Potter47
Part Two
Wrinkling Time
"Is all our Life, then but a dream
Seen faintly in the goldern gleam
Athwart Time's dark resistless stream?."
Lewis Carroll
Chapter Ten
Lost in the Mail
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there was a little, innocuous egg. It seemed to be a perfectly ordinary egg, and there were many other ones like it.
But someone, it seemed, had decided that this particular egg was not quite the same as all of the others; instead, this particular egg would have had quite a part to play, before the end.
Harry Potter found himself in a rather unusual state. His eyes were closed, so he wasn't quite sure where he was--what he was most sure of was that he was in quite a lot of pain, as though he had just fallen from a broomstick, or had been trampled by a Crumple-Horned Snorkack. As he recalled where he had just been--on that awfully strange adventure, in Logica-Land--he wondered, for a moment, if this might not have been the case. Had a wild Snorkack come across his body, after he had--
He recalled the great veil in the Envelope's wall, and the sounds he had heard behind it--the shouts, the yells, the noises. It occurred to him that he could still hear those sounds--and in fact, they were even louder now.
He opened his eyes.
The world around him was in chaos--he was back in the Ministry, in the Veil room, and there were jets of light flashing in every direction, like some sort of magical, ever-changing spider web, and the jets were shooting forth from the wands of what seemed like an army of wizards and witches. On second thought, Harry thought, it was more likely to be two armies, wasn't it?
His first thought was to pull out his wand, but he remembered that he didn't have his wand at all--Voldemort broke it, he thought, with a sudden pang. It hadn't really hit him before that that meant he would need a new wand, he would never have that wand again, his wand, his own. It was a strange thought--but then Harry realized there were more important things to deal with at the moment, or he may never have any wand again, or any use for one, for that matter.
He began to crawl, keeping low to avoid the spellfire above him, and to keep from attracting anyone's attention. He needed to find someone--was Dumbledore here? Sirius?
The robes billowing all round him were all quite plain--the black Death Eater robes, and the robes of what seemed to be each and every Order member he had never really talked to, which didn't help him at all, now. He began to climb up the stone benches, searching for someone, anyone he knew, anyone that could help--
"HARRY, GET DOWN!" came a shout, and Harry threw himself behind the nearest bench. A jet of green light crashed into the next bench, above him, and a large piece of it crumbled, bits of rock and dust falling down onto him.
He crawled more furiously now, to get away from the spot, as someone had clearly seen him, to fire the spell--who had called his name, though? It must have been one of the Order members he didn't know...
He crawled and crawled, pulling himself along the row until he reached the next break in the benches, and then he began to climb again, up and up and up until finally he had reached the top of the room. It was darker up here, further away from the glow of the spells, and he kneeled behind the topmost bench, feeling relatively safe that nobody would see him. He looked down on the fighting, taking a minute to breathe, to take it in.
This is it, isn't it? he thought to himself. This was far larger than the battle here in June--this time, it seemed, everyone was here, every last Death Eater, every last member of the Order. There were teachers here, he saw now--there were people he had never thought he'd see fighting in his life. There was Flitwick--and Grubblyplank--and even Professor Sprout. It seemed so very wrong, all of it... how had they all known to come here? It had just been him, Voldemort, and Lucius Malfoy, before... when had all these people gotten here...?
And for that matter, where was Voldemort?
"Harry," said a voice, and Harry spun around in a moment, his arm out as though he had a wand to hold at the ready--he was half-expecting to be face to face with Voldemort himself again, right now, but when he turned around, there was no one there.
"Harry," the voice said once again, wavering slightly, and this time Harry could place it. "You're alive. I knew it was possible... I merely..."
"Professor Dumbledore?"
"Yes, Harry--I think you should stay a bit lower to the ground, you'll be seen. "
Harry did so, and then asked, "Where are you?"
"I'm right here," said Dumbledore, and Harry jumped slightly as he felt a hand on his arm.
