instantly it was a huge mistake. Some unseen, otherworldly force seemed to seize hold of his outstretched hand. Even as he dug his feet into the floor and braced his other hand against the archway, he realised the force was too strong to resist.
The soft whispers of the Veil had turned to screams in his ears, drowning out the voices of his friends behind him. Turning his head slowly, a sad smile crossing his face as he looked upon them – Lupin, Neville, even Dumbledore – and then, in an instant, he was gone, the boy-who-lived lifted off his feet and yanked sharply forward, seeing nothing but... blackness.
Harry Potter was no longer of this world.
Harry was speechless. Well, speaking was the last thing on his mind right now. What the hell was wrong with the Veil? He had simply fallen through a piece of cloth hanging in an archway – now he was – well, he hadn't a clue as to where he was or what was happening. Perhaps he shouldn't be so shocked, magic being magic and everything, but come on...
The sensation he was feeling though, it was difficult to describe. Weightlessness akin to what he imagined muggle astronauts must experience, a disconcerting feeling of... disconnection. He could just about feel the pounding of blood on his temples, a sharp prickling at his extremities and a most distressing pressure behind his eyeballs, as if to force them out of their sockets if it weren't for his tightly closed eyelids. The closest thing Harry could compare it to from his own experiences would be a portkey journey, only multiplied tenfold, and with the stomach disturbing effects of being kicked in the crotch. In a word he was uncomfortable.
Harry's other senses seemed to be rendered obsolete. He couldn't hear anything but the roaring wind as it rushed past his face, tearing at his cheeks and tugging at his hair in an excruciating manner. Harry dared to open his eyes for a split second, but quickly scrunched them back up again as the unnaturally powerful wind threatened to tug them from their sockets. However, for the brief moment he could see, he had glimpsed a blinding flash of blue electricity sparking right in front of his face, burning its image into his retinas.
As Harry opened his mouth his scream was snatched from his tongue, along with the rest of his breath before he could react.
The wind had finally broken Harry's glasses and tugged them off his face, or at least he assumed so when he felt something – somethings – sharp impact with his face, gouging into his face, and a searing pain for a few seconds before it was drowned out by the gales grasping at his body. Harry prayed they weren't his glasses, but he didn't hold much hope in his prayer.
Come to think of it, if his glasses had broken what about his wand? Harry swore loudly, although he had no chance of hearing it over the raging din. He couldn't feel in his hand. He knew he had brought it with him into the Veil; he'd had it when Dumbledore arrived, and now he didn't have it. His loyal eleven inch, holly and phoenix feather wand was gone.
Harry screamed in anguish, only this time he heard the sound of his voice.
He screamed again, and again, and again, and again, over and over, releasing the frustration, pain, sorrow, and the healthy dose of fear within him. Then he realised why he could hear his voice. The wind that had terrorised him since before his entry into the Veil had stopped.
With this new revelation, Harry tentatively blinked his eyes open for a fraction of a second. Then opened them permanently. Despite his lack of glasses, Harry could plainly see in front of him a wall of whiteness, pure and unspoilt, and something else.
A blurred figure, ragged hair floating listlessly about their face like a strange black halo.
'SIRIUS!' Harry screamed out and the figure turned towards him, eyes widening in shock.
'Harry!' he called back. 'Stay put, I'm coming to get you!'
But even as the words had left his godfather's mouth Harry felt his body being tugged gently away. Gritting his teeth, he started to swim, much like he had seen astronauts move in films back with the Dursleys. So close, the distance between them was shortening, before his fist clenched around his godfather's hand.
'Harry,' he said, his voice laden with solemnity. 'What happened? How – why?'
'I tried to get you back, but the Veil was too strong, it sucked me in, there was nothing I could do.'
'Oh Harry,' Sirius said, shaking his head softly. 'Always a Gryffindor.'
'Always,' replied Harry, but before he could say anymore he felt a sharp tug at his feet. 'Sirius –' he cried out, seeing his godfather's eyes open wide, alarm clouding his face, before the two of them were torn forcefully apart.
'Harry!' Sirius called out, as the distance between their outstretched hands went from mere inches to feet. 'Don't move,' he screamed out, but there was nothing Harry could do to stop the inexorable drift away from his godfather.
'I can't stop it Sirius! Help me! PLEASE!'
'I'm so sorry Harry,' Sirius seemed to whisper, although Harry could hear it as clearly as if it had been spoken into his ear. 'Whatever happens, to me or to you, wherever we end up, I will look for you, and I will find you.'
