Amid a sense of utter emptiness, crossing lines of time and space, lay a hand. It was curled most unnaturally upward, clutching at air above a face frozen in cold horror. It was Hermione, but not as he had seen her in many, many years. He could never forget her as he saw her now. It had seemed such a loss, such a painful time, in their second year, when the Basilisk had frozen her in this expression. The few times he had been allowed to see her were burned into his memory like with fire.
Beside her was a pale, bemoaning figure, seeming on the edge of death, it choked on some unseen substance, hardly catching breath for the pain of it. It was Ron; he could not but feel the icy crush within his heart that that instant had wrought. He could remember the fear, the sensation of premature loss that had threatened to take hold. Luckily, he had remembered the Prince's notes on bezoars. He had reacted when a teacher had not. Did that make him better? Did it make him colder?
Luna lay, without much peace, but without these external expressions of pain. Harry recalled she looked just as they all had from the moment Voldemort's spell had affected them. It was a horror unlike the others. It was impermeable and simple. She appeared tormented but otherwise fine, like a great losing battle was taking place within her mind. Harry shuddered and looked on, inexorably drawn to see what would come next.
It was Neville. He lay facedown, seeming dead. His hair, clothes, and very body appeared shaken loose from their fast architecture. He clung to nothing, but was probably the most at peace of all there. He was unconscious but unmoving. Harry remembered that he had tripped over this image, only later to find out he was better off than appeared.
Cold as death, pale as snow-dust, and beautifully preserved from memories long past, Ginny lay now before his eyes. He could not take this most of all. Her entanglement with Riddle had nearly lost him Ginny once, and that was just when he saw her as Ron's sister. How much more was the pain he felt at Riddle's final act of vengeance...?
He wanted to touch her face, but his arms acted as though they brushed a wall, a sheet of thin glass holding him back. He petted the air in a soft vertical stroke. He had forgotten two people were standing behind him. He had forgotten these were memories, not real images. He had forgotten everything but that face. Pain seemed to well up from deep down, beneath all that he had set in the way.
Then, the laugh came. "Haha, Harry, Harry, Harry. When will you learn to distinguish truth from simple illusion? When will you toss out the past for the present, the future?" the voice rasped, "You are so easily fooled. Snape was right, wasn't he? You never could learn to hide your heart in subtleties. But he was the greater fool, in the end, wasn't he?"
Harry did not answer. He began to fume. He was not so much angry at the figure; he knew he should expect this of it. Harry became furious with himself. He would not grant an answer.
"Yes, listen, that's a good boy. Severus Snape underestimated your power. He did not see the power you could have with your attachments; that is why he failed. That is why I will not. I see you. I know you better than you do. On the other hand, perhaps you do know, but will not admit it. It is immaterial."
"Harry?" a small timid voice broke in. Harry turned. Jan looked like she wanted to say something.
"Hush, dear. Hush," the figure said, growing more impressive with its calm exterior hovering mere inches before her. "The grown-ups are having a discussion." She shrunk in fear.
"Leave her alone, will you? It is me you want, right?" Harry said, not realizing the words were forming until they were out of his mouth.
"Quite right, quite right, but she was going to interrupt. We really do not have time for this. You see, we are on sort of a timetable, here. Where was I? Oh, yes... you see, your friends as you did then, at those critical times when they were at their weakest, when you were."
"You see them so because it is easier. Look again. Look and see pain."
Harry saw that they had suddenly changed. They, once more, were those ragged bits of flesh, those tattered remnants of souls secured to the mattresses by the greatest healers of St. Mungo's, of the world. He was surprised. He looked at the figure, hood to eye. The figure, for once, was completely wrong. He did not say anything. The figure, seeing his quick turn from the image, laughed.
"Yes, it is too painful for you to see them so. It is all different, now, isn't it? However, we all know they are not there; they are gone. They may never have been, for all it matters. You have forgotten them, and rightly so. Now you can see your justification, late in coming as it is. Haha..."