"I can't see you," said Harry, although he thought that sounded perfectly stupid once he'd said it.
"I certainly hope not," said Dumbledore, "or else my invisibility charms are not what they used to be."
There was a silence, and then Dumbledore said: "What was it like?"
Harry furrowed his brow. "What? What was what like?"
"Beyond the veil, Harry, the veil! You realize what this means, do you not?"
Harry was silent for a moment, expecting Dumbledore to continue speaking. Then:
"What? What does it mean?"
"Harry, you are the first person in history to go through that veil and come back again."
"I am?"
"Yes. How did you do it, Harry? How?"
"I... it... I didn't die, Professor, I just went to Logica-Land."
Dumbledore blinked.
"Logica-Land?"
"Yeah... um, it's the strangest place..."
"I know what it is, Harry, Severus has been popping in and out for months. But... the veil leads to Logica-Land?"
"Well, it did. For me, yeah. Hermione said--something about Logica-Land being the universe's attempt to fix what Voldemort's messed up by messing about with time. So I don't know if it always leads there, but I wasn't supposed to die, so it... saved me, I guess..."
"Harry, what do you mean that Voldemort 'messed' with time?"
Harry shook his head. "I don't know," he said.
Dumbledore was silent for a long time, and then, quietly, he said:
"All right then... for now, Harry, stay low, and keep yourself hidden. I believe this will come in handy for that."
And suddenly, out of nowhere, Harry saw his invisibility cloak, apparently floating towards him in midair. He took the familiar cloth, and shook his head slightly.
"Why did you bring this? Couldn't you just make me invisible like you've done yourself?"
"I could," said Dumbledore, "but I believe you're rather used to using this magnificent cloak. And..." He hesitated. "I don't believe it would be wise for me to do so. I need to keep my energy."
"For what?" asked Harry.
Dumbledore did not answer.
"Well, what am I supposed to do with this?" asked Harry, gesturing with the cloak. "I don't have a wand, I'm not going to be any use--I can't very well duel Voldemort again or anything--"
"I believe you'll know what to do, when the time comes," said Dumbledore. "For now, do as I said--stay out of sight. And... stay out of this room."
"Why?"
"Too much wandfire. You may get in the way."
"Well what are you going to do?"
"You will see," said Dumbledore. A pause, and suddenly the crashes and shouts from below seemed to grow louder. "Now... go."
Harry nodded, unsure of anything that was going on around him, threw the invisibility cloak on, and eased open the nearest door. Inside, the deep green glow of the tank of brains loomed ominously in the distance.
Inside the egg was a tiny, unborn hummingbird, which, like the egg, seemed to be just like every other hummingbird. One day, however, while still nestled within his egg and longing for nothing but to be freed of it, his story took a rather sharp turn.
His mother, whom he didn't know very well but whom cared for him very much, was sitting upon his egg (and the others in the nest) when quite suddenly, she flew away with a start. The poor hummingbird had no idea at all what had frightened her so, but a long time passed, and she still had not returned.
Hermione ducked behind the glowing tank as a spell shot just past her. She took a breath, the sudden thought hitting her that just a few minutes ago she had been paging through Logica-Land, A History and making her way through the vast collection of letters in the Envelope's fortress. She had been in her element, soaking up the new knowledge like a sponge... and now she had been thrown quite unwillingly into a duel, hoping against hope that it wouldn't end with her soaking up brain juice.
The thought shook her back into reality, and she edged her way towards the other side of the tank, hoping she could take her attacker by surprise. Instead, as she peered around the edge of the glass, she found that the Death Eater had had the very same idea, and had edged around the other way.
She had no time to react, as the Death Eater raised his wand--she was just about to attempt to dive back around the tank of brains, when--
"Stupefy!"
The Death Eater fell to the floor in a heap, and Hermione blinked.
"How about you take care of the ones you're dueling and let me concentrate on mine?" said Professor Snape, eyebrow arched as he blocked a spell from another direction.