Harry hung in the air, struggling futilely against the force separating him from his godfather, before blinking; a fraction of a second, and Sirius was gone.
'Not if I find you first,' was Harry's murmured reply as he stared blankly into the abyss.
Looking around, Harry seemed to be in some sort of circular tube, formed out of the same white substance in front of him. It was only then that Harry felt that he was falling – although plummeting may have been a better term for it – as yet again the wind seemed to rush past him, though lacking the unearthly strength that had brought him through the Veil and separated him from his godfather.
Suddenly he saw something black below him, seemingly coming up to meet him at an incredible speed. Or was he going down to meet it, he briefly pondered...
Harry had just enough time to emit a choice curse before he hit the ground with a sickening crunch. Technically he was also vomiting during these processes – something he would later realise when he regained consciousness.
Harry awoke to find himself lying face down on a black flag-stoned floor, seemingly lying in a pool of vomit. His own vomit he realised as he recalled the previous hour's events. He groaned loudly, before rolling onto his back and out of the former contents of his stomach. When he'd signed up to be boy-who-lived, Harry hadn't expected this. Come to think of it, he couldn't remember signing anything...
Staring upwards Harry could see a familiar, yet eerily different sight. The ornate golden ceiling of the Department of Mysteries, exactly as it had been mere minutes earlier. Or was it hours? Harry shook his head, no there was a difference. A smattering of brown covered areas of the ceiling; spread over such a large area that he didn't need his glasses to see it.
Thinking of his glasses, Harry was rather shocked when the very same wire-rimmed spectacles came hurtling out of nowhere, accompanied by an unnatural surge of wind, to land with a squelch into the pile of gloop Harry had recently vomited. They were missing their lenses, reminding Harry of their breakage within the Veil's vortex. He gently placed a grazed palm to his head, judging the damage they had done.
Although several gouges were raked across his cheeks, none of them seemed to be bleeding much. However, his nose seemed to be leaking copious amounts of blood, and Harry could taste a copper tang as it trickled along the edge of his mouth. He prodded it, before wincing at the sharp pain. He must have broken it upon impact with the floor.
Harry's wand was nowhere to be seen, though he half expected it to drop out of the Veil at any moment. Groaning, he picked himself up off the cold floor and stretched himself out. Looking around, Harry could see that he was in the same room as before, but all his friends, Order of the Phoenix members, and Death Eaters were gone. Not that he had expected them to be here – if they were they would have at least tried to help him – or curse him in the case of the Death Eaters.
Harry glanced at the dais that had supported the original Veil he had fallen through, but it stood empty. The Veil had disappeared. Harry considered the oddness of constructing a dais with nothing to put upon it. Unless he was not meant to go back.
Even Harry knew the dead did not come back to life.
He had half expected to see Sirius, as badly bruised and beaten as he was, lying somewhere about the room, but he was missing. Perhaps he had gone on before Harry had arrived, or maybe he was still stuck in the vortex like his phoenix-feather wand. Harry fervently hoped for the first option.
Harry glanced about the room hoping to spy an exit, and saw it in the closed door to his right. Uncertain about leaving his wand behind, but unwilling to stay in the room any longer than he had to, Harry approached with caution. Perhaps this was all an elaborate trap laid by Voldemort and his followers, though what they had hoped to achieve was beyond him, and it still didn't explain – well it didn't explain anything really. It was much more likely he was dead, and it astonished him how well he was taking it. Reaching the door, he was rather relieved when it opened smoothly, without a creak. Surprising really, considering its weight and obvious age.
The sight outside, though, was a huge shock. Harry knew that he and his friends' latest escapade had been particularly destructive. He just hadn't expected it to be this destructive.
The floor of the corridor was scored with long cracks, almost ravines, running along its length, and the corridor itself was tilted, one side definitely lay a foot, if not more, higher than the other. It looked like large chunks had been blasted out of the walls as well, but what most worried – and intrigued – Harry the most were the reddish-brown splashes along the walls. It was unmistakably blood, and for the first time since his exit from the Veil Harry was truly scared.
What the hell had happened here?
Harry was beginning to get the uncomfortable feeling that he had died and gone to Hell. Or purgatory at the very least. For sure he couldn't imagine any sort of heaven like this, unless... he wasn't dead. Maybe the Veil had sent him through time, rather than into the afterlife. Harry had to concede it was unlikely, but it was still a much more preferable option to being in Hell.
