The Freedom of the Soul
It was a grey day, the day Harry traveled back in time. Just the day before, he was sitting in the parlor of Godric's hollow, his fingers holding a cup of hot tea. He sipped it, and let it down on the table in front of the sofa he was sitting on, and turned to Ginny Weasley. "I have to do it, don't you understand?"
"Why, we have all we need here," said Ginny, "You don't-you shouldn't do this!"
"I will, you can't stop me."
"Nobody can," Ginny said bitterly. "Well, then, great mage, great wizard, leaving us all here to fight the dark lord alone. Go! I don't care." She turned and sobbed. Outside, the monotonous grey day absorbed Harry's interest as he waited for her sobs to die down.
Harry watched her apathetically. "I have dwelved deeply in the dark arts," he said as if talking about the weather. She looked up, curious despite herself, and somewhat horrified. "I studied it, because Voldemort studied it. To fight fire with fire is the only way," Harry said, "And that is the way I have been fighting for twenty five years."
"You don't understand, what will we do without you? He will kill us all."
"No he won't, nobody will die. We will all be back and only I will know of the future. It will be like I was a seer, a man who can see into the future. The future will not have existed, and the past will be there in all it's beauty, ready to be tampered with."
"Why are you telling me all this?" Ginny asked, her eyes focused and sharp. Harry moved toward her, and kissed her gently on the lips. He stroked her hair lightly and said, "The ritual calls for a sacrifice."
Ginny gulped, "I love you Harry, don't do this."
"I have to, Ginny, I have to. It's the only way to defeat him and I can't do it without you."
"No, I won't do it," said Ginny with an iron voice.
"In our second year I saved you, barely. A few seconds later and you would have been a goner."
"So what, you will make sure that I was never saved? That I died in the Chamber of Secrets?"
"Yes." Harry said, "But you must participate willingly. I won't force you, just ask you to do what is best for the wizarding world, for the greater good. For me, Ginny. If you really love me, you will sacrifice yourself for my war."
"You know I do," Ginny said bitterly.
The grey day continued, and they walked outside in the garden holding hands, talking in low voices of what was to come. The next morning, it rained terribly but that didn't stop the pair from going outside and drawing a chalk circle, lighting ten candles in pentagonal shapes in the circle, and holding each other chanting softly in ancient languages. They did this for a few minutes, a blue light seemed to pour out of Ginny into Harry. Then the light was gone and Ginny slumped to the ground, dead. Harry raised his wand to the sky, and said, "Avada Kedavra." A green light shot out like a tower of blazing fury, and suddenly he was gone, popped out of existence itself.
He opened his eyes to see a younger version of Tom Riddle. "Harry Potter," said Tom, "I have been meaning to meet you."
They were in the chamber of secrets. It was dark and smelled like dead things. The musty air suffocated Harry as he felt his memories return to him, as he felt a wierd yet powerful sense of deja vu. And then, feeling nothing in his heart where once lillies and flowers blossomed, he knew what he had to do. His emotions were an endless plain of grey rocks, jutting up to meet the grey sky. Nothing mattered anymore but his success. Could he still save Ginny? No, he was too far gone. Love, the most powerful force, had allowed him to change the entire universe. He pulled out his wand. "Are you ready to die, Tom?" he asked, watching the other boy's eyes widen in surprise, fear, and a touch of contempt.
"You are a mere school chid," hissed the future dark lord. "Do you know who I am? Let me show you." Tom began drawing his name in the air with his finger, and the light show that was his name rearranged the letters to say: I am Lord Voldemort.
"Ah," Harry said unsurprised, "I see." He raised his wand, pointing it at the boy, and then spied the diary. He jabbed the wand toward the diary, crying, "Avara Fugo!" A brilliant jet of white hot fire rushed out of his wand, and with searing heat destroyed the diary, and Ginny's pale body lying on the floor of the chamber was spared from the flame as it curved itself around her toward the sleeping snake lying in a cavernous pipe, waiting to spring. The basilisk rushed out like a raging beast, but soon crumpled to the ground as the fiendfyre consumed it.