"What? I didn't ask for your help, I was handling it just fine--"
"Come off it, Granger," said Snape, still dueling his own duel while he spoke, "he was about to decimate you."
"Stupefy!" shouted Hermione, and the Death Eater that Snape had been dueling fell to the ground in a heap as well.
"There," said Hermione, rather insufferably. "Now we're even."
Snape smirked. "Touché," he said, as a new Death Eater's spell came his way. He dodged it lithely, and began to duel once again.
Hermione smirked as well. In the distance, the door that led to the circular room opened and closed silently, apparently of its own accord.
The hummingbird felt quite helpless inside his egg, so he tried and tried and tried to break through its shell, but he wasn't strong enough yet. He didn't like this at all--it was cold, without his mother there to keep him warm, and he was very worried. What if she never returned? What would happen to him...?
Harry closed the door behind him, and the circular room began to spin. The spots of blue candlelight seemed to blur into streams, and Harry had to blink several times to clear his vision once the spinning had stopped.
Where was he supposed to go now? Why couldn't Dumbledore have just said what he should do, rather than being all mysterious...? "You'll know what to do," he had said. How on earth was he supposed to know what to do?
He picked a door at random, and pushed it open slowly, carefully, trying his best to be inconspicuous--and it was a good thing he did, because this particular door led to a vast room full of planets and one or two people who were most definitely not bound by gravity. Harry rather thought that if he'd taken another step, he wouldn't have enjoyed it.
He stepped back from the door, and chose another--the sparkling, shimmering light told him immediately that it was the Time Room. He took a breath, and then a step forward--somehow, he felt this was the room he was looking for.
Then, one day, the hummingbird felt a strange rustling around his egg, and then a most peculiar feeling indeed. He did not know what was happening to him--was he hatching? Was he dying?
In fact, he was falling. Falling, falling, falling out of his nest and out of his tree, and it seemed as though nothing would break his fall, and his egg would be shattered open before he was big enough to hatch at all. But then... quite suddenly... the strange sensation stopped. He was no longer falling.
Ron could not believe he'd been so stupid. He'd been in the middle of an intense duel when the Death Eater had tried to run in this room--Ron had followed without even thinking, and now he found himself floating pretty much aimlessly around the solar system. The room's only other occupant (other than the planets and the sun) was the Death Eater himself, who Ron had managed to Stun. Now he sort of wished he hadn't done so--that brief, floating duel had been far more exciting than this. If only it had lasted a bit longer...
How on earth was someone supposed to get out of here, anyway? Didn't they use this room for studying planets and things...? How did those people get out? There had to be some way...
Suddenly, there was a bright rectangle of light in the distance, and Ron's heart leapt up in his chest--somebody must have opened one of the doors--but then the light was gone again, as quick as it had appeared.
"Bloody hell," murmured Ron to himself, spinning lazily in the lack of gravity. "The battle of the century's going on out there and I'm nothing but a... but a... what do they call it? Nothing but a tallesite..."
"You're far more than a tallesite, Ronald, and you're even more than a satellite," said a familiar voice, and Ron spun around again, accidentally tipping head over heels as well, in the process.
"LUNA!" said Ron, who caught a quick glimpse of her before spinning around again, standing in another glowing rectangle of a doorway.
Luna smiled. "See, it's not that bad, is it?" she said. "I want to put one of these rooms in our house one day..."
Ron blinked.
"Our house? What house?"
Luna giggled. "You look so silly, spinning around like that."
"Wha--Luna, could you just get me out of here?"
She grinned. "Of course, Ronald." Then she pointed his wand at him, and he winced, unsure of what exactly she was going to do.
"Accio Ronald!" she shouted, and he found himself barreling towards her far faster than he'd expected, and the next thing he knew he'd toppled her in the doorway.
"Uh... thanks," he said, attempting to get off of her.