Harry continued onwards, more wary now, although there seemed to be no visible signs of life. The corridors of the once proud Ministry of Magic were eerily quiet, and all he could smell was the faint stench of death...
And even that seemed to be diminishing with decay, much like the rest of the building. Pushing through the last door he entered the foyer of the Atrium. The last time he had been here it was bustling with busy civil servants, going about their business without giving Harry or his friends a second glance. It was enough to make him wonder just how often desperate gangs of wand-wielding teenagers stormed the ministry.
As a strange, although not entirely unsurprising feeling of vulnerability began to take hold of him, Harry wished he still had his wand. Sure, last year when he had faced off against Lord Voldemort, or the previous year with the devastating werewolf/dementor combination, he had been in more obvious danger, he had always had his trusty wand with him. Now he felt naked without it. Steeling his mind and subconsciously balling up his fists, the Boy-who-lived continued onwards.
The Atrium was as deserted as the rest of this lifeless ministry. The once proud golden statue of the wizarding world's diverse inhabitants was horrifically mangled. Not destroyed, but changed. The witch and wizard who had once been the focal point were now bent over, kneeling before the goblin which in turn looked down upon them with an imperious scowl, brandishing a wand and a whip. Said goblin was also mounted upon the centaur, whose stance didn't seem to have changed since Harry had last seen the fountain.
Harry wondered what had become of the house elf, until he saw its decapitated head lying in a corner of the room. Evidently it hadn't been needed.
Harry couldn't understand why the fountain would be like this. He couldn't imagine any wizard bowing down to a goblin, much less the centaur allowing the pitiful creature to ride it like a pack animal. Either this was a bizarre, yet well-perpetrated prank, or goblins had taken over the ministry and redecorated. Harry reckoned goblins must make crap interior designers.
And why had the house elf been so brutally mangled? Harry knew people treated them like slaves, but nobody could really hate a house elf (exceptions for Kreacher of course), as they were willing and obedient servants. It seemed to Harry that things were making less and less sense the more he saw in this place. Was he dead, in the future, or was this all an elaborate death eater plot? Harry couldn't know but it was certainly creeping him out.
He just wanted to leave as quickly as possible.
Spinning around in a full circle, Harry spotted a battered looking telephone box. He strode, almost running, straight towards it, eager to leave the eerie, echoing building, and its blood-stained walls. Harry prayed the lift would be in a working condition. Although it was, to the best of his knowledge, the only direct exit to the rest of Diagon Alley, its working mechanism could easily have decayed or even been destroyed.
Harry prodded the numbers six-two-four-four-two into the receiver, and was relieved when the lift juddered into action. The movements were far from smooth but at least it worked. Harry's heart began to beat faster in his chest as he anticipated his entrance onto Diagon Alley. Would it be as different as the Ministry of Magic, or would it be the same as he remembered?
Harry doubted it could have changed too much. The Ministry was only one building, but the alley was many, and in the minds of a lot of wizards, more important.
How wrong he was.
Stepping out into the once lively street was liked entering a graveyard.
That had been hit by a meteor shower. Several times.
Perhaps that was a little extreme, but Harry was still bowled over. Less so than he would have been if he hadn't already travelled through the abandoned ministry, but shocked nonetheless.
The ministry had been devoid of life, showing signs of a fierce battle. The Alley, however only displayed what Harry guessed as numerous smaller skirmishes, with a good number of buildings destroyed, but more simply abandoned in a relatively organised manner. It showed that the Alley's inhabitants had had at least some time to prepare for their leaving.
Yet it had been only a few hours since the Alley had been a hub of activity. Something strange was going on. Harry considered this was an understatement if ever there was one.
The sky at that moment was almost jet black and starless, the street illuminated only by the light of the full moon hanging ominously in the sky. Despite not having his glasses, Harry was thankful for the solitary source of light; he wouldn't much have fancied being on the street in pitch darkness.
Harry slowly moved over the cobbles, feeling his way with his feet past around those that had been uprooted and destroyed. At first he decided to stick to the centre of the road, to give himself a better view if something was about to attack him out of the shadows. Needless to say, it wasn't long before Harry was finding himself drawn to look closer at the buildings he had come to know so well over the past five years.
Casting his eyes around, Harry could just about make out Ollivander's wand shop. Its windows had been boarded up, but it looked to have gotten off much lighter than the neighbouring store; Quality Quidditch Supplies.
Harry approached it slowly, unable to resist the temptation to see what had happened to his favourite shop first-hand. He gave the door a hefty shove, but found it was locked. Harry contented himself by looking through the window. The top half of the window seemed to be badly broken, but the bottom half had held together with only a few long cracks running through it. The shop's interior was a wreck; most of it was stained black as if there had been a fire.