Tom started hissing in parsletongue as he faded away but he did not get the chance to complete whatever spell he had been trying to do wandlessly. The horcrux was destroyed. Harry smirked contemptously. He had faced down numerous skilled death eaters - geniuses they had been, and he had learnt from each of them, as well as from the times he had personally fought Voldemort.
Rearranging the future to suit himself would be a piece of cake. He pointed his wand at Ginny's body, and felt a wave of nausea hit him as he thought about what he was about to do.
Sacrifice spells were such that they demanded an invisible yet unbreakable oath. He had sacrificed her to initiate the time spell and now to keep the changes retained in history permanently, he would have to do it again.
"Wake up, Ginny," he said sharper than he intended. She awoke and stared at him, and said in an utterly calm and serene voice, "I remember everything, Harry."
"You know what you must do, don't you?"
She nodded, crying a bit, but with courage characteristic of her house, she got to her feet and hugged Harry one last time, sobbing a bit on his shoulder, knowing it was her end. Harry pointed his wand at her temple, and cast, "Avada Kedavra." She fell in a slump, dead, but a brilliant blue hue of light floated out of her like smoke and into Harry. He felt recharged. He felt good, in physical and mental health at least, but in spirit, he felt empty and unfulfilled.
He wondered what he was doing treading the dark path, but in the light of his mentor, he said to himself, "It's for the greater good," as he carried Ginny's body out with him. He came out with her dead body, and met with the headmaster, explaining the situation to the Weasleys in a way that cast him in an innocent light. Nobody suspected a little boy of deceit, of hiding his thoughts behind deceptive fields of occlumency.
That night, watching the rain storm from the Astronomy tower, Harry smirked to himself despite mourning tears on his face as he thought, I might have a fighting chance after all. A lightning bolt of purple blue struck the darkness of the night, and thunder rumbled overhead in the distance. Harry stood alone.
He came across the piece of parchment when he was hunting Anthony Dolohov on the streets of Knockturne alley, alone, at night. The parchment was simply a title of a book, but what caught his attention was the handwriting. Tom Riddle's handwriting, recognizable from his second year when he had scribbled in the diary. Harry followed the trail of the parchment to a book, where he came across a peculiar ritual he had modified to suit his taste.
His taste to travel back in time that is, virtually impossible according to experts, probable to unspeakables. He had to consult them in his journey to perfect the ritual, but it all began with the parchment.
No wonder the death eater was willing to die fighting to protect the piece of paper. It was perhaps a key or a clue into Voldemort's past. Many would pay dearly to have something - just a tidbit - of Voldemort's past. Just like Harry would. So he hunted, with his wand out, running after him, shooting golden spells that blasted the streets but made no noise. Surreptitious was the word that came to the forefronts of Harry's mind.
He caught Anthony when he turned a bad corner, into a dead end. Harry shot some ropes out, which the death eater slashed through with sneering ease. They fought a vicious two minute duel that was as deadly as it could get, evenly matched. Anthony was a creative dueler, who had a vast repretoire of spells at his beck and call, and Harry was effective, blunt, like an axe. Slash, cleave, demolish. Anthony made use of elaborate traps, like throwing feint spells that would rebound and strike at Harry's back, were it not for his quidditch reflexes to save him.
It ended when Harry surprised the death eater by casting the one curse he wasn't expecting, "Legilimency!" Harry pushed past a flimsy occlumency shield and brought out painful memories of an abusive childhood, and memories of torture sessions with Voldemort. It brought the death eater to his knees. But when Anthony tried to cast the killing curse to surprise Harry, he found himself on the recieving end of "Crucio!"
Harry only cast it because he was viewing a memory of Voldemort casting it. He let it go in a few seconds when he realized what he was doing was not a memory. Anthony twitched, slumped and lying on the ground, on the cold desolate street.
"Avada kedavra," Harry said, ending the man's life.
He searched the death eater, finding only the slip of paper that read in Tom's script: "Rituals and Rites Using Sacrifice" The title. The author: "Albus Dumbledore"
Harry smirked. He knew where to find this book. It was time to pay the headmistress a visit, and perhaps peruse Dumbledore's private library, hidden in his office.