"You're welcome," she said, pulling him back down. She kissed him a bit extensively on the lips, which he thought was a peculiar thing to do during the biggest battle of their lives, and then let him go, and smiled once again. "Now come on, Ronald--there are Death Eaters here, you know. We should go fight them."
Ron nodded, while somehow shaking his head slightly to himself at the same time. He didn't think he'd ever get used to Luna... but then that was sort of the point, wasn't it?
"Let's go," she said, and they went.
Now, the hummingbird felt very much better. He felt stronger, stronger, and stronger still until suddenly he was so strong that he broke his egg open most easily, and he was flying, and it was the most freeing feeling in the world.
Dumbledore watched the fight that was going on below for a very long time--he was not at all certain if what he was about to do was the right thing to do. He had thought it through as well as he could, in the little time that he'd had to do so (and, admittedly, he could do a great deal of thinking in any amount of time) and the only thing he had concluded was that while it may not be what is right, it most certainly was not what is easy, and that was a start.
Taking a breath, he stood upon the topmost stone bench, and held his wand to his throat.
"IF I MAY HAVE YOUR ATTENTION," he said quite calmly, and his voice echoed throughout the entire Ministry.
Everything stopped. The spells that had been cast shot off into the distance harmlessly, and each and every person in the hall turned to where the voice had come. The only movement left in the room was the soft fluttering of the veil.
Dumbledore tapped himself on the head with his wand, removing the charm that had left him invisible. The entire room gasped as one, as he appeared, and people began sidling in through all the doorways, those who had been fighting in the other rooms. Nobody said a word, as Dumbledore began to stride down the benches, one by one, apparently completely calm, until he had reached the center of the room, where he stepped upon the dais, and turned around. He did not need the Sonorous Charm anymore.
"I believe there is enough room for all of you," he said, gesturing to the benches. "Please, have a seat. You'll find them remarkably comfortable, as you're no doubt a bit worn out from all of your dueling.
The people began to sit down, as though Dumbledore had some sort of strange control over all of them. Soon the benches were filled, the Order and the Death Eaters and everybody else (the unofficial members of both armies) were all there, as if hypnotized, wondering (and perhaps afraid of) what Dumbledore would do next.
"Thank you," said Dumbledore, and he smiled, although it seemed a bit strained.
But then, the hummingbird opened his eyes, and saw that he was not flying at all. He was floating, in some sort of strange liquid, and he was trapped in a shining, shimmering something. Outside the walls, he could see his tree in the distance, but he could not get to it--and there were other things, big things that were moving, big people that were watching him closely. And then he began to feel very, very tired.
Harry walked into the Time Room, keenly aware of what had happened the last time he had been here. This was where it had all begun--this place had been the beginning of the odyssey. Everything changed, in here--everything changed, when the bell jar fell.
And now, Harry realized there was no more fighting going on, not in here--here were no jets of light splashing color across the room. There were no sounds of breaking glass, of crumbling stone. There was only a lone, solitary figure, kneeling before the shimmering bell jar, head bowed.
Harry's breath caught--it was Lord Voldemort. And he was speaking.
"Thank you, Bell Jar," said the Dark Lord, sounding so very different from when Harry had last heard him. His voice was empty of malice--now it almost seemed to be full of joy.
"I doubted you," he continued, "but you did not fail me. The world has failed me--my followers have failed me. But after all that has happened, after all you put me through... you did not fail me."
Harry couldn't breathe. This was not the same Voldemort at all. This was a strange, pitiful, terrifying sight, this new Voldemort. The old Voldemort never would have bowed to anything, let alone an inanimate object.
But then, Harry was reminded that the Bell Jar was not an inanimate object, as the small hummingbird within caught his eye. It glimmered in a strange way, for a moment, and then it began to descend once again into its egg.
"It is over," said the Dark Lord. "He is dead. I have won."
And when Harry looked away from the bird, his gaze caught sight of Voldemort's wand--laying untouched just beside where Voldemort knelt.