Harry was broken out of his reverie by a low, menacing growl, and he quickly glanced in its direction. The sight almost caused him to wretch on the spot. If his stomach had not been emptied after the journey through the Veil he would have done. An unrecognisable, mostly rotted corpse lay on the floor, marked by numerous small bite marks. Like it had been used for something's dinner.
And Harry could see whose dinner it had been. A family of gnomes had somehow managed to tear an arm off the poor wizard (or witch, Harry couldn't tell), and were gnawing on it like rats.
What could have caused ordinary garden gnomes to resort to eating human beings? Harry didn't want to stick around and find out. He slowly backed off, hoping the gnomes had not seen him.
Scared of gnomes Harry thought to himself. This would have been unthinkable twenty-four hours ago.
Harry continued down the Alley now at a half-run, the latest incident had really scared him. He wasn't sure if it was the almost alien nature the gnomes were showing, or the bizzarity of the sequence of events occurring that day. He didn't really care though; he only wanted to leave the Alley as quickly as possible now.
However, one sign seen out of the corner of his eye stopped Harry in his tracks. A street stand called 'Mick's Corner Shop'. Harry had seen it often enough before, and although it hadn't been too badly damaged it had obviously been abandoned long ago. A few loose sheaves of paper drifted gently along the ground beside it, carried in the cool night breeze. But Harry had an idea. His eyes widened in mute surprise as he seized the first newspaper from the stand. He grabbed another, and another, and another. He didn't need his glasses to see they all read the same thing: Saturday 6th May, 1992. Four years ago. The Alley had obviously been abandoned years before, but... none of it made sense. The headline below caught his eye.
LAST GREAT HOPE DIES AT TEACHER'S HAND by Rita Skeeter.
...Neville Longbottom, the young protégé of Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore, and prophesied 'Chosen One', was confirmed dead last night, supposedly at the hands of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher Professor Quirinius Quirrel. It seems that Quirrel, believed to be an unmarked Death Eater, infiltrated the Hogwarts faculty at the behest of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named with the intention of assassinating young master Longbottom. It has been confirmed that Longbottom died late on Thursday evening after being struck by the Killing Curse. Autopsies indicate the twelve-year-old suffered long exposure to the Cruciatus Curse before he died. It is currently unknown whether Quirrel also intended to kill Headmaster Dumbledore, but...
Without his glasses it took a while to read, but as he finished Harry dropped the newspaper to the floor, balling his fists with frustration. 'WHAT. THE FUCK. IS GOING ON!' he cried out into the abandoned Alley, emotions overcoming whatever caution he had. Immediately he regretted it.
Harry suddenly spun round, hearing a rustling noise from behind him. Perhaps he was being paranoid... perhaps not.
An instant later his ears were assaulted by a shrill cry, as small scaly hands latched around his neck, attempting to wring it like a chicken's. Harry emitted a shocked cry and not knowing what else to do, grabbed a handful of newspaper and began whacking at whatever creature had latched onto him.
A few seconds of suffering Harry's panicked swipes made the creature let go, falling to the floor. Harry quickly turned to face his opponent, holding the now rolled-up newspaper like a sword. Sprawled in front of him was a goblin. Its eyes had glazed over, and it bared its yellow fangs as it laughed cruelly. It looked withered with hardship and starvation, but much to Harry's surprise was very sprightly. In a split second it was back on its feet, ducking below Harry's rushed swipe, and latching onto his upper thigh with its rotting yellow teeth.
Harry fell back, struggling to remove the clearly unhinged goblin, but the creature had wrapped its scaly arms around the back of his leg and wasn't letting go.
All of a sudden the goblin released Harry from its grip and scuttled off into the shadows. Harry gave a cry of victory, but wondered why the ugly green beast had given up so easily.
A low-pitched growling noise made him turn around suddenly and Harry got his answer.
Standing on all fours in front of him was a huge animal. A wolf. Its ear pressed back against its head, bulging muscles tensed to strike, and a snarl on its mouth displayed an impressive set of teeth.
'Oh shit,' said Harry.
Harry follows Sirius through the Veil to a land where friends are not quite friends, family is not quite family, and enemies are not quite enemies. In the strange darkness of the other country, all Harry can do is search for some sort of constant - Sirius, avoiding setback and betrayal on the journey. Alternate universe, hopefully the same Harry.