ACT I

SCENE VII

I SEE HIM JUMP BEFORE ME

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The Hall of Prophecies was always cold. The dim blue light gave the impression of constant night and left the upper reaches of the place in complete darkness. The air seemed to move as if something huge was breathing high above. Goosebumps broke out on Harry's arms even under his warm robes.

"Where shall we start?" asked Simon. He looked up at the nearest rack of shelves. "This is row twelve."

"The action all happened at the end of row ninety-seven," said Harry. "Better head that way." He pointed.

Part way along row eighty, they stopped. "I think this is near enough," said Harry. "We don't want to land in the middle of a bunch of Death-Eaters." He wiggled the outer rings of the time Turner. "Look at all these settings. I've never seen a Time Turner with so many. I wonder what else it can do? Here." He passed it to Simon who shivered. "Simon?" Harry was unexpectedly reminded that Simon was not a young man.

"I'm fine. Just had that feeling, you know. When they say someone walked over your grave?" Simon rotated the two outer rings of the device and showed Harry. "I think that's right?"

"Here we go, then." Harry pressed his middle finger to the top of the central hourglass and flicked it sharply into a rapid spin and felt himself spinning with it, nauseatingly faster than he could have believed possible. He and Simon twisted into each other as if the two of them were rags someone had wrung together. And then, with a jolt, it stopped. His lungs were bursting.

Simon was beside him, leaning down with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. "Ugh! That was horrible. Are we there? It doesn't look any different."

"Ah!" Harry clutched his head as a terrible pain he had not felt for over twenty years stabbed into his scar. He stumbled.

"Harry!" Simon caught him and steadied him. "What's wrong?"

"It's—Merlin! We are where we meant to be! Voldemort is close by!"

"Are you all right? You can feel him again?"

Harry took some deep breaths, "Yes, but I'm getting used to it. Have you got the Time-Turner safe?"

"Of course." Simon patted his pocket. "I can hear a bit of a kerfuffle. Let's get nearer."

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They inched cautiously towards the activity and peered round a rack to see a couple of Death Eaters, wands out and pointed, making their way towards the far end of the aisle.

"They're wearing masks!" muttered Harry in despair. "How will we know which one is Claudius Nott? Bugger!" He clenched his fist in frustration.

"Nott!" one of the masked Death Eaters said to the other, "take aisle ninety-six. If you see any of the children, incapacitate them only! The Dark Lord wants the Potter boy alive and the prophecy intact."

"That's how," whispered Simon winking at Harry. "He's the taller one."

They crept along the neighbouring aisle to a gap between the shelves where they could better see the two Death Eaters. They were not the only observers. "Look," Simon whispered, pointing through the opening. "There's our Claude. Let's say hello." He squeezed sideways between the racks into the next row, followed by Harry.

"Glad I didn't eat that last scone," Harry muttered.

"Sh." Simon put his finger to his lips.

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Intent on the events playing out a few yards away, the old man was oblivious to everything else and did not hear them approaching from behind.

"Well, well, Claude," said Simon softly over Nott's shoulder. "Fancy seeing you here."

The man gave a little cry and turned in shock, glaring at him from dark, hooded eyes. "Who the bloody hell are you?"

"Don't you recognise me, Claude?"

"No, I—no! Merlin! You can't be! You're dead!"

"Indeed." Simon smiled. His voice was genial. "And yet here I am. Fancy. And here you are. And"—he pointed—"there you are too. And what would happen if—" He grabbed a prophecy sphere from a shelf, raised his voice and shouted, "Claudius!"

"What!" Nott hissed. "You're mad! What are you doing?"

"What am I doing? Why, this. Claude!" he shouted again and shoved the older Nott hard towards his younger self who turned to see what the disturbance was. At the same moment, Simon smashed the prophecy onto the floor at his feet. It shattered in a cloud of pink smoke, and a cloudy image appeared in the air. A stream of unintelligible words echoed loosely for several seconds, then gradually dispersed around them.

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Simon pulled Harry round the end of the rack out of sight, and they crouched motionless, watching from between the shelves. The younger Nott gave an exclamation of alarm; then as the image from the prophecy faded into mist, Harry saw him hurrying away towards the other Death Eaters. There was a clinking noise, and Harry looked down to see the Time-Turner rolling gently past the end of the aisle where they were hiding. He reached out, seized it, and shoved it deep into the pocket of his robes.

Some forty or so yards away there was shouting and crashing and the crackle of spells. Clouds of smoke could be seen drifting above the racks and flashes of coloured light flickered between the rows. Ghostly disembodied echoes could be heard all around.