His wings--when had they started moving so fast?--began to slow down, and he felt himself falling again, but not like before--now he was just drifting down, floating down in the liquid until he was at the very bottom of the shining, shimmering something. He felt so very tired he wanted nothing more than to curl back up in his egg and go to sleep, and so he was quite happy to find his egg was piecing itself back together around him. In a moment, he was safe inside once more.
Dumbledore spoke once again, and nearly everyone in the benches had heard this sort of voice before--it was the voice with which he gave his end of term speech, every year, in the Great Hall of Hogwarts.
"I know some of you very well," he spoke. "And some of you, I know less than I would like to. And admittedly, some of you know me a great deal more than you would like to. But, I believe that if there is one thing we all can agree on about me... it is that I'm as mad as a hatter." He chuckled, slightly. No one else did.
"There are some things in this life of ours that will never be explained, that we will never understand. This place was built in an effort to ignore that truth. And so, in following with the rules of the universe, I am not going to explain to you why I am going to do what I am about to do. I'm just going to say that it is something I feel I need to do. There are some things that I very much would like to understand, as unlikely as that may be to actually happen, and I believe this may help me understand them. And more importantly," and here he smiled, "I could not think of anything else quite shocking enough to distract the lot of you, or else I would have done that and put this off for later."
He took a breath, and then let it out, slowly. "Anyway... I do hope one of you has a pen, for I would very much like these words to be added to my Chocolate Frog card." He paused, while someone rustled for a moment and brought out a pen and paper. Then he continued:
"Radiance. Vicissitude. Lemon-drop. Zeal."
He smiled once again. "That is all," he said, and stepped through the veil.
Harry held his breath for a moment, watching Voldemort as he stayed just where he was on the floor. And then, when he was relatively certain that the Dark Lord was not going to turn around, he opened the cloak just enough to fit his hand out, and murmured, "Accio wand!"
The Dark Lord spun his head around, but the wand was already safely within Harry's hand, and back underneath the cloak.
Voldemort reached out to where his wand had been, on the floor, and let out a strange, guttural sound when he found it was not there.
"Who's there?" he said, a slight quaver in his voice.
Wand gripped tightly in hand and pointed out at Voldemort, Harry let the cloak fall away, and the look that flashed upon the Dark Lord's face was indescribable--a thousand different emotions passed his features in a split second, from horror to fear to rage. And then he spoke:
"You died," he said, every shred of the joy gone from his voice. "I saw it. I pushed you. I finished it... this time." He snarled a strange, inhuman snarl.
"What did you do?" said Harry then, and it was strange, the way the words came to his lips without him even thinking them. "What did you mess with?"
The scarlet slits narrowed even further on Voldemort's face.
"What are you talking about?"
Harry gestured towards the Bell Jar. "You messed with time. What did you change?"
Voldemort was thinking, thinking, Harry could see, trying to figure out how Harry had known, what Harry already knew.
"I didn't change anything," said Voldemort.
"Liar."
Voldemort shook his head.
"No. I thought I had. Believe me, Harry Potter, I thought that I had. I thought that I had changed everything, I thought that I had broken the world in two. But that was a long time ago." He paused, and then: "I... understand things, now."
He looked at Harry for a moment, as though judging him.
"You see," he said, finally, "I didn't change anything at all. You did."
Harry did not move the wand an inch. He kept it trained on Voldemort, knew that in a moment he could end it all, knew that he would do it as soon as he knew what on earth Voldemort was talking about.
"What?"
Voldemort gestured to the Jar. "A long time ago, this Jar showed you to me. You and the girl. Weasley. It showed me how you went back, how you met me, and erased my memory. It showed me, and I didn't understand. So it showed me more, you see, Harry. It brought me forward, to the night I learned of the prophecy. You know the one, don't you?"
Harry was silent.
"'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...' That one? And my future self--now, my past self--had a choice to make. Between two boys who were born at the end of July. Then was when I interfered--I told myself to choose you, I told myself what I had seen, and I told myself to kill you."