Harry felt something uncomfortable squirm in his stomach, like a couple eels battling over the spare bit of organ space his innards afforded. It ached like a bruise but he could not find a verbal expression for what he felt. It was a twisting sort of emptiness that filled him.
He felt a pair of lips at his ear, words tumbled out like water, in a rush, frantic, "Harry, listen. They are here, they are. I can hear them more loudly here than I could anywhere else. Don't believe him. I know them...they must..."
A sudden smashing motion threw him and Jan apart. The figure had seen her sneak around and flattened her. "Now, now, that is not very polite," it said, with a lackadaisical sternness. "Please listen. Do not interrupt or I shall have to make you leave." A few teeth appeared, pointed and dark at the very center of the hood, where light could barely seem to penetrate.
"You can't! I have to be here, Harry wants me to. He asked me to come, didn't you, Harry?" she asked with a bit of fear and hope mixed in her voice.
Harry nodded in assertion. He almost wished he had not brought her, but he had not known. He didn't want to cause her any more pain. She seemed to brighten and sat neatly on a stool at a bed's end. The figure swept before Harry, returning his attention instantly to the topic at hand.
"What do you want?" Harry asked, "Really. I can tell you are no fool, but your very presence here makes no sense. You wish to propagate dark arts, of that, at least, I can tell. Why, why would you come to the very antithesis of dark artistry, the slayer of the darkest wizard of our age?"
"Really? Is that what you are?" the voice sneered, touching with a light flutter amusement in its sound. "So, all that talk, all the pageantry around the fall of Voldemort has convinced you? Hasn't it? You really are their little poster boy perfect hero..."
The laugh in this last sentence nearly made it inaudible. Harry felt the powerful urge to lash back with anger, with some well thought up quip, but had none. He stayed silent. Silence bade him to think. He had finished Voldemort. He remembered, the spell, the intent, the flash. No one else was there, right? It had to be him.
The friends had suddenly become paralyzed, and he grew blindingly angry. He hadn't seen it and never felt it done, but in shock, he surely couldn't be expected to notice or feel everything. Anything. Ever.
What if Voldemort had been defeated by something else, by a backfiring spell or some such? It had happened before. Harry still had faced him when none else could. He had instigated that end. It was he, Harry, who destroyed the Horcruxes. It was his victory.
"Yes. Enjoy that. Enjoy such shortsighted thoughts. You wish you could be sure, don't you? It would make life so much simpler, wouldn't it? The fact is, only one individual knows the fateful events of that day in the most crucial details. I am he. You were blinded by 'rage' as you call it. You were in shock, you hid in your little turtle's shell and did not witness, not truly witness all that befell."
The figure seemed to savor that moment, that precious moment when doubt began to well uncontrollably within Harry's mind and being. A part of him, a small, precious part, shoved back, trying to lend peace and calm to his shadowed mind. It was useless; the light it lent had not the strength to unravel the knots.
He let it go. It was not worth it. "So what?" he said permissively, "If I don't know the truth, it means nothing. Voldemort is vanquished, isn't that enough? I faced him, I destroyed his Horcruxes, and he is gone. I do not think this is a question of victory or honor. I did what I could, like so many others, to defeat the dark lord, Voldemort."
"Haha," the cold peal rang. "You don't actually believe that. You have a strong sense of defensiveness. Brushing off as irrelevant something you feel is vital to you is just an escape. Because, you see, if you had to face the truth, the failure would be complete. You know that you failed in your intention; you failed your fallen friends. What if you failed completely?"
Harry sat still; he had not realized that he had collapsed soundlessly upon the edge of Ginny's bed. He felt a dazedness that he had fought off and on for years. Every now and again, he could admit to his own heart, he had pondered the events of that evening. The vagueness of that moment always frightened him. He felt something unresolved, something incomplete. However, then, his life was like that, too, so that might have just been a side effect.
