Summary: (AU) The final battle has been won, but was it worth the cost? Harry, alone and determined, sets out to rewrite history for a better world. Pity the bloody time-turner isn't working right…
Disclaimer: All belongs to the one and only J.K.Rowling
…Chapter Nine…
The Way We Get By
The cold dreary days stumbled on in dull monotony, each turning slightly warmer than the last with every begrudge-full step closer to Spring. The Quidditch season kicked in, flying past in a whirlwind rush almost unnoticed by Harry, uncared for. Remus Lupin began a dueling club for all students from second year and up. Harry never came to watch either - he thought about it, in both prettily, meticulously wrapped cases ... but he didn't go.
Shutting himself alone in his tower fast became habit, a guilty retreat sulking into the deeper reaches of his mind.
Harry told himself he liked the distance, the solitude, the hollow, empty echo of peace and quiet.
Sometimes he believed it.
And not an hour trickled slowly by that he didn't think of the damn prophecy, hidden masterfully under his pillowcase.
Harry had all but forgotten about his other promise to Remus, to use his Boggart of the Demetor shape to help the other's seventh year class learn the Patronus charm, until Lupin politely reminded him early one breakfast-time. Harry obliged, a little reluctantly.
On the lesson that made his first appearance to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, Harry knew he rather regretted ever making the commitment - he had always loathed commitment. Harry tried to think of a way to get out of it, and carefully made several delicate plans of grand escape - but then, looking fondly around the old room, on a whim decided he'd do the stupid class anyway.
The students filed in, eyeing him warily, and Remus predictably began the class with a lecture.
Harry payed him no notice, taking great care to pick at his thumb whist examining Ron intently under his lashes. And staring at Ronald then, Harry began to have doubts. It had been years and years since he'd had to face a steely Boggart (as ridiculous and unintimidating now as they were) - but what if his greatest fear had changed?
What would he do if something else wholly embarrassing materialized in the classroom?
The form of Voldemort as hideous as he hadn't yet become to this world?
Or Cho in another hair-tearing hissy fit?
He needn't have worried, though.
Harry barely remembered what proceeded after that, hardly cared for the odd looks and whispers that never ceased to follow him, shade his every breath, every movement - whatever world he happened to flock to. Lupin had Harry sit opposite his desk, his back to the noisy grinding chatter of the class, an ornate little liquor cabinet that housed the Boggart perched dauntingly opposite him.
Then lesson carried on to be a bloody boring nightmare if there ever was one.
Harry simply sat there, using the empty space in front of him on the desk to mark a hefty stack of fifth year reports. The Boggart came again and again from his cabinet at Lupins' determined will, each time first spotting Harry and morphing to a Dementor, one that came not even mildly close to the terror reined by the real thing. And each time the 'Dementor' was plummeted with a handful of pitiful wisps, wannabe Patronus' in a foggy peal-white haze.
Lupin sung praise and the class greedily lapped it up.
Harry hit a new low of dissatisfaction.
Privately he thought their efforts quite pathetic, and for some time entertained the notion of telling the class exactly that. A dim hope whisked through his mind breifly, wishing that one of his swelling Divination students might become bored enough to try their hand at reading him.
All in all, Harry remained quite disappointed - and quite sure that the Ron and Hermione in his own world had long bested their counterparts here. He didn't consider this opinion to be just slightly biased.
For three nights after Harry took the prophecy from under his pillow to let it rest in his hand, and he pretended to debate what the hell to do with it, pretended like it was really a choice he had yet to make.
Harry understood that prophecies were not a definite fact, that they were liable to change and varying interpretation, perception.
If anyone would be familiar with this it was he.
But that didn't stop him wanting to know what it said, nor the traitorously reasonable feeling that he'd probably be better off throwing it out of the window, which never could quite quell Harry's capricious nature. And so as he lay awake into the deeper reaches of night, glaring spitefully at the unfamiliar ceiling that wasn't really so unfamiliar anymore at all, and he tried to make a decision wherein he lost and won either way, a decision that had really been made from the moment his eyes caught sight of the bloody thing.