"Reducto!" several young voices shouted in unison. There was an ominous creaking, and the top of one of the vast racks of shelves rocked and then toppled. As it fell, it took two other racks with it like gigantic dominoes. Harry and Simon retreated a couple of rows further back. There was more distant shouting. Harry recognised his own voice yelling, "Run!" and Hermione shouting, "Stupefy!"

He tensed with the recollection, and Simon gripped his shoulder. "It all worked out in the end, remember," he whispered. "Hold your nerve. We need to see what's going on. Keep out of sight."

The Death Eaters were running back down the aisle between the tall shelves with Claudius Nott in the lead. As he dashed for the heavy door, Hermione cried, "Colloportus!" and it started swinging shut. Instinctively, Nott grabbed at the edge of the door and tried to stop it closing, but he had misjudged the weight and momentum. There was a heavy clunk, a squelch, and a scream of agony.

"What an exquisite sound," murmured Simon appreciatively.

An imperious voice carried through the cavernous hall. "Leave him! His injuries are as nothing compared to what the Dark Lord will do if we fail to retrieve the prophecy! This way." The group turned and hurried off in another direction. In a few seconds they were gone, and there was only the sound of Nott's desperate whimpering.

"We need to check the settings on Erasmus's Time-Turner," Simon reminded Harry.

Harry took the device out of his pocket and looked at the dial. The inner ring was clicking slowly in a clockwise direction, half-second by half-second.

"Nott had set it for twenty minutes." He turned the outer dial anti-clockwise until it stopped. "That's as far as it will go. We've got a bit of a wait. Unless you want to go back now with the other Time-Turner, and I'll follow later. I suppose we'll actually arrive back at about the same time."

Simon's face was alight with excitement. "What! Go now, while things are getting interesting?"

Harry saw something of the old recklessness and felt a prickle of unease. There was a sound beyond the door where Nott was trapped.

Simon slid behind a shelf, pulling Harry with him. They could no longer see what was happening but heard the door opening and a slight scuffle followed by another scream and what Harry assumed was the sound of the freed Nott sliding to the floor. Footsteps ran away to the other end of the chamber and faded from earshot. "Come on," Simon whispered. "Let's follow."

"Do we need to?" said Harry. "We've got the Time-Turner. All we have to do is stay put and wait."

"You really didn't inherit your dad's sense of adventure, did you?" teased Simon. "I'm curious. Humour an old man. They'll be getting to the Death Chamber about now. Let's take a look.

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The battle was already in full swing as they sidled in through the door from the Brain Room and, crawled into a dark corner behind a pillar near the top of the chamber. Mad-Eye Moody was duelling a masked Death Eater on one of the lower tiers of benches. Further up, Kingsley was fighting two more. Flashes and explosions from elsewhere among the steep, tiered benches sent dangerous splinters of stone flying through the air in all directions. A sliver caught Harry on the cheek, but he hardly noticed.

Tonks was halfway up the bank of tiers, duelling Bellatrix who was further down. Harry saw a Death Eater aiming his wand at her from behind and winced helplessly, but someone shot a spell at the attacker, and sent him head over heels into another tier. Harry looked round to see where the spell had come from and saw Sirius running with admirable balance along a row of benches in pursuit.

Down in the middle of the chamber, Neville was on his knees gasping for breath while a Death Eater Harry remembered was Macnair had his arm about young Harry's throat pulling him up so that Harry's toes were scrabbling on the ground. He was holding the prophecy in one hand and struggling to twist his wand backwards in the other.

A shout of "Crucio!" drew Harry's and Simon's attention back to Moody, whose opponent had got the better of him. Moody screamed and lurched sideways, bleeding, but as he fell, he snatched the mask from the Death Eater he had been fighting, revealing Antonin Dolohov's pale features. Dolohov laughed and aimed a vicious kick at Moody's head, knocking out his false eye and sending it skittering down the steps and across the flagstones to where young Harry was flapping helplessly in Macnair's grip.

Neville scrambled to his feet and launched himself towards Harry's attacker, jabbing his wand into the Death Eater's eye. Macnair screamed a high pitched, girlish sound, and released Harry who stumbled as his foot slipped on Moody's eye.

There was a green flash from behind a nearby pillar followed by a cry of pain. Tonks flew through the air, landing with a sickening thud a few feet away from Harry and Simon. She groaned and moved a little, then was motionless. Instinctively Harry started towards her but Simon grabbed him by the robes hissing, "She's all right. Remember!"

Dolohov had jumped down to the bottom tier and was already raising his wand. "Tarantallegra!" he shouted. Neville's legs started to twist and kick convulsively and he fell to the floor as if having a fit. Dolohov raised his wand again, his thin features alight with cruel pleasure.