Unconsciously, he began to stroke the hand at his side. It was soft and unblemished. It was as he had remembered. One thing, in this cold room, was as it had been, as it should be. A thought, like a tear, slipped painfully from the top of his mind to its base. As it trickled slowly down through his brain stem and to his spine and extremities, it brought with it an involuntary shudder.
The figure ignored this. "What, I ask you, could solve this dangerous divide? You are confused, uncertain. What you believe and can logically recall have such a wide gap that the world seems to tumble between it."
It floated, dreamlike, to Hermione's side. Looking down, it reached out and pulled up an echo, a memory, not unlike that of Harry's earlier vision of her frozen from the Basilisk. This memory was a golden necklace. At its base was an hourglass shape, a powerful tool of the wizarding world, a Time Turner. Hermione had used one such object their third year to make classes, and she and Harry had ended up saving two lives with it one day, temporarily, as Harry found out later. Death came for all, in their time.
"Funny things," the mysterious figure spoke, almost giving a sense, a comprehendible sense of gender or personality in this statement, "Time Turners. They manipulate the status of time and space, allowing the user to alter the past as he or she wishes, but by implication allow no true change to occur. All is in a line; all is as it had to be."
"Every event, every moment, caught, forever suspended in past tense, but some waiting and already completed by that sudden touch of the future's hand. You stopped Dementors from destroying yourself and your friends' lives years ago, thanks to one of these."
Harry did not ask how it knew this. It didn't really matter, did it? "So, what?" he asked.
The figure seemed a little annoyed, "Come now. Isn't it obvious? Must I kowtow to the drag you set on a mind capable of so much? Must I drag you forcibly from your comfort zone to those places where you would never wish to go?"
At no answer, it continued huffily, "A moment, a moment long contemplated and in which such immense pressures and spell work often rips a slight hole in the very fabric of existence. At such rips, time can be altered such as to allow the passage back and forth of a single soul, for a single moment. Surely, given the chance, you would take the plunge, make the leap into what is unknown, to find out, to learn the truth, to discover a past you never knew and learn more about the power within you, wouldn't you?"
Harry considered, it didn't quite make sense, but if he could go back, if he could confirm what he knew or learn the truth, however horrible, it could make a difference. Maybe, if his moment granted it, he could save his friends; maybe he could prevent their tragedy. Wouldn't that be worth it? He hid this last thought, though he suspected the figure knew that motive. He could almost feel its wicked grin beneath that hood.
Besides, what was there to lose? He had but to go and return, that sounded simple enough. He could save lives, change the world. It was all before him like a feast. His internals licked hungrily. He thought of the lives, the five wonderful lives he could recreate, could know retroactively. The figure had said the past was immobile, but that was nothing. He was Harry Potter; the impossible was just a set of arbitrary rules. These were his friends. If he had the opportunity, he would save them. Whether it took his life or his sanity, he had to try.
Jan had sat, since her last outburst, still and attentively. Now, she seemed to hold more still than before, unusually still. It was as though one bracing for a powerful impact would sit, expectant and in pain from the oncoming blow. Harry did not see this. His mind was elsewhere.
The figure brought him back. "There is," it began, clearing its throat, "one little stipulation. Recall, I said that the point in time to be jumped to requires a powerful breech in time/space. The one you are going too has a natural one, the death of Voldemort and, of course, the...er...cause of his demise. Now, in order to make it all clear, to create the gap rightly, you must go and return or things could get messy. Time will not allow you to remain in the same plane as yourself in such a method as this. It is but an instant, really."
"In order to get back, you will need as powerful an event, or more, to break the time stream here."
It was a simple sentence but the implications were incredible. Harry knew what he would have had to do. He couldn't. It was monstrous! He couldn't kill the figure, as distasteful as that was to him; it alone knew the way in or out of this magical shift. Moreover, the figure would not let anyone in or out. That left his friends. However, how could he justify killing one over another to save the rest? It was horrible.