It was - of course - inevitable, really.
Harry was just stalling, just creating another obstacle to further place his unease, and he knew it, as well as he knew that drawing the time out only made it more painful and pressured.
Though he couldn't help but fantasize, couldn't stomp the tempt that befell with a tantalizing hope - that maybe this was it, that it was what he'd been waiting for and why he had landed in this wayward world in the first place - that perhaps it would be the conclusion to all of his long unanswered questions, a meaning at last to the haughty, splintered, maddening madness.
And he couldn't stand it if he were to be let down again, if he was wrong. But he knew, really, that nothing could bring him what he ultimately sought.
Dead is dead.
Inevitable. Irrevocable.
Scrunching his eyes shut, Harry closed his sweaty palm around the orb, tightly squeezing. Gently he let the trickle of hot, vehement anger purge through him, absorbing the pent up injustice, the angry frustration, his ridiculous longing to be needed again, to be with his ever loved ones like before, like it had always been - and the globe heated, buzzing, sticky and sickly in his sweat dampened palm.
And Harry threw the prophecy as hard as he could.
He watched as it collided against the far wall of his rooms, shattering into a thousand tiny shimmering pieces.
Harry fought the last urge to cover his ears, to deny the prophecy its right in his hearing, but he was too damn curious, as always had been the near death of him, and it was there already, broken in useless shards, creeping up towards him ...
And the words wove themselves around the stone walls of the room, opaque silvery threads of prediction.
Called down by those whom know him not, the one with the power, with purpose, with knowledge of victory ... he faces a choice ... an alternate to linger ... options, past, closes in ... he has the power to vanquish, to destroy; but there is more than one way in which this might be done ... a path must be taken, where the Dark Lord will meet his equal ... it comes with Him ... a choice. Neither can live while the other survives.
Harry feels trapped, suddenly. Claustrophobic in his own skin.
He needs to break out.
...pppqqq...
By the achingly tedious end of that month Harry had become more than a little tired of avoiding them; Neville, Ron, and the dreadfully annoying blond Harry Potter that had taken to trailing his every bloody move.
When they rose their hands in his class for assistance, Harry dutifully ignored them. When they ran into him in the hallway, he made plaintive excuses and fled. When they tried to gnarl his attention in the Great Hall, he decidedly remained politely oblivious. No-one was fooled in the slightest. Harry was quite proud, really, of how long he had managed to hold out - it was on a particularly hot day, the air thick and suffocatingly humid, where the trio finally got the better of him. When they cornered him in his office, Harry couldn't think of a way fast enough to get rid of them.
"Professor," Neville tried, talking right over Harry's fumbled explanation of needing desperately to be elsewhere. "Will you ... Will you teach us?"
Harry raised an eyebrow accusingly. "I was under the impression that I already taught you, Mr Longbottom."
Ronald blinked. "No! No - "
"No, I mean - " Neville paused, his voice trailing off.
Harry sighed. "Teach you what, then?" he asked, feigning negligence, refusing to meet his student's conspire-bulging eyes.
"How to," Neville started, stumbling -
"How to do the," Ron went on, coming to Neville's rescue but flailing all the same. "Erm ..."
An ugly silence befell them.
It was Harry's counterpart who bravely, heedlessly finished the question. "How to do the darker stuff. Sir."
Harry felt a migraine edge and rip, tearing angrily into his temple, and he groaned then, defeated, dropping the weight of his head to rest in his arms on the desk, gesturing madly with a waving hand for the students to leave, to let him be. For a while then Harry pretended to consider it - but in truth he already knew the answer, had always known it. He thought of the damn prophecy, of the damningly vague implications and meaning.
They wanted Harry to teach them. Someone had to, he supposed.