The Dark Lord smiled.
"That doesn't make any sense," said Harry, shaking his head. "If you hadn't tried to kill me, I never would have gone back in time in the first place--"
"I know," said Voldemort. "It's a lovely paradox, isn't it? But no matter how much it doesn't make sense, it's the truth--that by going back and 'messing' with me, all those years ago, you were the one who caused me to kill your parents." He glanced down at the wand Harry held on him, and smirked once more.
"How fitting, then," he said, "that you kill me with the same wand."
Harry definitely could not breathe now, now matter how hard he tried. None of this made any sense, he knew it had to have just been one of Voldemort's riddles... but then, no matter what else was true, it was true that this was... that wand...
He looked down at it--he had used this wand, the wand that had killed his parents, for weeks and weeks without ever really thinking about it. But now... now, no matter what riddles Voldemort was spinning...
"Harry... thank God..." said a voice at Harry's ear, a most familiar, most amazing, most beautiful voice that he had not heard in far too long.
"Ginny?" said Harry aloud, and he felt a soft hand on his arm.
"What about her?" spat Voldemort from the floor, thinking Harry had spoken to him.
"I'm right here Harry, I'm invisible..."
Why was everybody invisible today? It would have been getting annoying, if only it hadn't been Ginny... Ginny... his Ginny...
"What?" said Voldemort, smirking. "Why don't you just kill me Harry, why don't you just do it?"
Why don't I just do it? he asked himself. I could kill him, and it would be over, it would all be over... who cares if it's the same bloody wand...
He felt the words, the Curse, so very close to his tongue. He could just say it, he could just open his mouth... yes, yes, he had opened it now, now he only had to start the words moving, he had to start them rolling down his tongue. But as he tried to speak, he felt himself falling, falling, falling... not physically, but in his head, in his heart. The hand on his arm felt so very warm...
"Harry, hand me the wand," said Ginny's voice.
What? Why should he hand it to her? This was his, this was his to finish, he could kill this man, this not-even-a-man, and it would be--
"Harry, hand me the wand. You know what to do, don't you?"
The words of Dumbledore echoed in his head... and suddenly, yes, he knew what to do, even though it didn't really make sense. He knew, and he felt himself, his head, his heart, crawling back up a sort of precipice, no longer falling at all, but standing steady, with a warm, warm hand on him to keep his balance. He did know what to do, he knew just what to do... this was what Dumbledore had been talking about... somehow, he had known...
Harry nodded.
"Stand up," he said to Voldemort, voice shaking terribly. "Get up."
Voldemort stood, slowly, carefully, still smirking.
"You're not going to kill me, Harry," he said, shaking his head. "You can't do it, can you?"
Harry held the wand out to Ginny, who took it quickly--the wooden handle was gone before Harry realized it--and wrapped it in the invisibility cloak that Harry had dropped.
Voldemort blinked.
"What did you do with my wand? Where did it--"
Harry shook his head. "No," he said, and it didn't feel like he was the one speaking at all, "I can't kill you. But then, that's always been your biggest problem, hasn't it? You don't believe there's anything worse than death."
The words seemed to strike a chord with Voldemort, who suddenly seemed genuinely afraid for the first time since Harry had appeared from the dead.
"What are you talking about?" said Voldemort, but Harry didn't answer. Instead, he charged at him, with every bit of strength he had left, and shoved him as hard as he could--backwards, into the Bell Jar where it sat upon the desk. The Dark Lord fell, fell, fell until he was completely encased in the crystal, and then he began to change. He grew old and old and then young and young and did it all over again, as they watched.
"Just what you wanted," said Harry, smiling slightly. "Now you can live forever."
Neither Harry nor Ginny noticed a tiny little hummingbird as it flew gracefully away from its prison.
Epilogue
"Everything happens to everyone sooner or later, if there is time enough."
Shaw
Coming Soon
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.
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