He had to refuse. He had to...he couldn't. For some reason, he felt that this gap, this emptiness, this sense of un-being was focused horribly upon that event years ago. Only true resolution would bring him round. He had to know! He felt a selfish twinge. What would they care? They were as good as...he couldn't say it. It hurt so much. He would care. He had to voice this.
"No. Not them. There has to be another way. They may be, as you say, nothing but empty husks. They may be. But Jan said...Jan said..." Jan.
"Jan," said the figure, dark specks glittering behind shadows deep and unfeeling.
Both turned. She sat, silent and frozen, but not in fear. She was shocked, this was true, but looked resigned to whatever the moment would bring. She did not say anything. Harry would not think of it. He could not. She was more a friend than these others had been in years.
Harry spoke first, "No." He said this with a falling authority. He was running out of options. "There must," and he said this with withering hope, "there must be some other way. Forget it." He clenched his fists with a renewed firmness, as though voicing the right thing had given him more strength. It was the right thing. Five lives weren't worth the complete sacrifice of one, were they? They had had their chance. Jan had her own. It wasn't fair.
"Haha," the laugh echoed, "How poor you sympathetic fools are! She helped cause all of this, don't you remember? They were living normal, everyday lives, but then she ended that. Others died as well, and she fled. Did you ever bother to ask her why she fled? She could have helped. No one ever heard; she did not receive punishment for it. She never repaid her debt to their families. She never did anything to show remorse, true remorse."
Harry knew what it said to be true, but could not help but pity the poor, shaky wraith before him. She seemed, too, but a child who has upset a few of his playthings. She had not meant it, but felt ashamed and scared afterwards. It seemed natural, if sad. He could not; he would not accept this solution. Yet, the temptation lay there, in the back of his mind. He grasped for straws. He found one.
"What of those dummies from before? I used the Avada Kedavra to eliminate your little trap of my friends' twins. Why not use that moment? I could use a time turner to get back to that moment, surely?"
"Tut, tut, Harry. Did you not listen at all? They were nothing, an illusion, a powerful spell to mimic the actions of a human. Nothing more. Nothing at all, really."
"Then, it is off. I cannot do it. You may wish it, but I can still refuse. Resolved or unresolved, my self-satisfaction is not worth this. What would happen if I made the jump with no clear jump-back?"
"There is no telling," the voice spoke. "Everything could be fine, but it could all go wrong. You could bring one demons you cannot imagine upon yourselves and others. I wouldn't recommend it. It is an incredible risk." The voice had become steady, solid and unmoved. It sounded resigned to a certain nothingness that was encroaching. Something like a clock seemed to tick inside the extremities of the room. Something was tolling down toward an inevitable something.
"What could be worse than what is?" Harry asked rhetorically, and thinking, added, 'It could only improve, and it will improve. I will make it so! I have to, for them, for Ginny, for Ron, for Hermione, for Neville, for Luna, for...for me, too.'
He set his eye. The figure noted and nodded. Harry could almost feel a sense of fear, of reserve in that faceless being. He had made the thing nervous. 'Good,' his mind shouted, 'now, it knows the true power of bravery, of will!'
"Show me the way," he said clearly and slowly. The figure nodded and with a gesture revealed a portal of whirling madness. "This is the stream of time, leap through and search out the time you seek. It will be a bright spot in the midst of darkness. Nevertheless, beware, if you wander off, you may be lost forever in time. Your window is short. I know not what you will wreak upon this world by your foolish choice, but you will just have to live with that. Yes. You will regret it; I'm sure. Your will is set; nothing I can say will change it. Goodbye, for now, Harry Potter!"
Harry dove in, taking his life and the whole of existence in hand, as he did so. His greatest gamble, his greatest challenge, he took up for five friends. If he couldn't do it, who could? This question was the last to echo through his mind as he flew through the air, seeing a terrified Jan and a, once more, impassive cloaked figure, slightly overlapping from the angle, seeming as one long, congruous being. Then all went green-grey and he was gone.