From opposite Harry and Simon, Sirius vaulted over the tiers, practically bouncing down towards the bottom of the chamber.

"Couldn't do that these days," whispered Simon.

Below them Dolohov raised his wand again, pointing it squarely at young Harry. "Accio proph—"

From the second tier, Sirius tackled Dolohov, taking them both to the ground with a yell and a crash. He lifted his head, his arm rigid across the struggling Dolohov's throat. "Take the prophecy and run!" he screamed.

Seeing what was happening, Lucius Malfoy, not wearing a mask, started racing to the bottom of the chamber.

Young Harry helped the still-twitching Neville to his feet, but as the two boys tried to get away, Malfoy lunged at them, and the boys fell over. Malfoy grabbed at Harry who was desperately holding the prophecy in his outstretched arm trying not to drop it. "Neville!" yelled Harry and sent it rolling it across the floor.

Neville snatched the sphere and cradled it against his chest. As Harry scrambled to his feet, Malfoy raised his wand towards Neville, but Harry managed to yell, "Impedimenta!" and Malfoy stumbled. Before he could recover, Remus jumped between him and the boys, shouting, "Harry, get the others and go!"

Neville stuffed the prophecy into his pocket and Harry began to help him up the steps, but still unsteady, Neville trod on the hem of his robes, and the seam split open. The glass ball fell to the floor, and as he tried not to tumble, he accidentally caught it with his foot. The delicate bauble spun through the air and smashed against a step, the tiny noise lost amid the chaos of the battle. A misty figure with big round eyes appeared for a few moments then dissolved.

The air crackled and golden lightning forked overhead. A blaze illuminated the stone tiers.

"It's Dumbledore!" someone shouted.

The figure of the professor was silhouetted against one of the upper doors. Incandescent with fury, he strode down the steps sweeping his wand from side to side, casting jets of bright silver light from one side of the chamber to the other. The Death Eaters started to fall back in noisy confusion.

At the bottom of the steps below the crumbling arch, Sirius, oblivious to what was happening above, was duelling Bellatrix. He was goading her mercilessly, and she was losing control. Her aim was deteriorating with her temper, and she was beginning to stumble. Nimbly, Sirius jumped up on to the stairs on the dais at the front of the arch. Behind him, the darkness moved and drifted. Bellatrix tripped and dropped her wand, which skittered across the flagstones several feet away from her.

Sirius laughed fiercely. And everything seemed to pause.

Harry glanced at Simon and saw his eyes widen with shock. As if in slow motion, Simon lifted his wand and for a horrified second, Harry thought he was about to cast a spell at Bellatrix, but instead he put the end of the ancient wand to his own forehead. At first Harry could not tell what he was doing, and when he did, he couldn't understand why. A strand of silver mist was drifting from Simon's forehead, being pulled into the end of the wand. Below, standing squarely in front of the crumbling arch, Sirius was mocking Bellatrix as he raised his wand and pointed it at her.

Then Simon thrust his wand into Harry's hand saying, "Look after this for me." Then without any sign of hurry or anxiety he spun the fancy golden Time-Turner on its axis. "It's a funny thing," he said, "I was terrible at Quidditch, but I was a shit-hot cricket bowler. And Lucius was quite the fielder. Tell Julia and Megan I'm sorry. Goodbye, Harry."

Screeching in fear and fury Bellatrix grovelled on her knees, scrabbling for her own wand, but there was no way she would get to it before Sirius's spell hit her.

Beside Harry, Simon stood up, shouting, "Lucius!"

"Simon, no!" Harry hissed reaching out. But Simon was not wearing long robes for Harry to get hold of.

Lucius Malfoy, who was almost at one of the doors, turned towards them and Simon shouted, "Howzat!" With an expert flick of the wrist, he pitched the Time-Turner across the chamber. Then he jumped on to the top level of stone benches shouting, "Sirius. Sirius! Look up!" As graceful as he had been twenty-five years before, he skipped down the tiers.

Sirius, standing in front of the arch crowing in triumphant glee, looked towards the call. His expression froze in shock. His distraction allowed Bellatrix to reach her wand, and she lunged towards him screaming a curse. And in a flash of red light, Sirius fell back into the veil and was gone.

Harry crouched on the stone floor shaking with shock, clutching Simon's wand to his chest. He could hardly comprehend what had just happened.

From below, he heard Bellatrix gloating and his own younger self screaming for Sirius. He pressed his face against the cold stone floor.

The Time-Turner in his pocket started to vibrate and tick louder and faster. Bright light stabbed into Harry's closed eyes, and he began to spin.

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When, after what seemed an age, he lifted his head from the hard floor, the chamber was empty and silent.

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Exeunt Omnes.

End of Act I

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