Echoes of the Past
Disclaimer: J. K Rowling is the author of the Harry Potter books, I'm just borrowing the various bits and pieces you see here.
Summary: A week into his sixth year, Harry, still dealing with his godfathers death, disappears from the Quidditch pitch of Hogwarts. The search is on to find him, but no one knows who's taken him. The Order races to find him before anyone else does while Ron and Hermione try to discover how and why he disappeared.
Spoilers: All Harry Potter books up to and including Order of the Phoenix.
***
Chapter 1 -
Harry headed up early to the dormitory, glad to leave the noise of the common room behind. He had been in his sixth year of Hogwarts for almost a week. Hermione and Ron were still anxious about him and if Hermione asked him one more time if he was okay, he was certain that he'd end up hexing her. He knew that she and Ron were just worried, but he'd had the whole summer at the Dursleys' to get over the death of his godfather, and he was doing okay.
Maybe that was the problem though. He'd spent his whole summer at the Dursleys and he hadn't complained once about it to Ron or Hermione, which was a stark contrast to his reaction last year when he almost disowned them as his friends. But this summer he supposed he'd needed the isolation, and the Dursleys had been nothing if not tolerant towards him, owing to being threatened by Mad Eye Moody at King's Cross station. Harry still smiled at the memory.
Contrary to his friends beliefs, he was okay. He didn't need to talk about Sirius, though even Neville had tried to get him to talk about it. But he was doing just fine. He changed into his pyjamas and pulled the curtains round on his bed. He pulled the covers back and got in. Who was he trying to fool? Over his godfathers death? He'd been in denial the whole of summer and eventually, when the time came for him to return to Hogwarts, he managed to convince himself he was fine, that he'd dealt with it like a mature person. That he'd come to accept it.
If it had been funny he might have laughed at himself. But the only laughter he ever saw was Bellatrix Lestrange laughing as she murdered Sirius. No, there was no laughter left in Harry's life. Voldemort had seen to that, he had made Harry's life like his own, so that he would be alone, that he would grow up without a true family. And maybe that was his plan, so when the time came, Harry wouldn't have the strength or the heart to defeat him. With that depressing thought in his head, Harry closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
***
He was looking in a mirror at a face he didn't recognise. A child, maybe six or seven. No, wait, it was himself, when he was younger. Harry stared at the image of himself, and it stared back. The scar on his forehead as noticeable as ever. He turned from the mirror and looked around. The sight before him was familiar, Sirius being hit by the spell, Sirius falling through the veil. The look of shock so clear on his face. It was all happening in slow motion, again, like it did every night. The sequence slowed and stopped and Harry stared at it, lost in his thoughts, remembering.
A voice jolted him out of his reverie. "Why don't you accept that he's gone?" He looked around and saw no-one. "But then, you know that he's not. And yet you refuse to stop considering what might have been, instead of focusing on what is." The voice had taken on a kind of Hermione tone, annoying and yet he knew the words were true.
Suddenly the world seemed to sharpen, focus, as if he'd just put on his glasses. He could feel a breeze blowing by him, and there was grass under his feet. He looked in the mirror on the wall behind him, and now saw his own true reflection staring back at him and behind his reflection the death of Sirius was playing out again. He turned away, he didn't want to see it, not again.
"We don't have long, I don't think it's safe." A child's voice surprised him and he spun round to find her standing behind him. She had black hair and blue eyes. She was unfamiliar, and fairly young, about six or seven. "And so are you." It was as if she'd heard his thoughts. And he knew she spoke the truth again, he was the childish image he had first seen in the mirror.
"Who are you?", he asked. She smiled at him and she began to walk towards stream that he had just noticed. He fell into step beside her, noticing for the first time that her eyes were red-rimmed, as if she'd been crying. "I'm not sure it's important. And I don't think it's safe here... You see that forest?" She pointed to her left, and there, when he looked, was a dark looming forest, similar to the forbidden forest around Hogwarts. "It's not safe there.... You need to accept it, things are going to happen and you'll have choices to make. But some have already been made for you, the biggest by your mother. She chose you to destroy Voldemort, it was her choice to make you the one, to save you from him. My mother made a choice too."
She stopped walking and turned towards him, the stream they were walking to seemed no closer than it had been before. "It's going to happen soon. A third side to the story. People make mistakes.... and they can't always fix them. Voldemort thinks he can fix his." Harry thought it was very strange to see such a young child speak so calmly about the dark wizard.
"It's not safe for you here, your dreams are sometimes shared, sometimes watched. It's time for you to go - look." Harry looked to where she pointed, where there had previously been a mirror, there was a door, and at it stood Sirius, waving and beckoning to him. Harry smiled and turned to leave. "Goodbye" He called out over his shoulder. He heard her speaking behind him, in a sing-song voice, reciting what sounded like a poem.
"A muggle child was lost one day,
And wandered out of human way,
the forbidden forest she did find,
and she became unlike her kind,
her children mixed with wizard blood,
a baby boy found in the wood,
the legacy, it still lives on,
of Clann Lir and the beautiful swan,
the lions heart, the serpents fang,
the secrets out, the song is sang,
A muggle child who lost her way,
six hundred years ago today....."
Harry reached the door where Sirius stood as the song faded away. He took a last look behind him, and saw a girl, much older than the first, but with the same dark hair and blue eyes. He had only a moment to consider her, as he stepped through the door after Sirius... and promptly woke up.
***
The next evening, Harry and Ron went to the Quidditch field to get some practice. Harry spent a while trying to throw the quaffle into the goals while Ron saved them. Or at least, most of them. He was getting quite good, Fred and George would have been proud. Harry wasn't paying much attention as Ron chatted to him. He was thinking about his dream from the night before.
He almost missed it when Ron said, in a would-be casual voice, "So anyway, I was thinking of asking Hermione out for the first Hogsmeade weekend, it's on in about a fortnight. What do you think?" Harry, who had been about to throw the quaffle at Ron again, smiled and said truthfully, "Well it's about time. I've been waiting for you to ask her since last January."
Ron grinned and caught the quaffle as Harry threw it. "Thanks, I really needed to hear that, I was afraid I'd never get up the courage!"
Twenty minutes later, they finished up and Ron made to head back into the castle. "You don't mind do you? It's just I've got that potions essay to finish..." But Harry assured him it was fine, that he needed to practice catching the snitch and Ron couldn't really help him with that anyway. So Harry practised flying and catching the snitch for another half an hour.
By now it was beginning to grow dark. He landed and put the snitch away. He set out to head back to the castle, when a sound from behind him froze him in his tracks. He pulled his wand out of his pocket and made to turn around, but something hit him side on, and the spell died in his throat as he fell unconscious onto the field.
When Ron and Hermione came looking for him half an hour later, there was no sign of him, his broomstick or of a struggle. They both assumed that he'd already gone back to the castle, or maybe to Hagrid's and headed back. Though, if they had looked closer, they may have seen a small dark patch of grass, where Harry's blood, the blood of the boy-who-lived, had been spilt.
***
End of Chapter One
So what did you think? Please review, constructive criticism is always welcome, flames will used to carry out controlled laboratory experiments! As you can see there will be some kind of Ron/Hermione part in this story. The poem in the dream sequence is important and will be explained as the story progresses. Extra credit for anyone who knows what Clann Lir is!