He'd rather it were him than the temperamental snaps of Moody or twinkling clarity of the damned, belated Dumbledore.
And so teach them Harry would.
...pppqqq...
Lady Catherine, the young witch that hung in the portrait on the North Tower quarters, reported to the Headmaster every morning on Hadi Evans' comings and goings; how his classes ran, how well he slept at night, if and when he appeared upset, angry or cheerful - anything she could manage to read from him, which was unsurprisingly little, and no easy task.
She told the Headmaster that he never combed his hair. That he spent thirteen minutes every evening in the shower. That he had an alarming and scandalous measure of three teaspoons worth sugar with his tea. She told him of the frequent visits Evan spent in Hogsmeade - presumably in residence with that pretty, darling girl Chang. She told Albus of the long, tired scars stretched over his back - and the other scar most wouldn't have been drawn to notice, hidden as it was, residing ambiguously under a tangle of messy black bangs - a peculiar shape of a lightning bolt on his forehead.
And she told him of the new lessons he taught late at night, while the rest of the castle slept peacfully, obliviously.
That his pupils were of the most interesting assortment - though not nearly as interesting nor worrying as the curses they learnt and studied under Evans' antagonized aid. The study group was doing well for itself, too - steadily increasing in persons and level.
Albus Dumbledore, beyond any void of frustration, reached idly for another of the more sour tasting lemon drops on his desk.
It was not going as he had planned - and that, quite simply, wouldn't do at all.
And so time then it was, finally, to encourage justice intervene.
...pppqqq...
There was a cheep, wobbly table where a half finished game of chess took rest. Two wine glasses, barely touched; one had the mark of rosy lipstick glossed onto the side, sticking the imprinted texture of a woman's thick lips, still barely visible. A ratty cotton blanket, handmade by the inlaws, draped haphazardly over a stained, threadbare couch.
They were not wealthy people, and no-one would miss them were - when, he corrected - when they were gone. But numbers were numbers, and that night Lord Voldemort demanded a carnage.
The figure looked on past the lounge to the kitchen, stiffened, disgusted and repulsed.
Outside rain beat down lightly, pattering on the rooftop - obscuring scenes of destruction, violence and murder. He could smell the gritty tang of burnt flesh, fresh blood, screams of the innocent, undeserving in torment and pain.
The fireplace roared.
Two muggles, a husband and wife, struggled in their magical binds to no avail, eyes wide with fitful fear. Both were crouched lowly at his feet on the soaked carpet, writhing, near wetting themselves. He had no mercy, no care. No moral whim to allow penance of dignity or pride.
He had simply a point to make, a lesson that of late his better half had forgot.
"My Lord?"
There came no response.
"My Lord?" Lucius Malfoy tried again, faltered, unsure. "What shall we do with these ones, my Lord?"
He glowered, pure malice and hatred heating his face, burning in the depths of unnatural crimson eyes.
The command was a scarcely controlled hiss, eminent of loathing.
"I care not. Do with them as you like."
Lord Voldemort was nervous.
Worried, indecisive.
Lord Voldemort was scared he was loosing his nerve.
Lord Voldemort, for the first time in all of his long stretched and far snatching memory, felt nearly threatened.
Hadi Evans was the name he went by, the cause of such hindering predicament - the unexpected obstacle that had literally appeared out of nowhere. The plaintive annoyance that harbored more than a good amount of raw talent and unhinged power, one which now so close to the ending finale of light, so close to his triumphant rein, could easily tip scales to his favor - or his demise.
One which must either be swiftly turned or more swiftly otherwise dealt with.
Draco Malfoy, sleep adamantly refusing to take him, shook in his covers in the lower dungeons of Slytherin.
...pppqqq...
"No, no - not like that!"
Frustration. Annoyance. A slight reminiscent tone of sad, heartfelt melancholy.
Neville thew his wand to the floor and stalked off, tripping up on a chintz armchair, slamming the door behind him - and stumbling, tripping, falling down the steep winding stairs, one after the other, landing with a hard, merciless thump.
Ron chased after him without a backwards glance.
One Harry Potter laughed.
And then the other did, too.
Both realized, surprised, that they might have something in common.
...pppqqq...
"Regulus."
"Albus." The younger man turned away, shielding his face. "He opened it, then?"
"Yes."
"Hmm. Good." His left arm jerked back unwillingly. He bit his tongue, stiffened - kept his back ramrod straight. "What now?"
Albus smiled benignly. "We watch. And we wait."
He hesitates, unsure. "Is that all? Should we not - "
"No, Regulus." His eyes hold no twinkle, no spark of normalcy. "You have done quite enough already, and I thank you. But here there is nothing more to be done from our parts - it is up to him. We must be patient, now. He'll come to his sense, eventually. I'm sure of it."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
"And then? Is that when ... "
"Yes. I'll bee in touch, when ... if."
Regulus nodded, understanding.
...pppqqq...
It's like a game, Cho thinks. A stupid sodding game.
A puzzle, damn near impossible to solve - with more than just a few pieces missing. Lost.
Lost.
It's the stupid sodding game he's already lost before, and there's so little hope of him finding what he seeks - it makes her so frustrated, so annoyed. Though she will help him, if he ever asks. He never does. She doesn't really believe he ever will. Still, though, she waits patiently and she hopes pertinently, calculates from the intricate complexity of marks in his mind and divides by calm, careful observation. She's confused, now. She doesn't feel quite sure of anything.
Harry pretends to be asleep, but she's not fooled.
They're all pretending, and she's use to this games, his game - these dangerous games they play.
She watches over him instead.
His breath comes shallow and constrained, his chest slowly rising, falling, and rising yet again. He finds rest only in his own prickly cocoon, a tightly knitted chimera. It's impenetrable, and she can't break through, no matter to what ends she'd crawl for him, hanging her head. In subconscious he's free, free from restrains, other's long upheld aspirations. Cho winds a slim hand through his mess of dark hair, rubbing his neck. A smile sneaks to curve upward on his lips.
She realizes he's lost. To her, to himself.
Lost in old memories, old friends, old places. A shadow she cannot think to venture beneath.
And she wonders, spitefully, if sleep is the only place he will ever be happy, ever can be really happy.
Cho thinks she's falling in love - falling, and tumbling, and spinning out of rational, intelligent, logical control. She's quite sure the feeling is not quite reciprocated. He wont catch her. But she's persistent, and naively optimistic. She can work on it and she will. As long as he stays with her, by her side, she doesn't particularly care.
Harry opens his eyes and blinks; once, twice. He stretches, sees her gaze, her eyes unwavering, scrutinizing. He can't help it, then, sleepy still as he is - and he grins.
Cho grins back.
For a long while they both simply lay there, smiling stupidly, each absorbed in their own little playground.
She's surprised when his voice breaks the poignant, cushioned break.
"You said before you wanted to go overseas? To travel?"
"Yeah." She feels a little awkward - she hasn't thought of that since she met him. "What about it?"
He hesitates and tries hard not to show it.
He needs the prompt - "And? Hadi?"
Cho has always enjoyed puzzles: the more difficult the better. She likes complication. She likes to be competitive - and hell, she likes to win.
"What would you say if I wanted to leave tomorrow? Would you come with me?"
It's not what she'd expected, sweet Merlin no, but she hardly needs to ponder the question - because there is no question, really.
There never has been, never had been.
"Yes," she says, and she damn well means it. She's half joking when she asks, "When are we leaving?"
...pppqqq...
A/N: I'm so sorry for the wait on this! I've just been terribly busy, and working on a few other fics, and this one kinda sunk through the cracks. You've all been wonderfully kind and patient. Thanks again (as always) for reading ;) And, of course, reviews are very welcome too.